Page:The fortunes of Fifi (IA fortunesoffifi00seawiala).pdf/117

 and expense of the journey impressed her extremely. Louis Bourcet did not accompany Madame Bourcet and Fifi on the visit, but it was understood that Madame Bourcet should present his application for Fifi's hand.

It was a soft, mild day in February, with a hint of spring in the air, that they set forth in a rickety coach for Fontainebleau. Fifi wore the hideous brown gown with the green spots in it, and felt exactly as she did the night she played Léontine in the blue silk robe with the grease spot in the back. If the grease spot had been noticed everything would have been ruined—and if the Holy Father should notice the brown gown! Fifi felt that it would mean wholesale disaster. She comforted herself, however, with the reflection that the Holy Father probably knew nothing about ladies' gowns; and then, she had never forgotten the extreme kindness of the Holy Father's eyes the night she peered at him in the coach.

"And after all," she thought, "although Cartouche laughed at me for thinking the Holy Father had looked at me that night, I know he did—perhaps I am like my father or my grandfather, and that was why he looked." And then she remem