The Abbe defended his word, and for fully twenty minutes there was an eager argument, people citing passages and derivations, and defining shades of meaning with immense animation and brilliant wit, as I now understand, though then it seemed to me a wearisome imbroglio about a trifle.  I did not know what real benefit was done by these discussions in purifying the language from much that was coarse and unrefined.  Yes, and far more than the language, for Madame de Rambouillet, using her great gifts as a holy trust for the good of her neighbour, conferred no small benefit on her generation, nor is that good even yet entirely vanished.  Ah!  If there were more women like her, France and society would be very different.

When the discussion was subsiding, Mademoiselle d’ Argennes came to take me by the hand, and to present us to the queen of the salon.

‘Here, my mother, are our Odoardo and Gildippe,’ she said.

You remember, my children, that Odoardo and Gildippe are the names bestowed by Tasso on the English married pair who went together on the first crusade, and Gildippe continued to be my name in that circle, my nom de Parnasse, as it was called—­nay, Madame de Montausieur still gives it to me.

The allusion was a fortunate one; it established a precedent, and, besides, English people have always been supposed to be eccentric.  I am, however, doing the noble lady injustice.  Arthenice, as she was called by an anagram of her baptismal name of Catherine, was no blind slave to the conventional.  She had originality enough to have been able to purify the whole sphere in which she moved, and to raise the commonplace into the ideal.  ‘Excuse me,’ she said to her friends, and she led my husband apart into a deep window, and there, as he told me, seemed to look him through and through.  And verily he was one who needed not to fear such an inspection, any more than the clearest crystal.

Then, in like manner, she called for me, and made me understand that I was condemning myself to a life of much isolation, and that I must be most circumspect in my conduct, whole, after all, I might see very little of my husband; I must take good care that my presence was a help and refreshment, not a burden and perplexity to him, or he would neglect me and repent my coming.  ‘It may seem strange,’ she said, ’but I think my young friend will understand me, that I have always found that, next of course to those supplied by our holy religion, the best mode of rendering our life and its inconveniences endurable is to give them a colouring of romance.’  I did not understand her then, but I have often since thought of her words, when the recollection of the poetical aspect of the situation has aided my courage and my good temper.  Madame de Rambouillet looked into my eyes as she spoke, then said:  ‘Pardon an old woman, my dear;’ and kissed my brow, saying:  ‘You will not do what I have only dreamt of.’