Fromont and Risler | Page 7

to venerate wealth, talked to her right-hand neighbor with a
very perceptible air of respect and coquetry.
With her left-hand-neighbor, on the contrary, Georges Fromont, her
husband's partner, she exhibited the utmost reserve. Their conversation
was restricted to the ordinary courtesies of the table; indeed there was a
sort of affectation of indifference between them.
Suddenly there was that little commotion among the guests which
indicates that they are about to rise: the rustling of silk, the moving of
chairs, the last words of conversations, the completion of a laugh, and
in that half-silence Madame Chebe, who had become communicative,
observed in a very loud tone to a provincial cousin, who was gazing in
an ecstasy of admiration at the newly made bride's reserved and
tranquil demeanor, as she stood with her arm in Monsieur Gardinois's:
"You see that child, cousin--well, no one has ever been able to find out
what her thoughts were."

Thereupon the whole party rose and repaired to the grand salon.
While the guests invited for the ball were arriving and mingling with
the dinner-guests, while the orchestra was tuning up, while the
cavaliers, eyeglass in position, strutted before the impatient,
white-gowned damsels, the bridegroom, awed by so great a throng, had
taken refuge with his friend Planus--Sigismond Planus, cashier of the
house of Fromont for thirty years--in that little gallery decorated with
flowers and hung with a paper representing shrubbery and clambering
vines, which forms a sort of background of artificial verdure to
Vefour's gilded salons.
"Sigismond, old friend--I am very happy."
And Sigismond too was happy; but Risler did not give him time to say
so. Now that he was no longer in dread of weeping before his guests,
all the joy in his heart overflowed.
"Just think of it, my friend!--It's so extraordinary that a young girl like
Sidonie would consent to marry me. For you know I'm not handsome. I
didn't need to have that impudent creature tell me so this morning to
know it. And then I'm forty-two--and she such a dear little thing! There
were so many others she might have chosen, among the youngest and
the richest, to say nothing of my poor Frantz, who loved her so. But, no,
she preferred her old Risler. And it came about so strangely. For a long
time I noticed that she was sad, greatly changed. I felt sure there was
some disappointment in love at the bottom of it. Her mother and I
looked about, and we cudgelled our brains to find out what it could be.
One morning Madame Chebe came into my room weeping, and said,
'You are the man she loves, my dear friend!'--And I was the man--I was
the man! Bless my soul! Whoever would have suspected such a thing?
And to think that in the same year I had those two great pieces of good
fortune-- a partnership in the house of Fromont and married to
Sidonie--Oh!"
At that moment, to the strains of a giddy, languishing waltz, a couple
whirled into the small salon. They were Risler's bride and his partner,
Georges Fromont. Equally young and attractive, they were talking in

undertones, confining their words within the narrow circle of the waltz.
"You lie!" said Sidonie, slightly pale, but with the same little smile.
And the other, paler than she, replied:
"I do not lie. It was my uncle who insisted upon this marriage. He was
dying--you had gone away. I dared not say no."
Risler, at a distance, gazed at them in admiration.
"How pretty she is! How well they dance!"
But, when they spied him, the dancers separated, and Sidonie walked
quickly to him.
"What! You here? What are you doing? They are looking everywhere
for you. Why aren't you in there?"
As she spoke she retied his cravat with a pretty, impatient gesture. That
enchanted Risler, who smiled at Sigismond from the corner of his eye,
too overjoyed at feeling the touch of that little gloved hand on his neck,
to notice that she was trembling to the ends of her slender fingers.
"Give me your arm," she said to him, and they returned together to the
salons. The white bridal gown with its long train made the badly cut,
awkwardly worn black coat appear even more uncouth; but a coat can
not be retied like a cravat; she must needs take it as it was. As they
passed along, returning the salutations of all the guests who were so
eager to smile upon them, Sidonie had a momentary thrill of pride, of
satisfied vanity. Unhappily it did not last. In a corner of the room sat a
young and attractive woman whom nobody invited to dance, but who
looked on at the dances with a placid eye, illumined by all the joy of