The marquis fell into a profound reverie. "As for selling one's life too," he said with a sigh, "perhaps this Sorel would manage it quite as well as he could.

"Let us get into the carriage," said the marquis as though to chase away an unwanted idea.

"Monsieur," said Julien, "while they were getting this suit ready for me, I learnt the first page of to-days Quotidienne by heart."

The marquis took the paper. Julien recited it without making a single mistake. "Good," said the marquis, who this night felt very diplomatic. "During the time he takes over this our young man will not notice the streets through which we are passing."

They arrived in a big salon that looked melancholy enough and was partly upholstered in green velvet. In the middle of the room a scowling lackey had just placed a big dining-table which he subsequently changed into a writing-table by means of an immense green inkstained tablecloth which had been plundered from some minister.

The master of the house was an enormous man whose name was not pronounced. Julien thought he had the appearance and eloquence of a man who ruminated. At a sign from the marquis, Julien had remained at the lower end of the table. In order to keep himself in countenance, he began to cut quills. He counted out of the corner of his eye seven visitors, but Julien could only see their backs. Two seemed to him to be speaking to M. de la Mole on a footing of equality, the others seemed more or less respectful.

A new person entered without being announced. "This is strange," thought Julien. "People are not announced in this salon. Is this precaution taken in my honour?" Everybody got up to welcome the new arrival. He wore the same extremely distinguished decoration as three of the other persons who were in the salon. They talked fairly low. In endeavouring to form an opinion of the new comer, Julien was reduced to seeing what he could learn from his features and his appeareance. He was short and thick-set. He had a high colour and a brilliant eye and an expression that looked like a malignant boar, and nothing else.

Julien's attention was partly distracted by the almost immediate arrival of a very different kind of person. It was a a tall very thin man who wore three or four waistcoats. His eye was caressing, his demeanour polite.

"He looks exactly like the old bishop of Besançon," thought Julien. This man evidently belonged to the church, was apparently not more than fifty to fifty-five years of age, and no one could have looked more paternal than he did.

The young bishop of Agde appeared. He looked very astonished when, in making a scrutiny of those present, his gaze fell upon Julien. He had not spoken to him since the ceremony of Bray le-Haut. His look of surprise embarrassed and irritated Julien. "What!" he said to himself, "will knowing a man always turn out unfortunate for me? I don't feel the least bit intimidated by all those great lords whom I have never seen, but the look of that young bishop freezes me. I must admit that I am a very strange and very unhappy person."

An extremely swarthy little man entered noisily soon afterwards and started talking as soon as he reached the door. He had a yellow complexion and looked a little mad. As soon as this ruthless talker arrived, the others formed themselves into knots with the apparent object of avoiding the bother of listening to him.

As they went away from the mantelpiece they came near the lower end of the table where Julien was placed. His countenance became more and more embarrassed, for whatever efforts he made, he could not avoid hearing, and in spite of all his lack of experience he appreciated all the moment of the things which they were discussing with such complete frankness, and the importance which the high personages whom he apparently had under his observation must attach to their being kept secret.

Julien had already cut twenty quills as slowly as possible; this distraction would shortly be no longer available. He looked in vain at M. de la Mole's eyes for an order; the marquis had forgotten him.

"What I am doing is ridiculous," he said to himself as he cut his quills, "but persons with so mediocre an appearance and who are handling such great interests either for themselves or for others must be extremely liable to take offence. My unfortunate look has a certain questioning and scarcely respectful expression, which will doubtless irritate them. But if I palpably lower my eyes I shall look as if I were picking up every word they said."

His embarrassment was extreme, he was listening to strange things.

CHAPTER LII

THE DISCUSSION

— NAPOLEON, Memorial.

The footman rushed in saying "Monsieur the duke de —— "

"Hold your tongue, you are just a fool," said the duke as he entered. He spoke these words so well, and with so much majesty, that Julien could not help thinking this great person's accomplishments were limited to the science of snubbing a lackey. Julien raised his eyes and immediately lowered them. He had so fully appreciated the significance of the new arrival that he feared that his look might be an indiscretion.

The duke was a man of fifty dressed like a dandy and with a jerky walk. He had a narrow head with a large nose and a face that jutted forward; it would have been difficult to have looked at the same time more insignificant. His arrival was the signal for the opening of the meeting.

Julien was sharply interrupted in his physiognomical observations by de la Mole's voice. "I present to you M. the abbé Sorel," said the Marquis. "He is gifted with an astonishing memory; it is scarcely an hour ago since I spoke to him of the mission by which he might be honoured, and he has learned the first page of the Quotidienne by heart in order to give proof of his memory."

"Ah! foreign news of that poor N—" said the master of the house. He took up the paper eagerly and looked at Julien in a manner rendered humorous by its own self-importance. "Speak, monsieur," he said to him.

The silence was profound, all eyes were fixed on Julien. He recited so well that the duke said at the end of twenty lines, "That is enough." The little man who looked like a boar sat down. He was the president, for he had scarcely taken his place before he showed Julien a card-table and signed to him to bring it near him. Julien established himself at it with writing materials. He counted twelve persons seated round the green table cloth.

