CHAPTER IX
AT THE HÔTEL DE RAMBOUILLET
When Madeleine awoke next morning, the feeling she had had over night of being in a dream had by no means left her.
From the street rose the cries of the hawkers:—
‘Ma belle herbe, anis fleur.’
‘A la fraîche, à la fraîche, qui veut boire?’
‘A ma belle poivée à mes beaux épinards! à mon bel oignon!’
And then shrill and plaintive:—
‘Vous désirez quelque cho-o-o-se?’
It was no longer a taunt but the prayer of a humble familiar asking for its mistress’s orders, or, rather, of Love the Pedlar waiting to sell her what she chose. She opened her window and looked out. The length of the narrow street the monstrous signs stuck out from either side, heraldic lions, and sacred hearts, and blue cats, and mothers of God, and Maréchales looking like Polichinelle. It was as incongruous an assortment as the signs of the Zodiac, as flat and fantastic as a pack of cards——
‘Vous désirez quelque cho-o-ose?’ She laughed aloud. Then she suddenly remembered her vague misgivings of the night before. She drew in her head and rushed to her divination book. These were the lines her eyes fell upon:—
‘ ... and she seemed in his mind to have said a thousand good things, which, in reality, she had not said at all.’
For one moment Madeleine’s heart seemed to stop beating. Did it mean that she was not going to get in her prepared mots? No, the true interpretation was surely that Mademoiselle de Scudéry would think her even more brilliant than she actually was. She fell on her knees and thanked her kind gods in anticipation.
However, she too must do her part, must reinforce the Power behind her, so over and over again she danced out the scene at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, trying to keep it exactly the same each time. ‘Ah! dear Zénocrite! here you come, leading our new Bergère.’
All the morning she seemed in a dream, and her mother, father, Jacques, and Berthe hundreds of miles away. She could not touch a morsel of food. ‘Ah! the little creature with wings. I know, I know,’ Berthe kept muttering.
With her throat parched, and still in a strange, dry dream, she went to dress. The magical petite-oie seemed to her to take away all shabbiness from the serge bodice and the petticoat of camelot de Hollande. Then, in a flash, she remembered she had decided to add to her purchases at the Fair a trimming of those wonderful imitation jewels known as the pierreries du Temple. The petite-oie had taken on the exigency of a magic formulary, and its contents, to be efficacious, had to conform as rigidly to the original conception as a love-potion must to its receipt. In a few minutes she would have to start, and the man who sold the stones lived too far from Madame Cornuel for her to go there first. She was in despair.
At that moment the door opened, and in walked Jacques; as a rule he did not come home till evening. He sheepishly brought out of his hose an elaborate arrangement of green beads.
‘Having heard you prate of the pierreries du Temple, I’ve brought you these glass gauds. I fear me they aren’t from the man in the Temple, for I failed to find the place ... but these seemed pretty toys. I thought maybe they would help you to cut a figure before old Dame Scudéry.’
It was truly a strange coincidence that he should have brought her the very thing that at that very moment she had been longing for. But was it the very thing? For the first time that morning, Madeleine felt her feet on earth. The beads were hideous and vulgar and as unlike the pierreries du Temple as they were unlike the emeralds they had taken as their model. She was almost choked by a feeling of impotent rage.
How dare Jacques be such a ninny with so little knowledge of the fashion? How dare he expect a belle to care for him, when he was such a miserable gallant with such execrable taste in presents? The idea of giving her rubbish like that! She would like to kill him!
Always quick to see omens, her nerves, strung up that morning to their highest pitch, felt in the gift the most malignant significance. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes—I fear the Greeks even when they bear gifts. She blanched, and furtively crossed herself. Having said, in a dead voice, some words of thanks, she silently pinned the bead trimming on to her bodice and slowly left the room.
It was time to start; she got into the little box-like sedan. There was her mother standing at the door, waving her hand, and wishing her good luck. She was soon swinging along towards the Seine.
