THE FORTUNES OF FIFI

[Illustration--Fifi Cuddling Toto]




  THE

  FORTUNES OF FIFI


  BY

  MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL

  The author of Francezka
  The Sprightly Romance of Marsac
  Children of Destiny


  THE ILLUSTRATIONS BY
  T. DE THULSTRUP


  INDIANAPOLIS
  THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
  PUBLISHERS




  COPYRIGHT 1903
  MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL

  COPYRIGHT 1903
  THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

  OCTOBER

  All rights reserved

  PRESS OF
  BRAUNWORTH & CO.
  BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
  BROOKLYN, N. Y.




CONTENTS


 CHAPTER                           PAGE

    I THE IMPERIAL THEATER           1
   II NUMBER 1313                   31
  III THE GRAND PRIZE               51
   IV COURTSHIP AND CRIBBAGE        73
    V A PARCEL OF OLD SHOES         90
   VI THE BLUE SATIN BED           113
  VII A MOST IMPRUDENT THING       140
  VIII AN OLD LADY AND A LIMP      161
    IX BACK TO THE BLACK CAT       180
     X THE POPE WINS               200
    XI BY THE EMPEROR’S ORDER      222




THE FORTUNES OF FIFI


CHAPTER I

THE IMPERIAL THEATER


Although it was not yet six o’clock, the November night had descended
upon Paris--especially in those meaner quarters on the left bank of the
Seine, where, in 1804, lights were still scarce. However, three yellow
flickering lamps hung upon a rope stretched across the narrow Rue du
Chat Noir. In this street of the Black Cat the tall old rickety houses
loomed darkly in the brown mist that wrapped the town and shut out the
light of the stars.

Short as well as narrow, the Rue du Chat Noir was yet a thoroughfare
connecting two poor, but populous quarters. The ground floor of the
chief building in the street was ornamented with a row of gaudy red
lamps, not yet lighted, and above them, inscribed among some decaying
plaster ornaments, ran the legend:

                        _______________________
                       |                       |
                       | THE IMPERIAL THEATER. |
                       |   DUVERNET, MANAGER.  |
                       |_______________________|

Imperial was a great word in Paris in the month of November, 1804.

Across the way from the theater, at the corner where the tide of travel
turns into the little street, stood Cartouche, general utility man in
the largest sense of the Imperial Theater, and Mademoiselle Fifi, just
promoted to be leading lady. The three glaring, swinging lamps enabled
Cartouche to see Fifi’s laughing face and soft shining eyes as he
harangued her.

“Now, Fifi,” Cartouche was saying sternly, “don’t get it into your
head, because you have become Duvernet’s leading lady, with a salary
of twenty-five francs the week, that you are Mademoiselle Mars at the
House of Molière, with the Emperor waiting to see you as soon as the
curtain goes down.”

“No, I won’t,” promptly replied Fifi.

“And remember--no flirtations.”

“Ah, Cartouche!”

“No flirtations, I say. Do you know why Duvernet made you his leading
lady instead of Julie Campionet?”

“Because Julie Campionet can no more act than a broomstick, and--”

“You are mistaken. It is because Duvernet saw that Julie was going
the way of his three former leading ladies. They have each, in turn,
succeeded in marrying him, and there are three divorce cases at present
against Duvernet, and he does not know which one of these leading
ex-ladies he is married to, or if he is married at all; and here is
Julie Campionet out for him with a net and a lantern. So Duvernet told
me he must have a leading lady who didn’t want to marry him, and I
said: ‘Promote Fifi. She doesn’t know much yet, but she can learn.’”

“Is it thus you speak of my art?” cried Fifi, who, since her elevation,
sometimes assumed a very grand diction, as well as an air she
considered highly imposing.

“It is thus I speak of your art,” replied Cartouche grimly--which
caused Fifi’s pale, pretty cheeks to color, and made her shift her
ground as she said, crossly:

“Everybody knows you lead Duvernet around by the nose.”

“Who is ‘everybody’?”

“Why, that hateful Julie Campionet, and myself, and--and--”

“It is the first thing I ever knew you and Julie Campionet to agree
on yet--that the two of you are ‘everybody’. But mind what I say--no
flirtations. Duvernet beats his wives, you know; and you come of people
who don’t beat their wives, although you are only a little third-rate
actress at a fourth-rate theater.”

Fifi’s eyes blazed up angrily at this, but it did not disturb Cartouche
in the least.

“And you couldn’t stand blows from a husband,” Cartouche continued,
“and that’s what the women in Duvernet’s class expect. Look you. My
father was an honest man, and a good shoemaker, and kind to my mother,
God bless her. But sometimes he got in drink and then he gave my mother
a whack occasionally. Did she mind it? Not a bit, but gave him back as
good as he sent; and when my father got sober, it was all comfortably
made up between them. But that is not the way with people of your
sort--because you are not named Chiaramonti for nothing.”

“It seems as if I were named Chiaramonti for nothing, if I am, as
you say, only a little third-rate actress at a fourth-rate theater,”
replied Fifi, sulkily.

To this Cartouche answered only:

“At all events, there’s no question of marrying for you, Fifi, unless
you marry a gentleman, and there is about as much chance of that, as
that pigs will learn to fly.”

“So, I am to have neither lover nor husband, no flirtations, no
attachments--” Fifi turned an angry, charming face on Cartouche.

“Exactly.”

“Cartouche,” said Fifi, after a pause, and examining Cartouche’s brawny
figure, “I wish you were not so big--nor so overbearing.”

“I dare say you wish it was my arm instead of my leg that is stiff,”
said Cartouche.

He moved his right leg as he spoke, so as to show the stiffness of the
knee-joint. Otherwise he was a well-made man. He continued, with a grin:

“You know very well I would warm the jackets of any of these
scoundrels who hang about the Imperial Theater if they dared to be
impudent to you, because I regard you as a--as a niece, Fifi, and I
must take care of you.”

Cartouche had a wide mouth, a nose that was obstinacy itself, and he
was, altogether, remarkably ugly and attractive. Dogs, children and old
women found Cartouche a fascinating fellow, but young and pretty women
generally said he was a bear. It was a very young and beautiful woman,
the wife of the scene painter at the Imperial Theater, who had called
attention to the unlucky similarity between Cartouche’s grotesque name
and that of the celebrated highwayman.

Cartouche had caught the scene painter’s wife at some of her tricks and
had taken the liberty of giving a good beating to the gentleman in the
case, while the scene painter had administered a dose out of the same
bottle to the lady; so the promising little affair was nipped in the
bud, and the scene painter’s wife frightened into behaving herself.
But she never wearied of gibing at Cartouche--his person, his acting,
everything he did.

In truth, Cartouche was not much of an actor, and was further
disqualified by his stiff leg. But the Imperial Theater could scarcely
have got on without him. He could turn his hand to anything, from
acting to carpentering. He was a terror to evil-doers, and stood well
with the police. Duvernet, the manager, would rather have parted with
his whole company than with Cartouche, who received for his services
as actor, stage manager, and Jack of all trades the sum of twenty-two
francs weekly, for which he worked eighteen hours a day.

The worst of Cartouche was that he always meant what he said; and
Fifi, who was naturally inclined to flirtations, felt sure that it
would not be a safe pastime for her, if Cartouche said not. And as
for marrying--Cartouche had spoken the truth--what chance had she
for marrying a gentleman? So Fifi’s dancing eyes grew rueful, as she
studied Cartouche’s burly figure and weather-beaten face.

The night was penetratingly damp and chill, and Fifi shivered in her
thin mantle. The winter had come early that year, and Fifi had taken
the money which should have gone in a warm cloak and put it into the
black feathers which nodded in her hat. Pity Fifi; she was not yet
twenty.

Cartouche noted her little shiver.

“Ah, Fifi,” he said. “If only I had enough money to give you a cloak!
But my appetite is so large! I am always thinking that I will save up
something, and then comes a dish of beans and cabbage, or something
like it, and my money is all eaten up!”

“Never mind, Cartouche,” cried Fifi, laughing, while her teeth
chattered; “I have twenty-five francs the week now, and in a fortnight
I can buy a cloak. Monsieur Duvernet asked me yesterday why I did not
pawn my brooch of brilliants and buy some warm clothes. I posed for
indignation--asked him how he dared to suggest that I should pawn the
last remnant of splendor in my family--and he looked really abashed.
Of course I couldn’t admit to him that the brooch was only paste; that
brooch is my trump card with Duvernet. It always overawes him. I don’t
think he ever had an actress before who had a diamond brooch, or what
passes for one.”

“No,” replied Cartouche, who realized that the alleged diamond brooch
gave much prestige to Fifi, with both the manager and the company.
“However, better days are coming, Fifi, and if I could but live on a
little less!”

The streets had been almost deserted up to that time, but suddenly
and quietly, three figures showed darkly out of the mist. They kept
well beyond the circle of light made by the swinging lamp, which made a
great, yellow patch on the mud of the street.

All three of them wore long military cloaks with high collars, and
their cocked hats were placed so as to conceal as much as possible
of their features. Nevertheless, at the first sight of one of these
figures, Cartouche started and his keen eyes wandered from Fifi’s face.
But Fifi herself was looking toward the other end of the street, from
which came the sound of horses’ hoofs and the rattle of a coach in the
mud. It came into sight--a huge dark unwieldy thing, with four horses,
followed by a couple of traveling chaises. As the coach lurched slowly
along, it passed from the half-darkness into the circle of light of the
swinging lamps. Within it sat a frail old man, wrapped up in a great
white woolen cloak. He wore on his silvery hair a white beretta. His
skin was of the delicate pallor seen in old persons who have lived
clean and gentle lives, and he had a pair of light and piercing eyes,
which saw everything, and had a mild, but compelling power in them.

Fifi, quite beside herself with curiosity, leaned forward, nearly
putting her head in the coach window. At that very moment, the coach,
almost wedged in the narrow street, came to a halt for a whole minute.
The bright, fantastic light of the lamps overhead streamed full upon
Fifi’s sparkling face, vivid with youth and hope and confidence, and a
curiosity at once gay and tender, and she met the direct gaze of the
gentle yet commanding eyes of the old man.

Instantly an electric current seemed established between the young eyes
and the old. The old man, wrapped in his white mantle, raised himself
from his corner in the coach, and leaned forward, so close to Fifi
that they were not a foot apart. One delicate, withered hand rested on
the coach window, while with an expression eager and disturbing, he
studied Fifi’s face. Fifi, for her part, was bewitched with that mild
and fatherly glance. She stood, one hand holding up her skirts, while
involuntarily she laid the other on the coach window, beside the old
man’s hand.

While Fifi gazed thus, attracted and subdued, the three figures in the
black shadow were likewise studying the face of the old man, around
which the lamps made a kind of halo in the darkness. Especially was
this true of the shortest of the three, who with his head advanced and
his arms folded, stood, fixed as a statue, eying the white figure in
the coach. Suddenly the wheels revolved, and Fifi felt herself seized
unceremoniously by Cartouche, to keep her from falling to the ground.

“Do you know whom you were staring at so rudely?” he asked, as he stood
Fifi on her feet, and the coach moved down the street, followed by the
traveling chaises. “It was the Pope--Pius the Seventh, who has come to
Paris to crown the Emperor; and proud enough the Pope ought to be at
the Emperor’s asking him. But that’s no reason you should stare the old
man out of countenance, and peer into his carriage as if you were an
impudent grisette.”

Cartouche had an ugly temper when he was roused, and he seemed bent
on making himself disagreeable that night. The fact is, Cartouche had
nerves in his strong, rough body, and the idea just broached to him,
that Fifi would have to go two weeks or probably a month without a warm
cloak, made him irritable. If it would have done any good, he would
cheerfully have given his own skin to make Fifi a cloak.

Fifi, however, was used to Cartouche’s roughness, and, besides, she was
under the spell of the venerable and benignant presence of the old man.
So she gave Cartouche a soft answer.

“I did not mean to be rude, but something in that old man’s face
touched me, and overcame me; and Cartouche, he felt it, too; he looked
at me with a kind of--a kind of--surprised affection--”

“Whoosh!” cried Cartouche, “the Holy Father, brought to Paris by his
Imperial Majesty the Emperor Napoleon, is surprised at first sight into
so much affection for Mademoiselle Fifi, leading lady at the Imperial
Theater, that he means to adopt her, give her a title, make her a
countess or I don’t know what, and leave her a million of francs.”

Fifi, at this, turned her shapely, girlish back on the presumptuous
Cartouche, while there was a little movement of silent laughter on the
part of the three persons who had remained in the little dark street,
after the passing of the Pope’s traveling equipage.

Cartouche had not for a moment forgotten the face of the one he
recognized so instantly, but seeing them keeping in the shadow, and
having, himself, the soul of a gentleman, forbore to look toward them,
and proceeded to get Fifi out of the way.

“Come now,” said he. “It is time for me to go to the theater, and you
promised me you would sew up the holes in Duvernet’s toga before the
performance begins. It split last night in the middle of his death
scene, and I thought the whole act was gone, and I have not had time
to-day to get him a new toga; so run along.”

Fifi, for once angry with Cartouche, struck an attitude she had seen in
a picture of Mademoiselle Mars as Medea.

“I go,” she cried, in Medea’s tragic tone on leaving Jason, “but I
shall tell Monsieur Duvernet how you treat his leading lady.”

And with that she stalked majestically across the street and
disappeared in the darkness.

One of the group of persons came up to Cartouche and touched him on
the shoulder. It was the one, at sight of whom Cartouche had started.
In spite of his enveloping cloak, and a hat that concealed much of his
face, Cartouche knew him.

“Who is that pretty young lady with whom you have been quarreling?” he
asked.

“That, your Majesty,” replied Cartouche, “is Mademoiselle Fifi, a very
good, respectable little girl who has just been made leading lady at
Monsieur Duvernet’s theater across the way.”

Cartouche, although thrilled with happiness, did not feel the least
oppressed or embarrassed at talking with the Emperor. No private
soldier did--for was not the Emperor theirs? Had they not known him
when he was a slim, sallow young general, who knew exactly what every
man ought to have in his knapsack, and promised to have the company
cooks shot if they did not give the soldiers good soup? Did he not
walk post for the sleeping sentry that the man’s life might be saved?
And although the lightning bolts of his wrath might fall upon a
general officer, was he not as soft and sweet as a woman to the rugged
moustaches who trudged along with muskets in their hands? And Cartouche
answered quite easily and promptly--the Emperor meanwhile studying him
with that penetrating glance which could see through a two-inch plank.

“So you know me,” said the Emperor. “Well, I know you, too. It is not
likely that I can forget the hour in which I saw your honest, ugly
face. You were the first man across at the terrible passage of the
bridge of Lodi.”

“Yes, Sire. And your Majesty was the second man across at the terrible
passage of the bridge of Lodi.”

“Ah, was it not frightful! We were shoulder to shoulder on the bridge
that day, you and I. Your legs were longer than mine, else I should
have been across first,” the Emperor continued, smiling. “Berthier,
here, was on the bridge, too. We had a devil of a time, eh, Berthier?”

Marshal Berthier, short of stature and plain of face, and the greatest
chief of staff in Europe, smiled grimly at the recollection of that
rush across the bridge. The Emperor again turned to Cartouche; he loved
to talk to honest, simple fellows like Cartouche, and encouraged them
to talk to him; so Cartouche replied, with a broad grin:

“Your Majesty was on foot, struggling with us tall fellows of the
Thirty-second Grenadiers. At first we thought your Majesty was some
little boy-officer who had got lost in the mêlée from his command; and
then we saw that it was our general, and a hundred thousand Austrians
could not have held us back then. We ate the Austrians up, Sire.”

“Yes, you ate the Austrians up. Afterward, I never could recall without
laughing the expression on the faces of my old moustaches when they saw
me on the bridge.”

“Ah, Sire, when the soldiers came to themselves and began to think
about things, they were in transports of rage at your Majesty for
exposing your life so.”

The Emperor smiled--that magic and seductive smile which began with his
eyes and ended with his mouth, and which no man or woman could resist.
He began to pull Cartouche’s ear meditatively.

“You old rascals of moustaches have no business to think at all.
Besides, you made me a corporal for it. One has to distinguish himself
to receive promotion.”

“All the same,” replied Cartouche obstinately, “we were enraged against
your Majesty; and if your Majesty continues so reckless of your life,
it will be followed by a terrible catastrophe. The soldiers will lose
the battle rather than lose their Emperor.”

The Emperor had continued to pull Cartouche’s ear during all this.

“And where are your moustaches?” he asked. “And do you still belong to
the Thirty-second Grenadiers? For they were the fellows who got across
first.”

Cartouche shook his head.

“I did not get a scratch at Lodi, your Majesty; nor at Arcola, nor
Castiglione, nor Rivoli, nor at Mantua; but one day, I was ordered
to catch a goat which was browsing about my captain’s quarters; and
I, Cartouche, first sergeant in the Thirty-second Grenadiers, who
had served for nine years, who had been in seven pitched battles,
twenty-four minor engagements and more skirmishes than I can count, was
knocked down by that goat, and my leg broken--and ever since I have
been good for nothing to your Majesty. See.”

Cartouche showed his stiff leg.

“That is bad,” said the Emperor--and the words as he said them went to
Cartouche’s heart. “Luckily it did not spoil your beauty. That would
have been a pity.”

Both the Emperor and Cartouche laughed at the notion of Cartouche
having any beauty to spoil.

“And what are you doing now?”

“I am an actor, your Majesty, at the Imperial Theater yonder in this
street.”

“An actor! You! One of my old moustaches! What do you know about
acting?”

“Well, your Majesty, if you could see the theater, you wouldn’t be
surprised that they let me act in it. A franc the best seat--twenty
centimes for the worst--eating and drinking and smoking--and
cabbage-heads thrown at the villain, who is generally an Englishman.”

“But how do you manage on the stage with your stiff leg?”

“Very well, Sire. I am always a wounded soldier, or a grandfather, or
something of the sort. And I do other work about the theater--of so
many kinds I can not now tell your Majesty.”

“And the pretty little girl is your sweetheart?”

“No, your Majesty; I wish she were. She is not yet twenty, and really
has talent; and I am thirty-five and look forty-five, and have a stiff
leg; and, in short, I am no match for her.”

Cartouche would not mention his poverty, for he would not that money
should sully that hour of happiness when the Emperor talked with him.

“What does Mademoiselle Fifi think on the subject?” asked the Emperor.

“She does not think about it at all yet, your Majesty. She was but ten
years old when I took her. It was at Mantua. Your Majesty remembers
how everything was topsyturvy in Italy eight years ago. One day I saw
a child running about the market-place, calling gaily for her mother.
The mother did not come. Then the child’s cry changed to impatience,
to terror and at last to despair. It was Fifi. The mother was dead,
but the child did not know it then. She had no one in the world that
I could discover; so, when I was started for France in a cart--for I
could not walk at all then--I brought Fifi with me. She was so light,
her weight made no difference, and ate so little that she could live
off my rations and there would still be enough left for me. When we got
to Paris, I hired a little garret for her, in yonder tall old house
where I live, and Fifi lives there still. I made a shift to have her
taught reading and writing and sewing, and never meant her to go on the
stage. However, I caught her one day dressed up in a peasant costume,
which she had borrowed, acting in the streets with some strollers--a
desperately bad lot. I carried Fifi off by the hair of her head--she
had only been with them a single day--and frightened her so that I
don’t think she will ever dare to follow her own will again; but I saw
that acting was in her blood, so at last I got Duvernet, the manager,
to give her a small place. That was a year and a half ago, and to-day
she is his leading lady.”

“And you are not in love with her?”

“I did not say that, your Majesty. I said she was not my sweetheart;
but I wish I were good enough for her. However, Fifi knows nothing
about that. All she knows is, that Cartouche belongs to her and is
ready to thrash any rogue, be he gentleman or common man, who dares to
speak lightly to her, or of her, for, although the goat ruined my leg,
my arms are all right, and I know how to use them.”

“Fifi will be a great fool if she does not marry you,” said the Emperor.

“Your Majesty means, she would be a great fool if she thought of
marrying me--me--me! Her father was a Chiaramonti--that much I found
out--and my father was a shoemaker.”

At the mention of the name Chiaramonti the Emperor let go of
Cartouche’s ear, and cried:

“A Chiaramonti! And from what part of Italy, pray?”

“From a place called Cesena, at the foot of the Apennines. That is, the
family are from there; so I discovered in Mantua.”

“Do you know her father’s Christian name?”

“Yes, your Majesty--Gregory Barnabas Chiaramonti. I have seen Fifi’s
baptismal certificate in the church at Mantua.”

The Emperor folded his arms and looked at Cartouche.

“My man,” he said, “I shall keep an eye on Mademoiselle Fifi of the
Imperial Theater--likewise on yourself; and you may hear from me some
day.”

A sudden thought struck Cartouche.

“Why does not your Majesty go to see Fifi act to-night? The theater is
in this street--yonder it is, with the row of red lamps. I put those
lamps up myself. I am due at the theater now, and if your Majesty
has not the price of the tickets with you for yourself and Marshal
Berthier and General Duroc”--for Cartouche knew both of these well by
sight--“why, I, Cartouche, as stage manager, can pass you in.”

The Emperor threw back his head and laughed, and motioned to Berthier
and Duroc standing behind him to come nearer to him.

“Listen,” he said to them--and told them of Cartouche’s invitation, and
accepted it with great delight.

Marshal Berthier’s homely face lighted up with a smile at the notion
of attending a performance at the Imperial Theater in the street of
the Black Cat. General Duroc, silent and stolid, followed the Emperor
without a word, exactly as he would have marched into the bottomless
pit at the Emperor’s command.

“But not a word to the manager until we leave the house,” said the
Emperor.

Cartouche, walking with the Emperor, led the party a short distance
up the street to where the gaudy red lamps showed the entrance to the
Imperial Theater. Duvernet, the manager, in his shirt-sleeves, was
engaged in lighting these lamps. He called out to the approaching
Cartouche.

[Illustration--Napoleon at the Imperial Theater]

“Look here, Cartouche, this is a pretty business, if you have forgotten
my new toga. You were to have a new one ready for me to-night--I can’t
feel like a Roman senator, much less look like one in that old rag of
a toga I wore last night. It was made out of a white cotton petticoat
of Fifi’s, and she had the impertinence to remind me of it before the
whole company.”

“Hold your tongue,” whispered Cartouche to the manager, coming up
close; and then he added, aloud: “These are some friends of mine, whom
I have invited to see the play as my guests.”

The Emperor, a step behind Cartouche, fixed his eyes on Duvernet. No
use was it for Cartouche to refrain from mentioning who his first
guest was. Duvernet turned quite green, his jaw fell, and he backed up
against the wall.

“My God!” he murmured. “The toga is a regular rag!” and mopped his brow
frantically.

The Emperor evidently enjoyed the poor manager’s predicament, and
pushing back his hat, revealed himself so there was no mistaking him.
Duvernet could only mutter, in an agony:

“My God! The Emperor! My God! The toga!”

“Duvernet,” said Cartouche, shaking him, “you behave as if you were
drunk.”

“Perhaps I am--oh, I must be,” replied Duvernet, continuing to mop his
brow.

“Come, Duvernet,” said the Emperor, laughing, “never mind about the
toga. I am not going to eat you. I came to see my old acquaintance,
Cartouche, whom I have known ever since we met at the end of a bridge
on the tenth of May, 1796. And, although I have enough money to pay
for myself and my two friends, I accept Cartouche’s invitation to
see the performance as his guests. He has promised us the one-franc
seats--don’t forget, Cartouche--nothing under a franc.”

“Certainly, Sire,” replied Cartouche. “But if Duvernet doesn’t come
to himself, I don’t know whether we can have any performance or not;
because he is the Roman senator in our play to-night--a tragedy
composed by Monsieur Duvernet himself.”

Duvernet, at this, brought his wits together after a fashion, and
escorted the party within the theater, and gave them franc seats as
promised. It was then time for Cartouche to go and dress, but Duvernet,
not having to appear as the Roman senator until the second act, could
remain some time still with his guests.

Afterward Duvernet said that in the half-hour which followed, the
Emperor found out all about theaters of the class of Duvernet’s, rent,
lighting, wages, and told him more than he had ever known before
about his own business. But Duvernet was in no way reassured, and his
complexion was yet green, when Cartouche, peeping through a hole in the
curtain, saw him still talking to the Emperor--or rather answering the
Emperor’s questions.

The house was fast filling. It held only five hundred persons, and
there were but one hundred seats where the élite of the patronage paid
so much as a franc; and even these seats were filled. Fortune smiled on
the Imperial Theater that night.

Behind the curtain, the agitation was extreme; the Emperor had been
remembered and so had Berthier and Duroc. Everybody knew that the
Emperor had recognized Cartouche, had walked and talked with him, had
pulled his ear, and had come to see the performance as his guest--that
is to say, everybody except Fifi. That grand lady, since acquiring the
dignity of leading lady, always contrived to be just half a minute
behind Julie Campionet, her hated rival; but, also, just in time
to escape a wigging from Cartouche. Cartouche himself, dressed as a
centurion of the Pretorian Guard, was the coolest person behind the
curtain, and was vigorously rearranging the barrels which represented
the columns of the Temple of Vesta.

Julie Campionet, a tall, commanding-looking woman with an aggressive
nose, sailed in then, arrayed as a Roman matron. After her came Fifi,
tripping, and dressed as a Roman maiden. The air was charged with
electricity, and both Fifi and the hated Julie knew that something
was happening. Julie turned to the leading man, with whom she had an
ancient flirtation, to find out what was the impending catastrophe.

Fifi, however, ran straight to the place where there was a hole in the
curtain--a hole through which Cartouche had strictly forbidden her to
look, as it was bad luck to look at the house before the curtain went
up. Fifi was terribly afraid of signs and omens, but curiosity proved
stronger than fear. She swept one comprehensive glance through the
hole, and then, wildly seizing Cartouche by the arm, screamed at him:

“Cartouche! Cartouche! It is the Emperor! Give me my smelling-salts.”

Instead of running for the smelling-salts, Cartouche shook Fifi’s elbow
vigorously.

“Don’t be a goose, Fifi! The Emperor has come here as my guest--do you
understand? And it is the chance of your life!”

But Fifi, quite pale under her paint, could only gasp:

“Cartouche, I can never, never act before the Emperor!”

“It isn’t likely you will ever have but this one opportunity,” was
Cartouche’s unfeeling reply.

“Cartouche, within this hour I have seen the Holy Father--and now the
Emperor--oh, what is to become of me!”

“Get yourself superseded by Julie Campionet, who has a walk like an
ostrich and a voice like a peacock,” answered Cartouche rudely, “but
who does not go about screaming like a cat because she has seen the
Pope and the Emperor both in one evening.”

Now, Julie Campionet warmly reciprocated Fifi’s dislike, and was
looking on at Fifi’s doings and gloating over the prospect of her
failure. Fifi caught Julie’s eye--and she would much rather have been
flayed alive than oblige Julie by making a fiasco; so, instantly, Fifi
recovered her composure and declared she never felt more at ease in her
life, at which Julie Campionet’s spirits sensibly fell.

Meanwhile, everybody, from Moret, the leading man, down to the old
woman who acted as candle-lighter, treated Cartouche as if he had
been a hero. Moret, who had given himself great airs with Cartouche,
embraced him and told him he would never be forgotten by the members of
the company, for whom he had procured such an honor. Julie Campionet
would likewise have embraced him, if he had encouraged her, and did,
in fact, come dangerously near kissing him on the sly, but Cartouche
managed to escape at the critical moment. Duvernet oscillated between
the stage and the theater, and made so much confusion that Cartouche
requested him to keep away from the stage until his cue came.

In truth, but for Cartouche’s self-possession, the Emperor’s presence
would have simply caused a terrible catastrophe at the Imperial
Theater, and the manager’s Roman tragedy would not have got itself
acted at all that night; but, by coolness and the assumption of
authority, the curtain came up to the minute, the play began, and went
through without a hitch.

As for Fifi, she acted as if inspired, and Julie Campionet saw her
hopes of becoming leading lady vanish into thin air. Duvernet, in spite
of two large rents in the toga made out of Fifi’s petticoat, was a most
imposing senator. In his dying speech, which bore a suspicious likeness
to one of Corneille’s masterpieces, his voice could be heard bellowing
as far as the corner of the street of the Black Cat.