"M. Sorel," said the Duke, "retire into next room, you will be called."

The master of the house began to look very anxious. "The shutters are not shut," he said to his neighbour in a semi-whisper. "It is no good looking out of the window," he stupidly cried to Julien—"so here I am more or less mixed up in a conspiracy," thought the latter. "Fortunately it is not one of those which lead to the Place-de-Grève. Even though there were danger, I owe this and even more to the marquis, and should be glad to be given the chance of making up for all the sorrow which my madness may one day occasion him."

While thinking of his own madness and his own unhappiness he regarded the place where he was, in such a way as to imprint it upon his memory for ever. He then remembered for the first time that he had never heard the lackey tell the name of the street, and that the marquis had taken a fiacre which he never did in the ordinary way. Julien was left to his own reflections for a long time. He was in a salon upholstered in red velvet with large pieces of gold lace. A large ivory crucifix was on the consol-table and a gilt-edged, magnificently bound copy of M. de Maistre's book The Pope was on the mantelpiece. Julien opened it so as not to appear to be eavesdropping. From time to time they talked loudly in the next room. At last the door was opened and he was called in.

"Remember, gentlemen," the president was saying "that from this moment we are talking in the presence of the duke of —— . This gentleman," he said, pointing to Julien, "is a young acolyte devoted to our sacred cause who by the aid of his marvellous memory will repeat quite easily our very slightest words."

"It is your turn to speak, Monsieur," he said pointing to the paternal looking personage who wore three or four waistcoats. Julien thought it would have been more natural to have called him the gentleman in the waistcoats. He took some paper and wrote a great deal.

(At this juncture the author would have liked to have put a page of dots. "That," said his publisher, "would be clumsy and in the case of so light a work clumsiness is death."

"Politics," replies the author, "is a stone tied round the neck of literature which submerges it in less than six months. Politics in the midst of imaginative matter is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert. The noise is racking without being energetic. It does not harmonise with the sound of any instrument. These politics will give mortal offence to one half of the readers and will bore the other half, who will have already read the ideas in question as set out in the morning paper in its own drastic manner."

"If your characters don't talk politics," replied the publisher, "they cease to be Frenchmen of 1830, and your book is no longer a mirror as you claim?")

Julien's record ran to twenty-six pages. Here is a very diluted extract, for it has betn necessary to adopt the invariable practice of suppressing those ludicrous passages, whose violence would have seemed either offensive or intolerable (see the Gazette des Tribunaux ).

The man with the waistcoats and the paternal expression (he was perhaps a bishop) often smiled and then his eyes, which were surrounded with a floating forest of eyebrows, assumed a singular brilliance and an unusually decided expression. This personage whom they made speak first before the duke ("but what duke is it?" thought Julien to himself) with the apparent object of expounding various points of view and fulfilling the functions of an advocate-general, appeared to Julien to fall into the uncertainty and lack of definiteness with which those officials are so often taxed. During the course of the discussion the duke went so far as to reproach him on this score. After several sentences of morality and indulgent philosophy the man in the waistcoats said.

"Noble England, under the guiding hand of a great man, the immortal Pitt, has spent forty milliards of francs in opposing the revolution. If this meeting will allow me to treat so melancholy a subject with some frankness, England fails to realise sufficiently that in dealing with a man like Buonaparte, especially when they have nothing to oppose him with, except a bundle of good intentions there is nothing decisive except personal methods."

"Ah! praising assassination again!" said the master of the house anxiously.

"Spare us your sentimental sermons," cried the president angrily. His boarlike eye shone with a savage brillance. "Go on," he said to the man with the waistcoats. The cheeks and the forehead of the president became purple.

"Noble England," replied the advocate-general, "is crushed to-day: for each Englishman before paying for his own bread is obliged to pay the interest on forty milliards of francs which were used against the Jacobins. She has no more Pitt."

She has the Duke of Wellington," said a military personage looking very important.

"Please, gentlemen, silence," exclaimed the president. "If we are still going to dispute, there was no point in having M. Sorel in."

"We know that monsieur has many ideas," said the duke irritably, looking at the interrupter who was an old Napoleonic general. Julien saw that these words contained some personal and very offensive allusion. Everybody smiled, the turn-coat general appeared beside himself with rage.

"There is no longer a Pitt, gentlemen," went on the speaker with all the despondency of a man who has given up all hope of bringing his listeners to reason. "If there were a new Pitt in England, you would not dupe a nation twice over by the same means."

"That's why a victorious general, a Buonaparte, will be henceforward impossible in France," exclaimed the military interrupter.

On this occasion neither the president nor the duke ventured to get angry, though Julien thought he read in their eyes that they would very much like to have done so. They lowered their eyes, and the duke contented himself with sighing in quite an audible manner. But the speaker was put upon his mettle.

