‘Pray make your meaning clear!’ cried Madeleine.
‘Ah! not such a prude after all!’ thought the Chevalier. ‘Why, Mademoiselle, we are told that excessive strength or virtue in a mortal arouses in the gods what we may call la passion galante, to wit, jealousy, from which we may safely deduce that excessive beauty in a lady arouses the same passion in the goddesses.’
‘Oh, that’s your meaning!’ cried Madeleine, so relieved that she quite forgot what was expected of her in the escrime galante.
‘In truth, this naïveté is not without charm!’ thought the Chevalier, taking her relief for pleasure at the compliment.
‘But what mischief could they work me—the goddesses, I mean?’ she asked, her nerves once more agog.
‘The goddesses are ladies, and therefore Mademoiselle must know better than I.’
‘But have you a foreboding that they may wreak some vengeance on me?’
The poor Chevalier felt quite puzzled: this must be a visionnaire. ‘So great a crime of beauty would doubtless need a great punishment,’ he said with a bow. Madeleine felt tempted to rush into the nearest hospital, catch smallpox, and thus remove all cause for divine jealousy. The baffled Chevalier muttered something about a reunion at the Princesse de Guéméné and made his departure, yet, in spite of the strangeness of Madeleine’s behaviour, she had attracted him.
Most of the guests had already left, but Conrart, Chapelain, Pellisson, and a Mademoiselle Boquet—a plain, dowdy little bourgeoise—were still there, talking to Mademoiselle de Scudéry. The Chevalier’s departure had left Madeleine by herself, so Conrart called out to her,—
‘A lady who has just been gallantised by the Chevalier de Méré’ (so it was he!) ‘will carry the memory of perfection and must needs be a redoubtable critic in manners; Sappho, may she come and sit on this pliant near me?’ Madeleine tried to look bored, succeeded, and looked gauche into the bargain. Conrart patted her knee with his swollen, gouty hand, and said to Mademoiselle de Scudéry: ‘This young lady feels a bashfulness which, I think, does her credit, at meeting La Reine de Tendre, Princesse d’Estime, Dame de Reconnaissance, Inclination, et Terrains Adjacents.’ The great lady smiled and answered that if her ‘style’ included Ogress of Alarmingness, she would cease to lay claim to it. Here was Madeleine’s chance. Mademoiselle de Scudéry was smiling kindly at her and giving her a conversational opening. All she did was to mutter her formula and look with stony indifference in the opposite direction. Mademoiselle de Scudéry raised her eyebrows a little and forthwith Madeleine was excluded from the conversation.