Book: Fromont and Risler, Complete

A >> Alphonse Daudet >> Fromont and Risler, Complete




"This is my wife's reception day!"

Soon everybody in the place knows that it is Sidonie's day; and Pere
Achille, who takes care of the garden, is not very well pleased to find
that the branches of the winter laurels by the gate are broken.

Before taking his seat at the table upon which he draws, in the bright
light from the tall windows, Risler has taken off his fine frock-coat,
which embarrasses him, and has turned up his clean shirt-sleeves; but the
idea that his wife is expecting company preoccupies and disturbs him; and
from time to time he puts on his coat and goes up to her.

"Has no one come?" he asks timidly.

"No, Monsieur, no one."

In the beautiful red drawing-room--for they have a drawing-room in red
damask, with a console between the windows and a pretty table in the
centre of the light-flowered carpet--Sidonie has established herself in
the attitude of a woman holding a reception, a circle of chairs of many
shapes around her. Here and there are books, reviews, a little
work-basket in the shape of a gamebag, with silk tassels, a bunch of
violets in a glass vase, and green plants in the jardinieres. Everything
is arranged exactly as in the Fromonts' apartments on the floor below;
but the taste, that invisible line which separates the distinguished from
the vulgar, is not yet refined. You would say it was a passable copy of a
pretty genre picture. The hostess's attire, even, is too new; she looks
more as if she were making a call than as if she were at home. In
Risler's eyes everything is superb, beyond reproach; he is preparing to
say so as he enters the salon, but, in face of his wife's wrathful
glance, he checks himself in terror.

"You see, it's four o'clock," she says, pointing to the clock with an
angry gesture. "No one will come. But I take it especially ill of Claire
not to come up. She is at home--I am sure of it--I can hear her."

Indeed, ever since noon, Sidonie has listened intently to the slightest
sounds on the floor below, the child's crying, the closing of doors.
Risler attempts to go down again in order to avoid a renewal of the
conversation at breakfast; but his wife will not allow him to do so. The
very least he can do is to stay with her when everybody else abandons
her, and so he remains there, at a loss what to say, rooted to the spot,
like those people who dare not move during a storm for fear of attracting
the lightning. Sidonie moves excitedly about, going in and out of the
salon, changing the position of a chair, putting it back again, looking
at herself as she passes the mirror, and ringing for her maid to send her
to ask Pere Achille if no one has inquired for her. That Pere Achille is
such a spiteful creature! Perhaps when people have come, he has said that
she was out.

But no, the concierge has not seen any one.

Silence and consternation. Sidonie is standing at the window on the left,
Risler at the one on the right. From there they can see the little
garden, where the darkness is gathering, and the black smoke which the
chimney emits beneath the lowering clouds. Sigismond's window is the
first to show a light on the ground floor; the cashier trims his lamp
himself with painstaking care, and his tall shadow passes in front of the
flame and bends double behind the grating. Sidonie's wrath is diverted a
moment by these familiar details.

Suddenly a small coupe drives into the garden and stops in front of the
door. At last some one is coming. In that pretty whirl of silk and
flowers and jet and flounces and furs, as it runs quickly up the step,
Sidonie has recognized one of the most fashionable frequenters of the
Fromont salon, the wife of a wealthy dealer in bronzes. What an honor to
receive a call from such an one! Quick, quick! the family takes its
position, Monsieur in front of the hearth, Madame in an easychair,
carelessly turning the leaves of a magazine. Wasted pose! The fair caller
did not come to see Sidonie; she has stopped at the floor below.

Ah! if Madame Georges could hear what her neighbor says of her and her
friends!

At that moment the door opens and "Mademoiselle Planus" is announced. She
is the cashier's sister, a poor old maid, humble and modest, who has made
it her duty to make this call upon the wife of her brother's employer,
and who is amazed at the warm welcome she receives. She is surrounded and
made much of. "How kind of you to come! Draw up to the fire." They
overwhelm her with attentions and show great interest in her slightest
word. Honest Risler's smiles are as warm as his thanks. Sidonie herself
displays all her fascinations, overjoyed to exhibit herself in her glory
to one who was her equal in the old days, and to reflect that the other,
in the room below, must hear that she has had callers. So she makes as
much noise as possible, moving chairs, pushing the table around; and when
the lady takes her leave, dazzled, enchanted, bewildered, she escorts her
to the landing with a great rustling of flounces, and calls to her in a
very loud voice, leaning over the rail, that she is at home every Friday.
"You understand, every Friday."

