Madame Arnoux did not believe that, as he grew older, he would have a great imagination; but he had a winning disposition. His sister, on the other hand, possessed a caustic humour that sometimes wounded her.
“That will change,” said Frederick. “We must never despair.”
She returned:
“We must never despair!”
This automatic repetition of the phrase he had used appeared to him a sort of encouragement; he plucked a rose, the only one in the garden.
“Do you remember a certain bouquet of roses one evening, in a carriage?”
She coloured a little; and, with an air of bantering pity:
“Ah, I was very young then!”
“And this one,” went on Frederick, in a low tone, “will it be the same way with it?”
She replied, while turning about the stem between her fingers, like the thread of a spindle:
“No, I will preserve it.”
She called over the nurse, who took the child in her arms; then, on the threshold of the door in the street, Madame Arnoux inhaled the odour of the flower, leaning her head on her shoulder with a look as sweet as a kiss.
When he had gone up to his study, he gazed at the armchair in which she had sat, and every object which she had touched. Some portion of her was diffused around him. The caress of her presence lingered there still.
“So, then, she came here,” said he to himself.
And his soul was bathed in the waves of infinite tenderness.
Next morning, at eleven o’clock, he presented himself at M. Dambreuse’s house. He was received in the dining-room. The banker was seated opposite his wife at breakfast. Beside her sat his niece, and at the other side of the table appeared the governess, an English woman, strongly pitted with smallpox.
M. Dambreuse invited his young friend to take his place among them, and when he declined:
“What can I do for you? I am listening to whatever you have to say to me.”
Frederick confessed, while affecting indifference, that he had come to make a request in behalf of one Arnoux.
“Ha! ha! the ex-picture-dealer,” said the banker, with a noiseless laugh which exposed his gums. “Oudry formerly gave security for him; he has given a lot of trouble.”
And he proceeded to read the letters and newspapers which lay close beside him on the table.
Two servants attended without making the least noise on the floor; and the loftiness of the apartment, which had three portières of richest tapestry, and two white marble fountains, the polish of the chafing-dish, the arrangement of the side-dishes, and even the rigid folds of the napkins, all this sumptuous comfort impressed Frederick’s mind with the contrast between it and another breakfast at the Arnouxs’ house. He did not take the liberty of interrupting M. Dambreuse.
Madame noticed his embarrassment.
“Do you occasionally see our friend Martinon?”
“He will be here this evening,” said the young girl in a lively tone.
“Ha! so you know him?” said her aunt, fixing on her a freezing look.
At that moment one of the menservants, bending forward, whispered in her ear.
“Your dressmaker, Mademoiselle—Miss John!”
And the governess, in obedience to this summons, left the room along with her pupil.
M. Dambreuse, annoyed at the disarrangement of the chairs by this movement, asked what was the matter.
“ ’Tis Madame Regimbart.”
“Wait a moment! Regimbart! I know that name. I have come across his signature.”
Frederick at length broached the question. Arnoux deserved some consideration; he was even going, for the sole purpose of fulfilling his engagements, to sell a house belonging to his wife.
“She is considered very pretty,” said Madame Dambreuse.
The banker added, with a display of good-nature:
“Are you on friendly terms with them—on intimate terms?”
Frederick, without giving an explicit reply, said that he would be very much obliged to him if he considered the matter.
“Well, since it pleases you, be it so; we will wait. I have some time to spare yet; suppose we go down to my office. Would you mind?”
They had finished breakfast. Madame Dambreuse bowed slightly towards Frederick, smiling in a singular fashion, with a mixture of politeness and irony. Frederick had no time to reflect about it, for M. Dambreuse, as soon as they were alone:
“You did not come to get your shares?”
And, without permitting him to make any excuses:
“Well! well! ’tis right that you should know a little more about the business.”
He offered Frederick a cigarette, and began his statement.
The General Union of French Coal Mines had been constituted. All that they were waiting for was the order for its incorporation. The mere fact of the amalgamation had diminished the cost of superintendence, and of manual labour, and increased the profits. Besides, the company had conceived a new idea, which was to interest the workmen in its undertaking. It would erect houses for them, healthful dwellings; finally, it would constitute itself the purveyor of its employees, and would have everything supplied to them at net prices.
“And they will be the gainers by it, Monsieur: there’s true progress! that’s the way to reply effectively to certain Republican brawlings. We have on our Board”—he showed the prospectus—“a peer of France, a scholar who is a member of the Institute, a retired field-officer of genius. Such elements reassure the timid capitalists, and appeal to intelligent capitalists!”
The company would have in its favour the sanction of the State, then the railways, the steam service, the metallurgical establishments, the gas companies, and ordinary households.
“Thus we heat, we light, we penetrate to the very hearth of the humblest home. But how, you will say to me, can we be sure of selling? By the aid of protective laws, dear Monsieur, and we shall get them!—that is a matter that concerns us! For my part, however, I am a downright prohibitionist! The country before anything!”
He had been appointed a director; but he had no time to occupy himself with certain details, amongst other things with the editing of their publications.
“I find myself rather muddled with my authors. I