When the house was out of sight, with rude, nervous fingers she tore off the beads, and they fell in a shower about the sedan. Though one could scarcely move in the little hole, she managed to pick them all up, and pulling back the curtain she flung them out of the window. They were at that moment crossing the Pont-Neuf, and she caught a glimpse of a crowd of beggars and pages scrambling to pick them up. Recklessly scattering jewels to the rabble! It was like a princess in Amadis, or like the cardinal’s nieces, the two Mancini, whose fabulous extravagance was the talk of the town. Then she remembered that they were only glass beads. Was it an omen that her grandeur would be always a mere imitation of the real thing? Also—though she had got rid of the hateful trimming, her petite-oie was still incomplete. Should she risk keeping Madame Cornuel waiting and go first to the man in the Temple? No, charms or no charms, she was moving on to her destiny, and felt deadly calm. What she had prayed for was coming and she could not stop it now. Its inevitableness frightened her, and she began to feel a poignant longing for the old order, the comforting rhythm of the rut she was used to, with the pleasant feeling of every day drawing nearer to a miraculous transformation of her circumstances.
She pulled back the curtain again and peeped out, the Seine was now behind them, and they were going up la rue de la Mortellerie. Soon she would be in the clutches of Madame Cornuel, and then there would be no escape. Should she jump out of the sedan, or tell the porters to take her home? She longed to; but if she did, how was she to face the future? And what ingratitude it would be for the exquisite tact with which the gods had manipulated her meeting with Sappho! the porters swung on and on, and Madeleine leaned back and closed her eyes, hypnotised by the inevitable.
The shafts of the sedan were put down with a jerk, and Madeleine started up and shuddered. One of the porters came to the window. ‘Rue Saint-Antoine, Mademoiselle.’ Madeleine gave him a coin to divide with his companion, opened the door, and walked into the court. Madame Cornuel’s coach was standing waiting before the door.
She walked in and was shown by a valet into an ante-room. She sat down, and began mechanically repeating her litany. Suddenly, there was a rich rustle of taffeta, the door opened, and in swept a very handsomely-dressed young woman. Madeleine knew that it must be Mademoiselle le Gendre, the daughter of Monsieur Cornuel’s first wife. In a flash Madeleine took in the elegant continence of her toilette. While Madeleine had seven patches on her face, she had only three. Her hair was exquisitely neat, and she was only slightly scented, while her deep, plain collar à la Régente, gave an air of puritanic severity to the bright, cherry-coloured velvet of her bodice. Also, she was not nearly as décolletée as Madeleine.
Madeleine felt that all of a sudden her petite-oie had lost both its decorative and magical virtue and had become merely incongruous gawds on the patent shabbiness of her gown. For some reason there flashed through her head the words she had heard at the Fair: ‘As if all the purple and fine linen of Solomon himself could add an ounce of comeliness to his antic, foolish face.’
‘Mademoiselle Troqueville? My step-mother awaits us in the coach, will you come?’ said the lady. Her manner was haughty and unfriendly. Madeleine realised without a pang that it would all be like this. But after all, nothing in this dull reality really mattered.
‘Bestir yourself! ’Tis time we were away!’ shouted a voice from the carrosse. Mademoiselle le Gendre told Madeleine to get in.
‘Mademoiselle Troqueville? I am glad to make your acquaintance—pray get in and take the back seat opposite me.’ Madeleine humbly obeyed, indifferent to what in her imaginings she would have looked upon as an unforgivable insult, the putting her in the back seat.
‘Hôtel de Rambouillet,’ Madame Cornuel said to a lackey, who was waiting for orders at the window. The words left Madeleine quite cold.
Madame Cornuel and her step-daughter did not think it necessary to talk to Madeleine. They exchanged little remarks with each other at intervals, and laughed at allusions which she could not catch.
‘Are we to fetch Sappho?’ suddenly asked the younger woman.
‘No, she purposes coming later, and on foot.’
Madeleine heard the name without a thrill.
The coach rolled on, and Madeleine sat as if petrified. Suddenly she galvanised herself into activity. In a few minutes they would be there, and if she allowed herself to arrive in this condition all would be lost. Why should she let these two horrid women ruin her chance of success? She muttered quickly to herself:—
‘Oh! blessed Virgin, give me the friendship of Mademoiselle de Scudéry,’ and then started gabbling through her prepared scene.
‘“Ah, dear Zénocrite, here you come, leading our new bergère!” cries the lady on the bed. “Welcome, Mademoiselle, I have been waiting with impatience to make your acquaintance.”’
Would she get it finished before they arrived? She felt all her happiness depended on it.