The Emperor sat through two whole acts and applauded vigorously, and
when the curtain came down on the second act, sent for Cartouche,
and paid the performance the highest compliments. Especially did he
charge Cartouche to say that he thought Duvernet’s death scene the
most remarkable he had ever witnessed on or off the stage. And then he
handed Cartouche a little tortoise-shell snuff-box, saying:

“It is not likely I shall forget you, Cartouche--that is, not until I
forget the bridge of Lodi; though, really, you should have let me over
the bridge first.”

Cartouche shook his head and spoke no word, but his stern countenance
and his obstinate nose said as plainly as tongue could speak it:

“Your Majesty should not have been on the bridge at all.”

The Emperor saw this, and looked significantly at his companions, who
laughed. Then he continued:

“And this young lady, Mademoiselle Chiaramonti, I shall have some
inquiries made about, and the result may surprise you. Adieu. Remember,
you have a friend in your Emperor.”

This was spoken at the corner of the street of the Black Cat.
Cartouche, with adoration in his eyes, watched the figure of the
Emperor disappear in the darkness. Then, being careful to note that
there were no onlookers, he kissed the snuff-box, exactly as he
had seen Fifi kiss her paste brooch when she was enamored with its
splendors, and hid his treasure in his breast.

But Fifi saw it before she slept.




CHAPTER II

NUMBER 1313


It took Fifi a whole month to recover from the shock of delight which
she had experienced on the night she had acted before the Emperor.
Meanwhile, her little head became slightly turned, and she gave herself
airs of great haughtiness to Julie Campionet, and Moret, the leading
man, and even to Duvernet, the manager. Duvernet was one of those
unfortunates who are the victims of their own charms. He was reckoned
a handsome man, as beauty goes on the left bank of the Seine, and was
almost invincible with young ladies of the ballet, milliners’ girls
and the like. When convinced that a deserving young woman had fallen
in love with him, Duvernet felt sorry for her, and honestly tried, by
reciprocating her passion, to keep her from throwing herself in the
river.

By virtue of this amiable weakness, he had married in turn, as
Cartouche had said, three of his leading ladies, and was only safe from
Julie Campionet as long as Cartouche kept watch, like a wolf, over
the lady. Separations always followed fast on Duvernet’s marriages,
and his three wives were in such various stages of divorce, that, as
Cartouche said, Duvernet himself did not know exactly where he stood
matrimonially. Of one thing only was he sure: that Fifi did not harbor
designs upon him. And for this, and on account of her cleverness with
her needle, which enabled her to convert her white cotton petticoat
into a toga for the manager, in an emergency, Duvernet put up with her
airs and graces.

Fifi tried a few of these same airs and graces on Cartouche, but
Cartouche had the habit of command with her, and Fifi had the habit
of obedience with him; so these little experimental haughtinesses on
Fifi’s part soon collapsed. Every night, when the performance was over,
Cartouche would bring Fifi home, and after seeing that she was in her
own little garret, retired to his, which was at the head of the stairs,
and was the meanest and poorest of all the mean and poor rooms in the
mean and poor lodging-house. But it was respectable; and to Cartouche,
who had charged himself with the care of such a pair of sparkling dark
eyes as Fifi’s, and such a musical voice, and such a neat foot and
ankle as hers, this respectability was much.

If he had had his way Fifi would have been locked up in a convent and
only let out to be married to a person of the highest respectability.
But Fifi, in her own gay little obstinate head, by no means relished
schemes of this sort, and was fully determined on having both
flirtations and a husband, _malgré_ all Cartouche could say.

The curious part of it was she could not construct any plan of life
leaving out Cartouche. She had known him so long; he had carried her
many weary miles, in spite of his bad leg, in that journey so long ago,
when Fifi was but a mite of a child; he had often brought her a dinner
when she suspected he had none for himself; he had taught her all she
knew, and was always teaching her.

The men in the company often spoke roughly to the women in it, and
oftener still, were unduly familiar, but none of them ever spoke so
to her, chiefly because there was nothing the matter with Cartouche’s
brawny arms, as he had told the Emperor. And if the man Fifi married
did not treat her right, Cartouche, she knew, would beat him all to
rags; and how could she, husband or no husband, settle anything in
the world, from a new part in a play, to the way to make onion soup,
without consulting Cartouche? So the question of a husband was full of
complications for Fifi. At last, however, a brilliant solution burst
upon her mind: she would have a great many flirtations--and then she
would marry Cartouche!

Fifi was charmed with her own cleverness in devising this plan. It
occurred to her at the very moment that she was putting on her hat
with the black feathers to go out and buy herself a warm cloak. It was
Christmas Eve, late in the wintry afternoon, and she had time, before
she was due at the theater, to run around the corner to a shop where
she had seen a beautiful cloak for thirty francs. She had saved up
exactly thirty francs in the month since that stupendous evening when
she had seen both the Pope and the Emperor.

The bargain for the cloak was quite completed; both she and Cartouche
had examined it critically, had made the shopman take off a franc for
a solitary button which was not quite right, and nothing remained
but to pay over the thirty francs. It was a beautiful cloak, of a
rich, dark red, lined with flannel--there was one like it, lined with
cotton-backed satin, which Fifi longed for--but when she mentioned the
flannel lining of the first one to Cartouche, he had promptly vetoed
the cotton-backed satin.

Fifi set forth gaily, feeling warm in spite of her thin black silk
mantle.

It was near dusk and a great silver moon was smiling down at Fifi
from the dark blue heavens. The streets were crowded and there was as
much gaiety in them as in the finer faubourgs across the river. The
chestnut venders were out in force, and on nearly every corner one of
them had set up his temporary kitchen, whose ruddy glow lighted up the
clear-obscure of the evening.

Around these centers of light and warmth people were gathered, sniffing
the pungent odor of the roasting chestnuts, and spending five-centime
pieces with a splendid generosity. The street hawkers did a rushing
business; one could buy broken furniture, cheeses, toy balloons,
cheap bonbons and cakes tied with gay ribbons, within twenty feet of
anywhere. Three organ-grinders were going at the same time in front
of the brightly lighted shop where Fifi’s cloak was--for she already
reckoned it hers. But alas for Fifi! Directly in front of the shop
a crowd had collected around an Italian, who was exhibiting the most
entirely fascinating little black dog that Fifi had ever seen. He was
about as big as a good-sized rabbit, and was trimmed like a lion.
Around his neck was tied a card on which was written:

_Toto is my name, and I am a dog of the most aristocratic lineage in
France, and I can be bought for twenty francs. See me dance and you
will believe that I would be cheap at a hundred francs._

Fifi edged her way to where this angel of a dog was being shown by his
owner, the Italian, and opening her arms wide, cried out in Italian:

“Come here, my beauty. Come here, dear Toto.”

The dog ran to her, and placing his paws on her gown, gazed up into her
shining eyes with that look of confiding friendship which only a dog’s
eyes can express. Fifi bent down, and Toto, putting out a sharp little
red tongue, licked her delicate, cold cheek. Fifi was enraptured. Toto,
with all his beauty, high descent and accomplishments, was not puffed
up, but had a dog’s true heart.

Fifi and Toto became intimate at once, to the delight of the crowd,
as well as of Toto’s master. The Italian saw, in this evidence of
the dog’s gentle disposition, a better chance to sell him. A stout,
red-faced woman, showily dressed, immediately offered eighteen francs
for the dog. The Italian held out stoutly for twenty, and to clinch
the matter, brought out from his clothes somewhere a complete ballet
dancer’s outfit; and in the wink of an eye Toto was doing a beautiful
ballet, his skirts of pink spangled tulle waving up and down around his
slim, little black legs, a low-necked bodice showing a necklace around
his throat, earrings jangling in his ears, and his head affectedly
stuck on one side, while he ogled the gentlemen in true ballet-dancer’s
style.

Oh, it was delicious! Fifi almost wept with delight as Toto pirouetted,
his tulle skirts waving and his earrings tinkling musically. And when
at last he retired and sat down, fanning himself with his skirts,
Fifi’s heart, as well as her hard-earned money, was Toto’s.

The stout, red-faced woman was obviously impressed with Toto’s value,
for she immediately said to the Italian:

“Nineteen francs, Monsieur.”

The Italian shook his head; and then, scarcely knowing what she was
doing, Fifi cried out in her musical, high-pitched voice:

“Twenty francs! Oh, Toto, you are mine!”

And holding her arms open, Toto jumped into them and was cuddled to her
breast.

It was all over in a minute. The crowd had dispersed, and Fifi, with
Toto in her arms, and his ballet dress in her pocket, where now
only ten of her thirty francs reposed, was rather dumfounded at the
success of her sudden venture. The cloak, of course, was out of the
question--and what should she say to Cartouche? But the touch of Toto’s
little black paws gave her courage, and it was plain that her love for
him at first sight was reciprocated. So Fifi started back to her garret
with Toto, inventing on the way her replies to the wigging Cartouche
was sure to give her.

She had scarcely got Toto into her room, when a rap came at the door,
which Fifi recognized, and clapping Toto into the cupboard, she
prepared to face Cartouche.

“Well,” said Cartouche, walking in. “Where is the cloak?”

Fifi busied herself for a minute in lighting her one candle, before
she could summon up courage to answer, in a quavering voice:

“I did not get the cloak, Cartouche. That is, not to-day.”

“Why not?” demanded Cartouche.

“B-b-because I spent twenty francs of the money upon--upon something I
wanted more than the cloak.”

“What is it?” asked Cartouche in a tone that made little shivers run
down Fifi’s backbone. “More feathers? Or was it a fan to keep you cool,
when the snow is on the ground, instead of a cloak to keep you warm?”

“N-no. It was not a fan. And it is something to keep me warm, too, it
is as good as a stove, sometimes.”

“What is it?”

There was no mistaking the note in Cartouche’s voice. Fifi began:

“It is--don’t be angry, dear Cartouche--it is a little black--it is a
little black--it is something alive!”

“Is it a little black ostrich? Or is it a little black giraffe?”

Cartouche came toward Fifi then, looking exactly as he did the day he
caught her acting with the strolling players on the street.

“Oh, no, Cartouche. It is a little--a little--I would much rather have
him than a cloak. It is a dear little--”

But Toto himself revealed his species at that moment, by pushing the
cupboard door open; and bouncing out, he ran to Fifi’s protecting arms.

Cartouche was too much staggered to say a word, but Fifi, in the
terrible silence, said timidly:

“He can dance, Cartouche--and--and stand on his hind legs like a little
angel!”

“I see,” cried Cartouche, recovering his speech and uncorking his
wrath. “It is for a little black angel that can stand on his hind legs
that you have sacrificed the cloak!”

“Yes,” cried Fifi, likewise recovering her speech, now that the murder
was out. “Toto is worth a dozen cloaks to me, and he only cost twenty
francs. It is almost like buying a dear little child for twenty francs.
I shall love Toto so much and he will love me back--we shall love each
other better than anything in the world!”

Cartouche drew back a little as if he had received a blow. He remained
silent--so silent that Fifi was a little scared.

“You should see him dance,” she said; and slipping Toto’s ballet
costume on him, she began to sing in a very lively manner:

                        _Le petit mousse noir._

Toto, evidently thinking that he was meant by the black cabin-boy of
whom the song treats, made his stage bow, and began his ballet dancing.
And as it went on, Cartouche, in spite of himself, began to laugh. That
was Fifi’s triumph--and springing up, she, too, began to dance as well
as sing.

She was only a half-starved little actress on twenty-five francs the
week. She had no friend in the world but Cartouche, who was as poor as
she was, but her heart was light, and her fresh young voice caroled
merrily in the cold, bare little room. Cartouche sat, looking at her,
and trying to frown; but it was in vain. He knew nothing of that
newly-formed resolve in Fifi’s mind, to have a great many flirtations
and then to marry him; and then, a vast, a stupendous sacrifice came
into his mind by which he could still get Fifi a cloak.

He had ten francs of his own, and there was the tortoise-shell
snuff-box the Emperor had given him. Cartouche himself would have
starved and frozen rather than take it to the pawnshop--but Fifi’s cold
and hunger was something else. There was no struggle in making the
resolve, sacrifice for Fifi was no sacrifice to Cartouche, but there
was a moment of sharp regret--a feeling that the only treasure among
his poor possessions was about to be torn from him. Presently he said
gently:

“Fifi, I have two bundles of fagots in my room and a sausage, and I
will get a bottle of wine, and after the performance to-night, we will
have a little supper here. And I will forgive you for buying Toto.”

“That will be best of all,” cried Fifi, remembering that in the end she
meant to marry Cartouche.

Cartouche went out, leaving Fifi alone, for half an hour of rapture
with Toto, before it was time to go to the theater. He climbed up to
his garret under the roof, and taking his cherished snuff-box from his
breast where he always carried it, looked at it as a mother looks her
last on her dead child; and then, going quickly downstairs again into
the street, he made for a pawnshop close by, with which he was well
acquainted.

Just as he turned the corner of the street of the Black Cat, he almost
ran into Duvernet’s arms.

“Hey, Cartouche, you are the very man I want to see,” cried the
manager, buttonholing him. And then, noting that several persons on
the street stopped and looked at him, Duvernet swelled out his chest
and assumed an attitude in which he very much admired himself in his
favorite part of the Roman senator.

Duvernet continued in a very impressive manner: “I contemplate both
raising your salary, Cartouche, and also making you a little gift.
You have worked hard for me; you got the Emperor to the theater, and
business has been remarkably good ever since, and you have kept Julie
Campionet from marrying me--so far, that is--and I feel the obligation,
I assure you. So your salary after this will be twenty-five francs the
week, and here are three ten-franc pieces which I beg you will accept.”

With the air of a Roman emperor bestowing a province upon a faithful
proconsul, Duvernet thrust the thirty francs into Cartouche’s hand.
Cartouche, thoroughly dazed, mumbled something meant for thanks as he
accepted the three ten-franc pieces. Duvernet, suddenly dropping his
majestic manner, said, in Cartouche’s ear:

“And remember, you have got to keep Julie Campionet from marrying me. I
don’t like the look in her eye--she shows she is bent on it--and stop
Fifi from reminding me of that infernal white petticoat she gave me.”

Cartouche nodded, and Duvernet, resuming his air of benignant
magnificence, stalked off, happy. At least six persons had seen him
make this princely present. His heart was good, although his head was
indifferent, and he was sincerely glad to be able to reward Cartouche
for his faithfulness.

In a minute or two Cartouche came to himself, and tore along the
street, as fast as his stiff leg would allow, to the cloak shop, where,
in two seconds, he had paid the money for the beautiful cloak, and had
it wrapped in a bundle under his arm. How happy was Cartouche then!

He still had his ten francs, and he determined to make a little
Christmas feast for Fifi. So he bought a jar of cabbage-soup, and a
little bag of onions, and some chocolate. Then he went into a wine
shop for a bottle of wine.

The wine shop was a cheerful, dirty, agreeable place that he knew well.
When he entered he found the shop full of men, standing around a table
on which was a blindfolded boy with a hat full of slips of paper in his
hand.

A shout greeted Cartouche’s arrival.

“You are just in time, Monsieur Cartouche,” cried the proprietor, a
jolly red-faced man. “You make the last and twenty-fifth man necessary
to join our lottery. I have bought a ticket in the Grand Imperial
Lottery, which is to be drawn in a fortnight, and for every bottle of
wine I sell, and a franc extra, I give my customers a chance in the
lottery ticket, limiting it to twenty-five chances. Come now--I see
good luck written all over you--hand me your franc.”

Cartouche handed out his franc, bought his bottle of wine, and joined
the circle at the table. The little boy handed the hat around, and
every man took a slip out and read thereon a number. Cartouche took his
slip and read out:

“Number 1313!”

A roar of laughter greeted this, but when it subsided, the proprietor
advanced, and handing Cartouche a blue lottery ticket, said gravely:

“You have won, Monsieur Cartouche, in our lottery, and I hope you will
win in the Imperial Lottery. The number of the ticket I offer you is
1313.”

There was another shout of derision, and several of the disappointed
ones commiserated with Cartouche on the load of ill luck he was
carrying off with him in number 1313, but Cartouche stoutly maintained
that there was nothing to be afraid of, and hurried back to the street
of the Black Cat.

There was just time for him to get to the theater and dress. The people
came pouring into the house, and the box office took in the enormous
sum of two hundred and ninety-eight francs. It was again Duvernet’s
Roman tragedy, and it went finely. Fifi again acted as if inspired,
and received any number of recalls, besides a wreath of holly, with
an imitation silver buckle in it, handed over the footlights from an
unknown admirer.

During the waits between the acts she told her fellow actors of Toto’s
charms and accomplishments, so that the other women, some of whom
possessed nothing more interesting than babies, were furiously jealous.

But at last the play was over, and Fifi and Cartouche were in Fifi’s
garret, with a good fire in the stove, made with Cartouche’s fagots,
the cabbage-soup, the onions, the wine, and the sausage, and the
chocolate on the table, and Toto to make the trio complete. Cartouche
had sneaked the cloak in, without Fifi’s seeing it, and just as they
were sitting down to the table he said carelessly, as if thirty-franc
cloaks were the most ordinary incidents in life:

“Fifi, if you will open that bundle on the chair, you will find a
little gift from me.”

Fifi ran and tore the parcel open, and there was the beautiful, warm,
crimson cloak. She flew to Cartouche, and with dewy eyes, although her
lips were smiling, gave him one of those hearty kisses she had given
him when she was a little, black-eyed damsel ten years old. Cartouche
did not return the kiss, but sat, first pale and then red, and with
such a strange look on his face that Fifi was puzzled.

“Never mind,” she said to herself. “The next time it will be he who
kisses me--not I who kiss him.”

But nothing could spoil the joy over the new cloak.

“To think that I should have the red cloak and Toto, too! Oh, it is too
much!” cried Fifi.

“Quite too much--too much by way of a dog,” remarked Cartouche; but
as Toto at that moment jumped from his chair at the table on to
Cartouche’s knee, it became impossible not to be friendly with the
little rogue, and perfect harmony reigned among the three friends.

Cartouche and Fifi were among the poorest people in Paris; they worked
hard for a very little money; the room was small and bare, and although
Fifi had now a cloak for the winter, she would have been better off for
some warm stockings, and Cartouche for some flannel shirts.

Nevertheless, they were as happy as the birds in spring. They ate, they
drank, they laughed, they sang. Fifi dressed Toto up in his ballet
costume, and together they did a beautiful _ballet divertissement_
for Cartouche, which he liberally applauded. He told Fifi of his
twenty-five francs a week, as well as Duvernet’s present, and Fifi
concluded that he would be a desirable _parti_ for his money as well
as for his solid virtues, and determined to propose to him before
another year should pass.

Cartouche had forgotten about the lottery ticket, but just as he was
leaving, he remembered it and handed it to Fifi. At the sight of the
numbers on it, Fifi shrieked:

“Take it away! Take it away! It will bring bad luck! Take it away!”

“I won’t,” replied Cartouche, “and do you, Fifi, take care of it. You
may draw the hundred-thousand-franc prize in the lottery yet. Just
as likely as not the prizes are put on the numbers that nobody would
choose.”

This somewhat reconciled Fifi to the danger of keeping number 1313; so
she reluctantly put it away in the box where she kept her treasure of a
paste brooch, remarking meanwhile:

“If it draws the hundred-thousand-franc prize, I will marry you,
Cartouche.”

Again Cartouche turned red and pale. These jokes which seemed to amuse
Fifi so much, cut him to the quick. He only growled:

“About as much chance of one as of the other.”

And then a great melodious deep-toned bell in a neighboring church
began its chiming, solemn and glorious, proclaiming that Christmas Day
was at hand, and Fifi, falling on her knees, as her mother had taught
her long years ago, in Italy, thanked God for giving her Cartouche, and
Toto, and the red cloak lined with flannel.

She forgot all about the lottery ticket.




CHAPTER III

THE GRAND PRIZE


For the first fortnight of the new year, things went swimmingly at
the Imperial Theater, and several times the nightly receipts were
over three hundred francs. Duvernet wrote and produced a new play, in
which he took the part of Alexander the Great; and it was a screaming
success. Fifi as Queen Roxana was simply stunning, wearing her alleged
diamond brooch in a tiara made by her own hands, of beautiful glass
beads. The merry war between Julie Campionet and herself went on as
noisily as ever, but there was more noise than malignity about it. When
Julie was ill with a cold, Fifi went and cooked Julie’s dinner for her;
and when Fifi needed a scepter for her part of Queen Roxana, Julie
Campionet sent her a very nice parasol handle with a glass knob at the
top which made a lovely scepter.

But they did not, for these trifles, deny themselves the pleasure of
quarreling, and Duvernet was treated about once a week to a threat
from each of them that if her rival were not immediately discharged,
the complainant would at once resign. Duvernet received these threats
with secret satisfaction, because, as he explained to Cartouche, as
long as the war was actively prosecuted, Julie Campionet did not have
time to make a serious demonstration against him.

“But if ever they are reconciled,” he confided gloomily to Cartouche,
“the Campionet woman will marry me in a week.”

As for Cartouche, he attended strictly to his business at the theater,
but his mind was so much taken up with certain possibilities of the
future that he did not keep the faithful watch over Duvernet which
the manager considered as his safeguard. Cartouche was even so
inconsiderate as to let Julie Campionet get into the manager’s private
office more than once, and remain there alone with him for at least
five minutes, without interrupting the tête-à-tête.

It was the lottery ticket which in some way grievously disturbed
Cartouche’s mind. Suppose Fifi should win a prize? And from that
supposing, came a kind of superstitious conviction that number 1313
_would_ win a prize. He found himself, without his own volition,
figuring upon what should be done with the money, so as to enure to the
greatest benefit of Fifi.

“If it is a twenty-franc prize she draws, she must have a pair of
new shoes, and some good stockings”--he thought, for Cartouche knew
intimately the condition of Fifi’s wardrobe. “If it is as much as fifty
francs, the shoes and stockings must wait--it won’t do to fool away
such a sum as fifty francs; it must be put aside for a rainy day, for
Fifi, in the tin box in the cranny of the chimney”--where Cartouche
was beginning to save up also for a rainy day, for Fifi. If it were
five hundred francs--or possibly a thousand--Cartouche lost his breath
in contemplation of the catastrophe. In that case, Fifi would have a
_dot_, but whom would she marry? She knew no one but the men about the
theater, and Cartouche did not consider any of them a match for Fifi;
but perhaps he was prejudiced. She might, it is true, with five hundred
francs to her dowry, marry a tradesman; but how would Fifi get on with
a tradesman?

Altogether, it was the most puzzling proposition Cartouche had ever
struggled with, and he began to wish the fateful day were over, and
that these strange dreams and hopes and fears about Fifi and the
lottery ticket would vanish like shapes in a mist, and leave him in
peace.

Then, there was that veiled suggestion from the Emperor that he knew
something about Fifi’s family which might change her whole destiny;
and on the whole, Cartouche had good reason to go about looking like a
sick bull, which was his way of showing a passionate solicitude for the
being dearest to him on earth. And meanwhile, Julie Campionet went hot
foot after the manager, and Fifi wondered why Cartouche was so gentle
with her and so indulgent with Toto.

The lottery drawing was to be held on the tenth of January, in a large
public hall of the _arrondissement_, the mayor presiding. The drawing
was to begin at noon, and last until all the tickets were drawn. As the
day drew near, Cartouche’s fever of excitement increased, and when the
morning of the tenth dawned he was as nervous as a cat. He knocked at
Fifi’s door early, and told her to be ready to go with him at twelve
o’clock to the lottery drawing. Fifi responded sleepily, but when the
hour came she was ready to accompany him.

It was a lovely, bright morning, and Fifi’s looks were in harmony with
the morning. The red cloak was very becoming to her, and the black
feathers, for which her first thirty francs had gone, nodded over the
most sparkling, piquant face in Paris. Toto, of course, was along, led
by a long blue ribbon in his mistress’ hand; and so they set off.

Fifi had not the slightest thought of drawing a prize.

“As if 1313 would draw anything!” she sniffed. “If you had given me
that franc, Cartouche, which the ticket cost, I could have bought a
pair of gloves, or a fan, or a bushel of onions--” Fifi went on to
enumerate what she could have bought with Cartouche’s franc, until its
purchasing power grew to be something like her whole weekly salary. But
in any event, she liked the expedition she was on and Toto liked it;
so, on the whole, Fifi concluded she could at least get fifty centimes’
worth of pleasure out of the lottery ticket.

She looked so pretty as she tripped along that Cartouche mentally
resolved, if she drew a five-hundred-franc prize, she might aspire to a
notary, such as her father had been; and engrossed with the thought of
Fifi’s possible rise in the world, he was so grumpy, Fifi declared she
almost hated him.

They were among the first to arrive, and secured good seats near
the tribune. There sat the officers of the lottery, the mayor with
his tricolored sash, and several representatives of the government,
together with a little fairy of a child, all in white, who was to draw
the numbers from the wheel, which was already in place.

The crowd assembled in the hall was an orderly and well-dressed one,
but Fifi and Cartouche, who were used to crowds, felt in a subtile
way that it was quite different from the ordinary crowd. Most of the
people were, like Cartouche, in a state of acute tension. They were
strangely still and silent, but also, strangely ready to laugh, to cry,
to shout--to do anything which would take the edge off the crisis.

When the drawing began, and one or two small prizes of twenty and fifty
francs were drawn, the winners were vociferously cheered. There was a
feeling that the grand prize of a hundred thousand francs would not be
drawn until late in the afternoon, and the people were letting off
their excitement over the little prizes, waiting for the thunder-bolt
to fall. But scarcely half an hour after the drawing began, there was a
sudden, deep pause--time itself seemed to stop for a moment--and then
the auctioneer, who was calling out the prizes, roared out:

“Number 1313 draws the grand prize of one hundred thousand francs!”

Cartouche sat stunned. Like persons near drowning, he saw in an
instant, by some inward vision, all his past and future with Fifi: she
was no more for him. A great gulf had opened between them. Had it been
thundered in his ears for a century, he could not have realized it more
than in the first two seconds after the announcement was made. Fifi had
a hundred thousand francs; then she could be Fifi, his little Fifi, no
more. He saw, in a mental flash, the little store he had saved up in
the cranny of the chimney--twenty-two francs. Twenty-two francs! What a
miserable sum! A blur came before his eyes; he heard a great noise of
men shouting and clapping; women were waving their handkerchiefs and
laughing and screaming out of sheer inability to keep quiet. As for
Fifi, she turned two wide, innocent, frightened eyes on Cartouche, and
stammered:

“Dear Cartouche--shall we really have a hundred--thousand--francs--of
our own?”

“You will have it, Fifi,” replied Cartouche, and thrusting the ticket
in her nerveless hand, he forced her to stand up and show it, which
Fifi did, then suddenly burst into a torrent of tears and a tempest of
sobs.

Her youth, her beauty, her tears, her humility touched all hearts; and
this time there was a roar of sympathy. Fifi’s slight figure swayed and
would have fallen but for Cartouche holding her up. It was buzzed about
on all sides:

“Who is that tall, ugly fellow with her?” Some said her father, some
her brother, but no one said he was her lover.

The formalities were simple and brief; the drawing would still take
many hours; and Fifi, with her precious memorandum, duly signed and
countersigned, to be presented at a certain bank, was once again in the
street with Cartouche.

It was a bright, soft January day, the sun gilding the blue river,
the quays and bridges, and lighting up with a golden glow the great
masses of the Louvre and the Tuileries. Fifi walked along, clutching
Cartouche’s arm tightly. She had forgotten Toto trotting soberly at her
side, and apparently crushed by the hundred thousand francs, forgotten
all but Cartouche, who seemed to her the only thing that was not
changed in all the wide world. It was Cartouche who held Toto’s blue
ribbon and who straightened Fifi’s hat when it fell over her eyes and
she was too agitated to know it. Cartouche proposed to her to stop and
rest in the Tuileries gardens--but Fifi would have none of it.

“Take me home,” she cried. “Take me somewhere so I can cry as much as I
like!”

This struck Cartouche as a perfectly natural way of receiving such
stunning news; he himself could have wept with pleasure.

At last they were in Fifi’s shabby little room, and Fifi was taking off
her new cloak and folding it up mechanically.

“No need to do that, Fifi,” said Cartouche, in a strange voice. “After
to-morrow you need not wear thirty-franc cloaks any more.”

“Oh, you cruel Cartouche!” cried Fifi, and burst into the anticipated
fit of crying. She insisted on weeping on Cartouche’s shoulder, and
even kicked Toto when that sympathetic dog would have joined his grief
to hers, for Toto knew well enough that something was to pay, whether
it was the devil or not, he could not tell, but rather suspected it was
the devil.

