This new conviction engendered a sort of loyalty to Mademoiselle de Scudéry, for previously a stray word or suggestion would fire her with the charms of some other lady, whom she would proceed to make for the time the centre of her rites—la Comtesse de la Suze, after having read her poetry, the Marquise de Sévigné, when she had heard her praised as a witty beauty—but now, with the fortitude of a Saint Anthony, she would chase the temptresses from her mind, and firmly nail her longings to Mademoiselle de Scudéry. And soon the temptation to waver left her, and Mademoiselle de Scudéry became a corroding obsession. She began to crave feverishly to go to Paris. Lyons turned into a city of Hell, where everything was a ghastly travesty of Heaven. The mock Précieuses with their grotesque graces, the vulgar dandies, so complacently unconscious of their provincialism, the meagre parade of the Promenade, it was all, she was certain, like the uncouth Paris of a nightmare. If she went to Paris, she would, of course, immediately meet Mademoiselle de Scudéry, who, on the spot, would be fatally wounded by her esprit and air gallant, and the following days would lead the two down a gentle slope straight to le Pays de Tendre. But how was she to get to Paris?
Then, as if by a miracle, her father was also seized by a longing to go to Paris, and finally a complete déménagement was decided upon. What wonder if Madeleine felt that the gods were upon her side?
But once in Paris, she was brought face to face with reality. It had never struck her that a meeting with Mademoiselle de Scudéry might be a thing to need manœuvring. Days, weeks, went by, and she had not yet met her. She began to realise the horror of time, as opposed to eternity. Her meeting with Mademoiselle de Scudéry could only be the result of a previous chain of events, not an isolated miracle. To fit it into an air-tight compartment of causality and time, seemed to require more volition than her ‘sick will’ could compass.
Then there was the maddening thought that while millions of people were dead, and millions not yet born, and millions living at the other side of the world, Mademoiselle de Scudéry was at that very moment alive, and actually living in the same town as herself, and yet she could not see her, could not speak to her. What difference was there in her life at Paris to that at Lyons?
They had settled, as we have seen, in the Quartier de l’Université, as it was cheap, and not far from the Île Notre-Dame, where Jacques and Monsieur Troqueville went every day, to the Palais de Justice. It was a quarter rich in the intellectual beauty of tradition and in the tangible beauty of lovely objects, but—it was not fashionable and therefore held no charm for Madeleine.
The things she valued were to be found in the quarters of Le Marais, of the Arsenal, of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, of the Place Royale. She hated the Rambouillets for not begging her to live with them, she hated the people in the streets for not acclaiming her with shouts of welcome every time she appeared, she hated Mademoiselle de Scudéry for never having heard of her. Whenever she passed a tall, dark lady, she would suddenly become very self-conscious, and raising her voice, would try and say something striking in the hopes that it might be she.
She was woken every morning by the cries of the hawkers:—
‘Grobets, craquelines; brides à veau, pour friands museaux!’
‘Qui en veut?’
‘Salade, belle Salade!’