Madeleine: One of Love's Jansenists

by Hope Mirrlees

PART III

Ainsi de ce désir que le primitif croyait être une des forces de l’univers et d’où il fit sortir tout son panthéon, le musulman a fait Allâh, l’être parfait auquel il s’abandonne. De même que le primitif logeait dans la cuiller promenée processionnellement son désir de voir l’eau abreuver la terre, ainsi le musulman croit qu’Allâh réalise la perfection en dehors de lui. Sous une forme plus abstraite l’argument ontologique de Descartes conclura de l’idée du parfait à son existence, sans s’apercevoir qu’il y a là, non pas un raisonnement, un argument, mais une imagination. Et cependant, à bien entendre les paroles des grands croyants, c’est en eux qu’ils portent ce dieu: il n’est que la conscience de l’effort continuel qui est en nous. La grâce du Janséniste n’est autre que cet effort intérieur.’

Doutté—Magie et Religion.

CHAPTER XXI
‘WHAT IS CARTESIANISM?’

With the return of hope quite involuntarily Madeleine began once more to pray. But to whom was she praying? Surely not to the hard, remote God of the Jansenists, for that, she knew by bitter experience, would avail her nothing. Jansenism led straight to the ‘Heavenly Rape’; of that she was convinced. If, as in spite of herself she could not doubt, there was only one God, and He such a Being as the Jansenists presented Him, then she must not pray, for prayers only served to remind Him of her existence, and that He should completely forget her was her only hope of escape from the ‘ravishing arms.’

But ghostly weapons she must have with which to fight for success on Saturday. If not prayers, then something she could do; if not the belief in a Divine Ally, then some theory of the universe which justified her in hoping. For in Madeleine there was this much of rationalism—perverted and scholastic though it might be—that for her most fantastic superstitions she always felt the need of a semi-philosophical basis.

Suddenly she remembered Jacques’s words in the Place Maubert: ‘’Tis the will that Descartes writes of—a magic sword like to the ones in Amadis.’ To will, was not that the same as to desire? Mère Agnès had insisted on the importance of desiring. She had talked about the adamant of desire that neither the tools of earth can break nor the chemistry of Hell resolve. Hours of anguish could testify to that adamant being hers, but what if the adamant were a talisman, and that in its possession lay the certainty of success? She must find out about Cartesianism.

She ran into the parlour.

‘Jacques, I would fain learn something of Descartes,’ she cried.

‘Descartes? Oh, he’s the rarest creature! ’Tis reported he never ceases from sniffling in his nose, and like Allah, he sits clad in a dressing-gown and makes the world.’

Monsieur Troqueville cocked an eye full of intelligent interest and said, in his prim company voice: ‘In good earnest, is that so?’ But Madeleine gave one of Jacques’s ringlets a sharp tweak, and asked indignantly what he meant by ‘dressing-gowns and Allah.’

‘Why, Allah is the Turk’s God,’ then, seeing that Monsieur Troqueville with pursed-up lips was frowning and shaking his head with the air of a judge listening to an over-specious counsel, he added,—

‘Well, uncle, do you lean to a contrary opinion?’

‘All the world is aware that Mohammed is the Turk’s God—Mohammed. But you have ever held opinions eccentric to those of all staid and learned doctors!’

‘Uncle, I would have you know that Allah is the Turk’s God.’

‘Mohammed!’

‘Allah, I say, and as there is good ground for holding that he is ever clad in a Turkish dressing-gown, thus....’

‘They dub their God Mohammed,’ roared Monsieur Troqueville, purple in the face.

‘Mohammed or Allah, ’tis of little moment which. But I would fain learn something of Descartes’ philosophy,’ said Madeleine wearily.

‘Well,’ began Jacques, delighted to hold forth, ‘’Tis comprised in the axiom, cogito, ergo sum—I think, therefore I am—whence he deduces....’

‘Yes, but is it not he who holds that by due exercise of the will one can compass what one chooses?’ broke in Madeleine, to the evident delight of Monsieur Troqueville, for he shot a triumphant glance at Jacques which seemed to say, ‘she had you there!’

Jacques gave her a strange little look. ‘I fear not,’ he answered dryly; ‘the Will is not the bountiful beneficent Venus of the Sapphic Ode.’ Madeleine’s face fell.

‘’Tis the opinion he holds with regard to the power exercised by the will over the passions that you had in mind,’ he went on. ‘He holds the will to be the passions’ lawful king, and though at times ’tis but an English king pining in banishment, by rallying its forces it can decapitate “mee lord protectour” and re-ascend in triumph the steps of its ancient throne. This done, ’tis no longer an English king but an Emperor of Muscovy—so complete and absolute is its sway over the passions.

‘Ainsi de vos désirs toujours reine absolue

De la plus forte ardeur vous portez vos esprits

Jusqu’à l’indifférence, et peut-être au mépris,

Et votre fermeté fait succéder sans peine

La faveur au dédain, et l’amour à la haine.

‘There is a pretty dissertation for you, adorned with a most apt quotation from Corneille. Why, I could make my fortune in the Ruelles as a Professor of philosophie pour les dames!’ he cried with an affectionate little moue at Madeleine, restored to complete good humour by the sound of his own voice. But Madeleine looked vexed, and Monsieur Troqueville, his eyes starting from his head with triumph, spluttered out, ‘’Twas from Polyeucte, those lines you quoted, and how does Pauline answer them?

‘Ma raison, il est vrai, dompte mes sentiments;

Mais, quelque authorité que sur eux elle ait prise,

Elle n’y règne pas, elle les tyrannise,

Et quoique le dehors soit sans émotion,

Le dedans n’est que trouble et que sédition.

‘So you see, my young gallant, I know my Corneille as well as you do!’ and he rubbed his hands in glee. ‘“Le dedans n’est que trouble et que sédition,” how would your old Descartes answer that? ’Tis better surely to yield to every Passion like a gentleman, than to have a long solemn face and a score of devils fighting in your heart like a knavish Huguenot ... hein, Jacques? hein?’ (It was not that Monsieur Troqueville felt any special dislike to the tenets of Cartesianism in themselves, he merely wished to prove that Jacques had been talking rubbish.)

‘Well, uncle, there is no need to be so splenetic, ’tis not my philosophy; ’tis that of Descartes, and though doubtless——’

But Madeleine interrupted a discussion that threatened to wander far away from the one aspect of the question in which she was interested.

‘If I take your meaning, Descartes doesn’t teach one how to compass what one wishes, he only teaches us how to be virtuous?’

Monsieur Troqueville gave a sudden wild tavern guffaw, and rubbing his hands delightedly, cried, ‘Pitiful dull reading, Jacques, hein?’

‘You took his book for a manual of love-potions, did you?’ Jacques said in a low voice, with a hard, mocking glint in his eyes.

He had divined her thought, and Madeleine blushed. Then his face softened, and he said gently,—

‘I will get you his works, nor will it be out of your gain to read them diligently.’

CHAPTER XXII
BEES-WAX

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.’

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.

CHAPTER XXIV
SELF-IMPOSED SLAVERY

‘I knew you would have to pass this way, and I have been waiting for you this half-hour,’ said Jacques. ‘Well, how went the encounter?’ That Madeleine was not in despair was clear from the fact that she was willing to talk about it.

‘Oh! Jacques, I cannot say. Mademoiselle de Scudéry was entertaining the whole company with discourse, but when she did address a word to me I was awkward and bashful—and—and—not over civil. Do you think she will hate me?’ She waited anxiously for his answer.

‘Awkward, bashful, and not over civil!’ laughed Jacques. ‘What did you do uncivil? Did you put out your tongue and hiccough in her face? Oh, that you had! Or did you deliberately undress and then dance about naked? I would that people were more inclined to such pleasant antics!’

‘In good earnest I did not,’ said Madeleine severely. ‘But I feigned not to be interested when she talked, and averted my eyes from her as if the sight of her worked on my stomach. Oh! what will she think of me?’

‘Well, I don’t know, Chop,’ Jacques said dubiously; ‘it seems you used arts to show yourself in such colours as ’twould be hard to like!’

‘Do people never take likings to bashful, surly people?’ she persisted.

‘I fear me they are apt to prefer smooth-spoken, courtly ones,’ he answered with a smile. ‘But, take heart, Chop, you will meet with her again, doubtless, when you must compel yourself to civility and to the uttering of such galanterie as the occasion furnishes, and then the issue cannot choose but be successful. Descartes holds admiration to be the mother of the other passions; an you arouse admiration the others will follow of their own accord.’

‘’Tis easy to talk!’ wailed Madeleine, ‘but her visible presence works so strangely upon me as to put me out of all my precepts, and I am driven to unseemly stammering or to uncivil silence.’

‘Lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus Flamma demanat, etcetera. Have you been studying that most witty anatomy of the lover in the volume of Catullus that I lent you?’ asked Jacques, rather mockingly.

‘Yes,’ said Madeleine, blushing. Then, after a pause,—

‘It seems that ... er ... er ... my father ... that this Ariane ... that, in short, he has prospered in his suit of late?’

‘Has he? I am exceeding glad to hear it,’ said Jacques dryly. Then, looking at her with his little inscrutable smile, he added: ‘You show a most becoming filial interest in your father’s roman; ’tis as if you held its issue to be tied up in some strange knot with the issue of your own.’

How sinister he was looking! Madeleine stared at him with eyes of terror. She tried to speak but no sound would come from her lips.

Suddenly his expression became once more kind and human.

‘Why, Chop,’ he cried, ‘there are no bounds set to your credulity! I verily believe your understanding would be abhorrent of no fable or fiction, let them be as monstrous as they will. In good earnest you are in sore need of a dose of old Descartes!’

‘But, Jacques, I have of late been diligently studying him and yet it has availed me nothing. My will has lost naught of its obliquity.’

‘How did you endeavour to straighten it ... hein?’ Jacques asked very gently.

Madeleine hung her head and then confessed her theory about the Wax, and how she had tried upon reality the plastic force of her will.

Jacques threw out his hands in despair.

‘Oh, Chop!’ he cried, ‘it is a sin to turn to such maniac uses the cleanest, sweetest good sense that ever man has penned! That passage about the wax is but a figure! The only way to compass what we wish is to exercise our will first on our own passions until they will take what ply we choose, and then to exercise it on the passions of others. Success lies in you but is not to be compassed by vain, foolish rites after the manner of the heathen and the Christians. Why, you have made yourself a slave, bound with the fetters of affrighting fancies that do but confound the senses and scatter the understanding. The will is the only talisman. Exercise yourself in the right using of it against your next meeting with Mademoiselle de Scudéry, then when that meeting comes, at one word from you the bashful humours—docile now—will cower behind your spleen, and the mercurial ones will go dancing through your blood up to your brain, whence they will let fall a torrent of conceits like sugar-plums raining from the Palais Mazarin, and thus in Mademoiselle de Scudéry you will arouse the mother of the passions—Admiration.’

They both laughed, and arm in arm—Madeleine with a serene look in her eyes—made their way to the petite rue du Paon.

CHAPTER XXV
THE SYMMETRY OF THE COMIC MUSE

July came, making the perfume of the meadows more fragrant, the stench of the Paris streets more foul.

Madeleine had adopted Jacques’s rationalism, and, having discarded all supernatural aids, was applying her energies to the quelling of her ‘passions.’

It stood to reason that l’amitié tendre could only spring from the seeds of Admiration. It behoved her, then, to make herself worthy of Admiration. The surest way of achieving this was to perfect herself in the air galant, and she had the great good fortune to procure the assistance of one of the most eminent professors of this difficult art. For the Chevalier de Méré wrote an elaborate Epistle asking her to grant him the privilege of waiting on her, which she answered in what she considered a masterpiece of elegant discretion, consisting of pages of obscure preciosity ending in the pleasant sting of a little piquant ‘yes.’

He became an almost daily visitor, and, unfailingly suave and fluent, he would give her dissertations on life and manners, filled with that tame, fade common sense which had recently come to be regarded as the last word in culture.

She was highly flattered by his attentions, naturally enough, for he was considered to have exquisite taste in ladies and had put the final polish on many an eminent Précieuse. Under his tuition she hoped to be, by the time of her visit to Conrart, a past-mistress in the art of pleasing, and to have her ‘passions’ in such complete control as to be quite safe from an attack of bashfulness.

A July of quiet progress—then August and Mademoiselle de Scudéry! She awaited the issue of this next meeting with quiet confidence. There is a comfortable solidity about four weeks, like that of a square arm-chair in which one can sit at one’s ease, planning and dreaming. If Madeleine had been gifted with clarity of vision she would have realised that, for her, true happiness was to be found nowhere but in that comfortable, sedentary posture. Only those very dear to the gods can distinguish between what they really want and what they think they want.

Berthe was full of sly hints with regard to the Chevalier, and his visits elicited from her many an aphorism on the tender passion. She had evidently given to him the rôle formerly played by Jacques in her version of Madeleine’s roman.

And what of Jacques? He was naturally very jealous of the Chevalier and very angry with Madeleine.

He was now rarely at home in the evenings. Monsieur Troqueville, who, during the first week of July, was forced to keep his room by a severe attack of gout, seemed strangely uneasy.

Suddenly Jacques ceased coming home even to sleep, and at the mention of his name Monsieur Troqueville would be threatened by a fit of apoplexy.

When alone with Madeleine he was full of vague threats and warnings such as: ‘When I get hold of that rascally cousin of yours, I would see him that dares prevent me strangling him!’ ‘Have a care lest that scoundrel Jacques stick a disgrace upon you, as he has done to me!’ ‘If you’ll be ruled by me you’ll have none of that fellow! ’Tis a most malicious and treacherous villain!’

A sinister fear began to stir in Madeleine’s heart.

---

After a week’s absence, Jacques appeared at supper, dishevelled and debonair, with rather a wicked gleam in his narrow eyes. The atmosphere during the meal was tense with suppressed emotion, and it was evident that Monsieur Troqueville was thirsting for his blood.

Supper over, Madeleine made a sign to Jacques to follow her.

‘Well?’ she asked him, once they were in her own room.

‘Well?’ he answered, smiling enigmatically.

‘You have been about some mischief—I know it well. Recount me the whole business without delay.’

‘Some mischief? ’Tis merely that I have been driving the playwright’s trade and writing a little comedy, on life instead of on foolscap.’

‘I do not take your meaning.’

‘No? Have you ever remarked that Symmetry is the prettiest attribute of the Comic Muse? Here is my cast—two Belles and one Gallant. Belle I. loathes the Gallant like the seven deadly sins, while he most piteously burns with her flame, and has been hoodwinked by his own vanity and the persuasions of a friend that she burns as piteously with his. Now, mark the inverted symmetry—the Gallant loathes Belle II., while she burns with his flame and is persuaded that he does with hers. Why, the three are as prettily interrelated as a group of porcelain figures! I am of opinion that Comedy is naught but Life viewed geometrically.’

‘You talk in riddles, Jacques, and I am entirely without clue to your meaning—save that it is some foolishness,’ cried Madeleine with intense irritation. Jacques’s only answer was an inscrutable smile.

‘Read me your riddle without delay, or you’ll have me stark mad with your nonsense!’ she cried with tears of suspense and impatience in her eyes.

So Jacques told her how after his first rebuff Monsieur Troqueville had for a time ceased to pester Ariane with his addresses, and had found balm for his hurt vanity in pretending to his tavern companions that his success with Ariane had been complete, and that he held her heart in the hollow of his hand. He had almost come to believe this himself, when one evening his friends in the tavern, who had of course never believed his story, had insisted on seeing Ariane in the flesh. It was in vain that Monsieur Troqueville had furiously reiterated that ‘the lady being no common bawd, but exceeding dainty of her favours, would never stoop to such low company as theirs.’ The company was obdurate, reiterating that unless they saw her with their own eyes they would hold his ‘Chimène’ to be but a ‘chimère,’ and that like Troy in Euripides’ fable, it was but for a phantom lady that he burned. Finally, Monsieur Troqueville, goaded beyond all endurance, vowed that the lady would be with them ere an hour was passed. The company agreed that if he did not keep his word he would have to stand drinks all round and kiss their grim Huguenot hostess, while if Ariane appeared within an hour they would give him as brave a petite-oie as their joint purses could afford. (At the words ‘petite-oie’ Madeleine went pale.) Once outside the tavern Monsieur Troqueville gave way to despair, and Jacques was so sorry for him that although he felt certain the business would end in ridicule for them both, he rushed to Ariane’s house to see if he could move her to pity. Fortunately he found her alone and bored—and took her fancy. To cut a long story short, before the hour was up, amid the cheers of the revellers and the Biblical denunciations of the hostess, Ariane made her epiphany at the tavern and saved Monsieur Troqueville’s face. After that Jacques went often to see Ariane, and delivered the love-letters he carried from Monsieur Troqueville, not to her but to her ancient duenna, in whose withered bosom he had easily kindled a flame for his uncle. Finally, having promised him a meeting with his lady, he had thrown him into the arms of the duenna.

When Jacques had finished his story, Madeleine, who had gazed at him with a growing horror in her eyes, said slowly,—

‘To speak truth, you seem to me compact of cruelty.’ At once he looked penitent. ‘No, Chop, ’tis not my only humour. One does not hold Boisrobert and the other writers of Comedy to be cruel in that they devise droll situations for their characters.’

‘That is another matter.’

‘Well, maybe you are in the right. ’Twas a scurvy trick I played him, and I am ashamed. Are you grievously wroth with me, Chop?’

‘I can hardly say,’ she answered and, her eyes wandering restlessly over the room, she twisted her hands in a way she had when her nerves were taut. ‘There are times when I am wont to wonder ... if haply I do not somewhat resemble my father,’ she added with a queer little laugh.

The idea seemed to tickle Jacques. She looked at him angrily.