Cartouche tried to comfort Fifi--usually not a difficult problem when
one has to be reconciled to a fortune--but there is always something
staggering in contemplating another state of existence. Neither
Cartouche nor Fifi could at once become calm, and Fifi, too, felt in
some singular, but acute manner, that the hundred thousand francs stood
between her and Cartouche.

“Now, mind, Fifi,” Cartouche said, “not a word of this to the people in
the theater. Wait until the money is actually in your hands.”

“In my hands,” cried Fifi, tearfully and indignantly, “in _your_ hands,
you mean, you cruel Cartouche!”

Fifi had called Cartouche cruel a dozen times since she had drawn the
prize, but Cartouche did not mind it. He would have liked to stay with
her but there were a dozen things awaiting him at the theater, and
Cartouche was not the man to neglect his work. He went off, therefore,
and had not a minute to himself, until just before it was time to dress
for the play. Then he went to his room, and taking his tin box from the
chink in the chimney, he counted over his twenty-two francs--saved by
doing without food and fire.

Clothes and shoes he must have to keep his place in the theater.
Duvernet had been a good friend to him, and he could not go in rags,
so that people would say: “There goes one of Duvernet’s actors. That
man does not pay his people enough to give them decent clothes to their
backs.”

But food and fire were a man’s own affairs, and, by keeping on the
near side of both, Cartouche had been able to save twenty-two francs
in three weeks of the coldest weather he had ever felt. And how little
it was! How contemptible alongside of a hundred thousand francs!
Cartouche, sighing, put the box back. It was all in vain: those days
when he battled with his hunger, those bitter nights when the snow lay
deep on the roofs below his garret, and his old, cracked stove was as
cold as the snow. And yet, there had been a tender, piercing sweetness
in the very endurance of those privations--it was for Fifi. And Fifi
would never more need his savings, which thought should have made him
happy, but did not.

The next day, the whole story was out, the newspapers published the
numbers and names of the winners, and it was as if Fifi had been
transported to another planet.

Duvernet came first to congratulate her. She was in a cold spasm of
terror for fear he had come to tell her that her services were no
longer needed at the theater. It seemed to her as if she were about to
be thrown headlong into an unknown abyss, and she thought that if she
could but remain at the Imperial Theater for a short while longer, long
enough to get accustomed to that stupendous change which awaited her,
it would become a little more tolerable. And Duvernet himself was so
strange, it frightened Fifi. He was so respectful; he did not strut as
usual, and he called her Mademoiselle Chiaramonti, instead of Fifi. And
Toto, who usually barked furiously at the manager, did not bark at all,
but sat on his hind legs, his fore legs dropping dejectedly, and looked
ruefully in Duvernet’s face, as much as to say:

“See, Monsieur Duvernet; we have got a hundred thousand francs and we
don’t know what to do with it, or how to behave ourselves.” Toto, in
fact, had neither barked nor danced nor jumped since he heard the news,
and appeared thoroughly oppressed and abashed by his changed fortunes.

Duvernet, it is true, felt some awe of Fifi in her new aspect, but the
active and enterprising manager was still uppermost with him.

“Well, Mademoiselle,” he began, trying to assume an airy manner, “I
presume we shall have to dispense with your valuable services at the
Imperial Theater; you will probably abandon the stage altogether, and
certainly our humble place.”

Duvernet, before this, had always spoken as if the Imperial Theater
were the rival of the Théâtre Française.

Fifi burst into tears.

“Yes,” she cried, “I shall have to go away--and that odious Julie
Campionet, who can no more act than a gridiron can act, will have all
my best parts--o-o-o-o-oo-h!”

Then Duvernet played his trump card.

“A few farewell performances, Mademoiselle, would put Julie Campionet’s
nose severely out of joint.”

“Do you think so?” cried Fifi, brightening up at the thought of
putting Julie’s Roman nose out of joint; that, at least, seemed natural
and normal.

“If Cartouche will let me--” for Fifi now, instead of opposing
Cartouche, seemed unable to come to the smallest decision without him.

“I will see to that,” replied the manager eagerly, “and I will also see
to it that Julie Campionet is made to gnaw the file.”

Just then Cartouche coming in, Fifi besought him to let her act for at
least two weeks more; and Cartouche, feeling himself that vague, but
intense strangeness of all things and people since Fifi got her hundred
thousand francs, consented. When it was decided, Toto laid his nose
down on his paws and uttered a short whine of relief, which sounded
like grace after meat.

So Fifi was to play for two weeks more at the Imperial Theater, the
franc seats were to be two francs, and the cheapest seats, fifty
centimes. Fifi breathed again. It was a respite.

Meanwhile Fifi had been formally notified that the money was awaiting
her at a certain bank, and she was requested to name a day for the
payment to her, in the presence of an official of the lottery, a friend
of her own, and a representative of the lottery company. Fifi, or
rather Cartouche for her, named a day a whole month from the day of the
lottery drawing. They were both frightened at the prospect of Fifi’s
receiving the money.

She and Cartouche resumed their life exactly as it had been before
number 1313 was purchased. Cartouche, going about attending to his
business as usual, thought his head would crack. At the end of the
month, what was to be done? He was but little more experienced than
Fifi when it came to a hundred thousand francs. Fifi must find another
and a very different home--but where? She must be married--but when
and how and to whom? He knew of no one of whom he could ask advice,
except one, and he was not easy to reach--the Emperor. Cartouche was
as certain as he was of being alive, that if he could see his Emperor,
and could tell the whole story, a way out of all his perplexities could
be found. He had a shadowy hope that the Emperor might have discovered
something about Fifi, according to that mysterious hint he gave the
memorable night when he heard her name, but it did not materialize.

At last Cartouche formed the desperate resolve of trying to see the
Emperor and telling all his trouble about Fifi. On certain mornings in
the week an inspection of the Imperial Guard was held in the courtyard
of the Tuileries; and on one of these mornings--a cold, dull, uncertain
morning, matching Cartouche’s feelings--he went and stationed himself
as close to the iron railings of the courtyard as the police would let
him. He thought to himself: “The Emperor sees everything and everybody.
He will see me, and he will know that I have something on my mind, and
then he will send for me, and I will make a clean breast of it; and the
Emperor will tell me what to do with Fifi and her money.”

The guard was drawn up into a hollow square, their splendid uniforms
making a splash of color in the dull gray day, their arms shining,
their bronzed countenances and steady eyes fit to face the great god
Mars himself. Presently an electric thrill flashed through every
soldier and each of the crowd of onlookers, as when a demigod appears
among the lesser sons of men--the Emperor appeared, stepping quickly
across the courtyard.

He was in simple dress uniform, and had with him only two or three
anxious-looking officers; for he was then the eagle-eyed general, who
knew if a button was missing or a strap awry, and incidentally read
the soul of the man before him. At once, he ordered this man and that
to open his knapsack; one piercing glance sufficed to see in it and
through it. He had a musket examined here and there, and in a flash he
knew if everything was as it should be. The inspection was rapid, but
nothing escaped the magic eyes of the Emperor. All was in order, and in
consequence, Jove smiled.

Cartouche saw that the Emperor would pass within a few yards of
him, and he stood, erect and rigid, at “attention,” waiting for the
lightning glance to find him, and, just as he expected, the Emperor’s
eye swept over the waiting crowd, rested a moment on him, recognized
him instantly, and as Cartouche made a slight gesture of entreaty,
nodded to him. Five minutes after, a smart young aide stepped up, and
motioning to Cartouche, walked toward the palace; Cartouche followed.

He did not know how he got into a small room on the ground floor,
which communicated with the Emperor’s cabinet. He was hot and cold and
red and pale, but said to himself: “Never mind, as soon as I see the
Emperor I shall feel as cool and easy as possible. For when was it
that a private soldier was not at his ease with the Emperor? It is the
bigwigs who think they know something, whom the Emperor frightens.”

There was a long wait, but after a while the door opened, and the
same young aide ushered him into the Emperor’s cabinet; and just as
Cartouche had known, he felt as easy as ever in his life as soon as he
found himself alone with the Emperor.

The Emperor sat at a table, leaning his elbow upon it. His pale and
classic face was luminous with a smile as he saw Cartouche; he had no
more forgotten the first man across the bridge at Lodi than Cartouche
had forgotten him.

“Well, my friend,” he said, smiling. “I was about to send for you,
because I have found out some surprising things about your protegée,
Mademoiselle Fifi; and besides, I see by the newspapers that she has
drawn a prize of a hundred thousand francs in the lottery.”

“Yes, Sire,” replied Cartouche, “and I want to ask your Majesty what I
am to do with Fifi’s hundred thousand francs.”

“Good God!” cried the Emperor, getting up and walking about the room
with his hands behind his back, “I know no more what to do with a
hundred thousand francs than you do; I never had a hundred thousand
francs of my own in my life. I have a civil list of forty millions,
which I disburse for the benefit of the state, but it is as much as
I can do to keep myself and my wife in clothes. Women are expensive
creatures, Cartouche.”

“True, your Majesty,” replied Cartouche, “and Fifi does not know what
to do with money when she gets it--” Then, in a burst of confidence he
told the Emperor about the thirty francs Fifi had saved up for a cloak
and invested in a little black dog instead. The Emperor threw back his
head and laughed heartily.

“This Fifi must be a character. Well, I shall ask Lebrun, the
arch-treasurer, to give us his advice about Fifi’s hundred
thousand francs. But suppose she will not trust you and me and the
arch-treasurer with her money?”

“I don’t know about the arch-treasurer, your Majesty, but I am sure
Fifi will trust you, Sire, and me. But what is to be done with Fifi
herself, is puzzling me.”

“That can be easily settled, I think. You remember I told you, when
I found her name was Chiaramonti, that I might have some surprising
news about her. I was, this very morning, contemplating sending for
you. Well, this young lady, whom you found crying in the market-place
at Mantua, I have discovered is the granddaughter of Barnabas Gregory
Chiaramonti, who was the first cousin and playmate, in his boyhood, of
Gregory Barnabas Chiaramonti, now reigning over the Holy See as Pius
the Seventh, and at present, sojourning as my guest at the palace of
Fontainebleau.”

Everything reeled before Cartouche, and he had to hold on to the back
of a chair to keep from falling.

Some minutes passed. The world was changing its aspect so rapidly to
Cartouche that he hardly recognized it as the same old planet he had
known for thirty-five years.

The Emperor waited until Cartouche had a little recovered himself,
although he was still pale and breathed hard. Then the Emperor said:

“I shall cause the Holy Father to be informed of Fifi’s existence. He
is a good old man, although as obstinate as the devil. Oh, I am sure
we can arrange for Fifi; and then, Cartouche, how about a husband for
her?”

The Emperor, as he said this, looked steadily at Cartouche; but
Cartouche, looking back as steadily, replied:

“I should think the Holy Father would arrange that, your Majesty.”

“True,” replied the Emperor, “but I wish one of my deserving young
officers might suit the Holy Father as Fifi’s husband. I say,
Cartouche, how hard life is sometimes! Now, because Fifi is rich
through the lottery ticket you bought her, you can never hope to marry
her.”

“Oh, your Majesty, that could not have been in any event,” answered
Cartouche, a dull red showing through his dark skin. “I am sixteen
years older than Fifi, and I have a stiff leg, and although I make
what is reckoned a good living for a man like me, it is not the sort
of living for a notary’s daughter like Fifi. No, your Majesty; I love
Fifi, but I never thought to make her my wife. She deserves a better
man than I am.”

“Another sort of a man, Cartouche, but not a better one,” replied the
Emperor, gently tweaking Cartouche’s ear. “I shall arrange for the
Holy Father to be told of Fifi’s existence, and we shall see about the
hundred thousand francs; and, Cartouche, if you are in any trouble or
perplexity, come to your Emperor.”

And with that, Cartouche knew the interview was over, and he went away
with a heart both light and heavy. For Cartouche was a very human man
after all, and the thought of Fifi’s having a husband made the whole
world black to him.




CHAPTER IV

COURTSHIP AND CRIBBAGE


Behold Fifi, a fortnight afterward, installed in a quiet and correct
apartment in the Rue de l’Echelle, under the charge of a certain Madame
Bourcet, who was as quiet and correct as her apartment. And Madame
Bourcet had a nephew, Louis Bourcet, more quiet and more correct even
than herself, and he aspired to marry Fifi and her hundred thousand
francs.

It was all like a dream to Fifi. The Emperor had been as good as his
word. He had consulted Lebrun, the arch-treasurer, who had advised, as
Fifi was likely to be provided soon with a husband, that the hundred
thousand francs be again deposited in the bank, as soon as it was
drawn, less a small amount for Fifi’s present expenses. He argued, that
it would simplify matters in her marriage contract to have her _dot_ in
cash--which recommended itself to all who knew, as sound doctrine.

He had also been asked by the Emperor, if he knew of a respectable
person who would take charge of Fifi for the present. It would still
be some time before the day came which she and Cartouche had named
for the actual payment of the money. And besides it was necessary to
prepare for Fifi’s presentation to the Holy Father, and everybody,
including Fifi herself, agreed that certain preliminaries of dress and
custom be arranged for that momentous interview. Lebrun had bethought
him of Madame Bourcet, whose deceased husband had been a hanger-on of
the arch-treasurer’s. Thus it was that the day after Fifi finished her
engagement at the Imperial Theater, Cartouche had deposited her and her
boxes in the quiet apartment of the quiet Madame Bourcet.

There was one box which she particularly treasured and would not let
out of her sight from the time it was put into the van until it was
placed in the large, cold, handsome room which was set aside for her
in Madame Bourcet’s apartment. No one but Fifi knew what was in this
box. It contained her whole theatrical wardrobe, consisting of three
costumes, and her entire assortment of wigs, old shoes, cosmetics and
such impedimenta. Fifi would not have parted with these for half her
fortune. They would be something real, substantial and familiar in her
new environment. They gave her a mystic hold upon the street of the
Black Cat, upon the Imperial Theater, and upon Cartouche, so Fifi felt.

Toto was brought along with the boxes, but met with such a cool
reception from Madame Bourcet that he declined to remain; nor would
Madame Bourcet admit a dog of his theatrical antecedents in her family.
Nothing had been said about a dog; she disliked dogs, because they
barked; there was no place for him in the apartment. Toto showed his
understanding of Madame Bourcet’s attitude toward him by deliberately
turning his back on her, and walking out of the house after Cartouche.
Fifi said not a word. She was too dazed to make any protest.
Cartouche’s honest heart was wrung when he left her sitting silent and
alone in Madame Bourcet’s drawing-room.

It was a large, dull room with a snuff-colored carpet on the floor,
snuff-colored furniture and snuff-colored curtains to the windows,
which overlooked a great, quiet courtyard. No wonder that Fifi, as soon
as Cartouche left her, rushed into her own room, which adjoined the
drawing-room, and opening her treasured box, took out an old white
wig, and clasping it to her bosom, rocked to and fro in an agony.
There was but one thing in the box that was not hers, and that was a
wooden javelin which Cartouche had used with great effect in his part
of the centurion of the Pretorian Guard. It was rather a commonplace
looking javelin in the cold light of day, but Fifi held that, too, to
her breast; it was those things that kept her from losing her mind;
they made her feel that after all, the old life existed, and was not a
nightmare, like the present.

With the moral support of the wig and the javelin she was enabled to
compose herself, and to meet Madame Bourcet and Louis Bourcet, the
nephew, and as Fifi shrewdly suspected, the person assigned to become
the future owner of her hundred thousand francs. But Fifi had some
ideas of her own concerning her marriage, which, although lying dormant
for a time, were far from moribund.

For this first evening in her snuff-colored house, Fifi, with a heavy
heart, put on her best gown; it was very red and very skimpy, but Fifi
had been told she looked charming in it, which was the truth: but
it didn’t seem to charm Madame Bourcet, when Fifi finally presented
herself.

Madame Bourcet was a small, obstinate, kindly, narrow-minded woman, who
went about measuring the universe with her own tape line. Louis Bourcet
proved to be Madame Bourcet in trousers. Fifi thought, if Louis were
dressed up in his aunt’s petticoats and Madame Bourcet were to put on
Louis’ trousers, nobody could tell them apart.

Before this interesting youth was presented to Fifi, Madame Bourcet
informed her that Louis was the most correct young advocate in Paris
and had not a fault. After this promising introduction, Fifi hated
Louis at first sight; but with that overwhelming sense of strangeness
and of being led blindly toward an unknown fate, Fifi gave no sign of
dislike toward the most correct young advocate in Paris, and the man
without a fault.

As for Louis Bourcet, he thought that a discerning Providence had
dropped Fifi, with her hundred thousand francs, into his mouth, as it
were. He knew that she had been an actress in a poor little theater;
but she was a Chiaramonti, her grandfather was own cousin to the Holy
Father, and the hundred thousand francs covered a multitude of sins.

And it was another of the rewards of a judicious Providence that Fifi’s
money had come to her as it had--dropping from the sky into her lap.
There was no prying father, no meddling trustee to interfere with her
prospective husband’s future control of it. Louis Bourcet was honest,
if conceited, and meant to do a good part by Fifi. He contemplated
making her exactly like his aunt, in every respect; and as Fifi
was only nineteen, Louis had not the slightest doubt that with his
authority as a husband, together with his personal charms, he would be
able to mold Fifi to his will, and make her rapturously happy in the
act of doing it.

As soon as Fifi was established in Madame Bourcet’s apartment, Louis
began to lay siege to her. Regularly every evening at eight o’clock,
he arrived--to pay his respects to his aunt. Regularly did he propose
to play a game of cribbage with Fifi: a dull and uninteresting game,
which involved counting--and counting had always been a weak point with
Fifi--she always counted her salary at too much, and her expenses at
too little.

Her counting at cribbage determined Louis to keep the family purse
himself, after they were married--for Louis looked forward securely
to this event. Regularly at nine o’clock Madame Bourcet fell asleep,
or professed to fall asleep, peacefully in her armchair. Regularly,
Louis improved the opportunity by telling Fifi how much his income was,
going into the minutest detail. That, however, took only a short time;
but much more was consumed in telling how he spent it. A very little
wine; no cards or billiards; a solemn visit four times the year to the
Théâtre Française to see a classic play, and a fortnight in summer in
the country. Such was the life which Louis subtly proposed that Fifi
should lead with him.

Fifi listened, dazed and silent. The room was so quiet, so quiet, and
at that hour all was life, hustle, gaiety and movement at the Imperial
Theater. She knew to the very moment what Cartouche was doing, and
what Toto was doing; and there was that hateful minx, Julie Campionet,
being rapturously applauded in parts which were as much Fifi’s as the
clothes upon Fifi’s back--for Julie Campionet had promptly succeeded to
Fifi’s vacant place, in spite of Cartouche. All this distracted Fifi’s
attention from the nightly game of cribbage and made her count worse
than ever.

And so Fifi began to live, for the first time, without love and without
work. Only the other day, she remembered, she had been hungry and
hard-worked and happy: and now she was neither hungry nor hard-worked,
but assuredly, she was not happy.

She had not seen Cartouche since the day he left her and her boxes in
the Rue de l’Echelle, and had walked off with Toto, and, incidentally,
with all of Fifi’s happiness. She had directed him to come to see her
often, and he had not once been near her! At this thought Fifi clenched
her little fists with rage: Cartouche was her own--her very own--and
how dared he treat her in this manner?

In the beginning, every day Fifi expected him, and would run to the
window twenty times in an afternoon. But he neither came nor wrote.
After a while, Fifi’s heart became sore and she burst out before Madame
Bourcet and Louis:

“Cartouche has not come to see me; he has not even written.”

“But, my dear child,” remonstrated Madame Bourcet, “you surely do
not expect to keep up a correspondence with a--a--person like this
Monsieur--what--do--you--call--him--”

“Cartouche!” cried Fifi, opening her eyes very wide indeed. “Why,
Cartouche has done everything for me! He taught me all I know about
acting, and he always carried my fagots upstairs, and showed me how to
clean my white shoes when they became soiled, and--”

Fifi stopped. She could have told a great deal more: not only that
Cartouche showed her how to clean her white shoes, but that he actually
took the shoes off her poor little feet when she was so, so tired;
and Cartouche must have been tired, too, having been on his legs--or
rather his leg and a half--all the day and evening. These, and other
reminiscences of Cartouche, in the capacity of lady’s maid, cook, and
what not, occurred to her quick memory, almost overwhelming her. It
seemed to her as if he had done all for her that her mother had once
done, but she could not speak of it before Madame Bourcet, still less
Louis Bourcet. Imagine the most correct young advocate in Paris taking
Fifi’s shoes off, because she was tired! Louis would have let her die
of fatigue before he would have committed this horrid crime, as he
conceived it.

So Fifi checked the ebullition that was rising in her, and kept her
head and held her tongue. But when she was once alone in her own large,
solemn room, fitter for a dowager duchess than for little Fifi, she
poured out her soul in a letter to Cartouche--thus:

  “Cartouche--Why haven’t you been to see me? Cartouche, I believe you
  have forgotten me--that odious Julie Campionet has played me some
  trick, I know she has. Cartouche, having money is not all we thought
  it was. It is very dull being rich and certain of one’s dinner every
  day. Madame Bourcet and I went out yesterday and bought a gown.
  Cartouche, do you remember when I had saved up the thirty francs to
  buy a cloak, and bought Toto, my darling Toto, instead? And how angry
  you were with me? And then you gave me the cloak out of your own
  money? Don’t send Toto to see me--it would break my heart. The gown
  I bought yesterday is hideous. It is a dark brown with green spots.
  Madame Bourcet selected it. There was a beautiful pink thing, with a
  great many spangles, that I wanted. It is just like the stuff that
  Toto’s ballet skirt is made of. But the gown is for me to wear the
  day I am presented to the Holy Father, and Madame Bourcet said the
  pink spangled thing would not do. Then she bought me some black lace
  to wear over my head that day, and she paid a cruel price for it, but
  the shops where you get new things are very dear. Madame Bourcet will
  not let me go to the second-hand shops. Do you remember the blue silk
  robe that Monsieur Duvernet made me buy a year ago for forty francs,
  and how it turned out to have a big grease-spot in the back, and I was
  so afraid the spot would be seen, that it almost ruined my performance
  as _Léontine_ in ‘_Papa Bouchard_’? And how do you get your costumes
  to hang together when I am not there to sew them? I know you are
  coming all to pieces by this time. Have you forgotten how I used to
  sew you up? Oh, Cartouche, have you forgotten all these things? I
  think of them all the time. I wake up in the night, thinking I hear
  Toto barking, and it is only Madame Bourcet snoring. Cartouche, if you
  don’t come to see me soon you will break my heart.

                                                  FIFI.”

Cartouche read this letter sitting on the edge of his poor bed. His
eyes grew moist, and the foolish fellow actually kissed Fifi’s name;
but he said to himself resolutely:

“No, I will not go to her. It will only make the struggle harder. She
must separate herself from the old life, and the quicker, the better.
The pain is sharp, but it will not last--for her.”

And he was such a fool that he read the letter aloud to Toto, who was
huddled close to him: and then the two who loved Fifi so dearly--the
man and the dog--rubbed noses, and mourned together, Toto uttering a
howl of distress and longing that cut Cartouche to the heart.

“Come,” said he, putting the dog aside, and rising, “I can’t go on this
way. One would think I was sorry that Fifi is better off than she ever
hoped or dreamed.”

Then he went to his cupboard, and took out a little frayed white satin
slipper--one of Fifi’s slippers--and held it tenderly in his hand,
while his poor heart was breaking. Next day, came a letter of another
sort from Fifi. She was very, very angry, and wrote in a large hand,
and with very black ink.

  “Cartouche: I will not stand your conduct. I give you warning; I
  will not permit it. _You_ are responsible for my being here. But for
  you and that--” here a word was erased, but Cartouche saw the faint
  outlines of “devilish”--“lottery ticket, I should have still been
  in my little room under the roof--I should still have you and Toto.
  Oh, Cartouche, I shall have to marry Louis Bourcet--I see it, I know
  it, I feel it. He has not a fault in the world, so Madame Bourcet
  says. Imagine what a brute I shall appear alongside of him! He plays
  cribbage. That is his only dissipation. But I see that I must marry
  him, for this life I am leading can not last. Madame Bourcet tells me
  she has four or five diseases, any one of which is liable to carry her
  off any day; and then I should be left alone in Paris with a hundred
  thousand francs. Something--everything seems to be driving me toward
  marrying Louis Bourcet. Poor Louis! How sorry he will be after he gets
  me! Next week, Madame Bourcet takes me out to Fontainebleau where I am
  to be presented to the Holy Father. The gown has come home, and it is
  more hideous than it was in the shop. If the Holy Father has any taste
  in dress that gown will ruin my chances with him. Cartouche, I am not
  joking--I can never joke any more. But I will not put up with your
  behavior. Do you understand me? It is Fifi who says this. You know,
  you always told me when I flew into a rage I could frighten Monsieur
  Duvernet. You remember, he often ran into his closet and locked the
  door when I was storming at him at the theater. I am much more angry
  now.

                                                  Fifi.”

To this letter also Cartouche made no answer. He did not know the ways
of ladies who had dowries of a hundred thousand francs. He had heard
they were always supplied with husbands by some one duly empowered;
and these decisions, he imagined, were like the laws of the Medes and
Persians. He felt for his poor little Fifi; her vivid, incoherent words
were perfectly intelligible to him and went like a knife into his
heart. He mused over them in such poignant grief that he could hardly
drag himself through his multitude of duties. He had no life or spirit
to keep watch over Duvernet; and Julie Campionet, one fine morning,
took advantage of this and, walking the manager off to the _mairie_,
married him out of hand. The first thing Cartouche knew of it was when
the bridegroom, with a huge white favor in his buttonhole, marched into
Cartouche’s garret.

“She’s done it, Cartouche,” groaned Duvernet. “They all do.”

Cartouche knew perfectly well what poor Duvernet meant.

“She has, has she?” he roared, “and did you tell her about the three
other women you have married, and got yourself in such a precious mess
with?”

“Yes,” groaned Duvernet, seating himself on the side of the bed. “She
knows all about it--but I couldn’t explain which ones had sued me for
divorce, and which I had sued. But Julie didn’t mind. You see, she is
thirty-six years old, and never has been married, and she made up her
mind it wasn’t worth while to wait longer; and when women get that way,
it’s no use opposing them.”

“The last time,” shouted Cartouche, quite beside himself at the
manager’s folly, for which he himself felt twinges of conscience, “the
last time you said it was because she was a widow! Duvernet, as sure as
you are alive, you will bring yourself behind the bars of Ste. Pélagie.”

“If I do,” cried poor Duvernet, stung by Cartouche’s reproaches,
“whose fault will it be? If you had kept an eye on Julie Campionet,
this never would have happened. It was you who bought that cursed
lottery ticket for Fifi, and lost me the only leading lady I ever had
who didn’t insist on marrying me against my will.”

Here was a cud for Cartouche to chew upon: young ladies reproaching
him bitterly for giving them a hundred thousand francs in cash, and
happy bridegrooms reviling him because through him they secured brides.
Cartouche was too stunned by it all to answer. The only thing he could
do was to try to keep Duvernet’s unfortunate weakness from landing him
in jail. Luckily, none of his wives had any use for Duvernet, after a
very short probation, and as he had no property to speak of, and the
earnings of the Imperial Theater were uncertain, there was no money to
be squeezed out of him. So, unless the authorities should get wind of
Duvernet’s matrimonial ventures, which he persisted in regarding as
mere escapades, into which he was led by a stronger will than his own,
he would be allowed to roam at large.

“At all events,” said Cartouche, after a while, “I can make Julie
Campionet behave herself as long as she is willing to stay here by
threatening to lodge an information against both of you with the
magistrate.”

“Do,” anxiously urged Duvernet. “I would not mind serving a short term
in prison if Julie gets troublesome. Well, all men are fools where
women are concerned.”

“No, they are not,” replied Cartouche darkly; “there are a few
bachelors left.”

“It is fate, destiny, what you will,” said the mournful bridegroom.
“That woman, Julie Campionet--or Duvernet she is now--meant to marry me
from the start, just like the rest. Oh, if only little Fifi were here
once more!”

If only little Fifi were here once more! Poor Cartouche’s lonely heart
echoed that wish.




