MADAME MARGOT

Madame Margot

A Grotesque Legend
of Old Charleston

BY
JOHN BENNETT

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1921

Copyright, 1921, by
John Bennett


Printed in U. S. A.

TO

... You, and you, and you,
... who have gone greatly here
In friendship, making some delight, some true
Song in the dark, some story against fear.
... Lovers yet shall tell the nightingale
Sometimes a song that we of old time made,
And gossips gathered at the twilight ale
Shall say, “Those two were friends,” or “Unafraid
Of bitter thoughts were those because they loved
Better than most.”
... There in the midst of all those words shall be
Our names, our ghosts, our immortality.
—John Drinkwater.

The above is reprinted by permission of the publishers.

MADAME MARGOT

[3]

MADAME MARGOT

In an age so glorious, so rich andfine, and so be-starred with splendorthat one almost forgets the bottomlessabyss into which it plunged at last,there lived a woman in Charleston ofwhom a very odd story is told.

The languid, lovely, tired old townwas then a city brave and gay, withMediterranean manners and Caribbeanways.

The perfume of ten thousand flowersdrifted upon the winds, which came andwent over a thousand gardens, ebbingand flowing like the tide.

Clouds of snowy gold and roses rolled[4]across the sky, like the vast rotundasof a city builded of colored ivory.Slowly rising overhead, in windy andethereal masses, they stood, carvings ofpale porphyry upon a turquoise wall.The earth was transfigured with beauty.

It was a golden age, when all thingswere fair; nothing had grown old; eventhe tragic and the terrible were comelythen. Wonder lay on everything.Merely to exist was to be happy. Itwas a world of unextinguished youth;life was brimful to the lips with delight.

In the gardens rare flowers bloomed,and rare fruits ripened,—pomegranates,oranges, medlars, figs, jujubes, and thepurple In

...

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