Free Saratoga Trunk by Edna Ferber Page A

Cupide.
    “Fold your arms!” Cupide commanded of the chuckling Negro beside him on the box. “Sit up straight, you Congo! Eyes ahead!”
    The man wagged his head in delighted wonder. “Just like you say, Quärtee. Look them horses step! My, my!”
    Kaka, victorious, decided to follow up her advantage. “Madame la Comtesse looked very chic talking to that dock laborer. Is it for that we crossed the ocean and returned to New Orleans to live!”
    “I didn’t talk to him. He talked to me. He isn’t a dockhand. He’s a Texan, probably. Can I help it if—”
    “Texan! Savages!”
    “A clarence, he said. Thoroughbred bays. And serve you right if he has Cupide brought into court.”
    “That one! Not for him, courtrooms. I know the look of them. He’s probably wanted in Texas himself, and skipped out with somebody’s carriage and pair.”
    “Oh, Kaka, let’s not quarrel. I was going to have such a lovely day. I looked forward to it.” The morning was sunny; she was young; a clarence drawn by long-tailed bays and driven by a huge Texan in a white sombrero could not long remain hidden on the streets of New Orleans; instinct warned her that danger lay ahead, common sense told her that Kakaracou was right.
    They turned into Decatur Street and drew up at Madame Begué’s with quite a flourish.
    “Let him wait,” Clio commanded, loftily.
    “No such thing. Sitting here, doing nothing, while we pay him for it. I’ll pay him off now. If he wants to wait until we come out that’s his business. You, Cupide!”
    Cupide had heard. He tossed the shabby reins into the hands of their owner, and, agile as a monkey, scrambled out on the heaving back of one of the astonished horses, retrieved his check reins (at which the horses’ heads, released, immediately slumped forward as though weighted with lead), leaped down and handed Clio out in his best Paris manner. The check reins he tucked away under his coat; he sprang to open the restaurant door, and the strange little procession of three climbed the narrow stair and entered as Rita Dulaine had entered so often twenty years before, with the woman to attend her like a duenna, the dwarf to stand behind her chair as though she were Elizabethan royalty.

IV
    New Orleans of the late ‘80’s had itself been sufficiently bizarre to have found nothing fantastic in the sight of the beautiful placée followed by her strange retinue. But the New Orleans of Clio’s day, breakfasting solidly in its favorite restaurant, looked up from its plate to remain staring, its fork halfway to its mouth.
    The three stood a moment in the doorway, their eyes blinking a little in the sudden change from the white glare of the midday streets to the cool half-light of the restaurant. In that instant Monsieur Begué himself stood before them in his towering stiffly starched chef’s cap, his solid round belly burgeoning ahead of him. He bowed, he clasped his plump hands.
    “Madame! But no. For a moment I thought you were—but of course it isn’t possible—”
    “I have heard my mother speak of you so often, Monsieur Begué. They say I resemble her. I am Comtesse de—uh—Trenaunay de Chanfret. But this is America, and my home now. Just Madame de Chanfret, please.”
    She was having a splendid time. She relished the little stir that her entrance had made; it was pleasant to be ushered by Hippolyte Begué himself to a choice table and to have him hovering over her chair as he presented for her inspection the menu handwritten in lively blue ink. Having entered with enormously dramatic effect, she now pretended to be a mixture of royalty incognito and modest young miss wide-eyed with wonder. She had seated herself with eyes cast down, she had handed her parasol to Cupide, her gloves to Kaka, she had pressed her hands to her hot cheeks in pretty confusion, she had thrown an appealing glance up at the attendant Begué.
    “I want everything that you are famous for, Monsieur. You and Madame Begué.” She