Fromont and Risler Part 37

"Madame, Madame! Monsieur Risler is going out!"

Claire looked at him from her window, and that tall form, bowed by sorrow, leaning on Sigismond's arm, aroused in her a profound, unusual emotion which she remembered ever after.

In the street people bowed to Risler with great interest. Even their greetings warmed his heart. He was so much in need of kindness! But the noise of vehicles made him a little dizzy.

"My head is spinning," he said to Pla.n.u.s:

"Lean hard on me, old fellow-don't be afraid."

And honest Pla.n.u.s drew himself up, escorting his friend with the artless, unconventional pride of a peasant of the South bearing aloft his village saint.

At last they arrived at the Palais-Royal.

The garden was full of people. They had come to hear the music, and were trying to find seats amid clouds of dust and the sc.r.a.ping of chairs. The two friends hurried into the restaurant to avoid all that turmoil. They established themselves in one of the large salons on the first floor, whence they could see the green trees, the promenaders, and the water spurting from the fountain between the two melancholy flower-gardens.

To Sigismond it was the ideal of luxury, that restaurant, with gilding everywhere, around the mirrors, in the chandelier and even on the figured wallpaper. The white napkin, the roll, the menu of a table d'hote dinner filled his soul with joy. "We are comfortable here, aren't we?" he said to Risler.

And he exclaimed at each of the courses of that banquet at two francs fifty, and insisted on filling his friend's plate.

"Eat that--it's good."

The other, notwithstanding his desire to do honor to the fete, seemed preoccupied and gazed out-of-doors.

"Do you remember, Sigismond?" he said, after a pause.

The old cas.h.i.+er, engrossed in his memories of long ago, of Risler's first employment at the factory, replied:

"I should think I do remember--listen! The first time we dined together at the Palais-Royal was in February, 'forty-six, the year we put in the planches-plates at the factory."

Risler shook his head.

"Oh! no--I mean three years ago. It was in that room just opposite that we dined on that memorable evening."

And he pointed to the great windows of the salon of Cafe Vefour, gleaming in the rays of the setting sun like the chandeliers at a wedding feast.

"Ah! yes, true," murmured Sigismond, abashed. What an unlucky idea of his to bring his friend to a place that recalled such painful things!

Risler, not wis.h.i.+ng to cast a gloom upon their banquet, abruptly raised his gla.s.s.

"Come! here's your health, my old comrade."

He tried to change the subject. But a moment later he himself led the conversation back to it again, and asked Sigismond, in an undertone, as if he were ashamed:

"Have you seen her?"

"Your wife? No, never."

"She hasn't written again?"

"No--never again."

"But you must have heard of her. What has she been doing these six months? Does she live with her parents?"

"No."

Risler turned pale.

He hoped that Sidonie would have returned to her mother, that she would have worked, as he had worked, to forget and atone. He had often thought that he would arrange his life according to what he should learn of her when he should have the right to speak of her; and in one of those far-off visions of the future, which have the vagueness of a dream, he sometimes fancied himself living in exile with the Chebes in an unknown land, where nothing would remind him of his past shame. It was not a definite plan, to be sure; but the thought lived in the depths of his mind like a hope, caused by the need that all human creatures feel of finding their lost happiness.

"Is she in Paris?" he asked, after a few moments' reflection.

"No. She went away three months ago. No one knows where she has gone."

Sigismond did not add that she had gone with her Cazaboni, whose name she now bore, that they were making the circuit of the provincial cities together, that her mother was in despair, never saw her, and heard of her only through Delobelle. Sigismond did not deem it his duty to mention all that, and after his last words he held his peace.

Risler, for his part, dared ask no further questions.

While they sat there, facing each other, both embarra.s.sed by the long silence, the military band began to play under the trees in the garden.

They played one of those Italian operatic overtures which seem to have been written expressly for public open-air resorts; the swiftly-flowing notes, as they rise into the air, blend with the call of the swallows and the silvery plash of the fountain. The blaring bra.s.s brings out in bold relief the mild warmth of the closing hours of those summer days, so long and enervating in Paris; it seems as if one could hear nothing else. The distant rumbling of wheels, the cries of children playing, the footsteps of the promenaders are wafted away in those resonant, gus.h.i.+ng, refres.h.i.+ng waves of melody, as useful to the people of Paris as the daily watering of their streets. On all sides the faded flowers, the trees white with dust, the faces made pale and wan by the heat, all the sorrows, all the miseries of a great city, sitting dreamily, with bowed head, on the benches in the garden, feel its comforting, refres.h.i.+ng influence. The air is stirred, renewed by those strains that traverse it, filling it with harmony.

Poor Risler felt as if the tension upon all his nerves were relaxed.

"A little music does one good," he said, with glistening eyes. "My heart is heavy, old fellow," he added, in a lower tone; "if you knew--"

They sat without speaking, their elbows resting on the window-sill, while their coffee was served.

Then the music ceased, the garden became deserted. The light that had loitered in the corners crept upward to the roofs, cast its last rays upon the highest windowpanes, followed by the birds, the swallows, which saluted the close of day with a farewell chirp from the gutter where they were huddled together.

"Now, where shall we go?" said Pla.n.u.s, as they left the restaurant.

"Wherever you wish."

On the first floor of a building on the Rue Montpensier, close at hand, was a cafe chantant, where many people entered.

"Suppose we go in," said Pla.n.u.s, desirous of banis.h.i.+ng his friend's melancholy at any cost, "the beer is excellent."

Risler a.s.sented to the suggestion; he had not tasted beer for six months.

It was a former restaurant transformed into a concert-hall. There were three large rooms, separated by gilded pillars, the part.i.tions having been removed; the decoration was in the Moorish style, bright red, pale blue, with little crescents and turbans for ornament.

Although it was still early, the place was full; and even before entering one had a feeling of suffocation, simply from seeing the crowds of people sitting around the tables, and at the farther end, half-hidden by the rows of pillars, a group of white-robed women on a raised platform, in the heat and glare of the gas.

Our two friends had much difficulty in finding seats, and had to be content with a place behind a pillar whence they could see only half of the platform, then occupied by a superb person in black coat and yellow gloves, curled and waxed and oiled, who was singing in a vibrating voice--

Mes beaux lions aux crins dores, Du sang des troupeaux alteres, Halte la!--Je fais sentinello!

[My proud lions with golden manes Who thirst for the blood of my flocks, Stand back!--I am on guard!]

The audience--small tradesmen of the quarter with their wives and daughters-seemed highly enthusiastic: especially the women. He represented so perfectly the ideal of the shopkeeper imagination, that magnificent shepherd of the desert, who addressed lions with such an air of authority and tended his flocks in full evening dress. And so, despite their bourgeois bearing, their modest costumes and their expressionless shop-girl smiles, all those women, made up their little mouths to be caught by the hook of sentiment, and cast languis.h.i.+ng glances upon the singer. It was truly comical to see that glance at the platform suddenly change and become contemptuous and fierce as it fell upon the husband, the poor husband tranquilly drinking a gla.s.s of beer opposite his wife: "You would never be capable of doing sentry duty in the very teeth of lions, and in a black coat too, and with yellow gloves!"