‘You hold then that there is truth in what I say?’ and try as she would she could not get him to say that there was not.

CHAPTER XXVI
BERTHE’S STORY

Madeleine was feeling restless, so she asked Berthe to come and sit by her bed and talk to her.

‘Tell me a story,’ she commanded, and Berthe delightedly launched forth on her favourite theme, that of Madeleine’s resemblance to her youngest brother.

‘Oh, he often comes to me and says, “Tell me a story, Berthe,” like that, “tell me a story, Berthe,” and I’ll say, “Do you think I have nothing better to do, sir, than tell you stories. Off you go and dig cabbages;” and he’ll say, with a bow, “Dig them yourself, Madame”—oh, he’s malin, ever pat with an answer; he is like Monsieur Jacques in that way. One day——’

‘Please tell me a story,’ Madeleine persisted. ‘Tell me the one about Nausicaa.’

‘Ah! that was the one that came back to me when Mademoiselle turned with such zeal to housewifery!’ and she chuckled delightedly.

‘Tell it to me!’

‘Well, it was a pretty tale my grandmother used to tell; she heard it from her grandmother, who had been tire-woman to a great lady in the reign of good King Francis.’

‘Begin the tale,’ commanded Madeleine firmly.

‘Oh, Mademoiselle will have her own way—just like Albert,’ winked Berthe, and began,—

‘Once upon a time, hundreds of years ago, there lived a rich farmer near Marseilles. My grandmother was wont to say he was a king, but that cannot have been, for, as you will see, his daughter did use to do her own washing. Mademoiselle hates housework, doesn’t she? I can see you are ill-pleased when Madame talks of a ménage of your own——’

‘Go on,’ said Madeleine. Berthe cackled, ‘Just like Albert!’ she exclaimed.

‘Well, this farmer had an only daughter, who was very beautiful; she had an odd name: it was Nausicaa. She was rêveuse, like Mademoiselle and me, and used to love to lie in her father’s orchard reading romances or looking out over the sea, which lay below. She did not care for the sons of the farmers round that came wooing her with presents of lambs and apples or with strings of beads which they bought from sailors at the harbour; they seemed to her clumsy with their foolish grins and their great hands, for Nausicaa was exceeding nice,’ and Berthe winked meaningly. ‘And there were merchants, too, with long beards and grave faces, and gold chains, who sought her hand, but she was aware that they looked on her as nothing better than the rare birds their ships brought them from the Indies. Well, one night, Our Lady appeared to her in a dream and said: “Lève-toi, petite paresseuse, les jeunes demoiselles doivent s’occuper du mariage et de leur ménage.” And she bade Nausicaa go to the river, and wash all her linen, for if a Prince came he would be ill-pleased to find her foul. And Nausicaa woke up feeling very strange and as if fair wondrous things were coming to meet her. ’Tis a fancy that seizes us all at times, and much good it does us!’ And Berthe gave her long, soft chuckle, while Madeleine scowled at her.

‘As soon as she was dressed, Nausicaa ran into the fields to find her father, and she put her arms round his neck and hid her face on his shoulder and said, laughing,—

‘“Father, I am fain you should lend me a cart and four mules for to-day,” and her brothers, who were standing near, laughed and asked who was waiting for her at the other end. And Nausicaa tossed her head and said she did but want to wash her linen in the river. And her father pinched her ear and kissed her and said that he would order four of his best mules to be harnessed. And when her mother heard of her project she clapped her hands with joy and winked at the old nurse, for she divined the thought in Nausicaa’s mind, and the poor soul was exceeding glad.’

‘Go on,’ Madeleine commanded feverishly, forestalling a personal deviation.

‘Well, the mother filled a big hamper full of the delicate fare that Nausicaa liked best—pain d’épice, and quince jam and preserved fruits and a fine fat capon, and bade four or five of the dairymaids go with her and help her with her washing, and Nausicaa filled a great basket with her linen, and they all climbed into the cart, and Nausicaa took the reins and flicked the whip, and the mules trotted off. When they got to the river they rolled up their sleeves and set to, and they laughed and talked over their work, for Nausicaa was not proud. And when all the linen was washed and laid out on the grass to dry they sat down and ate their dinner and talked, and Nausicaa sang them songs, for she had brought her lute with her. And then they played at Colin-Maillard and at ball, and then they danced a Branle, and poor grannie used always to say that they were as lovely as the angels dancing in Paradise. Every one, of course, was comely long ago’—and Berthe interrupted her narration to chuckle.

‘Grannie used always to go on like this: “They laughed and played as maidens will when they are among themselves, but they little knew what was watching them from behind a bush of great blue flowers,” and we used to say, with our eyes as round as buttons—“Was it a bear, grannie?” “No.” “Was it a lutin, then?” And we were grievously disappointed when she would say, “No, it was a man!” Well, it was a great Roman lord called Ulysse who had fought with Charlemagne at the Siege of Troy, and when he started on his voyage home, Saint Nicholas, the sailors’ saint, who did not love him, pestered him with storms and shipwrecks and monstrous fish so that the years passed and he got no nearer home. And all the time he kept on praying to Our Lady to give him a safe and speedy return, and at last she heard his prayer, and when Saint Nicholas had once again wrecked his ship she rescued him from the sea and walked over the waves with him in her arms as if he were a little child till she reached the river near Marseilles, and then she laid him among the rushes by its banks, and there he slept. And when he woke up she worked a miracle so that the wrinkles and travel-stains and sunburn dropped away from him, and his rags she changed into a big hat with fine plumes, and a jerkin of Isabelle satin, and a cloak lined with crimson plush, and breeches covered with ribbons, so that he was once more the fine young gallant that had years ago started for the wars. And she told him to step out from behind the bush and accost Nausicaa. Oh, believe me, he knew what to say, for he was as malin as a fox! He made as fine a bow as you could see and told Nausicaa that she must be a king’s daughter. And her heart was fluttering like a bird—poor, pretty soul!—as she remembered her dream. Not that she had need to call it to mind, for, as Mademoiselle doubtless will understand, she had thought of nothing else all day!’ Madeleine looked suspiciously at the comic mask, but Berthe went on,—

‘And then my lord Reynard tells of his misfortunes, and the hours he had spent struggling in the cold sea, and of his hunger, and of how his ship was lost, and he longing for his own country, “until I saw Mademoiselle,” with another bow, so that tears came to the eyes of Nausicaa and her maids, and shyly kind, she asked him if he would be pleased to take shelter under her father’s roof, which, as you will believe, was just what he had been waiting for! And her parents welcomed the handsome stranger kindly, the father as man to man, the mother a little shyly, for she saw that he was a great lord, though he did not tell his name, and she feared that he might think poorly of their state. All the same, her mind was busy weaving fantasies, and when she told them to her husband he mocked her for a vain and foolish woman, but for all that, he looked troubled and not well pleased. Nausicaa did not tell her parents of her dream, but that evening when her old nurse was combing her hair—my grannie used to say it was a comb made of pink coral—she asked her whether she thought that dreams might be taken as omens, and the old woman, who from the question divined the truth, brought out a dozen cases of dreams coming true.’

‘Does it end happily?’ Madeleine interrupted feverishly.

‘Mademoiselle will see,’ chuckled Berthe, her expression inexpressibly sly.

‘Don’t look so strangely, Berthe, you frighten me!’ cried Madeleine. She was in a state of great nervous excitement.

‘But, Mademoiselle, it is only a tale—it is just like Albert, he will sometimes cry his eyes out over a sad tale. I remember one evening at the Fête des Rois, the Curé——’

‘Go on with the story,’ cried Madeleine.

‘Where was I? Oh, yes.... Well, Ulysse stayed with them some days, and he would borrow a blue smock from one of Nausicaa’s brothers and help to bring in the hay, and in the evening tell them stories of strange countries or play to them on the lute. And he would wander with Nausicaa in the orchard, and though his talk was pretty and full of fleurettes, he never spoke of love. Well, one evening a Troubadour—Mademoiselle knows what that is?’

‘Of course!’

‘Came to the door and they asked him in, and after supper he sang them songs all about the Siege of Troy and the hardships undergone by Charlemagne and his knights when they fought there for la belle Hélène, and as he listened Ulysse could not keep from weeping, and they watched him, wondering. And when the song was finished they were all silent. And then Ulysse spoke up, saying he would no longer keep his name from them—“and, indeed,” he added proudly, “it is not a name that need make its bearer blush, for,” said he, “I am the lord Ulysse!” At that they all exclaimed with wonder, and Nausicaa turned as white as death, but Ulysse did not look at her. Then he told them of all the troubles sent him by Saint Nicholas and how fain he was to get to his own country and to his lady who was waiting for him in a high tower, but that he had no ship. Then Nausicaa’s father clapped him on the shoulder, although he was such a great lord, and told him that he had some ships of his own to carry his corn to barren countries like England, and that he should have one to take him home. Then he filled up their glasses with good red Beaume and drank to his safe arrival, but Nausicaa said never a word and left the room. And next morning she was there, standing by a pillar of the door to bid him godspeed, smiling bravely, for though she was but a farmer’s daughter she had a noble fierté. But after he had gone she could do nothing but weep, and pray to the Virgin to send her comfort. And some tell that in time she forgot the lord Ulysse and the grievous sorrow he had brought on her, and wedded with a neighbouring farmer and gat him fair children.

