Читать книгу Madeleine: One of Love's Jansenists онлайн

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‘Now, then, Monsieur Jacques,’ went on Madame Pilou, thoroughly enjoying herself. ‘You are a learned young man, and sustained your thesis in philosophy at the University, do you hold it can be so ordered that one person can get another into Paradise—in short, that one can be pious by proxy?’

‘Madame Pilou!’ piped Robert plaintively, flapping his arms as though they had been wings, then he crossed himself and pulled his face back into its usual expression of stolidity.

‘Because,’ went on Madame Pilou, paying not the slightest attention to him, ‘it would be much to my liking if Robert could do all my church-going for me; I was within an ace of fetching up my dinner at Mass last Sunday, the stench was so exceeding powerful. I am at a loss to know why people are wont to smell worse in Church than anywhere else!’

‘I suppose that is what is called the odour of sanctity,’ said Jacques, with his engaging grin, looking at Madeleine to see if she was amused. Both Madeleine and Madame Troqueville smiled, but Robert was so busy seeing how long he could keep his cheeks blown out without letting out the breath that he did not hear, and Monsieur Troqueville was so occupied with planning how he could go one better that he had no time to smile. Jacques’s sally, however, displeased Madame Pilou extremely. She was really very devout in the sane fashion of the old Gallican Church, and though she herself might make profane jokes, she was not going to allow them in a very young man.