After four o'clock, when he left his office, until midnight,
he amused himself; some party of pleasure had usually been arranged
the night before,--a good dinner, a card-party, a supper by some one
or other of the set. Philippe was in his element.
This carnival, which lasted eighteen months, was not altogether
without its troubles. The beautiful Mariette no sooner appeared at the
Opera, in January, 1821, than she captured one of the most
distinguished dukes of the court of Louis XVIII. Philippe tried to
make head against the peer, and by the month of April he was compelled
by his passion, notwithstanding some luck at cards, to dip into the
funds of which he was cashier. By May he had taken eleven hundred
francs. In that fatal month Mariette started for London, to see what
could be done with the lords while the temporary opera house in the
Hotel Choiseul, rue Lepelletier, was being prepared. The luckless
Philippe had ended, as often happens, in loving Mariette
notwithstanding her flagrant infidelities; she herself had never
thought him anything but a dull-minded, brutal soldier, the first rung
of a ladder on which she had never intended to remain long. So,
foreseeing the time when Philippe would have spent all his money, she
captured other journalistic support which released her from the
necessity of depending on him; nevertheless, she did feel the peculiar
gratitude that class of women acknowledge towards the first man who
smooths their way, as it were, among the difficulties and horrors of a
theatrical career.
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