Now it is dark. The two great lamps in the salon are lighted. In the
adjoining room they hear the servant laying the table. It is all over.
Madame Fromont Jeune will not come.

Sidonie is pale with rage.

"Just fancy, that minx can't come up eighteen steps! No doubt Madame
thinks we're not grand enough for her. Ah! but I'll have my revenge."

As she pours forth her wrath in unjust words, her voice becomes coarse,
takes on the intonations of the faubourg, an accent of the common people
which betrays the ex-apprentice of Mademoiselle Le Mire.

Risler is unlucky enough to make a remark.

"Who knows? Perhaps the child is ill."

She turns upon him in a fury, as if she would like to bite him.

"Will you hold your tongue about that brat? After all, it's your fault
that this has happened to me. You don't know how to make people treat me
with respect."

And as she closed the door of her bedroom violently, making the globes on
the lamps tremble, as well as all the knick-knacks on the etageres,
Risler, left alone, stands motionless in the centre of the salon, looking
with an air of consternation at his white cuffs, his broad patent-leather
shoes, and mutters mechanically:

"My wife's reception day!"

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Affectation of indifference
Always smiling condescendingly
Convent of Saint Joseph, four shoes under the bed!
Deeming every sort of occupation beneath him
Dreams of wealth and the disasters that immediately followed
He fixed the time mentally when he would speak
Little feathers fluttering for an opportunity to fly away
No one has ever been able to find out what her thoughts were
Pass half the day in procuring two cakes, worth three sous
She was of those who disdain no compliment
Such artificial enjoyment, such idiotic laughter
Superiority of the man who does nothing over the man who works
Terrible revenge she would take hereafter for her sufferings
The groom isn't handsome, but the bride's as pretty as a picture
The poor must pay for all their enjoyments




FROMONT AND RISLER

By ALPHONSE DAUDET




BOOK 2.




CHAPTER VII

THE TRUE PEARL AND THE FALSE

"What can be the matter? What have I done to her?" Claire Fromont very
often wondered when she thought of Sidonie.

She was entirely ignorant of what had formerly taken place between her
friend and Georges at Savigny. Her own life was so upright, her mind so
pure, that it was impossible for her to divine the jealous, mean-spirited
ambition that had grown up by her side within the past fifteen years. And
yet the enigmatical expression in that pretty face as it smiled upon her
gave her a vague feeling of uneasiness which she could not understand. An
affectation of politeness, strange enough between friends, was suddenly
succeeded by an ill-dissembled anger, a cold, stinging tone, in presence
of which Claire was as perplexed as by a difficult problem. Sometimes,
too, a singular presentiment, the ill-defined intuition of a great
misfortune, was mingled with her uneasiness; for all women have in some
degree a kind of second sight, and, even in the most innocent, ignorance
of evil is suddenly illumined by visions of extraordinary lucidity.

From time to time, as the result of a conversation somewhat longer than
usual, or of one of those unexpected meetings when faces taken by
surprise allow their real thoughts to be seen, Madame Fromont reflected
seriously concerning this strange little Sidonie; but the active, urgent
duties of life, with its accompaniment of affections and preoccupations,
left her no time for dwelling upon such trifles.

To all women comes a time when they encounter such sudden windings in the
road that their whole horizon changes and all their points of view become
transformed.

Had Claire been a young girl, the falling away of that friendship bit by
bit, as if torn from her by an unkindly hand, would have been a source of
great regret to her. But she had lost her father, the object of her
greatest, her only youthful affection; then she had married. The child
had come, with its thrice welcome demands upon her every moment.
Moreover, she had with her her mother, almost in her dotage, still
stupefied by her husband's tragic death. In a life so fully occupied,
Sidonie's caprices received but little attention; and it had hardly
occurred to Claire Fromont to be surprised at her marriage to Risler. He
was clearly too old for her; but, after all, what difference did it make,
if they loved each other?

As for being vexed because little Chebe had attained that lofty position,
had become almost her equal, her superior nature was incapable of such
pettiness. On the contrary, she would have been glad with all her heart
to know that that young wife, whose home was so near her own, who lived
the same life, so to speak, and had been her playmate in childhood, was
happy and highly esteemed. Being most kindly disposed toward her, she
tried to teach her, to instruct her in the ways of society, as one might
instruct an attractive provincial, who fell but little short of being
altogether charming.

