“The devil take your ‘Cercle du Chateau d’Eau!’ Monsieur Georges has left more than thirty thousand francs there in two months.”

The other began to laugh.

“Why, you’re greatly mistaken, Pere Planus—­it’s at least three months since we have seen your master.”

The cashier did not pursue the conversation; but a terrible thought took up its abode in his mind, and he turned it over and over all day long.

If Georges did not go to the club, where did he pass his evenings?  Where did he spend so much money?

There was evidently a woman at the bottom of the affair.

As soon as that idea occurred to him, Sigismond Planus began to tremble seriously for his cash-box.  That old bear from the canton of Berne, a confirmed bachelor, had a terrible dread of women in general and Parisian women in particular.  He deemed it his duty, first of all, in order to set his conscience at rest, to warn Risler.  He did it at first in rather a vague way.

“Monsieur Georges is spending a great deal of money,” he said to him one day.

Risler exhibited no surprise.

“What do you expect me to do, my old Sigismond?  It is his right.”

And the honest fellow meant what he said.  In his eyes Fromont jeune was the absolute master of the establishment.  It would have been a fine thing, and no mistake, for him, an ex-draughtsman, to venture to make any comments.  The cashier dared say no more until the day when a messenger came from a great shawl-house with a bill for six thousand francs for a cashmere shawl.

He went to Georges in his office.

“Shall I pay it, Monsieur?”

Georges Fromont was a little annoyed.  Sidonie had forgotten to tell him of this latest purchase; she used no ceremony with him now.

“Pay it, pay it, Pere Planus,” he said, with a shade of embarrassment, and added:  “Charge it to the account of Fromont jeune.  It is a commission intrusted to me by a friend.”

That evening, as Sigismond was lighting his little lamp, he saw Risler crossing the garden, and tapped on the window to call him.

“It’s a woman,” he said, under his breath.  “I have the proof of it now.”

As he uttered the awful words “a woman” his voice shook with alarm and was drowned in the great uproar of the factory.  The sounds of the work in progress had a sinister meaning to the unhappy cashier at that moment.  It seemed to him as if all the whirring machinery, the great chimney pouring forth its clouds of smoke, the noise of the workmen at their different tasks—­as if all this tumult and bustle and fatigue were for the benefit of a mysterious little being, dressed in velvet and adorned with jewels.