The White House Part 3

"Fifine, listen to me, I entreat you!"

"Are you going to cry?"

"To go to the Baron de Marcey's, I must wear full evening dress."

"Ah! I see what you're coming at--you want me to put on your curl-papers."

"Curl-papers--I shall be glad if you will, it is true; for you do it to perfection."

"Ah! the lion is quieting down!"

"But there is something else of which I am in urgent need, and that is my black silk stockings, which I lent you the last Sunday that it rained."

"Your silk stockings?"

"Yes, mademoiselle."

"The deuce! but they're a long way off, if they're still going!"

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean that I lent them to Fdora, to play in private theatricals, and she admitted that she let her best friend wear them the next day, to a wedding; but as his calves are exceptionally big, he ripped a few st.i.tches when he took them off."

"Mon Dieu! this is what comes of lending your things!"

"Is a person to presume that her lover will ask her to return what he lends her?"

"Mademoiselle, I am not a capitalist, a dealer in novelties. I have never pretended to play the _grand seigneur_ with you."

"Oh! anyone can see that!--Catch it, Raoul."

"Don't throw cherry-stones at me, please.--What am I to do? It's eight o'clock already; to be sure, I know that people go very late to large receptions."

"Sometimes they don't go till the next day; it's more _comme il faut_."

"But I counted on those stockings."

"You must buy some more; there's a place across the street where they sell them."

"Buy some? Oh, yes! that's very easy to say.--You shouldn't have made me spend twelve francs at the restaurant last Sunday."

"We will spend fifteen next Sunday, my dear friend."

"You always want to eat the things that cost most."

"Nothing's too good for me."

"Well, if I buy stockings, it's adieu to our country excursion for Sunday, I warn you."

"That begins to move me.--Come, be calm, _loulou_; you're very lucky to have a sweetheart with some imagination. Stay here and begin to dress at the top; I'll go to look after the lower part!"[1]

"Oh! my dear Fifine, how good you will be to do that!"

"Give me five or six sheets of note paper--vellum."

"Here they are; as it happens, I have just brought some home from my office. Do you want some sealing-wax--three sticks?"

"Yes, yes, give it to me; I secure madame's good graces with these things; otherwise she wouldn't have let me come away so early; but I said that I had a sick-headache, and as I'm her favorite, she said: 'Go upstairs to bed.'"

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 b.u.t.ton, 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, opera-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 denouement, 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 _Belisaire_, 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 s.h.i.+rt.

"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!"

"To be sure, as it was Adeline who lent them to me."

"Men don't wear openwork things like these."

"Bah! men wear something else, and it doesn't prevent their dancing."

"But----"

"But these are all I could find, and it seems to me that you ought to be well satisfied."

Robineau concluded at last to put on the stockings.

"They'll think that it's a new style I am trying to introduce," he said.

While he began to dress, Fifine took the guitar and hummed a tune.

"So I shan't have any lesson to-night, my friend?"