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Updated: May 20, 2025
"You have been very faithful to me, Zalli." She wept on. "Nobody to take care of you now, Zalli." Zalli only went on weeping. "I want to give you this house, Zalli; it is for you and the little one." An hour after, amid the sobs of Madame John, she and the "little one" inherited the house, such as it was.
It meant in French, "If he saw us last night!" "Ah! dear," said the mother, her face beaming with fun "What can it be, Maman?" "He speaks oh! ha, ha! he speaks such miserable French!" It came to pass one morning at early dawn that Zalli and 'Tite Poulette, going to mass, passed a café, just as who should be coming out but Monsieur, the manager of the Salle de Condé. He had not yet gone to bed.
"I would surely tell him!" said the daughter. When Zalli, for some cause, went next morning to the window, she started. "'Tite Poulette!" she called softly without moving. The daughter came. The young man, whose idea of propriety had actuated him to this display, was sitting in the dormer window, reading. Mother and daughter bent a steady gaze at each other.
"Yes, Monsieur, she is my daughter." "O no, Madame John, it is only make-believe, I think." "I swear she is, Monsieur de la Rue." "Is that possible?" pretending to waver, but convinced in his heart of hearts, by Zalli's alarm, that she was lying. "But how? Why does she not come to our ball-room with you?" Zalli, trying to get away from him, shrugged and smiled.
Zalli, still in the vestibule, was just taking her hand from the font of holy-water. "Madame John," whispered the manager. She courtesied. "Madame John, that young lady is she your daughter?" "She she is my daughter," said Zalli, with somewhat of alarm in her face, which the manager misinterpreted. "I think not, Madame John." He shook his head, smiling as one too wise to be fooled.
"And left an infant!" said the Dutchman, ready to shout with exultation. "Ah! no, Monsieur," said Zalli. The invalid's heart sank like a stone. "Madame John," his voice was all in a tremor, "tell me the truth. Is 'Tite Poulette your own child?" "Ah-h-h, ha! ha! what foolishness! Of course she is my child!" And Madame gave vent to a true Frenchwoman's laugh. It was too much for the sick man.
Through the long, enervating summer, the contest lasted; but when at last the cool airs of October came stealing in at the bedside like long-banished little children, Kristian Koppig rose upon his elbow and smiled them a welcome. The physician, blessed man, was kind beyond measure; but said some inexplicable things, which Zalli tried in vain to make him speak in an undertone.
From the next room, Zalli, with a face of agonized suspense, gazed upon the pair, undiscovered. The young man lifted the hand to lay it upon his lips, when, with a mild, firm force, it was drawn away, yet still rested in his own upon the bedside, like some weak thing snared, that could only not get free. "Thou wilt not have my love, 'Tite Poulette?" No answer. "Thou wilt not, beautiful?"
The window above, too, it was Kristian Koppig who noticed that, opened a wee bit, like the shell of a terrapin; Presently the manager lifted his foot and put forward an arm, as though he would enter the gate by pushing, but as quick as gunpowder it clapped in his face! You could hear the fleeing feet of Zalli pounding up the staircase.
In the pitiful weakness of his shattered nerves he turned his face into his pillow and wept like a child. Zalli passed into the next room to hide her emotion. "Maman, dear Maman," said 'Tite Poulette, who had overheard nothing, but only saw the tears. "Ah! my child, my child, my task my task is too great too great for me. Let me go now another time. Go and watch at his bedside."
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