CHAPTER XXIII
MADEMOISELLE DE SCUDÉRY’S SATURDAY
For the next few days Madeleine danced and desired and repeated mechanically to herself: ‘I will get the love of Mademoiselle de Scudéry,’ feeling, the while, that the facets of the adamant were pressing deep, deep into the wax of reality.
Then Saturday came, and Monsieur Conrart arrived in his old-fashioned coach punctually at 12.30. She took her place by his side and they began to roll towards the Seine.
‘I trust Acanthe will be worshipping at Sappho’s shrine to-day. His presence is apt to act as a spark setting ablaze the whole fabric of Sappho’s wit and wisdom,’ said Conrart in the tone of proud proprietorship he always used when speaking of Mademoiselle de Scudéry. Who was Acanthe? Madeleine felt a sudden pang of jealousy, and her high confidence seemed suddenly to shrink and shrivel up as it always did at any reminder that Mademoiselle de Scudéry had an existence of her own, independent of that phantom existence of hers in Madeleine’s imaginings. She felt sick with apprehension.
As they passed from the rue de la Mortellerie into the fine sweep of the rue Sainte-Antoine the need for sympathy became peremptory. Conrart had been giving her a dissertation on the resemblance between modern Paris and ancient Rome, she had worn a look of demure attention, though her thoughts were all to the four winds. There was a pause, and she, to break the way for her question, said with an admirable pretence of half-dazzled glimpses into long vistas of thought: ‘How furiously interesting. Yes—in truth—there is a great resemblance,’ followed by a pause, as if her eyes were held spellbound by the vistas, while Conrart rubbed his hands in mild triumph. Then, with a sudden quick turn, as if the thought had just come to her,—
‘I must confess to a sudden access of bashfulness; the company will all be strange to me.’
Conrart smiled good-naturedly.
‘Oh, ’twill pass, I dare swear, as soon as you have seen Sappho. There is an indescribable mixture of gentleness and raillery in her manners that banishes bashfulness for ever from her ruelle.’
‘Well, I must confess I did not find it so, to say truth she didn’t charm me; her ugliness frightened me, and I thought her manners as harsh as her voice,’ Madeleine found herself saying. Conrart opened his small innocent eyes as wide as they would go.
‘Tut-tut, what blasphemy, and I thought you were a candidate for admission to our agreeable city!’ he said in mild surprise. ‘But here we are!’
They had pulled up before a small narrow house of gray stone. Madeleine tried to grasp the fact in all its thrillingness that she was entering the door of Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s house, but somehow or other she could not manage it.
‘I expect they will be in the garden,’ said Conrart. ‘Courage!’ he added over his shoulder, with a kind twinkle. In another moment Madeleine was stepping into a tiny, pleasant garden, shadowed by a fine gnarled pear-tree in late blossom, to the left was seen the vast, cool boscage of the Templars’ gardens, and in front there stretched to the horizon miles of fields and orchards.
The little garden seemed filled with people all chattering at once, and among them Madeleine recognised, to her horror, the fine figure of Madame Cornuel. Then the bony form of Mademoiselle de Scudéry, clad in gray linen, detached itself from the group and walked towards them. She showed her long teeth in a welcoming smile. Mignonne, her famous dove, was perched on her shoulder.
‘This is delicious, Cléodomas,’ she barked at Conrart, and then gave her hand with quite a kind smile to Madeleine. ‘Mignonne affirms that all Dodona has been dumb since its prophet has been indisposed. Didn’t you, my sweeting?’ and she chirped grotesquely at the bird.
‘Jésus!’ groaned Madeleine to herself. ‘A child last time and now a bird!’
‘Mignonne’s humble feathered admirer at Athis sends respectfully tender warblings!’ Conrart answered, with an emphasis on ‘tender,’ as he took Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s hand, still looking, in spite of himself, ridiculously paternal.