CHAPTER V

A PARCEL OF OLD SHOES


The day arrived when Fifi’s hundred thousand francs was to be paid
over to her and deposited in the bank. Fifi had taken for granted that
Cartouche would be with her on that momentous occasion; but when the
day came no Cartouche appeared, so she was forced to ask Madame Bourcet
and Louis Bourcet to attend her. This they both agreed to do, with the
utmost alacrity.

Fifi still remained perfectly and strangely docile, but her mind had
begun to work normally once more, and Fifi had a very strong little
mind, which could work with great vigor. She had the enormous advantage
of belonging to that class of persons who always know exactly what
they want, and what they do not want. She did not want to have her
money where she could not get it; and banks seemed to her mysterious
institutions which were designed to lock people’s money up and prevent
them from getting the benefit of it, but offered no security whatever
that somebody other than the owner should not get the benefit of it.
She had heretofore kept all her money--when she had any--sewed up in
her mattress, in a place where she could feel it, if she wished to; and
the mattress was perfectly safe; whereas, she had no guaranty that the
bank was.

So Fifi quietly but decisively made up her mind that she would get
hold of her hundred thousand francs and put it in a safe place--that
is to say, the mattress. It might not be difficult to manage. Madame
Bourcet told her she must take a tin box with her, and kindly provided
the box; but it was not impossible--Suppose, thought Fifi, she could
quietly transfer the money to a large reticule she possessed, and put
something, old shoes, for example, in the tin box she would deposit in
the bank? She had plenty of old shoes in her mysterious trunk. Fifi was
charmed with this notion.

On the morning of the great day she took the precaution to fill her
reticule with old shoes, fasten it to her belt, and it was so well
concealed by her flowing red cloak that nobody but herself knew she
had a reticule. Madame Bourcet, Louis and herself were to go in the
carriage of Madame Bourcet’s brother, a professor of mathematics, who
had married a fortune of two hundred thousand francs, and was held up
as a model of wisdom and a prodigy of virtue therefor.

The carriage arrived, and the party set out. Louis Bourcet regarded
Fifi with an eye of extreme favor. She had never asserted herself, or
contradicted any one, or said a dozen words consecutively, since she
had been with Madame Bourcet; and she had a hundred thousand francs of
her own.

Louis thought he could not have found a wife better suited to him if
she had been made to order. As she was the granddaughter to the Pope’s
cousin, her experiences in the street of the Black Cat were evenly
balanced by her other advantages.

As they jolted soberly along, Fifi’s mind was busy with her provident
scheme of guarding against banks. When they reached the bank--a large
and imposing establishment--they were ushered into a private room,
where sat several official-looking persons. A number of transfers were
made in writing, the money was produced, counted, and placed in Fifi’s
tin box.

This ended that part of the formalities. Then the box was to be sealed
up and placed in a strong box hired from the bank. Fifi herself
carried the tin box under her cloak, and, accompanied by Madame Bourcet
and Louis, went to another apartment in the bank, from which they were
taken to the strong room in the basement. There Fifi solemnly handed
over her tin box to be tied and sealed, and accepted a receipt for it;
and it was put away securely in a little dungeon of its own.

Never was a parcel of old shoes treated with greater respect, for in
it reposed the contents of Fifi’s reticule, while in the reticule
peacefully lay a hundred thousand francs. It had been done under the
noses of Madame Bourcet and Louis--and with the utmost neatness--for
Fifi was accustomed to acting, and was in no way discomposed by having
people about her, but was rather steadied and emboldened.

On the return home in the carriage Louis Bourcet treated her with such
distinguished consideration that he was really afraid his attentions,
including the numerous games of cribbage, were compromising, but Fifi
noted him not. Her mind was fixed on the contents of her reticule, and
the superior satisfaction it is to have one’s money safe in a mattress
where one can get at it, instead of being locked up in a bank where
everybody could get at it except one’s self.

That night, while Madame Bourcet snored and snoozed peacefully, Fifi,
by the light of a solitary candle, was down on her knees, sewing her
money up in the mattress. She made a hard little knob of it right in
the middle, so she could feel it every time she turned over in bed.
Then, climbing into bed, she slept the sleep of conscious innocence and
peace.

The next event in Fifi’s life was to be her presentation to the Holy
Father. For this Madame Bourcet severely coached Fifi. She was taught
how to walk, how to speak, how to curtsey, how to go in and how to
go out of the room on the great occasion. Fifi learned with her new
docility and obedience, but had a secret conviction that she would
forget it all as soon as the occasion came to use it.

A week or two after Fifi had rescued her money from the bank the day
arrived for her presentation to the Holy Father, who had personally
appointed the time. Since Fifi’s journey from Italy in her childhood,
she had never been so far from the street of the Black Cat as
Fontainebleau, and the length and expense of the journey impressed her
extremely. Louis Bourcet did not accompany Madame Bourcet and Fifi on
the visit, but it was understood that Madame Bourcet should present his
application for Fifi’s hand.

It was a soft, mild day in February, with a hint of spring in the air,
that they set forth in a rickety coach for Fontainebleau. Fifi wore
the hideous brown gown with the green spots in it, and felt exactly as
she did the night she played _Léontine_ in the blue silk robe with the
grease spot in the back. If the grease spot had been noticed everything
would have been ruined--and if the Holy Father should notice the brown
gown! Fifi felt that it would mean wholesale disaster. She comforted
herself, however, with the reflection that the Holy Father probably
knew nothing about ladies’ gowns; and then, she had never forgotten the
extreme kindness of the Holy Father’s eyes the night she peered at him
in the coach.

“And after all,” she thought, “although Cartouche laughed at me for
thinking the Holy Father had looked at me that night, I know he
did--perhaps I am like my father or my grandfather, and that was why
he looked.” And then she remembered what Cartouche had said about the
private soldiers not being afraid when the Emperor talked with them.
“It will be the same with the Holy Father,” she thought. “He is so far
above me--why, it would be ridiculous for me to be afraid of him.”

It took all of three hours to get to Fontainebleau, and Fifi felt
that the world was a very large place indeed. They drove through the
splendid park and dismounted before the great château. Then, Madame
Bourcet showing some cabalistic card or other token, it was understood
that the visit of the two ladies was expected by the Pope. They were
escorted up the great horseshoe stairs and into a small salon, where
luncheon was served to them, after their long drive. Madame Bourcet was
too elegant to eat much, but Fifi, whose appetite had been in abeyance
ever since she left the street of the Black Cat, revived, and she
devoured her share with a relish. It was the first time she had been
hungry since she had had enough to eat.

Presently a sour-looking ecclesiastic came to escort them to the
presence of the Holy Father. The ecclesiastic was clearly in a bad
humor. The Holy Father was always being appealed to by widows with
grievances, real or imaginary, young ladies who did not want to marry
the husbands selected for them, young men who had got themselves
in discredit with their families or superiors, and the Holy Father
had a way of treating these sinners as if they were not sinners at
all. Indeed, he often professed himself to be edified by their pious
repentance; and the ecclesiastic never quite understood whether the
Holy Father was quietly amusing himself at the expense of his household
or not. But one thing was certain to the ecclesiastic’s mind: the Holy
Father had not that horror of sinners which the world commonly has, and
was far too easy on them.

With these thoughts in mind, he introduced Madame Bourcet into the
Pope’s cabinet, while Fifi remained in the anteroom, guarded by another
ecclesiastic, who looked much more human than his colleague. This last
one thought it necessary to infuse courage into Fifi concerning the
coming interview, but to his amazement found Fifi not in the least
afraid.

“I don’t know why, Monsieur, I should be afraid,” she said. “A friend
of mine--Cartouche--says the private soldiers are not the least afraid
of the Emperor, and are perfectly at ease when he speaks to them,
while the councillors of state and the marshals and the great nobles
can not look him in the eye.”

“And may I ask who is this Cartouche, Mademoiselle?” asked the
ecclesiastic.

“He is a friend of mine,” replied Fifi warily.

At last, after twenty minutes, Madame Bourcet came out. She was pale
and agitated, but showed satisfaction in every feature.

“The Holy Father approves of my nephew, provided you have no objection
to him,” she whispered. And the next moment Fifi found herself alone
with the Holy Father.

Although the afternoon was mild and sunny, a large fire was burning on
the hearth, and close to it, in a large armchair, sat Pius the Seventh.
He gave Fifi the same impression of whiteness and benevolence he had
given her at that chance meeting three months before.

As Fifi entered she made a low bow--not the one that Madame Bourcet
had taught her, but a much better one, taught her by her own tender
little heart. And instantly, as before, there was an electric sympathy
established between the old man and the young girl, as the old and
young eyes exchanged confidences.

“My child,” were the Holy Father’s first words, in a voice singularly
young and sweet for an old man. “I have seen you before, and now I
know why it was that the sight of your eyes so moved me. You are my
Barnabas’ granddaughter.”

And then Fifi made one of the most outlandish speeches imaginable for a
young girl to make to the Supreme Pontiff. She said:

“Holy Father, as I looked into your eyes that night when your coach was
passing through the street of the Black Cat, I said to myself, ‘There
is an old man with a father’s heart,’ and I felt as if I had seen my
own father.”

And instead of meeting this speech with a look of cold reproof, the
Holy Father’s eyes grew moist, and he said:

“It was the cry of kindred between us. Now, sit near to me--not in that
armchair.”

“Here is a footstool,” cried Fifi, and drawing the footstool up to
the Holy Father’s knees, she seated herself with no more fear than
Cartouche had of his Emperor.

“Now, my child,” said the Holy Father, “the old must always be allowed
to tell their stories first,--the young have time to wait. I know that
you can not have seen your grandfather, or even remember your own
father, he died so young.”

“Yes, Holy Father, I was so little when he died.”

“I could have loved him as a son, if I had known him,” the Holy Father
continued, speaking softly as the old do of a bygone time. “But never
was any one so much a part of my heart as Barnabas was. We were born
within a month of each other, at Cesena, a little old town at the foot
of the Apennines. I think I never saw so pretty and pleasant an old
town as Cesena--so many fine young men and excellent maidens, such
venerable old people. One does not see such nowadays.”

Fifi said nothing, but she did not love the Holy Father less for this
simplicity of the old which is so like the simplicity of the young.

[Illustration--Fifi with the Holy Father]

“Barnabas and I grew up together in an old villa, all roses and
honeysuckles outside, all rats and mice within--but we did not mind
the rats and mice. When we grew out of our babyhood into two naughty,
troublesome boys, we thought it fine sport to hunt the poor rats and
torture them. I was worse in that respect than Barnabas, who was ever
a better boy than I. But we had other amusements than that. We loved to
climb into the blue hills about Cesena, and when we were old enough to
be trusted by ourselves we would sometimes spend days in those far-off
hills, with nothing but bread and cheese and wild grapes to live on.
We slept at night on the ground, rolled in our blankets. We were hardy
youngsters, and I never had sweeter sleep than in those summer nights
on the hard ground, with the kind stars keeping watch over us.”

Fifi said no word. The old man was living over again that sweet, young
time, and from it was borne the laughter, faint and afar off, the
smiles so softly tender, the tears robbed of all their saltness; he was
once more, in thought, a little boy with his little playmate on the
sunny slopes of the Apennines.

Presently he spoke again, looking into Fifi’s eyes, so like those of
the dead and gone comrade of the old Cesena days.

“Barnabas, although of better natural capacity than I, did not love
the labor of reading. He chose that I should read, and tell him what
I read; and so he knew all that I knew and more besides, being of
sharper and more observant mind. We never had a difference except
once. It was over a cherry tart--what little gluttons we were! When we
quarreled about the tart our mothers divided it, and for punishment
condemned us both to eat our share alone. And what do you think was the
result? Neither one of us would touch it--and then we cried and made up
our quarrel; it was our first and last, and we were but ten years old.”

Fifi listened with glowing eyes. These little stories of his youth,
long remembered, made Fifi feel as if the Holy Father were very human,
after all.

The old man paused, and his expressive eyes grew dreamy as he gazed
at Fifi. She brought back to him, as never before, the dead and gone
time: the still, ancient little town, lying as quietly in the sunlight
as in the moonlight, the peaceful life that flowed there so placidly
and innocently. He seemed to hear again the murmuring of the wind in
the fir trees of the old garden and the delicate cooing of the blue and
white pigeons in the orchard. Once more he inhaled the aromatic scent
of the burning pine cones, as Barnabas and himself, their two boyish
heads together, hung over the scanty fire in the great vaulted kitchen
of the old villa. All, all, were gone; the villa had fallen to decay;
the orchard and the garden were no more; only the solemn fir trees and
the dark blue peaks of the Apennines remained unchanged. And here was a
girl with the same eyes, dark, yet softly bright, of his playfellow and
more than brother of fifty years ago!

Fifi spoke no word. The only sound in the small, vaulted room was the
faint crackling of the burning logs, across which a brilliant bar of
sunlight had crept stealthily. As the Holy Father paused and looked at
Fifi, there was a gentle deprecation in his glance; he seemed to be
saying: “Bear with age a while, O glorious and pathetic youth! Let me
once more dream your dreams, and lay aside the burden of greatness.”
And the old man did not continue until he saw in Fifi’s eyes that she
was not wearied with him; then he spoke again.

“When we were ten years old we were taught to serve on the altar.
Barnabas served with such recollection, such beautiful precision, that
it was like prayer to see him. He was a handsome boy, and in his white
surplice and red cassock, his face glowing with the noble innocence
and simplicity of a good boyhood, he looked like a young archangel.”

“And yourself, Holy Father?” asked Fifi.

“Ah, I was very unlike Barnabas. I was but an ordinary-looking boy,
and I often fell asleep while I was sitting by the priest during the
sermon, and in full view of the congregation. We had a worthy old
priest, who would let me sleep during the sermon, but would pinch me
smartly to wake me up when it was over and it was time again to go on
the altar. So I devised a way to keep myself awake. I hid a picture
book in the sleeve of my cassock, and during the sermon, while the
priest who was on the altar had his eyes fixed on the one who was
preaching in the pulpit, I slipped out my picture book, and began to
look at it stealthily,--but not so stealthily that the priest did not
see me, and, quietly reaching over, took it out of my hand and put it
in the pocket of his cassock. I plotted revenge, however. Presently,
when the priest went up on the altar and is forbidden to leave it, he
turned and motioned to me for the water, which it was my duty to have
ready. I whispered to him, ‘Give me my picture book, and I will give
you the water.’ Of course, he had to give me the picture book, and
then I gave him the water. He did not tell my parents on me, wherein
he failed in his duty; but he gave me, after mass, a couple of sound
slaps--and I played no more tricks on him.”

“Holy Father, you must have been a flesh-and-blood boy,” said Fifi,
softly.

The Holy Father laughed--a fresh, youthful laugh, like his voice.

“Formerly I judged myself harshly. Now I know that, though I was not
a very good boy, I was not a bad boy. I was not so good a boy as
Barnabas. He had no vocation for the priesthood; but in my eighteenth
year the wish to be a priest awoke in me. And the hardest of all the
separations which my vocation entailed was the parting with Barnabas.
He went to Piacenza and became an advocate. He married and died within
a year, leaving a young widow and one child--your father. They were
well provided for, and the mother’s family took charge of the widow
and of the child. But the widow, too, soon died, and only your father
was left. I often wished to see him, and my heart yearned like a
father’s over him, but I was a poor parish priest, far away from him,
and could hear nothing from him. Then in the disorders that followed
the French Revolution one lost sight of all that one had ever known
and loved. I caused diligent inquiry to be made--I was a bishop then,
and could have helped Barnabas’ son--but I could not find a trace
of him. He, like Barnabas, had married and died young, leaving an
only child--yourself--and, I knew it not! The great whirlpool of the
Revolution seemed to swallow up everything. But on the night of my
arrival in Paris, as we passed slowly along that narrow street, and
I saw your face peering into my carriage, it was as if my Barnabas
had come back to me. You are more like him than I believed any child
could be like its father. So, when I heard, through the agency of the
Emperor, that a young relative of mine, by name Chiaramonti, was in
Paris, earning her living, I felt sure it was the young girl who looked
into my carriage that night.”

“But I am not earning my living now, Holy Father.”

“So I hear. You have had strange good fortune--good fortune in having
done honest work in your poverty, and good fortune in being under the
charge of the excellent and respectable Madame Bourcet, since there was
no need for you to work.”

“But--” Here Fifi paused and struggled for a moment with herself, then
burst out: “I was happier, far, when I was earning my living. The
theater was small, and ill lighted, and my wages were barely enough to
live upon, and I often was without a fire; but at least I had Cartouche
and Toto.”

“And who are Cartouche and Toto?” asked the Holy Father, mildly.

Then Fifi told the story of Cartouche; how brave he was at the bridge
of Lodi; how he had befriended her, and stood between her and harm;
and, strange to say, the Pope appeared not the least shocked at things
that would have paralyzed Madame Bourcet and Louis Bourcet. Fifi told
him all about the thirty francs she had saved up for the cloak, and
the spending it in buying Toto, and the Holy Father laughed outright.
He asked many questions about the theater, and the life of the people
there, and agreed with Fifi when she said sagely:

“Cartouche says there is not much more of virtue in one calling than
another, and that those people, like poor actors and actresses, who
live from hand to mouth, and can’t be very particular, are in the way
of doing more kindnesses for each other than people who lead more
regular lives. Cartouche, you know, Holy Father, is a plain, blunt man.”

“Like Mark Antony,” replied the Pope, smiling. Fifi had never heard of
such a person as Mark Antony, so very wisely held her peace.

“But this Cartouche seems to be an honest fellow,” added the Pope.

“Holy Father,” cried Fifi, earnestly, “Cartouche is as honest as you
are!”

“I should like to see him,” said the Holy Father, smiling at Fifi.

“If I could, I would make him come to you--but he will not even come
to see me,” said Fifi sadly. “Before he took me to Madame Bourcet’s
he told me I must leave my old life behind me. He said, ‘It will be
hard, Fifi, but it must be done resolutely.’ I said: ‘At least if I
see no one else of those people, whom I really love, now that I am
separated from them--except Julie Campionet’--I shall always hate Julie
Campionet--‘I shall see you.’ ‘No,’ said Cartouche, in an obstinate
voice that I knew well,--Cartouche is as obstinate as a donkey when
he wishes to be,--‘if you see me you will have a new struggle every
time we part. Years from now, when you are fixed in another life, when
you are suitably married, it will do you no harm to see me, but not
now,’--and actually, Holy Father, that mean, cruel, heartless Cartouche
has kept his word, and has not been near me, or even answered my
letters.”

“Cartouche is a sensible fellow,” said the Holy Father, under his
breath.

Luckily Fifi did not catch the words, or she would, in her own mind,
have stigmatized the Holy Father as also mean, cruel and heartless,
just like Cartouche.

“Very well,” said the Pope aloud, “tell me about Julie Campionet. Why
do you hate her?”

“Oh, Holy Father, Julie Campionet is a minx. She married the manager
against his will, and has stolen all my best parts, and has made
everybody at the theater forget there ever was a Mademoiselle Fifi. You
can’t imagine a person more evil than Julie Campionet.”

“Wicked, wicked Julie Campionet,” said the Holy Father softly; and Fifi
knew he was laughing at her. Then he grew serious and said: “My child,
it is important--nay, necessary--for you to be properly married. You
are too young, too friendless, too inexperienced, to be safe until you
have the protection of a good husband. Madame Bourcet has brought me
proofs of the worth and respectability of her nephew, Monsieur Louis
Bourcet, and, as the head of your family, I urge you to marry this
worthy young man.”

Fifi sat still, the dazed, submissive look coming back into her face.
Everything seemed to compel her to marry Louis Bourcet. As the Holy
Father had said, she must marry some one. She felt a sense of despair,
which involved resignation to her fate. The Holy Father looked at her
sharply, but said gently:

“Is there no one else?”

“No one, Holy Father,” replied Fifi.

There was no one but Cartouche; and Cartouche would neither see her
nor write to her, and besides had never spoken a word of love to her
in his life. If she had remained at the theater she could have made
Cartouche marry her; but now that was impossible. Fifi was finding
out some things in her new life which robbed her of one of her chief
weapons--ignorance of convention.

“And Monsieur Bourcet is worthy?” she heard the Holy Father saying, and
she replied mechanically:

“Quite worthy.”

“And you do not dislike him?”

“No,” said Fifi, after a moment’s pause. There was not enough in Louis
Bourcet to dislike.

Fifi rose. She could not bear any more on this subject. The Holy
Father, smiling at Fifi’s taking the initiative in closing the
interview, said to her:

“Then you agree to marry Louis Bourcet?”

“I agree to marry Louis Bourcet,” replied Fifi, in a voice that sounded
strange in her own ears. She did not know what else to say. Two
months ago she would have replied briskly, “No, indeed; I shall marry
Cartouche, and nobody but Cartouche.” Now, however, she seemed to be
under a spell. It appeared to be arranged for her that she should marry
Louis Bourcet, and Cartouche would not lift a finger to help her. And,
strangest of all, in saying she would marry Louis Bourcet she did not
really know whether she meant it or not. It was all an uneasy dream.

The Pope raised his hand to bless her. Fifi, looking at him, saw that
the stress of emotion at seeing her was great. The pallor of his face
had given place to a dull flush, and his uplifted hand trembled.

“You will come again, my child, when your future is settled?” he said.

“Yes, Holy Father,” replied Fifi, and sank on her knees to receive his
blessing.

As she walked toward the door, the Holy Father called to her:

“Remember that Julie Campionet, in spite of her crimes toward you, is
one of God’s children.”

Fifi literally ran out of the room. It seemed to her as if the Holy
Father were taking Julie Campionet’s part.




CHAPTER VI

THE BLUE SATIN BED


Two weeks after the visit to Fontainebleau came the crisis--for
Fifi was as surely tending toward a crisis as water flows downward
and sparks fly upward. Madame Bourcet, armed with the Holy Father’s
approval, represented to Fifi the necessity for her marrying Louis
Bourcet. Fifi listened silently. Then, Madame Bourcet, eagerly taking
silence for consent, said that Louis would that very evening accept
formally of Fifi’s hand. To this also Fifi made no reply, and Madame
Bourcet left the room fully persuaded that Fifi was reveling in rapture
at the thought of acquiring an epitome of all the virtues in Louis
Bourcet.

It was during the morning, and in the snuff-colored drawing-room, that
the communication was made. Fifi felt a great wave of doubt and anxiety
swelling up in her heart. For the first time she was brought face to
face with the marriage problem, and it frightened her by its immensity.
If only Cartouche were there--some one to whom she could pour out her
trembling, agitated heart! But Cartouche was not there, nor would he
come. And suddenly, for the first time, something of the fierceness
of maidenhood overwhelmed Fifi--a feeling that Cartouche should,
after all, seek her--that, if he loved her, as she knew he did above
everything on earth, he should speak and not shame her by his silence.

Then, the conviction that Cartouche preferred her good to his, that he
thought she would be happier married to another and a different man,
and held himself honestly unworthy to marry her, brought a flood of
tenderness to her heart. She had seen Cartouche turn red and pale when
she kissed him, and avoid her innocent familiarities, and she knew
well enough what it meant. But if he would not come, nor speak, nor
write,--and everybody, even the Holy Father, was urging her to marry
Louis Bourcet; and a great, strong chain of circumstances was dragging
her toward the same end--oh, what a day of emotions it was to Fifi!

She knew not how it passed, nor what she said or did, nor what she ate
and drank; she only waited, as if for the footfall of fate, for the
hour when Louis Bourcet would arrive. He came at eight, punctual to the
minute. Punctuality, like every other virtue, was his. Madame Bourcet
whispered something to him, and Louis, for the first time, touched
Fifi’s hand and brushed it with his lips, Fifi standing like a statue.
The crisis was rapidly becoming acute.

At nine o’clock, the cribbage board was brought out; Madame Bourcet
dutifully fell asleep, and Louis, with the air of doing the most
important thing in the world, took from his pocket a small picture of
himself, which he presented to Fifi with a formal speech, of which
she afterward could not recall one word. Nor could she remember what
he talked about during the succeeding half-hour before Madame Bourcet
waked up. Then Louis rose to go, and something was said about happiness
and economy in the management of affairs; and Louis announced that
owing to the necessity of procuring certain papers from Strasburg,
where his little property lay, the marriage contract could not be
signed for a month yet, and inquired if Fifi would be ready to marry
him at the end of the month. Fifi instantly replied yes, and then the
crisis was over. From that moment nothing on earth would have induced
Fifi to marry Louis Bourcet.

She did not, of course, put this in words, but sent poor Louis off with
her promise to marry him in a month. Nevertheless, by one of those
processes of logic which Fifi could not formulate to save her life, but
which she could act up to in the teeth of fire and sword, the promise
to marry Louis Bourcet settled for all time that she would not marry
him.

Up to that moment all had been vague, agitating, mysterious and
compelling. She felt herself driven, if not to marry Louis Bourcet, to
act as if she meant to marry him. But once she had promised, once she
had something tangible to go upon, her spirit burst its chains, and she
was once more free. She had no more notion of marrying Louis Bourcet
then than she had of trying to walk on her head. And she felt such
a wild, tempestuous joy--the first flush of happiness she had known
since the wretched lottery ticket had drawn the prize. She was so happy
that she was glad to escape to her own room. She carried in her hand
the picture of Louis Bourcet, and did not know she held it until she
put it down on her mantelpiece and saw in the mirror above it her own
smiling, glowing face.

“No, Louis,” she said to the picture, shaking her head solemnly, “it is
not to be. I have been a fool heretofore in not saying outright that
I wouldn’t marry you to save your life. But now my mind is made up.
Nobody can make me marry you, and I would not do it if Cartouche, the
Holy Father and the Emperor all commanded me to marry you!”

Then an impish thought came into Fifi’s head, for Fifi was in some
respects a cruel young person. She would make Louis himself refuse to
marry her and contrive so that all the blame would be visited upon the
innocent Louis, while she, the wicked Fifi, would go free. In a flash
it was revealed to her; it was to get rid of her hundred thousand
francs. Then Louis would not marry her--and oh, rapture! Cartouche
would.

“He can’t refuse,” thought Fifi in an ecstasy. “When I have been jilted
and cruelly used, and have no money, then I can go back to the stage,
and everybody will know me as Mademoiselle Chiaramonti, granddaughter
of the Pope’s cousin, who won the great prize in the lottery; everybody
will flock to see me, as they did the last two weeks I played; and I
shall have forty francs the week, and Cartouche, and love and work and
peace and Toto, and no Louis Bourcet! And how angry Julie Campionet
will be!”

It was so deliciously easy to get at her money--a rip and a stitch
afterward--ten thousand francs squandered before Louis Bourcet’s
eyes. Fifi thought the loss of the first ten thousand would rid her
of her fiancé, but she knew she could never get Cartouche as long as
she had even ten thousand francs left, and she realized fully that
it was Cartouche that she wanted most of anything in the world. The
Holy Father would probably scold her a little, but Fifi felt sure, if
she could only tell the Holy Father just how she felt and how good
Cartouche was, and also how odiously good Louis Bourcet was, he would
forgive her.

The more Fifi thought of this scheme of getting rid of Louis Bourcet
and entrapping Cartouche the more rapturous she grew. She had two ways
of expressing joy and thankfulness--praying and dancing. She plumped
down on her knees, and for about twenty seconds thanked God earnestly
for having shown her the way to get rid of Louis Bourcet--for Fifi’s
prayers, like herself, were very primitive and childlike. Then, jumping
up, she danced for twenty minutes, kicking as high as she could, until
she finally kicked the picture of Louis Bourcet off the mantelpiece to
the floor, on which it fell with a sharp crash.

Madame Bourcet, in the next room, stirred at once. Fifi again plumped
down on her knees, and when Madame Bourcet opened the door Fifi was
deeply engaged in saying her prayers. Madame Bourcet shut the door
softly--the noise could not have been in Fifi’s room.

As soon as Madame Bourcet was again snoozing, Fifi, moving softly
about, lighted her candle and wrote a letter to Cartouche.

  “Cartouche, my mind is made up. This evening I promised Louis Bourcet,
  in Madame Bourcet’s presence, to marry him. When I had done it I felt
  as if a load were lifted off my mind, for as soon as the words were
  out of my mouth I determined that nothing on earth should induce me
  to keep my promise. I feel that I am right, Cartouche, and I have not
  felt so pious for a long time. I don’t know how it will be managed.
  I am only certain of one thing, and that is that Louis Bourcet will
  never become Monsieur Fifi Chiaramonti--for that is just what it would
  amount to, he is so good and so colorless. I am not in the least sorry
  for Louis. I am only sorry for myself that I have been bothered with
  him so long, and besides, I wish to marry some one else.     Fifi.”

