The next morning—the morning of the day—Madeleine woke up with the same feeling of purification; she seemed to be holding the day’s culmination in her hands, and it was made of solid white marble, that cooled her palms as she held it.
Berthe, with mysterious winks, brought her a sealed letter. It was from Jacques:—
‘DEAR CHOP,—I am moving to the lodgings of a friend for a few days, and then I go off to join the Army in Spain. Take no blame to yourself for this, for I have always desired strangely to travel and have my share in manly adventures, and would, ’tis likely, have gone anyhow. I would never have made a good Procureur. I have written to Aunt Marie to acquaint her with my sudden decision, in such manner that she cannot suspect what has really taken place.
‘Oh, dear! I had meant to rail against you and I think this is nothing toward it! ’Tis a strange and provoking thing that one cannot—try as one will—be moved by real anger towards those one cares about! Not that I have any real cause to be angry upon your score—bear in mind, Chop, that I know this full well—but in spite of this I would dearly like to be!
‘JACQUES.’
As she read it, she realised that she had made a big sacrifice. Surely it would be rewarded!
She dressed in a sort of trance. Her excitement was so overwhelming, so vibrantly acute, that she was almost unconscious.
Then the Chevalier, with little Mademoiselle Boquet, drove up to the door, and Madeleine got in, smiling vaguely in reply to the Chevalier’s compliments, and they drove off, her mother and Berthe standing waving at the door. On rolled the carrosse past La Porte Sainte-Antoine, through which were pouring carts full of vegetables and fruit for the Halles, and out into the white road beyond; and on rolled the smooth cadences of the Chevalier’s voice—‘To my mind the highest proof that one is possessed of wit and that one knows how to wield it, is to lead a well-ordered life and to behave always in society in a seemly fashion. And to do that consists in all circumstances following the most honnête line and that which seems most in keeping with the condition of life to which one belongs. Some rôles in life are more advantageous than others; it is Fortune that casts them and we cannot choose the one we wish; but whatever that rôle may be, one is a good actor if one plays it well ...’ and so on. Fortunately, sympathetic monosyllables were all that the Chevalier demanded from his audience, and these he got from Mademoiselle Boquet and Madeleine.
And so the journey went on, and at last they were drawing up before a small, comfortable white house with neatly-clipped hedges, shrubberies, and the play of a sedate fountain. Madame Conrart, kind and flustered, was at the door to meet them, and led them into a large room in which Conrart in an arm-chair and Mademoiselle de Scudéry busy with her embroidery in another arm-chair sat chatting together. Conrart’s greeting to Madeleine was kindness itself, and Mademoiselle de Scudéry also said something polite and friendly. She pretended not to hear her, and moved towards Madame Conrart, for as soon as her eyes had caught sight of Sappho, she had been seized by the same terrible self-consciousness, the same feeling of ‘nothing matters so long as I am seen and heard as little as may be.’
Then came some twenty minutes of respite, for Mademoiselle Boquet with her budget of news of the Court and the Town acted as a rampart between Madeleine and Mademoiselle de Scudéry. But at dinner-time her terror once more returned, for general conversation was expected at meals. ‘Simple country fare,’ said Conrart modestly, but although the dishes were not numerous, and consisted mainly of home-reared poultry, there were forced peaches and grapes and the table was fragrant with flowers.
‘Flora and Pomona joining hands have never had a fairer temple than this table,’ said the Chevalier, and all the company, save Madeleine, added their tribute to their host’s bounty. But Madeleine sat awkward and tongue-tied, too nervous to eat. The precious moments of her last chance were slipping by; even if she thought of a thousand witty things she would not be able to say them, for her tongue felt swollen and impotent. Descartes on the Will was just an old pedant, talking of what he did not understand.
At last dinner was over, and Conrart suggested they should go for a little walk in the grounds. He offered his arm to Mademoiselle de Scudéry, the Chevalier followed with Madame Conrart, so Madeleine and Mademoiselle Boquet found themselves partners. But even then Madeleine was at first unable to break the spell of heavy silence hanging over her. ‘Blessed Saint Magdalene, help me! help me! help me!’ she muttered, and then reminded herself that being neither half-witted nor dumb, it did not demand any gigantic effort of will to force herself to behave like an honnête femme ... and to-day it was a matter of life or death.