In the meantime the rest of the company had gathered round them. A distinguished-looking man, not in his first youth, and one of the few of the gentlemen wearing a plumed hat and a sword, said in a slow, rather mincing voice,—
‘But what of indisposed, Monsieur? Is it not a word of the last deliciousness? I vow, sir, if I might be called indisposed, I would be willing to undergo all the sufferings of Job—in fact, even of Benserade’s Job——’
‘Chevalier, you are cruel! Leave the poor patriarch to enjoy the prosperity and regard that the Scriptures assure us were in his old age once more his portion!’ answered Mademoiselle de Scudéry, and the company laughed and cried ‘Bravo!’ This sally Madeleine understood, as accounts had reached Lyons of the Fronde within the Fronde—the half-jesting quarrel as to the respective merits of Voiture’s sonnet to Uranie and Benserade’s to Job—which had divided literary Paris into two camps, and she knew that Mademoiselle de Scudéry had been a partisan of Job. However, she was much too self-conscious to join in the laughter, her instinct was to try to go one better. She thought of ‘But Benserade’s Job isn’t old yet!’—when she was shy she was apt to be seized by a sort of wooden literalness—but the next minute was grateful to her bashfulness for having saved her from such bathos.
‘But really, Madame, indisposed is ravishing; is it your own?’ persisted the gentleman they called Chevalier.
‘Well, Chevalier, and what if it is? A person who has invented as many delightful words as you have yourself shows that his obligingness is stronger than his sincerity if he flatters so highly my poor little offspring!’ Madeleine gave a quick glance at the Chevalier. Could it be that this was the famous Chevalier de Méré, the fashionable professor of l’air galant, through whose urbane academy had passed all the most gallant ladies of the Court and the Town? It seemed impossible.
All this time a long shabby citizen in a dirty jabot had been trying in vain to catch Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s eye. Now he burst out with,—
‘A propos of words—er—of words,’ and he spat excitedly—on Madame Cornuel’s silk petticoat. She smiled with one corner of her mouth, raised her eyebrows, then pulling a leaf, gingerly rubbed the spot, and flung it away with a little moue of disgust. The shabby citizen, quite unconscious of this by-play, which was giving exquisite pleasure to the rest of the company, went on: ‘What do you think then of my word affreux—aff-reux—a-f-f-r-e-u-x? It seems to me not unsuccessful—hein—hein?’
‘Affreux?’ repeated an extremely elegant young man, with a look of mock bewilderment.
‘Affreux! What can it possibly mean, Monsieur Chapelain?’
‘But, Monsieur, it tells us itself that it is a lineal descendant of the affres so famous in the reign of Corneille the Great, a descendant who has emigrated to the kingdom of adjectives. It is ravishing, Monsieur; I hope it may be granted eternal fiefs in our language!’ said Mademoiselle de Scudéry courteously to poor Chapelain, who had begun to look rather discomfited. Madeleine realised with a pang that Mademoiselle de Scudéry had quite as much invention as she had herself, for the friend of her dreams had just enough wit to admire Madeleine’s.
‘Affreux—it is——’ cried Conrart, seeking a predicate that would adequately express his admiration.
‘Affreux,’ finished the elegant young man with a malicious smile. Mademoiselle de Scudéry frowned at him and suggested their moving into the house. Godeau (for he was also there) stroked the wings of Mignonne and murmured that she had confessed to him a longing to peck an olive branch. Godeau had not recognised Madeleine, and she realised that he was the sort of person who never would.
They moved towards the house. Through a little passage they went into the Salle. The walls were covered with samplers that displayed Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s skill in needlework and love of adages. The coverlet of the bed was also her handiwork, the design being, somewhat unsuitably, considering the lady’s virtue and personal appearance, a scene from the amours of Venus and Adonis. There were also some Moustier crayon sketches, and portraits in enamel by Petitot of her friends, and—by far the most valuable object in the room—a miniature of Madame de Longueville surrounded by diamonds. Madeleine looked at them with jealous eyes; why was not her portrait among them?