‘But others tell that the poor soul could not rid herself of the burden of her grief, but did use to pass the nights in weeping and the days in roaming, wan and cheerless, by the sea-waves or through the meadows. And one eve as she wandered thus through a field of corn, it chanced that one of God’s angels was flying overhead, and he saw the damsel, and his strange bloodless heart was filled with love and pity of her, and he swooped down on her and caught her up to Paradise.

‘ ... There is Madame calling me!’ and Berthe hurried from the room.

Madeleine lay quite still on her bed, with a frightened shadow in her eyes. Ever since Jacques’s dissertation on the Symmetry of the Comic Muse, terror had been howling outside the doors of her soul, but now it had boldly entered and taken possession.

CHAPTER XXVII
THE CHRISTIAN VENUS

The sane and steady procedure of the last few weeks—to prepare for the arousing of Admiration in Mademoiselle de Scudéry by a course in the art of pleasing—now seemed to Madeleine inadequate and frigid. She felt she could no longer cope with life without supernatural aid.

Once more her imagination began to pullulate with tiny nervous fears.

There would be onions for dinner—a vegetable that she detested. She would feel that unless she succeeded in gulping down her portion before her father gave another hiccough, she would never gain the friendship of Mademoiselle de Scudéry. She would wake up in the middle of the night with the conviction that unless, standing on one leg, she straightway repeated ‘cogito, ergo sum’ fifteen times, Conrart would be seized by another attack of gout which would postpone her visit.

But these little fears—it would be tedious to enumerate them all—found their source in one great fear, to wit lest the Sapphic Ode and the adventures of Nausicaa formed one story.

The Ode tells how Venus appeared to Sappho and promised her rare things; but were these promises fulfilled? The Ode does not tell us, but we know that Sappho leapt from a cliff into the cold sea. The Virgin appears to Nausicaa, and although her promises are not as explicit as those of Venus, they are every whit as enticing, and what do they lead to? To a maiden disillusioned, deserted, and heart-broken, finding her final consolation in the cold and ravishing embraces of an Angel.

She, too, by omens and signs had been promised rare things; she had abandoned God, but had she ceased to believe in His potency? She remembered the impression left on Jacques by the fourth book of the Eneid, and Descartes’ discarded hypothesis of an evil god, le grand trompeur—the ‘great cheat,’ he had called Him. Perhaps He had sent the Virgin to Nausicaa, Dame Venus to Sappho, and to herself a constellation of auspicious stars, to cozen them with fair promises that He might have the joy of breaking them—and their hearts as well.

One evening when her nerves were nearly cracking under the strain of this idea, she went to the kitchen to seek out Berthe.

‘Berthe,’ she said, ‘when you do strangely desire a thing shall come to pass, what means do you affect to compass it?’

Berthe gave her a sly look and answered: ‘I burn a candle to my patron saint, Mademoiselle.’

‘And is the candle efficacious to the granting of your prayers?’

‘As to their granting, it hangs upon the humour of Saint Berthe.’

‘Do you know of any charm that will so work upon her as to change her humour from a splenetic to a kindly one?’

‘There is but two charms, Mademoiselle, that will surely work upon the humours of the great—be they in Paradise or on the earth—they be flattery and presents. Albeit, I am a good Catholic, I hold my own opinions on certain matters, and I cannot doubt that once the Saints are safe in Paradise they turn exceeding grasping, crafty, and malicious. Like financiers, they are glutted on the farthings of the poor—a pack of Montaurons!’

‘And in what manner does one flatter them?’

‘Why, by novenas and candles and prostrating oneself before their images. As for me, except I have a prayer I strangely desire should be granted, I do never affect to kneel at Mass, I do but bend forward in my seat. In Lorraine we hold all this bowing and scraping as naught but Spanish tomfoolery! You’d seek long before you found one of us putting ourselves to any discomfort for the Saints, except it did profit us to do so!’ and for at least a minute she chuckled and winked.

Well, here was a strange confirmation of her theory—a wicked hierarchy could only culminate in a wicked god. Yes, but such ignoble Saints would surely not be incorruptible. Might not timely bribes change their malicious designs? Also, it was just possible that Nausicaa and Sappho had neglected the rites and sacrifices without which no compact is valid between a god and a mortal. But could she not learn from their sad example? Her story was still in the making, by timely rites she might bring it to a happy issue.

With a sudden flash of illumination she felt she had discovered the secret of her failure. It was due to her neglect of her own patron saint, Saint Magdalene, who was as well the patron saint of Madeleine de Scudéry, a mystic link between their two souls, without which they could never be united.

Forget not your great patron saint in your devotions. It was her particular virtue that she greatly loved, had been the words of Mère Agnès. She greatly loved—why, it was all as clear as day; was she not the holy courtesan, and as such had she not taken over the functions of the pagan Venus, she who had appeared to Sappho? As the Christian Venus, charm and beauty and wit and l’air galant, and all the qualities that inspire Admiration must be in her gift, and Madeleine had neglected her! It was little wonder she had failed. Why, at the very beginning of her campaign against amour-propre she should have invoked her aid—‘the saint who so greatly loved.’

Thus, link by link, was forged a formidable chain of evidence proving the paramount importance of the cult of Saint Magdalene.

What could she do to propitiate her? The twenty-second of July was her Feast, just a few days before the visit to Conrart. That was surely a good omen. She made a rapid calculation and found that it would fall on a Sunday, what if ... she shuddered, for something suddenly whispered to her soul a sinister suggestion.

---

That afternoon the Chevalier de Méré came to wait on her, and in the course of his elegantly didactic monologue, Madeleine inadvertently dropped her handkerchief: he sprang to pick it up, and as he presented it to her apostrophised it with a languorous sigh,—

‘Ah, little cambric flower, it would not have taken a seer to foretell that happiness as exquisite as yours should precede a fall!’

Then, according to his custom of following up a concrete compliment by a dissertation on the theory of Galanterie he launched into an historical survey of the use to which the Muse Galante had made, in countless admirable sonnets, of the enviable intimacy existing between their fair wearer and such insensible objects as a handkerchief or a glove.

‘But these days,’ he continued, ‘the envy of a poet à la mode is not so much aroused by gloves of frangipane and handkerchiefs of Venetian lace, in that a franchise far greater than they have ever enjoyed has been granted by all the Belles of the Court and Town to ignoble squares of the roughest cloth—truly evangelical, these Belles have exalted the poor and meek and——’

‘I don’t take your meaning, pray explain,’ Madeleine cut in.

‘Why, dear Rhodanthos, have you never heard of Mère Madeleine de Saint-Joseph of the Carmelites?’

‘That I have, many a time.’

‘Well, as you know, in her life time she worked miracles beyond the dreams of Faith itself, and at her death, as in the case of the founder of her Order, the great Elias, her virtue was transmitted to her cloak, or rather to her habit, portions of which fortunate garment are worn by all the belles dévotes next ... er ... their ... er next ... er ... their sk ... next their secret garden of lilies, with, I am told, the most extravagant results; it is her portion of the miraculous habit that has turned Madame de Longueville into a penitent, for example, but its effects are sometimes of a more profane nature, namely—breathe it low—success in the tender passion!’ Madeleine’s eyes grew round.

‘Yes, ’tis a veritable cestus of Venus, which, I need hardly remind a lady of such elegant learning as Mademoiselle, was borrowed by Juno when anxious to rekindle the legitimate passion in the bosom of Jove. And speaking of Juno I remember——’

But Madeleine had no more attention to bestow on the urbane flow of the Chevalier’s conversation. She was ablaze with excitement and hope ... Mère Madeleine de Saint-Joseph, the mystical name again! And the cestus of Venus ... it was surely a message sent from Saint Magdalene herself. The Chevalier had said that these relics had usurped the rôle previously played in the world of fashion by lace handkerchiefs and gloves of frangipane, in short of the feminine petite-oie. Thus, by obtaining a relic, she would kill two birds with one stone; she would absorb the virtue of Saint Magdalene and at the same time destroy for ever the bad magic of that petite-oie of bad omen which she had bought at the Foire St. Germain. The very next day she would go to the Carmelites, and perhaps, perhaps, if they had not long ago been all distributed, procure a piece of the magical habit. At any rate she would consolidate her cult for Saint Magdalene by burning some candles in the wonderful chapel set up in her honour in the Church of the Carmelites.

CHAPTER XXVIII
THE ASCENT OF MOUNT CARMEL

Many strange legends had gone to weave round the Convent of the Carmelites—so long the centre of fashionable Catholicism—an atmosphere of romantic mystery.

