This alluded to Penelope; but I was determined not to understand. I went to say adieu to Madame de Mourairef, who seemed rather excited and anxious. Penelope almost succeeded in wringing forth a tear; but I did not think it was decreed that at my age I should really make love to a Russian serf, however charming. So off they went to the railway station, leaving me in a very dull, stupid, melancholy mood.
'What a fortunate man M. Jerome is!' said the garçon, as he came into my room a few minutes afterwards.
'Yes,' I replied; 'Madame de Mourairef seems in every way worthy of him.'
'I should think so,' quoth he. 'It is not every waiter, however fascinating, that falls in with a Russian princess.'
'Waiter! M. Jerome!'
'Of course,' replied my informant. 'You seem surprised; but M. Jerome is really a waiter at the Café ——, on the Boulevard des Italiens; came down for his health. We were comrades once, and I promised to keep the secret, for he thought it extremely probable that he might meet a wealthy English lady here, who might fall in love with him—your countrywomen are so eccentric. He has found a Russian princess, which is better. I suppose we must now call him Monseigneur?'
Although, like the rest of my species, disposed to laugh at the misfortunes of my fellow-creatures, I confess that I pitied Madame de Mourairef; for I felt persuaded that M. Jerome had passed himself off as a very distinguished personage. However, there was no remedy, and I had no right to interfere in the matter. The lady, indeed, had been in an unpardonable hurry to be won, and must take the consequences.
In the afternoon, there was a great bustle in the hôtel, and half-a-dozen voices were heard doing the work of fifty. I went out into the passage, and caught the first fragments of an explanation that soon became complete. M. Alphonse, courier to M. de Mourairef, had arrived, and was indignantly maintaining that Sophie and Penelope, the two waiting-maids of the princess, had arrived at the Tête Noire, to take a suite of rooms for their mistress; whilst the landlord and his coadjutors, slow to comprehend, averred that the great lady had herself been there, and departed. The truth at length came out—that these two smart Parisian lasses, having a fortnight before them, had determined to give up their places, and play the mascarade which I have described. When M. and Madame de Mourairef, two respectable, middle-aged people, arrived, they were dismally made acquainted with the sacrilege that had been committed; but as no debts had been contracted in their name, and their letters came in a parcel by the post from Orleans, they laughed heartily at the joke, and enjoyed the idea that Sophie had been taken in.
The following winter, I went into a café newly established in the Rue Poissonière, and was agreeably surprised to see Sophie, the pseudo-princess, sitting behind the counter in magnificent toilette, receiving the bows and the money of the customers as they passed before her, whilst M. Jerome—exactly in appearance as before, except that prosperity had begun to round him—was leaning against a pillar in rather a melodramatic attitude, a white napkin gracefully depending from his hand. They started on seeing me, and were a little confused, but soon laughed over their adventure; called Penelope to take her turn at the counter—the little serf whispered to me as she passed, that I was 'a traitor, a barbarian,' and insisted on treating me to my coffee and my petit verre, free, gratis, for nothing.