Fifi crept into bed after writing this letter. For the first time she
found the hard lump in the middle of her mattress uncomfortable.

“Never mind,” thought Fifi to herself, “I shall soon be rid of it, and
sleep in peace, as I haven’t done since I had it.”

Fifi’s dreams were happy that night, and when she waked in the morning
she felt a kind of dewy freshness in her heart, like the awakening of
spring. It was springtime already, and as Fifi lay cosily in her little
white bed she contrived joyous schemes for her own benefit, which some
people might have called plotting mischief. She reasoned with herself
thus:

“Fifi, you have been miserable ever since you got the odious, hateful
hundred thousand francs, and it was nasty of Cartouche to give you
the lottery ticket. Fifi, you are not very old, but you are of the
sort which does not change, and you will be Fifi as long as you
live. You can not be happy away from Cartouche and the theater and
Toto--unfeeling wretch that you are, to let Toto be torn from you!
So the only thing to do is to return to love and work. If you spend
all your money Louis Bourcet would not marry you to save your life,
and then you can go back to the theater and make Cartouche marry you.
Oh, how simple it is! Stupid, stupid Fifi, that you did not think of
this before!” And, throbbing with happiness at the emancipation before
her, Fifi rose and dressed herself. She was distracted by the riotous
singing of the robins in the one solitary tree in the courtyard.
Heretofore the little birds had been mute and half frozen, but this
morning, in the warm spring sun, they sang in ecstasy.

Fifi not only felt different, but she actually looked so; and the
blitheness which shone in her eyes when she went to ask Madame Bourcet
if she might have Angéline, the sour maid-of-all-work, to go with her
to the shops that morning might have awakened suspicion in most minds.
But not in Madame Bourcet’s. Fifi slyly let drop something about her
trousseau, and Madame Bourcet hastened to say that she might take
Angéline.

In a little while the two were ready to start. In her hand Fifi
carried a little purse, containing twenty-one francs, and in her
reticule she carried her handkerchief, her smelling-salts and ten crisp
thousand-franc notes.

“How shall I ever spend it all!” she thought, with a little dismay; and
then, having some curious odds and ends of sense in her pretty head,
she concluded: “Oh, it is easy enough. I have often heard Cartouche say
that nobody ever yet tried to squander money who did not find a dozen
helpers on every hand.”

Paris is beautiful on a spring morning, with the sun shining on the
splashing fountains and the steel blue river, and the streets full of
cheerful-looking people. It was the first, mild, soft day of March,
and everybody was trying to make believe it was May. The restaurants
had placed their chairs and tables out of doors, and made a brave
showing of greenery with watercress and a few little radishes.
Itinerant musicians were grinding away industriously, and some humorous
cab-drivers had paid five centimes for a sprig of green to stick behind
the ears of their patient horses. All Paris was out of doors, helping
the birds and leaves to make the spring.

Fifi strolled along and found the streets almost as pleasant as the
street of the Black Cat, except that she knew everybody in the street
of the Black Cat and knew no one at all of all this merry throng. Her
first incursion was into a chocolate shop, where she treated both
herself and Angéline in a princely manner, as became a lady who had ten
notes of a thousand francs to dispose of in a morning’s shopping.

While they were sipping their chocolate Fifi was wondering how
she could manage to leave Angéline in the lurch and slip off by
herself--for Angéline might possibly make trouble for her when she came
to dispensing her wealth as she privately planned. But in this, as in
all things else that day, fortune favored Fifi. Afar off was heard the
rataplan of a marching regiment, with the merry laughter and shuffle of
feet of an accompanying crowd.

“What so easy as to get carried along with that crowd?” thought Fifi,
as she ran to the door, where the proprietor and all the clerks as
well as the customers were flying. It was the day of a grand review
at Longchamps, and the sight of the marching regiment, with the band
ringing out in rhythmic beauty, seemed the finest thing in the world.

Fifi found herself, with very little effort on her part, pushed out on
the sidewalk, and the next thing she was being swept along with the
eager crowd following the soldiers. At the corner of a large street the
regiment turned off toward the Champs Elysées, the crowd parted, and
Fifi saw her way back clear to the chocolate shop. But staring her in
the face was a magnificent furniture and bric-à-brac shop, while next
it was a superb _magasin des modes_ with a great window full of gowns,
wraps and hats.

Here was the place for Fifi to get rid of her ten thousand francs. It
seemed to Fifi as if a benignant Providence had rewarded her virtuous
design by placing her just where she was; so she walked boldly into the
_magasin des modes_.

The manager of the place, a handsome, showily-dressed and bejeweled
woman, looked suspiciously at a young and pretty girl, arriving
without maid or companion of any sort--but Fifi, bringing into play
some of the arts she had learned at the Imperial Theater, sank,
apparently breathless, into a seat; told of her being swept away from
her companion, and offered to pay for a messenger to hunt up Angéline.
Meanwhile she artlessly let out that she was Mademoiselle Chiaramonti,
in search of articles for her trousseau.

Her story was well known; everybody in Paris had heard of Mademoiselle
Chiaramonti, of the Imperial Theater, who had drawn the first prize in
the lottery, and instantly all was curiosity to see her and alertness
to attend her--except as to sending for Angéline. There was an
unaccountable slowness about that, except on the theory that it would
be well to show Fifi some of the creations of the establishment before
the arrival of the elder person, who might throw cold water on the
prospective purchases. And then began the comedy, so often enacted in
the world, of the cunning hypocrite being unconsciously the dupe of the
supposed victim.

Fifi was careful to hint that her marriage was being arranged; and if
anything could have added to Fifi’s joy and satisfaction it was the
determination on the part of the shop people to embody in her trousseau
all the outlandish things they possessed. This suited Fifi exactly.
Louis Bourcet was as finically particular about colors as he was about
behavior, and both he and Madame Bourcet were privately determined that
Fifi should go through life in brown gowns with dark green spots, like
the one which had so excited her disgust in the first instance. Knowing
this, Fifi concluded to administer a series of shocks in every one of
her purchases, and went about to do this with a vim and thoroughness
characteristic of her.

The first gown they showed her nearly made her scream with delight.
It was almost enough to make Louis Bourcet break their engagement
at sight. It was a costume of a staring yellow brocade, with large
purple flowers on it, and was obviously intended for a woman nine feet
high and three feet broad--and Fifi was but a slender twig of a girl.
One huge flower covered her back, and another her chest, while three
or four went around the vast skirt which trailed a yard behind. The
manager put it on Fifi, while her assistants and fellow conspirators
joined with her in declaring that the gown was ravishing on Fifi, which
it was in a way.

Fifi paraded solemnly up and down before the large swinging mirror,
surveying herself. She was a quaint object in the great yellow and
purple gown, and she knew it. Her face broke into a shower of smiles
and dimples.

“It will answer my purpose exactly,” she cried. This was true, as it
was calculated to give Madame Bourcet, and especially Louis Bourcet,
nervous convulsions.

“Show me a hat to go with it--the largest hat you have.”

The hat was produced--a nightmare, equal to the yellow and purple
brocade. Flowers, beads, ribbons and feathers weighed it down, but Fifi
demanded more of everything to be put on it, particularly feathers.
When she put the hat on, with the gown, one of the young women in the
establishment gave a half shriek of something between a laugh and a
scream. A look from the manager sent the culprit like a shot into the
back part of the shop.

Fifi, gravely examining herself in the glass, declared she was charmed
with her costume and would wear it on the day of her civil marriage.
Then she demanded a cloak.

“One that would look well on a dowager empress,” she said with a grand
air, knowing she had ten thousand francs in her pocket.

One was produced which might have looked well on the dowager empress
of China, but scarcely on an occidental. It was a stupendous stripe of
red and green satin, which might have served for the gridiron on which
Saint Lawrence was broiled alive. It had large sleeves, which Fifi
insisted must be trimmed with heavy lace and deep fur. In a twinkling
this was fastened on, and Fifi approved.

“And now a fan,” she said.

Dozens of fans were produced, but none of them preposterous enough to
suit Fifi’s purpose and her costume. At last she compromised on a large
pink one with a couple of birds of paradise on it.

Oh, what a picture was Fifi, parading up and down before the mirror,
and saying to herself:

“I think this will finish him.”

The amount, for the costume, cloak, hat and fan was nearly two thousand
francs. Fifi regretted it was not more.

“And now,” she said, “some negligées, with rich effects; you
understand.”

Fifi’s taste being pretty well understood in the establishment by this
time, some negligées were produced, in which Fifi arrayed herself and
looked like a parroquet. Then came evening gowns. There was one in
particular which Fifi thought might be the death of the Bourcets. It
was a short, scant, diaphanous Greek costume, which was so very Greek
that it could only have been worn with propriety in the days of the
nymphs, the fauns and the dryads.

“This, without a petticoat, I am sure, will rid me of Louis Bourcet,”
thought Fifi, “but I must never let Cartouche see it, or he will kill
me.”

Fifi, being fatigued with her exertions--for her purchases were
calculated to fatigue the eye as well as the mind, ordered the articles
selected to be sent that day to Madame Bourcet’s.

“And the bill, Mademoiselle?” asked the manager in a dulcet voice.

“Make it out,” replied Fifi debonairly, “and I will pay it now.”

There was a pause for the manager and the clerks to recover their
breath, while Fifi sat quite serene. It did not take a minute for
the bill to be made out, however,--four thousand, nine hundred and
forty-four francs, twenty-five centimes. Fifi was cruelly disappointed;
she had reckoned on getting rid of more of her money. But still this
was a beginning, so she handed over five notes of a thousand francs
each, and gravely counted her change: fifty-five francs, seventy-five
centimes.

Then, and then only, was a message sent after Angéline to the chocolate
shop.

But Angéline could not be found. She had seen Fifi swept away, as she
thought, by the crowd, and had rushed out to join her; but Fifi had no
mind to be caught, and Angéline found herself flopping about wildly,
shrieking at the passers-by, without any stops whatever between her
words:

“Have you seen Mademoiselle Fifi Mademoiselle Chiaramonti I lost her
in the chocolate shop oh what will Madame Bourcet say good people I am
sure she is lost for good and a hundred thousand francs in bank and
what is to be become of Monsieur Louis where _can_ Mademoiselle Fifi
be?” and much more of the same sort.

Fifi, however, was half a mile away, and having exhausted the resources
of the shop for gowns, tripped gaily into the furniture shop next door.

Here, thought Fifi cheerfully, she would be able to make substantial
progress toward getting rid of Louis Bourcet and marrying Cartouche.
She saw many splendid gilt tables, chairs, divans, cabinets and the
like, which she, with her limited experience in furniture buying in
the street of the Black Cat, thought must be very dear: some of the
most splendid pieces must cost as much as four hundred francs, thought
innocent Fifi.

But it was not enough for a thing to be expensive; it must be
outrageous in taste and design to be available for her purpose, and
with this in view she roved around the establishment, attended by a
clerk of lofty manners and a patronizing air. At last, however, she
pounced upon an object worthy to be classed with the yellow and purple
brocade. This was a huge, blue satin bed, with elaborate gilt posts,
and cornice, vast curtains of lace as well as satin, cords, tassels,
and every other species of ornament which could be fastened to a bed.

Fifi, who had never seen anything like it before, gasped in her
amazement and delight, the clerk meanwhile surveying her with an air of
condescending amusement.

Here was the thing to drive Louis Bourcet to madness, thought Fifi,
surveying the bed rapturously. If she could once get it into the house,
it would be difficult to get it out, it was so large and so complex,
and so very formidable. Fifi’s resolution was taken in an instant. She
meant to have it if it cost a thousand francs. She rather resented the
air of patronage with which the clerk explained the beauties of the bed
to her. He seemed to be saying all the time:

“This is but time wasted. You can never afford anything so expensive as
this.”

Fifi, calling up her talents as an actress, which were not
inconsiderable, accentuated her innocent and open-mouthed wonder at the
size and splendor of the bed. Then, intending to make a grand stroke
which would paralyze the clerk, she said coolly:

“I will give you fifteen hundred francs for this bed.”

The clerk’s nose went into the air.

“I have the honor to inform Mademoiselle that this bed was made with
a view to purchase by the Empress, but the cost was so great that the
Emperor objected and would not allow the Empress to buy it. The price
is five thousand francs; no more and no less.”

Fifi was secretly staggered by this, but she now regarded the clerk as
an enemy to be vanquished at any price--and vengeance seemed to her
cheap at five thousand francs. Fifi had a revengeful nature, which did
not stop at trifles. So, after a moment’s pause to recover herself, she
said, still coolly:

“Well, then, the price is exorbitant, but I will take the bed.”

The clerk, instead of succumbing to this, retained his composure in the
most exasperating manner. He only asked, with a shade of incredulity in
his voice:

“If Mademoiselle will kindly give us the money in gold or notes it can
be arranged at once.”

Fifi, in the most debonair manner in the world, opened her reticule and
produced five notes for a thousand francs each.

The clerk, unlike Fifi, knew nothing of the art of acting, and looked,
as he was, perfectly astounded. His limp hand fell to his side, his jaw
dropped open and he backed away from Fifi as if he thought she might
explode. Fifi, as calm as a May zephyr, continued:

“I desire that this bed be sent between ten and two to-morrow to the
address I shall give. I shall only take it on that condition.”

There was method in this. Fifi had suddenly remembered that the next
morning was Thursday. On that day, every week, Madame Bourcet indulged
in the wild orgy of attending a lecture on mathematics delivered by her
brother, the professor of mathematics, before a lyceum frequented by
several elderly and mathematical ladies, like Madame Bourcet. When she
was out of the house was clearly the time to get the preposterous bed
in; and Fifi made her arrangements accordingly.

Nothing could have been more impressive than Fifi’s studied calmness
and coolness while giving directions about the bed. The clerk went
after the proprietor, who could not conceal his surprise at a young
lady like Fifi going about unattended, and with five thousand francs
in her pocket. Fifi finally condescended to explain that she was
Mademoiselle Chiaramonti. That cleared up everything. The proprietor,
of course, had heard her story, and rashly and mistakenly assumed that
Fifi was a little fool, but at all events, he had made a good bargain
with her, and he bowed her out of the establishment as if she had been
a princess as well as a fool.

Once outside in the clear sunshine, Fifi was triumphant. She felt that
a long step had been taken toward getting rid of Louis Bourcet. And,
after all, it was just as easy to spend five thousand francs as five,
if one has the money. She had spent infinitely more time and trouble
over her thirty-franc cloak than over all her extraordinary purchases
of the last hour.

“The gowns are frightful enough, as well as the bills,” she thought to
herself, walking away from the shop, “and the bed is really a crushing
revelation--but it is not enough--it is not enough.”

Then an inspiration came to her which brought her to a standstill.

“I must go to a monkey shop and buy a monkey--but--but I am afraid of
monkeys. However--”--here Fifi felt an expansion of the soul--“when one
loves, as I love Cartouche, one must be prepared for sacrifices. So I
shall sacrifice myself. I shall buy a monkey.”

But it is easier to say one will buy a monkey than to buy one. Fifi
walked on, pondering how to make this sublime sacrifice to her
affections.

The sense of freedom, the exhilaration of the spring day, made
themselves felt in her blood. And then, for the first time, she also
felt the berserker madness for shopping which is latent in the
feminine nature. The fact that reason and common sense were to be
outraged as far as possible rather added zest to the enjoyment.

“This is the real way to go shopping,” thought Fifi, with delight.
“Spending for the pleasure of spending--buying monkeys and everything
else one fancies. It can only be done once in a blue moon; even the
Empress can not do it whenever she likes.”

She walked on, drinking in with delight the life and sunshine around
her. The more she reflected upon the monkey idea the finer it appeared
to her. True, she was mortally afraid of a monkey, but then she was
convinced that Louis Bourcet was more afraid of monkeys than she was.

“And it is for my Cartouche--and would Cartouche hesitate at making
such a sacrifice for me? No! A thousand times no! And I can not do less
than all for Cartouche, whom I love. It is my duty to use every means,
even a monkey, to get rid of Louis Bourcet.”

But where should she find a place to buy a monkey? That she could not
think of, but her fertile mind suggested an expedient even better
than the mere purchase of a single monkey. She stopped at one of those
movable booths, wherein sat a man who did writing for those unable to
write as well as they wished, or unable to write at all. The booth was
plastered over with advertisements of articles for sale, but naturally
no monkeys were offered.

The man in the booth, a bright-eyed cripple, looked up when Fifi tapped
on the glass of the little open window.

“Monsieur,” said Fifi, sweetly, “if you please, I am very anxious for
a monkey--a dear little monkey, for a pet; but I do not know where
to find one, and my family will not assist me in finding one. If I
should pay you, say five francs, would you write an advertisement for
a monkey, and let it be pasted with the other advertisements on your
booth?”

“Ten francs,” responded the man.

Fifi laid the ten francs down.

“Now, write in very large letters: ‘Wanted--A monkey, for a lady’s
pet; must be well trained, and not malicious. Apply at No. 14 Rue de
l’Echelle. Any person bringing a monkey will receive a franc for his
trouble, if the monkey is not purchased.’”

“Do you wish any snakes or parrots, Mademoiselle?” asked the man,
pocketing his ten francs.

“No, thank you; the monkey, I think, will answer all my purposes,”
responded Fifi with dignity.

It was then past noon, and Fifi, having spent a most enjoyable morning,
called a fiacre and directed the cabman to take her home.

Just as she turned into the Rue de l’Echelle she heard some one calling
after her:

“Mademoiselle! Mademoiselle Fifi!”

It was Angéline, very red in the face, and running after the fiacre.
Fifi had it stopped and Angéline clambered in. Before she had a chance
to begin the fault-finding which is the privilege of an old servant
Fifi cut the ground from under her feet.

“Why did you desert me as you did, Angéline?” cried Fifi indignantly.
“You saw me swept off my feet, and carried along with the crowd, and
instead of following me--”

“I did not see you, Mademoiselle--it was you--”

“You left me to my fate! What might not have happened to me alone in
the streets of Paris!”

“Mademoiselle has perhaps been alone in the streets of Paris before--”

“Silence, Angéline! How dare you say that I have been alone in the
streets of Paris before! Your language, as well as your conduct, is
intolerable!”

“I beg Mademoiselle to remember--”

“I remember nothing but that, being sent out in your charge, you basely
deserted me, and you shall answer for it; I beg of you to remember
that.”

Angéline was reduced by this tirade to surly silence, and, not bearing
in mind that Fifi was really a very clever little actress, actually
thought she was in a boiling rage. Fifi was meanwhile laughing in her
sleeve.




CHAPTER VII

A MOST IMPRUDENT THING


Madame Bourcet sat in the snuff-colored drawing-room, nursing her
rheumatism, when in walked Fifi as demure as the cat after it has eaten
the canary. She mentioned casually that she had bought a few things
for her trousseau, and Madame Bourcet presumed that the sum total of
expenditure was something like a hundred francs. Still, with visions of
the pink spangled gown which Fifi wished to buy for her presentation to
the Holy Father, Madame Bourcet thought it well to say, warningly:

“I hope your purchases were of a sober and substantial character,
warranted to wear well, and in quiet colors.”

“Wait, Madame, until you see them,” was Fifi’s diplomatic answer.

As soon as she could, she escaped to her own room, and, locking the
door, she opened her precious trunk with the relics of her theatrical
life in it, and began to handle them tenderly.

“Oh, you dear old wig, how happy I was when I wore you!” she said to
herself, clapping the white wig over her own rich brown hair. “When I
put you on I became a marquise at the court of Louis le Grand, and how
fine it seemed! Never mind, I shall be a marquise again, and get forty
francs the week at least! And how nice it will be to be quarreling with
Julie Campionet again, the wretch! And Duvernet--I shall not forget to
remind him of how I gave him my best white cotton petticoat for his
toga--and sewed it with my own fingers, too! And I shall say to him,
‘Recollect, Monsieur, I am no longer Fifi, but Mademoiselle Josephine
Chiaramonti, granddaughter of the cousin of a reigning sovereign, and
I am the young lady who won the grand prize in the lottery, and spent
it all; you never had a leading lady before who knew how to spend a
hundred thousand francs.’ I think I can see Duvernet now--and as I say
it I shall toy with my paste brooch. I can’t buy any jewels, for that
wouldn’t help me to get rid of Louis Bourcet, or to get Cartouche; so
I shall tell Duvernet that nothing in the way of diamonds seemed worth
while after those I had already.”

Fifi fondled her paste brooch, which was kept in the same shrine as
the white wig, and then she clasped to her breast Cartouche’s javelin,
made from a broomstick, and it seemed to her almost as if she were
clasping Cartouche. It put the notion into her head to write him a
letter, so she hastily closed her trunk, and sat down to write.

  “Cartouche, I went out this morning, and spent ten thousand francs of
  that odious money I won through that abominable lottery ticket you
  gave me. I should think you would never cease reproaching yourself
  if you knew how miserable that lottery ticket has made me. I bought
  some of the most terrible gowns you ever saw, and a bed that cost five
  thousand francs, and which the Empress couldn’t buy. I shall tell poor
  Louis and Madame Bourcet that these gowns are for my trousseau--but,
  of course, I have not the slightest idea of marrying Louis. I made up
  my mind not to last night, the very moment I promised--and so I wrote
  to you before I slept. It is not at all difficult to spend money; it
  is as easy to spend five thousand francs for a bed as five, if you
  have the money. And I had the money in my reticule. I shan’t tell you
  now how I got it, but I did, just the same, Cartouche. I long to see
  you. I did something for you to-day that I would not do for any one
  else in the world. You know how afraid I am of monkeys? Well, I can
  not explain in a letter, but you will be pleased when I tell you all.

                                                  Fifi.”

It was not Louis Bourcet’s habit to appear in his aunt’s apartment
until eight o’clock, but at six o’clock, seeing a great van drawn up
before the door, from which was disgorged innumerable large parcels
addressed to his fiancée, Louis, like other good men, was vanquished by
his curiosity. He mounted the stairs, on which he was jostled at every
step by men carrying huge pasteboard boxes of every size and shape, all
addressed to Mademoiselle Chiaramonti.

Fifi stood, with a brightly smiling face, at the head of the stairs,
directing the parcels to be carried into her own room. Louis, after
speaking to her, ventured to say:

“The cost of your purchases must be very great.”

“Yes,” answered Fifi, merrily, “but when one is about to make a grand
marriage, such as I am, one should have good clothes.”

Louis Bourcet, thus openly tickled under the fifth rib, smiled rather
anxiously, and replied:

“But one should be prudent, Mademoiselle. An extravagant wife would
give me a great deal of pain.”

“Ah, a woman happy enough to be married to you could not give you a
moment’s pain,” cried Fifi tenderly.

Louis started and blushed deeply,--this open lovemaking was a new
thing, and very embarrassing,--but it is difficult to tell the lady in
the case that she is too demonstrative.

Fifi, with a truly impish intelligence, saw at a glance the misery
she could inflict upon poor Louis by her demonstrations of affection,
and the discovery filled her with unholy joy, particularly as Madame
Bourcet, sitting in the snuff-colored drawing-room, was within hearing
through the open door.

“Only wait,” cried Fifi, as she skipped into her own room; “only wait
until you see me in these things I bought to-day, and you will be as
much in love with me as I am with you!”

Louis, blushing redder than any beet that ever grew, entered the
snuff-colored drawing-room and closed the door after him. Madame
Bourcet’s countenance showed that she had heard every word.

“In my day,” said she, in a severe tone, “young ladies did not fall in
love with their fiancés, much less proclaim the fact.”

Louis shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“We must make allowances, Aunt, for Mademoiselle Chiaramonti’s early
training--and we must not forget that her grandfather was cousin to His
Holiness, and Mademoiselle has a hundred thousand francs of her own.”
Louis mentally added, “and a hundred thousand francs is not picked up
with every girl.”

“She will not have a hundred thousand francs if she goes shopping like
this very often,” stiffly replied Madame Bourcet. “I should not be
surprised if she had squandered all of a thousand francs in one day.”

Just then the door opened, and a tremendous hat, with eleven large
feathers on it, and much else besides, appeared. Fifi’s delicate
bright face, now as solemn as a judge’s, was seen under this huge
creation. The red and green striped satin cloak, with the large lace
and fur-trimmed sleeves, concealed some of the yellow brocade with the
big purple flowers, but some yards of it were visible, trailing on
the floor. The bird of paradise fan and a muff the size of a barrel
completed Fifi’s costume.

Madame Bourcet gave a faint scream and Louis almost jumped out of his
chair at the show. Fifi, parading solemnly up and down, surveying
herself complacently, remarked:

“This is the costume I shall wear when we pay our visit of ceremony to
the Holy Father, upon my marriage.”

A dead pause followed. Both Madame Bourcet and Louis were too stunned
to speak. Fifi, seeing to what a state they were reduced, returned to
her room, and being an expert in quick changes of costume, reappeared
in a few minutes wearing one of the violently sensational negligées, in
which she looked like a living rainbow.

Neither Madame Bourcet nor Louis knew what to say at this catastrophe,
and therefore said nothing. But Fifi was voluble enough for both.
She harangued on the beauty of the costumes, and their extraordinary
cheapness, without mentioning the price, and claimed to have a gem of a
gown to exhibit, which would eclipse anything she had yet shown.

When she went to put this marvelous creation on, Madame Bourcet
recovered speech enough to say:

“A thousand francs, I said a few minutes ago--two thousand I say now.
Only ninety-eight thousand francs of her fortune is left--of that I am
sure.”

“I am not sure there is so much left,” responded Louis gloomily.

The door opened and a vision appeared. It was Fifi in the spangled
white ball gown _à la grecque_. The narrow, scanty skirt did not reach
to her ankles. The waist, according to the fashion of the time, was
under her arms, and the bodice was about four inches long. There were
no sleeves, only tiny straps across Fifi’s white arms; and her whole
outfit could have been put in Louis Bourcet’s waistcoat pocket.

Madame Bourcet fell back in her chair, with a groan. Louis rose, red
and furious, and said in portentous tones:

“You will excuse me, Mademoiselle, if I retire behind the screen while
you remain with that costume on in my presence.”

“Do you want me to take it off then?” asked Fifi airily; but Louis was
already behind the screen.

“Aunt,” he called out sternly, “kindly let me know when Mademoiselle
Chiaramonti has retired.”

“I can not,” responded Madame Bourcet, briefly, “for I shall myself
retire.” And Madame Bourcet marched away to her own room.

“Louis,” said a timid, tender little voice, “don’t you think this gown
more suitable to wear than the yellow brocade when we go to pay our
visit of ceremony to the Holy Father?”

Louis Bourcet was near choking with wrath at this. What right had she
to call him Louis? He had never asked her to do so--their engagement
was not even formally announced; he had never spoken to her or of her
except as Mademoiselle Chiaramonti. And that gown to go visiting the
Holy Father!

“Mademoiselle,” replied Louis in a voice of thunder, still from behind
the screen, “I consider that gown wholly improper for you to appear
before any one in, myself included.”

“Just come and take a look at it,” pleaded Fifi.

[Illustration--Fifi and Bourcet]

“I will not, Mademoiselle; and I give you warning I am now about to
leave this room.”

“I thought you would contrive to get a look at me, and not stick behind
that screen,” remarked Fifi, with a sudden explosion of laughter, as
Louis stalked from behind the screen. But the injustice and impropriety
of her remark was emphasized by his indignantly turning his head away
from her as he made for the door.

“Oh,” cried Fifi, impishly, “you can see me perfectly well in the
mirror, with your head turned that way!”

An angry bang of the door after him was Louis Bourcet’s only answer to
this.

Fifi surveyed herself in the mirror which she had accused the innocent
Louis of studying.

“This gown is perfectly outrageous, and it would be as much as my life
is worth to let Cartouche see it,” she thought. “But if only it can
frighten off that odious, ridiculous thing, how happy I shall be!”

Fifi retired to her room. Eight o’clock was the hour when tea was
served in the drawing-room, and both Madame Bourcet and Louis appeared
on the scene inwardly uncomfortable as to the meeting with Fifi.
There sat Fifi, but without the least appearance of discomfort; on the
contrary, more smiling and more at ease than they had ever seen her.
The door to her bedroom was open, and as soon as Madame Bourcet and
Louis entered they were saluted by an overwhelming odor of burning.
Madame Bourcet, who was a fire-fiend, shrieked at once:

“Something is on fire! Go, go, inform the police; fetch some water, and
let me faint!”

