At last dinner was over, and Conrart suggested they should go for a little walk in the grounds. He offered his arm to Mademoiselle de Scudéry, the Chevalier followed with Madame Conrart, so Madeleine and Mademoiselle Boquet found themselves partners. But even then Madeleine was at first unable to break the spell of heavy silence hanging over her. ‘Blessed Saint Magdalene, help me! help me! help me!’ she muttered, and then reminded herself that being neither half-witted nor dumb, it did not demand any gigantic effort of will to force herself to behave like an honnête femme ... and to-day it was a matter of life or death.
She felt like a naked, shivering creature, standing at the top of a gigantic rock, and miles below her lay an icy black pool, but she must take the plunge; and she did.
She began to reinforce her self-confidence by being affected and pretentious with Mademoiselle Boquet, but the little lady’s gentle reserve made her vaguely uncomfortable. She was evidently one of those annoying little nonentities with strong likes and dislikes, and a whole bundle of sharp little judgments of their own, who are always vaguely irritating to their more triumphant sisters. Then she tried hard to realise emotionally that the gray female back in front of her belonged to Mademoiselle de Scudéry—to the Reine de Tendre; to Sappho—but somehow her imagination was inadequate. The focus of all her tenderness was not this complacent lady, but the Sappho of her dances.
As, for example, I find in myself two divers Ideas of the Sun, one as received by my senses by which it appears to me very small, another as taken from the arguments of Astronomers by which ’tis rendered something bigger than the Globe of the Earth. Certainly both of these cannot be like that sun which is without me, and my reason persuades that that Idea is most unlike the Sun, which seems to proceed immediately from itself.
She remembered these words of Descartes’ Third Meditation ... two suns and two Sapphos, and the one perceived by the senses, not the real one ... and yet, and yet she could never be satisfied with merely the Sappho of the dances, even though metaphysically she were more real than the other. Her happiness depended in merging the two Sapphos into one ... she must remember, reality is colourless and silent and malleable ... a white, still Sappho like the Grecian statues in the Louvre ... to the Sappho of her dances she gave what qualities she chose, so could she to the Sappho who was walking a few paces in front of her ... forward la Madeleine! Then the Chevalier came and walked on her other side. She told herself that this was a good opportunity of working herself into a vivacious mood, which would bridge over the next awful chasm. So she burst into hectic persiflage, and to Hell with Mademoiselle Boquet’s little enigmatical smile!
They were walking in a little wood. Suddenly from somewhere among the trees came the sound of violins. A cadeau for one of the ladies! Madeleine felt that she would die with embarrassment if it were not for her—yes, die—humiliated for ever in the eyes of Mademoiselle de Scudéry, in relationship to whom she always pictured herself as a triumphant beauty, with every inch of the stage to herself.
There was a little buzz of expectation among the ladies, and Madame Conrart, looking flustered and pleased, said: ‘I am sure it is none of our doing.’ Madeleine stretched her lips in a forced smile, in a fever of anxiety.
Then suddenly they came to an open clearing in the wood, and there was a table heaped with preserved fruits and jams and sweetmeats and liqueurs, all of them rose-coloured. The napkins were of rose-coloured silk and folded into the shape of hearts, the knives were tiny darts of silver. Behind stood the four fiddlers scratching away merrily at a pot pourré of airs from the latest ballet de cour. The ladies gave little ‘ohs!’ of delight, and Conrart looked pleased and important, but that did not mean anything, for he was continually taking a possessive pride in matters in which he had had no finger. The Chevalier looked enigmatic. Conrart turned to him with a knowing look and said,—
‘Chevalier, you are a professor of the philosophie de galanterie, can you tell us whether rose pink is the colour of Estime or of le Tendre?’