"My audience is eager for me to finish," he said vigorously, completely discarding that smiling politeness and that balanced diction that Julien thought had expressed his character so well. "It is eager for me to finish, it is not grateful to me for the efforts I am making to offend nobody's ears, however long they may be. Well, gentlemen, I will be brief.

"I will tell you in quite common words: England has not got a sou with which to help the good cause. If Pitt himself were to come back he would never succeed with all his genius in duping the small English landowners, for they know that the short Waterloo campaign alone cost them a milliard of francs. As you like clear phrases," continued the speaker, becoming more and more animated, "I will say this to you: Help yourselves, for England has not got a guinea left to help you with, and when England does not pay, Austria, Russia and Prussia—who will only have courage but have no money—cannot launch more than one or two campaigns against France.

"One may hope that the young soldiers who will be recruited by the Jacobins will be beaten in the first campaign, and possibly in the second; but, even though I seem a revolutionary in your prejudiced eyes, in the third campaign—in the third campaign I say—you will have the soldiers of 1794 who were no longer the soldiers enlisted in 1792."

At this point interruption broke out simultaneously from three or four quarters.

"Monsieur," said the president to Julien, "Go and make a precis in the next room of the beginning of the report which you have written out."

Julien went out to his great regret. The speaker was just dealing with the question of probabilities which formed the usual subject for his meditations. "They are frightened of my making fun of them," he thought. When he was called back, M. de la Mole was saying with a seriousuess which seemed quite humorous to Julien who knew him so well,

"Yes, gentlemen, one finds the phrase, 'is it god, table or tub?' especially applicable to this unhappy people. ' It is god ' exclaims the writer of fables. It is to you, gentlemen, that this noble and profound phrase seems to apply. Act on your own initiative, and noble France will appear again, almost such as our ancestors made her, and as our own eyes have seen her before the death of Louis XVI.

"England execrates disgraceful Jacobinism as much as we do, or at any rate her noble lords do. Without English gold, Austria and Prussia would only be able to give battle two or three times. Would that be sufficient to ensure a successful occupation like the one which M. de Richelieu so foolishly failed to exploit in 1817? I do not think so."

At this point there was an interruption which was stifled by the hushes of the whole room. It came again from the old Imperial general who wanted the blue ribbon and wished to figure among the authors of the secret note.

"I do not think so," replied M. de la Mole, after the uproar had subsided. He laid stress on the "I" with an insolence which charmed Julien.

"That's a pretty piece of acting," he said to himself, as he made his pen almost keep pace with the marquis' words.

M. de la Mole annihilated the twenty campaigns of the turncoat with a well turned phrase. It is not only on foreign powers," continued the marquis in a more even tone, "on whom we shall be able to rely for a new military occupation. All those young men who write inflammatory articles in the Globe will provide you with three or four thousand young captains among whom you may find men with the genius, but not the good intentions of a Kléber, a Hoche, a Jourdan, a Pichegru."

"We did not know how to glorify him," said the president. "He should have been immortalized."

"Finally, it is necessary for France to have two parties," went on M. de la Mole; " but two parties not merely in name, but with clear-cut lines of cleavage. Let us realise what has got to be crushed. On the one hand the journalists and the electors, in a word, public opinion; youth and all that admire it. While it is stupefying itself with the noise of its own vain words, we have certain advantages of administrating the expenditure of the budget."

At this point there was another interruption.

"As for you, monsieur," said M. de!a Mole to the interrupter, with an admirable haughtiness and ease of mnnner, "you do not spend, if the words chokes you, but you devour the forty thousand francs put down to you in the State budget, and the eighty thousand which you receive from the civil list."

"Well, monsieur, since you force me to it, I will be bold enough to take you for an example. Like your noble ancestors, who followed Saint Louis to the crusade, you ought in return for those hundred and twenty thousand francs to show us at any rate a regiment; a company, why, what am I saying? say half a company, even if it only had fifty men, ready to fight and devoted to the good cause to the point of risking their lives in its service. You have nothing but lackeys, who in the event of a rebellion would frighten you yourselves."

"Throne, Church, Nobility are liable to perish to-morrow, gentlemen, so long as you refrain from creating in each department a force of five hundred devoted men, devoted I mean, not only with all the French courage, but with all the Spanish constancy.

"Half of this force ought to be composed of our children, our nephews, of real gentlemen, in fact. Each of them will have beside him not a little talkative bourgeois ready to hoist the tricolor cockade, if 1815 turns up again, but a good, frank and simple peasant like Cathelineau. Our gentleman will have educated him, it will be his own foster brother if it is possible. Let each of us sacrifice the fifth of his income in order to form this little devoted force of five hundred men in each department. Then you will be able to reckon on a foreign occupation. The foreign soldier will never penetrate even as far as Dijon if he is not certain of finding five hundred friendly soldiers in each department.

"The foreign kings will only listen to you when you are in a position to announce to them that you have twenty thousand gentlemen ready to take up arms in order to open to them the gates of France. The service is troublesome, you say. Gentlemen, it is the only way of saving our lives. There is war to the death between the liberty of the press and our existence as gentlemen. Become manufacturers, become peasants, or take up your guns. Be timid if you like, but do not be stupid. Open your eyes.

