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.