“There isn’t the least danger,” cried Fifi; “it is only my improper
ball gown which is burning in my grate.” And they saw, through the
open door, the ball gown stuffed in the grate, in which a fire was
smoldering. Some pieces of coal were piled upon it, to keep it from
blazing up, and it was being slowly consumed, with perfect safety to
the surroundings and an odor as if a warehouse were afire.

Madame Bourcet concluded not to faint, and she and Louis stood staring
at each other. But they were not the only ones to be startled. The
other tenants in the house had taken the alarm, and the bell in Madame
Bourcet’s lobby was being frantically pulled. Fifi ran and opened
the door. There stood Doctor Mailly, the eminent surgeon, who had the
apartment above the Bourcet’s; Colonel and Madame Bruart, who lived
in the apartment below, and about half a dozen others of the highly
respectable persons who inhabited this highly respectable house.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Fifi, in the tone of easy confidence which
the stage had bred in her, “there is nothing whatever to be alarmed
about. I am simply burning up a gown which Monsieur Louis Bourcet, my
fiancé, objected to--and as--as--I am madly in love with him, I destroy
the gown in order to win his approval. Can any of you--at least those
who know what it is to love and be beloved--think me wrong?”

There was a dead silence. Louis Bourcet, his face crimson, advanced and
said sternly to Fifi:

“Mademoiselle, I desire to say that I consider your conduct in regard
to the gown most uncalled for, most sensational and wholly opposed to
my wishes.”

“So you wanted to see me wear it again, did you?” cried Fifi,
roguishly; and then, relapsing into a sentimental attitude, she said:
“But you don’t know how much pleasure it gives me to sacrifice that
gown for you, dear Louis.”

At this, Louis Bourcet, with a flaming face, replied:

“I beg of you, Mademoiselle, not to call me Louis; and your expressions
of endearment are as unpleasant to me as they are improper.”

The lookers-on began to laugh, and turned away, except Colonel Bruart,
a fat old retired cavalry colonel, on whom a pretty face never failed
of its effect.

“Mademoiselle,” he cried gallantly, “if I were as young as your fiancé,
you might call me all the endearing names in the dictionary and I
wouldn’t complain. Is this young gentleman a Frenchman?”

“Yes, Monsieur,” replied Fifi, sweetly.

“Then,” replied Colonel Bruart, turning his broad back on the scene, “I
am glad there are not many like him. Adieu, Mademoiselle.”

Fifi, Madame Bourcet and Louis returned to the drawing-room. The
Bourcets were stupefied. Fifi was evidently a dangerous person to adopt
into a family, but a hundred thousand francs is a great deal of money.
Fifi, by way of administering a final shock, said:

“Anyway, the gown only cost five hundred francs, and that seemed to me
little enough to pay for pleasing you, Louis. And yet, you do not seem
pleased.”

“I am not,” responded Louis, who found Fifi’s singular endearments as
trying as her clothes.

The evening passed with the utmost constraint on every one except Fifi,
who was entirely at her ease and in great spirits.

Madame Bourcet and Louis each spent a sleepless night, and next morning
held a council of war in Madame Bourcet’s bedroom. Another startling
thought had occurred to them: where did Fifi get the money to pay for
the outlandish things? On each parcel Madame Bourcet had noted the
mark “Paid.” Fifi had not gone to the bank; and yet, she must have
had several thousand francs in hand. Possibly, she had more than a
hundred thousand francs. The Holy Father might have presented her with
a considerable sum of money the day he had the long interview with her.

There were many perplexing surmises; and, at last, wearied with their
anxieties, both Madame Bourcet and Louis resolved that Madame Bourcet,
after attending her brother’s lecture, should consult that eminent
man, as an expert in managing heiresses. It had become a very serious
question as to whether Fifi should be admitted into the Bourcet family
or not, but then, there was the money!

Madame Bourcet was not expected to return before half-past two, as her
conference with the professor was to take place after the lecture; but
at two o’clock, precisely, Louis Bourcet appeared. He had spent an
anxious morning. Whichever way the cat might jump would be disastrous
for him. If he went on with the marriage, he was likely to die of shock
at some of Fifi’s vagaries; and if the marriage were declared off,
there was a hundred thousand francs, and possibly more, gone, to say
nothing of the last chance of being allied to a reigning sovereign.
Poor Louis was beset with all the troubles of the over-righteous man.

As he entered the drawing-room, Fifi, dressed in the yellow brocade,
which looked more weird than ever by daylight, ran forward to meet him.

“How glad I am that you have come!” she cried. “I have something
beautiful to show you. Look!”

She threw wide her bedroom door, and there, filling up half the large
room, stood the gorgeous blue satin and gold bed.

Louis was stricken dumb. He had never seen such a machine before,
but being a practical person he saw at a glance its costliness. He
opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. However, Fifi remarked
rapturously:

“It was made for the Empress, but the Emperor, thinking the price too
much, refused to take it; and it was only five thousand francs, too!”

Then, running and exhibiting the lace, the gilt tassels and other
paraphernalia of the bed, Fifi concluded with saying:

“Of course, I shan’t sleep in it--it’s much too fine. I don’t think it
was ever meant to be slept in--but see--” Here Fifi raised the valance,
and showed her own mattress, which she had substantial reasons for
holding on to, “that’s what I shall sleep on! No one shall call _me_
extravagant!”

Louis retreated to the drawing-room. Fifi followed him, shutting the
door carefully after her.

Just then there was a commotion and a scuffle heard outside, in the
lobby, and Angéline’s shrill voice raised high.

“That must be the monkeys!” cried Fifi, running out.

Two Italians, each with a robust-looking monkey, were squabbling on
the stairs with Angéline. The Italians, each bent on getting in first,
had begun a scuffle which was growing perilously near a fight. Neither
paid the slightest attention to Angéline’s fierce demand that they and
their monkeys take themselves off. When Fifi appeared, both of the
monkey venders burst into voluble explanations and denunciations. Fifi,
however, had lost something of her cool courage. In her heart she was
afraid of monkeys, and had not meant to let them get so far as the
drawing-room door.

“Ah,” she cried to the Italians, thinking to pacify both of them, “here
is a franc apiece for your trouble, and take the monkeys away. I don’t
think either will suit.”

“No!” shrieked both of the Italians in chorus. “We have brought our
monkeys and Mademoiselle must at least examine them.”

This was anything but an agreeable proposition to Fifi; nor was she
reassured by each of the Italians declaring vehemently that his rival’s
monkey was as fierce as a lion and a disgrace to the simian tribe.
Fifi secretly thought that both of them were telling the truth in that
respect, and totally disbelieved them when each swore that his own
monkey was a companion fit for kings. All Fifi could do, therefore, was
to say, with an assumption of bravado:

“I will give you each two francs if you will go away and bring the
monkeys to-morrow.”

“Three francs!” shouted one of her compatriots, while the other bawled,
“Five francs!”

Fifi had as much as ten francs about her, so she gladly paid the ten
francs, and the Italians departed, each swearing he would come the next
day, and would, meanwhile, have the other’s blood.

Fifi returned to the drawing-room. On the hearth-rug stood Louis, pale
and determined.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, “there must be an end of this.”

“Of what?” asked Fifi, innocently.

“Either of the performances of yesterday and to-day, or of our
arrangement to marry.”

“O-o-o-h!” wailed Fifi, “just as I had fallen so beautifully in love
with you!”

Louis’s face turned paler still.

“Mademoiselle, I do not know how to take such speeches.”

“I see you don’t,” replied Fifi.

“It is the first time I have ever been thrown with a young person of
your profession,” began Louis.

“Or with an heiress worth a hundred thousand francs, and the relative
of a reigning sovereign--” added Fifi, maliciously.

Louis hesitated, and changed from one foot to the other. It was hardly
likely that the Holy Father would let so desirable a match for his
young relative escape. Louis’s esteem for himself was as tall as the
Vendôme column, and he naturally thought everybody took him at his
own valuation. The Holy Father’s possible attitude in the matter was
alarming and disconcerting to poor Louis.

“And besides,” added Fifi, “your attentions have been compromising.
Do you recall, Monsieur--since you forbid me to call you Louis--that
you have played a game of cribbage with me every evening since I have
lived under your aunt’s charge? Is that nothing? Is my reputation to
be sacrificed to your love of cribbage? Do you suppose that I shall
let my relative, the Holy Father, remain in ignorance of those games
of cribbage? Beware, Monsieur Louis Bourcet, that you are not made to
repent of the heartless way in which you entrapped my affections at the
cribbage-board.”

And Fifi walked with great dignity into her bedroom and banged the door
after her. Once inside, she opened her arms wide and whispered softly:

“Cartouche! Cartouche! You will not be any such lover as this creature!”

Meanwhile, Madame Bourcet had returned from her conference with her
brother. Angéline had met her on the stairs with a gruesome tale of the
blue satin bed, and the two monkeys, who had been invited to call the
next day. It was too much for Madame Bourcet. She dropped on a chair as
soon as she reached the drawing-room. There Louis Bourcet burst forth
with his account, of the blue satin bed and the monkeys, adding many
harrowing details omitted by Angéline.

“And what does my uncle say?” he asked, gloomily.

“He says,” replied Madame Bourcet, more gloomily, “that Mademoiselle
Chiaramonti’s conduct is such as to drive any prudent man to
distraction; and that if you marry her with even more than a hundred
thousand francs’ fortune, you will be doing a most imprudent thing.”

Madame Bourcet paused for Louis to digest this. Then, she continued,
after an impressive pause:

“And my brother also says, and desired me particularly to impress
this upon you--that a _dot_ of a hundred thousand francs is something
enormous in our station of life; that he does not know of a single
acquaintance of his own who has been so fortunate as to marry so much;
and his own good fortune in marrying two hundred thousand francs is
absolutely unprecedented. Moreover, through Mademoiselle Chiaramonti’s
connection with the Holy Father, your prospects, no doubt, would be
splendidly advanced; and to throw away such a chance would be--a most
imprudent thing.”

So all the comfort poor Louis got was, that, whatever he did, he would
be doing a most imprudent thing. The knowledge of this made him a truly
miserable man.




CHAPTER VIII

AN OLD LADY AND A LIMP


Nearly a week passed, with the utmost constraint, upon the little
family in the Rue de l’Echelle, except Fifi. Nothing could equal the
airy _insouciance_ of that young woman. She was no more the dumb,
docile creature whose soul and spirit seemed frozen, whose will was
benumbed, but Mademoiselle Fifi of the Imperial Theater. Fifi delighted
in acting--and she was now acting in her own drama, and with the most
exquisite enjoyment of the situation.

At intervals, during the week, Italians with monkeys appeared; but
Angéline adopted with these gentry a simple, but effective, method
of her own, which was secretly approved by Fifi. This was to appear
suddenly on the scene with a kettle of boiling water, which she
threatened to distribute impartially upon the monkeys and their owners.
This never failed to stampede the enemy. Fifi scolded and complained
bitterly of this, but Angéline took a firm stand against monkeys and
Italians--much to Fifi’s relief.

The subject of Fifi’s marriage to Louis was not touched upon by either
Madame Bourcet or Louis in that week, although Louis continued to spend
his evenings with his aunt and Fifi, and did not intermit the nightly
game of cribbage. If it was imprudent to marry Fifi, it was likewise
imprudent not to marry her--so reasoned the unhappy Louis, who, like
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, was of two minds at the same time, and
fairly distracted between them.

But, if the Bourcets let the marriage question remain discreetly in the
background, not so Fifi. Having discovered that Louis suffered acutely
from her manifestations of affection, Fifi proceeded to subject him to
a form of torture in high repute among the most bloodthirsty savages
of North America. This consists in smearing the victim’s body all over
with honey, and then letting him be slowly stung to death by gnats
and flies. Figuratively speaking, she smeared poor Louis with honey
from his head to his heels, and then had a delicious joy in seeing him
writhe under his agonies. And the innocence and simplicity with which
she did it fooled the unfortunate Louis completely.

One thing seemed clear to him: even if the Holy Father were willing to
give up so desirable a husband for his young relative, Fifi, herself,
would have to be reckoned with; and it all came, Louis thought, with
a rainbow of vanity athwart the gloom, of his being so dreadfully
handsome, fascinating and virtuous.

To Fifi this was the comedy part of the drama--and she played it for
all there was in it.

She reckoned the shopping episode as the first act of the play. That
was through, and there must be a second act. Fifi was too much of an
artist to repeat herself. She felt she had reached the limit of horrors
in shopping, and she still had nearly ninety thousand francs sewed up
in her mattress. Some new way must be devised for getting rid of it.
She thought of endowing beds in hospitals, of giving _dots_ to young
ladies, not so fortunate as herself in having a man like Cartouche, who
declined a fortune--and a thousand other schemes; but all involved some
vague and mysterious business transactions which frightened Fifi.

But, by a turn of fate, most unexpected, it was Cartouche who showed
her a way out of her difficulties, and it filled her with delight. It
was in a letter Cartouche wrote her in response to the two she had sent
him, one after the other. Cartouche’s letter was written in very black
ink, in a large, slovenly hand, on a big sheet of paper, and Fifi knew
perfectly well that he was in a rage when writing it.

  “Fifi: What nonsense is this you write me, that as soon as you
  promised to marry Louis Bourcet you determined not to marry him? What
  have you been doing? Don’t you know if you squander your money neither
  Louis Bourcet nor any man of his class will marry you? Four thousand
  francs for your trousseau is outrageous; as for the blue-satin bed
  the Empress could not buy, I can not trust myself to speak of it. If
  you continue acting in this way, I will not come to your wedding, nor
  let Toto come--that is, if Monsieur Bourcet or any other man will
  marry you. You seem to be bitten with the desire to do everything the
  Empress does, and a little more besides. You might follow the Empress’
  example, and going in your coach and six, with outriders, to the
  banking-house of Lafitte, make a little gift of a hundred thousand
  francs to the fund for soldiers’ orphans. Fifi, you are a goose, and
  there is no disguising it. I hope Monsieur Bourcet will use the strong
  hand on you, for your own good.                  Cartouche.

  “P. S. I could tell you many interesting things about Toto, but I am
  so angry I can not write any more.”

Fifi read this letter over, with a serene smile. Of course Cartouche
was angry--but that was rather amusing.

She laid the letter down, and looked up at the patch of blue sky
visible from her bedroom window. She seemed to see in that blue patch
all her former life, so full of work, of makeshifts, of gaiety, of
vivid interest--and compared with it the dull and spiritless existence
before her--that is, which had lately been before her; because now
the determination to return to the old life was as strong as the soul
within her.

She took Cartouche’s letter up and read it again, and a cry of joy came
from her lips. Give the money to the soldiers’ fund! She remembered
having heard Madame Bourcet and Louis speaking of this fund the night
before. The Empress had gone in state, as Cartouche said, to make her
splendid gift--and Lafitte’s banking-house was not fifteen minutes from
where she was in the Rue de l’Echelle.

In a flash, Fifi saw she could do it. She had her white wig and outside
of her door was the press in which Angéline kept her best black bonnet,
black shawl and gown, in which any woman could look a hundred years
old. Oh, it was the simplest thing in the world! The next day was
Thursday, the morning Madame Bourcet always went out, and Angéline
always stayed at home. It could be done within twenty-four hours!

Fifi danced about her room in rapture. It was now late in the
afternoon; she could scarcely wait until the next day. How precious was
her white wig to her then!

“Cartouche said I was silly to bring all these things with me,” she
said to herself gleefully; “and I had to do it secretly--but see, how
sensible I was! The fact is, I have a great deal of sense, and I know
what is good for me, much better than Cartouche does, or the Bourcets,
or the Emperor, or even the Holy Father. How do they know what is
going on inside of my head? Only I know perfectly well. And to think
that Cartouche should have suggested such a good way for me to get rid
of the hateful money! What an advertisement it will be! Mademoiselle
Chiaramonti, granddaughter of the Pope’s cousin, winner of the first
prize in the grand lottery, and giving ninety thousand francs to the
soldiers’ orphans! Mademoiselle Mars, at the Théâtre Française, never
had half such an advertisement. She has only her art to advertise her!
I shall be worth fifty francs the week to any manager in Paris. No
doubt the high-priced theaters will try to get me, and all the people
who think they know, like the Emperor and the Holy Father, would say
I should go to a theater on the other side of the river. But I do not
understand the style of acting at the high-priced theaters. I should
be hissed. No. The cheap theaters for me, and the kings and queens and
Roman consuls and things like that. Oh, Fifi, what a clever, clever
creature you are!”

The happier Fifi was the more she loved to torment Louis Bourcet, and
she was so very demonstrative that night, and made so many allusions to
the bliss she expected to enjoy with him, that both Louis and Madame
Bourcet were half distracted. But Fifi had such a lot of money--and was
the granddaughter of the Holy Father’s cousin!

Next morning, Madame Bourcet, as usual, made ready to go to the
lecture, at twelve o’clock. Fifi had never once proposed going out
alone, and was at that moment engaged in needlework in her own room.
Madame Bourcet, therefore, started off, without any misgivings, except
the general gloom produced by the thought of either having Fifi in the
family, or not having her.

Scarcely had Madame Bourcet’s respectable figure disappeared around
the corner, before another figure equally respectable, and apparently
a good deal older, emerged upon the street. It was Fifi, dressed in
Angéline’s clothes, and with a green barége veil falling over her face.
She knew how to limp as if she were seventy-five, instead of nineteen,
and cleverly concealed her mouthful of beautiful white teeth. On her
arm was a little covered basket which might have held eggs, but which
really held nearly ninety thousand francs in thousand-franc notes.

Fifi knew the way to the banking-house of Lafitte perfectly well. It
was then in a great gloomy building in the Rue St. Jacques. In less
than fifteen minutes she was mounting the steps, and soon found herself
in a large room, around which was an iron grating, and behind this
grating were innumerable clerks at work.

Fifi went to the window nearest the door, and asked of a very
alert-looking young clerk, at work at the desk:

“Will you be kind enough, Monsieur, to tell me where I can make a
contribution to the fund for the soldiers’ orphans?”

“Here, Madame,” replied the young clerk, eying superciliously the
little basket Fifi laid down on the ledge before him. People made all
sorts of contributions to this fund, and the spruce young clerk had
several times had his sensibilities outraged by offerings of old shoes,
of assignats, even of a live cock. The basket before him looked as if
it held a cat--probably one of the rare kind, which the old lady would
propose that he should sell, and give the proceeds to the fund. Out of
the basket the white-haired old lady with the green barége veil took a
parcel, and laying it down, said humbly:

“Monsieur, this gift comes from one who has no husband and no son to
give to the empire.”

“To whom shall I make out the receipt, and for how much, Madame?” asked
the clerk; but the old lady was already out of the room, and going down
the steps much faster than one would expect a person of her age to be
able to do.

Once outside Fifi stepped into a dark archway, from which she emerged,
a minute later, wearing her own bonnet and red cloak and her own skirt.
All of Angéline’s paraphernalia, together with the white wig, was
squeezed into a bundle which Fifi cleverly concealed under her cloak.
The basket she had tossed down an open cellar under the archway.

She called a closed cab, and stuffing her bundle under the seat,
ordered the cabman to drive her in a direction which she knew would
take her past the bank. She had the exquisite pleasure of seeing half
a dozen clerks rush distractedly out, inquiring frantically if any one
had seen in the neighborhood an old lady with a limp, a green veil and
a basket. Fifi stopped her cab long enough to get a description of
herself from one of the wildest-looking of the clerks.

“But why, Monsieur, do you wish to find this old lady?” Fifi asked.

“Because, Mademoiselle, she has stolen ninety thousand francs from
this bank a moment ago or given ninety thousand francs to something
or other,” cried the clerk, who had entirely confounded the story of
Fifi’s adventure, which had been imparted to him in haste and confusion.

Fifi, nearly dying with laughter, rolled away in her cab. The last
glimpse she had of her late friend, the bank clerk, he had found the
basket in the archway, and was declaiming with disheveled hair and wild
gesticulations concerning the robbery, or the gift, he did not know
which.

Fifi was not away from home more than half an hour, and when Angéline,
about one o’clock, passed through the snuff-colored drawing-room, she
saw Fifi, through the open door, sitting at the writing-table in her
bedroom, and scribbling away for dear life. This is what she wrote:

 “Cartouche: I have got your letter and I have followed your advice--I
 will not say exactly how--but you will shortly see me, I think, in the
 dear old street of the Black Cat.                Fifi.”

Madame Bourcet returned punctually at two o’clock, and as the weather
had become bad, she and Fifi spent the afternoon together in the
snuff-colored drawing-room.

When eight o’clock in the evening arrived, Louis Bourcet, as usual,
appeared. He had news to communicate, and gave a fearful and wonderful
account of the proceedings at the banking-house, in which it was
represented that a mysterious old lady, with a basket and a limp, had
appeared, and had either stolen ninety thousand francs, or given ninety
thousand francs to the fund for the soldiers’ orphans, nobody outside
of the bank knew exactly which. The excitement in the neighborhood
of the bank had been tremendous, and such a crowd had collected that
the _gens d’armes_ had been compelled to charge in order to clear the
street. The basket had been found, but the limp, along with the old
lady, had vanished.

All sorts of stories were flying about concerning the affair, some
people declaring that the troops from the nearest barracks had been
ordered out, a cordon placed around the banking-house, and the
mysterious old lady was nothing less than a determined ruffian, who had
disguised himself as an old woman, and was the leader of a gang of
desperate robbers, determined on looting the bank. Louis Bourcet held
firmly to this opinion.

“It is my belief,” he said solemnly, “that it was a scheme which
involved not only robbery, but possibly assassination. The old woman
was no old woman, but a reckless criminal, who, by a clever disguise,
got into the bank, and was only prevented from carrying out some
dreadful design by the coolness and decision of the bank employees.
The basket, which is marked with the initials A. D., is held at the
bureau of the _arrondissement_, and at the investigation to-morrow
morning--mark my words, that basket will be the means of disclosing a
terrible plot against the banking-house of Lafitte.”

Madame Bourcet listened to these words of wisdom with the profoundest
respect--but Fifi uttered a convulsive sound which she smothered in her
handkerchief and which, she explained, was caused by her agitation at
the sensational story she had just heard.

Louis was so flattered by the tribute of attention to his powers of
seeing farther into a millstone than any one else, that he harangued
the whole evening upon this violent attempt on Lafitte’s banking-house
in particular and the dangers of robbery in general. He even forgot
the game of cribbage. When he rose to go, at ten o’clock, both Madame
Bourcet and Fifi protested that they expected to be murdered in their
beds by a gang of robbers before daylight. Louis promised to come to
the _déjeuner_ at eleven the next morning, to give them the latest
particulars of this nefarious attempt to rob the bank.

Fifi alone in her own room went into spasms of delight. Her freedom was
close at hand--and soon, soon, she could return to that happy life of
hard work and deep affection she had once known. When she slipped into
bed, the hard lump was not in her mattress.

“Think,” she said to herself, lying awake in the dark, “of the good
that hateful money will do now--of the poor children warmed and fed and
clothed. Giving it away like this is not half so difficult as spending
it on hats and gowns and monkeys, and I think I may reckon on getting
back to the dear street of the Black Cat soon--very soon.”

And so, she fell into a deep, sweet sleep, to dream of Cartouche, and
Toto and all the people at the Imperial Theater, including Julie
Campionet.

Next morning, Fifi awaited the _déjeuner_ with feelings of entrancing
pleasure. She loved to see Louis Bourcet make a fool of himself, and
longed to make a fool of him--this naughty Fifi.

She was gratified, for at eleven o’clock, Louis appeared, looking, for
once, a little sheepish. The desperate robbery had been no robbery at
all, but a gift of ninety thousand francs to the fund for the soldiers’
orphans. Louis had bought several newspapers, and each contained the
official announcement of the banking-house of Lafitte, with a request
that the generous donor come forward and discover her identity.

Louis Bourcet, like a good many other people, could always construct
a new hypothesis to meet any new development in a case. He at once
declared that the donor must be a conscience-stricken woman, who had at
some time committed a crime and wished to atone for it. He harped on
this theme while Fifi was soberly drinking her chocolate and inwardly
quivering with delight. She waited until one of Louis’s long-winded
periods came to an end, when, the spirit of the actress within her,
and the piercing joy of making Louis Bourcet look like a guy, were too
much for her. Putting down her cup, therefore, and looking about her in
a way to command attention, Fifi said, in a soft, low voice:

“Madame Bourcet--and dear Louis--” here Louis shuddered--“I have
something to say to you, concerning that mysterious old woman with the
limp and the basket. First, let me say, that until yesterday, I kept
my fortune of nearly ninety thousand francs in my mattress, and my old
shoes I kept in the bank. For people are always losing their money in
banks, but I never heard of any one losing a franc that was sewed up in
a mattress.”

There was a pause. Louis Bourcet sat as if turned to stone, with his
chocolate raised to his lips, and his mouth wide open to receive it,
but he seemed to lose the power of moving his hand or shutting his
mouth. Madame Bourcet appeared to be paralyzed where she sat.

“Yes,” said Fifi, who felt as if she were once more on the beloved
boards of the Imperial Theater. “I kept my money where I knew it
would be safe. And then, seeing I had totally failed to captivate
the affections of my fiancé, I determined to perform an act of
splendid generosity, that would compel his admiration, and possibly,
his tenderness. So, yesterday, when you, Madame, were out, I dressed
myself up in Angéline’s Sunday clothes, took her small fruit basket,
and putting all my fortune in the basket, went to the bank, and handed
it all over, in notes of the Bank of France, to the fund for soldiers’
orphans.”

There was not a sound, except Madame Bourcet’s gasping for breath.
Louis Bourcet had turned of a sickly pallor, his mouth remaining wide
open, and his cup still suspended. This lasted for a full minute, when
the door suddenly opened, and Angéline appeared from the kitchen.

“Madame,” she cried excitedly, “there have been thieves here as well as
at the bank. My fruit basket is gone--I can swear I saw it yesterday
morning. It is marked with my initials, A. D., and I trust, by the
blessing of God, the thief will be found and sent to the galleys for
life.”

At this apparently trivial catastrophe, Madame Bourcet uttered a loud
shriek; Louis Bourcet dropped his cup, which crashed upon the table,
smashing the water carafe; Angéline, amazed at the result of her simple
remark, ran wildly about the room shrieking, “Thieves! thieves! Send
for the police!” Madame Bourcet continued to emit screams at short
intervals, while Louis Bourcet, his head in his hands, groaned in
anguish.

Fifi, alone, sat serene and smiling, and as soon as she could make
herself heard, cried to Louis:

“Dear Louis, tell me, I beg of you, if you approve of my course?”

“No!” bawled Louis, for once forgetting to be correct in manner and
deportment. Then, rising to his feet, and staggering to the door, he
said in a sepulchral voice: “Everything is over between us. If the Holy
Father takes measures to make me fulfil my compact to marry you, I
shall leave France--I shall flee my country. Mademoiselle, permit me to
say you are an impossible person. Adieu forever, I hope!” With this he
was gone.

Madame Bourcet at this recovered enough to scream to Angéline, in a
rapid crescendo:

“Get a van--_get a van_--GET A VAN!”

Fifi knew perfectly well what that meant, and was in ecstasies. She
flew to her room, huddled her belongings together, saying to herself:

“Cartouche, I shall see you! And, Cartouche, I love you! And,
Cartouche, I shall make you marry me--me, your own Fifi!”

In a little while the van was at the door and Fifi’s boxes were piled
in. She threw to Angéline the odious brown gown, with the green spots,
and a ten-franc piece besides--which somewhat mollified Angéline,
without changing her opinion that Fifi was a dangerous and explosive
person to have about. She promised to send for the blue satin bed. Then
Fifi, reverting to her old natural self, climbed into the van along
with her boxes, and jolted off, in the direction of the street of the
Black Cat, and was happier than she had yet been since she had left it.





CHAPTER IX

BACK TO THE BLACK CAT


About three o’clock in the afternoon, the van, containing Fifi and her
wardrobe, drew up before the tall old house in the street of the Black
Cat where she had lived ever since she was a little, black-eyed child,
who still cried for her mother, and who would not be comforted except
upon Cartouche’s knee. How familiar, how actual, how delightfully
redolent of home was the narrow little street! Fifi saw it in her
mind’s eye long before she reached it, and in her gladness of heart
sang snatches of songs like the one Toto thought was made for him,
_Le petit mousse noir_. As the van clattered into the street, Fifi,
sitting on her boxes, craned her neck out to watch a certain garret
window, and from thence she heard two short, rapturous barks. It was
Toto. Fifi, jumping down, opened the house door, and ran headlong up
the dark, narrow well-known stair. Half way up, she met Toto, jumping
down the steps two at a time. Fifi caught him to her heart, and wept
plentifully, tears of joy.

