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 cloak, made him irritable. If it would have done any good, he would cheerfully have given his own skin to make Fifi a cloak.

Fifi, however, was used to Cartouche's roughness, and, besides, she was under the spell of the venerable and benignant presence of the old man. So she gave Cartouche a soft answer.

"I did not mean to be rude, but something in that old man's face touched me, and overcame me; and Cartouche, he felt it, too; he looked at me with a kind of—a kind of—surprised affection—"

"Whoosh!" cried Cartouche, "the Holy Father, brought to Paris by his Imperial Majesty the Emperor Napoleon, is surprised at first sight into so much affection for Mademoiselle Fifi, leading lady at the Imperial Theater, that he means to adopt her, give her a title, make her a countess or I don't know what, and leave her a million of francs."

Fifi, at this, turned her shapely, girlish back on the presumptuous Cartouche, while there was a little movement of silent laughter on the part of the three persons who had remained in the little dark street, after the passing of the Pope's traveling equipage.

Cartouche had not for a moment forgotten the