The work-women laughed sneeringly and whispered: 

“Just look at that Tata Bebelle!  A fine way to dress to go out.  She don’t rig herself up like that to go to mass, that’s sure!  To think that it ain’t three years since she used to start for the shop every morning in an old waterproof, and two sous’ worth of roasted chestnuts in her pockets to keep her fingers warm.  Now she rides in her carriage.”

And amid the talc dust and the roaring of the stoves, red-hot in winter and summer alike, more than one poor girl reflected on the caprice of chance in absolutely transforming a woman’s existence, and began to dream vaguely of a magnificent future which might perhaps be in store for herself without her suspecting it.

In everybody’s opinion Risler was a dishonored husband.  Two assistants in the printing-room—­faithful patrons of the Folies Dramatiques—­declared that they had seen Madame Risler several times at their theatre, accompanied by some escort who kept out of sight at the rear of the box.  Pere Achille, too, told of amazing things.  That Sidonie had a lover, that she had several lovers, in fact, no one entertained a doubt.  But no one had as yet thought of Fromont jeune.

And yet she showed no prudence whatever in her relations with him.  On the contrary, she seemed to make a parade of them; it may be that that was what saved them.  How many times she accosted him boldly on the steps to agree upon a rendezvous for the evening!  How many times she had amused herself in making him shudder by looking into his eyes before every one!  When the first confusion had passed, Georges was grateful to her for these exhibitions of audacity, which he attributed to the intensity of her passion.  He was mistaken.

What she would have liked, although she did not admit it to herself, would have been to have Claire see them, to have her draw aside the curtain at her window, to have her conceive a suspicion of what was passing.  She needed that in order to be perfectly happy:  that her rival should be unhappy.  But her wish was ungratified; Claire Fromont noticed nothing and lived, as did Risler, in imperturbable serenity.

Only Sigismond, the old cashier, was really ill at ease.  And yet he was not thinking of Sidonie when, with his pen behind his ear, he paused a moment in his work and gazed fixedly through his grating at the drenched soil of the little garden.  He was thinking solely of his master, of Monsieur “Chorche,” who was drawing a great deal of money now for his current expenses and sowing confusion in all his books.  Every time it was some new excuse.  He would come to the little wicket with an unconcerned air: 

“Have you a little money, my good Planus?  I was worsted again at bouillotte last night, and I don’t want to send to the bank for such a trifle.”

Sigismond Planus would open his cash-box, with an air of regret, to get the sum requested, and he would remember with terror a certain day when Monsieur Georges, then only twenty years old, had confessed to his uncle that he owed several thousand francs in gambling debts.  The elder man thereupon conceived a violent antipathy for the club and contempt for all its members.  A rich tradesman who was a member happened to come to the factory one day, and Sigismond said to him with brutal frankness: