La joie! la joie! Voilà des oublies! Could it be that the secret of la joie was nothing but this dream-sense and—l’oubli?
They found Jacques waiting for them, pale but happy. He would not tell them why he had left the ball-room, but he followed Madeleine to her room. He was limping. And then, with eyes bright with triumph, he described how, at their exit from the ball-room, he had rallied the Clercs of the Bazoche (they had stayed to play cards with the Troguin’s household), how they had followed the courtiers, and, taking them by surprise, had given them the soundest cudgelling they had probably ever had in their lives. ‘Though they put up a good fight!’ and he laughed ruefully and rubbed his leg.
‘How came it that they knew my father?’ Madeleine asked. Jacques grinned.
‘Oh, Chop, should I tell you, it would savour of the blab ... yet, all said, I would not have you lose so good a diversion ... were I to tell you, you would keep my counsel?’
‘Yes.’
Then he proceeded to tell her that her father had fallen in love in Lyons with a courtesan called Ariane. She had left Lyons to drive her trade in Paris, and that was the true cause of his sudden desire to do the same. On reaching Paris, his first act was to buy from the stage wardrobe of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, an ancient suit of tawdry finery, which long ago had turned a courtier into the Spirit of Spring in a Royal Ballet. This he had hidden away in the attic of an old Huguenot widow who kept a tavern on the Mont Sainte-Geneviève, and had proceeded to pester Ariane with letters and doggerel imploring an interview—but in vain! Finally, he had taken his courage in both hands, and donning his finery—‘which he held to have the virtue of the cestus of Venus!’ laughed Jacques—he had boldly marched into Ariane’s bedroom, only to be received by a flood of insults and ridicule by that lady and her gallants.
Madeleine listened with a pale, set face. Why had she been so pursued these last few days by her father’s sordid amours?
‘So this ... Ariane ... rejected my father’s suit?’ she said in a low voice.
‘Ay, that she did! How should she not?’ laughed Jacques.
‘And you gave your suffrage to the foolish enterprise?’