Poor Chapelain was still looking gloomy and offended, so when they had taken their seats, Mademoiselle de Scudéry, with a malicious glance at the others, asked him if he would not recite some lines from La Pucelle. The elegant young man, who was sitting at the feet of Mademoiselle Legendre closed his eyes, and taking out an exquisite handkerchief trimmed with Point du Gênes with gold tassels in the form of acorns, used it as a fan. Madame Cornuel smiled enigmatically.
‘Yes, Monsieur, pray give us that great pleasure!’ cried Conrart warmly. Chapelain cleared his throat, spat into the fireplace and said,—
‘It may be I had best begin once more from the beginning, as I cannot flatter myself that Mademoiselle has kept the thread of my argument in her head.’ ‘Like the thread of Ariadne, it leads to a hybrid monster!’ said the elegant young man, sotto voce.
In spite of Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s assurances that she remembered the argument perfectly, Chapelain began to declaim with pompous emphasis,—
‘Je chante la Pucelle, et la sainte Vaillance
Qui dans le point fatal, où perissait la France,
Ranimant de son Roi la mourante Vertu,
Releva son État, sous l’Anglais abbatu.’
On he went till he came to the couplet—
‘Magnanime Henri, glorieux Longueville,
Des errantes Vertus, et le Temple, et l’asile—’
Here Madame Cornuel interrupted with a gesture of apology—‘“L’asile des errantes vertus,”’ she repeated meditatively. ‘Am I to understand that Messieurs les Académiciens have decided that vertu is feminine?’ Chapelain made an awkward bow.
‘That goes without saying, Madame; we are not entirely ungallant; les Vertus et les dames sont synonymes!’ ‘Bravo!’ cried the Chevalier. But Madame Cornuel said thoughtfully,—
‘Poor Monsieur de Longueville, he is then an hôpital pour les femmes perdues; who is the Abbess: Madame his wife or—Madame de Montblazon?’ Every one laughed, including Mademoiselle de Scudéry, and Madeleine feverishly tried to repeat her formula ten times before they stopped. Chapelain stared, reddened, and began with ill-concealed anger to assure Madame Cornuel that ‘erring’ was only the secondary meaning of the word; its primary meaning was ‘wandering,’ and thus he had used it, and in spite of all the entreaties of Mademoiselle de Scudéry, Conrart, and the Chevalier, he could not be persuaded to resume his recitation.
Then for a time the conversation broke up into groups, Mademoiselle de Scudéry devoting herself to Chapelain, and Madeleine found herself between Godeau and the Chevalier, who spoke to each other across her.
‘What of Madame de la Suze?’ asked Godeau. The Chevalier smiled and shrugged.
‘As dangerous an incendiarist as ever,’ he answered. ‘A hundred Troys burn with her flame.’
‘What a splendid movement her jealousy used to have; it was a superb passion to watch at play!’
‘Ah! but it is killing her, if another poet’s poems are praised, it means the vapours for a week.’
‘She must sorely resent, then, the present fecundity of Mnemosyne.’
‘Yes, for the most part, a galant homme must needs speak of the Muses to a poetess as ten, but to her we must speak as if there were but one!’
Godeau laughed.
‘But what ravishingly languishing eyes!’ the Chevalier went on rapturously.
‘And what a mouth! there is something in its curves at once voluptuous and chaste; oh, it is indescribable; it is like the mouth of a Nymph!’ cried the little prelate with very unecclesiastical fervour.
‘You think it chaste? Hum,’ said the Chevalier dryly. ‘Her chastity, I should say, belongs to the band of Chapelain’s “vertus errantes.”’ Godeau gave a noncommittal, ecclesiastical smile. ‘I was speaking of her mouth,’ he answered.
‘Ah! what the Church calls a “lip-virtue.” I see.’
Godeau gave another smile, this time a rather more laïcal one.
‘And what of the charming Marquise, dear Madame de Sévigné?’ Godeau went on. The Chevalier flung up his hands in mute admiration.
‘There surely is the asile des vertus humaines!’ cried Godeau. ‘Ah, well, they both deserve an equal degree of admiration, but which of the two ladies do we like best?’ They both chuckled knowingly.
