deprived those memories of all their charm. Luckily he still had 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