LORLOTTE AND THE CAPITAINE.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 1584, 8 April 1887, Page 3

LORLOTTE AND THE CAPITAINE.

Chapteb I. The Duponts rented a great perfumery shop in the Rue des Magasins, Paris, and lived in the entresol, with the whole air so penetrated and saturated with the sweet fumes of lavender, orange, and miilifleurs, that the city home recalled vividly to one sense the barren cliffs, aromatic and sea-views of Provence. Madame Dupont'# orange-tubs and violet-pots in her window were supernumeraries and purely aestheticil in their end.

Madame was the presiding genius of the place—entresol and shop—a born tradeswoman and manager, uglv, vivacious, lynx-eyed, but not wasting her powers in unnecessary irritability or acts of oppression to the bargin as it were, but calculating their value olosely, and putting them out to interest bs carefully as the rest of her stock. She regarded M. Dupont as a desirable adjunct to her business and family, was faithful to him in both lights, and even sharply indulgent to him ; but she never dreamt of regarding him as anything but an adjunct and an inferior.

Ai. Dupont, on his part, was quite content with his position. It sayed him an infinite deal of trouble; it suited his debonnaire pleasure-looking disposition. M. Dupont was a dapper little man, with white teeth, a very pretty figure, and very small feet, all of which personal advantages madame had taken into consideration, and valued rather above than below their value in making her alliance with monsieur, qualified and skilled as she was in business transactions. But the strongest fortress has a weak point in its battlements, and the wisest woman's heart has the flaw of a folly.

For the rest, monsieur was idiotically vain exceedingly good-natured, kind-hearted, and a good deal addicted to lying— not the lie malicious and spiteful, but the purely gasconading lie, to glorify himself and all belonging to him. Madame and monsieur got on admirably : he did the ornamental and madame the useful ia their married life, and the only fault to be fouad with the performance was, that the traditional cast of characters in the play suffered a reversal. The couple had no children, but one of the madame's distinctive traits was that she was a great family woman, and acknowledged, brought forward, marshalled, and marched off the carpet, so far as settling them in live was concerned, the kinsmen and kinswomen of herself and mousieur to the remotest degree of consanguinity, with the greatest impartial, ity. She could afford herself the luxury, for the Duponts were of the substantial 'and aflluent order of tradespeople, and she took the best plan to be successful id such operations by carrying them ou summarily, and without hesitation.

Madame had come upstairs from keeping shop on a fine afternoon in May, after the best huurs lor sales and for fashionable customer* was over. She was in her invariable black govrn and jacket, and black head-dress; the last brightened by a yellow rose, which summer and winter, in spite of decides of different head-dresses, never faded or died out of madame's head. When she replaced the lace of the coiffure with fresh lace, she took out the immortal rose, pinched and shook it, and restored it in all its original crispness and ye.lowneas to its niche over her right temple. By way of rest, malarne was sewing steadily and with astonishing rapidity,—men, ling, patching, turning ups.de down and inside out, wine mysterious portion of her wardrobe, while monsieur, who had dune nothing all day B*™ »au:iter from the entresol to the shop an'l back again, smoke cigarettes, read Oahgnani and the play-bills, lay in a chintz dressinggown and a Greek cap, on a leopard-skin couch, amidst the wnite piint, marble, plate glas?, and gilding, with which madame had not failed to furnish, and garnish, as the French have it properly, her little salon, in which she never sat, except for an hour, as a ceremory required of her by etiquette, every afternoon, or when she was receiving company. Monsieur lay with his eyes shut, except a' interrab, when he opened those orb*, round, black, ami twinkling, to their full extent, enlarging them, indeed, as far as he was able, to contemplate with intense interest and satisfaction in the mirror opposite him, the curl of his sleek paoustaclia, or to regard with perfect approbation the general symmetry of his tiny foot, which he exerted himself to kick up at a right angle, in order to a£f jrd him a finer opportunity of inspection. '• Louis," exclaimed madame, brusquely—(she had none of the catlike ways of some of her countrywoman,—no slyness, no stealthy approach to her aim, and feint of retreat when she was about to attack j had she been an EnglUh woman, she would have beeu called blunt; being French, she wai now and then stigmatized as brutal)—"l shall have your cousin, Lorlotte, up from an English school at Boulogne next week, since she is idle, with the scarlet fever among the children."

" My dear Paulette, you are an angel as usual, but you s'artle me a little, to the jarring of my teeth,'* replied monsieur, with a delicate suggestion that madame's abruptness was too much for him. " Why should you have Lorlotte for the present ? Her great vacations are not till June, when she must come here or board herself, and the little one has no salary to spare after she has gowned, hatted, gloved, and shod herself. I believe |lm baa inherited • alight weakness in the lait

respect. Never mind, in the meantime the school is obliged to keep her, and she has had the scarlet fever already. Pardon me for my dullness, my friend, but I do not comprehend your invitation," observed monsieur, innocently. The fact was, that good family woman as madame was, she was by no means in the habit of treating her relations to bed and board a la discretion and at all seasons.

•' Bah!" ejaculated madame, coolly, " you never see beyond the end of your nose, and jou have no end of the nose to speak of, to turn the cover." She intermitted her stitching for a second to tap, by way of emphatic contrast, her own prominent, self-asserting, broadly-rooted nose, of which monsieur's smart pug was but a small edition. " Then help my short sight, madame; you owe it to me," pleaded monsieur, not at all offended.

