Public-domain ebook
Language: en446 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #68758.
The opening · free to read
Although it was not yet six o’clock, the November night had descended upon Paris--especially in those meaner quarters on the left bank of the Seine, where, in 1804, lights were still scarce. However, three yellow flickering lamps hung upon a rope stretched across the narrow Rue du Chat Noir. In this street of the Black Cat the tall old rickety houses loomed darkly in the brown mist that wrapped the town and shut out the light of the stars.
Short as well as narrow, the Rue du Chat Noir was yet a thoroughfare connecting two poor, but populous quarters. The ground floor of the chief building in the street was ornamented with a row of gaudy red lamps, not yet lighted, and above them, inscribed among some decaying plaster ornaments, ran the legend:
_______________________ | | | THE IMPERIAL THEATER. | | DUVERNET, MANAGER. | |_______________________|
Imperial was a great word in Paris in the month of November, 1804.
Across the way from the theater, at the corner where the tide of travel turns into the little street, stood Cartouche, general utility man in the largest sense of the Imperial Theater, and Mademoiselle Fifi, just promoted to be leading lady. The three glaring, swinging lamps enabled Cartouche to see Fifi’s laughing face and soft shining eyes as he harangued her.
“Now, Fifi,” Cartouche was saying sternly, “don’t get it into your head, because you have become Duvernet’s leading lady, with a salary of twenty-five francs the week, that you are Mademoiselle Mars at the House of Molière, with the Emperor waiting to see you as soon as the curtain goes down.”
“No, I won’t,” promptly replied Fifi.
“And remember--no flirtations.”
“Ah, Cartouche!”
“No flirtations, I say. Do you know why Duvernet made you his leading lady instead of Julie Campionet?”
“Because Julie Campionet can no more act than a broomstick, and--”
“You are mistaken. It is because Duvernet saw that Julie was going the way of his three former leading ladies. They have each, in turn, succeeded in marrying him, and there are three divorce cases at present against Duvernet, and he does not know which one of these leading ex-ladies he is married to, or if he is married at all; and here is Julie Campionet out for him with a net and a lantern. So Duvernet told me he must have a leading lady who didn’t want to marry him, and I said: ‘Promote Fifi. She doesn’t know much yet, but she can learn.’”
“Is it thus you speak of my art?” cried Fifi, who, since her elevation, sometimes assumed a very grand diction, as well as an air she considered highly imposing.
“It is thus I speak of your art,” replied Cartouche grimly--which caused Fifi’s pale, pretty cheeks to color, and made her shift her ground as she said, crossly:
“Everybody knows you lead Duvernet around by the nose.”
“Who is ‘everybody’?”
“Why, that hateful Julie Campionet, and myself, and--and--”
“It is the first thing I ever knew you and Julie Campionet to agree on yet--that the two of you are ‘everybody’. But mind what I say--no flirtations. Duvernet beats his wives, you know; and you come of people who don’t beat their wives, although you are only a little third-rate actress at a fourth-rate theater.”
Fifi’s eyes blazed up angrily at this, but it did not disturb Cartouche in the least.
“And you couldn’t stand blows from a husband,” Cartouche continued, “and that’s what the women in Duvernet’s class expect. Look you. My father was an honest man, and a good shoemaker, and kind to my mother, God bless her. But sometimes he got in drink and then he gave my mother a whack occasionally. Did she mind it? Not a bit, but gave him back as good as he sent; and when my father got sober, it was all comfortably made up between them. But that is not the way with people of your sort--because you are not named Chiaramonti for nothing.”
“It seems as if I were named Chiaramonti for nothing, if I am, as you say, only a little third-rate actress at a fourth-rate theater,” replied Fifi, sulkily.
“At all events, there’s no question of marrying for you, Fifi, unless you marry a gentleman, and there is about as much chance of that, as that pigs will learn to fly.”
“So, I am to have neither lover nor husband, no flirtations, no attachments--” Fifi turned an angry, charming face on Cartouche.
“Exactly.”
“Cartouche,” said Fifi, after a pause, and examining Cartouche’s brawny figure, “I wish you were not so big--nor so overbearing.”
“I dare say you wish it was my arm instead of my leg that is stiff,” said Cartouche.
He moved his right leg as he spoke, so as to show the stiffness of the knee-joint. Otherwise he was a well-made man. He continued, with a grin:
“You know very well I would warm the jackets of any of these scoundrels who hang about the Imperial Theater if they dared to be impudent to you, because I regard you as a--as a niece, Fifi, and I must take care of you.”