‘Yes, Dieu peut devenir homme mais l’homme ne doit pas se faire Dieu,’ went on Godeau, according to the fashion among worldly priests of reminding the company of their calling, even at the risk of profanity. Then Madeleine said in a voice shaking with nervousness,—
‘Don’t you think that parallel portraits, in the manner of Plutarch, might be drawn of these two ladies?’
There was rather a startled look on Godeau’s ridiculous, naughty little face. He had forgotten that this young lady had been listening to their conversation, and it seemed to him as unsuitable that strange and obscure young ladies should listen to fashionable bishops talking to their intimates, as it was for mortals to watch Diana bathing. But the Chevalier looked at her with interest; she had, the moment he had seen her, entered into his consciousness, but he had mentally laid her aside until he had finished with his old friend Godeau.
‘There are the seeds in that of a successful Galanterie, Mademoiselle,’ he said. ‘Why has it never occurred to us before to write parallel portraits? We are fortunate in having for le Plutarque de nos jours a charming young vestal of Hebe instead of an aged priest of Apollo!’ and he bowed gallantly to Madeleine.
Oh, the relief to be recognised as a person at last, and by the Chevalier de Méré, too, for Madeleine was sure it was he.
‘Monsieur du Raincy,’ he cried to the elegant young man who was still at Mademoiselle Legendre’s feet and gazing up into her eyes. ‘We think parallel portraits of Madame de Sévigné and Madame de La Suze would be du dernier galant, will you be le Plutarque galant?’
‘Why not share the task with the Abbé Ménage? Let him do Mme. de Sévigné, and you, the other!’ said Godeau with a meaning smile. Du Raincy looked pleased and self-conscious. He took out of his pocket a tiny, exquisitely chased gold mirror, examined himself in it, put it back, looked up. ‘Well, if it is I that point the contrasts,’ he said, ‘it might be called “the Metamorphosis of Madame La Marquise de Sévigné into a Mouche,” for she will be but a mouche to the other.’
‘Monsieur Ménage might have something to say to that,’ smiled the Chevalier.
Poor Madeleine had been trying hard to show by modest smiles of ownership that the idea was hers: she could have cried with vexation. ‘’Twas my conceit!’ she said, but it was in a small voice, and no one heard it.
‘What delicious topic enthralls you, Chevalier?’ cried out Mademoiselle de Scudéry in her rasping voice, feeling that she had done her duty by Chapelain for the present. The Chevalier answered with his well-preserved smile,—
‘Mademoiselle, you need not ask, the only topic that is not profane in the rue de Beauce—the heavenly twins, Beauty and Wit.’ Madeleine blushed crimson at the mention of beauty, in anticipation of Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s embarrassment; it was quite unnecessary, Sappho’s characteristic was false vanity rather than false modesty. She gave a gracious equine smile, and said that these were subjects upon which no one spoke better than the Chevalier.
‘Mademoiselle, do you consider that most men, like Phaon in your Cyrus, prefer a belle stupide—before they have met Sappho, I need not add—to a belle spirituelle?’ asked Conrart. Mademoiselle de Scudéry cleared her throat and all agog to be dissertating, began in her favourite manner: ‘Beauty is without doubt a flame, and a flame always burns—without being a philosopher I think I may assert that,’ and she smiled at Chapelain.
‘But all flame is grateful—if I may use the expression—for fuel, and wit certainly makes it burn brighter. But seeing that all persons have not sufficient generosity, and élan galant to yearn for martyrdom, they naturally shun anything which will make their flame burn more fiercely; not that they prefer a slow death, but rather having but a paltry spirit they hope, though they would not own it, that their flame may die before they do themselves. Then we must remember that the road to Amour very often starts from the town of Amour-Propre and wit is apt to put that city to the sword, while female stupidity, like a bountiful Ceres, fertilises the soil from her over-flowing Cornucopia. On the other hand, les honnêtes gens start off on the perilous journey from the much more glorious city of Esteem, and are guided on their way by the star of Wit.’