" ' Form your battalions ,' I would say to you in the words of the Jacobin songs. Some noble Gustavus Adolphus will then be found who, touched by the imminent peril of the monarchical principle, will make a dash three hundred leagues from his own country, and will do for you what Gustavus did for the Protestant princes. Do you want to go on talking without acting? In fifty years' time there will be only presidents or republics in Europe and not one king, and with those three letters R. O. I. you will see the last of the priests and the gentlemen. I can see nothing but candidates paying court to squalid majorities.

"It is no use your saying that at the present time France has not a single accredited general who is universally known and loved, that the army is only known and organised in the interests of the throne and the church, and that it has been deprived of all its old troopers, while each of the Prussian and Austrian regiments count fifty non-commissioned officers who have seen fire.

"Two hundred thousand young men of the middle classes are spoiling for war—"

"A truce to disagreeable truths," said a grave personage in a pompous tone. He was apparently a very high ecclesiastical dignitary, for M. de la Mole smiled pleasantly, instead of getting angry, a circumstance which greatly impressed Julien.

"A truce to unpleasant truths, let us resume, gentlemen. The man who needs to have a gangrened leg cut off would be ill advised to say to his surgeon, 'this disease is very healthy.' If I may use the metaphor, gentlemen, the noble duke of —— is our surgeon."

"So the great words have at last been uttered," thought Julien. "It is towards the —— that I shall gallop to-night."

CHAPTER LIII

THE CLERGY, THE FORESTS, LIBERTY

The first law of every being, is to preserve itself and live. You sow hemlock, and expect to see ears of corn ripen.— Macchiavelli.

The great personage continued. One could see that he knew his subject. He proceeded to expound the following great truths with a soft and tempered eloquence with which Julien was inordinately delighted:—

"1. England has not a guinea to help us with; economy and Hume are the fashion there. Even the saints will not give us any money, and M. Brougham will make fun of us.

"2. The impossibility of getting the kings of Europe to embark on more than two campaigns without English gold; two campaigns will not be enough to dispose of the middle classes.

"3. The necessity of forming an armed party in France. Without this, the monarchical principle in Europe will not risk even two campaigns.

"The fourth point which I venture to suggest to you, as self-evident, is this:

"The impossibility of forming an armed party in France without the clergy. I am bold enough to tell you this because I will prove it to you, gentlemen. You must make every sacrifice for the clergy.

"Firstly, because as it is occupied with its mission by day and by night, and guided by highly capable men established far from these storms at three hundred leagues from your frontiers —— "

"Ah, Rome, Rome!" exclaimed the master of the house.

"Yes, monsieur, Rome," replied the Cardinal haughtily. "Whatever more or less ingenious jokes may have been the fashion when you were young, I have no hesitation in saying that in 1830 it is only the clergy, under the guidance of Rome, who has the ear of the lower classes.

"Fifty thousand priests repeat the same words on the day appointed by their chiefs, and the people—who after all provide soldiers—will be more touched by the voices of its priests than by all the versifying in the whole world." (This personality provoked some murmurs.)

"The clergy has a genius superior to yours,' went on the cardinal raising his voice. "All the progress that has been made towards this essential point of having an armed party in France has been made by us." At this juncture facts were introduced. "Who used eighty thousand rifles in Vendée?" etc., etc.

"So long as the clergy is without its forests it is helpless. At the first war the minister of finance will write to his agents that there is no money to be had except for the curé. At bottom France does not believe, and she loves war. Whoever gives her war will be doubly popular, for making war is, to use a vulgar phrase, the same as starving the Jesuits; making war means delivering those monsters of pride—the men of France—from the menace of foreign intervention."

The cardinal had a favourable hearing. "M. de Nerval," he said, "will have to leave the ministry, his name irritates and to no purpose."

At these words everybody got up and talked at the same time. "I will be sent away again," thought Julien, but the sapient president himself had forgotton both the presence and existence of Julien.

All eyes were turned upon a man whom Julien recognised. It was M. de Nerval, the prime minister, whom he had seen at M. the due de Retz's ball.

The disorder was at its height, as the papers say when they talk of the Chamber. At the end of a long quarter of an hour a little quiet was established.

Then M. de Nerval got up and said in an apostolic tone and a singular voice:

"I will not go so far as to say that I do not set great store on being a minister.

"It has been demonstrated to me, gentlemen, that my name will double the forces of the Jacobins by making many moderates divide against us. I should therefore be willing to retire; but the ways of the Lord are only visible to a small number; but," he added, looking fixedly at the cardinal, "I have a mission. Heaven has said: 'You will either loose your head on the scaffold or you will re-establish the monarchy of France and reduce the Chambers to the condition of the parliament of Louis XV.,' and that, gentlemen, I shall do."

He finished his speech, sat down, and there was a long silence.

