I cannot, after all these years, recall what was said, impossible to recapture now the quick turns of wit, the dry little jokes, the swift touches of poetry, that followed each other with such rapid intellectual grace. It was all incredibly rapid. I could just manage to keep up with the sense of it. I didn’t attempt to take part. Ideas were as thick in that room as confetti at a fête. Clémentine, in an apple-green dress, with a round red spot of rouge on either cheek, swayed this way and that in response to innumerable sallies, her face changing like lightning. She was a match for those men. Her wit played over the history of her country like a jolly little ferret nosing out and pouncing upon joke and anecdote from the vast field of the past. Cardinals, princes, and ruffians were held up to ridicule. International affairs were dealt with clearly and deftly by her cutting tongue. She played with the ideas round her as if they were a swarm of brilliant darting winged creatures. Her delight in this battle of wit was contagious. The talk grew faster and faster. Soon every one was talking at once. No one could finish a sentence.
Cambon was explaining to Aunt Clothilde why the Government would not tolerate an Ambassador to the Pope. Clémentine was defending the English, no one appeared to like the English. Felix was making fun of Diaghilev, the new Russian who had appeared with his Imperial Ballet a week before.
What delightful people! Certainly without reservation of any kind I find them now as I did then the most delightful people in the world. Ludovic wore a celluloid collar. His body was too heavy for his legs and his head too big for his body; no matter; his profound, quiet gaze and tired, brown face expressed a nobility that made one ashamed of noticing his ill-cut coat. Felix looked like a faun. With his exaggerated features thrust forward into the candle-light he said funny, penetrating things that kept Aunt Clo chuckling. I watched, fascinated. These were the people Aunt Clo called disreputable, utterly lacking in a moral sense. Were ever sinners so joyous, so light-hearted? Rebels against creeds, against the fixed order of society, against the didactic spoken word, they were kind to me, the Philistine, exerting at once and with unconscious ease the most disarming charm.
Vaguely I recalled the mentality of my American home. It was there behind me, like a cold and lifeless plaster cast behind a curtain. Here was something infinitely more interesting, something brilliantly living, something merry and subtle and fine that defied disapproval. The powers of evil? Chimeras! No room for them here, no room for anything dismal and boring. I felt an uplift, it was like an awakening. All that horror of soul searching, all the dreary puritan A. B. C. of right and wrong was a childish nightmare. These people understood the world. They made fun of evil. They loved each other and found no fault with their friends. Under their gaiety was a deep sympathy for poor humanity.
They said things that would have sent St. Mary’s Plains reeling with horror into one large devastating revival meeting. If St. Mary’s Plains could have dreamed of the character of their conversation it would call upon God to destroy them. I laughed. Albert filled my glass.
Some one was saying—
“Time is a circle.”
“The sunrise, why the same sun? Who knows?”
“Truth? Why should one want truth? Truth is a thing we have invented. An accurate statement of facts? But there is no accuracy except in mathematics, and in mathematics there are no facts.”
Were they joking? Or were they serious? Both. I felt like a schoolgirl, very ignorant, very crude, with a stiff blank mind like a piece of cardboard. They slowed down to listen to Ludovic. I remember Ludovic speaking to them all with his eyes smiling under their spiky grey eyebrows. I think I remember what he said. It was the first time I had heard him talk, as he talked to me so often afterwards.