Cardillac had risen, and said with wild looks, like a man beside himself, still holding the casket out towards her, “Do me the kindness to take it, Mademoiselle! You have no notion how profound a reverence I bear in my heart for your virtues and your high deserts. Do but accept my little offering, as an attempt, on my part, to prove to you the warmth of my regard.”
As Mademoiselle de Scudéri was still hesitating, Madame de Maintenon took the casket from Cardillac’s hands, saying, “Now, by heaven, Mademoiselle, you are always talking of your great age What have you and I to do with years and their burden? You are like some bashful young thing who would gladly reach out for forbidden fruit, if she could gather it without hands or fingers. Do not hesitate to accept good Master René’s present, which thousands of others could not obtain for money or entreaty.”
As she spoke she continued to press the casket on Mademoiselle de Scudéri; and now Cardillac sank again on his knees, kissed her dress, her hands, sighed, wept, sobbed, sprang up, and ran off in frantic haste, upsetting chairs and tables, so that the glass and porcelain crashed and clattered together.
“In the name of all the saints, what is the matter with the man?” cried Mademoiselle de Scudéri in great alarm.
But the Marquise, in particularly happy temper, laughed aloud, saying, “What is it, Mademoiselle? That Master René is over head and ears in love with you and, according to the laws of galanterie, begins to lay siege to your heart with a valuable present.”
She carried this jest further, begging Mademoiselle de Scudéri not to be too obdurate towards this despairing lover of hers; and Mademoiselle de Scudéri, in her turn, borne away on a current of merry fancies, said that if it were so, she would not be able to refrain from delighting the world with the unprecedented spectacle of a goldsmith’s bride of three-and-seventy summers and unexceptionable descent. Madame de Maintenon offered to twine the bridal wreath herself, and give her a few hints as to the duties of a housewife, a subject on which such a poor inexperienced little chit could not be expected to know very much.
But, notwithstanding all the jesting and the laughter, when Mademoiselle de Scudéri rose to depart, she became very grave again as her hand rested upon the jewel casket. “Whatever happens,” she said, “I shall never be able to bring myself to wear these ornaments. They have, in any event, been in the hands of one of those diabolical men, who rob and slay with the audacity of the evil one himself and are very probably in league with him. I shudder at the thought of the blood which seems to cling to those glittering stones—even Cardillac’s behaviour had something about it which struck me as singularly wild and strange. I cannot drive away from me a gloomy foreboding that there is some terrible and frightful mystery hidden behind all this; and yet, when I bring the whole affair, with all the circumstances of it, as clearly as I can before my mental vision, I cannot form the slightest idea what that mystery can be—and, above all, how the good, honourable Master René—the very model of all a good, well-behaved citizen ought to be—can have anything to do with what is wicked or guilty. But at all events, I distinctly feel that I never can wear those jewels—”
The Marquise considered that this was carrying scruples rather too far; yet, when Mademoiselle de Scudéri asked her to say, on her honour, what she would do in her place, she replied, firmly and earnestly, “Far rather throw them into the Seine than ever put them on.”
The scene with Master René inspired Mademoiselle de Scudéri to write some pleasant verses, which she read to the King the following evening at Madame de Maintenon’s. Perhaps it was the thought of Master René carrying off a bride of seventy-three of unimpeachable quarterings—that enabled her to conquer her evil forebodings; but conquer them she did, completely—and the King laughed with all his heart, vowing that Boileau Despreaux had met with his master. So de Scudéri’s poem was reckoned the very wittiest that ever was written.