Molly Elliot Seawell

“ 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? ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Poor Cartouche, who had alternated between heaven and hell ever since Fifi’s return, was in [Pg 220] 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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.
“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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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!” ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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?” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”