Advice is not readily accepted by one pretty young woman from another.
When Madame Fromont gave a grand dinner-party, she took Madame Risler to
her bedroom, and said to her, smiling frankly in order not to vex her:
"You have put on too many jewels, my dear. And then, you know, with a
high dress one doesn't wear flowers in the hair." Sidonie blushed, and
thanked her friend, but wrote down an additional grievance against her in
the bottom of her heart.

In Claire's circle her welcome was decidedly cold. The Faubourg
Saint-Germain has its pretensions; but do not imagine that the Marais has
none! Those wives and daughters of mechanics, of wealthy manufacturers,
knew little Chebe's story; indeed, they would have guessed it simply by
her manner of making her appearance and by her demeanor among them.

Sidonie's efforts were unavailing. She retained the manners of a
shop-girl. Her slightly artificial amiability, sometimes too humble, was
as unpleasant as the spurious elegance of the shop; and her disdainful
attitudes recalled the superb airs of the head saleswomen in the great
dry-goods establishments, arrayed in black silk gowns, which they take
off in the dressing-room when they go away at night--who stare with an
imposing air, from the vantage-point of their mountains of curls, at the
poor creatures who venture to discuss prices.

She felt that she was being examined and criticised, and her modesty was
compelled to place itself upon a war footing. Of the names mentioned in
her presence, the amusements, the entertainments, the books of which they
talked to her, she knew nothing. Claire did her best to help her, to keep
her on the surface, with a friendly hand always outstretched; but many of
these ladies thought Sidonie pretty; that was enough to make them bear
her a grudge for seeking admission to their circle. Others, proud of
their husbands' standing and of their wealth, could not invent enough
unspoken affronts and patronizing phrases to humiliate the little
parvenue.

Sidonie included them all in a single phrase: "Claire's friends--that is
to say, my enemies!" But she was seriously incensed against but one.

The two partners had no suspicion of what was taking place between their
wives. Risler, continually engrossed in his press, sometimes remained at
his draughting-table until midnight. Fromont passed his days abroad,
lunched at his club, was almost never at the factory. He had his reasons
for that.

Sidonie's proximity disturbed him. His capricious passion for her, that
passion that he had sacrificed to his uncle's last wishes, recurred too
often to his memory with all the regret one feels for the irreparable;
and, conscious that he was weak, he fled. His was a pliable nature,
without sustaining purpose, intelligent enough to appreciate his
failings, too weak to guide itself. On the evening of Risler's
wedding--he had been married but a few months himself--he had experienced
anew, in that woman's presence, all the emotion of the stormy evening at
Savigny. Thereafter, without self-examination, he avoided seeing her
again or speaking with her. Unfortunately, as they lived in the same
house, as their wives saw each other ten times a day, chance sometimes
brought them together; and this strange thing happened--that the husband,
wishing to remain virtuous, deserted his home altogether and sought
distraction elsewhere.

Claire was not astonished that it was so. She had become accustomed,
during her father's lifetime, to the constant comings and goings of a
business life; and during her husband's absences, zealously performing
her duties as wife and mother, she invented long tasks, occupations of
all sorts, walks for the child, prolonged, peaceful tarryings in the
sunlight, from which she would return home, overjoyed with the little
one's progress, deeply impressed with the gleeful enjoyment of all
infants in the fresh air, but with a touch of their radiance in the
depths of her serious eyes.

Sidonie also went out a great deal. It often happened, toward night, that
Georges's carriage, driving through the gateway, would compel Madame
Risler to step hastily aside as she was returning in a gorgeous costume
from a triumphal promenade. The boulevard, the shop-windows, the
purchases, made after long deliberation as if to enjoy to the full the
pleasure of purchasing, detained her very late. They would exchange a
bow, a cold glance at the foot of the staircase; and Georges would hurry
into his apartments, as into a place of refuge, concealing beneath a
flood of caresses, bestowed upon the child his wife held out to him, the
sudden emotion that had seized him.

Sidonie, for her part, seemed to have forgotten everything, and to have
retained no other feeling but contempt for that weak, cowardly creature.
Moreover, she had many other things to think about.

Her husband had just had a piano placed in her red salon, between the
windows.

