On this particular day Matilde's friends manifested a continuous hostility to the visitors who came into the vast salon. The friends of the house were the favoured victims at first, inasmuch as they were better known. You can form your opinion as to whether Julien paid attention; everything interested him, both the substance of things and the manner of making fun of them.

"And there is M. Descoulis," said Matilde; "he doesn't wear a wig any more. Does he want to get a prefectship through sheer force of genius? He is displaying that bald forehead which he says is filled with lofty thoughts."

"He is a man who knows the whole world," said the marquis de Croisenois. "He also goes to my uncle the cardinal's. He is capable of cultivating a falsehood with each of his friends for years on end, and he has two or three hundred friends. He knows how to nurse friendship, that is his talent. He will go out, just as you see him, in the worst winter weather, and be at the door of one of his friends by seven o'clock in the morning.

"He quarrels from time to time and he writes seven or eight letters for each quarrel. Then he has a reconciliation and he writes seven or eight letters to express his bursts of friendship. But he shines most brilliantly in the frank and sincere expansiveness of the honest man who keeps nothing up his sleeve. This manœuvre is brought into play when he has some favour to ask. One of my uncle's grand vicars is very good at telling the life of M. Descoulis since the restoration. I will bring him to you."

"Bah! I don't believe all that, it's professional jealousy among the lower classes." said the comte de Caylus.

"M. Descoulis will live in history," replied the marquis. "He brought about the restoration together with the abbé de Pradt and messieurs de Talleyrand and Pozzo di Borgo."

"That man has handled millions," said Norbert, "and I can't conceive why he should come here to swallow my father's epigrams which are frequently atrocious. 'How many times have you betrayed your friends, my dear Descoulis?' he shouted at him one day from one end of the table to the other."

"But is it true that he has played the traitor?" asked mademoiselle de la Mole. "Who has not played the traitor?"

"Why!" said the comte de Caylus to Norbert, "do you have that celebrated Liberal, M. Sainclair, in your house. What the devil's he come here for? I must go up to him and speak to him and make him speak. He is said to be so clever."

"But how will your mother receive him?" said M. de Croisenois. "He has such extravagant, generous and independent ideas."

"Look," said mademoiselle de la Mole, "look at the independent man who bows down to the ground to M. Descoulis while he grabs hold of his hand. I almost thought he was going to put it to his lips."

"Descoulis must stand better with the powers that be than we thought," answered M. de Croisenois.

"Sainclair comes here in order to get into the academy," said Norbert. "See how he bows to the baron L —— , Croisenois."

"It would be less base to kneel down," replied M. de Luz.

"My dear Sorel," said Norbert, "you are extremely smart, but you come from the mountains. Mind you never bow like that great poet is doing, even to God the Father."

"Ah there's a really witty man, M. the Baron Bàton," said mademoiselle de la Mole, imitating a little the voice of the flunkey who had just announced him.

"I think that even your servants make fun of him. What a name Baron Bâton," said M. de Caylus.

"What's in a name?" he said to us the other day, went on Matilde. "Imagine the Duke de Bouillon announced for the first time. So far as I am concerned the public only need to get used to me."

"Julien left the vicinity of the sofa."

Still insufficiently appreciative of the charming subtleties of a delicate raillery to laugh at a joke, he considered that a jest ought to have some logical foundation. He saw nothing in these young peoples' conversation except a vein of universal scandal-mongering and was shocked by it. His provincial or English prudery went so far as to detect envy in it, though in this he was certainly mistaken.

"Count Norbert," he said to himself, "who has had to make three drafts for a twenty-line letter to his colonel would be only too glad to have written once in his whole life one page as good as M. Sainclair."

Julien approached successively the several groups and attracted no attention by reason of his lack of importance. He followed the Baron Bâton from a distance and tried to hear him.

This witty man appeared nervous and Julien did not see him recover his equanimity before he had hit upon three or four stinging phrases. Julien thought that this kind of wit had great need of space.

The Baron could not make epigrams. He needed at least four sentences of six lines each, in order to be brilliant.

"That man argues, he does not talk," said someone behind Julien. He turned round and reddened with pleasure when he heard the name of the comte Chalvet. He was the subtlest man of the century. Julien had often found his name in the Memorial of St. Helena and in the portions of history dictated by Napoleon. The diction of comte Chalvet was laconic, his phrases were flashes of lightning—just, vivid, deep. If he talked about any matter the conversation immediately made a step forward; he imported facts into it; it was a pleasure to hear him. In politics, however, he was a brazen cynic.

"I am independent, I am," he was saying to a gentleman with three stars, of whom apparently he was making fun. "Why insist on my having to-day the same opinion I had six weeks ago. In that case my opinion would be my master."

Four grave young men who were standing round scowled; these gentlemen did not like flippancy. The comte saw that he had gone too far. Luckily he perceived the honest M. Balland, a veritable hypocrite of honesty. The count began to talk to him; people closed up, for they realised that poor Balland was going to be the next victim.

M. Balland, although he was horribly ugly and his first steps in the world were almost unmentionable, had by dint of his morals and his morality married a very rich wife who had died; he subsequently married a second very rich one who was never seen in society. He enjoyed, in all humility, an income of sixty thousand francs, and had his own flatterers. Comte Chalvet talked to him pitilessly about all this. There was soon a circle of thirty persons around them. Everybody was smiling, including the solemn young men who were the hope of the century.

"Why does he come to M. de la Mole where he is obviously only a laughing stock?" thought Julien. He approached the abbé Pirard to ask him.

M. Balland made his escape.

"Good," said Norbert, "there is one of the spies of my father gone; there is only the little limping Napier left."

"Can that be the key of the riddle?" thought Julien, "but if so, why does the marquis receive M. Balland?"

The stern abbé Pirard was scowling in a corner of the salon listening to the lackeys announcing the names.

"This is nothing more than a den," he was saying like another Basil, "I see none but shady people come in."

