‘Mademoiselle,—A malady so tedious and unpoetical, that had it not been given the entrée to the society of les mots honnêtes by being mentioned by several Latin poets, and having by its intrinsic nature a certain claim to royalty, for it shares with the Queen the power of granting “Le Tabouret”; a malady, I say, which were it not for these saving graces I would never dare to mention to one who like yourself embodies its two most powerful enemies—Youth and Beauty—has taken me prisoner. Mademoiselle’s quick wit has already, doubtless, solved my little enigma and told herself with a tear, I trust, rather than a dimple, that the malady which has so cruelly engaged me to my chair is called—and it must indeed have been a stoic that thus named it!—La Goutte! Rarely has this unwelcome guest timed his visit with a more tantalising inopportuneness, or has shown himself more ungallant than to-day when he keeps a poor poet from the inspiration of beauty and beauty from its true mate, wit. But over one circumstance at least it bears no sway: that circumstance is that I remain, Mademoiselle, Your sincere and humble servitor,
‘Conrart.’
In all this fustian Madeleine’s ‘quick wit’ did not miss the fact that lay buried in it, hard and sharp, that she was not to be taken to Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s that afternoon. She laughed. It had so palpably been all along the only possible climax. Of course. This moment had always been part of her sum of experience. All her life, her prayers, and placations had been but the remedies of a man with a mortal disease. As often in moments of intense suffering, she was struck by the strangeness of being contained by the four walls of a room, queer things were behind these walls, she felt, if she could only penetrate them.
Berthe ambled in under pretext of fetching something, looking espiègle and inquisitive.
‘Good news, Mademoiselle?’ she asked. But Madeleine growled at her like an angry animal, and with lips stretched from her teeth, driving her nails into her palms, she tore into her own room.
Once there, she burst into a passion of tears, banging her head against the wall and muttering, ‘I hate God, I hate God!’ So He considered, did He, that ‘no one could resist the workings of the inward Grace’? Pish for the arrogant theory; she would disprove it, once and for all. Jacques was right. He was a wicked and a cruel God. All the Jansenist casuistry was incapable of saving Him from the diabolic injustice involved in the First Proposition:—
‘Some of God’s Commandments it is impossible for the just to fulfil.’
In plain words, the back is not made for the burden. Oh, the cold-blooded torturer! And the Jansenists with their intransigeant consistency, their contempt of compromise, were worthy of their terrible Master.
So, forsooth, He imagined that by plucking, feather by feather, the wings of her hopes, He could win her, naked and bleeding, to Him and His service? She would prove Him wrong, she would rescind His decrees and resolve the chain of predestination. No, her soul would never be ‘tamed with frets and weariness,’ she would never ‘pursue, nor offer gifts,’ and, willy-nilly, she would never love, from the design on His cubes of wood no print of her life would be taken.
And then the sting of the disappointment pricked her afresh, and again she burst into a passion of tears.