"You must get your lover to take you, some day when he's in funds."
"My lover's never in funds; I don't know what he does with his money; he wouldn't treat me to a glass of cider! He pretends that he puts every sou in the savings bank against the time we get married."
"Believe that and drink water, my poor Sophie!—Pins, please."
"The large scissors."
"Here they are."
"However, he took me to the theatre once, because somebody'd given him the tickets. That day, I remember, we dined in my room, on very little, and I was very hungry at the theatre; it was a theatre on the boulevard, and the play was a long melodrama. At half-past eleven we still had four acts to see. But in the play, where the scene was a farmhouse, and peasants coming home from work, all of a sudden they brought on a big wooden bowl and went to eating cabbage soup. It was real cabbage soup, I can tell you, and it was smoking hot and smelt awful good. Imagine the effect it produced on us, hungry as we were!—'I've a good mind to apply at once to be admitted to the chorus,' I says to Oscar; but he had already got up and opened the door of the box, where we were all alone, and called the opener; when she came, I heard him say: 'Madame, my wife's in a situation where it ain't safe to refuse her anything—a situation in which women are subject to the strangest whims and the most extraordinary desires; you understand what I mean—she's enceinte. Well, after a dinner fit for the angels, at Véry's, here she is acting like a madwoman because she smells the cabbage soup they're eating on the stage. She wants some of it, says she must have it, and threatens me with a plate of soup as offspring if I don't satisfy her craving. Isn't there some way of doing it, madame? there's no sacrifice I'm not capable of making to prevent my wife's giving me a cabbage for a son.'—The opener, hoping to be handsomely paid, replied: 'Never fear, monsieur; I'll just go down and tell 'em at the office, and they'll send word on to the stage; your wife shall have some cabbage soup, I promise you.'—'A thousand thanks, madame,' says Oscar. 'Please go and ask for a lot of it at once, for in her present condition, when we dine at a restaurant, my wife always eats soup enough for four, and it doesn't do her a bit of harm.'—The box opener went off, and Oscar came back to his seat. You can judge whether I wanted to laugh. 'Keep quiet,' says my lover, 'and try to look as if you were in the condition I said you were; we are going to sup at the expense of the management; it won't hurt them, and it will give us great pleasure.'—And, sure enough, in a few minutes the opener came into the box with a pretty little soup tureen, a deep plate, and a spoon, which she offered me with a most amiable smile.—'Madame shall have all she wants,' she says; 'they've filled the tureen, so that madame can satisfy her craving.'—'You are a thousand times too good,' says Oscar; 'but I hope that you will be satisfied with me, too.'—With that, the woman bows to the ground, and goes off, shutting the door behind her. No sooner were we alone, than Oscar filled the plate for me, but kept the spoon and began to gulp down all that was left in the tureen; as there was only one spoon, I had to wait till he'd finished before I could eat my plateful; but the soup was fine, I assure you. When we had finished, Oscar called the box opener again, and gave her the tureen and plate and spoon.—'Would you believe that my wife would eat it all!' he says. 'It's incredible what feats a woman in her condition will perform!'—The opener said that she was delighted that I had satisfied my craving, and off she went again with the things we had given back to her. As soon as she was out of sight, my lover says to me: 'Put on your hat and shawl, and be all ready to go.'—Then he looked out in the corridor, but was flabbergasted to see our box opener sitting there in her chair; she had given the things to a lemonade boy to carry back to the stage. Oscar swore between his teeth, but as he was one of the kind that's never embarrassed, he says: 'Wait till the end of the next act.'—The act ended very soon; then he motioned to me to get up, I took his arm, and we went out of the box. I leaned on him as if it was very hard for me to walk. As we passed the opener, Oscar says to her: 'What do you suppose it is now, madame? this wife of mine insists on having an ice. Gad! what strange ideas Nature has!'—'But, monsieur, you could just as well have had it brought to your box.'—'True, but I think it won't do my wife any harm to have a breath of air. Keep our seats for us, madame; is it a long intermission?'—'Not very, monsieur.'—'Come, then, my dear love; let's make haste, for I'm very much interested in the play, and I don't want to lose a scene. Be sure and keep our box for us, madame.'—With that, Oscar pulled me along, and we left the theatre, with not the slightest desire to return. The box opener didn't even get the price of the cricket she had pushed under my feet. And that's the only time my lover ever treated me."
Mademoiselle Sophie's anecdote greatly amused the young dressmaking apprentices. Mademoiselle Euphémie could not control her outbursts of laughter, and the corpulent Julienne cried:
"But it would have been much more convenient for eating, if they'd had a box with a salon. There must be plates and glasses in those boxes."
"They even have a kitchen at one side," said tall Laura, "with everything you need to roast a joint."
"Oh! what fun it must be to see a play and turn the spit at the same time!"