Tradition taught that the order had been founded on the summit of Mount Carmel by Elias himself. Its earliest members were the mysterious Essenes, but they were converted to Christianity by Saint Peter’s Pentecostal sermon, and built on the mountain a chapel to the Blessed Virgin Mary, she herself becoming a member of their order. Her example was followed by the Twelve Apostles, and any association with that mysterious company of sinister semi-plastic beings, menacing sinners with their symbolic keys and crosses, had filled Madeleine since her childhood with a nameless terror.

The Essenes and the Apostles! The Carmelites thus preserved the Mysteries of both the Old and the New Testaments.

Madeleine, as she stood at the door of their Convent, too awe-struck to enter, felt herself on the confines of the Holy Land—that land half geographical, half Apocalyptical, where the Unseen was always bursting through the ramparts of nature’s laws; where Transfigurations and Assumptions were daily events, and Assumptions not only of people but of cities. Had not Jerusalem, with all its towers and palm-trees and gardens and temples, been lifted up by the lever of God’s finger right through the Empyrean, and landed intact and all burning with gold in the very centre of the Seventh Heaven?

Summoning up all her courage she passed into the court. It was quite empty, and over its dignified proportions there did indeed seem to lie the shadow of the silent awful Denizen of ‘high places.’ Dare she cross it? Once more she pulled herself together and made her way into the Church.

It was a gorgeous place, supported by great pillars of marble and bronze and hung with large, sombre pictures by Guido and Philippe de Champagne, while out of the darkness gleamed the ‘Arche d’Alliance’ with its huge sun studded with jewels.

The atmosphere though impressive was familiar—merely Catholicism in its most luxuriant form, and Madeleine took heart. She set out in quest of the Magdalene’s Chapel. Here and there a nun was kneeling, but she was the only stranger.

Yes, it was but meet that here—the grave of sweet Mademoiselle de Vigean’s love for the great Condé and of many another romantic tragedy—the Magdalene should be specially honoured.

The Chapel was small and rich, its door of fretted iron-work made it look not unlike a great lady’s alcove. It was filled with pictures by Le Brun and his pupils of scenes from the life of the Saint. There she was in a dark grove, with tears of penitence streaming from the whites of large upturned eyes. And there she was again, beneath the Cross, and there watching at the Tomb, but always torn by the same intensity of pseudo emotion, for Le Brun and Guido foreshadowed in their pictures that quality of poignant, artificial anguish which a few years later was to move all sensibilities in the tragedies of Racine.

Madeleine was much moved by the Magdalene’s anguish, and hesitated to obtrude her own request. But her throbbing desire won the day, and remembering what Berthe had said about flattery she knelt before the largest picture and began by praising the Magdalene’s beauty and piety and high place in Paradise, and then with humble importunity implored the friendship of her namesake.

When she opened her eyes, there was the Magdalene as absorbed as before in the intensity of her own emotion. Le Brun’s dramatic chiaroscuro brings little comfort to suppliants—the eternal impassivity of the Buddha is far less discouraging than an eternal emotion in which we have no part.

Madeleine felt the chill of repulse. Perhaps in Paradise as on earth the Saints were sensible to nothing but the cycle of the sacred Story, and knew no emotions but passionate grief at the Crucifixion, ecstasy at the Resurrection, awe at the Ascension, and child-like joy as the Birth comes round again.

‘I am scorned in both the worldly and the sacred alcoves,’ she told herself bitterly, nevertheless, she determined to continue her attentions.

She bought three fine candles and added them to those already burning on the Magdalen’s altar. What did the Saint do with the candles? Perhaps at night when no one was looking she melted them down, then added them to the wax of reality and moulded, moulded, moulded. Once more Madeleine fell on her knees, and there welled from her heart a passion of supplication.

Sainte Madeleine, the patron saint of all Madeleines ... of Madeleine Troqueville and of Madeleine de Scudéry ... the saint who had loved so much herself ... the successor of she whom Jacques had called ‘the beneficent and bountiful Venus’ ... surely, surely she would grant her request.

‘Deathless Saint Magdalen of the damasked throne,’ she muttered, ‘friend of Jesus, weaver of wiles, vex not my soul with frets and weariness but hearken to my prayer. Who flees, may she pursue; who spurns gifts may she offer them; who loves not, willy-nilly may she love. Broider my speech with the quaint flowers of Paradise, on thine own loom weave me wiles and graces to the ensnaring of my love. Up the path of Admiration lead Sappho to my desire.’

She felt a touch on her shoulder, and, looking round, saw a lay-sister, in the brown habit of the Carmelites. Her twinkling black eyes reminded Madeleine of another pair of eyes, but whose she could not remember.

‘I ask pardon, Madame,’ the sister said in a low voice, ‘but we hold ourselves the hostesses, as it were, of all wanderers on Carmel. Is there aught that I can do for you?’

Madeleine’s heart began to beat wildly; the suddenness with which an opportunity had been given her for procuring her wish seemed to her of the nature of a miracle. Through her perennial grief at the old, old story, the Magdalene must have heard her prayer. A certainty was born in on her that her desire would be granted. She and the other Madeleine would one day visit the Chapel together, and side by side set up rows and rows of wax candles in gratitude for the perfection of their friendship.

‘Oh, sister, I am much beholden to you,’ she stammered. The nun led the way out of the Church into the great garden that marched with that of the Luxembourg and rivalled it in magnificence. She sat down by a statue of the Virgin, enamelled in gold and azure.

Madeleine thought with contemptuous pity of the comparatively meagre dimensions and furnishing of Port-Royal, and triumphed to think how far she had wandered from Jansenism.

‘You have the air of one in trouble,’ said the nun kindly. Her breath smelt of onions, and somehow or other this broke the spell of the situation for Madeleine. It was a touch of realism not suited to a mystical messenger.

‘I perceive graven on your countenance the lines of sorrow, my child,’ she went on, ‘but to everything exists its holy pattern, and these lines can also be regarded as a blessing, when we call to mind the holy stigmata.’ She gabbled off this speech as though it had been part of the patter of a quack.

‘Yes, I am exceeding unhappy,’ said Madeleine; ‘at least I am oppressed by fears as to the issue of certain matters,’ she corrected herself, for ‘unhappy’ seemed a word of ill-omen.

‘Poor child!’ said the Sister, ‘but who knows but that oil and balm of comfort may not pour on you from Mount Carmel?’

‘Oh, do you think it may?’ Madeleine cried eagerly.

‘’Tis a strange thing, but many go away from here comforted. It is richly blessed.’

‘I wonder,’ Madeleine began hesitatingly. ‘I fear ’tis asking too much—but if I could but have a relic of the blessed Mère Madeleine de Saint-Joseph! The world reports her relics more potent than any other Saint’s.’ (In spite of the efforts of many great French ladies, Mère Madeleine de Saint-Joseph had not been canonised. Madeleine knew this, but she thought she would please the Carmelite by ignoring it.)

At Madeleine’s words the little nun wriggled her body into a succession of Gallic contortions, in which eyebrows and hands played a large part, expressive of surprise, horror, and complete inability to grant such an outrageous request. But Madeleine pleaded hard, and after a dissertation on the extraordinary virtue of the habit, and a repeated reiteration that there were only one or two scraps of it left, the Carmelite finally promised that one of these scraps should be Madeleine’s.

She went into the Convent and came back with a tiny piece of frayed cloth, and muttering a prayer she fixed it inside Madeleine’s bodice.

Madeleine was almost too grateful to say ‘thank you.’

‘All the greatest ladies of the Court and the Town are wont to wear a portion of the sacred habit,’ the nun continued complacently. Madeleine found herself wondering quite seriously if the mère Madeleine de Saint-Joseph had been a Gargamelle in proportions.

‘To speak truth, it must have been a huge and capacious garment!’ she said in all good faith. The nun gave her a quick look out of her shrewd little eyes, but ignored the remark.

‘And now Mademoiselle will give us a contribution for our Order, will she not?’ she said insinuatingly. Madeleine was much taken aback. She blushed and said,—

‘Oh, in earnest ... ’tis accordant with my wishes ... but ... er ... how much?’

‘Do but consult your own heart, and it will go hard but we shall be satisfied. I have given you what to the eyes of the flesh appears but a sorry scrap of poor rough fustian, but to the eyes of the spirit it has the lustre of velvet, and there is not a Duchess but would be proud to wear it!’

Why, of course, her eyes were like those of the mercer at the Fair who had sold her the ‘petite-oie’!

However, one acquires merit by giving to holy Houses ... and also, Mademoiselle has procured something priceless beyond rubies. Madeleine offered a gold louis, and the nun was profuse in her thanks. They parted at the great gates, the nun full of assurances as to the efficacy of the amulet, Madeleine of grateful thanks.

It had been a strange adventure, and she left the Sacred Mountain with conflicting emotions.

