A childlike shyness, and the Germanisms of speech which he never had laid
aside in his life of absorbing toil, embarrassed him much in giving
expression to his ideas. Moreover, his friends overawed him. They had
in respect to him the tremendous superiority of the man who does nothing
over the man who works; and M. Chebe, less generous than Delobelle, did
not hesitate to make him feel it. He was very lofty with him, was M.
Chebe! In his opinion, a man who worked, as Risler did, ten hours a
day, was incapable, when he left his work, of expressing an intelligent
idea. Sometimes the designer, coming home worried from the factory,
would prepare to spend the night over some pressing work. You should
have seen M. Chebe's scandalized expression then!

"Nobody could make me follow such a business!" he would say, expanding
his chest, and he would add, looking at Risler with the air of a
physician making a professional call, "Just wait till you've had one
severe attack."

Delobelle was not so fierce, but he adopted a still loftier tone. The
cedar does not see a rose at its foot. Delobelle did not see Risler at
his feet.

When, by chance, the great man deigned to notice his presence, he had a
certain air of stooping down to him to listen, and to smile at his words
as at a child's; or else he would amuse himself by dazzling him with
stories of actresses, would give him lessons in deportment and the
addresses of outfitters, unable to understand why a man who earned so
much money should always be dressed like an usher at a primary school.
Honest Risler, convinced of his inferiority, would try to earn
forgiveness by a multitude of little attentions, obliged to furnish all