‘Descartes is dumb on the relation of colours to the Passions, so it is not for me to decide,’ the Chevalier answered calmly, ‘all I know is that the Grecian rose was pink.’ Madeleine’s heart gave a bound of triumph.
The fiddles started a languorous saraband, and from the trees a shower of artificial rose-petals fell on the ladies. Mademoiselle de Scudéry looked very gracious.
‘Our unknown benefactor has a very fragrant invention,’ she said in a tone which seemed to Madeleine to intimate that she was the queen of the occasion. Vain, foolish, ugly creature, how dare she think so, when she, Madeleine, was there! Had she not heard what the Chevalier had said about the ‘Grecian rose’?—(though why she should know that the Chevalier called Madeleine ‘Rhodanthos,’ I fail to perceive!)—she would put her in her place. She gave a little affected laugh, and, looking straight at the Chevalier, she said,—
‘It is furiously gallant. I thank you a thousand times.’
The Chevalier looked nonplussed, and stammered out that ‘Cupid must have known that a bevy of Belles had planned to visit that wood.’
Madeleine had committed the unpardonable crime—she had openly acknowledged a cadeau, whereas Galanterie demanded that the particular lady it was intended to honour should be veiled in a piquant mystery. Why, it was enough to send all the ladies of Cyrus shuddering back for ever to their Persian seraglios! But she had as well broken the spell of silence woven by Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s presence. That lady exchanged a little look with Mademoiselle Boquet which somehow glinted right off from Madeleine’s shining new armour. She gulped off a liqueur and gave herself tooth and nail to the business of shining. She began to flirt outrageously with the Chevalier, and though he quite enjoyed it, the pédagogue galant in him made a mental note to give Madeleine a hint that this excessive galanterie smacked of the previous reign, while the present fashion was a witty prudishness. Certainly, Mademoiselle de Scudéry was not looking impressed, but, somehow, Madeleine did not care; the one thing that mattered was that she should be brilliantly in the foreground, and be very witty, and then Mademoiselle de Scudéry must admire her.
Mademoiselle de Scudéry soon started a quiet little chat with Conrart, which caused Madeleine’s vivacity to flag; how could she sparkle when her sun was hidden?
‘Yes, la belle Indienne would doubtless have found her native America less barbarous than the milieu in which she has been placed by an exceeding ironical fortune,’ Mademoiselle de Scudéry was saying. Madeleine, deeply read in La Gazette Burlesque, knew that she was speaking of the beautiful and ultra-refined Madame Scarron, forced to be hostess of the most licentious salon in Paris.
‘’Tis my opinion she falls far short of Monsieur Scarron in learning, wit, and galanterie!’ burst in Madeleine. She did not think so really; it was just a desire to make herself felt. Mademoiselle de Scudéry raised her eyebrows.
‘Is Mademoiselle acquainted with Madame Scarron?’ she inquired in a voice that implied she was certain that she was not. In ordinary circumstances, such a snub, even from some one for whose good opinion she did not care a rap, would have reduced her to complete silence, but to-day she seemed to have risen invulnerable from the Styx.