It is a fact that it is one of honest Risler’s ways to eat slowly, and to light his pipe at the table while he sips his coffee.  To-day he must renounce these cherished habits, must leave the pipe in its case because of the smoke, and, as soon as he has swallowed the last mouthful, run hastily and dress, for his wife insists that he must come up during the afternoon and pay his respects to the ladies.

What a sensation in the factory when they see Risler Aine come in, on a week-day, in a black frock-coat and white cravat!

“Are you going to a wedding, pray?” cries Sigismond, the cashier, behind his grating.

And Risler, not without a feeling of pride, replies: 

“This is my wife’s reception day!”

Soon everybody in the place knows that it is Sidonie’s day; and Pere Achille, who takes care of the garden, is not very well pleased to find that the branches of the winter laurels by the gate are broken.

Before taking his seat at the table upon which he draws, in the bright light from the tall windows, Risler has taken off his fine frock-coat, which embarrasses him, and has turned up his clean shirt-sleeves; but the idea that his wife is expecting company preoccupies and disturbs him; and from time to time he puts on his coat and goes up to her.

“Has no one come?” he asks timidly.

“No, Monsieur, no one.”

In the beautiful red drawing-room—­for they have a drawing-room in red damask, with a console between the windows and a pretty table in the centre of the light-flowered carpet—­Sidonie has established herself in the attitude of a woman holding a reception, a circle of chairs of many shapes around her.  Here and there are books, reviews, a little work-basket in the shape of a gamebag, with silk tassels, a bunch of violets in a glass vase, and green plants in the jardinieres.  Everything is arranged exactly as in the Fromonts’ apartments on the floor below; but the taste, that invisible line which separates the distinguished from the vulgar, is not yet refined.  You would say it was a passable copy of a pretty genre picture.  The hostess’s attire, even, is too new; she looks more as if she were making a call than as if she were at home.  In Risler’s eyes everything is superb, beyond reproach; he is preparing to say so as he enters the salon, but, in face of his wife’s wrathful glance, he checks himself in terror.

“You see, it’s four o’clock,” she says, pointing to the clock with an angry gesture.  “No one will come.  But I take it especially ill of Claire not to come up.  She is at home—­I am sure of it—­I can hear her.”