So this year, as in other years, I have been dining at the Chantals’ to celebrate Epiphany.
According to custom I embraced M. Chantal, Madame Chantal and Mademoiselle Perle, and made a profound bow to Mesdemoiselles Louise and Pauline. They asked me a thousand questions, about town gossip, about politics, about popular opinion on the events in Tonkin, and about our representatives. Madame Chantal, a stout lady, whose ideas always give me the impression that they are squared like so many hewn stones, had a habit of enouncing the phrase, “That will bear evil fruit some day,” as the conclusion of every political discussion. Why have I always imagined that Madame Chantal’s ideas are square? I do not know, the fact remains that everything she says assumes this shape in my mind; a square, a big square with four equal angles. There are other persons whose ideas always seem to be round and rolling like circles. No sooner have they commenced a phrase on some subject, than it goes rolling and issues in a dozen, a score, fifty round ideas, big and little, which I see running one after the other to the farthest horizon. Other persons, again, have pointed ideas.... But that is neither here nor there.
We sat down to table as usual, and the dinner passed without anything being said worth remembering.
At dessert, the Twelfth-cake was brought in. Now, every year M. Chantal was king. Whether that was a repeated coincidence or a family arrangement, I do not know, but he used infallibly to find the bean in his share of the cake, and used to proclaim Madame Chantal queen. So I was astounded to feel in a mouthful of cake something very hard, which almost broke a tooth for me. I carefully removed the thing from my mouth and saw a little china doll no bigger than a bean. In my surprise, I exclaimed, “Ah!” They looked at me, and Chantal clapped his hands and shouted, “Gaston’s got it! Gaston’s got it! Long live the king! Long live the king!”
Everybody repeated in chorus, “Long live the king!” and I blushed up to my ears, as one will blush, for no reason whatever, in rather foolish situations. I sat looking down at the cloth, with the scrap of china in my finger and thumb, forcing a laugh, and at a loss what to say or do, when Chantal resumed, “Now, you must choose a queen.”
At that I was overwhelmed. In a second, a thousand thoughts, a thousand suppositions flashed through my mind. Did they mean me to single out one of the Chantal girls? Was this a plan for making me say which one I preferred? Was it a gentle, slight, insensible impulse from the parents towards a possible marriage? The notion of marriage is constantly lurking in all those houses with grown-up daughters, and takes all sorts of forms, all sorts of disguises, all sorts of measures. I felt horribly afraid of compromising myself, and also excessively timid in face of the obstinately correct and composed attitude of Mesdemoiselles Louise and Pauline. To elect one of them to the detriment of the other was, to my mind, as difficult as to choose between two drops of water; and, besides, I was dreadfully scared by the fear of risking myself in an affair where I should be led on to marriage against my will by procedures so discreet, so imperceptible, and so calm as this trumpery royalty.
But all at once I had an inspiration, and I offered the symbolical doll to Mademoiselle Perle. They were all surprised at first; then they undoubtedly appreciated my delicacy and my discretion, for they applauded furiously. “Long live the queen, long live the queen!” they shouted.
As for her, poor old maid, she had lost countenance entirely: she trembled, quite scared, and stammered, “Oh no.... Oh no.... Oh no ... not me.... I pray you ... not me.... I pray you!”
At that I considered Mademoiselle Perle for the first time in my life, and began to ask myself what she was.
I was accustomed to seeing her in that house, as one sees the old tapestry arm-chairs on which one has sat from childhood, without ever noticing them. Some day, no one knows why, because a sunbeam falls on the chair, one says, “Why, this is very interesting.” And one discovers that the wood has been wrought by an artist, and that the covering is remarkable. I had never taken any notice of Mademoiselle Perle.