The Pretentious Young Ladies

CAT. How can you make a tune then?

MASC. People of rank know everything without ever having learned anything.

MAD. His lordship is quite in the right, my dear.

MASC. Listen if you like the tune: hem, hem, la, la. The inclemency of the season has greatly injured the delicacy of my voice but no matter, it is in a free and easy way. (He sings). Oh! Oh! quite without heed was I, etc.

CAT. What a passion there breathes in this music. It is enough to make one die away with delight!

MAD. There is something plaintive in it.

MASC. Do you not think that the air perfectly well expresses the sentiment, stop thief, stop thief? And then as if some one cried out very loud, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop thief! Then all at once like a person out of breath, Stop thief!

MAD. This is to understand the perfection of things, the grand perfection, the perfection of perfections. I declare it is altogether a wonderful performance. I am quite enchanted with the air and the words.

CAT. I never yet met with anything so excellent.

MASC. All that I do comes naturally to me; it is without study.

MAD. Nature has treated you like a very fond mother; you are her darling child.

MASC. How do you pass away the time, ladies?

CAT. With nothing at all.

MAD. Until now we have lived in a terrible dearth of amusements.

MASC. I am at your service to attend you to the play, one of those days, if you will permit me. Indeed, a new comedy is to be acted which I should be very glad we might see together.

MAD. There is no refusing you anything.

MASC. But I beg of you to applaud it well, when we shall be there; for I have promised to give a helping hand to the piece. The author called upon me this very morning to beg me so to do. It is the custom for authors to come and read their new plays to people of rank, that they may induce us to approve of them and give them a reputation. I leave you to imagine if, when we say anything, the pit dares contradict us. As for me, I am very punctual in these things, and when I have made a promise to a poet, I always cry out "Bravo" before the candles are lighted.

MAD. Do not say another word; Paris is an admirable place. A hundred things happen every day which people in the country, however clever they may be, have no idea of.

CAT. Since you have told us, we shall consider it our duty to cry up lustily every word that is said.

MASC. I do not know whether I am deceived, but you look as if you had written some play yourself.

MAD. Eh! there may be something in what you say.

MASC. Ah! upon my word, we must see it. Between ourselves, I have written one which I intend to have brought out.

CAT. Ay! to what company do you mean to give it?

MASC. That is a very nice question, indeed. To the actors of the hôtel de Bourgogne; they alone can bring things into good repute; the rest are ignorant creatures who recite their parts just as people speak in every-day life; they do not understand to mouth the verses, or to pause at a beautiful passage; how can it be known where the fine lines are, if an actor does not stop at them, and thereby tell you to applaud heartily?

[Footnote: The company of actors at the hotel de Bourgogne were rivals to the troop of Molière; it appears, however, from contemporary authors, that the accusations brought by our author against them were well-founded.]

CAT. Indeed! that is one way of making an audience feel the beauties of any work; things are only prized when they are well set off.

MASC. What do you think of my top-knot, sword-knot, and rosettes? Do you find them harmonize with my coat?

[Footnote: In the original petite oie; this was first, the name given to the giblets of a goose, oie; next it came to mean all the accessories of dress, ribbons, laces, feathers, and other small ornaments. In one of the old translations of Molière petite oie is rendered by "muff," and Perdrigeon (see next note), I suppose, with a faint idea of perdrix, a partridge, by "bird of paradise feathers!!"]

CAT. Perfectly.

MASC. Do you think the ribbon well chosen?

MAD. Furiously well. It is real Perdrigeon.

[Footnote: Perdrigeon was the name of a fashionable linen-draper in

Paris at that time.]

MASC. What do you say of my rolls?

[Footnote: According to Ash's Dictionary, 1775, canons, are "cannions, a kind of boot hose, an ancient dress for the legs."]

MAD. They look very fashionable.

MASC, I may at least boast that they are a quarter of a yard wider than any that have been made.

MAD. I must own I never saw the elegance of dress carried farther.

MASC. Please to fasten the reflection of your smelling faculty upon these gloves.

MAD. They smell awfully fine.

CAT. I never inhaled a more delicious perfume.

MASC. And this? (He gives them his powdered wig to smell).

MAD. It has the true quality odour; it titillates the nerves of the upper region most deliciously.

MASC. You say nothing of my feathers. How do you like them?

CAT. They are frightfully beautiful.

MASC. Do you know that every single one of them cost me a Louis-d'or?

But it is my hobby to have generally everything of the very best.

MAD. I assure you that you and I sympathize. I am furiously particular in everything I wear; I cannot endure even stockings, unless they are bought at a fashionable shop.

[Footnote: Without going into details about the phraseology of the précieuses, of which the ridiculousness has appeared sufficiently in this scene, it will be observed that they used adverbs, as "furiously, terribly, awfully, extraordinarily, horribly, greatly," and many more, in such a way that they often appear absurd, as, "I love you horribly," or, "he was greatly small." Such a way of speaking is not unknown even at the present time in England; we sometimes hear, "I like it awfully," "it is awfully jolly."]

MASC. (Crying out suddenly). O! O! O! gently. Damme, ladies, you use me very ill; I have reason to complain of your behaviour; it is not fair.