CHAPTER XXIX
THE BODY OF THE DRAGON

If you remember, when Madeleine had realised that the feast of Saint Magdalene was approaching, an idea had flashed into her head which she had not then dared to entertain. But it had slowly crept back and now had established itself as a fixed purpose. It was this—on the feast of Saint Magdalene to communicate, without having first received Absolution. She felt that it would please the potent Saint that she should commit a deadly sin in her honour. Also, it would mean a complete and final rupture with Jansenism. And with one stroke she would annihilate her Salvation—that predestined ghostly certainty to the fulfilment of which the Celestial Powers seemed bent on sacrificing all her worldly hopes and happiness. Yes, she would now be able to walk in security along the familiar paths of life, unhaunted by the fear of the sudden whirr of wings and then—the rape to the love of invisible things.

So on Sunday, the twenty-second of July, she partook of the Blessed Sacrament. Arnauld had written in the ‘Fréquente Communion’: ‘therefore as the true penitent eats the body of Jesus Christ, so the sinner eats the body of the Dragon.’

Well, and so she was eating the body of the Dragon! The knowledge gave her a strange sense of exaltation and an awful peace.

CHAPTER XXX
A JAR

It was the day before the meeting. Early next morning the Chevalier de Méré was to call for her in his coach and drive her out to Conrart’s house. He was also taking that tiresome little Mademoiselle Boquet. That was a pity, but she was particularly pleased that the Chevalier himself was to be there, he always brought out her most brilliant qualities.

She was absolutely certain of success ... the real world seemed to have become the dream world ... she felt as if she had been turned into a creature of some light, unsubstantial substance living in an airless crystal ball.

That afternoon, being Thursday and a holiday, she went an excursion with Jacques to Chaillot, a little village up the Seine. She walked in a happy trance, and the fifteenth century Church, ornate and frivolous, dotted with its black Minims—‘les bons hommes de Chaillot’—and the coach of the exiled Queen-Mother of England’s gaily rattling down the cobbled street, seemed to her—safe inside her crystal ball—pretty and unreal and far-away, like Berthe’s stories of Lorraine.

Then they wandered into a little copse behind the village and lay there in the fantastic green shade, and Madeleine stroked and petted Jacques and laughed away his jealousy about the Chevalier, and promised that next week she would go with him to the notary and plight her troth.

Then they got up and she took his arm; on her face was a rapt smile, for she was dreaming particularly pleasant things about herself and Sappho.

Suddenly Jacques’s foot caught in a hidden root ... down he came, dragging Madeleine after him ... smash went the crystal ball, and once more she saw the world bright and hard and menacing and felt around her the rough, shrewd winds.

So Jacques had made her fall—just when she was having such pleasant dreams of Sappho!

Hylas, hélas! Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. Birds thinking to fly through have dashed themselves against the wall. ’Tis as though the issue of his roman were tied in a strange knot with that of yours. I have been writing a little comedy on life instead of on foolscap. In the smithy of Vulcan are being forged weapons which will not tarry to smash your fragile world into a thousand fragments ... weapons? Perhaps one of them was ‘the scimitar of the Comic Muse’ (or was it the ‘symmetry’? It did not really matter which.)

Who was the mercer at the Fair? He had the same eyes as the nun at the Carmelites.... Her father, too, had a petite-oie ... he had put his faith in bravery. Perhaps Venus-Magdalen and the Comic Muse were one ... and their servant was Hylas the mocking shepherd. The wooden cubes on which God’s finger had cut a design ... generals and particulars. Have a care lest that scoundrel Jacques stick a disgrace upon you, as he has done to me! A comedy written upon life instead of upon foolscap.

In morbid moments she had often heard a whisper to which she had never permitted herself to listen. She heard the whisper now, louder and more insistent than ever before. To-day she could not choose but listen to it.

Her ‘roman’ had to follow the pattern of her father’s. Her father’s ‘roman,’ as slowly it unfolded, was nothing but a magical pre-doing of her own future, more potent than her dances. And God had deputed the making of it to—Jacques. He was the playwright, or the engraver, or the moulder of wax—it mattered little in what medium he wrought his sinister art.

There was still time to act. ‘She would do, she would do, she would do.’ Action is the only relief for a hag-ridden brain. An action that was ruthless and final—that would break his power and rid her of him for ever. That action should be consummated.

All the while that this train of fears and memories had been coursing through her brain, she had chattered to Jacques with hectic gaiety.

When they got home she ran to the kitchen to find Berthe.

‘Berthe, were you ever of opinion I would wed with Monsieur Jacques?’

Berthe leered and winked. ‘Well, Mademoiselle,’ she said, ‘Love is one thing—marriage is another. Monsieur Jacques could not give Mademoiselle a coach and a fine hôtel in the Rue de Richelieu. I understand Mademoiselle exceeding well, in that we are not unlike in some matters,’ and she gave her grotesque grin. ‘As for me, I would never wed with a man except he could raise me to a better condition than mine own—else what would it profit one? But if some plump little tradesman were to come along——’

‘But did you hold that I would wed with Monsieur Jacques?’ Madeleine persisted.

‘Well, if Mademoiselle did wed with him, she would doubtless be setting too low a price on herself, though he is a fine young gentleman and malin comme un singe; he is like Albert, nothing escapes him.’

‘Do you think the Saints like us to use each other unkindly?’

Berthe laughed enigmatically, ‘I think ’tis a matter of indifference to them, so long as they get the sous.’

‘But don’t you think it might accord well with their humour if they are as wicked as you say they are?’

Part of the truth suddenly flashed on Berthe, and she winked and chuckled violently. ‘Oh, Mademoiselle is sly!’ she cried admiringly. ‘I think it would please them not a little were Mademoiselle to jilt a poor man that she might wed with a rich one, for then there would be gold for them instead of copper!’

And Madeleine, having forced her oracle into giving her a more or less satisfactory answer, fled from the room in dread of Berthe mentioning the name of the Chevalier de Méré and thereby spoiling the oracular answer.

She called Jacques to her room at once, and found herself—she who had such a horror of hurting the feelings of her neighbours that she would let a thief cut her purse-strings rather than that he should know that she knew he was a thief—telling him without a tremor that his personality was obnoxious to her, his addresses still more so, and that she wanted to end their relationship once and for all. Jacques listened in perfect silence. At her first words he had gone white and then flushed the angry red of wounded vanity, and then once more had turned white. When she had finished, he said in a voice of icy coldness,—

‘Mademoiselle, you have an admirable clearness of exposition; rest assured I shall not again annoy you with my addresses—or my presence,’ and with his head very high he left the room.

CHAPTER XXXI
THE END OF THE ‘ROMAN’

Madeleine listened to Jacques’s light footsteps going down the long flight of stairs, and knew that he had gone for ever. With this knowledge came a sense of peace she had not known for days, and one of sacramental purity, such as must have filled the souls of pious Athenians when at the Thargelia the Pharmakoi were expelled from the city.

Yes, just in time she had discovered the true moral of the Sapphic Ode and the story of Nausicaa, to wit, that the gods will break their promises if man fails to perform the necessary rites and ceremonies. Ritually, her affairs were in exquisite order. By her sacrilegious Communion (she still shuddered at the thought of it) she had consolidated her cult for the powerful Saint Magdalene, and at the same time cut out of her heart the brand of God, by which in the fullness of time the ravishing Angel would have discovered his victim. And, finally, by her dismissal of Jacques, she had rid herself of a most malign miasma. The wax of reality lay before her, smooth and white and ready for her moulding. All she had to do now was to sparkle, and, automatically, she would arouse the passion of Admiration.

Suddenly she remembered another loose thread that needed to be gathered up. The roman of her dances had not been brought to a climax.

An unwritten law of the style gallant makes the action of a roman automatically cease after a declaration of love. Nothing can happen afterwards. What if she should force time to its fullness and make a declaration? It would be burning her boats, it would be staking all her happiness on this last meeting, for if it were a failure hope would be dead. For, owing to her strange confusion of the happenings of her dances with those of real life, the roman of the one having been completed, its magical virtue all used up, its colophon reached, she felt that the roman of the other would also have reached its colophon, that nothing more could happen. But for great issues she must take great risks ... dansons!

---

Sappho and Madeleine are reclining on a bank, the colour and design of which rival all the carpets in the bazaars of Bagdad. There is no third person to mar their ravishing solitude à deux. Madeleine is saying,—

‘I must confess, Madame, that your delicious writings have made me a heretic.’

Sappho laughs gaily. ‘Then I tremble for your fate, for heretics are burned.’

‘In that case I am indeed a heretic, for a flame has long burned me,’ says Madeleine boldly. But Sappho possesses in a high degree the art of hearing only what she chooses, and she says, a trifle coldly,—

‘If my writings have made you a heretic, they must themselves be heretical. Do they contain Five Propositions worthy of papal condemnation?’

‘Madame, you are resolved to misunderstand me. They have made me a heretic in regard to the verdict of posterity as to the merits of the ancients, for since I have steeped myself, if I may use the expression, in your incomparable style I have become as deaf as Odysseus to the siren songs of Greece and Rome.’

‘That is indeed heresy,’ cries Sappho with a smile that shows she is not ill-pleased. ‘I fear it will be visited by excommunication by the whole College of Muses.’

