The fortunes of Fifi

by Molly Elliot Seawell

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.