Angéline was reduced by this tirade to surly silence, and, not bearing in mind that Fifi was really a very clever little actress, actually thought she was in a boiling rage. Fifi was meanwhile laughing in her sleeve.
CHAPTER VII
A MOST IMPRUDENT THING
Madame Bourcet sat in the snuff-colored drawing-room, nursing her rheumatism, when in walked Fifi as demure as the cat after it has eaten the canary. She mentioned casually that she had bought a few things for her trousseau, and Madame Bourcet presumed that the sum total of expenditure was something like a hundred francs. Still, with visions of the pink spangled gown which Fifi wished to buy for her presentation to the Holy Father, Madame Bourcet thought it well to say, warningly:
“I hope your purchases were of a sober and substantial character, warranted to wear well, and in quiet colors.”
“Wait, Madame, until you see them,” was Fifi’s diplomatic answer.
As soon as she could, she escaped to her own room, and, locking the door, she opened her precious trunk with the relics of her theatrical life in it, and began to handle them tenderly.
“Oh, you dear old wig, how happy I was when I wore you!” she said to herself, clapping the white wig over her own rich brown hair. “When I put you on I became a marquise at the court of Louis le Grand, and how fine it seemed! Never mind, I shall be a marquise again, and get forty francs the week at least! And how nice it will be to be quarreling with Julie Campionet again, the wretch! And Duvernet—I shall not forget to remind him of how I gave him my best white cotton petticoat for his toga—and sewed it with my own fingers, too! And I shall say to him, ‘Recollect, Monsieur, I am no longer Fifi, but Mademoiselle Josephine Chiaramonti, granddaughter of the cousin of a reigning sovereign, and I am the young lady who won the grand prize in the lottery, and spent it all; you never had a leading lady before who knew how to spend a hundred thousand francs.’ I think I can see Duvernet now—and as I say it I shall toy with my paste brooch. I can’t buy any jewels, for that wouldn’t help me to get rid of Louis Bourcet, or to get Cartouche; so I shall tell Duvernet that nothing in the way of diamonds seemed worth while after those I had already.”
Fifi fondled her paste brooch, which was kept in the same shrine as the white wig, and then she clasped to her breast Cartouche’s javelin, made from a broomstick, and it seemed to her almost as if she were clasping Cartouche. It put the notion into her head to write him a letter, so she hastily closed her trunk, and sat down to write.
“Cartouche, I went out this morning, and spent ten thousand francs of that odious money I won through that abominable lottery ticket you gave me. I should think you would never cease reproaching yourself if you knew how miserable that lottery ticket has made me. I bought some of the most terrible gowns you ever saw, and a bed that cost five thousand francs, and which the Empress couldn’t buy. I shall tell poor Louis and Madame Bourcet that these gowns are for my trousseau—but, of course, I have not the slightest idea of marrying Louis. I made up my mind not to last night, the very moment I promised—and so I wrote to you before I slept. It is not at all difficult to spend money; it is as easy to spend five thousand francs for a bed as five, if you have the money. And I had the money in my reticule. I shan’t tell you now how I got it, but I did, just the same, Cartouche. I long to see you. I did something for you to-day that I would not do for any one else in the world. You know how afraid I am of monkeys? Well, I can not explain in a letter, but you will be pleased when I tell you all. Fifi.”
It was not Louis Bourcet’s habit to appear in his aunt’s apartment until eight o’clock, but at six o’clock, seeing a great van drawn up before the door, from which was disgorged innumerable large parcels addressed to his fiancée, Louis, like other good men, was vanquished by his curiosity. He mounted the stairs, on which he was jostled at every step by men carrying huge pasteboard boxes of every size and shape, all addressed to Mademoiselle Chiaramonti.