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‘My child, your wish has something in’t like rare wit and sense,’ interrupted Madame Pilou warmly, ‘she is better worth seeing than anything else in the world, than the Grand Turk or Prester John himself.’

‘Was it not the late Monsieur Voiture that said of her, “I revere her as the most noble, the most beautiful, and the most perfect thing I have ever seen”?’ said Madeleine, the ordeal of quoting making her burn with self-consciousness.

‘I dare say it was. Poor Voiture, he was an impudent fellow, but his wit was as nimble as a hare. He always put me in mind of a performer there used to be on the Pont-Neuf—we called him the “Buveur d’Eau”—he would fill his mouth with ordinary cold water and then spout it out in cascades of different coloured scents. Some trick, doubtless, but it was wonderful. And in the same way Voiture would take some plain homespun sentiment and twist it and paint it and madrigalise it into something so fantastical that you would never recognise it as the same.’

‘I remember me to have seen that “Buveur d’Eau” when I came to Paris as a young man, and——’ began Monsieur Troqueville, in whom for some time the pleasures of the table had triumphed over the desire to shine. But Madeleine was not going to let the conversation wander to quacks and mountebanks. In a clear, though gentle voice, she asked if it were true that the Marquise de Rambouillet was in very delicate health.