They love one
another, and so long as that love lasts they will be better guardians
to one another than ten governors or twenty dames de compagnie.'
In England we should certainly not have done all this in public, and
my husband and I were terribly put to the blush; indeed, I felt my
whole head and neck burning, and caught a glimpse of myself in a
dreadful mirror, my white bridal dress and flaxen hair making my
fiery face look, my brothers would have said, 'as if I had been
skinned.'
And then, to make it all worse, a comical little crooked lady, with a
keen lively face, came hopping up with hands outspread, crying: 'Ah,
let me see her! Where is the fair Gildippe, the true heroine, who is
about to confront the arrows of the Lydians for the sake of the lord
of her heart?'
'My niece,' said the Marquis, evidently gratified by the sensation I
had created, 'Mademoiselle de Scudery does you the honour of
requesting to be presented to you.'
I made a low reverence, terribly abashed, and I fear it would have
reduced my mother to despair, but it was an honour that I
appreciated; for now that I was a married woman, I was permitted to
read romances, and I had just begun on the first volume of the Grand
Curus. My husband read it to me as I worked at my embroidery, and
you may guess how we enjoyed it.
But I had no power of make compliments--nay, my English heart
recoiled in anger at their making such an outcry, whether of blame or
praise, at what seemed to me the simplest thing in the world.
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