After long hesitation she had decided to learn to sing, thinking that it
was rather late to begin to play the piano; and twice a week Madame
Dobson, a pretty, sentimental blonde, came to give her lessons from
twelve o'clock to one. In the silence of the neighborhood the a-a-a and
o-oo, persistently prolonged, repeated again and again, with windows
open, gave the factory the atmosphere of a boarding-school.

And it was in reality a schoolgirl who was practising these exercises, an
inexperienced, wavering little soul, full of unconfessed longings, with
everything to learn and to find out in order to become a real woman. But
her ambition confined itself to a superficial aspect of things.

"Claire Fromont plays the piano; I will sing. She is considered a refined
and distinguished woman, and I intend that people shall say the same of
me."

Without a thought of improving her education, Sidonie passed her life
running about among milliners and dressmakers. "What are people going to
wear this winter?" was her cry. She was attracted by the gorgeous
displays in the shop-windows, by everything that caught the eye of the
passers-by.

The one thing that Sidonie envied Claire more than all else was the
child, the luxurious plaything, beribboned from the curtains of its
cradle to its nurse's cap. She did not think of the sweet, maternal
duties, demanding patience and self-abnegation, of the long rockings when
sleep would not come, of the laughing awakenings sparkling with fresh
water. No! she saw in the child naught but the daily walk. It is such a
pretty sight, the little bundle of finery, with floating ribbons and long
feathers, that follows young mothers through the crowded streets.

When she wanted company she had only her parents or her husband. She
preferred to go out alone. The excellent Risler had such an absurd way of
showing his love for her, playing with her as if she were a doll,
pinching her chin and her cheek, capering about her, crying, "Hou! hou!"
or staring at her with his great, soft eyes like an affectionate and
grateful dog. That senseless love, which made of her a toy, a mantel
ornament, made her ashamed. As for her parents, they were an
embarrassment to her in presence of the people she wished to know, and
immediately after her marriage she almost got rid of them by hiring a
little house for them at Montrouge. That step had cut short the frequent
invasions of Monsieur Chebe and his long frock-coat, and the endless
visits of good Madame Chebe, in whom the return of comfortable
circumstances had revived former habits of gossip and of indolence.

Sidonie would have been very glad to rid herself of the Delobelles in the
same way, for their proximity annoyed her. But the Marais was a central
location for the old actor, because the boulevard theatres were so near;
then, too, Desiree, like all sedentary persons, clung to the familiar
outlook, and her gloomy courtyard, dark at four o'clock in winter, seemed
to her like a friend, like a familiar face which the sun lighted up at
times as if it were smiling at her. As she was unable to get rid of them,
Sidonie had adopted the course of ceasing to visit them.

In truth, her life would have been lonely and depressing enough, had it
not been for the distractions which Claire Fromont procured for her. Each
time added fuel to her wrath. She would say to herself:

"Must everything come to me through her?"

And when, just at dinner-time, a box at the theatre or an invitation for
the evening was sent to her from the floor below, while she was dressing,
overjoyed at the opportunity to exhibit herself, she thought of nothing
but crushing her rival. But such opportunities became more rare as
Claire's time was more and more engrossed by her child. When Grandfather
Gardinois came to Paris, however, he never failed to bring the two
families together. The old peasant's gayety, for its freer expansion,
needed little Sidonie, who did not take alarm at his jests. He would take
them all four to dine at Philippe's, his favorite restaurant, where he
knew all the patrons, the waiters and the steward, would spend a lot of
money, and then take them to a reserved box at the Opera-Comique or the
Palais-Royal.

At the theatre he laughed uproariously, talked familiarly with the
box-openers, as he did with the waiters at Philippe's, loudly demanded
footstools for the ladies, and when the performance was over insisted on
having the topcoats and fur wraps of his party first of all, as if he
were the only three-million parvenu in the audience.

For these somewhat vulgar entertainments, from which her husband usually
excused himself, Claire, with her usual tact, dressed very plainly and
attracted no attention. Sidonie, on the contrary, in all her finery, in
full view of the boxes, laughed with all her heart at the grandfather's
anecdotes, happy to have descended from the second or third gallery, her
usual place in the old days, to that lovely proscenium box, adorned with
mirrors, with a velvet rail that seemed made expressly for her light
gloves, her ivory opera-glass, and her spangled fan. The tawdry glitter
of the theatre, the red and gold of the hangings, were genuine splendor
to her. She bloomed among them like a pretty paper flower in a filigree
jardiniere.