‘“Madame, it would have been of no consequence, for the Sibyl herself would have taken the conqueror captive.... But, Mademoiselle, what, if you will pardon my curiosity, induced you to leave your agreeable prairies?”’
They were passing the Palais Cardinal—soon they would turn down the rue St Thomas du Louvre—she had not much time.
The coach was rolling into the court of the Hôtel de Rambouillet and she had not finished. They got out. A tall woman, aged about thirty, with reddish hair and a face badly marked by smallpox, but in spite of these two blemishes of an extremely elegant and distinguished appearance, came towards them, screwing up her eyes in the manner of the near-sighted. Her top petticoat was full of flowers; she was too short-sighted to recognise Madame Cornuel till she was quite close, then she dropped a mock-low curtsey, and drawled ‘Ma-a-a-dame.’ Madame Cornuel laughed: evidently she had imitated a mutual acquaintance. With a sudden sense of exclusion Madeleine gave up hope.
‘Are you following the example of our friend of the Faubourg St-Germain, may I inquire?’ asked Madame Cornuel, with a little smile, pointing to the flowers, at which her step-daughter laughed, and the tall red-haired lady made a moue and answered with a deep sigh:—
‘Ah! the wit of the Marais!’ The meaning of this esoteric persiflage was entirely lost on Madeleine, and she sat with an absolutely expressionless face, trying to hide her own embarrassment.
‘Ah! pardon me, I had forgotten,’ Madame Cornuel exclaimed. ‘Mademoiselle de Rambouillet, allow me to present to you Mademoiselle Troqueville.’ (It may have been Madeleine’s imagination, but it seemed to her that Madame Cornuel paused before calling her Mademoiselle.) Mademoiselle de Rambouillet screwed up her eyes at her and smiled quite pleasantly, while Madeleine, absolutely tongue-tied, tried to perform the almost impossible task of curtseying in a coach. They got out, and went inside, the three others continuing their mystifying conversation.
They went up a staircase and through one large splendid room after another. So here was Madeleine, actually in the famous ‘Palais de Cléomire,’ as it was called in Cyrus, but the fact did not move her, indeed she did not even realise it. Once Mademoiselle de Rambouillet turned round and said to her:—
‘I fear ’tis a long journey, Mademoiselle,’ but the manner in which she screwed up her eyes both terrified and embarrassed her, so instead of answering she merely blushed and muttered something under her breath.
Finally they reached Madame de Rambouillet’s bedroom (she had ceased for some years to receive in the Salle Bleue). She was lying on a bed in an alcove and there were several people in the ruelle; as the thick velvet curtains of the windows were drawn Madeleine got merely an impression of rich, rare objects glowing like jewels out of the semi-darkness, but in a flash she took in the appearance of Madame de Rambouillet. Her face was pale and her lips a bright crimson, which was obviously not their natural colour; she had large brown eyes with heavy pinkish eyelids, and the only sign that she was a day over fifty was a slight trembling of the head. She was wearing a loose gown of some soft gray material, and on her head were cornettes of exquisite lace trimmed with pale yellow ribbons. One of her hands was lying on the blue coverlet, it was so thin that its veins looked almost like the blue of the coverlet shining through. The fingers were piled up with beautiful rings.
There was a flutter round the bed, and then Madeleine found herself being presented to the Marquise.
‘Ah! Mademoiselle Toctin, I am ravished to make your acquaintance,’ she said in a wonderfully melodious voice, with a just perceptible Italian accent. ‘You come from delicious Marseilles, do you not? You will be able to recount to us strange Orient romances of orange-trees and Turkish soldiers. Angélique, bring Mademoiselle Touville a pliant, and place it close to me, and I will warm myself at her Southern historiettes.’
‘It is from Lyons that I come, not from Marseilles,’ was the only repartee of which at the moment Madeleine was capable. Her voice sounded strange and harsh, and she quite forgot a ‘Madame.’ However, the Marquise did not hear, as she had turned to another guest. But Angélique de Rambouillet heard, and so did another lady, with an olive complexion and remarkably bright eyes, whom Madeleine guessed to be Madame de Montausier, the famous ‘Princesse Julie.’ They exchanged glances of delight, and Madeleine began to blush, and blush, though, as a matter of fact, it was by their mother they were amused.
In the meantime a very tall, elderly man, with a hatchet face, came stumbling towards her.
