Some months passed. There remained but one year before the fatal term.
Cachelin had suspended in the dining room an enormous calendar, from which he effaced a day each morning, raging at the impotence of his son-in-law, who was allowing this great fortune to escape week by week. And the thought that he would have to drudge at the office all his life, and limit his expenses to the pitiful sum of two thousand francs a year, filled him with a passion of anger that found vent in the most violent abuse. He could not look at Lesable without shaking with rage, with a brutal desire to beat, to crush, to trample on him. He hated him with an inordinate hatred. Every time he saw him open the door and enter the room, it seemed to him that a robber had broken into the house and robbed him of a sacred inheritance. He hated him more than his most mortal enemy, and he despised him at the same time for his weakness, and above all for the baseness which caused him to sacrifice their common hope of posterity to the fear of his health. Lesable, in fact, lived as completely apart from his wife as if no tie united them. He never approached or touched her; he avoided even looking at her, as much through shame as through fear.
Cachelin, every morning asked his daughter: “Well, how about your husband? Has he made up his mind?”
And she would reply: “No, papa.”
Each evening saw the most painful scenes take place at table. Cachelin continually reiterated: “When a man is not a man, he had better get out and yield his place to another.”
And Cora added: “The fact is, there are some men who are both useless and wearisome. I do not know why they are permitted to live only to become a burden to everyone.”
Lesable dosed himself and made no reply. At last one day his father-in-law cried: “Say, you, if you do not change your manners now that your health is improving, do you know what my daughter means to do?”
The son-in-law raised his eyes, foreseeing a new outrage. Cachelin continued: “She will take somebody else, confound you! You may consider yourself lucky if she hasn’t done so already. When a girl has married a weakling like you, she is entitled to do anything.”
Lesable, turning livid with wrath, replied: “It is not I who prevents her from following your good counsel.”
Cora lowered her eyes, and Cachelin, knowing that he had said an outrageous thing, remained silent and confused.
VI
At the office the two men seemed to live on good enough terms. A sort of tacit pact was entered into between them to conceal from their colleagues their internal warfare. They addressed each other as “my dear Cachelin,” “my dear Lesable”; they even feigned to laugh and talk together as men who were satisfied and happy in their domestic relations.
Lesable and Maze, for their part, comported themselves in the presence of each other with the ceremonious politeness of adversaries who had met in battle.
The duel they had escaped, but whose shadow had chilled them, exacted of them an exaggerated courtesy, a more marked consideration, and perhaps a secret desire for reconciliation, born of the vague fear of a new complication. Their attitude was recognised and approved as that of men of the world, who had had an affair of honour. They saluted each other from a distance with severe gravity, and with a flourish of hats that was graceful and dignified. They did not speak, their pride preventing either from making the first advances. But one day, Lesable, whom the Chief demanded to see immediately, to show his zeal, started with a great rush through the lobby and ran right into the stomach of an employee. It was Maze. They recoiled before each other, and Lesable exclaimed with eager politeness: “I hope I have not hurt you, Monsieur?”
Maze responded: “Not at all, sir.”
From this moment they thought it expedient to exchange some phrases when they met. Then, in the interchange of courtesies, there were little attentions they paid each other from which arose in a short time certain familiarities, then an intimacy tempered with reserve and restrained by a certain hesitation; then on the strength of their increasing goodwill and visits made to the room of each other, a comradeship was established. They often gossiped together now of the news that found its way into the bureau. Lesable laid aside his air of superiority, and Maze no longer paraded his social successes. Cachelin often joined in the conversation and watched with interest their growing friendship. Sometimes as the handsome Maze left the apartment with head erect and square shoulders, he turned to his son-in-law and hissed: “There goes a fine man!” One morning when they were all four together, for old Savon never left his copying, the chair of the old clerk, having been tampered with no doubt by some practical joker, collapsed under him, and the good man rolled on the floor uttering cries of affright. The three others flew to his assistance. The order-clerk attributed this machination to the communists, and Maze earnestly desired to see the wounded part. Cachelin and he even essayed to take off the poor old fellow’s clothes to dress the injury, they said, but he resisted desperately, crying that he was not hurt.
When the fun was over, Cachelin suddenly exclaimed: “I say, M. Maze, now that we are all together, can you not do us the honour of dining with us next Sunday? It will give pleasure to all three of us, myself, my son-in-law, and my daughter, who has often heard your name when we speak of the office. Shall it be yes?”
Lesable added his entreaty, but more coldly than
