Chapter I: Preface

Fiction—to adapt a famous definition of law—is the meeting-point of Life and Art. Life is like a blind and limitless expanse of sky, for ever dividing into tiny drops of circumstances that rain down, thick and fast, on the just and unjust alike. Art is like the dauntless, plastic force that builds up stubborn, amorphous substance cell by cell, into the frail geometry of a shell. These two things are poles apart—how are they to meet in the same work of fiction?

One way is to fling down, _pêle-mêle_, a handful of separate acts and words, and then to turn on them the constructive force of a human consciousness that will arrange them into the pattern of logic or of drama.

Thus, in this book, Madeleine sees the trivial, disorderly happenings of her life as a momentous battle waged between a kindly Power who had written on tablets of gold before the world began that she should win her heart’s desire, and a sterner and mightier Power who had written on tablets of iron that all her hopes should be frustrated, so that, finally, naked and bleeding, she might turn to Him. And having this conception of life all her acquaintances become minor _daimones_, friendly or hostile, according as they seem to serve one power or the other.

The other way is to turn from time to time upon the action the fantastic limelight of eternity, with a sudden effect of unreality and the hint of a world within a world. My plot—that is to say, the building of the shell—takes place in this inner world and is summed up in the words that dog the dreams of Madeleine—_per hunc in invisibilium amorem rapiamur_. In the outer world there is nothing but the ceaseless, meaningless drip of circumstances, in the inner world—a silent, ineluctable march towards a predestined climax.

I have had the epilogue printed in italics to suggest that the action has now moved completely on to the stage of the inner world. In the outer world Madeleine might with time have jettisoned the perilous stuff of youth and have sailed serenely the rough, fresh sea of facts. In the inner world, there was one thing and one thing only that could happen to her: life is the province of free-will, art the province of fate.

CONTENTS

PART I

CHAP. PAGE

I. THE DINNER AT MADAME PILOU’S 3

II. A PARTIAL CONFESSION 22

III. A SUPPLEMENT TO THE CONFESSION 34

IV. THE SIN OF NARCISSUS 48

V. AN INVITATION 63

VI. THE GRECIAN PROTOTYPE 72

VII. THE MERCHANTS OF DAMASCUS AND DAN 77

VIII. ‘RITE DE PASSAGE’ 84

IX. AT THE HÔTEL DE RAMBOUILLET 94

X. AFTERWARDS 115

XI. REBUILDING THE HOUSE OF CARDS 122

PART II

XII. THE FÊTE-DIEU 129

XIII. ROBERT PILOU’S SCREEN 133

XIV. A DEMONSTRATION IN FAITH 141

XV. MOLOCH 148

XVI. A VISIT TO THE ABBAYE OF PORT-ROYAL 154

XVII. ‘HYLAS, THE MOCKING SHEPHERD’ 166

XVIII. A DISAPPOINTMENT 171

XIX. THE PLEASURES OF DESPAIR 178

XX. FRESH HOPE 185

PART III

XXI. ‘WHAT IS CARTESIANISM?’ 191

XXII. BEES-WAX 195

XXIII. MADEMOISELLE DE SCUDÉRY’S SATURDAY 200

XXIV. SELF-IMPOSED SLAVERY 216

XXV. THE SYMMETRY OF THE COMIC MUSE 219

XXVI. BERTHE’S STORY 224

XXVII. THE CHRISTIAN VENUS 231

XXVIII. THE ASCENT OF MOUNT CARMEL 237

XXIX. THE BODY OF THE DRAGON 243

XXX. A JAR 244

XXXI. THE END OF THE ‘ROMAN’ 248

XXXII. ‘UN CADEAU’ 255

XXXIII. FACE TO FACE WITH FACTS 267

XXXIV. OUT INTO THE VOID 273

EPILOGUE. THE RAPE TO THE LOVE OF INVISIBLE THINGS 275