“Leave me—­go away,” he said to Sigismond.  “I must be alone.”

But the other knew better than to abandon him thus to his despair.  Unnoticed by Risler, he led him away from the factory, and as his affectionate heart suggested to the old cashier what he had best say to his friend, he talked to him all the time of Frantz, his little Frantz whom he loved so dearly.

“That was genuine affection, genuine and trustworthy.  No treachery to fear with such hearts as that!”

While they talked they left behind them the noisy streets of the centre of Paris.  They walked along the quays, skirted the Jardin des Plantes, plunged into Faubourg Saint-Marceau.  Risler followed where the other led.  Sigismond’s words did him so much good!

In due time they came to the Bievre, bordered at that point with tanneries whose tall drying-houses with open sides were outlined in blue against the sky; and then the ill-defined plains of Montsouris, vast tracts of land scorched and stripped of vegetation by the fiery breath that Paris exhales around its daily toil, like a monstrous dragon, whose breath of flame and smoke suffers no vegetation within its range.

From Montsouris to the fortifications of Montrouge is but a step.  When they had reached that point, Planus had no great difficulty in taking his friend home with him.  He thought, and justly, that his tranquil fireside, the spectacle of a placid, fraternal, devoted affection, would give the wretched man’s heart a sort of foretaste of the happiness that was in store for him with his brother Frantz.  And, in truth, the charm of the little household began to work as soon as they arrived.

“Yes, yes, you are right, old fellow,” said Risler, pacing the floor of the living-room, “I mustn’t think of that woman any more.  She’s like a dead woman to me now.  I have nobody left in the world but my little Frantz; I don’t know yet whether I shall send for him to come home, or go out and join him; the one thing that is certain is that we are going to stay together.  Ah!  I longed so to have a son!  Now I have found one.  I want no other.  When I think that for a moment I had an idea of killing myself!  Nonsense! it would make Madame What-d’ye-call-her, yonder, too happy.  On the contrary, I mean to live—­to live with my Frantz, and for him, and for nothing else.”

“Bravo!” said Sigismond, “that’s the way I like to hear you talk.”

At that moment Mademoiselle Planus came to say that the room was ready.

Risler apologized for the trouble he was causing them.

“You are so comfortable, so happy here.  Really, it’s too bad to burden you with my melancholy.”

“Ah! my old friend, you can arrange just such happiness as ours for yourself,” said honest Sigismond with beaming face.  “I have my sister, you have your brother.  What do we lack?”

Risler smiled vaguely.  He fancied himself already installed with Frantz in a quiet little quakerish house like that.