Mlle. Fouchette Part 60

Notoriety is fame to Frenchmen, and while he did not yet fully comprehend it, Jean Marot had reached this sort of fame in a single day. His name had been actively and even viciously discussed in the newspapers. He was accused of being both royalist and anti-Dreyfusarde by the ultra republican press. He was said to be a Bonapartist. The Dreyfusarde papers declared that the government had connived at his discharge from prison. The nationalist papers lauded him as a patriot.

One extravagant writer compared him to the celebrated Camille Desmoulins who led the great Revolution. A noisy deputation had called upon him in the Rue St. Honore to find that he had not been seen there since the riot.

Of all of this Jean Marot actually knew less than any other well-informed person in Paris. Being wholly absorbed in his domestic affairs, he had scarcely more than glanced at a newspaper, and did not at this moment know that his name had ever been printed in the Paris journals. The few acquaintances he had met had congratulated him for something, and some students he did not know had raised their hats to him in the streets; and once he had been saluted by a cla.s.s procession with desultory cries of "Vive Marot!" Mere rioting was then too common in Paris to excite particular attention individually.

But Jean Marot had been magnified by newspaper controversy into a formidable political leader; besides which there were young men here who had followed him a few days before in the riots. Therefore he was now the cynosure of curious attention.

From admiring glances the crowd of diners quickly pa.s.sed to complimentary language intended for his ears.

"He's a brave young man!" "You should have seen him that day!" "Ah, but he's a fighter, is M. Marot!" "Un bon camarade!" "He is a patriot!" etc.

These broken expressions were mingled with sly allusions to Mlle.

Fouchette from the women, who were consumed by envy. They had heard of the Savatiere's conquest with disbelief, now they saw it with their own eyes. The brazen thing! She was showing him off.

"She's caught on at last."

"Monsieur has more money than taste."

"Is he as rich as they say?"

"The skinny model."

"Model, bah!"

"Model for hair-pin, probably."

"The airs of that kicker!"

"He might have got a prettier mistress without trying hard."

"He'll find her a devil."

"Oh, there's no doubt about it. He has fitted up an elegant appartement for her in the Rue St. Jacques."

"Rue St. Jacques. Faugh!"

It should be unnecessary to say that these encomiums were not designed for the ears of Mlle. Fouchette, though the said ears must have burned with self-consciousness. But it may be well enough to remark that despite the spleen the object of it had risen immensely in the estimation of the female as well as the male habitues of Cafe Weber.

As the couple occupied a table in the extreme rear, the patrons in front found it convenient to go out by way of the Rue Champollion in order to see if not to bow to the distinguished guest.

The apparent fact that the new political leader had taken up with one of the most notorious women of the Quartier Latin in no way detracted from their esteem for him,--rather lent an agreeable piquancy to his character. On the other hand, it raised Mlle. Fouchette to a certain degree of respectability.

These demonstrations annoyed our young gentleman very much. Nothing but this patent fact saved them from a general reception.

"It is provoking!" exclaimed his companion.

"I don't understand it at all," said he.

"I do," replied Mlle. Fouchette.

"And, see, little one, I don't like it."

"I knew you wouldn't, and that is why I suggested the right bank of the river."

"True,--I always make a mistake when I don't follow your advice. Have some more wine,--I call that good."

"It ought to be at two francs a bottle," she retorted.

"My father would call this rank poison, but it goes."

"Poor me! I never tasted any better," laughed the girl, sipping the wine with the air of a connaisseuse. "A litre a cinquante is my tipple," she said.

"Now, what the devil do all these people mean?" he asked, when a party had pa.s.sed them with a slight demonstration.

"That you are famous, monsieur. I wish we had remained at home."

"So do I, pet.i.te," he said.

"Let us take our coffee there, at least," she suggested.

"Good!" he cried,--"by all means!"

They were soon installed in his small salon, where she quickly spread a table of dainty china. She had agreed with him in keeping his pictures, bric-a-brac, and prettiest dishes.

"Ah! they are so sweet!" she would say. "Now here is a lovely blue cup for you. I take the dear little pink one,--it's as delicate as an egg-sh.e.l.l,--Sevres, surely! And here's some of my coffee. It is not as good, perhaps, as you are used to, but----"

"Oh, I'm used to anything,--except being stared at and mobbed by a lot of curious chaps as if I were a calf with six legs, or had run off with the President's daughter, or----"

"Or committed murder, eh?" said she. "People always stare at murderers, do they not? Still, it isn't really bad, you know,"

abruptly returning to the coffee, "with a pet.i.t verre and cigarette."

"Au contraire," he retorted, gayly.

And over their coffee and cognac and cigarettes, surrounded by his tasteful belongings, shut in by the heavy damask hangings, under the graceful wreaths of smoke, they formed a very pretty picture. He, robust, dark, manly; she, frail, delicate, blonde, and distinctively feminine.

The comfort of it all smote them alike. The conversation soon became forced, then ceased, leaving each silently immersed in thought.

But Mlle. Fouchette welcomed this interval of silence with a satisfaction inexpressible. She, too, was under the spell of the place and the occasion. Mlle. Fouchette was not a sentimental woman, as we have seen; but she had recently been undergoing a mental struggle that taxed all her practical common sense. She found now that she saw things more clearly.

The result frightened her.

Mlle. Fouchette felt that she was happy, therefore she was frightened.

She experienced a mysterious glow of gladness--the gladness of mere living--in her veins. It permeated her being and filled her heart with warm desires.

This feeling had been stealing upon her so gradually and insidiously that she had never realized it until this moment,--the moment when it had taken full possession of her soul.

"I love him! I love him!" she repeated to herself. "I have struggled against it,--I have denied it. I did not want to do it,--it is misery!

But I can't help it,--I love him! I, Fouchette, the spy, who would have betrayed him, who wronged him, who thought love impossible!"