bade him hope.

As for Sidonie, he no longer thought of her. Let no one be astonished at
that abrupt mental rupture. Those two superficial beings had nothing to
attach them securely to each other. Georges was incapable of receiving
lasting impressions unless they were continually renewed; Sidonie, for
her part, had no power to inspire any noble or durable sentiment. It was
one of those intrigues between a cocotte and a coxcomb, compounded of
vanity and of wounded self-love, which inspire neither devotion nor
constancy, but tragic adventures, duels, suicides which are rarely fatal,
and which end in a radical cure. Perhaps, had he seen her again, he
might have had a relapse of his disease; but the impetus of flight had
carried Sidonie away so swiftly and so far that her return was
impossible. At all events, it was a relief for him to be able to live
without lying; and the new life he was leading, a life of hard work and
self-denial, with the goal of success in the distance, was not
distasteful to him. Luckily; for the courage and determination of both
partners were none too much to put the house on its feet once more.

The poor house of Fromont had sprung leaks on all sides. So Pere Planus
still had wretched nights, haunted by the nightmare of notes maturing and
the ominous vision of the little blue man. But, by strict economy, they
always succeeded in paying.

Soon four Risler Presses were definitively set up and used in the work of
the factory. People began to take a deep interest in them and in the
wall-paper trade. Lyons, Caen, Rixbeim, the great centres of the
industry, were much disturbed concerning that marvellous "rotary and
dodecagonal" machine. One fine day the Prochassons appeared, and offered
three hundred thousand francs simply for an interest in the patent