"What a good actor," thought Julien. He made his usual mistake of ascribing too much intelligence to the people. Excited by the debates of so lively an evening, and above all by the sincerity of the discussion, M. de Nerval did at this moment believe in his mission. This man had great courage, but at the same time no sense.

During the silence that followed the impressive words, "I shall do it," midnight struck. Julien thought that the striking of the clock had in it a certain element of funereal majesty. He felt moved.

The discussion was soon resumed with increasing energy, and above all with an incredible naivety. "These people will have me poisoned," thought Julien at times. "How can they say such things before a plebian."

They were still talking when two o'clock struck. The master of the house had been sleeping for some time. M. de la Mole was obliged to ring for new candles. M. de Nerval, the minister, had left at the quarter to two, but not without having repeatedly studied Julien's face in a mirror which was at the minister's side. His departure had seemed to put everybody at their ease.

While they were bringing new candles, the man in the waistcoats, whispered to his neighbour: "God knows what that man will say to the king. He may throw ridicule upon us and spoil our future."

"One must own that he must possess an unusual self-assurance, not to say impudence, to put in an appearance here There were signs of it before he became a minister; but a portfolio changes everything and swamps all a man's interests; he must have felt its effect."

The minister had scarcely left before the general of Buonaparte closed his eyes. He now talked of his health and his wounds, consulted his watch, and went away.

"I will wager," said the man in the waistcoats, "that the general is running after the minister; he will apologise for having been here and pretend that he is our leader."

"Let us now deliberate, gentlemen," said the president, after the sleepy servants had finished bringing and lighting new candles. Let us leave off trying to persuade each other. Let us think of the contents of the note which will be read by our friends outside in forty-eight hours from now. We have heard ministers spoken of. Now that M. de Nerval has left us, we are at liberty to say 'what we do care for ministers.'"

The cardinal gave a subtle smile of approval.

"Nothing is easier it seems to me than summing up our position," said the young bishop of Agde, with the restrained concentrated fire of the most exalted fanaticism. He had kept silent up to this time; his eye, which Julien had noticed as being soft and calm at the beginning, had become fiery during the first hour of the discussion. His soul was now bubbling over like lava from Vesuvius.

"England only made one mistake from 1806 to 1814," he said, "and that was in not taking direct and personal measures against Napoleon. As soon as that man had made dukes and chamberlains, as soon as he had re-established the throne, the mission that God had entrusted to him was finished. The only thing to do with him was to sacrifice him. The scriptures teach us in more than one place how to make an end of tyrants" (at this point there were several Latin quotations).

"To-day, gentlemen, it is not a man who has to be sacrificed, it is Paris. What is the use of arming your five hundred men in each department, a hazardous and interminable enterprise? What is the good of involving France in a matter which is personal to Paris? Paris alone has done the evil, with its journals and it salons. Let the new Babylon perish.

"We must bring to an end the conflict between the church and Paris. Such a catastrophe would even be in the worldly interests of the throne. Why did not Paris dare to whisper a word under Buonaparte? Ask the cannon of Saint-Roch?"

Julien did not leave with M. de la Mole before three o'clock in the morning.

The marquis seemed tired and ashamed. For the first time in his life in conversation with Julien, his tone was plaintive. He asked him for his word never to reveal the excesses of zeal, that was his expression, of which chance had just made him a witness. "Only mention it to our foreign friend, if he seriously insists on knowing what our young madmen are like. What does it matter to them if a state is overthrown, they will become cardinals and will take refuge in Rome. As for us, we shall be massacred by the peasants in our châteaus."

The secret note into which the marquis condensed Julien's full report of twenty-six pages was not ready before a quarter to five.

"I am dead tired," said the marquis, "as is quite obvious from the lack of clearness at the end of this note; I am more dissatisfied with it than with anything I ever did in my whole life. Look here, my friend," he added, "go and rest for some hours, and as I am frightened you might be kidnapped, I shall lock you up in your room."

The marquis took Julien on the following day to a lonely château at a good distance from Paris. There were strange guests there whom Julien thought were priests. He was given a passport which was made out in a fictitious name, but indicated the real destination of his journey, which he had always pretended not to know. He got into a carriage alone.

The marquis had no anxiety on the score of his memory. Julien had recited the secret note to him several times but he was very apprehensive of his being intercepted.

"Above all, mind you look like a coxcomb who is simply travelling to kill time," he said affectionately to him when he was leaving the salon. "Perhaps there was more than one treacherous brother in this evening's meeting."

The journey was quick and very melancholy. Julien had scarcely got out of the marquis's sight before he forgot his secret note and his mission, and only thought about Mathilde's disdain.

At a village some leagues beyond Metz, the postmaster came and told him that there were no horses. It was ten o'clock in the evening. Julien was very annoyed and asked for supper. He walked in front of the door and gradually without being noticed passed into the stable-yard. He did not see any horses there.

"That man looked strange though," thought Julien to himself. "He was scrutinizing me with his brutal eyes."

As one sees he was beginning to be slightly sceptical of all he heard. He thought of escaping after supper, and in order to learn at any rate something about the surrounding country, he left his room to go and warm himself at the kitchen fire. He was overjoyed to find there the celebrated singer, signor Geronimo.