‘You have not a chair, have you, Mademoiselle?’
‘Here it is, father,’ said Angélique, who was bringing one up.
‘Ah! that is right, Mademoiselle er ... er ... er ... will sit here.’
Madeleine took to this kind, polite man, and felt a little happier. He sat down beside her and made a few remarks, which Madeleine, full of the will to be agreeable, answered as best she could, endeavouring to make up by pleasant smiles for her sudden lack of esprit. But, unfortunately, the Marquis was almost stone-blind, so the smiles were lost upon him, and before long Madeleine noticed by his absent laugh and amused expression that his attention was wandering to the conversation of the others.
‘I am of opinion you would look inexpressibly galant in a scarlet hat, Marquis,’ Madame de Rambouillet was saying to a short, swarthy man with a rather saturnine expression. They all looked at him mischievously. ‘Julie would be obliged to join Yvonne in the Convent, but there would be naught to hinder you from keeping Marie-Julie at your side as your adopted daughter.’ The company laughed a little, the laugh of people too thoroughly intimate to need to make any effort. ‘Monsieur de Grasse is wearing his episcopal smile—look at him, pray! Come, Monseigneur, you must confess that a scarlet hat would become him to a marvel,’ and Madame de Rambouillet turned her brilliant, mischievous eyes on a tiny prelate with a face like a naughty schoolboy’s.
He had been called Monsieur de Grasse. Could he, then, be the famous Godeau, bishop and poet? It seemed impossible. For Saint Thomas is the patron saint of provincials when they meet celebrities in the flesh.
‘I fear Monsieur’s head would be somewhat too large to wear it with comfort,’ he answered.
‘Hark to the episcopal fleurette! Marquis, rise up and bow!’ but the only answer from the object of these witticisms was a surly grunt. Another idle smile rippled round the circle, and then there fell a silence of comfortable intimacy. If Madeleine had suddenly found herself in the kingdom of Prester John she could not have understood less of what was going on around her.
‘Madame Cornuel has a furiously galante historiette she is burning to communicate to us,’ said Mademoiselle de Rambouillet, screwing up her eyes at Madame Cornuel.
‘Julie, bid Monsieur de Grasse go upstairs to play with Marie-Julie, and then Madame Cornuel will tell it.’
‘Monsieur de Grasse——’
‘Madame la Marquise come to my rescue! I too would fain hear the historiette!’
‘Nolo episcopari, hein?’
‘Now, then, be obedient, and get you to Marie-Julie!’
‘If there were a hazel-nut at hand, ’twould serve your purpose.’
‘No, Madame la Marquise, permit me to hide within your locket.’
‘As you will. Now, Madame, we are all attention.’
Throughout this fooling, Madeleine had sat with aching jaws stretched into a smile, trying desperately hard not to look out of it. They all looked towards Madame Cornuel, who sat smiling in unruffled silence.
‘Madame?’
‘Well, Mademoiselle, tell me who is to be its heroine, who its hero, and what its plot, and then I will recount it to you,’ she said. They seemed to think this very witty, and laughed heartily. There was another pause, and Madeleine again made an attempt to engage the Marquis’s attention.
‘The ... the ... the houses in Paris ... seem to me most goodly structures,’ she began. He gave his nervous laugh.
‘Yes, yes, we have some rare architects these days. Have you been to see the new buildings of the Val de Grâce?’
‘No, I have not ... er ... it is a Convent, is it not?’
‘Yes. Under the patronage of Notre Dame de la Crêche.’
His attention began to wander again; she made a frantic effort to rekindle the flames of the dying topic.
‘What a strange name it is—Val de Grâce, what do you think can be its meaning?’
‘Yes, yes,’ with his nervous laugh, ‘Val de Grâce, doubtless there is some legend connected with it.’
Madeleine gave up in despair.
The languid, intimate talk and humorous silences had suddenly turned into something more animated.
‘Madame de Sablé vows that she saw her there with her own eyes, and that she was dressed in a justaucorps.’
‘Sophie has seen more things than the legendary Argos!’
‘Well, it has been turned into a Vaudeville in her quarter.’
‘In good earnest, has it? What an excellent diversion! Julie, pray ask Madame d’Aiguillon about it and tell us. Go to-day.’