As a matter of fact the severe abbé did not know what constitutes high society. But his friends the Jansenites, had given him some very precise notions about those men who only get into society by reason of their extreme subtlety in the service of all parties, or of their monstrous wealth. For some minutes that evening he answered Julien's eager questions fully and freely, and then suddenly stopped short grieved at having always to say ill of every one, and thinking he was guilty of a sin. Bilious Jansenist as he was, and believing as he did in the duty of Christian charity, his life was a perpetual conflict.

"How strange that abbé Pirard looks," said mademoiselle de la Mole, as Julien came near the sofa.

Julien felt irritated, but she was right all the same. M. Pirard was unquestionably the most honest man in the salon, but his pimply face, which was suffering from the stings of conscience, made him look hideous at this particular moment. "Trust physiognomy after this," thought Julien, "it is only when the delicate conscience of the abbé Pirard is reproaching him for some trifling lapse that he looks so awful; while the expression of that notorious spy Napier shows a pure and tranquil happiness." The abbé Pirard, however, had made great concessions to his party. He had taken a servant, and was very well dressed.

Julien noticed something strange in the salon, it was that all eyes were being turned towards the door, and there was a semi silence. The flunkey was announcing the famous Barron Tolly, who had just become publicly conspicuous by reason of the elections. Julien came forward and had a very good view of him. The baron had been the president of an electoral college; he had the brilliant idea of spiriting away the little squares of paper which contained the votes of one of the parties. But to make up for it he replaced them by an equal number of other little pieces of paper containing a name agreeable to himself. This drastic manœuvre had been noticed by some of the voters, who had made an immediate point of congratulating the Baron de Tolly. The good fellow was still pale from this great business. Malicious persons had pronounced the word galleys. M. de la Mole received him coldly. The poor Baron made his escape.

"If he leaves us so quickly it's to go to M. Comté's," said Comte Chalvet and everyone laughed.

Little Tanbeau was trying to win his spurs by talking to some silent noblemen and some intriguers who, though shady, were all men of wit, and were on this particular night in great force in M. de la Mole's salon (for he was mentioned for a place in the ministry). If he had not yet any subtlety of perception he made up for it as one will see by the energy of his words.

"Why not sentence that man to ten years' imprisonment," he was saying at the moment when Julien approached his knot. Those reptiles should be confined in the bottom of a dungeon, they ought to languish to death in gaol, otherwise their venom will grow and become more dangerous. What is the good of sentencing him to a fine of a thousand crowns? He is poor, so be it, all the better, but his party will pay for him. What the case required was a five hundred francs fine and ten years in a dungeon."

"Well to be sure, who is the monster they are speaking about?" thought Julien who was viewing with amazement the vehement tone and hysterical gestures of his colleague. At this moment the thin, drawn, little face of the academician's nephew was hideous. Julien soon learnt that they were talking of the greatest poet of the century.

"You monster," Julien exclaimed half aloud, while tears of generosity moistened his eyes. "You little rascal," he thought, "I will pay you out for this."

"Yet," he thought, "those are the unborn hopes of the party of which the marquis is one of the chiefs. How many crosses and how many sinecures would that celebrated man whom he is now defaming have accumulated if he had sold himself—I won't say to the mediocre ministry of M. de Nerval—but to one of those reasonably honest ministries which we have seen follow each other in succession."

The abbé Pirard motioned to Julien from some distance off; M. de la Mole had just said something to him. But when Julien, who was listening at the moment with downcast eyes to the lamentations of the bishop, had at length got free and was able to get near his friend, he found him monopolised by the abominable little Tanbeau. The little beast hated him as the cause of Julien's favour with the marquis, and was now making up to him.

" When will death deliver us from that aged rottenness " it was in these words of a biblical energy that the little man of letters was now talking of the venerable Lord Holland. His merit consisted in an excellent knowledge of the biography of living men, and he had just made a rapid review of all the men who could aspire to some influence under the reign of the new King of England.

The abbé Pirard passed in to an adjacent salon. Julien followed him.

"I warn you the marquis does not like scribblers, it is his only prejudice. Know Latin and Greek if you can manage it, the history of the Egyptians, Persians, etc., he will honour and protect you as a learned man. But don't write a page of French, especially on serious matters which are above your position in society, or he will call you a scribbler and take you for a scoundrel. How is it that living as you do in the hotel of a great lord you don't know the Duke de Castries' epigram on Alembert and Rousseau: 'the fellow wants to reason about everything and hasn't got an income of a thousand crowns'!"

"Everything leaks out here," thought Julien, "just like the seminary." He had written eight or six fairly drastic pages. It was a kind of historical eulogy of the old surgeon-major who had, he said, made a man of him. "The little note book," said Julien to himself, "has always been locked." He went up to his room, burnt his manuscript and returned to the salon. The brilliant scoundrels had left it, only the men with the stars were left.

Seven or eight very aristocratic ladies, very devout, very affected, and of from thirty to thirty-five years of age, were grouped round the table that the servants had just brought in ready served. The brilliant marèchale de Fervaques came in apologising for the lateness of the hour. It was more than midnight: she went and sat down near the marquise. Julien was deeply touched, she had the eyes and the expression of madame de Rênal.

Mademoiselle de la Mole's circle was still full of people. She was engaged with her friends in making fun of the unfortunate comte de Thaler. He was the only son of that celebrated Jew who was famous for the riches that he had won by lending money to kings to make war on the peoples.

The Jew had just died leaving his son an income of one hundred thousand crowns a month, and a name that was only too well known. This strange position required either a simple character or force of will power.

Unfortunately the comte was simply a fellow who was inflated by all kinds of pretensions which had been suggested to him by all his toadies.

M. de Caylus asserted that they had induced him to make up his mind to ask for the hand of mademoiselle de la Mole, to whom the marquis de Croisenois, who would be a duke with a hundred thousand francs a year, was paying his attentions.

"Oh, do not accuse him of having a mind," said Norbert pitifully.

Will-power was what the poor comte de Thaler lacked most of all. So far as this side of his character went he was worthy of being a king. He would take council from everybody, but he never had the courage to follow any advice to the bitter end.

