‘Approche donc, ma belle,
Approche-toi, mon bien——’
Madeleine’s lips were parted into a little smile, and her spellbound eyes filled with tears; then she saw Jacques looking at her and his eyes were bright and mocking. She blushed furiously.
‘He is like Hylas, the mocking shepherd in the Astrée,’ she told herself. ‘Hylas, hélas, Hylas, hélas,’ she found herself muttering.
After another pause for Galanterie and preserved fruits, the violins broke into the slow, voluptuous rhythm of the Saraband. The old ladies again beat time with their fans, muttering ‘vraiment cela donne à rêver.’
Madeleine danced with Jacques and he never took his eyes from her face, but hers were fixed and glassy, and the words of the Sapphic Ode, ‘that man seems to me the equal of the gods’ ... clothed itself, as with a garment, with the melody.
She was awakened from her reverie by feeling Jacques’s grasp suddenly tighten on her hand. She looked at him, he was white and scowling. A ripple of interest was passing over the dancers, and all eyes were turned to the door. Two or three young courtiers had just come in, attracted by the sound of the fiddles. For in those days courtiers claimed a vested right to lounge uninvited into any bourgeois ball, and they were always sure of an obsequious welcome.
There was the Président Troguin puffily bowing to them, and the Présidente bobbing and smirking and offering refreshment. Young Brillon, the giver of the fiddles, had left his partner, Marguerite Troguin, and was standing awkwardly half-way to the door, unable to make up his mind whether he should doff his hat to the courtiers before they doffed theirs to him; but they rudely ignored all three, and, swaggering up to the fiddles, bade them stop playing.
‘Foi de gentilhomme, I vow that it is of the last consequence that this Saraband should die. It is really ubiquitous,’ lisped one of them, a little muguet, with a babyish face.
‘It must be sent to America with the Prostitutes,’ said another.