She felt like a naked, shivering creature, standing at the top of a gigantic rock, and miles below her lay an icy black pool, but she must take the plunge; and she did.
She began to reinforce her self-confidence by being affected and pretentious with Mademoiselle Boquet, but the little lady’s gentle reserve made her vaguely uncomfortable. She was evidently one of those annoying little nonentities with strong likes and dislikes, and a whole bundle of sharp little judgments of their own, who are always vaguely irritating to their more triumphant sisters. Then she tried hard to realise emotionally that the gray female back in front of her belonged to Mademoiselle de Scudéry—to the Reine de Tendre; to Sappho—but somehow her imagination was inadequate. The focus of all her tenderness was not this complacent lady, but the Sappho of her dances.
As, for example, I find in myself two divers Ideas of the Sun, one as received by my senses by which it appears to me very small, another as taken from the arguments of Astronomers by which ’tis rendered something bigger than the Globe of the Earth. Certainly both of these cannot be like that sun which is without me, and my reason persuades that that Idea is most unlike the Sun, which seems to proceed immediately from itself.
She remembered these words of Descartes’ Third Meditation ... two suns and two Sapphos, and the one perceived by the senses, not the real one ... and yet, and yet she could never be satisfied with merely the Sappho of the dances, even though metaphysically she were more real than the other. Her happiness depended in merging the two Sapphos into one ... she must remember, reality is colourless and silent and malleable ... a white, still Sappho like the Grecian statues in the Louvre ... to the Sappho of her dances she gave what qualities she chose, so could she to the Sappho who was walking a few paces in front of her ... forward la Madeleine! Then the Chevalier came and walked on her other side. She told herself that this was a good opportunity of working herself into a vivacious mood, which would bridge over the next awful chasm. So she burst into hectic persiflage, and to Hell with Mademoiselle Boquet’s little enigmatical smile!
They were walking in a little wood. Suddenly from somewhere among the trees came the sound of violins. A cadeau for one of the ladies! Madeleine felt that she would die with embarrassment if it were not for her—yes, die—humiliated for ever in the eyes of Mademoiselle de Scudéry, in relationship to whom she always pictured herself as a triumphant beauty, with every inch of the stage to herself.
There was a little buzz of expectation among the ladies, and Madame Conrart, looking flustered and pleased, said: ‘I am sure it is none of our doing.’ Madeleine stretched her lips in a forced smile, in a fever of anxiety.
Then suddenly they came to an open clearing in the wood, and there was a table heaped with preserved fruits and jams and sweetmeats and liqueurs, all of them rose-coloured. The napkins were of rose-coloured silk and folded into the shape of hearts, the knives were tiny darts of silver. Behind stood the four fiddlers scratching away merrily at a pot pourré of airs from the latest ballet de cour. The ladies gave little ‘ohs!’ of delight, and Conrart looked pleased and important, but that did not mean anything, for he was continually taking a possessive pride in matters in which he had had no finger. The Chevalier looked enigmatic. Conrart turned to him with a knowing look and said,—
‘Chevalier, you are a professor of the philosophie de galanterie, can you tell us whether rose pink is the colour of Estime or of le Tendre?’
‘Descartes is dumb on the relation of colours to the Passions, so it is not for me to decide,’ the Chevalier answered calmly, ‘all I know is that the Grecian rose was pink.’ Madeleine’s heart gave a bound of triumph.
The fiddles started a languorous saraband, and from the trees a shower of artificial rose-petals fell on the ladies. Mademoiselle de Scudéry looked very gracious.
‘Our unknown benefactor has a very fragrant invention,’ she said in a tone which seemed to Madeleine to intimate that she was the queen of the occasion. Vain, foolish, ugly creature, how dare she think so, when she, Madeleine, was there! Had she not heard what the Chevalier had said about the ‘Grecian rose’?—(though why she should know that the Chevalier called Madeleine ‘Rhodanthos,’ I fail to perceive!)—she would put her in her place. She gave a little affected laugh, and, looking straight at the Chevalier, she said,—
‘It is furiously gallant. I thank you a thousand times.’
The Chevalier looked nonplussed, and stammered out that ‘Cupid must have known that a bevy of Belles had planned to visit that wood.’
