Madeleine flung herself breathless and exhausted on her bed.
Deep down her conscience was wondering if she had achieved a genuine reconciliation between Preciosity and Jansenism.
CHAPTER XV
MOLOCH
The period that ensued was one of great happiness for Madeleine. It was spent in floating on her own interpretation of the Jansenists’ ‘full sea of grace,’ happy in the certainty, secure in the faith, that God in His own good time would grant her desires, and reverse the rôles of fugitive and pursuer. And being set free from the necessity of making her own future, ipso facto she was also released from the importunities of the gnat-like taboos and duties upon the doing or not doing of which had seemed to depend her future success.
She felt at peace with God and with man, and her family found her unusually gentle, calm, and sympathetic.
But Bethel was not yet raised. This was partly due to the inevitable torpor caused by an excess of faith. If it was God’s will that she should have an explanation with Jacques, He would furnish the occasion and the words.
So the evenings slipped by, and Madeleine continued to receive Jacques’s caresses with an automatic responsiveness.
Then, at a party at the Troguins, she met a benevolent though gouty old gentleman, in a black taffeta jerkin and black velvet breeches, and he was none other than Monsieur Conrart, perpetual secretary to the Academy, and self-constituted master of the ceremonies at the ‘Samedis’ of Mademoiselle de Scudéry. Madeleine was introduced to him, and her demure attention to his discourse, her modest demeanour, and her discreet feminine intelligence pleased him extremely. She made no conscious effort to attract him, she just trusted God, and, to ring another change on her favourite quolibet, it was as if la Grâce confided to the Graces the secret of its own silent, automatic action. He grew very paternal, patted her on the knee with his fat, gouty hand, and focused his energies on the improvement of her mind instead of the collective mind of the company.
The end of it was that he promised to take her with him to the very next ‘Samedi.’