Then Fifi, glancing about, saw a rickety old chair at the head of the stairs, and noiselessly fetching it, she put it against the door, stepped up on it; a second step on the little table by the door, and a third step on the floor, brought her in the room, and close to Cartouche. She laid one hand upon his shoulder—with the other she picked up Toto—and said, in a wheedling voice:
“Cartouche, shall we be married this day fortnight?”
Cartouche made a faint effort to push her away, but the passion in him rose up lion-like, and mastered him. He seized Fifi in his strong arms and devoured her rosy lips with kisses. Then, dropping her as suddenly, he cried wildly:
“No, no! It is not right, Fifi—I can not do you so cruel a wrong!”
“You are almost as bad as Louis Bourcet,” remarked Fifi, straightening her curly hair, which was all over her face. “Nevertheless, I shall marry you this day fortnight.”
For answer, Cartouche vaulted over the half-door, in spite of his bad leg, and was gone clattering down the stairs. Fifi listened as the sound died away, and then ran to the window to see him go out of the house and walk off, as fast as he could, down the street of the Black Cat.
“Toto,” said Fifi to her friend, taking him up in her arms: “We—you and I—are not good enough for Cartouche, but all the same, we mean to have him. I can not live without him—that is, I will not, which comes to the same thing—and all the other men I have ever known seem small and mean alongside of Cartouche—” which showed that Fifi, as she claimed, really had some sense.
As for Cartouche, he walked along through the narrow streets into the crowded thoroughfare, full of shadows even then, although it was still early in the soft, spring afternoon. He neither knew nor cared where he was going except that he must fly from Fifi’s witching eyes and tender words and sweet caresses. His heart was pounding so that he could fancy others heard it besides himself. This marriage was clearly impossible—it was not to be thought of. Fifi, in spite of her rashness and throwing away of her fortune, was no fool. She had not, as Cartouche feared, assumed a style of living that would have made a hundred thousand francs a mere bagatelle. What she had squandered, she had squandered deliberately for a purpose; what she had given had been given to a good cause, for Fifi, of all women, best knew her own mind. And to think that she should have taken up this strange notion to marry him—after she had seen something so far superior—so Cartouche thought. And what was to be done? If necessary, he would leave the Imperial Theater, and go far, far away; but what then would become of Fifi, alone and unprotected, rash and young and beautiful?
Turning these things over tumultuously in his mind, Cartouche found himself in front of the shop where he had bought Fifi the red cloak. There was a mirror in the window, and Cartouche stood and looked at himself in it. The mirror stiffened his resolution.
“No,” he said. “Fifi must not throw herself away on such a looking fellow. I love her—I love her too well for that.”