‘The only punishment of heresy—you have yourself said so—is ... flame,’ says Madeleine, gazing straight into the eyes of Sappho. This time she is almost certain she can perceive a blush on that admirable person’s cheek—almost certain, for the expression of such delicate things as the Passions of Sappho must need itself be very delicate. Descartes has said that a blush proceeds from one of two passions—love or hate. En voilà un problème galant!

‘To justify my heresy, permit me, Madame, to recall to your mind a poem by your namesake, the Grecian Sappho,—

‘That man seems to me greater than the gods who doth sit facing thee and sees thee and hears thy delicate laughter. When this befalls me my senses clean depart ... all is void ... my tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth, drop by drop flame steals down my slender veins ... there is a singing in mine ears ... my eyes are covered with a twin night.

She pauses, but Sappho laughs—perhaps not quite naturally—and cries,—

‘Mademoiselle, your heresy still stands unjustified!’

‘Why, Madame, how could any one of taste take pleasure in verse so devoid of wit, of grace, of galanterie ... so bare, so barbarous, after they have been initiated into the Parnassian Mysteries of your incomparable verse and prose? Why, what I have quoted is the language of lexicographers and philosophers, not the divine cadences of a poet. Put in metre Descartes’ description of the signs by which the movements of the Passions may be detected, namely,—

‘“The chief signs by which the Passions show themselves are the motions of the eyes and the face, changes of colour, trembling, languor, faintness, laughter, tears, moans, and sighs,” and you will have a poem every whit as graceful and well-turned!

‘The poem of Sappho I. is a “small thing” ... but if it had proceeded from the delicious pen of Sappho II. it would have been a “rose”!’

‘And how should I have effected this miracle?’ asks Sappho with a smile.

‘I think, Madame, you would have used that excellent device of the Muse Galante which I will call that of Eros Masqué.’

‘Eros Masqué? Is he unseen then as well as unseeing?’

‘On his first visit, frequently, Madame. And this droll fact—that lovers pierced by as many of his arrows as Saint Sebastian by those of the Jews are wont to ignore the instrument by which they have got their wounds—has been put to pretty use by many poètes galants. For example, an amorous maiden or swain doth describe divers well-known effects of the tender passion, and then asks with a delicious naïveté, “Can it be Love?” And this simple little question, if inserted between each of the symptoms enumerated by Sappho, would go far to giving her poem the esprit it so sadly lacks. But, Madame, far the most ravishing of all the poems of Eros Masqué are your own incomparable verses in the sixth volume of “Cyrus”:—

‘Ma peine est grande, et mon plaisir extrême,

Je ne dors point la nuit, je rêve tout le jour;

Je ne sais pas encore si j’aime,

Mais cela ressemble a l’amour.

‘Voyant Phaon mon âme est satisfaite,

Et ne le voyant point, la peine est dans mon cœur

J’ignore encore ma defaite

Mais peut-être est-il mon vainqueur?

‘Tout ce qu’il dit me semble plein de charmes!

Tout ce qu’il ne dit pas, n’en peut avoir pour moi,

Mon cœur as-tu mis bas les armes?

Je n’en sais rien, mais je le crois.

‘Do not these verses when placed by the side of those of the Grecian Sappho justify for ever my heresy?’

‘I should be guilty myself of the heresy of self-complacency were I to subscribe your justification,’ cries Sappho with a delicious air of raillery.

‘Madame, the device of Eros Masqué serves another purpose besides that of charming the fancy by its grace and drollery.... It makes Confession innocent, for although that Sacrament is detested by Précieuses as fiercely as by Protestants, the most precise and prudish of Précieuses could scarce take umbrage at a Confession expressed by a string of naïve questions.’

‘There, Madame, you show a deplorable ignorance of the geography of the heart of at least one Précieuse. I can picture myself white with indignation on receiving the Socratic Confession you describe,’ says Sappho, but the ice of her accents thaws into two delicious little dimples.

‘“Mais votre fermeté tient un peu du barbare,” to quote the great Corneille,’ cries Madeleine with a smile. ‘You called it a Socratic Confession, alluding I presume to the fact that it was cast in the form of questions, but a Socratic Confession, if my professors have not misled me, is very close to a Platonic one. Can you picture yourself white with rage at receiving a Platonic Confession?’

‘Before I can answer that question you must describe to me a Platonic Confession,’ says Sappho demurely.

‘’Tis the confession of a sentiment the purity and discreetness of which makes it the only tribute worthy to be laid at the feet of a Précieuse. Starting from what Descartes holds to be the coldest of the Passions, that of Admiration, it takes its demure way down the slope of Inclination straight into the twilight grove of l’Amitié Tendre—

‘Auprès de cette Grote sombre

Oh l’on respire un air si doux;

L’onde lutte avec les cailloux,

Et la lumière avec l’ombre.

‘Dans ce Bois, ni dans ces montagnes

Jamais chasseur ne vint encore:

Si quelqu’un y sonne du Cor

C’est Diane avec ses compagnes.

‘These delicious verses of the gentle Tristan might have been a description of the land of l’Amitié Tendre, so charmed is its atmosphere, so deep its green shadows, so heavy its brooding peace. For all round it is traced a magic circle across which nothing discordant or vulgar can venture.... Without, moan the Passions like wild beasts enchained, the thunder booms, the lightning flashes, and there is a heap as high as a mountain of barbed arrows shot by Love, all of which have fallen short of that magic circle.

‘Happy they who have crossed it!

‘Madame, I called the Grecian Sappho a barbarian.... Barbarian or no she discovered hundreds of years ago the charm by which the magic circle can be crossed ... the charm is simple when you know it; it is merely this ... take another maiden with you. It has never been crossed by man and maid, for in sight of the country’s cool trees and with the murmur of its fountains in their ear they have been snatched from behind by one of the enchained passions, or grievously wounded by one of the whizzing arrows ... Madame, shall we try the virtue of the Grecian Sappho’s charm?’

And Sappho murmurs ‘yes.’

---

So Madeleine put her fate ‘to the touch, to win or lose it all,’ and there was something exhilarating in the thought that retreat now was impossible.

CHAPTER XXXII
‘UN CADEAU’

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!’

CHAPTER XXXIII
FACE TO FACE WITH FACTS

She awoke next morning to the sense that she must make up her account. How exactly did things stand? She certainly had been neither gauche nor silent the day before. Saint Magdalene had done all she had asked of her, but by so doing had she played her some hideous trick?

She had had absolute faith in Descartes’ doctrine that love proceeds from admiration, and that admiration is caused by anything rare and extraordinary. She was rare, she was extraordinary, but had she aroused admiration? And even if she had, could it not be the forerunner of hate as well as of love?

Alas! how much easier would be self-knowledge, and hence, if the Greeks were right, how much easier too would be virtue, if the actions of our passions were as consistent, the laws that govern them as mechanical, as they appear in Descartes’ Treatise. Moreover, how much easier would be happiness if, docile and catholic like birds and flowers, we were never visited by these swift, exclusive passions, which are so rarely reciprocal.

No, if Mademoiselle de Scudéry did not feel for her d’un aveugle penchant le charme imperceptible, the Cestus of Venus itself would be of no avail. Even if she had not cut herself off from the relief of her dances by bringing them to a climax beyond which their virtue could not function, this had been, even for their opiate, too stern and dolorous a fact.

Circumstances had forced her bang up against reality this time. She must find out, once and for all, how matters stood, that is to say, if she had aroused the emotion of admiration. She must have her own suspicions allayed—or confirmed. The only way this could be done, was to go to the Chevalier’s house and ask him. The spoken word carried for her always a strange finality. Suspense would be unbearable; she must go now.

She dressed hurriedly, slipped on her mask and cloak, and stole into the street. The strange antiphony of the hawkers rang through the morning, and there echoed after her as she ran the well-known cry: Vous désirez quelque ch-o-o-se? This cry in the morning, and in the evening that of the Oublieux.—La joie! la joie! Voilà des oublies! ... Did one answer the other in some strange way, these morning and evening cries? It could be turned into a dialogue between Fate and a mortal, thus:—

Fate: Vous désirez quelque cho-o-o-se?

Mortal: La joie! la joie!

Fate: Voilà—l’oubli.

On she ran, careless of the surprise of the passers-by, over the Pont-Neuf, already busy, and driving its motley trade, then along the Quais on the other side, past the Louvre, and up the Rue de Richelieu, where the Chevalier lived. She had naturally never been to his rooms, but she knew where they were. She slipped in at the main doorway and up the long stairs, her heart beating somewhere up in her throat. She knew he lived on the second landing. She knocked many times before the door was opened by a lackey in a night-cap. He gaped when he first saw her, and then grinned broadly.

‘Mademoiselle must see Monsieur? Monsieur is abed, but Mademoiselle doubtless will not mind that!’

‘Tell Monsieur that Mademoiselle Troqueville must see him on urgent business,’ Madeleine said severely.

