CHAPTER XXIV
SELF-IMPOSED SLAVERY
‘I knew you would have to pass this way, and I have been waiting for you this half-hour,’ said Jacques. ‘Well, how went the encounter?’ That Madeleine was not in despair was clear from the fact that she was willing to talk about it.
‘Oh! Jacques, I cannot say. Mademoiselle de Scudéry was entertaining the whole company with discourse, but when she did address a word to me I was awkward and bashful—and—and—not over civil. Do you think she will hate me?’ She waited anxiously for his answer.
‘Awkward, bashful, and not over civil!’ laughed Jacques. ‘What did you do uncivil? Did you put out your tongue and hiccough in her face? Oh, that you had! Or did you deliberately undress and then dance about naked? I would that people were more inclined to such pleasant antics!’
‘In good earnest I did not,’ said Madeleine severely. ‘But I feigned not to be interested when she talked, and averted my eyes from her as if the sight of her worked on my stomach. Oh! what will she think of me?’
‘Well, I don’t know, Chop,’ Jacques said dubiously; ‘it seems you used arts to show yourself in such colours as ’twould be hard to like!’
‘Do people never take likings to bashful, surly people?’ she persisted.
‘I fear me they are apt to prefer smooth-spoken, courtly ones,’ he answered with a smile. ‘But, take heart, Chop, you will meet with her again, doubtless, when you must compel yourself to civility and to the uttering of such galanterie as the occasion furnishes, and then the issue cannot choose but be successful. Descartes holds admiration to be the mother of the other passions; an you arouse admiration the others will follow of their own accord.’
‘’Tis easy to talk!’ wailed Madeleine, ‘but her visible presence works so strangely upon me as to put me out of all my precepts, and I am driven to unseemly stammering or to uncivil silence.’