"His physiognomy would be sufficient in itself," mademoiselle de la Mole was fond of saying, "to have inspired her with a holy joy." It was a singular mixture of anxiety and disappointment, but from time to time one could distinguish gusts of self-importance, and above all that trenchant tone suited to the richest man in France, especially when he had nothing to be ashamed of in his personal appearance and was not yet thirty-six. "He is timidly insolent," M. de Croisenois would say. The comte de Caylus, Norbert, and two or three moustachoed young people made fun of him to their heart's content without him suspecting it, and finally packed him off as one o'clock struck.

"Are those your famous Arab horses waiting for you at the door in this awful weather?" said Norbert to him.

"No, it is a new pair which are much cheaper," said M. de Thaler. "The horse on the left cost me five thousand francs, while the one on the right is only worth one hundred louis, but I would ask you to believe me when I say that I only have him out at night. His trot you see is exactly like the other ones."

Norbert's remark made the comte think it was good form for a man like him to make a hobby of his horses, and that he must not let them get wet. He went away, and the other gentleman left a minute afterwards making fun of him all the time. "So," thought Julien as he heard them laugh on the staircase, "I have the privilege of seeing the exact opposite of my own situation. I have not got twenty louis a year and I found myself side by side with a man who has twenty louis an hour and they made fun of him. Seeing a sight like that cures one of envy."

CHAPTER XXXV

SENSIBILITY AND A GREAT PIOUS LADY

— Faublas.

This was the stage Julien had reached, when after several months of probation the steward of the household handed him the third quarter of his wages. M. de la Mole had entrusted him with the adminisiration of his estates in Brittany and Normandy. Julien made frequent journeys there. He had chief control of the correspondence relating to the famous law-suit with the abbé de Frilair. M. Pirard had instructed him.

On the data of the short notes which the marquis would scribble on the margin of all the various paper which were addressed to him, Julien would compose answers which were nearly all signed.

At the Theology School his professors complained of his lack of industry, but they did not fail to regard him as one of their most distinguished pupils. This varied work, tackled as it was with all the ardour of suffering ambition, soon robbed Julien of that fresh complexion which he had brought from the provinces. His pallor consiituted one of his merits in the eyes of his comrades, the young seminarist; he found them much less malicious, much less ready to bow down to a silver crown than those of Besançon; they thought he was consumptive. The marquis had given him a horse.

Julien fearing that he might meet people during his rides on horseback, had given out that this exercise had been prescribed by the doctors. The abbé Pirard had taken him into several Jansenist Societies. Julien was astonished; the idea of religion was indissolubly connected in his mind with the ideas of hypocrisy and covetousness. He admired those austere pious men who never gave a thought to their income. Several Jansensists became friendly with him and would give him advice. A new world opened before him. At the Jansenists he got to know a comtè Altamira, who was nearly six feet high, was a Liberal, a believer, and had been condemned to death in his own country. He was struck by the strange contrast of devoutness and love of liberty.

Julien's relations with the young comtè had become cool. Norbert had thought that he answered the jokes of his friends with too much sharpness. Julien had committed one or two breaches of social etiquette and vowed to himself that he would never speak to mademoiselle Mathilde. They were always perfectly polite to him in the hôtel de la Mole but he felt himself quite lost. His provincial commonsense explained this result by the vulgar proverb Tout beau tout nouveau.

He gradually came to have a little more penetration than during his first days, or it may have been that the first glamour of Parisian urbanity had passed of. As soon as he left off working, he fell a prey to a mortal boredom. He was experiencing the withering effects of that admirable politeness so typical of good society, which is so perfectly modulated to every degree of the social hierarchy.

No doubt the provinces can be reproached with a commonness and lack of polish in their tone; but they show a certain amount of passion, when they answer you. Julien's self-respect was never wounded at the hôtel de la Mole, but he often felt at the end of the day as though he would like to cry. A café-waiter in the provinces will take an interest in you if you happen to have some accident as you enter his café, but if this accident has everything about it which is disagreeable to your vanity, he will repeat ten times in succession the very word which tortures you, as he tells you how sorry he is. At Paris they make a point of laughing in secret, but you always remain a stranger.

We pass in silence over a number of little episodes which would have made Julien ridiculous, if he had not been to some extent above ridicule. A foolish sensibility resulted in his committing innumerable acts of bad taste. All his pleasures were precautions; he practiced pistol shooting every day, he was one of the promising pupils of the most famous maîtres d'armes. As soon as he had an instant to himself, instead of employing it in reading as he did before, he would rush off to the riding school and ask for the most vicious horses. When he went out with the master of the riding school he was almost invariably thrown.

The marquis found him convenient by reason of his persistent industry, his silence and his intelligence, and gradually took him into his confidence with regard to all his affairs, which were in any way difficult to unravel. The marquis was a sagacious business man on all those occasious when his lofty ambition gave him some respite; having special information within his reach, he would speculate successfully on the Exchange. He would buy mansions and forests; but he would easily lose his temper. He would give away hundreds of louis, and would go to law for a few hundred francs. Rich men with a lofty spirit have recourse to business not so much for results as for distraction. The marquis needed a chief of staff who would put all his money affairs into clear and lucid order. Madame de la Mole, although of so even a character, sometimes made fun of Julien. Great ladies have a horror of those unexpected incidents which are produced by a sensitive character; they constitute the opposite pole of etiquette. On two or three occasions the marquis took his part. "If he is ridiculous in your salon, he triumphs in his office." Julien on his side thought he had caught the marquise's secret. She deigned to manifest an interest in everything the minute the Baron de la Joumate was announced. He was a cold individual with an expressionless physiognomy. He was tall, thin, ugly, very well dressed, passed his life in his château, and generally speaking said nothing about anything. Such was his outlook on life. Madame de la Mole would have been happy for the first time in her life if she could have made him her daughter's husband.

CHAPTER XXXVI

PRONUNCIATION

If fatuity is pardonable it is in one's first youth, for it is then the exaggeration of an amiable thing. It needs an air of love, gaiety, nonchalance. But fatuity coupled with self-importance; fatuity with a solemn and self-sufficient manner! This extravagance of stupidity was reserved for the XIXth century. Such are the persons who want to unchain the hydra of revolutions! —LE JOHANNISBURG, Pamphlet.

