‘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.