he's like
a dead woman to me now. I have nobody left in the world but my little
Frantz; I don't know yet whether I shall send for him to come home, or
go out and join him; the one thing that is certain is that we are going
to stay together. Ah! I longed so to have a son! Now I have found one.
I want no other. When I think that for a moment I had an idea of killing
myself! Nonsense! it would make Madame What-d'ye-call-her, yonder, too
happy. On the contrary, I mean to live--to live with my Frantz, and for
him, and for nothing else."

"Bravo!" said Sigismond, "that's the way I like to hear you talk."

At that moment Mademoiselle Planus came to say that the room was ready.

Risler apologized for the trouble he was causing them.

"You are so comfortable, so happy here. Really, it's too bad to burden
you with my melancholy."

"Ah! my old friend, you can arrange just such happiness as ours for
yourself," said honest Sigismond with beaming face. "I have my sister,
you have your brother. What do we lack?"

Risler smiled vaguely. He fancied himself already installed with Frantz
in a quiet little quakerish house like that.

Decidedly, that was an excellent idea of Pere Planus.

"Come to bed," he said triumphantly. "We'll go and show you your room."

Sigismond Planus's bedroom was on the ground floor, a large room simply
but neatly furnished; with muslin curtains at the windows and the bed,
and little squares of carpet on the polished floor, in front of the
chairs. The dowager Madame Fromont herself could have found nothing to
say as to the orderly and cleanly aspect of the place. On a shelf or
two against the wall were a few books: Manual of Fishing, The Perfect
Country Housewife, Bayeme's Book-keeping. That was the whole of the
intellectual equipment of the room.

Pere Planus glanced proudly around. The glass of water was in its place
on the walnut table, the box of razors on the dressing-case.

"You see, Risler. Here is everything you need. And if you should want
anything else, the keys are in all the drawers--you have only to turn
them. Just see what a beautiful view you get from here. It's a little
dark just now, but when you wake up in the morning you'll see; it is
magnificent."

He opened the widow. Great drops of rain were beginning to fall, and
lightning flashes rending the darkness disclosed the long, silent
line of the fortifications, with telegraph poles at intervals, or the
frowning door of a casemate. N