The subject of Fifi’s marriage to Louis was not touched upon by either Madame Bourcet or Louis in that week, although Louis continued to spend his evenings with his aunt and Fifi, and did not intermit the nightly game of cribbage. If it was imprudent to marry Fifi, it was likewise imprudent not to marry her—so reasoned the unhappy Louis, who, like Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, was of two minds at the same time, and fairly distracted between them.
But, if the Bourcets let the marriage question remain discreetly in the background, not so Fifi. Having discovered that Louis suffered acutely from her manifestations of affection, Fifi proceeded to subject him to a form of torture in high repute among the most bloodthirsty savages of North America. This consists in smearing the victim’s body all over with honey, and then letting him be slowly stung to death by gnats and flies. Figuratively speaking, she smeared poor Louis with honey from his head to his heels, and then had a delicious joy in seeing him writhe under his agonies. And the innocence and simplicity with which she did it fooled the unfortunate Louis completely.
One thing seemed clear to him: even if the Holy Father were willing to give up so desirable a husband for his young relative, Fifi, herself, would have to be reckoned with; and it all came, Louis thought, with a rainbow of vanity athwart the gloom, of his being so dreadfully handsome, fascinating and virtuous.
To Fifi this was the comedy part of the drama—and she played it for all there was in it.
She reckoned the shopping episode as the first act of the play. That was through, and there must be a second act. Fifi was too much of an artist to repeat herself. She felt she had reached the limit of horrors in shopping, and she still had nearly ninety thousand francs sewed up in her mattress. Some new way must be devised for getting rid of it. She thought of endowing beds in hospitals, of giving dots to young ladies, not so fortunate as herself in having a man like Cartouche, who declined a fortune—and a thousand other schemes; but all involved some vague and mysterious business transactions which frightened Fifi.
But, by a turn of fate, most unexpected, it was Cartouche who showed her a way out of her difficulties, and it filled her with delight. It was in a letter Cartouche wrote her in response to the two she had sent him, one after the other. Cartouche’s letter was written in very black ink, in a large, slovenly hand, on a big sheet of paper, and Fifi knew perfectly well that he was in a rage when writing it.
“Fifi: What nonsense is this you write me, that as soon as you promised to marry Louis Bourcet you determined not to marry him? What have you been doing? Don’t you know if you squander your money neither Louis Bourcet nor any man of his class will marry you? Four thousand francs for your trousseau is outrageous; as for the blue-satin bed the Empress could not buy, I can not trust myself to speak of it. If you continue acting in this way, I will not come to your wedding, nor let Toto come—that is, if Monsieur Bourcet or any other man will marry you. You seem to be bitten with the desire to do everything the Empress does, and a little more besides. You might follow the Empress’ example, and going in your coach and six, with outriders, to the banking-house of Lafitte, make a little gift of a hundred thousand francs to the fund for soldiers’ orphans. Fifi, you are a goose, and there is no disguising it. I hope Monsieur Bourcet will use the strong hand on you, for your own good. Cartouche.
“P. S. I could tell you many interesting things about Toto, but I am so angry I can not write any more.”
Fifi read this letter over, with a serene smile. Of course Cartouche was angry—but that was rather amusing.
She laid the letter down, and looked up at the patch of blue sky visible from her bedroom window. She seemed to see in that blue patch all her former life, so full of work, of makeshifts, of gaiety, of vivid interest—and compared with it the dull and spiritless existence before her—that is, which had lately been before her; because now the determination to return to the old life was as strong as the soul within her.