Madeleine had committed the unpardonable crime—she had openly acknowledged a cadeau, whereas Galanterie demanded that the particular lady it was intended to honour should be veiled in a piquant mystery. Why, it was enough to send all the ladies of Cyrus shuddering back for ever to their Persian seraglios! But she had as well broken the spell of silence woven by Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s presence. That lady exchanged a little look with Mademoiselle Boquet which somehow glinted right off from Madeleine’s shining new armour. She gulped off a liqueur and gave herself tooth and nail to the business of shining. She began to flirt outrageously with the Chevalier, and though he quite enjoyed it, the pédagogue galant in him made a mental note to give Madeleine a hint that this excessive galanterie smacked of the previous reign, while the present fashion was a witty prudishness. Certainly, Mademoiselle de Scudéry was not looking impressed, but, somehow, Madeleine did not care; the one thing that mattered was that she should be brilliantly in the foreground, and be very witty, and then Mademoiselle de Scudéry must admire her.
Mademoiselle de Scudéry soon started a quiet little chat with Conrart, which caused Madeleine’s vivacity to flag; how could she sparkle when her sun was hidden?
‘Yes, la belle Indienne would doubtless have found her native America less barbarous than the milieu in which she has been placed by an exceeding ironical fortune,’ Mademoiselle de Scudéry was saying. Madeleine, deeply read in La Gazette Burlesque, knew that she was speaking of the beautiful and ultra-refined Madame Scarron, forced to be hostess of the most licentious salon in Paris.
‘’Tis my opinion she falls far short of Monsieur Scarron in learning, wit, and galanterie!’ burst in Madeleine. She did not think so really; it was just a desire to make herself felt. Mademoiselle de Scudéry raised her eyebrows.
‘Is Mademoiselle acquainted with Madame Scarron?’ she inquired in a voice that implied she was certain that she was not. In ordinary circumstances, such a snub, even from some one for whose good opinion she did not care a rap, would have reduced her to complete silence, but to-day she seemed to have risen invulnerable from the Styx.
‘No, I haven’t been presented to her—although I have seen her,’ she said.
‘And yet you speak of her as though you had much frequented her? You put me in mind, Mademoiselle, of the troupe of players in my brother’s comedy who called themselves Comédiens du Roi, although they had played before His Majesty but once,’ said Mademoiselle de Scudéry coldly.
‘In earnest, I have no wish to pass as Madame Scarron’s comedian. Rumour has it she was born in a prison,’ Madeleine rejoined insolently. ‘Moreover, I gather from her friends, the only merit in her prudishness is that it acts as a foil to her husband’s wit.’
Mademoiselle de Scudéry merely raised her eyebrows, and Conrart, attempting to make things more comfortable, said with a good-natured smile,—
‘Ah! Sappho, the young people have their own ideas about things, I dare swear, and take pleasure in the genre burlesque!’
(Jacques would have smiled to hear Madeleine turned into the champion of the burlesque!) ‘Well, all said, the burlesque, were it to go to our friend Ménage (whom one might call the Hozier[4] of literary forms) might get a fine family tree for itself, going back to the Grecian Aristophanes—is that not so, Chevalier?’ went on Conrart. The Chevalier smiled non-committally.
‘No, no,’ interrupted Madeleine; ‘certainly not Aristophanes. I should say that the Grecian Anthology is the founder of the family; a highly respectable ancestor, though de robe rather than d’épée, for I am told Alexandrian Greek is not as noble as that of Athens. It contains several epigrams, quite in the manner of Saint-Amant.’ She was quoting Jacques, from whom, without knowing a word of Greek, she had gleaned certain facts about Greek construction and literature.
Though Conrart never tried to conceal his ignorance of Greek, he could scarcely relish a reminder of it, while to be flatly contradicted by a fair damsel was not in his Chinese picture of Ladies and Sages. Mademoiselle de Scudéry came to his rescue,—
‘For myself, I have always held that all an honnête homme need know is Italian and Spanish’—(here she smiled at Conrart, who was noted for his finished knowledge of these two tongues)—‘the nature of the passions, l’usage de monde, and above all, Mythology, but that can be studied in a translation quite as well as in the original Greek or Latin. This is the necessary knowledge for an honnête homme, but as the word honnête covers a quantity of agreeable qualities, such as a swift imagination, an exquisite judgment, an excellent memory, and a lively humour naturally inclined to learning about everything it sees that is curious and that it hears mentioned as worthy of praise, the possessor of these qualities will naturally add a further store of agreeable information to the accomplishments I have already mentioned. These accomplishments are necessary also to an honnête femme, but as well as being able to speak Italian and Spanish, she must be able to write her native French; I must confess that the orthography of various distinguished ladies of my acquaintance is barely decent! As well as knowing the nature and movements of the Passions she must know the causes and effects of maladies, and a quantity of receipts for the making of medicaments and perfumes and cordials ... in fact of both useful and gallant distillations, as necessity or pleasure may demand. As well as being versed in Mythology, that is to say, in the amours and exploits of ancient gods and heroes, she must know what I will call the modern Mythology, that is to say the doings of her King and the historiettes of the various Belles and Gallants of the Court and Town.’
