Very much later, in truth, for M. Chebe had reflected:
“My son-in-law is so good-natured! If I leave him with this swindler, who knows what he may get out of him?”
And he remained on guard. The actor was furious. It was impossible to postpone the matter to some other day, for Risler told them that he was going the next day to spend the next month at Savigny.
“A month at Savigny!” exclaimed M. Chebe, incensed at the thought of his son-in-law escaping him. “How about business?”
“Oh! I shall come to Paris every day with Georges. Monsieur Gardinois is very anxious to see his little Sidonie.”
M. Chebe shook his head. He considered it very imprudent. Business is business. A man ought to be on the spot, always on the spot, in the breach. Who could say?—the factory might take fire in the night. And he repeated sententiously: “The eye of the master, my dear fellow, the eye of the master,” while the actor—who was little better pleased by this intended departure—opened his great eyes; giving them an expression at once cunning and authoritative, the veritable expression of the eye of the master.
At last, about midnight, the last Montrouge omnibus bore away the tyrannical father-in-law, and Delobelle was able to speak.
“Let us first look at the prospectus,” he said, preferring not to attack the question of figures at once; and with his eyeglasses on his nose, he began, in a declamatory tone, always upon the stage: “When one considers coolly the decrepitude which dramatic art has reached in France, when one measures the distance that separates the stage of Moliere—”
There were several pages like that. Risler listened, puffing at his pipe, afraid to stir, for the reader looked at him every moment over his eyeglasses, to watch the effect of his phrases. Unfortunately, right in the middle of the prospectus, the cafe closed. The lights were extinguished; they must go.—And the estimates?—It was agreed that they should read them as they walked along. They stopped at every gaslight. The actor displayed his figures. So much for the hall, so much for the lighting, so much for poor-rates, so much for the actors. On that question of the actors he was firm.
“The best point about the affair,” he said, “is that we shall have no leading man to pay. Our leading man will be Bibi.” (When Delobelle mentioned himself, he commonly called himself Bibi.) “A leading man is paid twenty thousand francs, and as we have none to pay, it’s just as if you put twenty thousand francs in your pocket. Tell me, isn’t that true?”