considered a gossip, a hawker of unsavory stories. But they had
incontestable proofs. It was no longer a secret to anybody.

"And even suppose it were true," cried M. Chebe, furious at her
persistence. "Is it for us to worry about it? Our daughter is married.
She lives a long way from her parents. It is for her husband, who is
much older than she, to advise and guide her. Does he so much as think
of doing it?"

Upon that the little man began to inveigh against his son-in-law, that
cold-blooded Swiss, who passed his life in his office devising machines,
refused to accompany his wife into society, and preferred his old-
bachelor habits, his pipe and his brewery, to everything else.

You should have seen the air of aristocratic disdain with which M. Chebe
pronounced the word "brewery!" And yet almost every evening he went
there to meet Risler, and overwhelmed him with reproaches if he once
failed to appear at the rendezvous.

Behind all this verbiage the merchant of the Rue du Mail--"Commission-
Exportation"--had a very definite idea. He wished to give up his shop,
to retire from business, and for some time he had been thinking of going
to see Sidonie, in order to interest her in his new schemes. That was
not the time, therefore, to make disagreeable scenes, to prate about
paternal authority and conjugal honor. As for Madame Chebe, being
somewhat less confident than before of her daughter's virtue, she took
refuge in the most profound silence. The poor woman wished that she were
deaf and blind--that she never had known Mademoiselle Planus.

Like all persons who have been very unhappy, she loved a benumbed