Fifine took the paper and sealing-wax, and skipped out of Robineau’s room; whereupon he began to undress, saying to himself:
"She is really an excellent girl, and as bright as a button, this Fifine! She’s a little hasty, and a bit of a glutton; but still she is mad over me and would jump into the fire for me. She has refused marquises, beet-sugar manufacturers and brokers for me; and yet I simply take her out on Sundays—that’s all. She isn’t like Monsieur Edouard’s sempstress, who left him for an Englishman.—Ha! ha! I am not so very sorry, for he seems rather inclined to put on airs. He has about three thousand francs a year, I believe; that’s not so much! But he writes plays, opéra-comiques, vaudevilles—that is to say, fragments of vaudevilles.—Mon Dieu! if I had the time, I would write plays, too; and I flatter myself they’d be done rather better than his. But when a man has to be at his desk from nine o’clock till four, and always working, how is he to cultivate the Muses? When I am chief of a bureau, or even deputy chief, then it will be different—I shall have some time to myself. That Alfred’s the lucky fellow! An only son, his father a baron, and about a hundred thousand francs a year!—And just see how it all came about: Alfred lost his mother when he was very young; his father married again some years later, and might have had other children; but he didn’t; instead of that, his wife, whom he adored, died three years after their marriage, and the baron, overwhelmed with grief by the loss of his second wife, swore that he would never marry again; and he has kept his oath, although he is still a young man.—How well it has all turned out for Alfred! Dieu! nothing like that will ever happen to me! And yet I have an uncle somewhere or other, careering round the world, according to what my mother told me before she died; an uncle who was determined to make his fortune, and who started for the Indies, or Peru—in fact, no one knows where. But psha! he has probably tried to leap Niagara! It’s only on the stage that uncles arrive just in time for the dénouement, in order to save innocence from going to prison. After all, I am not ambitious—I’m a philosopher, I am satisfied with what I have. If I had some silk stockings, though, I should be even better satisfied. But just let a fortune fall into my hands, and people will see how coolly, how phlegmatically I will receive it.—Well! here I am all undressed, and Mademoiselle Fifine doesn’t return.—I can’t put on my cravat before my feet are shod and my hair curled. Luckily it’s July, and I shan’t take cold."
To kill time, Robineau, being weary of walking about his room dressed like a person who is about to make bread, concluded to take his guitar. He had reached the second stanza of the romanza from Bélisaire, when he was interrupted by a burst of laughter. Fifine, having left the door ajar, had entered the room without making any noise, and was holding her sides as she contemplated Belisarius in his shirt.
"O Dieu! how handsome you are like that, my boy!" she said, still laughing; "I am tempted to call the girls to look at the picture."
"Call no one, I beg; although, without flattery, I believe I have a figure that wouldn’t frighten them."
"You look like a fat Bacchus."
"Let me see the stockings, please."
"Here they are, troubadour; and I think that they’ll make a handsome leg."
And Fifine tossed a pair of black silk stockings on Robineau’s knee. He examined them for some time, then cried:
"They’re a woman’s stockings!"