THE FORTUNES OF FIFI

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

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.

“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.”