‘I daren’t; “my dear, my dear, cela fait dévotion and that puts me in mind, the Reine-Mère got a special chalice of Florentine enamel and I must——” Roqueten, Roqueten, Roquetine.’
‘Upon my life, the woman’s talk has less of meaning than a magpie’s!’ growled Madeleine to herself.
At that moment the door opened and in came a tall, middle-aged woman, swarthy, and very ugly. She was dressed in a plain gown of gray serge. Her face was wreathed in an agreeable smile, that made her look like a civil horse.
Madeleine had forgotten all about Mademoiselle de Scudéry, but when this lady came in, it all came rushing back; she got cold all over, and if before she had longed to be a thousand miles away, she now longed to be ten thousand.
There was a general cry of:—
‘Mademoiselle: the very person we were in need of. You know everything. Tell us all about the Présidente Tambonneau, but avoid, in your narration, an excessive charity.’
‘If you talk with the tongues of men and of Angels and yet have Charity, ye are become as sounding brass and as a tinkling cymbal,’ said Madame Cornuel in her clear, slow voice. She spoke rarely, but when she did it was with the air of enunciating an oracle.
‘Humph! That is a fault that you are rarely guilty of!’ growled Montausier quite audibly.
‘The Présidente Tambonneau? No new extravagance of hers has reached my ears. What is there to tell?’ said the new-comer. She spoke in a loud, rather rasping voice, and still went on smiling civilly.
‘Oh, you ladies of the Marais, every one is aware that you are omniscient, and yet you are perfect misers of your historiettes!’
‘Sappho, we must combine against the quartier du Palais Cardinal, albeit they do call us “omniscient.” It sounds infinitely galant, but I am to seek as to its meaning,’ said Madame Cornuel.
‘Ask Mademoiselle, she is in the last intimacy with the Maréchal des mots; it is reported he has raised a whole new company to fight under his Pucelle.’
‘From all accounts, she is in sore need of support, poor lady. Madame de Longueville says she is “parfaitement belle mais parfaitement ennuyeuse,”’ said Mademoiselle de Rambouillet very dryly.
‘That would serve as an excellent epitome of divers among our friends,’ murmured Madame de Montausier.
‘Poor Chapelain! all said, he, by merely being himself, has added infinitely more to our diversion than the wittiest person in the world,’ said Madame de Rambouillet, looking mischievously at Mademoiselle de Scudéry, who, though still wearing the same smile, was evidently not pleased.
‘Yes, Marquis, when you are made a duke, you would do well to employ Monsieur Chapelain as your jester. Ridiculous, solemn people are in reality much more diverting than wits,’ said Mademoiselle de Rambouillet to Montausier, who looked extremely displeased, and said in angry, didactic tones:—
‘Chapelain a des sentiments fins et delicats, il raisonne juste, et dans ses œuvres on y trouve de nobles et fortes expressions,’ and getting up he walked over to Mademoiselle de Scudéry, and they were soon talking earnestly together.
Madeleine all this time had been torn between terror of being introduced to Mademoiselle de Scudéry, and terror of not being introduced. Her face was absolutely impassive, and she had ceased to pretend to take any interest in what was going on around her.
Suddenly she heard Madame de Rambouillet saying to Monsieur de Grasse:—
‘You remember Julie’s and her sister’s vision about night-caps?’
‘Ah, yes, and the trick played on them by Voiture, and the poor, excellent Marquis de Pisani.’
‘Yes,’ she answered, with a little sigh and a smile. ‘Well, it has been inherited by little Marie-Julie, whenever she beholds one she becomes transfixed by terror. Visions are strange things!’
Madeleine for the first time that afternoon felt happy and pleased. She herself had always loathed night-caps, and as a child had screamed with terror whenever she had seen any one wearing one. What a strange coincidence that this vision should be shared by Madame de Rambouillet’s daughters! She turned eagerly to the Marquis.
‘Monsieur, I hear Madame la Marquise telling how Mesdames her daughters were wont to be affrighted by night-caps; when I was a child, they worked on me in a like manner, and to speak truth, to this day I have a dislike to them.’
‘Indeed, indeed,’ he answered, with his nervous laugh. ‘Yes, my daughters had quite a vision as to night-caps. Doubtless ’twas linked in their memory with some foolish, monstrous fable they had heard from one of their attendants. ’Tis strange, but our little granddaughter has inherited the fear and she refuses to kiss us if we are wearing one.’
