‘It is a most sweet invention!’ said Madeleine in her low, soft voice, meeting Jacques’s twinkle with unruffled gravity.
‘A most excellent, happy conceit! but I would fain tell you the notion it has engendered in my mind!’ cried Monsieur Troqueville, all agog for praise.
‘Oh, I was of opinion it would accord with your humour,’ nodded Madame Pilou, with rather a wicked twinkle.
‘But what was your notion, Uncle?’ asked Jacques, his mouth twitching.
‘Well, ’tis this way——’ began Monsieur Troqueville excitedly, but Madeleine felt that she would faint with boredom if her father were given an innings, so turned the attention of the company to the workmanship of a handsome clock on the chimney-piece.
‘Yes, for Robert that clock is what the “Messieurs de Port Royal” (coxcombs all of them, I say!) would call the grace efficace, in that by preventing him from being late for Mass it saves his soul from Hell!’ said Madame Pilou, looking at her son, who nodded his head in solemn confirmation. Jacques shot a malicious glance at Madeleine, who was looking rather self-conscious.
‘Now, then, Monsieur Jacques,’ went on Madame Pilou, thoroughly enjoying herself. ‘You are a learned young man, and sustained your thesis in philosophy at the University, do you hold it can be so ordered that one person can get another into Paradise—in short, that one can be pious by proxy?’
‘Madame Pilou!’ piped Robert plaintively, flapping his arms as though they had been wings, then he crossed himself and pulled his face back into its usual expression of stolidity.
‘Because,’ went on Madame Pilou, paying not the slightest attention to him, ‘it would be much to my liking if Robert could do all my church-going for me; I was within an ace of fetching up my dinner at Mass last Sunday, the stench was so exceeding powerful. I am at a loss to know why people are wont to smell worse in Church than anywhere else!’