As he had promised, Jacques brought her the works of Descartes, and she turned eagerly to their pages. Here, surely, she would find food sweeter to her palate than the bitter catechu of Jansenism which she had spewed from her mouth with scorn and loathing.
But to her intense annoyance, she found the third maxim in the Discourse on Method to be as follows:—
My third maxim was ever to endeavour to conquer myself rather than fortune, and to change my own desires rather than the order of the universe. In short, to grow familiar with the doctrine that ’tis but over our own thoughts we hold complete and absolute sway. Thus, if after all our efforts we fail in matters external to us, it behoofs us to acknowledge that those things wherein we fail belong, for us at least, to the domain of the impossible.
Here was a doctrine as uncompromising with regard to individual desires as Jansenism itself.
Oh, those treacherous twists in every creed and every adventure which were always suddenly bringing her shivering to the edge of the world of reality, face to face with its weary outstretched horizons, its cruelly clear outlines, and its three-dimensional, vivid, ruthless population. Well, even Descartes was aware that it was not a pleasant place, for did he not say in the Six Meditations:—
But the Reason is that my Mind loves to wander, and suffers not itself to be bounded within the strict limits of Truth.
But were these limits fixed for ever: were we absolutely powerless to widen them?
A few lines down the page she came on the famous wax metaphor:—
Let us choose for example this piece of Beeswax: it was lately taken from the comb; it has not yet lost all the taste of the honey; it retains something of the smell of the flowers from whence ’twas gathered, its colour, shape, and bigness are manifest; ’tis hard, ’tis cold, ’tis easily felt, and if you will knock it with your finger, ’twill make a noise. In fine, it hath all things requisite to the most perfect notion of a Body.
But behold whilst I am speaking, ’tis put to the fire, its taste is purged away, the smell is vanished, the colour is changed, the shape is altered, its bulk is increased, it becomes soft, ’tis hot, it can scarce be felt, and now (though you can strike it) it makes no noise. Does it yet continue the same wax? Surely it does: this all confess, no one denies it, no one doubts it. What therefore was there in it that was so evidently known? Surely none of those things which I perceive by my senses; for what I smelt, tasted, have seen, felt, or heard, are all vanished, and yet the wax remains. Perhaps ’twas this only that I now think on, to wit, that the wax itself was not that taste of honey, that smell of flowers, that whiteness, that shape, or that sound, but it was a body which a while before appeared to me so and so modified, but now otherwise.
She was illuminated by a sudden idea—startling yet comforting. In itself her bugbear, the world of reality, was an innocuous body without form, sound, or colour. Once before she had felt it as it really is—cold and nil—when at the Fête-Dieu the bell at the most solemn moment of the Mass had rung her into ‘a world of non-bulk and non-colour.’
Yes, the jarring sounds and crude colours which had so shocked and frightened her were but delusions caused by the lying ‘animal-spirits’ of man. The true contrast was not between the actual world and her own world of dreams, not between the design cut by God’s finger upon cubes of wood and her own frail desires, but between the still whiteness of reality and the crude and garish pattern of cross purposes thrown athwart it by the contrary wills of men.
Well, not only was Jansenism distasteful, but it was also untrue, and here was a grave doctor’s confirmation of the magical powers of her adamant of desire.
The pattern of cross-purposes was but a delusion, and therefore not to be feared. The only reality being a soft maniable Body, why should she not turn potter instead of engraver and by the plastic force of her own will give the wax what form she chose?
Through her dancing she would exercise her will and dance into the wax the fragrance of flowers, the honey of love, the Attic shape she longed for.
Madeleine is following Théodamas (Conrart) into Sappho’s reception-room. A dispute is raging as to whether Descartes was justified in regarding Love as soulageant pour l’estomac. They turn to Madeleine and ask for her opinion: she smiles and says,—
‘’Twould provide the Faculty with an interesting thèse du Cardinal, but ’tis a problem that I, at least, am not fitted to tackle, in that I have never tasted the gastric lenitive in question.’
‘If the question can be discussed by none but those experienced in love,’ cries Sappho, ‘then are we all reduced to silence, for which of us will own to such a disgraceful experience?’
The company laughs. ‘But at least,’ cries Théodamas, ‘we can all of us in this room confess to a wide experience in the discreet passion of Esteem, although the spiritual atoms of which it is formed are too subtle, its motions too delicate to produce any effect on so gross an organ as the one in question.’
‘Do you consider that the heart is the seat of esteem, or is esteem too refined to associate with the Passion considered as the chief denizen of that organ from time immemorial?’ asks Doralise.
‘The words “time immemorial” shows an ignorance which in a lady as full of agreeable information as yourself, has something indescribably piquant and charming,’ says Aristée, with a delicious mixture of the gallant and the pedant. ‘For ’tis well known,’ he continues, ‘that the Ancients held the liver to be the seat of the passion in question.’
‘Well, then,’ cries Madeleine gaily, ‘these pagans were, I fear, more evangelical in their philosophy than we, if they made love and its close attendant, Hope, dwell together in ... le foie! But,’ she continues, when the company had laughed at her sally, ‘I hear that this same Descartes has stirred up by his writings a serious revolt in our members, what one might call an organic Fronde.’
‘Pray act as our Muse Historique and recount us this historiette,’ cries Sappho gaily.
‘Would it be an affront to the dignity of Clio to ask her to cite her authorities?’ asks Aristée.
‘My authority,’ answers Madeleine, ‘is the organ whom Descartes has chiefly offended, and the prime mover of the revolt—my heart! For you must know that the ungallant philosopher in his treatise on the Passions sides neither with the Ancients nor the Moderns with regard to the seat of the Tender Passion.’
‘To the Place de Grèves with the Atheist and Libertine!’ cries the company in chorus.
‘And who has this impious man dared to substitute for our old sovereign?’ asks Théodamas.
‘Why, a miserable pretender of as base an origin and as high pretensions as Zaga-Christ, the so-called King of Ethiopia, in fact, an ignoble little tube called the Conarium.’
‘Base usurper!’ cries all the company save Sappho, who says demurely,—
‘I must own to considering it a matter rather for rejoicing than commiseration that so noble an organ as the heart should at last be free from a grievous miasma that has gone a long way to bringing its reputation into ill-odour. I regard Descartes not as the Heart’s enemy but rather as its benefactor, as the venerable Teiresias who comes at the call of the noble Œdipus, desirous of discovering wherein lies the cause of his country’s suffering. Teiresias tells him that the cause is none other than the monarch’s favourite page, a pretty boy called Love. Whereupon the magnanimous Œdipus, attached though he is to this boy by all the tenderest bonds of love and affection, wreathes him in garlands and pelts him with rose-buds across the border. Then once more peace and plenty return to that fair kingdom, and les honnêtes gens are no longer ashamed of calling themselves subjects of its King.’
As she finishes this speech, Sappho’s eye catches that of Madeleine, and they smile at each other.
‘Why, Madame,’ cries Théodamas, laughing, ‘the inhabitant of so mean an alley as that in which Descartes has established Love, must needs, to earn his bread, stoop to the meanest offices, therefore we may consider that Descartes was in the right when he laid down that one of the functions of Love is to soulager l’estomac.’