Every one had listened in admiring attention, except Madeleine, who, through the perverseness of her self-consciousness, had given every sign of being extremely bored.
‘I hear a rumour—it was one of the linnets in your garden that told me—that shortly a lady will make her début at Quinets’ in whom wit and beauty so abound that all the femmes galantes will have to pocket their pride and come to borrow from her store,’ said the Chevalier. Conrart looked important. ‘I am already in love to the verge of madness with Clélie,’ he said; ‘is it an indiscretion to have told her name?’ he added, to Mademoiselle de Scudéry.
‘The Chevalier de Méré would tell you that it is indiscreet to the verge of crime to mention the name of one’s flame,’ she answered with a smile, but she did not look ill-pleased. So Clélie was to be the name of the next book! Madeleine for some reason was so embarrassed and self-conscious at the knowledge that she did not know what to do with herself.
‘I picture her dark, with hazel eyes and——’ began Mademoiselle Legendre.
‘And I guess that she is young,’ said Madame Cornuel, with a twinkle. Du Raincy sighed sentimentally.
‘Well, Monsieur, tell us what is la Jeunesse?’ said Godeau.
‘La Jeunesse?’ he cried. ‘La Jeunesse est belle; la Jeunesse est fraîche; la Jeunesse est amoureuse,’ he cried, rolling his eyes.
‘But she rarely enters the Royaume du Tendre,’ said a little man as hideous as an ape—terribly pitted by smallpox—whom they called Pellisson, with a look at Mademoiselle de Scudéry. That lady smiled back enigmatically, and Madeleine found herself pitying him from the bottom of her heart for having no hope of ever getting there himself. There was a lull, and then people began to get up and move away. The Chevalier came up to Madeleine and sat down by her. He twisted his moustache, settled his jabot, and set to.
‘Mademoiselle, I tremble for your Fate!’ Madeleine went white and repeated her formula.
‘Why do you say that?’ she asked, not able to keep the anxiety out of her voice, for she feared an omen in the words.
‘To a lady who has shown herself the mistress of so many belles connaissances, I need not ask if she knows the words of the Roman Homer: Spretæ injuria formæ?’ Madeleine stared at his smiling, enigmatical face, could it be that he had guessed her secret, and by some occult power knew her future?
‘I am to seek as to your meaning,’ she said, flushing and trembling.
‘Jésus!’ said the Chevalier to himself, ‘I had forgotten the prudery of the provinces; can it be she has never before been accosted by a galant homme?’
‘Pray make your meaning clear!’ cried Madeleine.
‘Ah! not such a prude after all!’ thought the Chevalier. ‘Why, Mademoiselle, we are told that excessive strength or virtue in a mortal arouses in the gods what we may call la passion galante, to wit, jealousy, from which we may safely deduce that excessive beauty in a lady arouses the same passion in the goddesses.’
‘Oh, that’s your meaning!’ cried Madeleine, so relieved that she quite forgot what was expected of her in the escrime galante.
‘In truth, this naïveté is not without charm!’ thought the Chevalier, taking her relief for pleasure at the compliment.
‘But what mischief could they work me—the goddesses, I mean?’ she asked, her nerves once more agog.
‘The goddesses are ladies, and therefore Mademoiselle must know better than I.’
‘But have you a foreboding that they may wreak some vengeance on me?’
The poor Chevalier felt quite puzzled: this must be a visionnaire. ‘So great a crime of beauty would doubtless need a great punishment,’ he said with a bow. Madeleine felt tempted to rush into the nearest hospital, catch smallpox, and thus remove all cause for divine jealousy. The baffled Chevalier muttered something about a reunion at the Princesse de Guéméné and made his departure, yet, in spite of the strangeness of Madeleine’s behaviour, she had attracted him.
