Madeleine went rather pale; she rapped out in icy tones: ‘Les honnêtes gens pronounce it serge. Leave me, please ... I have the caprice to dress myself unaided this morning.’
Once alone, Madeleine flung herself on her bed, clutched her head in her hands and gave little, short, sharp moans.
The truth of the matter was this—that when, in her dances, she rehearsed her visit to the Hôtel de Rambouillet, she pictured herself dressed in a very décolleté bodice of céladon velvet sparkling with jewels and shrouded in priceless Italian lace, a petticoat of taffetas dotted with countless knots of ribbon, and green silk stockings with rose-coloured clocks. Until this moment, when her mother, with her irritating sense of reality, had brought her face to face with facts, it had never so much as occurred to her that nothing of this bravery existed outside her own imagination. Yes, it was true! a serge bodice and a ferrandine petticoat were all the finery her wardrobe could provide. Was she then to make her début at the Palace of Arthénice as a dingy little bourgeoise? What brooked the Grecian Sappho and her conceits, what brooked the miraculous nature of Madame Cornuel’s invitation if the masque of reality was to lack the ‘ouches and spangs’ of dreams? Well, God had made the path of events lead straight to Mademoiselle de Scudéry, could He not too turn her mother’s purse into that of Fortunatus? She could but go to the Fair—and await a miracle.
As they made their way along the bank of the Seine, Madame Troqueville was wrapt in pleasant reverie. None of the wealthy young bourgeoises at the ball would look as delicate and fine as her Madeleine ... what if she took the fancy of some agreeable young magistrate, with five or six different posts in the Parlement, and a flat, red house with white facings in the Place Dauphine, like the Troguins? Then he would ‘give the Fiddles’ for a ball, and offer Madeleine a bouquet in token that it was in her honour, then Madeleine would ‘give the Fiddles’ for a return ball.... The Troguins would lend their house ... and then ... why not? stranger things had happened.
‘A fragment of Lyons silk ... some bisette and some camelot de Hollande ... a pair of shoes that you may foot it neatly ... yes, you will look rare and delicate, and ’twill go hard but one gold coin will furnish us with all we need.’
Madeleine smiled grimly—unless she were much mistaken, not even one silver coin would be squandered on the Troguins’s ball.
They were now making their way towards two long rows of wooden buildings in which was held the famous Fair.
In the evenings it was a favourite haunt of beauty and fashion, but in the mornings it was noisy with all the riff-raff of the town—country cousins lustily bawling ‘Stop, thief!’; impudent pages; coarse-tongued musketeers; merchant’s wives with brazen tongues and sharp, ruthless elbows; dazzled Provincials treating third-rate courtesans to glasses of aigre de cèdre and the delicious cakes for which the Fair was famous.
Through this ruthless, plangent, stinking crowd, Madame Troqueville and Madeleine pushed their way, with compressed lips and faces pale with disgust.