Considering that he was a new arrival who was too disdainful to put any questions, Julien did not fall into unduly great mistakes. One day when he was forced into a café in the Rue St. Honoré by a sudden shower, a big man in a beaver coat, surprised by his gloomy look, looked at him in return just as mademoiselle Amanda's lover had done before at Besançon.

Julien had reproached himself too often for having endured the other insult to put up with this stare. He asked for an explanation. The man in the tail-coat immediately addressed him in the lowest and most insulting language. All the people in the café surrounded them. The passers-by stopped before the door. Julien always carried some little pistols as a matter of precaution. His hand was grasping them nervously in his pocket. Nevertheless he behaved wisely and confined himself to repeating to his man "Monsieur, your address, I despise you."

The persistency in which he kept repeating these six words eventually impressed the crowd.

"By Jove, the other who's talking all to himself ought to give him his address," they exclaimed. The man in the tail-coat hearing this repeated several times, flung five or six cards in Julien's face.

Fortunately none of them hit him in the face; he had mentally resolved not to use his pistols except in the event of his being hit. The man went away, though not without turning round from time to time to shake his fist and hurl insults at him.

Julien was bathed in sweat. "So," he said angrily to himself, "the meanest of mankind has it in his power to affect me as much as this. How am I to kill so humiliating a sensitiveness?"

Where was he to find a second? He did not have a single friend. He had several acquaintances, but they all regularly left him after six weeks of social intercourse. "I am unsociable," he thought, and "I am now cruelly punished for it." Finally it occurred to him to rout out an old lieutenant of the 96th, named Lieven, a poor devil with whom he often used to fence. Julien was frank with him.

I am quite willing to be your second," said Lieven, "but on one condition. If you fail to wound your man you will fight with me straight away."

"Agreed," said Julien quite delighted; and they went to find M. de Beauvoisis at the address indicated on his card at the end of the Faubourg Saint Germain.

It was seven o'clock in the morning. It was only when he was being ushered in, that Julien thought that it might quite well be the young relation of Madame de Rênal, who had once been employed at the Rome or Naples Embassy, and who had given the singer Geronimo a letter of introduction.

Julien gave one of the cards which had been flung at him the previous evening together with one of his own to a tall valet.

He and his second were kept waiting for a good three-quarters of an hour. Eventually they were ushered in to a elegantly furnished apartment. They found there a tall young man who was dressed like a doll. His features presented the perfection and the lack of expression of Greek beauty. His head, which was remarkably straight, had the finest blonde hair. It was dressed with great care and not a single hair was out of place.

"It was to have his hair done like this, that is why this damned fop has kept us waiting," thought the lieutenant of the 96th. The variegated dressing gown, the morning trousers, everything down to the embroidered slippers was correct. He was marvellously well-groomed. His blank and aristocratic physiognomy betokened rare and orthodox ideas; the ideal of a Metternichian diplomatist. Napoleon as well did not like to have in his entourage officers who thought.

Julien, to whom his lieutenant of the 96th had explained, that keeping him waiting was an additional insult after having thrown his card so rudely in his face, entered brusquely M. de Beauvoisis' room. He intended to be insolent, but at the same time to exhibit good form.

Julien was so astonished by the niceness of M. de Beauvoisis' manners and by the combination of formality, self-importance, and self-satisfaction in his demeanour, by the admirable elegance of everything that surrounded him, that he abandoned immediately all idea of being insolent. It was not his man of the day before. His astonishment was so great at meeting so distinguished a person, instead of the rude creature whom he was looking for, that he could not find a single word to say. He presented one of the cards which had been thrown at him.

"That's my name," said the young diplomat, not at all impressed by Julien's black suit at seven o'clock in the morning, "but I do not understand the honour."

His manner of pronouncing these last words revived a little of Julien's bad temper.

"I have come to fight you, monsieur," and he explained in a few words the whole matter.

M. Charles de Beauvoisis, after mature reflection, was fairly satisfied with the cut of Julien's black suit.

"It comes from Staub, that's clear," he said to himself, as he heard him speak. "That waistcoat is in good taste. Those boots are all right, but on the other hand just think of wearing a black suit in the early morning! It must be to have a better chance of not being hit," said the chevalier de Beauvoisis to himself.

After he had given himself this explanation he became again perfectly polite to Julien, and almost treated him as an equal. The conversation was fairly lengthy, for the matter was a delicate one, but eventually Julien could not refuse to acknowledge the actual facts. The perfectly mannered young man before him did not bear any resemblance to the vulgar fellow who had insulted him the previous day

Julien felt an invincible repugnance towards him. He noted the self-sufficiency of the chevalier de Beauvoisis, for that was the name by which he had referred to himself, shocked as he was when Julien called him simply "Monsieur."

He admired his gravity which, though tinged with a certain modest fatuity, he never abandoned for a single moment. He was astonished at his singular manner of moving his tongue as he pronounced his words, but after all, this did not present the slightest excuse for picking a quarrel.

The young diplomatist very graciously offered to fight, but the ex-lieutenant of the 96th, who had been sitting down for an hour with his legs wide apart, his hands on his thigh, and his elbows stuck out, decided that his friend, monsieur de Sorel, was not the kind to go and pick a quarrel with a man because someone else had stolen that man's visiting cards.

Julien went out in a very bad temper. The chevalier de Beauvoisis' carriage was waiting for him in the courtyard before the steps. By chance Julien raised his eyes and recognised in the coachman his man of the day before.

Seeing him, catching hold of him by his big jacket, tumbling him down from his seat, and horse-whipping him thoroughly took scarcely a moment.

Two lackeys tried to defend their comrade. Julien received some blows from their fists. At the same moment, he cocked one of his little pistols and fired on them. They took to flight. All this took about a minute.

The chevalier de Beauvoisis descended the staircase with the most pleasing gravity, repeating with his lordly pronunciation, "What is this, what is this." He was manifestly very curious, but his diplomatic importance would not allow him to evince any greater interest.

When he knew what it was all about, a certain haughtiness tried to assert itself in that expression of slightly playful nonchalance which should never leave a diplomatist's face.

