Madame Margot: A grotesque legend of old Charleston - John Bennett

... There in the midst of all those words shall be

Our names, our ghosts, our immortality.

—John Drinkwater.

The above is reprinted by permission of the publishers.

MADAME MARGOT

In an age so glorious, so rich and fine, and so be-starred with splendor that one almost forgets the bottomless abyss into which it plunged at last, there lived a woman in Charleston of whom a very odd story is told.

The languid, lovely, tired old town was then a city brave and gay, with Mediterranean manners and Caribbean ways.

The perfume of ten thousand flowers drifted upon the winds, which came and went over a thousand gardens, ebbing and flowing like the tide.

Clouds of snowy gold and roses rolled across the sky, like the vast rotundas of a city builded of colored ivory. Slowly rising overhead, in windy and ethereal masses, they stood, carvings of pale porphyry upon a turquoise wall. The earth was transfigured with beauty.