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: "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.