The lieutenant of the 96th began to realise that M. de Beauvoisis was anxious to fight. He was also diplomatic enough to wish to reserve for his friend the advantage of taking the initiative.

"This time," he exclaimed, "there is ground for duel."

"I think there's enough," answered the diplomat

"Turn that rascal out," he said to his lackeys. "Let someone else get up."

The door of the carriage was open. The chevalier insisted on doing the honours to Julien and his friend. They sent for a friend of M. de Beauvoisis, who chose them a quiet place. The conversation on their way went as a matter of fact very well indeed. The only extraordinary feature was the diplomatist in a dressing-gown.

"These gentlemen, although very noble, are by no means as boring," thought Julien, "as the people who come and dine at M. de la Mole's, and I can see why," he added a moment afterwards. "They allow themselves to be indecent." They talked about the dancers that the public had distinguished with its favour at the ballet presented the night before. The two gentlemen alluded to some spicy anecdotes of which Julien and his second, the lieutenant of the 96th, were absolutely ignorant.

Julien was not stupid enough to pretend to know them. He confessed his ignorance with a good grace. This frankness pleased the chevalier's friend. He told him these stories with the greatest detail and extremely well.

One thing astonished Julien inordinately. The carriage was pulled up for a moment by an altar which was being built in the middle of the street for the procession of Corpus Christi Day. The two gentlemen indulged in the luxury of several jests. According to them, the curé was the son of an archbishop. Such a joke would never have been heard in the house of M. de la Mole, who was trying to be made a duke. The duel was over in a minute. Julien got a ball in his arm. They bandaged it with handkerchiefs which they wetted with brandy, and the chevalier de Beauvoisis requested Julien with great politeness to allow him to take him home in the same carriage that had brought him. When Julien gave the name of M. de la Mole's hôtel, the young diplomat and his friend exchanged looks. Julien's fiacre was here, but they found these gentlemen's conversation more entertaining than that of the good lieutenant of the 96th.

"By Jove, so a duel is only that," thought Julien. "What luck I found that coachman again. How unhappy I should have been if I had had to put up with that insult as well." Thesin amug conversation had scarcely been interrupted. Julien realised that the affectation of diplomatists is good for something.

"So ennui," he said himself, "is not a necessary incident of conversation among well-born people. These gentlemen make fun of the Corpus Christi procession and dare to tell extremely obscene anecdotes, and what is more, with picturesque details. The only thing they really lack is the ability to discuss politics logically, and that lack is more than compensated by their graceful tone, and the perfect aptness of their expressions." Julien experienced a lively inclination for them. "How happy I should be to see them often."

They had scarcely taken leave of each other before the chevalier de Beauvoisis had enquiries made. They were not brilliant.

He was very curious to know his man. Could he decently pay a call on him? The little information he had succeeded in obtaining from him was not of an encouraging character.

"Oh, this is awful," he said to his second. "I can't possibly own up to having fought a duel with a mere secretary of M. de la Mole, simply because my coachman stole my visiting cards."

"There is no doubt that all this may make you look ridiculous."

That very evening the chevalier de Beauvoisis and his friend said everywhere that this M. Sorel who was, moreover, quite a charming young man, was a natural son of an intimate friend of the marquis de la Mole. This statement was readily accepted. Once it was established, the young diplomatist and friend deigned to call several times on Julien during the fortnight. Julien owned to them that he had only been to the Opera once in his life. "That is awful," said one, "that is the only place one does go to. Your first visit must be when they are playing the ' Comte Ory .'"

The chevalier de Beauvoisis introduced him at the opera to the famous singer Geronimo, who was then enjoying an immense success.

Julien almost paid court to the chevalier. His mixture of self-respect, mysterious self-importance, and fatuous youthfulness fascinated him. The chevalier, for example, would stammer a little, simply because he had the honour of seeing frequently a very noble lord who had this defect. Julien had never before found combined in one and the same person the drollery which amuses, and those perfect manners which should be the object of a poor provincial's imitation.

He was seen at the opera with the chevalier de Beauvoisis. This association got him talked about.

"Well," said M. de la Mole to him one day, "so here you are, the narural son of a rich gentleman of Franche Comté, an intimate friend of mine."

The marquis cut Julien short as he started to protest that he had not in any way contributed to obtaining any credence for this rumour.

"M. de Beauvoisis did not fancy having fought a duel with the son of a carpenter."

"I know it, I know it," said M. de la Mole. "It is my business now to give some consistency to this story which rather suits me. But I have one favour to ask of you, which will only cost you a bare half-hour of your time. Go and watch every opera day at half-past eleven all the people in society coming out in the vestibule. I still see you have certain provincial mannerisms. You must rid yourself of them. Besides it would do no harm to know, at any rate by sight, some of the great personages to whom I may one day send you on a commission. Call in at the box office to get identified. Admission has been secured for you."

CHAPTER XXXVII

AN ATTACK OF GOUT

And I got advancement, not on my merit, but because my master had the gout.— Bertolotti.

The reader is perhaps surprised by this free and almost friendly tone. We had forgotten to say that the marquis had been confined to his house for six weeks by the gout.

Mademoiselle de la Mole and her mother were at Hyères near the marquise's mother. The comte Norbert only saw his father at stray moments. They got on very well, but had nothing to say to each other. M. de la Mole, reduced to Julien's society, was astonished to find that he possessed ideas. He made him read the papers to him. Soon the young secretary was competent to pick out the interesting passages. There was a new paper which the marquis abhorred. He had sworn never to read it, and spoke about it every day. Julien laughed. In his irritation against the present time, the marquis made him read Livy aloud. The improvised translation of the Latin text amused him. The marquis said one day in that tone of excessive politeness which frequently tried Julien's patience,

"Allow me to present you with a blue suit, my dear Sorel. When you find it convenient to wear it and to come and see me, I shall look upon you as the younger brother of the comte de Chaulnes, that is to say, the son of my friend the old Duke."

