Thus, link by link, was forged a formidable chain of evidence proving the paramount importance of the cult of Saint Magdalene.
What could she do to propitiate her? The twenty-second of July was her Feast, just a few days before the visit to Conrart. That was surely a good omen. She made a rapid calculation and found that it would fall on a Sunday, what if ... she shuddered, for something suddenly whispered to her soul a sinister suggestion.
That afternoon the Chevalier de Méré came to wait on her, and in the course of his elegantly didactic monologue, Madeleine inadvertently dropped her handkerchief: he sprang to pick it up, and as he presented it to her apostrophised it with a languorous sigh,—
‘Ah, little cambric flower, it would not have taken a seer to foretell that happiness as exquisite as yours should precede a fall!’
Then, according to his custom of following up a concrete compliment by a dissertation on the theory of Galanterie he launched into an historical survey of the use to which the Muse Galante had made, in countless admirable sonnets, of the enviable intimacy existing between their fair wearer and such insensible objects as a handkerchief or a glove.
‘But these days,’ he continued, ‘the envy of a poet à la mode is not so much aroused by gloves of frangipane and handkerchiefs of Venetian lace, in that a franchise far greater than they have ever enjoyed has been granted by all the Belles of the Court and Town to ignoble squares of the roughest cloth—truly evangelical, these Belles have exalted the poor and meek and——’
‘I don’t take your meaning, pray explain,’ Madeleine cut in.
‘Why, dear Rhodanthos, have you never heard of Mère Madeleine de Saint-Joseph of the Carmelites?’
‘That I have, many a time.’