‘It is, indeed, and an excellent portrait at that, save that the original is ten times wittier and more galante,’ Madeleine found herself answering with an important air, touched with condescension.
‘Are you acquainted with her?’ the two girls asked in awed voices.
‘Why, yes, I am well acquainted with her, she has asked me to attend her Samedis.’
And afterwards she realised with a certain grim humour that could she have heard this conversation when she was at Lyons she would have concluded that all had gone as she had hoped.
During this time she did not dance, because that would be a confession that hope was not dead. That it should be dead she was firmly resolved, seeing that, although genuinely miserable, she took a pleasure in nursing this misery as carefully as she had nursed the atmosphere of her second coup de grâce. By doing so, she felt that she was hurting something or some one—what or who she could not have said—but something outside herself; and the feeling gave her pleasure. All through this terrible time she would follow her mother about like a whimpering dog, determined that she should be spared none of her misery, and Madame Troqueville’s patience and sympathy were unfailing.
Jacques, too, rose to the occasion. He lost for the time all his mocking ways, nor would he try to cheer her up with talk of ‘some other Saturday,’ knowing that it would only sting her into a fresh paroxysm of despair, but would sit and hold her hand and curse the cruelty of disappointment. Monsieur Troqueville also realised the gravity of the situation. On the rare occasions when the fact that some one was unhappy penetrated through his egotism, he was genuinely distressed. He would bring her little presents—a Portuguese orange, or some Savoy biscuits, or a new print—and would repeat over and over again: ‘’Tis a melancholy business! A melancholy business!’ One day, however, he added gloomily: ‘’Tis the cruellest fate, for these high circles would have been the fit province for Madeleine and for me,’ at which Madeleine screamed out in a perfect frenzy: ‘There’s no similarity between him and me! none! NONE! NONE!’ and poor Monsieur Troqueville was hustled out of the room, while Jacques and her mother assured her that she was not in the least like her father.
Monsieur Troqueville seemed very happy about something at that time. Berthe told Madeleine that she had found hidden in a chest, a galant of ribbons, a pair of gay garters, an embroidered handkerchief, and a cravat.
‘He is wont to peer at them when Madame’s back is turned, and, to speak truth, he seems as proud of them as Mademoiselle was of the bravery she bought at the Fair!’ and she went on to say that by successful eavesdropping she had discovered that he had won them as a wager.
‘It seems that contrary to the expectations of his comrades he has taken the fancy of a pretty maid! He! He! Monsieur’s a rare scoundrel!’ but Madeleine seemed to take no interest in the matter.
The only thing in which she found a certain relief was in listening to Berthe’s tales about her home. Berthe could talk by the hour about the sayings and doings of her young brothers and sisters, to whom she was passionately devoted. And Madeleine could listen for hours, for Berthe was so remote from her emotionally that she felt no compulsion to din her with her own misery, and she felt no rights on her sympathy, as she did on her mother’s, whom she was determined should not be spared a crumb of her own anguish. In her childhood, her imagination had been fascinated by an object in the house of an old lady they had known. It was a small box, in which was a tiny grotto, made of moss and shells and little porcelain flowers, out of which peeped a variegated porcelain fauna—tiny foxes and squirrels and geese, and blue and green birds; beside a glass Jordan, on which floated little boats, stood a Christ and Saint John the Baptist, and over their heads there hung from a wire a white porcelain dove. To many children smallness is a quality filled with romance, and Madeleine used to crave to walk into this miniature world and sail away, away, away, down the glass river to find the tiny cities that she felt sure lay hidden beyond the grotto; in Berthe’s stories she felt a similar charm and lure.