Julien did not quite gather what it was all about, but he tried a visit in the blue suit that very evening. The marquis treated him like an equal. Julien had a spirit capable of appreciating true politeness, but he had no idea of nuances. Before this freak of the marquis's he would have sworn that it was impossibls for him to have been treated with more consideration. "What an admirable talent," said Julien to himself. When he got up to go, the marquis apologised for not being able to accompany him by reason of his gout.

Julien was preoccupied by this strange idea. "Perhaps he is making fun of me," he thought. He went to ask advice of the abbé Pirard, who being less polite than the marquis, made no other answer except to whistle and change the subject.

Julien presented himself to the marquis the next morning in his black suit, with his letter case and his letters for signature. He was received in the old way, but when he wore the blue suit that evening, the marquis's tone was quite different, and absolutely as polite as on the previous day.

"As you are not exactly bored," said the marquis to him, "by these visits which you are kind enough to pay to a poor old man, you must tell him about all the little incidents of your life, but you must be frank and think of nothing except narrating them clearly and in an amusing way. For one must amuse oneself," continued the marquis. "That's the only reality in life. I can't have my life saved in a battle every day, or get a present of a million francs every day, but if I had Rivarol here by my sofa he would rid me every day of an hour of suffering and boredom. I saw a lot of him at Hamburg during the emigration."

And the marquis told Julien the stories of Rivarol and the inhabitants of Hamburg who needed the combined efforts of four individuals to understand an epigram. M. de la Mole, being reduced to the society of this little abbé, tried to teach him. He put Julien's pride on its mettle. As he was asked to speak the truth, Julien resolved to tell everything, but to suppress two things, his fanatical admiration for the name which irritated the marquis, and that complete scepticism, which was not particularly appropriate to a prospective curé. His little affair with the chevalier de Beauvoisis came in very handy. The marquis laughed till the tears came into his eyes at the scene in the café in the Rue St. Honore with the coachman who had loaded him with sordid insults. The occasion was marked by a complete frankness between the marquis and the protegé.

M. de la Mole became interested in this singular character. At the beginning he had encouraged Jullikn's droll blunders in order to enjoy laughing at them. Soon he found it more interesting to correct very gently this young man's false outlook on life.

"All other provincials who come to Paris admire everything," thought the marquis. "This one hates everything. They have too much affectation; he has not affectation enough; and fools take him for a fool."

The attack of gout was protracted by the great winter cold and lasted some months.

"One gets quite attached to a fine spaniel," thought the marquis. "Why should I be so ashamed of being attached to this little abbé? He is original. I treat him as a son. Well, where's the bother? The whim, if it lasts, will cost me a diamond and five hundred louis in my will." Once the marquis had realised his protegé's strength of character, he entrusted him with some new business every day.

Julien noticed with alarm that this great lord would often give him inconsistent orders with regard to the same matter.

That might compromise him seriously. Julien now made a point whenever he worked with him, of bringing a register with him in which he wrote his instructions which the marquis initialled. Julien had now a clerk who would transcribe the instructions relating to each matter in a separate book. This book also contained a copy of all the letters.

This idea seemed at first absolutely boring and ridiculous, but in two months the marquis appreciated its advantages. Julien suggested to him that he should take a clerk out of a banker's who was to keep proper book-keeping accounts of all the receipts and of all the expenses of the estates which Julien had been charged to administer.

These measures so enlightened the marquis as to his own affairs that he could indulge the pleasure of undertaking two or three speculations without the help of his nominee who always robbed him.

"Take three thousand francs for yourself," he said one day to his young steward.

"Monsieur, I should lay myself open to calumny."

"What do you want then?" retorted the marquis irritably.

"Perhaps you will be kind enough to make out a statement of account and enter it in your own hand in the book. That order will give me a sum of 3,000 francs. Besides it's M. the abbé Pirard who had the idea of all this exactness in accounts." The marquis wrote out his instructions in the register with the bored air of the Marquis de Moncade listening to the accounts of his steward M. Poisson.

Business was never talked when Julien appeared in the evening in his blue suit. The kindness of the marquis was so flattering to the self-respect of our hero, which was always morbidly sensitive, that in spite of himself, he soon came to feel a kind of attachment for this nice old man. It is not that Julien was a man of sensibility as the phrase is understood at Paris, but he was not a monster, and no one since the death of the old major had talked to him with so much kindness. He observed that the marquis showed a politeness and consideration for his own personal feelings which he had never found in the old surgeon. He now realised that the surgeon was much prouder of his cross than was the marquis of his blue ribbon. The marquis's father had been a great lord.

One day, at the end of a morning audience for the transaction of business, when the black suit was worn, Julien happened to amuse the marquis who kept him for a couple of hours, and insisted on giving him some banknotes which his nominee had just brought from the house.

"I hope M. le Marquis, that I am not deviating from the profound respect which I owe you, if I beg you to allow me to say a word."

"Speak, my friend."

"M. ie Marquis will deign to allow me to refuse this gift. It is not meant for the man in the black suit, and it would completely spoil those manners which you have kindly put up with in the man in the blue suit." He saluted with much respect and went out without looking at his employer.

This incident amused the marquis. He told it in the evening to the abbé Pirard.

"I must confess one thing to you, my dear abbé. I know Julien's birth, and I authorise you not to regard this confidence as a secret."

His conduct this morning is noble, thought the marquis, so I will ennoble him myself.

Some time afterwards the marquis was able to go out.

"Go and pass a couple of months at London," he said to Julien. "Ordinary and special couriers will bring you the letters I have received, together with my notes. You will write out the answers and send them back to me, putting each letter inside the answer. I have ascertained that the delay will be no more than five days."

As he took the post down the Calais route, Julien was astonished at the triviality of the alleged business on which he had been sent.

We will say nothing about the feeling of hate and almost horror with which he touched English soil. His mad passion for Bonaparte is already known. He saw in every officer a Sir Hudson Low, in every great noble a Lord Bathurst, ordering the infamies of St. Helena and being recompensed by six years of office.

At London he really got to know the meaning of sublime fatuity. He had struck up a friendship with some young Russian nobles who initiated him.