All the company had sat in rapt attention during this discourse, except Madeleine, who had fidgeted and wriggled and several times had attempted to break in with some remark of her own. Now she took advantage of the slight pause that followed to cry out aggressively: ‘Italian and Spanish may be the language of les honnêtes gens, but Greek is certainly that of les gens gallants, if only for this reason, that it alone possesses the lover’s Mood.’ Madeleine waited to be asked what that was, and the faithful Chevalier came to her rescue.
‘And what may the lover’s mood be, Mademoiselle?’ he asked with a smile.
‘What they call the Optative—the Mood of wishing,’ said Madeleine. The Chevalier clapped delightedly, and Conrart, now quite restored to good humour, also congratulated her on the sally; but Mademoiselle de Scudéry looked supremely bored.
The violins started a light, melancholy dance, and from behind the trees ran a troop of little girls, dressed as nymphs, and presented to each of the ladies a bouquet, showing in its arrangement the inimitable touch of the famous florist, La Cardeau. Madeleine’s was the biggest. Then they got up and moved on to a little Italian grotto, where they seated themselves on the grass, Madame Conrart insisting that her husband should sit on a cloak she had been carting about with her for the purpose all the afternoon. He grumbled a little, but sat down on it all the same.
‘And now will the wise Agilaste make music for us?’ he asked. All looked invitingly towards Mademoiselle Boquet. She expressed hesitation at performing in a garden where such formidable rivals were to be found as Conrart’s famous linnets, but she finally yielded to persuasion, and taking her lute, began to play. It was exquisite. First she played some airs by Couperin, then some pavanes by a young Italian, as yet known only to the elect and quite daring in his modernity, by name Lulli, and last a frail, poignant melody of the time of Henri IV., in which, as in the little poem of the same period praised by Alceste, ‘la passion parlait toute pure.’
Madame Conrart listened with more emotion than any of them, beating time with her foot, her eyes filling with tears. When Mademoiselle Boquet laid down her lute, she drew a deep sigh. ‘Ah! Now that’s what I call agreeable!’ Conrart frowned at her severely, but Mademoiselle de Scudéry and the Chevalier were evidently much amused. The poor lady, realising that she had made a faux pas, looked very unhappy.
‘Oh! I did not mean to say ... I am sure ... I hope you will understand!’ she said to the company, but looking at Conrart the while.
‘We will understand, and indeed we would be very dull if we failed to, that you are ever the kindest and most hospitable of hostesses,’ said Mademoiselle de Scudéry. Madame Conrart looked relieved and said,—
‘I am sure you are very obliging, Mademoiselle.’ Then she turned to Madeleine, ‘And you, Mademoiselle, do you sing or play?’ Madeleine said in a superior tone that she did not, and the Chevalier, invariably adequate, said: ‘Mademoiselle is a merciful Siren.’
And so the afternoon passed, until it was time to take their leave. The Conrarts were very kind and friendly and hoped Madeleine would come again, but Mademoiselle de Scudéry had so many messages to send by Mademoiselle Boquet to friends in Paris, that she forgot even to say good-bye to her.
On the drive home the Chevalier and Mademoiselle Boquet had a learned discussion about music, and Madeleine sat silent and wide-eyed. It was eight o’clock when they reached the petite rue du Paon. Madeleine rushed in to her mother, who was waiting for her, and launched into a long excited account of the day’s doings, which fulfilled the same psychological need that a dance would have done, and then she went to her room, for her mother wished to discuss the violent decision come to so suddenly by Jacques.
She went straight to bed and fell asleep to the cry of the Oublieux—‘La joie! la joie! Voilà des oublies!’