Most of the guests had already left, but Conrart, Chapelain, Pellisson, and a Mademoiselle Boquet—a plain, dowdy little bourgeoise—were still there, talking to Mademoiselle de Scudéry. The Chevalier’s departure had left Madeleine by herself, so Conrart called out to her,—
‘A lady who has just been gallantised by the Chevalier de Méré’ (so it was he!) ‘will carry the memory of perfection and must needs be a redoubtable critic in manners; Sappho, may she come and sit on this pliant near me?’ Madeleine tried to look bored, succeeded, and looked gauche into the bargain. Conrart patted her knee with his swollen, gouty hand, and said to Mademoiselle de Scudéry: ‘This young lady feels a bashfulness which, I think, does her credit, at meeting La Reine de Tendre, Princesse d’Estime, Dame de Reconnaissance, Inclination, et Terrains Adjacents.’ The great lady smiled and answered that if her ‘style’ included Ogress of Alarmingness, she would cease to lay claim to it. Here was Madeleine’s chance. Mademoiselle de Scudéry was smiling kindly at her and giving her a conversational opening. All she did was to mutter her formula and look with stony indifference in the opposite direction. Mademoiselle de Scudéry raised her eyebrows a little and forthwith Madeleine was excluded from the conversation.
Shortly afterwards Conrart asked Madeleine if she was ready to go, and they rose. A wave of inexpressible bitterness and self-reproach broke over Madeleine as Mademoiselle de Scudéry took her hand absently and bade her good-bye. Her new god in a dressing-gown had loyally done his part, but she, like a fool, had spoiled it all. And yet, she felt if she had it all over again, she would be seized by the same demon of perversity, that again all her instincts would hide her real feelings under a wall of shields. And Conrart, what would he think of her? However, he seemed to think nothing in particular. He was evidently trying to find out what Madeleine’s impressions of the company had been, and when she, anxious to make atonement, praised them enthusiastically, he chuckled with pleasure, as if her praise enhanced his own self-importance. ‘But the rest of us are but feeble luminaries compared to Sappho—the most remarkable woman of the century—she was in excellent vein on Beauty and Wit.’ It was on the tip of Madeleine’s tongue to say ‘A trifle pedantic!’ but she checked herself in time. ‘She always does me the honour of spending part of July and August at my little country house. It is delicious to be her companion in the country, the comparisons she draws between life and nature are most instructive, as well as infinitely gallant. And like all les honnêtes gens she is as ready to learn as to instruct; on a fine night we sometimes take a stroll after supper, and I give the company a little dissertation on the stars, for though she knows a thousand agreeable things, she is not a philosopher,’ he added complacently.
‘Ah, but, Monsieur, a grain of philosophy outweighs an ounce of agreeable knowledge; there is a solidity about your mind; I always picture the great Aristotle with your face!’ Madeleine’s voice was naturally of a very earnest timbre, and this, helped by her lack of humour and a halting way of speaking which suggested sincerity, made people swallow any outrageous compliment she chose to pay them. Conrart beamed and actually blushed, though he was perpetual and honorary secretary of the Academy, and Madeleine but an unknown young girl!
‘Aristotle was a very great man, Mademoiselle,’ he said modestly. Madeleine smiled. ‘There have been great men since Agamemnon,’ she said. Really this was a very nice girl!
‘Mademoiselle, I would like you to see my little campagne——’ he began.
‘That would be furiously agreeable, but I fear I could not come till the end of July,’ said Madeleine with unwonted presence of mind.
‘Dear, dear, that is a long while hence, but I hope we shall see you then.’
‘You are vastly kind, Monsieur; when shall I come?’ Madeleine asked firmly.
‘Well—er—let me see—are you free to come on the first day of August?’
‘Entirely, I thank you,’ cried Madeleine eagerly. ‘Oh! with what pleasant expectancy I shall await it!—and you must promise to give me a lesson about the stars.’ The beaming old gentleman promised with alacrity, and made a note of the date in his tablets.
At that moment, Madeleine caught sight of Jacques, strolling along the Quay, and suddenly filled with a dread of finding herself alone with herself, she told Conrart that she saw her cousin, and would like to join him.