The Neopolitan was ensconced in an armchair which he had had brought near the fire. He was groaning aloud, and was speaking more to himself than to the twenty dumbfounded German peasants who surrounded him.

"Those people will be my ruin," he cried to Julien, "I have promised to sing to-morrow at Mayence. Seven sovereign princes have gone there to hear me. Let us go and take the air," he added, meaningly.

When he had gone a hundred yards down the road, and it was impossible to be overheard, he said to Julien:

"Do you know the real truth, the postmaster is a scoundrel. When I went out for a walk I gave twenty sous to a little ragamuffin who told me everything. There are twelve horses in the stable at the other end of the village. They want to stop some courier."

"Really," said Julien innocently.

Discovering the fraud was not enough; the thing was to get away, but Geronimo and his friends could not succeed in doing this.

"Let us wait for daybreak," said the singer at last, "they are mistrustful of us. It is perhaps you or me whom they suspect. We will order a good breakfast to-morrow morning, we will go for a walk while they are getting it ready, we will then escape, we will hire horses, and gain the next station."

"And how about your luggage?" said Julien, who thought perhaps Geronimo himself might have been sent to intercept him. They had to have supper and go to bed. Julien was still in his first sleep when he was woken up with a start by the voices of two persons who were speaking in his room with utmost freedom.

He recognised the postmaster armed with a dark lantern. The light was turned on the carriage-seat which Julien had had taken up into his room. Beside the postmaster was a man who was calmly searching the open seat. Julien could see nothing except the sleeves of his coat which were black and very tight.

"It's a cassock," he said to himself and he softly seized the little pistol which he had placed under his pillow.

"Don't be frightened of his waking up, curé," said the postmaster, "the wine that has been served him was the stuff prepared by yourself."

"I can't find any trace of papers," answered the cure. "A lot of linen and essences, pommades, and vanities. It's a young man of the world on pleasure bent. The other one who effects an Italian accent is more likely to be the emissary."

The men approached Julien to search the pockets of his travelling coat. He felt very tempted to kill them for thieves. Nothing could be safer in its consequences. He was very desirous of doing so … "I should only be a fool," he said to himself, "I should compromise my mission." "He is not a diplomatist," said the priest after searching his coat. He went away and did well to do so.

"It will be a bad business for him," Julien was saying to himself, "if he touches me in my bed. He may have quite well come to stab me, and I won't put up with that."

The curé turned his head, Julien half opened his eyes. He was inordinately astonished, he was the abbé Castanède. As a matter of fact, although these two persons had made a point of talking in a fairly low voice, he had thought from the first that he recognised one of the voices. Julien was seized with an inordinate desire to purge the earth of one of its most cowardly villains; "But my mission," he said to himself.

The curé and his acolyte went out. A quarter of an hour afterwards Julien pretended to have just woken up. He called out and woke up the whole house.

"I am poisoned," he exclaimed, "I am suffering horribly!" He wanted an excuse to go to Geronimo's help. He found him half suffocated by the laudanum that had been contained in the wine.

Julien had been apprehensive of some trick of this charade and had supped on some chocolate which he had brought from Paris. He could not wake Geronimo up sufficiently to induce him to leave.

"If they were to give me the whole kingdon of Naples," said the singer, "I would not now give up the pleasure of sleeping."

"But the seven sovereign princes?"

"Let them wait."

Julien left alone, and arrived at the house of the great personage without other incident. He wasted a whole morning in vainly soliciting an audience. Fortunately about four o'clock the duke wanted to take the air. Julien saw him go out on foot and he did not hesitate to ask him for alms. When at two yards' distance from the great personage he pulled out the Marquis de la Mole's watch and exhibited it ostentatiously. " Follow me at a distance ," said the man without looking at him.

At a quarter of a league's distance the duke suddenly entered a little coffee-house. It was in a room of this low class inn that Julien had the honour of reciting his four pages to the duke. When he had finished he was told to " start again and go more slowly ."

The prince took notes. "Reach the next posting station on foot. Leave your luggage and your carriage here. Get to Strasbourg as best you can and at half-past twelve on the twenty-second of the month (it was at present the tenth) come to this same coffee-house. Do not leave for half-an-hour. Silence!"

These were the only words which Julien heard. They sufficed to inspire him with the highest admiration. "That is the way," he thought, "that real business is done; what would this great statesman say if he were to listen to the impassioned ranters heard three days ago?"

Julien took two days to reach Strasbourg. He thought he would have nothing to do there. He made a great detour. "If that devil of an abbé Castanède has recognised me he is not the kind of man to loose track of me easily … And how he would revel in making a fool of me, and causing my mission to fail."

Fortunately the Abbè Castanède, who was chief of the congregational police on all the northern frontier had not recognised him. And the Strasbourg Jesuits, although very zealous, never gave a thought to observing Julien, who with his cross and his blue tail-coat looked like a young military man, very much engrossed in his own personal appearance.

