‘An excellent invention!’ cried Monsieur Troqueville, all ready to be impressed, and at the same time to show his own cleverness. ‘Were you a Frondeur yourself?’
Robert Pilou drew himself up stiffly. ‘No, Monsieur, I—was—not. I was for the King and the Cardinal. Well, as I was saying, profane history is countenanced if told by means of sacred prints and moreover itself becomes sacred history.’ Monsieur Troqueville clapped his hands delightedly.
‘In good earnest it does,’ he cried, ‘and sacred history becomes profane in the same way—’tis but a matter of how you look at it—why, you could turn the life of Jesus into the history of Don Quixote—a picture of the woman who pours the ointment on his feet could pass for the grand lady who waits on Don Quixote in her castle, and the Virgin could be his niece——’
‘Here you have a print of Judas Iscariot,’ Robert went on, having looked at Monsieur Troqueville suspiciously. ‘You observe he is a hunchback, and therefore can be taken for the Prince de Conti!’ He looked round triumphantly.
Madeleine said sympathetically, ‘’Tis a most happy comparison!’ but Monsieur Troqueville was smiling and nodding to himself, much too pleased with his own idea to pay any attention to Robert’s.
‘And here we have the Cardinal! By virtue of his holy office I need not find a sacred symbol for him, I just give his own portrait. This, you see, is St Michael fighting with the Dragon——’
‘Why, that would do most excellently for Don Quixote fighting with the windmills!’
‘Father, I beseech you, no more!’ whispered Madeleine severely.
‘But why? My conceit is every whit as good as his!’ said Monsieur Troqueville sulkily. Fortunately Robert Pilou was too muddle-headed and too wrapt up in himself to understand very clearly what other people were talking about, so he went on:—
‘It is a symbol of the King’s party fighting with the Frondeurs. Now here is a picture of a Procession of the Confrérie de la Passion; needless to say, it shadows forth the triumphant entry of the King and Cardinal into Paris—you see the banners and the torches—’tis an excellent symbol. And here you have a picture of the stonemasons busy at the new buildings of Val de Grâce, that is a double symbol—it stands for the work of the King and Cardinal in rebuilding the kingdom; it also stands for the gradual re-establishment of the power of the Church. And this first series ends up with this’—and he pointed gleefully to a horrible picture of Dives in Hell—‘this stands for the Prince de Condé in prison. And now we come to the second series——;’ but just then Madame Pilou called them back to the other room.