One evening, at the performance of a successful play at the Palais-Royal,
among all the noted women who were present, painted celebrities wearing
microscopic hats and armed with huge fans, their rouge-besmeared faces
standing out from the shadow of the boxes in the gaudy setting of their
gowns, Sidonie's behavior, her toilette, the peculiarities of her laugh
and her expression attracted much attention. All the opera-glasses in the
hall, guided by the magnetic current that is so powerful under the great
chandeliers, were turned one by one upon the box in which she sat. Claire
soon became embarrassed, and modestly insisted upon changing places with
her husband, who, unluckily, had accompanied them that evening.

Georges, youthful and elegant, sitting beside Sidonie, seemed her natural
companion, while Risler Allle, always so placid and self-effacing, seemed
in his proper place beside Claire Fromont, who in her dark clothes
suggested the respectable woman incog. at the Bal de l'Opera.

Upon leaving the theatre each of the partners offered his arm to his
neighbor. A box-opener, speaking to Sidonie, referred to Georges as "your
husband," and the little woman beamed with delight.

"Your husband!"

That simple phrase was enough to upset her and set in motion a multitude
of evil currents in the depths of her heart. As they passed through the
corridors and the foyer, she watched Risler and Madame "Chorche" walking
in front of them. Claire's refinement of manner seemed to her to be
vulgarized and annihilated by Risler's shuffling gait. "How ugly he must
make me look when we are walking together!" she said to herself. And her
heart beat fast as she thought what a charming, happy, admired couple
they would have made, she and this Georges Fromont, whose arm was
trembling beneath her own.

Thereupon, when the blue-lined carriage drove up to the door of the
theatre, she began to reflect, for the first time, that, when all was
said, Claire had stolen her place and that she would be justified in
trying to recover it.




CHAPTER VIII

THE BREWERY ON THE RUE BLONDEL

After his marriage Risler had given up the brewery. Sidonie would have
been glad to have him leave the house in the evening for a fashionable
club, a resort of wealthy, well-dressed men; but the idea of his
returning, amid clouds of pipe-smoke, to his friends of earlier days,
Sigismond, Delobelle, and her own father, humiliated her and made her
unhappy. So he ceased to frequent the place; and that was something of a
sacrifice. It was almost a glimpse of his native country, that brewery
situated in a remote corner of Paris. The infrequent carriages, the high,
barred windows of the ground floors, the odor of fresh drugs, of
pharmaceutical preparations, imparted to that narrow little Rue Blondel a
vague resemblance to certain streets in Basle or Zurich.

The brewery was managed by a Swiss and crowded with men of that
nationality. When the door was opened, through the smoke-laden
atmosphere, dense with the accents of the North, one had a vision of a
vast, low room with hams hanging from the rafters, casks of beer standing
in a row, the floor ankle-deep with sawdust, and on the counter great
salad-bowls filled with potatoes as red as chestnuts, and baskets of
pretzels fresh from the oven, their golden knots sprinkled with white
salt.

For twenty years Risler had had his pipe there, a long pipe marked with
his name in the rack reserved for the regular customers. He had also his
table, at which he was always joined by several discreet, quiet
compatriots, who listened admiringly, but without comprehending them, to
the endless harangues of Chebe and Delobelle. When Risler ceased his
visits to the brewery, the two last-named worthies likewise turned their
backs upon it, for several excellent reasons. In the first place, M.
Chebe now lived a considerable distance away. Thanks to the generosity of
his children, the dream of his whole life was realized at last.

"When I am rich," the little man used to say in his cheerless rooms in
the Marais, "I will have a house of my own, at the gates of Paris, almost
in the country, a little garden which I will plant and water myself. That
will be better for my health than all the excitement of the capital."

Well, he had his house now, but he did not enjoy himself in it. It was at
Montrouge, on the road that runs around the city. "A small chalet, with
garden," said the advertisement, printed on a placard which gave an
almost exact idea of the dimensions of the property. The papers were new
and of rustic design, the paint perfectly fresh; a water-butt planted
beside a vine-clad arbor played the part of a pond. In addition to all
these advantages, only a hedge separated this paradise from another
"chalet with garden" of precisely the same description, occupied by
Sigismond Planus the cashier, and his sister. To Madame Chebe that was a
most precious circumstance. When the good woman was bored, she would take
a stock of knitting and darning and go and sit in the old maid's arbor,
dazzling her with the tale of her past splendors. Unluckily, her husband
had not the same source of distraction.

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