“Don’t mention it,” gloomily replied Julie Campionet’s husband. “She has told me twenty times since yesterday that she means to get a divorce, just like the others. If she doesn’t, I can, perhaps, get her to take her old parts by giving her an additional five francs the week—for I assure you, when it comes to a question of salary, she is not Madame Duvernet, but Julie Campionet.”
“It would be against my conscience, Monsieur, to interfere with your domestic peace—” said Fifi demurely, and that time it was Duvernet who didn’t know whether or not Fifi was laughing at him.
“Mademoiselle,” replied he, with his loftiest air, “do you suppose I would let my domestic peace stand before Art? No. A thousand times no! Art is always first with me, and last. And besides, if Julie Campionet should get a divorce from me—well, I have never found any trouble yet in getting married. All the trouble came afterward.”
“Fifty francs,” mused Fifi; “and if I allow you to bill me as Mademoiselle Chiaramonti, and the granddaughter of the Pope’s cousin, that would be worth at least twenty-five francs the week more. Seventy-five francs the week.”
“Good heavens, no!” shouted Duvernet. “The Holy Father himself wouldn’t be worth seventy-five francs at the Imperial Theater! Sixty francs, at the outside, and Julie Campionet to think it is fifty.”
“I had better wait until I am married to Cartouche,” replied Fifi innocently.
But waiting was just what the manager did not want. So, still urging her to take sixty francs, they reached the palace.
Fifi had a little note prepared and gave it, together with a pink gilt-bordered card, inscribed “Mademoiselle Josephine Chiaramonti,” to the porter at the door. The porter evidently regarded Fifi, and her note and card included, with the utmost disfavor, but, like most underlings, he was well acquainted with his master’s private affairs, and knew in a minute who Fifi was, and so, grudgingly went off with her letter and card.
Fifi and Duvernet kept up their argument in the great, gloomy anteroom into which they were ushered. Fifi was saying: