So this was what Jacques had meant by his mysterious hints the night before! Madeleine followed her mother with a slight shudder.
CHAPTER VIII
‘RITE DE PASSAGE’
At about six o’clock on Wednesday evening a hired coach came to take them to the Troguin’s. To a casual eye it presented a gorgeous appearance of lumbering gilt, but Madeleine noticed the absence of curtains, the straw leaking out of the coachman’s cushion, and the jaded, shabby horses. Jacques had arranged that a band of his devoted clerks of la Bazoche, armed with clubs, should follow the coach to the Île Notre Dame, for the streets of Paris were infested by thieves and assassins, and it did not do to be out after dusk unarmed and unattended. On ordinary occasions this grotesque parody of the state of a Grand Seigneur—a hired coach, and grinning hobbledehoys instead of lackeys, strutting it, half proud, half sheepish, in their quaint blue and yellow livery—would have nearly killed Madeleine with mortification. To-night it rather pleased her, as a piquant contrast to what was in store for her to-morrow and onwards. For were not all doors to open to her to-morrow—the doors of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, the doors of the whole fashionable world, as well as the doors of Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s heart? The magical petite-oie, hidden away in her drawer at home, and the miraculous manner in which her eyes had been opened to its efficacy were certain earnests of success. The whole universe was ablaze with good omens—to-morrow ‘the weight of hungry dreams’ would drop from her, and her soul would get what it desired.
She found herself remembering with some perplexity that in romances the siege of a lady’s heart was a very long affair. Perhaps the instantaneous yielding of the fortress, which she felt certain would be the case with Mademoiselle de Scudéry when they met, was not quite in the best traditions of Galanterie. It was annoying, but inevitable, for she felt that any further delay would kill her.
The Troguins lived in the new, red-brick triangle of houses called la Place Dauphine, facing the bronze statue of Henri IV., and backed by Notre-Dame.
Lackeys holding torches were standing on the steps of their house, that the guests might have no trouble in finding it.
After having taken off their cloaks and pattens, the Troquevilles went into the ball-room. Here were countless belles and gallants, dressed in white, carnation, and sea-water green, which, on the authority of a very grave writer, we know to be the colours that show best by candle-light. Here and there this delicate mass of colour was freaked with the sombre soutanes of magistrates and the black silk of dowagers. The Four Fiddles could be heard tuning up through the hubbub of mutual compliments. Madeleine felt as if she were gazing at it all from some distant planet. Then Madame Troguin bustled up to them.
‘Good-evening, friends, you are exceeding welcome. You must all have a glass of Hippocras to warm you. It operates so sweetly on the stomach. I am wont to say a glass of Hippocras is better than any purge. I said as much to Maître Patin—our doctor, you know—and he said——’
Madeleine heard no more, for she suddenly caught sight of her father’s shining, eager eyes and anxious smile, ‘his vanity itching for praise,’ she said to herself scornfully. She saw him make his way to where the youngest Troguin girl was sitting on a pliant with several young men on their cloaks at her feet. How could he be such an idiot, Madeleine wondered, he must know that the Troguin girl did not want to talk to him just then. But there he stood, hawking and spitting and smirking. Now he was sitting down on a pliant beside her ... how angry the young men were looking ... Madeleine was almost certain she saw the Troguin girl exchange a look of despair with one of them. Now, from his arch gesture, she could see that he was praising the outline of her breasts and regretting the jabot that hid them.... Jésus! his provinciality! it was at least ten years ago since it had been fashionable to praise a lady’s breasts! So her thoughts ran on, while every moment she felt more irritated.