‘Ma belle herbe, anis fleur.’
‘A la fraîche, à la fraîche, qui veut boire?’
‘A ma belle poivée à mes beaux épinards! à mon bel oignon!’
And then shrill and plaintive:—
‘Vous désirez quelque cho-o-o-se?’
It was no longer a taunt but the prayer of a humble familiar asking for its mistress’s orders, or, rather, of Love the Pedlar waiting to sell her what she chose. She opened her window and looked out. The length of the narrow street the monstrous signs stuck out from either side, heraldic lions, and sacred hearts, and blue cats, and mothers of God, and Maréchales looking like Polichinelle. It was as incongruous an assortment as the signs of the Zodiac, as flat and fantastic as a pack of cards——
‘Vous désirez quelque cho-o-ose?’ She laughed aloud. Then she suddenly remembered her vague misgivings of the night before. She drew in her head and rushed to her divination book. These were the lines her eyes fell upon:—
‘ ... and she seemed in his mind to have said a thousand good things, which, in reality, she had not said at all.’
For one moment Madeleine’s heart seemed to stop beating. Did it mean that she was not going to get in her prepared mots? No, the true interpretation was surely that Mademoiselle de Scudéry would think her even more brilliant than she actually was. She fell on her knees and thanked her kind gods in anticipation.