llroom.
Reassured by Pere Achille's reply, the honest fellow thought of going up
to his bedroom, avoiding the festivities and the guests, for whom he
cared little.
On such occasions he used a small servants' staircase communicating with
the counting-room. So he walked through the many-windowed workshops,
which the moon, reflected by the snow, made as light as at noonday. He
breathed the atmosphere of the day of toil, a hot, stifling atmosphere,
heavy with the odor of boiled talc and varnish. The papers spread out on
the dryers formed long, rustling paths. On all sides tools were lying
about, and blouses hanging here and there ready for the morrow. Risler
never walked through the shops without a feeling of pleasure.
Suddenly he spied a light in Planus's office, at the end of that long
line of deserted rooms. The old cashier was still at work, at one o'clock
in the morning! That was really most extraordinary.
Risler's first impulse was to retrace his steps. In fact, since his
unaccountable falling-out with Sigismond, since the cashier had adopted
that attitude of cold silence toward him, he had avoided meeting him. His
wounded friendship had always led him to shun an explanation; he had a
sort of pride in not asking Planus why he bore him ill-will. But, on that
evening, Risler felt so strongly the need of cordial sympathy, of pouring
out his heart to some one, and then it was such an excellent opportunity
for a tete-a-tete with his former friend, that he did not try to avoid
him but boldly entered the counting-room.
The cashier was sitting there, motionless, among heaps of papers and
great books, which he had been turning over, some of which had fallen to
the floor. At the sound of his employer's footsteps he did not even lift
his eyes. He had recognized Risler's step. The latter, somewhat abashed,
hesitated a moment; then, impelled by one of those secret springs which
we have within us and which guide us, despite ourselves, in the path of
our destiny, he walked straight to the cashier's grating.
"Sigismond," he said in a grave voice.
The old man raised his head and displayed a shrunken face down which two
great tears were rolling, the first perhaps that that animate column of
figures had ever shed in his life.
"You are weeping, old man? What troubles you?"
And honest Risler, deeply touched, held out his hand to his friend, who
hastily withdrew his. That movement of repulsion was so instinctive, so
brut
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