But there was some one else to see--and that was Cartouche, who was
always in his room at that hour.

“Now, Toto,” said Fifi, as she slipped softly up the stairs, still
squeezing him, “I am about to make a formal offer of my hand to
Cartouche; and mind, you are not to interrupt me with barking and
whining and scratching. It is very awkward to be interrupted on such
occasions, and you must behave yourself suitably to the situation.”

“Yap!” assented Toto.

The door to Cartouche’s room was a half-door, the upper part of glass.
This upper half-door was a little ajar, and Fifi caught sight of
Cartouche. He was sitting on his poor bed, with a large piece of tin
before him, which he was transforming into a medieval shield. He was
hard at work--for who ever saw Cartouche idle? But once or twice he
stopped, and picked up something lying on the table before him, and
looked at it. Fifi recognized it at once. It was a little picture of
herself, taken long ago, when she used to sit on Cartouche’s knee and
beg him to tell her stories. Fifi felt a lump in her throat, and
called out softly and tremulously:

“Cartouche! I am here. It is Fifi.”

Cartouche dropped his tools as if lightning-struck, and turned toward
the door--and there was Fifi’s smiling face peering at him.

He went straight to the door and opened the upper part wide. Fifi
saw that he was quite pale, though his dark and expressive eyes were
burning, and it was plain to her that he was consumed with love and
longing for her--but he was almost cross when he spoke.

“What brings you here, Fifi?” he asked.

“Everything that is good. First, Louis Bourcet has jilted me--” and
Fifi capered gleefully with Toto in her arms.

“Is that anything to be merry about?” inquired Cartouche, sternly; but
Fifi saw that his strong brown hand trembled as it lay on the sill of
the half-door.

“Indeed it is--if you knew Louis Bourcet--and he did it because of my
nobility of soul.”

“Humph,” said Cartouche.

“It was in this manner. You remember, Cartouche, the letter you wrote
me three days ago, in which you advised me to give all my fortune to
the fund for soldiers’ orphans?”

“No,” tartly answered Cartouche. “I never wrote you any such letter.”

“Listen,” said Fifi, sweetly, and taking from her pocket Cartouche’s
letter, she read aloud:

“‘You might follow the Empress’ example, and going in your coach and
six, with outriders, to the banking-house of Lafitte, make a little
gift of a hundred thousand francs to the fund for the soldiers’
orphans.’

“I did not have a coach and six, with outriders, nor even a hundred
thousand francs to give,” continued Fifi, putting the letter, for
future reference, in her pocket, “as I had spent almost ten thousand
on clothes and monkeys and beds. And I also saved enough to buy some
gowns that will put Julie Campionet’s nose out of joint--but I had
nearly ninety thousand francs to give--and I dressed myself up as an
old woman--”

“It was all over Paris this morning,” cried Cartouche, striking his
forehead, “I read it myself in the newspaper! Oh, Fifi, Fifi, what
madness!” and Cartouche walked wildly about the room.

“Madness, do you call it?” replied Fifi, with spirit. “This comes of
taking your advice. I had meant to spend the money on any foolish thing
I could find to buy that was worth nothing, and never could be worth
anything; and when your letter came, I thought, ‘here is a sensible way
to spend it’--for I was obliged to get rid of it. I never had a happy
moment since I had the money--and I must say, Cartouche, I think you
behaved very badly to me, in never making me the slightest apology for
giving me the ticket that drew the money, even after you saw it made me
miserable.”

Here Fifi assumed an offended air, to which Cartouche, walking about
distractedly, paid no attention whatever, only crying out at intervals:

“Oh, Fifi, what makes you behave so! What will you do now?”

Fifi drew off, now genuinely contemptuous and indignant.

“Do?” she asked in a tone of icy contempt. “Do you think that an
actress who has given away her whole fortune of ninety thousand francs
and whose grandfather was cousin to the Pope will want an engagement?”

“But the newspapers don’t know who gave the money,” said Cartouche,
weakly. “All of them this morning said that--and the Emperor has had
published in the _Moniteur_ an official request that the giver will
make herself known, so that she may receive the thanks in person of
himself and the Empress.”

“Better and better,” cried Fifi. “Ten francs the week more will
Duvernet have to pay me for receiving the thanks of the Emperor and
Empress.” And then with an access of hauteur she added: “You must know
very little of the theatrical profession, Cartouche, if you suppose I
intend to let the newspapers remain in ignorance of who gave the money.
Cartouche, in some respects, you know about as little concerning our
profession as the next one. You never had the least idea of the value
of advertising.”

“Perhaps not,” replied Cartouche, stung by her tone, “all I know is,
the value of hard work. And now, I suppose, having thrown away the
chance of marrying a worthy man in a respectable walk of life, you will
proceed to marry some showy creature for his fine clothes, or his long
pedigree, and then be miserable forever after.”

“Oh, no,” answered Fifi, sweetly. “The man I intend to marry is not
at all showy. He is as plain as the kitchen knife--and as for fine
clothes and a long pedigree, ha! ha!” Fifi pinched Toto, who seemed to
laugh with her.

Cartouche remained silent a whole minute, and then said calmly:

“You seem to have fixed upon the man.”

“Yes, Toto and I have agreed upon a suitable match for me. Haven’t we,
Toto?”

“Yap, yap, yap!” barked Toto.

“Have you consulted any one about this?” asked Cartouche in a low
voice, after a moment.

“No one but Toto,” replied Fifi, pinching Toto’s ear.

Cartouche raised his arms in despair. He could only groan:

“Oh, Fifi! Oh, Fifi!”

“Don’t ‘Oh Fifi’ me any more, Cartouche, after your behavior to me,”
cried Fifi indignantly, “and after I have taken your advice and given
the money away, and Louis Bourcet has jilted me--as he did as soon as
he found I had no fortune--”

“Didn’t I tell you he would?”

“I didn’t need anybody to tell me that. Louis Bourcet is one of the
virtuous who make one sick of virtue. But at least after you made him
jilt me--”

“_I_ made him jilt you!”

“Certainly you did. How many times shall I have to prove to you that
it was you who put it into my head to give the money away? And now, I
want to ask, having caused me to lose the chance of marrying the most
correct young man in Paris, you--you--ought to marry me yourself!”

Fifi said this last in a very low, sweet voice, her cheek resting upon
Toto’s sleek, black head, her elbow on the sill of the half-door.
Cartouche walked quite to the other end of the room and stood with his
back to Fifi, and said not one word.

Fifi waited a minute or two, Cartouche maintaining his strange silence.
Then, Fifi, glancing down, saw on a little table within the room, and
close to the half-door, a stick of chalk. With that she wrote in large
white letters on Toto’s black back:

                       _Cartouche, I love you_--

and tossed Toto into the room. He trotted up to Cartouche and lay down
at his feet.

Fifi saw Cartouche give a great start when he picked up the dog, and
Toto uttered a little pleading whine which was quite human in its
entreaty. Being a very astute dog, he knew that Cartouche was not
treating Fifi right, and so, pleaded for her.

Fifi, calmly watching Cartouche, saw that he was deeply agitated, and
she was not in the least disturbed by it. Presently, dropping Toto,
Cartouche strode toward the half-door, over which Fifi leaned.

“Fifi,” he cried, in a voice of agony, “why do you torture me so? You
know that I love you; and you know that I ought not to let you marry
me--me, almost old enough to be your father, poor, obscure, half
crippled, Fifi. I shall never forget the anguish of the first day I
knew that I loved you; it was the day I found you acting with the
players in the street. You were but sixteen, and I had loved you until
then as a child, as a little sister--and suddenly, I was overwhelmed
with a lover’s love for you. But I swore to myself, on my honor, never
to let you know it--never to speak a word of love to you--”

The strong man trembled, and fell, rather than sat upon a chair. Fifi,
trembling a little herself, but still smiling, answered:

“And you have kept your vow. I remember that day well--it was the first
time you ever spoke an angry word to me. You have spoken many since,
you hard-hearted Cartouche.”

To this Cartouche made no answer but to bury his face in his lean,
brown hands, that bore the marks of honest toil. Fifi continued briskly:

“Cartouche, open this lower door. It is fast.”

Cartouche only shook his head.

Then Fifi, glancing about, saw a rickety old chair at the head of the
stairs, and noiselessly fetching it, she put it against the door,
stepped up on it; a second step on the little table by the door, and
a third step on the floor, brought her in the room, and close to
Cartouche. She laid one hand upon his shoulder--with the other she
picked up Toto--and said, in a wheedling voice:

“Cartouche, shall we be married this day fortnight?”

Cartouche made a faint effort to push her away, but the passion in him
rose up lion-like, and mastered him. He seized Fifi in his strong arms
and devoured her rosy lips with kisses. Then, dropping her as suddenly,
he cried wildly:

“No, no! It is not right, Fifi--I can not do you so cruel a wrong!”

“You are almost as bad as Louis Bourcet,” remarked Fifi, straightening
her curly hair, which was all over her face. “Nevertheless, I shall
marry you this day fortnight.”

For answer, Cartouche vaulted over the half-door, in spite of his bad
leg, and was gone clattering down the stairs. Fifi listened as the
sound died away, and then ran to the window to see him go out of the
house and walk off, as fast as he could, down the street of the Black
Cat.

“Toto,” said Fifi to her friend, taking him up in her arms: “We--you
and I--are not good enough for Cartouche, but all the same, we mean
to have him. I can not live without him--that is, I will not, which
comes to the same thing--and all the other men I have ever known seem
small and mean alongside of Cartouche--” which showed that Fifi, as she
claimed, really had some sense.

As for Cartouche, he walked along through the narrow streets into
the crowded thoroughfare, full of shadows even then, although it was
still early in the soft, spring afternoon. He neither knew nor cared
where he was going except that he must fly from Fifi’s witching eyes
and tender words and sweet caresses. His heart was pounding so that
he could fancy others heard it besides himself. This marriage was
clearly impossible--it was not to be thought of. Fifi, in spite of her
rashness and throwing away of her fortune, was no fool. She had not,
as Cartouche feared, assumed a style of living that would have made
a hundred thousand francs a mere bagatelle. What she had squandered,
she had squandered deliberately for a purpose; what she had given had
been given to a good cause, for Fifi, of all women, best knew her own
mind. And to think that she should have taken up this strange notion to
marry him--after she had seen something so far superior--so Cartouche
thought. And what was to be done? If necessary, he would leave the
Imperial Theater, and go far, far away; but what then would become of
Fifi, alone and unprotected, rash and young and beautiful?

Turning these things over tumultuously in his mind, Cartouche found
himself in front of the shop where he had bought Fifi the red cloak.
There was a mirror in the window, and Cartouche stood and looked at
himself in it. The mirror stiffened his resolution.

“No,” he said. “Fifi must not throw herself away on such a looking
fellow. I love her--I love her too well for that.”

A church clock chimed six. Cartouche came out of his troubled day-dream
with a start--he was already due at the theater. He ran as fast as his
bad leg would allow him, and for the first time in the eight years he
had been employed there, was late.

Duvernet, the manager, was walking the floor of his dingy little office
and tearing his hair. He was dressed for the part of the Cid Campeador
in the drama of the evening. Duvernet never made the mistake of acting
a trivial part. He clattered about in a full suit of tin armor, but
had inadvertently clapped his hat on his head. Although there was but
little time to spare, the manager was obliged to pour out his woes to
Cartouche.

“Julie Campionet saw Fifi return, with all her boxes,” he groaned;
“and--well, you know Julie Campionet--I have had the devil’s own time
the whole afternoon. Then Fifi marched herself over here--the minx. I
called her Fifi, at first. She drew herself up like an offended empress
and said, ‘Mademoiselle Chiaramonti, if you please.’ She then informed
me, with an air of grand condescension that she might return here as
leading lady, and told me, quite negligently, that she was the person
who gave the ninety thousand francs to the soldiers’ orphans’ fund.
You would have thought she was in the habit of giving ninety thousand
francs to charity every morning before breakfast. She swore she did not
intend to acknowledge it until she had got a place as leading lady at
a theater that suited her; likewise that she proposed to be billed as
Mademoiselle Chiaramonti, cousin to the Holy Father, and to have the
story of her relationship to the Pope published in every newspaper in
Paris, and demanded fifty francs the week. The advertising alone is
worth a hundred francs the week; but you know, Cartouche, no woman on
earth could stand a hundred francs the week and keep sane. Then, she
tells me that she has a magnificent wardrobe--she wore that brooch
in here, which I have never been able to satisfy myself is real or
not--and took such a high tone altogether that I began to ask myself
if I were the manager of this theater or was Fifi. And then the
last information she gave me was that she was to marry you this day
fortnight--”

“Ah!” cried Cartouche, gloomily.

“And said if I didn’t give her back her old place as leading lady that
I would have to part with you. I said something about Julie Campionet,
and being my wife, and so on, and then Fifi flew into a royal rage,
saying she would settle with Julie Campionet herself. Then Julie came
rushing into the room, and she and Fifi had it out in great style.
You never heard such a noise in your life--it was like killing pigs,
and Julie fell in my arms and screamed to me to protect her, and Fifi
started that infernal dog of hers to barking, and there was a devil
of a row, and how it ended I don’t know, except that both of them are
vowing vengeance on me. But one thing is sure--I can’t let a chance go
of securing the Pope’s cousin, who won the first prize in the lottery
and gave away ninety thousand francs. And then--what Julie--”

The manager groaned and buried his head in his hands. Like the
unfortunate Louis Bourcet, all he could make out was, that whatever he
did would be highly imprudent.

It was already late, and there was not another moment to lose, so
Cartouche had to run away and leave the manager to his misery.

The performance was hardly up to the mark that night. Sensational tales
of Fifi’s return had flown like wildfire about the theater. She was
commonly reported to have come back in a coach and pair, with a van
full of huge boxes, all crammed with the most superb costumes. Such
stories were naturally disquieting to Julie Campionet, and together
with her scene in the afternoon, impaired her performance visibly.

As for Fifi, she was at that moment established in her old room,
which luckily was vacant, and was cooking a pair of pork chops over
a charcoal stove--and was perfectly happy. So was Toto, who barked
vociferously, and had to be held in Fifi’s arms, to keep his paws off
the red-hot stove. There was a bottle of wine, some sausages, and
onions and cheese, and a box of highly colored bonbons, for which Fifi
had rashly expended three francs. But it is not every day, thought
Fifi, that one comes home to one’s best beloved--and so she made a
little feast for Cartouche and herself.

Cartouche was late that night, and trying to avoid Fifi, he mounted
softly to his garret. As he approached Fifi’s door, he saw the light
through a chink. Fifi heard his step, quiet as it was, and opening the
door wide, cried out gaily:

“Here is supper ready for you, Cartouche, and Toto and I waiting for
you.”

Cartouche could not resist. He had meant to--but after all, he was but
human--and Fifi was so sweet--so sweet to him. He came in, therefore,
awkwardly enough, and feeling like a villain the while, he sat down at
the rickety little table, on which Fifi had spread a feast, seasoned
with love.

“Cartouche,” she said presently, when they were eating and drinking,
“you must get a holiday for this day fortnight.”

“What for?” asked Cartouche, gnawing his chop--Fifi cooked chops
beautifully.

“Because that is the day we are to be married,” briskly responded Fifi.

Cartouche put down his chop.

“Fifi,” he said. “You will break my heart. Why will you persist in
throwing yourself away on me?”

“Dear me!” cried Fifi to Toto, “how very silly Cartouche is to-night!
And what a horrid fiancé he makes--worse than Louis Bourcet.”

Then Fifi told him about some of the tricks she had played on poor
Louis, and Cartouche was obliged to laugh.

“At least, Fifi,” he said, “you shan’t marry me, until you have
consulted his Holiness.”

“And his Majesty,” replied Fifi gravely. “Who would think, to see us
supping on pork chops and onions, that our marriage concerned such very
great people!”

Cartouche went to his garret presently, still drowned in perplexities,
but with a wild feeling of rapture that seemed to make a new heaven and
a new earth for him.

Fifi, next morning, proceeded to lay out her plans. She did not go near
the theater until the afternoon. Then she put on her yellow and purple
brocade, her large red and green satin cloak, her huge hat and feathers
and reinforced with the alleged diamond brooch, and sending out for a
cab, ordered it to carry her and her magnificence across the street to
the manager’s private office.

Duvernet, thinking Fifi had come to her senses, and would ask, instead
of demanding, her place back, received her coolly. Fifi was charmingly
affable.

“I only called to ask, Monsieur,” she said, “if you could tell me how
to catch the diligence which goes out to Fontainebleau. I wish to go
out to see his Holiness, who, as you know, is my relative, and as such,
I desire his formal consent to my marriage to Cartouche.”

Fifi was careful not to say that she was the Pope’s relative; the Pope
was _her_ relative.

Duvernet, somewhat disconcerted by Fifi’s superb air, replied that the
diligence passed the corner, two streets below, at nine in the morning,
and one in the afternoon.

“Thank you,” responded Fifi. “I shall go out, to-morrow, at one
o’clock. I could not think of getting up at the unearthly hour
necessary to take the morning diligence. And can you tell me, Monsieur,
about the omnibus that passes the Tuileries? The Emperor has had a
request printed in the _Moniteur_, asking that the lady who made the
gift of ninety thousand francs to the soldiers’ orphans should declare
herself--and I have no objection to going in the omnibus as far as the
gates of the Tuileries. Then, I shall get a carriage.”

Duvernet was so thunderstruck at Fifi’s grandeur, that he mumbled
something quite unintelligible about the omnibus. Fifi, however,
was perfectly well acquainted with the ways both of the omnibus and
diligence, and only inquired about them to impress upon Duvernet
the immense gulf between the Fifi of yesterday and the Mademoiselle
Chiaramonti of to-day. She finally rose and sailed off, but returned
to ask the amazed and disgusted Duvernet to get her a cab to take her
across the street.

“I can walk, Monsieur,” she said condescendingly, “except that I am
afraid of ruining my clothes. I carry on my back nearly four thousand
francs’ worth of clothes.”

Duvernet, still staggered by her splendors, had to search the
neighborhood for a cab--cabs were not much in demand in that quarter.
But at last he found one, which transported Fifi and her grandeur
across the way. It was clearly impossible that so much elegance should
go on foot.

That night, again, she made a little supper for Cartouche, and
Cartouche, feeling himself a guilty wretch, again went in and ate it,
and basked in the sunlight of Fifi’s eyes.




CHAPTER X

THE POPE WINS


Now, Fifi really intended to go out to Fontainebleau the next day to
see the Holy Father, for, although she cared little for the opinion of
the world in general, she had been deeply impressed by the benignant
old man, and she secretly yearned for his approval. And besides, she
had an instinctive feeling that the Holy Father would understand better
than any one else in the world why she wished to marry Cartouche. That
tender, serene soul of the old man, who cherished the affections of his
youth and who had sounded the depths and measured the heights of human
grandeur and yet esteemed love the greatest thing in the world, would
understand a simple, loving heart like Fifi’s. It had been so easy to
tell him all about Cartouche and herself--and he had comprehended it
so readily; just the same, thought Fifi, as if he himself had lived
and worked and struggled as she and Cartouche had lived and worked and
struggled. Fifi knew, in her own way, that there is a kinship among
all honest souls--and that thus the Holy Father was near of kin to
Cartouche.

Fifi did not mention this proposed expedition to Cartouche, because, in
her lexicon, it was always easier to justify a thing after it is done
than before.

So, when on the morning after her return, the diligence rumbled
past the street below that of the Black Cat, Fifi was inside the
diligence--and, on the outside, quite unknown to her, was Duvernet.

The manager, it may be imagined, had not had a very easy time of it,
either as a manager or a husband for the last twenty-four hours.
Julie Campionet had large lung power, and had used it cruelly on him.
Nevertheless, the idea of securing Fifi with all her additional values
for the Imperial Theater was quite irresistible to Duvernet; and the
thought that another manager, more enterprising than he, might get her
for ten francs more the week, was intolerable to him. He determined to
make a gigantic effort for Fifi’s services, and it would be extremely
desirable to him to have this crucial interview as far away from the
Imperial Theater as possible.

Therefore, Duvernet was on the lookout when the diligence jolted past,
and when he saw a demure figure in black, with a veil over her face,
get inside the diligence, he recognized Fifi, and jumped up on the
outside.

Fifi, sitting within, had no notion that Duvernet was on the same
vehicle. She kept her veil down and behaved with the greatest
propriety. She knew better than to wear any of her ridiculous finery in
the presence of the Holy Father, and as she had got rid of the brown
gown with the green spots, she wore a plain black gown and mantle which
became her well, and she scarcely seemed like the same creature who had
worn the yellow brocade robe and the striped satin cloak.

The diligence rumbled along, through the pleasant spring afternoon,
upon the sunny road to Fontainebleau, and reached it in a couple of
hours.

When Fifi dismounted, at the street leading to the palace, what was her
surprise to find that Duvernet dismounted too!

“I had business at Fontainebleau, and so was fortunate to find myself
on the top of the diligence, while you were inside,” was Duvernet’s
ready explanation of his presence.

Fifi was at heart glad of his protection, and hoped he would return to
Paris with her, but would by no means admit so much to him.

“I,” said Fifi, with dignity, “also have business at
Fontainebleau--with the Holy Father. You may walk with me to the
palace.”

“Thank you, Mademoiselle,” answered Duvernet, bowing; and Fifi could
not tell whether he was laughing at her or not.

As they walked toward the vast old palace, gray and peaceful in the
golden sun of springtime, Duvernet said:

“Well, Fi--”

“What?” asked Fifi coldly.

“Mademoiselle, I should say. Since we find ourselves together, we may
as well resume our business conversation of yesterday afternoon. If you
will take fifty francs the week, your old place at the Imperial Theater
is open to you.”

“And that minx, Julie Campionet--oh, I beg your pardon.”

“Don’t mention it,” gloomily replied Julie Campionet’s husband. “She
has told me twenty times since yesterday that she means to get a
divorce, just like the others. If she doesn’t, I can, perhaps, get her
to take her old parts by giving her an additional five francs the
week--for I assure you, when it comes to a question of salary, she is
not Madame Duvernet, but Julie Campionet.”

“It would be against my conscience, Monsieur, to interfere with your
domestic peace--” said Fifi demurely, and that time it was Duvernet who
didn’t know whether or not Fifi was laughing at him.

“Mademoiselle,” replied he, with his loftiest air, “do you suppose I
would let my domestic peace stand before Art? No. A thousand times no!
Art is always first with me, and last. And besides, if Julie Campionet
should get a divorce from me--well, I have never found any trouble yet
in getting married. All the trouble came afterward.”

“Fifty francs,” mused Fifi; “and if I allow you to bill me as
Mademoiselle Chiaramonti, and the granddaughter of the Pope’s cousin,
that would be worth at least twenty-five francs the week more.
Seventy-five francs the week.”

“Good heavens, no!” shouted Duvernet. “The Holy Father himself wouldn’t
be worth seventy-five francs at the Imperial Theater! Sixty francs, at
the outside, and Julie Campionet to think it is fifty.”

[Illustration--Fifi and Duvernet at Fontainebleu]

“I had better wait until I am married to Cartouche,” replied Fifi
innocently.

But waiting was just what the manager did not want. So, still urging
her to take sixty francs, they reached the palace.

Fifi had a little note prepared and gave it, together with a pink
gilt-bordered card, inscribed “Mademoiselle Josephine Chiaramonti,”
to the porter at the door. The porter evidently regarded Fifi, and
her note and card included, with the utmost disfavor, but, like most
underlings, he was well acquainted with his master’s private affairs,
and knew in a minute who Fifi was, and so, grudgingly went off with her
letter and card.

Fifi and Duvernet kept up their argument in the great, gloomy anteroom
into which they were ushered. Fifi was saying:

“And if I allow you to bill me as his Holiness’ cousin, and you give me
seventy-five francs--”

“Sixty, Mademoiselle.”

“Seventy-five francs, will you promise always to take my part when I
quarrel with Julie Campionet?”

“Good God! What a proposition! I am married to Julie Campionet!”

“Have you really and actually straightened out your divorces from your
other three wives?” asked Fifi maliciously.

“N-n-not exactly. To tell you the truth, Fi--I mean, Mademoiselle--I
get those divorce suits and those leading ladies so mixed up in my
head, that I am not quite sure about anything concerning them. But if
you doubt that I am married to Julie Campionet, just listen to her when
she is giving me a wigging, and you will be convinced.”

“Of course,” continued Fifi, dismissing Duvernet and Julie Campionet
and their matrimonial complications with a wave of the hand, “it is not
really necessary for me to act at all. I have a fortune in my diamond
brooch, any time I choose to sell it. I gave away ninety thousand
francs--but in my brooch I hold on to enough to keep the wolf from
the door.” Then, a dazzling _coup_ coming into her head, she remarked
casually, “I hope Cartouche is not marrying me for my diamond brooch.”

Duvernet, a good deal exasperated by Fifi’s airs, replied, with a grin:

“Cartouche tells me he isn’t going to marry you at all.”

“We will see about that,” said Fifi, using the same enigmatic words
Cartouche had used, when the matrimonial proposition was first offered
for his consideration.

After a long wait the porter returned, accompanied by the same
sour-looking ecclesiastic whom Fifi had met on her previous visit; and
he escorted her to the door of the Pope’s chamber.

The door was opened for her, and Fifi found herself once more in the
presence of the Pope. She ran forward and kissed his hand, and the Holy
Father patted her hand kindly.

“Well, my child,” he said, “I hear strange things of you. The Bourcets
conveyed to me early this morning that you have left their house, given
up the marriage with the respectable young advocate, Louis Bourcet, and
bestowed all your fortune on charity. I have been anxious about you.”

“Pray don’t be so any more, Holy Father,” said Fifi, smiling brightly
and seating herself on a little chair the Holy Father motioned her to
take. “I never was so happy in my life as I am now. I hated the idea of
marrying Louis Bourcet.”

“Then you should not have agreed to marry him.”

“Oh, Holy Father, you can’t imagine how it dazes one to be suddenly
overwhelmed with riches, to be taken away from all one knows and
loves, to be compelled to be idle when one would work--to be, in
short, transplanted to another world. At first, I would have agreed to
anything.”

“I understand. Now, open your heart to me as to your father.”

“I was very wretched after I got the money. I was idle, I was unhappy,
I was unloved--and I had been used to being busy, to being happy,
to being loved. And what gave me the courage to rebel was, that I
found out I loved Cartouche. Holy Father, he is my only friend--” An
expression in the Holy Father’s eyes made Fifi quickly correct herself.
“_Was_ my only friend. And when I thought of being married, I could not
imagine life without Cartouche. So, I made up my mind to marry him. But
Cartouche said he was neither young nor rich, nor handsome, and with my
youth and newly-acquired fortune, I ought to marry above him. I do not
claim that Cartouche is what is called--a--” Fifi hesitated, the term
“brilliant marriage” not being known in the street of the Black Cat.
But the Holy Father suggested it with a smile--

“A brilliant marriage?”

“Yes, Holy Father, that is what I mean. But he is the best of men; I
shiver when I think what would have become of me without Cartouche. And
he is as brave as a lion--he was the first man across at the bridge
of Lodi--and the Emperor was the second. And he serves Duvernet, the
manager, just as faithfully as he served his country. Cartouche has
charge of all sorts of things at the theater, and he would die rather
than let any one swindle the manager.”

“I should like to have him for my majordomo,” said the Holy Father.

“He is not much of an actor though, to say nothing of his stiff leg.
Cartouche is an angel, Holy Father, but he can not act. So he does not
get much salary--only twenty-five francs the week. However, I know two
things: that Cartouche is the best of men, and that I love him with
all my heart. Holy Father, was not that reason enough for not marrying
Louis Bourcet?”

“Quite reason enough,” softly answered the Holy Father.

“After all, though, it was Louis Bourcet who got rid of me. It was
like this, Holy Father. I knew as long as I had a hundred thousand
francs that Louis Bourcet would marry me, no matter how outlandish
my behavior was; and I also knew, as long as I had a hundred thousand
francs, Cartouche never would marry me. And as I wanted to be happy, I
concluded to get rid of my hundred thousand francs, and that horrid,
pious, correct, stupid, pompous Louis Bourcet at the same time--”

And then Fifi burst into the whole story of her adventures, beginning
with her putting the box of old shoes in the bank, and sewing her money
up in the mattress. Through it all the Holy Father sat with his hand to
his lips and coughed occasionally.

