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