"My cousin, the capitaine, is with his regiment on duty at Fontainebleau; next month he will be gone to Cherbourg, or he may be ordered to Algerie. Do you understand f" Monsieur leapt up so as to sit upright and stamp his foot on the parquetted floor. " Voilci! this is the scarlet fever in Paris which is to supersede that at Boulogne." Madame did not acknowledge the witticism, but she did not affect a shade of concealment: she nodded the yellow rose, and looked monsieur somewhat stolidly in the face with her green-gray eves. " I have fixed that Lorlotte is the partie for the capitaine, and the cipitaine for Lorlotte. They meet here next week, are introduced, affianced, and *he gets her trousseau without trouble, and they are married without delay. She does not return to her tasks as an instructress; he does not need to waste any more money as a bachelor, or to go to Algerie. Her dot, which has been out as nurse, will suffice for the requirements of the service; his pay will match the interest of her dot. It would have been otherwise had it been Lorlotte's cousin Agathe and her dot. Agathe must look higher. But this marriage is good, excellent for both our cousins; therefore, my child, the affair is fixed unalterably in my mind ; it is all but a fact accomplished, and we have only the details to attend to." Her " child," who served her as well as a child and a great deal bettor than a parrot or a dog, great or small, credited her statement implicitly ; still he had his doubts and objections, and adjunct as monsieur was, he was in as full possession of the liberty of speech as any free-born Briton. " But the capitaine has fifty years, and Lorlotte only twenty-two " " Ah, well, so much the richer the capitaine!" madame distanced the objector with grim, disdainful humour.

" The capitaine is not a beau gar<;on. He is gray-headed. He looks as if he had swallowed his own sward without breaking it, and was not able to bend throughout its length. Lorlotte is gentille, as gay as a chaffinch, and her English mistresses and pupils have rendered her wild."

" The capitaine is a very good example of a militaire : I should be proud of so warlike a husband," declared madame, in sudden parenthesis, with a strange suspicion of a piece of coquetry, like the most daring and presuming of fairies, lurking within the folds of the black jacket, and underneath the petals of the yellow rose. "As if Lorlotte is a little sp lilt, the more need that she should ba removed from these romantic, reckless English she is with. It is not possible that the child can have lost her mor»ls in a year and a half's time. She got a dispensation from lie>* c ire, I know, for her Catholic religion, but she ;;ot. no dispensation that I heard of from her morals ; I should not have permitted sach a thing." " Have you never heard, my dear, that the capitaine is a lion when he is roused ; that he falls into a rage like an Englishman when he is provoked P " " Chansons! we can take care of all that. The lion is the most generous of all animals; does not La Fontaine say so P Andyou kn.m she is used to those English—one of whom hanged himself because they had served him tea without sugar." " The capitaine could never keep a sou of his pay since I had the honour of his acquaintance. He is not at all a mauvait sujet, agreed madame. On the contrary he is a father to the boys of his regiment sines he entered it a simple soldier! but he spends |on beer and pipes, and flowers and children, on relieving his comrades from the Mont de Pie'e, and on chariry to the poor, like a maurais sujet. " Ten thousan 1 reasons why the poor man should marry and give his purse to another, when Lorlotte is mistress of his menage all that is changed." Monsieur shrugged his shoulders express ively, as if with a lively realization of tha f obligation. "Ah! Well, also, Paulette, you are a charming intriguante, a Princess de Benvenuto; my wife, I felicitate you upon it It is necessary that it is quite equal to ire, to Lorlotte, and to the capitaine, since you wish it. " Without doubt," acquiesced madame, quietly, and with entire conviction, " and I have need that you bring the capitaine here to-worrow in order that he may be made au fait to my views." " Certainly, madame ; I shall seek him out at his cafo or his cremerie, if he is not in funds. We shall take a little turn on the Boulevards: our styles suit: there are never so many dimes lojk jasi le at me, flish a stance of approval at —my boot, shall I say, Paulette P as when I walk with a moustache grise, putting forth the paw of a polar bear. Vh! there was sueh a grand da-ne descending from her carriage in La Rue Lepelletier yesterday, who gave me a smile; but that I am your devo'ed servant, that smile would have drawn down an angel on his knees But you are not jealous, ma belle; the foot is yours to run your errands, and [ shall sound the capitaine as we tako our turn on the Boulevards."

"By no mean*," negntiv'd madame decidedly and imperatively, but without impatience or ill-humour, nay, she was specidly gracious. " Make your foot as pretty as you please, Louis; th*t. is your forle. lam not so bete as to quarrel with it. More than that I know it Jis my foot, and, of course, other women envy me the possesion of me. What did I marry for ? But don't medllo in my matter of proposing his m*rriuge to the capitaine. Mind your own affairs, my son. Hark! There is my bell." And ma-lame gathered up her work and descended like a bee to hum over the decanting of whole jars of helitoropu and attar of roses, the filling of little Jtaqons the mere waftings of perfume on handkerchiefs and gloves, doing all with conscious, consummate address, the exercise of which was in itself happiness; while monsieur, like a butterfly, caught up h's embroilered cap, exchanged his dressing gown for his dress eoat, and sauntered out to flutter and flaunt .ind show off his pretty faci and figure, which were pirt of madame's investments, and served her after their kind, by appearing in any p&blio garden, or at any spectacle, or bourgeois ball, which might be worthy of their presenoe. At the same hour next afternoon the c.ipitaine rep irted hims If duly in the boudoir at the entresol in obedience to the summons of his cousin, for whim be had much respect and some few. (ft k AMtimwQ.