“But, dear me,” said Philippe, “how far does she carry her favors for an old dappled-gray trooper like you?”
“Praise the Lord, I have never forgotten the old principles of our glorious uniform!” said Giroudeau. “I never spent two farthings on a woman.”
“What next?” cried Philippe, with a finger to his left eye.
“Quite true,” said Giroudeau. “But, between ourselves, the paper has something to do with it. Tomorrow you will see, in two lines, the management will be advised to give Mademoiselle Florentine a pas seul.—On my word, my dear boy, I am very happy,” said Giroudeau.
“Well,” thought Philippe, “if this venerable Giroudeau, in spite of a skull as bare as your knee, his eight-and-forty years, his corporation, his face like a wine-grower, and his nose like a potato, can be sweetheart to a dancer, I ought to be the man for the first actress in Paris.—Where are such articles to be had?” he asked Giroudeau.
“I will take you this evening to see Florentine’s humble home. Though my Dulcinea gets but fifty francs a month from the theatre, thanks to a retired silk mercer named Cardot, who allows her five hundred francs a month, she is not so badly set up.”
“Why—what?” said Philippe, jealous.
“Pooh!” said Giroudeau. “True love is blind.”
After the play Giroudeau took Philippe to see Mademoiselle Florentine, who lived in the Rue de Crussol, a stone’s-throw from the theatre.
“We must behave,” said Giroudeau; “Florentine has her mother with her. As you may suppose, I cannot afford to allow her one, and the good woman really is her mother. The woman was a doorkeeper, but she does not lack brains, and her name is Cabirolle. Call her madame; she is particular about that.”
Florentine had at her house that evening a friend of hers, a certain Marie Godeschal, as lovely as an angel, as cold as a ballet-dancer, and a pupil of Vestris, who promised her the highest Terpsichorean distinctions. Mademoiselle Godeschal, who was anxious to come out at the Panorama-dramatique, under the name of Mariette, counted on the patronage of a First Groom of the Chambers, to whom Vestris had long promised to present her. Vestris, as yet still in full vigor, did not think his pupil sufficiently advanced. Marie Godeschal was ambitious, and she made her assumed name of Mariette famous; but her ambition was praiseworthy. She had a brother, a clerk in Derville the lawyer’s office. Orphans and poor, but loving each other truly, the brother and sister had seen life as it is in Paris; he wished to become an attorney so as to provide for his sister; she determined in cold blood to be a dancer, and to avail herself of her beauty as well as of her nimble legs to buy a connection for her brother. Apart from their affection for each other, from their interests and their life together, everything else was to them, as to the ancient Romans and the Hebrews, barbarian, foreign, and inimical. This beautiful affection, which nothing could ever change, explained Mariette’s life to those who knew her well.
The brother and sister lived at this time on the eighth floor of a house in the Vieille Rue du Temple. Mariette had begun learning at the age of ten, and had now seen sixteen summers. Alas! for lack of a little dress her dainty beauty, hidden under an Angola shawl, perched on iron pattens, dressed in cotton print, and only moderately neat, could never be suspected by anyone but the Paris lounger in pursuit of grisettes and on the track of beauty under a cloud.
Philippe fell in love with Mariette. What Mariette found in Philippe was an officer of the Dragoon Guards and of the Emperor’s staff, a young man of seven-and-twenty, and the delight of proving herself superior to Florentine by the evident superiority of Philippe to Giroudeau. Both Florentine and Giroudeau—he to give his comrade pleasure, and she to procure a protector for her friend—urged Mariette and Philippe to a “watercolor marriage.” The Parisian expression à la détrempe is equivalent to the words “morgantic marriage” applied to kings and queens.
Philippe, as they went out, explained to Giroudeau how poor he was.
“I will mention you to my nephew, Finot,” said Giroudeau. “Look here, Philippe, this is the day of black coats and fine words; we must knock under. The inkstand is all powerful now. Ink takes the place of gunpowder, and words are used instead of shot. After all, these little vermin of editors are very ingenious, and not bad fellows. Come to see me tomorrow at the office; by that time I will have spoken two words about you to my nephew. Before long you will have something to do on some newspaper. Mariette, who will have you now because she has nothing else—make no mistake on that point—no engagement, no hope of coming out, and whom I told that, like me, you were going in for journalism—Mariette will prove that she loves you for yourself, and you will believe her! Do as I
