“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?”