The lackey grinned again, and led her through a great bare room, surrounded by carved wooden chests, in which, doubtless, the Chevalier kept his innumerable suits of clothes. They served also as beds, chairs, and tables to the Chevalier’s army of lackeys and pages, for some were lying full length on them snoring lustily, and others, more matinal, were sitting on them cross-legged, and, wrapped in rugs, were playing at that solace of the vulgar—Lasquinet. Madeleine felt a sudden longing to be one of them, happy, lewd, soulless creatures!

She was shown into an elegant little waiting-room, full of small inlaid tables and exquisite porcelain. The walls were hung with crayon sketches, and large canvasses of well-known ladies by Mignard and Beaubrun. Some of them were in allegorical postures—there was the celebrated Précieuse, Madame de Buisson, holding a lyre and standing before a table covered with books and astronomical instruments ... she was probably meant to represent a Muse ... she was leering horribly ... was it the Comic Muse?

It must have been for about a quarter of an hour that Madeleine waited, sitting rigid and expressionless.

At last the Chevalier arrived, fresh from his valet’s hands, in a gorgeous Chinese dressing-gown, scented and combed. He held out both his hands to her and his eyes were sparkling, to Madeleine it seemed with a sinister light, and she found herself wondering, as she marked the dressing-gown, if he were Descartes. Anything was possible in this Goblin-world.

She suddenly realised that she must find the ‘urgent business’ that had wrenched the Chevalier from his morning sleep. She could not very well blurt put ‘Did Mademoiselle de Scudéry like me?’ but what could she say?

‘Dear Rhodanthos, I cursed my valet for not being winged when I heard it was you, and—as you see—my impatience was too great for a jerkin! What brings you at this hour? That you should turn to me in your trouble, if trouble it is, is a prettier compliment than all les fleurettes of all the polite Anthologies. What has metamorphosed the Grecian rose into a French lily?’

Madeleine blushed, and stammered out that she did not know. Then the Chevalier took matters into his own hands. This behaviour might smack of the reign of Louis XIII., but it was very delicious for all that.

He took her in his arms. Madeleine lay there impassive. After all, it saved her the trouble of finding a reason; for the one thing that was left in this emotional ruin was the old shrinking from people knowing how much it mattered. But as to what he might think of her present behaviour, ’twas a matter of no moment whatever. She held him at arm’s length from her for a minute.

‘Tell me,’ she said archly, ‘did you find yesterday a pleasant diversion?’ His cheeks were flushed, and there was the dull drunken look in his eyes which is one of the ways passion expresses itself in middle-aged men. ‘Come back to me!’ he muttered thickly, without answering her question.

‘First tell me if you found it diverting!’ she cried gaily, and darted to the opposite end of the room. He rushed after her.

‘Don’t madden me, child,’ he muttered, and took her in his arms again. Again Madeleine broke away from him laughing.

‘I won’t come to you till—let me see—till you tell me if I took the fancy of Mademoiselle de Scudéry.’ She was, when hard-driven, an excellent actress, and the question tripped out, light and mocking, as if it had just been an excuse for tormenting him. There she stood with laughing lips and grave, wind-swept eyes, keeping him at bay with her upraised hand. ‘In earnest,’ she cooed tormentingly, ‘you must first answer my question.’ For a moment, the pedagogue broke through the lover.

‘Mademoiselle de Scudéry is an exquisitely correct lady, her sense of social seemliness amounts to genius. She could hardly approve of a hamadryad ... Madeleine!’ and he made a dash for her. But she ducked and turned under his outstretched arms, and was once more at the opposite end of the room. The flame of her wish to know began to burn up her flimsy rôle.

‘I—promise you—anything—afterwards, but—pray tell me—did Mademoiselle de Scudéry make any mention to you of me?’ she panted.

‘’Tis no matter and she did, I....’

‘Tell me!’ And somehow Madeleine’s voice compelled obedience.

‘What strange vision is this? Well, then, as you are so desirous of knowing ... Mademoiselle de Scudéry ... well, she is herself a lady, and as such cannot be over sensible to the charms of her own sex——’

‘Well?’

‘Well, do not take it ill, but also she always finds it hard to pardon a ... well ... a ... er ... a certain lack of decorum. I told her she erred grievously in her judgment of you, but, it seems, you did not take her fancy, and she maintained’—(The Chevalier was rather glad of the opportunity of repeating the following words, for not being in propria persona, they escaped incivility and might be beneficial.) ‘She maintained that your manners were grossier, your wit de province, and that even if you lived to be as old as the Sybil, “you would never be an honnête femme”.... Maintenant, ma petite Reine——’

But Madeleine was out of the room—pushing her way through the lackeys ... then down the staircase ... then out into the street ... running, running, running.

Then she stood still and began to tremble from head to foot with awful, silent laughter. Fool that she was not to have seen it before! Why, the Sapphic Ode was but another statement of the Law she had so dreaded—that the spurner of love must in his turn inevitably be spurned! Who flees, she shall pursue; who spurns gifts, she shall offer them; who loves not, willy-nilly she shall love. As the words stood, the ‘she’ did not necessarily refer to the object of Sappho’s desire. Fool, fool, she had read as a promise what was intended as a warning. She was being punished for spurning the love of Jacques.

What a strange irony, that just by her effort to escape this Law she had brought down on herself the full weight of its action! To avoid its punishment of her amour-propre she had pretended to be in love with Jacques, thereby entangling herself in a mass of contradictions, deceit, and nervous terrors from which the only means of extricating herself was by breaking the law anew and spurning love. Verily, it was a fine example of Até—the blindness sent by the gods on those they mean to destroy.

Well, now the end had come, and of the many possibilities and realities life had held for her, nothing was left but the adamant of desire which neither the tools of earth can break, nor the chemistry of Hell resolve.

CHAPTER XXXIV
OUT INTO THE VOID

So it was all over.

Had she been the dupe of malicious gods? Yes, if within that malign pantheon there was a throne for her old enemy, Amour-Propre. For it was Amour-Propre that had played her this scurvy trick and had upset her poor little boat ‘drifting oarless on a full sea’—not of Grace but of Chance. After all, Jansenism, Cartesianism, her mother’s philosophy of indifference, had all the same aim—to give a touch of sea-craft to the poor human sailor, and to flatter him with the belief that some harbour lies before him. But they lie, they lie! There is no port, no rudder, no stars, and the frail fleet of human souls is at the mercy of every wind that blows.

She laughed bitterly when she remembered her certainty of her own election, her anger against the mighty hands slowly, surely, torturing her life into salvation. She laughed still more at her faith in a kind, heavenly Father, a rock in a weary land, a certain caterer of lovely gifts. How had she ever been fool enough to believe in this? Had she no eyes for the countless proofs all round her that any awful thing might happen to any one? People, just as real and alive as she was herself, were disfigured by smallpox, or died of plague, or starved in the streets, or loved without being loved in return; and yet, she had wrapped herself round in an imaginary ghostly tenderness, certain in her foolish heart that it was against the order of the universe that such things should happen to her.

And as to Mademoiselle de Scudéry, she knew that the whole business had been a foolish vision, a little seed growing to grotesque dimensions in a sick brain, and yet this knowledge was powerless to stem the mad impetus of her misery.

How she longed for Jacques during these days, for his comforting hands, his allégresse, his half-mocking patience. She saw him, pale and chestnut-haired with his light, mysterious, beckoning eyes—so strangely like the picture by Da Vinci in the Louvre of Saint John the Baptist—marching head erect to his bright destiny down the long white roads of France, and he would never come back.

And yet, she had hinted to Madame Pilou that the fable of the dog and the shadow is the epitome of all tragedy. Somewhere inside her had she always known what must happen?

First, this time of faultless vision. And then, because—though hope was dead—there still remained ‘the adamant of desire,’ she began once more to dance. But with hope were cut the cables binding her to reality, and it was out into the void that she danced now.

EPILOGUE
THE RAPE TO THE LOVE OF INVISIBLE THINGS

αἵ σε μαινόμεναι πάννυχοι χορεύουσι τὸν ταμίαν Ἴακχον.

Soph. An. 1151.

‘Art springs straight out of the rite, and her first outward leap is the image of the god.’—Jane Harrison.

Some years later a troupe of wits, in quest of the ‘crotesque,’ were visiting the well-known lunatic asylum—‘les petites maisons.’

‘And now for the Pseudo-Sappho!’ cried one. ‘She, all said, is by far the most delicious.’

They made their way to where a woman sat smiling affably. She greeted them as a queen her courtiers.

‘Well, Alcinthe. Mignonne has been drooping since you were here, and cooing that all the doves have left the Royaume de Tendre. Where is dear Théodite? Ma chère, I protest that he is the king of les honnêtes gens.’

The wits laughed delightedly. Suddenly one had an idea.

‘Did not the ancients hold that in time the worshipper became the god? Surely we have here a proof that their belief was well founded. And if the worshipper becomes the god then should not also the metamorphosis of the lover into his mistress—Céladon into Astrée, Cyrus into Mandane—be the truly gallant ending of a “roman”?’

He drew out his tablets,—

‘I must make a note of that, and fashion it into an epigram for Sappho.’