“Oh!  I don’t need much.  An iron bed up under the eaves.  That’s all a clerk needs.  For, I repeat, I am nothing but a clerk from this time on.  A useful clerk, by the way, faithful and courageous, of whom you will have no occasion to complain, I promise you.”

Georges, who was going over the books with Planus, was so affected at hearing the poor fellow talk in that strain that he left his seat precipitately.  He was suffocated by his sobs.  Claire, too, was deeply moved; she went to the new clerk of the house of Fromont and said to him: 

“Risler, I thank you in my father’s name.”

At that moment Pere Achille appeared with the mail.

Risler took the pile of letters, opened them tranquilly one by one, and passed them over to Sigismond.

“Here’s an order for Lyon.  Why wasn’t it answered at Saint-Etienne?”

He plunged with all his energy into these details, and he brought to them a keen intelligence, due to the constant straining of the mind toward peace and forgetfulness.

Suddenly, among those huge envelopes, stamped with the names of business houses, the paper of which and the manner of folding suggested the office and hasty despatch, he discovered one smaller one, carefully sealed, and hidden so cunningly between the others that at first he did not notice it.  He recognized instantly that long, fine, firm writing,—­To Monsieur Risler—­Personal.  It was Sidonie’s writing!  When he saw it he felt the same sensation he had felt in the bedroom upstairs.

All his love, all the hot wrath of the betrayed husband poured back into his heart with the frantic force that makes assassins.  What was she writing to him?  What lie had she invented now?  He was about to open the letter; then he paused.  He realized that, if he should read that, it would be all over with his courage; so he leaned over to the old cashier, and said in an undertone: 

“Sigismond, old friend, will you do me a favor?”

“I should think so!” said the worthy man enthusiastically.  He was so delighted to hear his friend speak to him in the kindly voice of the old days.

“Here’s a letter someone has written me which I don’t wish to read now.  I am sure it would interfere with my thinking and living.  You must keep it for me, and this with it.”

He took from his pocket a little package carefully tied, and handed it to him through the grating.

“That is all I have left of the past, all I have left of that woman.  I have determined not to see her, nor anything that reminds me of her, until my task here is concluded, and concluded satisfactorily,—­I need all my intelligence, you understand.  You will pay the Chebes’ allowance.  If she herself should ask for anything, you will give her what she needs.  But you will never mention my name.  And you will keep this package safe for me until I ask you for it.”

Sigismond locked the letter and the package in a secret drawer of his desk with other valuable papers.  Risler returned at once to his correspondence; but all the time he had before his eyes the slender English letters traced by a little hand which he had so often and so ardently pressed to his heart.