Frantz and Madame
"Chorche," the only two human beings of whom he could think without a
feeling of sadness. Madame "Chorche" was always at hand, always trying to
minister to his comfort, to console him; and Frantz wrote to him often,
without mentioning Sidonie, by the way. Risler supposed that some one had
told Frantz of the disaster that had befallen him, and he too avoided all
allusion to the subject in his letters. "Oh! when I can send for him to
come home!" That was his dream, his sole ambition: to restore the factory
and recall his brother.

Meanwhile the days succeeded one another, always the same to him in the
restless activity of business and the heartrending loneliness of his
grief. Every morning he walked through the workshops, where the profound
respect he inspired and his stern, silent countenance had reestablished
the orderly conditions that had been temporarily disturbed. In the
beginning there had been much gossip, and various explanations of
Sidonie's departure had been made. Some said that she had eloped with a
lover, others that Risler had turned her out. The one fact that upset all
conjectures was the attitude of the two partners toward each other,
apparently as unconstrained as before. Sometimes, however, when they were
talking together in the office, with no one by, Risler would suddenly
start convulsively, as a vision of the crime passed before his eyes.

Then he would feel a mad longing to spring upon the villain, seize him by
the throat, strangle him without mercy; but the thought of Madame
"Chorche" was always there to restrain him. Should he be less courageous,
less master of himself than that young wife? Neither Claire, nor Fromont,
nor anybody else suspected what was in his mind. They could barely detect
a severity, an inflexibility in his conduct, which were not habitual with
him. Risler awed the workmen now; and those of them upon whom his white
hair, blanched in one night, his drawn, prematurely old features did not
impose respect, quailed before his strange glance-a glance from eyes of a
bluish-black like the color of a gun-barrel. Whereas he had always been
very kind and affable with the workmen, he had become pitilessly severe
in regard to the slightest infraction of the rules. It seemed as if he
were taking vengeance upon himself for some indulgence in the past,
blind, culpable indulgence, for which he blamed himself.

Surely he was a marvellous employe, was this new officer in the h