"Your future is assured, my dear Sorel," they said to him. "You naturally have that cold demeanour, a thousand leagues away from the sensation one has at the moment , that we have been making such efforts to acquire."

"You have not understood your century," said the Prince Korasoff to him. "Always do the opposite of what is expected of you. On my honour there you have the sole religion of the period. Don't be foolish or affected, for then follies and affectations will be expected of you, and the maxim will not longer prove true."

Julien covered himself with glory one day in the Salon of the Duke of Fitz-Folke who had invited him to dinner together with the Prince Korasoff. They waited for an hour. The way in which Julien conducted himself in the middle of twenty people who were waiting is still quoted as a precedent among the young secretaries of the London Embassy. His demeanour was unimpeachable.

In spite of his friends, the dandies, he made a point of seeing the celebrated Philip Vane, the one philosopher that England has had since Locke. He found him finishing his seventh year in prison. The aristocracy doesn't joke in this country, thought Julien. Moreover Vane is disgraced, calumniated, etc.

Julien found him in cheery spirits. The rage of the aristocracy prevented him from being bored. "There's the only merry man I've seen in England," thought Julien to himself, as he left the prison.

"The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God," Vane had said to him.

We suppress the rest of the system as being cynical.

"What amusing notion do you bring me from England?" said M. la Mole to him on his return. He was silent. "What notion do you bring me, amusing or otherwise?" repeated the marquis sharply.

"In the first place," said Julien, "The sanest Englishman is mad one hour every day. He is visited by the Demon of Suicide who is the local God.

"In the second place, intellect and genius lose twenty-five per cent, of their value when they disembark in England.

"In the third place, nothing in the world is so beautiful, so admirable, so touching, as the English landscapes."

"Now it is my turn," said the marquis.

"In the first place, why do you go and say at the ball at the Russian Ambassador's that there were three hundred thousand young men of twenty in France who passionately desire war? Do you think that is nice for the kings?"

"One doesn't know what to do when talking to great diplomats," said Julien. "They have a mania for starting serious discussions. If one confines oneself to the commonplaces of the papers, one is taken for a fool. If one indulges in some original truth, they are astonished and at a loss for an answer, and get you informed by the first Secretary of the Embassy at seven o'clock next day that your conduct has been unbecoming."

"Not bad," said the marquis laughing. "Anyway I will wager Monsieur Deep-one that you have not guessed what you went to do in England."

"Pardon me," answered Julien. "I went there to dine once a week with the king's ambassador, who is the most polite of men."

"You went to fetch this cross you see here," said the marquis to him. "I do not want to make you leave off your black suit, and I have got accustomed to the more amusing tone I have assumed with the man who wears the blue suit. So understand this until further orders. When I see this cross, you will be my friend, the Duke of Chaulne's younger son, who has been employed in the diplomatic service the last six months without having any idea of it. Observe," added the marquis very seriously, cutting short all manifestations of thanks, "that I do not want you to forget your place. That is always a mistake and a misfortune both for patron and for dependent. When my lawsuits bore you, or when you no longer suit me, I will ask a good living like that of our good friend the abbé Pirard's for you, and nothing more," added the marquis dryly. This put Julien's pride at its ease. He talked much more. He did not so frequently think himself insulted and aimed at by those phrases which are susceptible of some interpretation which is scarcely polite, and which anybody may give utterance to in the course of an animated conversation.

This cross earned him a singular visit. It was that of the baron de Valenod, who came to Paris to thank the Minister for his barony, and arrive at an understanding with him. He was going to be nominated mayor of Verrières, and to supersede M. de Rênal.

Julien did not fail to smile to himself when M. Valenod gave him to understand that they had just found out that M. de Rênal was a Jacobin. The fact was that the new baron was the ministerial candidate at the election for which they were all getting ready, and that it was M. de Rênal who was the Liberal candidate at the great electoral college of the department, which was, in fact, very ultra.

It was in vain that Julien tried to learn something about madame de Rênal. The baron seemed to remember their former rivalry, and was impenetrable. He concluded by canvassing Julien for his father's vote at the election which was going to take place. Julien promised to write.

"You ought, monsieur le Chevalier, to present me to M. the marquis de la Mole."

"I ought, as a matter of fact," thought Julien. "But a rascal like that!"

"As a matter of fact," he answered, "I am too small a personage in the hotel de la Mole to take it upon myself to introduce anyone." Julien told the marquis everything. In the evening he described Valenod's pretensions, as well as his deeds and feats since 1814.

"Not only will you present the new baron to me," replied de la Mole, very seriously, "but I will invite him to dinner for the day after to-morrow. He will be one of our new prefects."

"If that is the case, I ask for my father the post of director of the workhouse," answered Julian, coldly.

"With pleasure," answered the marquis gaily. "It shall be granted. I was expecting a lecture. You are getting on."

M. de Valenod informed Julien that the manager of the lottery office at Verrières had just died. Julien thought it humorous to give that place to M. de Cholin, the old dotard whose petition he had once picked up in de la Mole's room. The marquis laughed heartily at the petition, which Julien recited as he made him sign the letter which requested that appointment of the minister of finance.

M. de Cholin had scarcely been nominated, when Julien learnt that that post had been asked by the department for the celebrated geometrician, monsieur Gros. That generous man had an income of only 1400 francs, and every year had lent 600 to the late manager who had just died, to help him bring up his family.

Julien was astonished at what he had done.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

WHAT IS THE DECORATION WHICH CONFERS DISTINCTION?

"Thy water refreshes me not," said the transformed genie. "'Tis nevertheless the freshest well in all Diar-Békir— Pellico .

One day Julien had just returned from the charming estate of Villequier on the banks of the Seine, which was the especial subject of M. de la Mole's interest because it was the only one of all his properties which had belonged to the celebrated Boniface de la Mole.

He found the marquise and her daughter, who had just come back from Hyerès , in the hotel. Julien was a dandy now, and understood the art of Paris life. He manifested a perfect coldness towards mademoiselle de la Mole. He seemed to have retained no recollection of the day when she had asked him so gaily for details of his fall from his horse.

