When they heard what was the matter, persecution began for us both.
We used to compare our experiences; the ladies trying to persuade me
now that it was improper, now that I should be terrified to death now
that I should become too ugly to be presentable; while the gentlemen
made game of M. de Bellaise as a foolish young lover, who was so
absurd as to encumber himself with a wife of whom he would soon
weary, and whose presence would interfere with his enjoyment of the
freedom and diversions of military life. He who was only just free
from his governor, would he saddle himself with a wife? Bah!
He who had been so shy defended himself with spirit; and on my side I
declared that nothing but his commands, and those of my father,
should induce me to leave him. At Amiens we met a courier on his way
to England, and by him we dispatched letters to my father.
M. de Nidemerle treated all like absurd childish nonsense,
complimenting me ironically all the while; but I thought he wavered a
little before the journey was over, wishing perhaps that he had never
given his nephew a strange, headstrong, English wife, but thinking
that, as the deed was done, the farther off from himself she was the
better.
At least, he no longer blamed his nephew and threatened him with his
aunt; but declared that Madame de Rambouillet would soon put all such
folly out of our minds.
I asked my husband what Madame de Rambouillet could have to do with
our affairs; and he shrugged his shoulders and answered that the
divine Arthenice was the supreme judge of decorum, whose decisions
no one could gainsay.
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