Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 3.djvu/206

 fortune; a young man should have some person who can assist him, some person of sense and reason."

During this moral lesson, Madame Duflos, carelessly extended on an easy couch, rolled about her eyes in a way that would infallibly have led to an overpowering burst of laughter from me, had not her head-woman entered very opportunely to tell her that she was wanted in the work-room.

Thus terminated this interview, which proved to me the necessity of being on my guard. Without renouncing my intentions, I only appeared to look on the young women with indifference and was skilful enough to set her penetration at default; she watched me incessantly, spied my gestures, my words, my looks: but she was only astonished at one thing,—the rapidity of my progress. I had only passed one month's apprenticeship and could already sell a shawl, a fancy gown, a cap, or a bonnet, as well as the most experienced hand. Madame was delighted, and had even the kindness to say, that, if I continued as attentive to her lessons, she did not despair of making me the cock of the mode, (le coq de la nouveauté).

"But," she added, "mind, no familiarity with the pullets; you understand me, M. Eugene; you understand me. And I have also another thing to recommend to you, that is, not to neglect your personal appearance; nothing is so genteel as a well-dressed man. Besides, I will undertake to provide your dress for the present; let me do so, and you will see if I will not make a little Love of you."

I thanked Madame Duflos, but as I feared that with her extraordinary taste she might make of me some such a Cupid as she was herself a Venus, I told her that I wished to spare her the care of a metamorphosis that appeared to me impossible; but, that if she would confine herself to her kind advice, I should receive it with gratitude and seek to profit by it.

Some time afterward, (four days before Saint Louis,) Madame Duflos told me, that intending as usual to go