Alas! There was no crack through which Madeleine could get in her own personality! The Marquis got up and stumbled across the room to Mademoiselle de Scudéry, and Montausier, having to give up his chair, sat down by Madeleine. There was a cry of ‘Ah! here she comes!’
The door opened and a little girl of about seven years old walked into the room, followed by a gouvernante who stood respectfully in the doorway. The child was dressed in a miniature Court dress, cut low and square at the neck. She had a little pointed face, and eyes with a slight outward squint. She made a beautiful curtsey, first to her grandmother and then to the company.
‘My dearest treasure,’ Madame de Rambouillet cried in her beautiful husky voice. ‘Come and greet your friend, Monsieur de Grasse.’
Every one had stopped talking and were looking at the child with varying degrees of interest. Madeleine felt suddenly fiercely jealous of her; she stole a glance at Mademoiselle de Scudéry, and saw on her face the universal smile of tolerant amusement with which grown-up people regard children. The child went up to Godeau, kissed his ring, and then busily and deliberately found a foot-stool for herself, dragged it up to Madame de Rambouillet’s bed, and sat down on it.
‘The little lady already has the tabouret chez la reine,’[2] said Mademoiselle de Scudéry, smiling and bowing to Madame de Rambouillet. The child, however, did not understand the witticism; she looked offended, frowned, and said severely:—
‘I am working a tabouret for myself,’ and then, as if to soften what she evidently had meant for a snub, she added: ‘It has crimson flowers on it, and a blue saint feeding birds.’
Montausier went into fits of proud laughter.
‘There is a bit of hagiology for you to interpret, Monsieur de Grasse,’ he cried triumphantly, suddenly in quite a good temper, and looking round to see if the others were amused. Godeau looked interested and serious.
‘That must be a most rare and delicate tabouret, Mademoiselle,’ he said; ‘do you know what the saint’s name is?’
‘No, I thank you,’ she answered politely, but wearily, and they all again went into peals of laughter.
‘My love,’ said Madame de Rambouillet. ‘I am certain Monsieur de Grasse and that lady,’ nodding towards Mademoiselle de Scudéry, ‘would be enchanted by those delicious verses you wrote for my birthday, will you recite them?’
But the child shook her head, backwards and forwards, the more she was entreated, the more energetically she shook her head, evidently enjoying the process for its own sake. Then she climbed on to her grandmother’s bed and whispered something in her ear. Madame de Rambouillet shook with laughter, and after they had whispered together for some minutes the child left the room. Madame de Rambouillet then told the company that Marie-Julie’s reason for not wishing to recite her poem was that she had heard her father say that all hommes de lettres were thieves and were quite unprincipled about using each other’s writings, and she was afraid that Mademoiselle de Scudéry or Monsieur de Grasse might, if they heard her poem, publish it as their own. There was much laughter, and Montausier was in ecstasies.
‘I am impatient for you to hear the poem,’ said Madame de Rambouillet. ‘It is quite delicious.’
‘Yes, my daughter promises to be a second Neuf-germain!’[3] said Madame de Montausier, smiling.
‘What a Nemesis, that a mother who has inspired so many delicious verses, and a father——’ began Mademoiselle de Scudéry, but just then the child came back with her head disappearing into a large beplumed man’s hat, and carrying a shepherd’s crook in her hand.
‘I am a Muse,’ she announced, and the company exchanged delighted, bewildered glances.
‘Now, I will begin.’
‘Yes, pray do, my dear love,’ said Madame de Rambouillet, trying to compose her face.
‘The initial letters form my grandmother’s name: Cathérine,’ she explained, and then, taking her stand in the middle of the room, began to declaim with great unction:—
‘Chérie, vous êtes aimable et
Aussi belle que votre perroquet,
Toujours souriante et douce.
Hélas! j’ai piqué mon pouce
En brodant pour votre jour de fête
Rien qu’une bourse qui n’est pas bête.
J’aime ma Grandmère, c’est ma chatte,
Nellie, mon petit chien, donne lui ta patte,
Et lèche la avec ta petite langue.’
She then made a little bow to the company, and sat down again on her tabouret, quite undisturbed by the enthusiastic applause that had followed her recitation.
‘Mademoiselle,’ began Godeau solemnly, ‘words fail me, to use the delicious expression