“The time has been when I was a poor parish priest, that I had not the clothes of a gentleman, so I can feel for your Cartouche. So now, farewell, and be a good child—and forty francs the week as long as you are simply Mademoiselle Fifi. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Holy Father, and I can not thank you enough, and I am the happiest creature in the world.”
And then Fifi fell on her knees, and received a tender blessing, and went away, thinking with pride and joy of the visit she was to make after she was married to Cartouche.
“I know the Holy Father will like him,” she thought, as she tripped along the grand avenue toward the town. “The Holy Father is kind and simple of heart, and honest and brave, and so is Cartouche, and each will know this of the other, so how can they help being satisfied each with the other?”
Thinking these thoughts she almost walked over Duvernet, who was proceeding in the same direction. Duvernet’s manner had undergone a complete change in the last half-hour, and he spoke to Fifi with an offhandedness which took no account of her ruffled feathers when he addressed her by her first name.
“Fifi,” said Duvernet, “for it is all nonsense to call you Mademoiselle Chiaramonti now—Fifi, I say, I will give you fifty francs the week on the strength of having drawn the first prize in the lottery, of having given your fortune to the soldiers’ orphans and of being thanked, as you will be, by the Emperor and Empress in person. It is a liberal offer. No other manager in Paris would do so well.”
“And my art?” asked Fifi, grandly.
“Oh, yes, your art is well enough, as long as I have Cartouche to manage you. With the Pope’s forty francs the week you will be the richest woman in our profession on the left bank of the Seine.”
Fifi considered a while, walking briskly along. Ninety francs the week! What stupendous wealth! But it would never do to yield at once.
“And I am to have all of Julie Campionet’s best parts? And you are to be on my side in all my quarrels with Julie?”