Fifi knew how to tell her story, and gave very graphic pictures of her
life and adventures in the Rue de l’Echelle. She told it all, including
her return to the street of the Black Cat in the same van with her
boxes, her proposal of marriage to Cartouche and Toto’s share in the
proceedings. The Holy Father listened attentively, and after an extra
spell of coughing at the end, inquired gravely:

“And what did Cartouche say to your proposition to marry him?”

“Holy Father, he behaved horridly, and has not yet agreed, although
the poor fellow is eating his heart out for me. He says still, I am far
above him--for, you see, Holy Father, as soon as I have it published
that I am the giver of ninety thousand francs to the orphans’ fund,
all Paris will flock to see me act--and then--I shall be billed as
Mademoiselle Chiaramonti--cousin of the Holy Father, the Pope. That
alone is worth twenty-five francs the week extra.”

A crash resounded. The Holy Father’s footstool had tumbled over
noisily. The Holy Father himself was staring in consternation at Fifi.

“On the bills, did you say?”

“Yes, Holy Father. On the big red and blue posters all over the quarter
of Paris.”

“It must not be,” said the Holy Father, with a quiet firmness that
impressed Fifi very much. “How much did you say it was worth?”

“I say twenty-five francs. Duvernet, the manager, says only fifteen.”

“Where is this Duvernet?”

“Waiting for me in the anteroom below, Holy Father. He came out to
Fontainebleau to try to get me to make the arrangement at once.”

The Pope touched a bell at hand, and a servant appeared, who was
directed to bring Manager Duvernet to him at once. Then, turning to
Fifi, he said:

“Monsieur Duvernet must give up all ideas of this outrageous
playbill--and in consideration, I will secure to you an annuity of
twenty-five francs the week as long as you live.”

“How good it is of you, Holy Father!” cried Fifi. Then she added
dolefully: “But I am afraid if Cartouche knows I am to be as rich as
that, I shall have more trouble than ever getting him to marry me. What
shall I do, Holy Father, about telling him?”

The Pope reflected a moment or two.

“It is a difficult situation, but it must be managed,” he answered.

Then Fifi, eager for the Holy Father’s approval of Cartouche, told many
stories of his goodness to her in her childish days--and presently
Duvernet was announced.

Duvernet was an earnest worshiper of titles and power, but not to the
extent of forgetting his own advantage; and, although on greeting the
Pope he knelt reverently, he rose up with the fixed determination not
to do anything against the interests of the Imperial Theater, or its
manager, not if the Pope and all the College of Cardinals united in
asking him.

“Monsieur,” said the Holy Father, gently, but with authority: “This
young relative of mine tells me that her salary is to be increased
fifteen francs the week at your theater if her name and relationship
to me shall be exploited. I offer her twenty-five francs the week if
she will forego this. It does not appear to me to be proper that such
exploitation should take place.”

Duvernet bowed to the ground.

“Holy Father,” said he, with deepest humility, “it rests with
Mademoiselle Chiaramonti.” And he whispered to Fifi behind his hand,
“Thirty francs.”

“Thirty francs!” cried Fifi indignantly, “only just now you were
telling me that it was not even worth twenty-five francs!”

The Holy Father’s voice was heard--gentle as ever--

“Thirty-five francs.”

Duvernet, being found out, and seeing that he had the Supreme Pontiff
on the other side of the market, concluded it was no time for
diffidence, so he cried out boldly:

“Thirty-eight francs.”

There was a pause. Fifi looked toward the Holy Father.

“Forty francs,” said the Holy Father.

Duvernet, with the air and manner of a Roman senator acknowledging
defeat, bowed superbly and said:

“Your Holiness wins,” and backed toward the door.

Fifi turned to the Pope, and said with shining eyes:

“Holy Father, I thank you more than I can ever, ever say--I promise
never to do anything to dishonor the name I bear. And Duvernet,” she
added, turning to where the manager stood with folded arms and the
expression of a martyr: “Recollect, even if it is not put on the bill
that I am the granddaughter of the Holy Father’s cousin, that I am
still valuable. Did I not win the first prize in the lottery? And did I
not give ninety thousand francs to the soldiers’ orphans? And shan’t I
be thanked in person by the Emperor and Empress? Match me that if you
can. And besides, have I not the finest diamond brooch in Paris?”

“If it is diamond,” said Duvernet under his breath, but not so low
that the Holy Father did not hear him. However, without noticing this,
the Pope asked of him:

“Monsieur, will you kindly give me your opinion of Monsieur Cartouche,
whom my young relative wishes to marry?”

Duvernet paused a minute, trying to find words to express what he
thought of Cartouche, but in the end could only say:

“Your Holiness, Cartouche is--well, I could not conduct the Imperial
Theater without Cartouche. And he is the most honest and the most
industrious man I ever saw in my life.”

“Thank you, Monsieur. Good afternoon,” said the Pope, and Duvernet
vanished.

“My child,” said the Holy Father, after a little pause: “What is this
about your having the finest diamond brooch in Paris?” As he spoke, the
Holy Father’s face grew anxious. The possession of fine diamonds by a
girl of Fifi’s condition was a little disquieting to him.

“It is only paste, Holy Father,” replied Fifi, whipping the brooch
out of her pocket. “I always carry it with me to make believe it is
diamond, but it is no more diamond than my shoe. Duvernet thinks it
is diamond, and I encouraged him to think so, because I found that it
always overawed him. Whenever he grew presumptuous, all I had to do
was to put on this great dazzling brooch and a very grand air, and it
brought him down at once.”

“My child,” said the Holy Father--and stopped.

“I know what you would say, Holy Father--I am deceiving Duvernet--but
that is what is called in the world--diplomacy.”

With that she handed the brooch to the Holy Father. It was a brazen
imposture, and the Pope, who knew something about gems, could but smile
at the size and impudence of the alleged stones.

Then Fifi said timidly:

“Holy Father, how about Cartouche? I so much want to marry Cartouche!”

“Then,” said the Pope calmly, “you can not do better than marry
Cartouche, for I am sure he is an honest fellow, and loves you, and you
must bring him out to see me.”

“Oh, Holy Father,” cried Fifi joyfully, “when I bring Cartouche out
to see you, you will see what a _very_ honest, kind man he is! But
you must not expect to see a fine gentleman. My Cartouche has the
heart and the manners of a gentleman, but he has not the clothes of a
gentleman.” And to this, the Pope replied, smiling:

“The time has been when I was a poor parish priest, that I had not
the clothes of a gentleman, so I can feel for your Cartouche. So now,
farewell, and be a good child--and forty francs the week as long as you
are simply Mademoiselle Fifi. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Holy Father, and I can not thank you enough, and I am the
happiest creature in the world.”

And then Fifi fell on her knees, and received a tender blessing, and
went away, thinking with pride and joy of the visit she was to make
after she was married to Cartouche.

“I know the Holy Father will like him,” she thought, as she tripped
along the grand avenue toward the town. “The Holy Father is kind and
simple of heart, and honest and brave, and so is Cartouche, and each
will know this of the other, so how can they help being satisfied each
with the other?”

Thinking these thoughts she almost walked over Duvernet, who was
proceeding in the same direction. Duvernet’s manner had undergone a
complete change in the last half-hour, and he spoke to Fifi with an
offhandedness which took no account of her ruffled feathers when he
addressed her by her first name.

“Fifi,” said Duvernet, “for it is all nonsense to call you Mademoiselle
Chiaramonti now--Fifi, I say, I will give you fifty francs the week on
the strength of having drawn the first prize in the lottery, of having
given your fortune to the soldiers’ orphans and of being thanked, as
you will be, by the Emperor and Empress in person. It is a liberal
offer. No other manager in Paris would do so well.”

“And my art?” asked Fifi, grandly.

“Oh, yes, your art is well enough, as long as I have Cartouche to
manage you. With the Pope’s forty francs the week you will be the
richest woman in our profession on the left bank of the Seine.”

Fifi considered a while, walking briskly along. Ninety francs the week!
What stupendous wealth! But it would never do to yield at once.

“And I am to have all of Julie Campionet’s best parts? And you are to
be on my side in all my quarrels with Julie?”

“Certainly,” replied Duvernet. “You don’t suppose I would stand on a
little thing like that? Now, you had better take what I offer you, or
Julie will certainly spread the report that you wished to come back to
the Imperial Theater and I would not let you.”

“Bring the contract to me this evening,” replied Fifi.

“And to-morrow it is to be published in the newspapers?”

“Of course. In all the newspapers. But, Monsieur, there are some things
you must not expect of me now as formerly, such as constructing togas
for you out of my white petticoats, and making wigs for you out of tow.
I am above that now.”

“So I see--for the present--” replied Duvernet, laughing
disrespectfully, “but just let Julie Campionet try her hand at that
sort of thing in your place, and you would burst if you did not outdo
her. Come, here is the diligence. In with you.”

Fifi got back to her old quarters in time to prepare supper again for
Cartouche. This time they had cabbage-soup and a bit of sausage.

Poor Cartouche, who had alternated between heaven and hell ever since
Fifi’s return, was in heaven, sitting opposite to her at the rickety
table, and eating Fifi’s excellent cabbage-soup. She herself fully
appreciated their menu.

“When I was with the Bourcets I could not eat their tasteless messes,”
she cried. “No garlic, no cabbage, very few onions--and everything
sickly sweet. No, Cartouche, one must live as one has lived, and one
must have a husband who likes the same things one likes, so that is why
I am marrying you a week from Thursday.”

“Fifi,” said Cartouche, trying to be stern, “haven’t I told you to put
that silly idea out of your head?”

“Yes, but I haven’t though, and to-day I went to Fontainebleau to see
the Holy Father, and--now listen to reason, Cartouche--he told me to
marry you. Do you understand?”

This was the first Cartouche had heard of the visit to Fontainebleau.
Fifi described it glibly, and if she represented the Holy Father as
urging and commanding her marriage to Cartouche much more strongly than
was actually the case, it must be set down to her artistic instinct
which made her give the scene its full dramatic value. When she paused
for breath, Cartouche said, glumly:

“But the Holy Father hasn’t seen me and my stiff leg yet.”

“Oh,” cried Fifi, “I am to take you out to Fontainebleau as soon as we
are married.”

“You are afraid to show me before we are married.”

“Not in the least. I told the Holy Father that you were neither young
nor handsome; for that matter, the Holy Father himself is neither young
nor handsome. But I am glad you have at last agreed that we are to be
married--not that it would make any difference.”

“You have not married me yet,” Cartouche weakly protested, gazing into
the heaven of Fifi’s eyes, while eating her delicious cabbage-soup.

“Have you no respect for the Holy Father?” asked Fifi, indignantly.

“Yes, but suppose the Holy Father to-day had advised you to marry some
one--some one else--Louis Bourcet, for example.”

“I shouldn’t have paid the least attention to him; but it is your duty,
Cartouche, when the Holy Father says you ought to marry me to do so
without grumbling.”

And with this masterly logic, Fifi helped herself to the last of the
soup.




CHAPTER XI

BY THE EMPEROR’S ORDER


The next day but one, the mystery was solved of the old lady who gave
the ninety thousand francs to the soldiers’ orphans’ fund. It was not
an old lady at all, but the young and pretty actress, Mademoiselle
Fifi, who had drawn the great prize in the lottery. She had temporarily
retired from the stage of the Imperial Theater, in the street of the
Black Cat, but would shortly resume her place there as leading lady. So
it was printed in the newspapers, and known in the salons of Paris.

There was very nearly a mob in the street of the Black Cat, so many
persons were drawn by curiosity to see Fifi. Fifi, peeping from
her garret window, would have dearly liked to exhibit herself, but
Duvernet, for once stern, refused to let her show so much as an
eyelash, except to those who bought a ticket to see her at the theater,
when she was to appear in her great part of the Roman maiden on the
Thursday week, the very day she had fixed upon to marry Cartouche.

In this determination to keep Fifi in seclusion until the night of her
reappearance on the stage, Duvernet was backed up by Cartouche, who
reminded Fifi of the enormous salary she was receiving of fifty francs
the week. He had no inkling of the further rise in her fortunes of
forty francs the week from the Holy Father.

Meanwhile rehearsals were actively begun, and Fifi had had the
exquisite joy of seeing that Julie Campionet was furiously jealous
of her. Duvernet, in spite of his unceremonious behavior to her in
private, treated her at rehearsals with a respect fitting the place she
held on the programme and the stupendous salary she received. All of
her fellow actors were either stand-offish with her or over-friendly,
but this, Fifi knew, was only a phase. Cartouche alone treated her as
he had always done, and even scolded her sharply, saying that in three
months she had forgotten what it had taken her three years to learn.
But this was hardly exact, for Fifi, being a natural actress, had
forgotten very little and had learned a great deal during her exile
from the Imperial Theater.

On the morning after the announcement made in the newspapers about
Fifi’s gift a great clatter was heard in the street of the Black Cat.
An imperial courier came riding to Fifi’s door and handed in a letter
with the imperial arms and seal. It was a notification that the next
day, at noon, an imperial carriage would be sent for her that she
might go to the Tuileries and be thanked personally by the Emperor and
Empress for her magnificent generosity to the soldiers’ orphans.

Fifi turned pale as she read this letter. She did not mind the Emperor,
but the Empress. And what should she wear?

While considering these momentous questions, Duvernet rushed into the
room. He had seen the courier and suspected his errand.

Fifi, with blanched lips, told him. Duvernet was nearly mad with joy.

“Oh,” he cried. “If I was not already married to Julie Campionet and
three other women I would marry you this moment, Fifi.”

“Marry me!” cried Fifi, turning crimson, and finding her voice, which
rose with every word she uttered. “Marry _me_! _You_, Duvernet! Marry
Mademoiselle Josephine Chiaramonti! No! A thousand times no! Julie
Campionet is good enough for you.”

“I am as good as Cartouche,” growled Duvernet, stung by this vicious
attack on himself and his wife.

“Monsieur Duvernet,” screamed Fifi, stamping her foot, “if you wish me
to appear at the Imperial Theater a week from Thursday you will at once
admit that Julie Campionet is good enough for you, and that I--I am far
too good for you--but not too good for Cartouche.”

Duvernet hesitated, but the manager in him came uppermost. He conceded
all that Fifi claimed, but on returning to the theater cuffed the
call-boy unmercifully by way of reprisal on somebody, after Fifi’s
exasperating behavior.

That night, at supper, Cartouche was oppressed and depressed by this
new honor awaiting Fifi. Presently he said to her seriously:

“Fifi, it’s out of the question--your marrying me. Why, you might
marry an officer--who knows? Now, Fifi, don’t be a fool and insist on
marrying me.”

“I won’t be a fool,” answered Fifi promptly, “and I will marry you. The
Holy Father told me to, and I expect the Emperor will do the same. At
all events, you, too, are to go to the Tuileries.”

“I!”

Cartouche fell back in his chair.

“Certainly. I could never get along without you.”

“But I couldn’t go in the coach with you.”

“No. You can be in the gardens, though, and if the Emperor wants you he
can send for you.”

Cartouche in the end concluded he might as well go, not that he
expected the Emperor to send for him, but simply because Fifi wished
him to go. And he decided a very important point for Fifi--what she
should wear.

“Now, don’t wear any of your wild hats, or that yellow gown, which
can be heard screaming a mile away. Remember, the Emperor is not a
Duvernet, and the Empress is not Julie Campionet. Wear your little
black bonnet, with your black gown and mantle, and you will look like
what you are--my sweet little Fifi.”

This was the first word of open lovemaking into which Cartouche had
suffered himself to be betrayed, and as soon as he had uttered it he
jumped up from the supper table and ran to his own garret as quickly
as his stiff leg would allow. Fifi caught Toto to her heart in lieu of
Cartouche and murmured, “He loves me! He loves me! He loves me!”

At noon, next day, a splendid imperial carriage drove into the street
of the Black Cat and stopped before Fifi’s door. Fifi, dressed modestly
and becomingly in black, appeared. She could not forbear carrying
her huge muff, but as it was the fashion it did not detract from the
propriety of her appearance.

The street was full when, assisted by a gorgeous footman, she took her
seat in the carriage. Duvernet was a rapturous spectator of Fifi’s
splendor, and she had the ecstasy of feeling that Julie Campionet was
watching the whole magnificent event.

She sat up very straight as she drove through the bright and sunny
streets toward the Tuileries. As she entered the great gates she
watched for Cartouche, who was to be there. Yes, there he was, looking
out for her. Fifi’s heart gave a great throb of relief, for she was
really frightened half to death, and the nearness of Cartouche made her
feel a little safer. The look in his face as their eyes met was full of
encouragement--it did not seem to him a dreadful thing at all to meet
the Emperor.

This courage of Fifi’s only lasted until the carriage door was opened,
and she had to alight and walk an interminable distance through miles
of gorgeous rooms, of mirrors, of paintings, of gilding, and, worse
than all, in the company of the very polite old gentleman-in-waiting
who escorted her.

She knew not how she found herself in a small boudoir, and presently
the door opened and the Emperor and Empress entered, and at the first
word spoken to her by the Emperor, as with the Holy Father, fear
instantly departed from her, and it seemed the most natural thing in
the world for her to be there.

Fifi made a very pretty bow to both the Emperor and Empress. The
Empress seated herself, and her kind eyes, her soft Creole voice, her
charming grace, captivated Fifi, as it had done many of the greatest of
the earth. But when the Emperor spoke--ah, Fifi was one of the people,
after all--and like the old moustaches in Cartouche’s regiment, she
would have died for the Emperor after having once seen him. He said to
her:

“The Empress and I wish to thank you for your splendid gift to the
soldiers’ orphans, Mademoiselle. Was it not your whole fortune? For
I remember well hearing that you had drawn the grand prize in the
lottery.”

“Yes, Sire,” replied Fifi, “but I am still well off.”

“I am glad to hear it, Mademoiselle.”

“Sire, the manager of the Imperial Theater is to give me fifty francs
the week, and the Holy Father, to whom my grandfather was cousin, is
to give me forty francs the week as long as I live; that is, if I do
not put it on the bill-boards that I am Mademoiselle Chiaramonti,
granddaughter of the Pope’s cousin.”

“It was I who caused that relationship to be established, after having
heard your name, the evening that my good friend Cartouche invited me
to see you act. But what ingenious person was it who dreamed of putting
your relationship to the Pope on the bill-boards?”

“I and our manager, Monsieur Duvernet, Sire. Monsieur Duvernet knows
how to advertise.”

The Emperor laughed a little.

“I should think so. I have met Monsieur Duvernet--the same evening,
Mademoiselle, that I had the pleasure of seeing you act. So the Holy
Father interfered with yours and Duvernet’s little plan--ha! ha!”

“Yes, Sire. First, Monsieur Duvernet said he would give me twenty
francs to be billed as the Pope’s cousin, and the Holy Father said he
would give me twenty-five francs to be billed simply as Mademoiselle
Fifi. Then Monsieur Duvernet said thirty francs, and the Holy Father
said thirty-five; and Monsieur Duvernet said thirty-eight, and the
Holy Father said forty. That was such a large sum, Sire, that Monsieur
Duvernet could not meet it.”

“And what does our friend Cartouche say to this? Cartouche,” he
explained to the Empress, “is my old friend of Lodi, the only man who
crossed the bridge before me, and he came to see me and consulted me
about this young lady’s fortune.”

“Cartouche, Sire, does not know it.”

“Why? Have you fallen out with Cartouche?”

“Oh, no, Sire. Cartouche and I are to be married a week from Thursday,”
replied Fifi, smiling and blushing.

“Then explain why he does not know about the Pope’s forty francs,
since you are to marry him so soon?”

“Because, Sire, Cartouche does not want to marry me--I mean, that is,
he thinks he is not young enough or rich enough or well-born enough for
me--which is all nonsense, Sire.”

“Yes--I know something about you and Cartouche.”

“And I never could have married him if I had not got rid of my money.
But I am afraid if Cartouche knows of my forty francs the week he will
make a difficulty.”

“In that case we must not let him know anything about it. But I was
told by my arch-treasurer Lebrun that a marriage had been arranged for
you with a young advocate here whom Lebrun knows well, by name Bourcet.
What becomes of that?”

Fifi smiled and blushed more than ever, and remained silent until the
Empress said, in her flute-like voice:

“Perhaps, Mademoiselle, you could not love him.”

“Your Majesty, I hated him,” answered Fifi, with the greatest
earnestness. “He was the most correct person and the greatest bore
in the universe. Unlike Cartouche, he thought himself much too good
for me, but was willing to take me on account of my hundred thousand
francs. At first I tried to frighten him off.”

“How, Mademoiselle?” asked the Emperor, now laughing outright.

“Sire, by--by--buying things. Dreadful clothes, and--and--monkeys, but
I was afraid of the monkeys and would not keep them--and a blue satin
bed made for the Empress--”

“I know that diabolical bed--so they swindled you into buying it?”

“No, Sire, it was only a way of squandering money and frightening
that ridiculous Louis Bourcet. And--I made love to him very
outrageously--which was nearly the death of him. Louis Bourcet is not
the sort of a man to be first across the bridge of Lodi. The only way
to have got him across would have been to carry him. But in spite of
all I could do he would have married me if I had not found a way to get
rid of my money.”

“Tell me how you contrived to get your money in your own hands?”

Then Fifi told about putting the box of old shoes in the bank and
sewing the money up in the mattress, just as she had told the Pope, and
both the Emperor and the Empress laughed aloud at it. And Fifi further
explained how Cartouche’s letter had showed her the way to make a good
use of her uncomfortable fortune instead of merely throwing it away.

The Empress then asked, in her charming manner, some questions about
Fifi’s life, and both the Emperor and Empress seemed excessively amused
at the simplicity of Fifi’s answer.

“I shall have to tell Lebrun, the arch-treasurer, about this,” cried
the Emperor; “and now, what can I or the Empress do for you?”

Fifi reflected a moment.

“If you please, Sire,” she replied after a moment, “to send for
Cartouche--he is just outside in the gardens--and order him to marry me
a week from next Thursday. For, if he should happen to find out that I
have forty francs the week as long as I live, there’s no telling what
he will do, unless your Majesty gives him positive orders.”

The Emperor rang, and his aide appearing, he was directed to find the
fellow named Cartouche.

“He is very homely and has a stiff leg,” said Fifi, by way of
description of her lover.

While Cartouche was being found, the Emperor, after his wont, began to
ask Fifi all manner of questions, especially about the Holy Father, and
listened attentively to her replies. His only comment was:

“A good old man, a dreamer, who lives in his affections.”

When Cartouche was ushered into the room the Empress spoke to him with
the greatest kindness, but the Emperor, frowning, said:

“Mademoiselle Fifi tells me she has a mind to marry you a week from
Thursday, and you are hanging back.”

“Sire,” replied Cartouche, respectfully, but without the least fear,
“I am too old and ugly for Fifi, and I have a stiff leg. Your Majesty
knows what I say is true.”

“No, I do not know it, and Cartouche, obey what I say to you. A week
from Thursday, or before, if Mademoiselle Fifi requires, you are to be
ready to marry her, and if you balk the least in the world I shall have
a sergeant and a file of soldiers to persuade you. Do you understand?”

[Illustration--Fifi, Cartouche, Napoleon and Josephine]

“Oh, Sire,” replied Cartouche, with shining eyes, “how good of your
Majesty to command me! For, otherwise, I never could have thought it
anything but wrong to tie Fifi to me for life. But one must obey the
Emperor.”

“Yes,” cried Fifi, quite forgetting herself in her joy, “one must obey
the Emperor.”

And then the Emperor kissed Fifi on the cheek, and pulled Cartouche’s
ear, saying to him:

“You mutinous rascal, you would disobey your Emperor; but remember the
sergeant and the file of soldiers are ready when Mademoiselle Fifi
calls for them. So, good by, and good fortune to you both, and if
anything befalls you, you know where to find your Emperor.”

The Empress gave Fifi her hand to kiss and said, smiling:

“I shall not forget a little present for your wedding,” and Fifi and
Cartouche went away, the two happiest creatures in Paris.

Fifi returned in the imperial carriage, and Cartouche returned on the
top of an omnibus, but each of them was in a heaven of his own.

Fifi reached home first, and when Cartouche arrived she was hard at
work on a white bonnet for her wedding.

“Cartouche,” she cried, as he opened the door, “there are a million
things to be done if we are to be married a week from next Thursday.”

“I know it,” answered Cartouche, “and Fifi--you need not send for the
sergeant, I think.”

Fifi threw herself into his arms. She was bubbling over with joy.
Cartouche’s saturnine face was more saturnine than ever. He kissed Fifi
solemnly, and broke away from her. It was too much joy for him.

The preparations for their wedding were simple enough, as became an
insignificant actress and a poor actor, whose home was to be in two
little rooms very high up; for Fifi, having been bred under the tiles,
declined to come down lower, in spite of her improved fortunes. They
had a great many rehearsals at the theater, too, and Cartouche, as
stage manager, had lost none of his strictness, and ordered Fifi about
as peremptorily as if he were not to be married to her on Thursday.
Fifi obeyed him very sweetly and had a new humility toward him.

All of their fellow actors showed them great good-will--even Julie
Campionet, who behaved in the most beautiful manner, considering what
provocation Fifi had long given her. Everybody connected with the
theater gave them a little present--poor and cheap enough, but rich
in kindness. Even the old woman who lighted the theater brought Fifi
a couple of pink candles for a wedding present, and Fifi thankfully
accepted them.

Two days before the wedding came three splendid presents--a fine shawl
from the Empress, a watch from the Emperor and a purse from the Holy
Father. Fifi was charmed, and took up so much time at rehearsal in
exhibiting these gorgeous gifts that she failed to answer her cue, and
subjected herself to a fine, according to the rules of the theater,
which Cartouche rigorously exacted.

Fifi worked so hard preparing for her wedding on the Thursday morning,
and her return to the stage on the Thursday evening, that the hours
flew as if on wings--and the day came almost before she knew it.

The morning was fair and bright as only May mornings can be fair and
bright. Fifi and Cartouche, with Duvernet and Julie Campionet, now
completely reconciled with Fifi for a short time, walked to the
_mairie_ and then to the parish church, and were married hard and fast.
From thence they went to a cheap café to breakfast, and Duvernet, in
honor of the occasion, had a two-franc bouquet of violets on the table.
All of the waiters knew that two of the party were bride and groom, but
Cartouche was so solemn and silent, and Duvernet so gay and talkative,
that everybody supposed Duvernet the happy man and Cartouche the
disappointed suitor.

It was then time for the rehearsal, which lasted nearly all the rest of
the day, Cartouche being unusually strict. When the curtain went up in
the evening never was there such an audience or so much money in the
Imperial Theater. The best seats were put at the unprecedented price of
two francs and a half, and Duvernet gnashed his teeth that he had not
made them three francs, so great was the crowd. The play was the famous
classical one in which Duvernet had worn the toga made of Fifi’s white
petticoat. This time he had a beautiful toga, bought at a sale of third
and fourth-hand theatrical wardrobes, and it had been washed by Julie
Campionet’s own hands.

Everybody in the cast made a success. Even Cartouche as the wounded
Roman centurion of the Pretorian Guard, got several recalls, and he
was no great things of an actor. Duvernet covered himself with glory,
but all paled before Fifi’s triumph. Never was there such a thunder of
applause, such a tempest of curtain calls, such a storm of bravos. Fifi
palpitated with joy and pride.

When at last the performance was over, and Cartouche and Fifi came out
of the theater into the dark street, under the quiet stars, Fifi said,
quite seriously:

“Cartouche, my heart is troubled.”

“Why, Fifi?”

“Because I am not half good enough for you. I am only Fifi--you know
what I mean. I am ashamed that I am not something more and better than
merely Fifi.”

And Cartouche, who was usually the most matter-of-fact fellow alive,
replied softly:

“As if a rose should be ashamed of being only a rose!”




  BY
  MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL

  FRANCEZKA

  “A STORY OF YOUTH AND
  SPLENDOR”

  ILLUSTRATED BY
  HARRISON FISHER




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

On page 233, mattrees has been changed to mattress.

On page 226, love-making has been changed to lovemaking.

All other spelling, hyphenation and languages other than English have
been left as typeset.

The illustrations in the printed book had no captions; captions have
been added to this text to give the reader of a sense of their value.