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‘Oh! every one is there, every one of the Court and the Town. I should be loath to have you think I wasted my time in reading all the dozen volumes, but I cast my eye through some of them, and I don’t hold with dressing up living men and women in all these outlandish clothes and giving them Grecian names. It’s like the quacks on the Pont-Neuf, who call themselves “Il Signor Hieronymo Ferranti d’Orvieto,” and such like, though they are only decent French burghers like the rest of us!’

‘Or might it not be more in the nature of duchesses masquerading at the Carnival as Turkish ladies and shepherdesses?’ suggested Madeleine in a very nervous voice, her face quite white, as though she were a young Quakeress, bearing testimony for the first time.

‘Oh, well, I dare swear that conceit would better please the demoiselle,’ said Madame Pilou good-humouredly. ‘But it isn’t only in romances that we aren’t called by our good calendar names—oh, no, you are baptized Louise, or Marie, or Marguerite, but if you want to be in the mode, you must call yourself Amaryllis, or Daphne, or Phillis,’ and Madame Pilou minced out the names, her huge mouth pursed up. ‘I tell them that it is only actors and soldiers—the scum of the earth—who take fancy names. No, no, I am quite out of patience with the present fashion of beribboning and beflowering the good wood of life, as if it were a great maypole.’