“Hurrah!” cried the clerks like one man. “Bravo!—Very well!—Vivat!—Long live the Marests!—”
“Pontins,” added the boy (Les Marais Pontins—the Pontine Marshes).
“What is up?” asked Desroches, coming out of his private room. “Ah! you are here, Georges,” said he to the visitor. “I know you, you are leading my clerks into mischief.” And he went back into his own room, calling Oscar.
“Here,” said he, opening his cashbox, “are five hundred francs; go to the Palace of Justice and get the judgment in the case of Vandenesse vs. Vandenesse out of the copying-clerk’s office; it must be sent in this evening if possible. I promised Simon a refresher of twenty francs; wait for the copy if it is not ready, and do not let yourself be put off. Derville is quite capable of putting a drag on our wheels if it will serve his client.—Count Félix de Vandenesse is more influential than his brother the Ambassador, our client. So keep your eyes open, and if the least difficulty arises, come to me at once.”
Oscar set out, determined to distinguish himself in this little skirmish, the first job that had come to him since his promotion.
When Georges and Oscar were both gone, Godeschal tried to pump the new clerk as to what jest might lie, as he felt sure, under the name of the Marquise de las Florentinas y Cabirolos; but Frédéric carried on his cousin’s joke with the coolness and gravity of a judge, and by his replies and his manner contrived to convey to all the clerks that the Marquise de las Florentinas was the widow of a Spanish grandee, whom his cousin was courting. Born in Mexico, and the daughter of a Creole, this wealthy young widow was remarkable for the free-and-easy demeanor characteristic of the women of the Tropics.
“ ‘She likes to laugh, She likes to drink, She likes to sing as we do,’ ” said he, quoting a famous song by Béranger. “And Georges,” he went on, “is very rich; he inherited a fortune from his father, who was a widower, and who left him eighteen thousand francs a year, which, with twelve thousand left to each of us by an uncle, make an income of thirty thousand francs. And he hopes to be Marquis de las Florentinas, for the young widow bears her title in her own right, and can confer it on her husband.”
Though the clerks remained very doubtful as to the Marquise, the prospect of a breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale, and of a fashionable soirée, filled them with joy. They reserved their opinion as to the Spanish lady, to judge her without appeal after having seen her.
The Marquise de las Florentinas was, in fact, neither more nor less than Mademoiselle Agathe Florentine Cabirolle, leading danseuse at the Gaîté Theatre, at whose house Uncle Cardot “sang ‘La Mère Godichon.’ ” Within a year of the very reparable loss of the late Madame Cardot, the fortunate merchant met Florentine one evening coming out of Coulon’s dancing school. Dazzled by the beauty of this flower of the ballet—Florentine was then but thirteen—the retired shopkeeper followed her to the Rue Pastourelle, where he had the satisfaction of learning that the future divinity of the dance owed her existence to a humble doorkeeper. The mother and daughter, transplanted within a fortnight to the Rue de Crussol, there found themselves in modest but easy circumstances. So it was to this “Patron of the Arts,” to use a time-honored phrase, that the stage was indebted for the budding artist.
The generous Maecenas almost turned their simple brains by giving them mahogany furniture, curtains, carpets, and a well-fitted kitchen; he enabled them to keep a servant, and allowed them two hundred and fifty francs a month. Old Cardot, with his ailes de pigeon, to them seemed an angel, and was treated as a benefactor should be. This was the golden age of the old man’s passion.
For three years the singer of “La Mère Godichon” was so judicious as to keep Mademoiselle Cabirolle and her mother in this unpretentious house, close to the theatre; then, for love of the Terpsichorean art, he placed his protégée under Vestris. And, in 1820, he was so happy as to see Florentine dance her first steps in the ballet of a spectacular melodrama called The Ruins of Babylon. Florentine was now sixteen.
Soon after this first appearance Uncle Cardot was “an old hunks,” in the young lady’s estimation; however, as he had tact enough to understand that a dancer at the Gaîté Theatre must keep up a position, and raised her monthly allowance to five hundred francs a month, if he was no longer an angel, he was at least a friend for life, a second father. This was the age of silver.
Between 1820 and 1823 Florentine went through the experience which must come to every ballet-dancer of nineteen or twenty. Her friends were the famous opera-singers Mariette and Tullia; Florine, and poor Coralie, so early snatched from Art, Love, and Camusot. And as little uncle Cardot himself was now five years older, he had drifted into the indulgence of that half-fatherly affection which old men feel for the young talents they have trained, and whose successes are theirs. Besides, how and where should a man of sixty-eight have formed such another attachment as this with Florentine, who knew his ways, and at whose house he could sing “La Mère Godichon” with his friends? So the little man found himself under a half matrimonial yoke of irresistible weight. This was the age of brass.
In the course of the five years of the ages of gold and of silver, Cardot had saved ninety thousand francs. The old man had had much experience; he foresaw that by the time he was seventy Florentine would be of age; she would probably come out on
