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?’