CHAPTER LIV

STRASBOURG

Fascination! Love gives thee all his love, energy and all his power of suffering unhappiness. It is only his enchanting pleasures, his sweet delights, which are outside thy sphere. When I saw her sleep I was made to say "With all her angelic beauty and her sweet weaknesses she is absolutely mine! There she is, quite in my power, such as Heaven made her in its pity in order to ravish a man's heart."— Ode of Schiller .

Julien was compelled to spend eight days in Strasbourg and tried to distract himself by thoughts of military glory and patriotic devotion. Was he in love then? he could not tell, he only felt in his tortured soul that Mathilde was the absolute mistress both of his happiness and of his imagination. He needed all the energy of his character to keep himself from sinking into despair. It was out of his power to think of anything unconnected with mademoiselle de la Mole. His ambition and his simple personal successes had formerly distracted him from the sentiments which madame de Rênal had inspired. Mathilde was all-absorbing; she loomed large over his whole future.

Julien saw failure in every phase of that future. This same individual whom we remember to have been so presumptuous and haughty at Verrières, had fallen into an excess of grotesque modesty.

Three days ago he would only have been too pleased to have killed the abbé Castanède, and now, at Strasbourg, if a child had picked a quarrel with him he would have thought the child was in the right. In thinking again about the adversaries and enemies whom he had met in his life he always thought that he, Julien, had been in the wrong. The fact was that the same powerful imagination which had formerly been continuously employed in painting a successful future in the most brilliant colours had now been transformed into his implacable enemy.

The absolute solicitude of a traveller's life increased the ascendancy of this sinister imagination. What a boon a friend would have been! But Julien said to himself, "Is there a single heart which beats with affection for me? And even if I did have a friend, would not honour enjoin me to eternal silence?"

He was riding gloomily in the outskirts of Kehl; it is a market town on the banks of the Rhine and immortalised by Desaix and Gouvion Saint-Cyr. A German peasant showed him the little brooks, roads and islands of the Rhine, which have acquired a name through the courage of these great generals. Julien was guiding his horse with his left hand, while he held unfolded in his right the superb map which adorns the Memoirs of the Marshal Saint Cyr. A merry exclamation made him lift his head.

It was the Prince Korasoff, that London friend of his, who had initiated him some months before into the elementary rules of high fatuity. Faithful to his great art, Korasoff, who had just arrived at Strasbourg, had been one hour in Kehl and had never read a single line in his whole life about the siege of 1796, began to explain it all to Julien. The German peasant looked at him in astonishment; for he knew enough French to appreciate the enormous blunders which the prince was making. Julien was a thousand leagues away from the peasant's thoughts. He was looking in astonishment at the handsome young man and admiring his grace in sitting a horse.

"What a lucky temperament," he said to himself, "and how his trousers suit him and how elegantly his hair is cut! Alas, if I had been like him, it might have been that she would not have come to dislike me after loving me for three days."

When the prince had finished his siege of Kehl, he said to Julien, "You look like a Trappist, you are carrying to excess that principle of gravity which I enjoined upon you in London* A melancholy manner cannot be good form. What is wanted is an air of boredom. If you are melancholy, it is because you lack something, because you have failed in something."

"That means showing one's own inferiority; if, on the other hand you are bored, it is only what has made an unsuccessful attempt to please you, which is inferior. So realise, my dear friend, the enormity of your mistake."

Julien tossed a crown to the gaping peasant who was listening to them.

"Good," said the prince, "that shows grace and a noble disdain, very good!" And he put his horse to the gallop. Full of a stupid admiration, Julien followed him.

"Ah! if I have been like that, she would not have preferred Croisenois to me!" The more his reason was offended by the grotesque affectations of the prince the more he despised himself for not having them. It was impossible for self-disgust to be carried further.

The prince still finding him distinctly melancholy, said to him as they re-entered Strasbourg. "Come, my dear fellow, have you lost all your money, or perhaps you are in love with some little actress.

"The Russians copy French manners, but always at an interval of fifty years. They have now reached the age of Louis XV."

These jests about love brought the tears to Julien's eyes. "Why should I not consult this charming man," he suddenly said to himself.

"Well, yes, my dear friend," he said to the prince, "you see in me a man who is very much in love and jilted into the bargain. A charming woman who lives in a neighbouring town has left me stranded here after three passionate days, and the change kills me."

Using fictitious names, he described to the prince Mathilde's conduct and character.

"You need not finish," said Korasoff. "In order to give you confidence in your doctor, I will finish the story you have confided to me. This young woman's husband enjoys an enormous income, or even more probably, she belongs herself to the high nobility of the district. She must be proud about something."

Julien nodded his head, he had no longer the courage to speak. "Very good," said the prince, "here are three fairly bitter pills that you will take without delay.

"1. See madame —— What is her name, every day?"

"Madame de Dubois."

"What a name!" said the prince bursting into laughter. "But forgive me, you find it sublime. Your tactics must be to see Madame de Dubois every day; above all do not appear to be cold and piqued. Remember the great principle of your century: be the opposite of what is expected. Be exactly as you were the week before you were honoured by her favours."