Cartouche had a wide mouth, a nose that was obstinacy itself, and he was, altogether, remarkably ugly and attractive. Dogs, children and old women found Cartouche a fascinating fellow, but young and pretty women generally said he was a bear. It was a very young and beautiful woman, the wife of the scene painter at the Imperial Theater, who had called attention to the unlucky similarity between Cartouche’s grotesque name and that of the celebrated highwayman.
Cartouche had caught the scene painter’s wife at some of her tricks and had taken the liberty of giving a good beating to the gentleman in the case, while the scene painter had administered a dose out of the same bottle to the lady; so the promising little affair was nipped in the bud, and the scene painter’s wife frightened into behaving herself. But she never wearied of gibing at Cartouche--his person, his acting, everything he did.
In truth, Cartouche was not much of an actor, and was further disqualified by his stiff leg. But the Imperial Theater could scarcely have got on without him. He could turn his hand to anything, from acting to carpentering. He was a terror to evil-doers, and stood well with the police. Duvernet, the manager, would rather have parted with his whole company than with Cartouche, who received for his services as actor, stage manager, and Jack of all trades the sum of twenty-two francs weekly, for which he worked eighteen hours a day.
The worst of Cartouche was that he always meant what he said; and Fifi, who was naturally inclined to flirtations, felt sure that it would not be a safe pastime for her, if Cartouche said not. And as for marrying--Cartouche had spoken the truth--what chance had she for marrying a gentleman? So Fifi’s dancing eyes grew rueful, as she studied Cartouche’s burly figure and weather-beaten face.
The night was penetratingly damp and chill, and Fifi shivered in her thin mantle. The winter had come early that year, and Fifi had taken the money which should have gone in a warm cloak and put it into the black feathers which nodded in her hat. Pity Fifi; she was not yet twenty.
Cartouche noted her little shiver.
“Ah, Fifi,” he said. “If only I had enough money to give you a cloak! But my appetite is so large! I am always thinking that I will save up something, and then comes a dish of beans and cabbage, or something like it, and my money is all eaten up!”
“Never mind, Cartouche,” cried Fifi, laughing, while her teeth chattered; “I have twenty-five francs the week now, and in a fortnight I can buy a cloak. Monsieur Duvernet asked me yesterday why I did not pawn my brooch of brilliants and buy some warm clothes. I posed for indignation--asked him how he dared to suggest that I should pawn the last remnant of splendor in my family--and he looked really abashed. Of course I couldn’t admit to him that the brooch was only paste; that brooch is my trump card with Duvernet. It always overawes him. I don’t think he ever had an actress before who had a diamond brooch, or what passes for one.”
“No,” replied Cartouche, who realized that the alleged diamond brooch gave much prestige to Fifi, with both the manager and the company. “However, better days are coming, Fifi, and if I could but live on a little less!”
The streets had been almost deserted up to that time, but suddenly and quietly, three figures showed darkly out of the mist. They kept well beyond the circle of light made by the swinging lamp, which made a great, yellow patch on the mud of the street.
All three of them wore long military cloaks with high collars, and their cocked hats were placed so as to conceal as much as possible of their features. Nevertheless, at the first sight of one of these figures, Cartouche started and his keen eyes wandered from Fifi’s face. But Fifi herself was looking toward the other end of the street, from which came the sound of horses’ hoofs and the rattle of a coach in the mud. It came into sight--a huge dark unwieldy thing, with four horses, followed by a couple of traveling chaises. As the coach lurched slowly along, it passed from the half-darkness into the circle of light of the swinging lamps. Within it sat a frail old man, wrapped up in a great white woolen cloak. He wore on his silvery hair a white beretta. His skin was of the delicate pallor seen in old persons who have lived clean and gentle lives, and he had a pair of light and piercing eyes, which saw everything, and had a mild, but compelling power in them.
Fifi, quite beside herself with curiosity, leaned forward, nearly putting her head in the coach window. At that very moment, the coach, almost wedged in the narrow street, came to a halt for a whole minute. The bright, fantastic light of the lamps overhead streamed full upon Fifi’s sparkling face, vivid with youth and hope and confidence, and a curiosity at once gay and tender, and she met the direct gaze of the gentle yet commanding eyes of the old man.
The book keeps going
Reading is free forever. Sign up and watch scenes appear while you read.
Scenes Storieta drew for other classics.
New illustrated classics
Once or twice a month: the latest books to get full character casts, scene art, and free comic editions. No account needed.