Mademoiselle de la Mole thought that he had grown taller and paler. There was no longer anything of the provincial in his figure or his appearance. It was not so with his conversation. Too much of the serious and too much of the positive element were still noticeable. In spite of these sober qualities, his conversation, thanks to his pride, was destitute of any trace of the subordinate. One simply felt that there were still too many things which he took seriously. But one saw that he was the kind of man to stick to his guns.

"He lacks lightness of touch, but not brains," said mademoiselle de la Mole to her father, as she rallied him on the cross that he had given Julien. "My brother has been asking you for it for sixteen months, and he is a La Mole."

"Yes, but Julien has surprises, and that's what the de la Mole, whom you were referring to, has never been guilty of."

M. the duc de Retz was announced.

Mathilde felt herself seized by an irresistible attack of yawning. She knew so well the old gildings and the old habitués of her father's salon. She conjured up an absolutely boring picture of the life which she was going to take up at Paris, and yet, when at Hyerès , she had regretted Paris.

"And yet I am nineteen," she thought. "That's the age of happiness, say all those gilt-edged ninnies."

She looked at eight or ten new volumes of poetry which had accumulated on the table in the salon during her journey in Provence. She had the misfortune to have more brains than M.M. de Croisnois, de Caylus, de Luz, and her other friends. She anticipated all that they were going to tell her about the fine sky of Provence, poetry, the South, etc., etc.

These fine eyes, which were the home of the deepest ennui, and worse still, of the despair of ever finding pleasure, lingered on Julien. At any rate, he was not exactly like the others.

"Monsieur Sorel," she said, in that short, sharp voice, destitute of all femininity, which is so frequent among young women of the upper class.

"Monsieur Sorel, are you coming to-night to M. de Retz's ball?"

"Mademoiselle, I have not had the honour of being presented to M. the duke." (One would have said that these words and that title seared the mouth of the proud provincial).

"He asked my brother to take you there, and if you go, you could tell me some details about the Villequier estate. We are thinking of going there in the spring, and I would like to know if the château is habitable, and if the neighbouring places are as pretty as they say. There are so many unmerited reputations."

Julien did not answer.

"Come to the ball with my brother," she added, very dryly.

Julien bowed respectfully.

"So I owe my due to the members of the family, even in the middle of a ball. Am I not paid to be their business man?" His bad temper added, "God knows, moreover, if what I tell the daughter will not put out the plans of the father, brother, and mother. It is just like the court of a sovereign prince. You have to be absolutely negative, and yet give no one any right to complain."

"How that big girl displeases me!" he thought, as he watched the walk of Mademoiselle de la Mole, whom her mother had called to present to several women friends of hers. She exaggerates all the fashions. Her dress almost falls down to her shoulders, she is even paler than before she went away. How nondescript her hair has grown as the result of being blonde! You would say that the light passed through it.

What a haughty way of bowing and of looking at you! What queenly gestures! Mademoiselle de la Mole had just called her brother at the moment when he, was leaving the salon.

The comte de Norbert approached Julien.

"My dear Sorel," he said to him. "Where would you like me to pick you up to-night for Monsieur's ball. He expressly asked me to bring you."

"I know well whom I have to thank for so much kindness," answered Julien bowing to the ground.

His bad temper, being unable to find anything to lay hold of in the polite and almost sympathetic tone in which Norbert had spoken to him, set itself to work on the answer he had made to that courteous invitation. He detected in it a trace of subservience.

When he arrived at the ball in the evening, he was struck with the magnificence of the Hôtel de Retz. The courtyard at the entrance was covered with an immense tent of crimson with golden stars. Nothing could have been more elegant. Beyond the tent, the court had been transformed into a wood of orange trees and of pink laurels in full flower. As they had been careful to bury the vases sufficiently deep, the laurel trees and the orange trees appeared to come straight out of the ground. The road which the carriages traversed was sanded.

All this seemed extraordinary to our provincial. He had never had any idea of such magnificence. In a single instant his thrilled imagination had left his bad temper a thousand leagues behind. In the carriage on their way to the ball Norbert had been happy, while he saw everything in black colours. They had scarcely entered the courtyard before the rôles changed.

Norbert was only struck by a few details which, in the midst of all that magnificence, had not been able to be attended to. He calculated the expense of each item, and Julien remarked that the nearer he got to a sum total, the more jealous and bad-tempered he appeared.

As for himself, he was fascinated and full of admiration when he reached the first of the salons where they were dancing. His emotion was so great that it almost made him nervous. There was a crush at the door of the second salon, and the crowd was so great that he found it impossible to advance. The decorations of the second salon presented the Alhambra of Grenada.

"That's the queen of the ball one must admit," said a young man with a moustache whose shoulder stuck into Julien's chest.

"Mademoiselle Formant who has been the prettiest all the winter, realises that she will have to go down to the second place. See how strange she looks."

"In truth she is straining every nerve to please. Just look at that gracious smile now that she is doing the figure in that quadrille all alone. On my honour it is unique."

"Mademoiselle de la Mole looks as if she controlled the pleasure which she derives from her triumph, of which she is perfectly conscious. One might say that she fears to please anyone who talks to her."

"Very good. That is the art of alluring."

Julien vainly endeavoured to catch sight of the alluring woman. Seven or eight men who were taller than he prevented him from seeing her.

"There is quite a lot of coquetry in that noble reserve," said the young man with a moustache.

"And in those big blue eyes, which are lowered so slowly when one would think they were on the point of betraying themselves," answered his neighbour. "On my faith, nothing could be cleverer."

"See the pretty Formant looking quite common next to her," said the first.

"That air of reserve means how much sweetness would I spend on you if you were the man who was worthy of me."

"And who could be worthy of the sublime Mathilde," said the first man. "Some sovereign prince, handsome, witty, well-made, a hero in war, and twenty years old at the most."

"The natural son of the Emperor of Russia … who would be made a sovereign in honour of his marriage, or quite simply the comte de Thaler, who looks like a dressed-up peasant."

The door was free, and Julien could go in.

"Since these puppets consider her so remarkable, it is worth while for me to study her," he thought. "I shall then understand what these people regard as perfection."