My gracious Lord asked me what gems I would best like.
"Oh, agate or cornelian, if it please your Nobility," said I, "because they make people amiable."
He pinched my ear, and said he thought I was amiable enough: he would give me a set of jacinths.[#]
[#] These gems were believed to possess the properties in question.
"What, to send me to sleep?" said I, laughing.
"Just so," he answered. "Thou art somewhat too wide-awake."
"What do you please to mean, Monseigneur?"
He smiled, but then sighed heavily, and stroked my head.
"Ah, my little Lynette!" he said. "If thy blessed mother had but lived! I know not--truly I know not--whether I act for thy real welfare or not. The good God forgive our blunders, poor blindlings that we are!" And he rose and went away.
But of course it must be for my welfare that I should go to Guy, and get some appointment in the household of one of the Princesses, and see life, and--well, I don't know about getting married. I might not have so much of my own way. And I like that dearly. Besides, if I were married I could not be always with Guy. I think I won't, on the whole.
I asked Marguerite to-night if she could tell why holy people did not wash: and she said she thought they did.
"Well," said I, "but yonder holy palmer had not taken his clothes off for three years; and I am sure, Margot, he did not smell nice."
"I think," said Marguerite, "under leave of my Damoiselle, he would have been at least as holy if he had changed them once a month."
"O Margot! is not that heterodoxy?" asked I, laughing.
"Let my Damoiselle pardon her servant--no! Did not Monseigneur Saint Paul himself say that men should wash their bodies with pure water?"
"I am sure I don't know," said I. "I always thought, the holier you were, and the dirtier. And that is one reason why I always thought, too, that I could never be holy. I should want my hands and face clean, at least."
"Did my Damoiselle think she could never be holy?"
"Wherefore? Let her forgive her poor servant."
"Oh, holiness seems to mean all sorts of unpleasant things," said I. "You must not wash, nor lie on a comfortable bed, nor wear anything nice, nor dance, nor sing, nor have any pleasure. I don't want to be holy. I really could not do with it, Margot."