“Does it magnify itself to my eyes, this—the shadow of the tower?” she said. “I do not know. It was not so at Barse, where we arrive first; but heere—heere! The place oppresses me. Its antiquity is a rebuke to the frothy dynasties. Every whisper is from a ghost of the past bidding us of the new mode to begone. We are hated, tracked, and watched. I see faces behind trees; I heere mutterings through the walls. What have we to do in this haunted town?”
“It is the burying-place of kings,” said Mr Sheridan. “It should be to your taste.”
Madame la comtesse had no echo for levity. She seemed quite genuinely agitated. Her trick (pronounced eternal by one that detested her) of advertising the beauty of her hand and arm by toying, while she conversed, with a fillet of packthread, as if it were a harp string, was exchanged now for an incessant nervous handling of a little miniature Bastille, carved from a fallen stone of the original, that hung upon her bosom. Her face—pretty yet, though narrowing down to an over-small chin—seemed even yellow, drawn, and affrayed. This appearance was partly due, no doubt, to the fact that she wore no rouge. She had once made a vow to quit its use at the age of thirty, and now at forty-five she was yet true to her word. Indeed, she was the very dévote of Minerva-worship.
She sighed, “That I, whom Nature intended for the cloister, should have to fight always against the snares and the wickedness! I sink. Was there evaire the time when my flesh not preek to the fright? Oh yes, once when I was vain! It is vanity that make the good armure. I had no thought but levity when I marry M. de Genlis—and afterwards during the years of Passy, of Villers-Cotterets, of the Rue de Richelieu! Then I have no fear of the morrow; I have no fear at all but of the too-ardent lover.”
“It must have been an ever-present fear,” said Mr Sheridan gravely.
She shook her head with hardly a laugh.
“I am an old sad woman; my armure is crumbled from me. I play now only one part—in those times it was many. From Cupid to a cuisinière, I had the gift to make each character appear natural; to present it, nevairtheless, of the most charming grace. I was adored and adorable; but it was vanity. I would not exchange the present for the past. I could perform on seven, eight instruments, monsieur; I could dance to shame the unapproachable Vestris; I knew Corneille by heart; Mirabeau himself was not cleverer in organising a comedy for the living, than I for the artificial, stage. My rôle was to promote the healthy condition of amiability, to teach people how to be happy though innocent. That rôle yet remains to me; the rest is gone. When vanity has taught its lesson the pupil may become teacher. I leave since many years the theatre of emotions for the theatre of life. It would be good for some of your countrywomen to follow my example. When I sink of your Congreve, your Vanbrugh, and of the young ladies at Barse that listen wisout a blush, eh bien, on peut espérer que l’habit ne fait pas le moine!”
“Faith, it’s horrible!” said Mr Sheridan; and he remembered how assiduously madame and her charges had frequented the theatres during their two months’ stay at that questionable watering-place before they came to Bury.
“But the morals of ‘Belle Chasse’ have not penetrated to England,” says he, with a little roguish bow to the lady.
Madame uttered a self-indulgent sigh. She looked round on the frippery of fancy-work—moss-baskets, appliqué embroidery, wax flowers, illustrations of science in the shape of tiny trees formed from lead precipitate, illustrations of art in the collections of little moony landscapes engraved on smoked cards, illustrations of practical mechanics in the binding of a sticky volume or so—that lay about the room. These were all so many evidences of her system—instruction in the pleasant gardens of manual toil. She was possessed of the little knowledge of a hundred little crafts. She could have written a ‘Girl’s Own Book’ without the help of one collaborator.