"Ah! I was calm enough then," exclaimed Julien in despair, " I thought I was taking pity on her.…"

"The moth is burning itself at the candle," continued the prince using a metaphor as old as the world.

"1. You will see her every day.

"2. You will pay court to a woman in her own set, but without manifesting a passion, do you understand? I do not disguise from you that your rôle is difficult; you are playing a part, and if she realises you are playing it you are lost."

"She has so much intelligence and I have so little, I shall be lost," said Julien sadly.

"No, you are only more in love than I thought. Madame de Dubois is preoccupied with herself as are all women who have been favoured by heaven either with too much pedigree or too much money. She contemplates herself instead of contemplating you, consequently she does not know you. During the two or three fits of love into which she managed to work herself for your especial benefit, she saw in you the hero of her dreams, and not the man you really are.

"But, deuce take it, this is elementary, my dear Sorel, are you an absolute novice?

"Oddslife! Let us go into this shop. Look at that charming black cravat, one would say it was made by John Anderson of Burlington Street. Be kind enough to take it and throw far away that awful black cord which you are wearing round your neck."

"And now," continued the prince as they came out of the shop of the first hosier of Strasbourg, "what is the society in which madame de Dubois lives? Great God, what a name, don't be angry, my dear Sorel, I can't help it.… Now, whom are you going to pay court to?"

"To an absolute prude, the daughter of an immensely rich stocking-merchant. She has the finest eyes in the world and they please me infinitely; she doubtless holds the highest place in the society of the district, but in the midst of all her greatness she blushes and becomes positively confused if anyone starts talking about trade or shops. And, unfortunately, her father was one of the best known merchants in Strasbourg."

"So," said the prince with a laugh, "you are sure that when one talks about trade your fair lady thinks about herself and not about you. This silly weakness is divine and extremely useful, it will prevent you from yielding to a single moment's folly when near her sparkling eyes. Success is assured."

Julien was thinking of madame the maréchale de Fervaques who often came to the hôtel de la Mole. She was a beautiful foreigner who had married the maréchal a year before his death. The one object of her whole life seemed to be to make people forget that she was the daughter of a manufacturer. In order to cut some figure in Paris she had placed herself at the head of the party of piety.

Julien sincerely admired the prince; what would he not have given to have possessed his affectations! The conversation between the two friends was interminable. Korasoff was delighted: No Frenchman had ever listened to him for so long. "So I have succeeded at last," said the prince to himself complacently, "in getting a proper hearing and that too through giving lessons to my master."

"So we are quite agreed," he repeated to Julien for the tenth time. "When you talk to the young beauty, I mean the daughter of the Strasbourg stocking merchant in the presence of madame de Dubois, not a trace of passion. But on the other hand be ardently passionate when you write. Reading a well-written love-letter is a prude's supremest pleasure. It is a moment of relaxation. She leaves off posing and dares to listen to her own heart; consequently two letters a day."

"Never, never," said Julien despondently, "I would rather be ground in a mortar than make up three phrases. I am a corpse, my dear fellow, hope nothing from me. Let me die by the road side."

"And who is talking about making up phrases? I have got six volumes of copied-out love-letters in my bag. I have letters to suit every variation of feminine character, including the most highly virtuous. Did not Kalisky pay court at Richmond-on-the-Thames at three leagues from London, you know, to the prettiest Quakeress in the whole of England?"

Julien was less unhappy when he left his friend at two o'clock in the morning.

The prince summoned a copyist on the following day, and two days afterwards Julien was the possessor of fifty-three carefully numbered love-letters intended for the most sublime and the most melancholy virtue.

"The reason why there is not fifty-four," said the prince "is because Kalisky allowed himself to be dismissed. But what does it matter to you, if you are badly treated by the stocking-merchant's daughter since you only wish to produce an impression upon madame de Dubois heart."

They went out riding every day, the prince was mad on Julien. Not knowing how else to manifest his sudden friendship, he finished up by offering him the hand of one of his cousins, a rich Moscow heiress; "and once married," he added, "my influence and that cross of yours will get you made a Colonel within two years."

"But that cross was not given me by Napoleon, far from it."

"What does it matter?" said the prince, "didn't he invent it. It is still the first in Europe by a long way."

Julien was on the point of accepting; but his duty called him back to the great personage. When he left Korasoff he promised to write. He received the answer to the secret note which he had brought, and posted towards Paris; but he had scarcely been alone for two successive days before leaving France, and Mathilde seemed a worse punishment than death. "I will not marry the millions Korasoff offers me," he said to himself, "and I will follow his advice.

"After all the art of seduction is his speciality. He has thought about nothing else except that alone for more than fifteen years, for he is now thirty.

"One can't say that he lacks intelligence; he is subtle and cunning; enthusiasm and poetry are impossible in such a character. He is an attorney: an additional reason for his not making a mistake.

"I must do it, I will pay court to madame de Fervaques.

"It is very likely she will bore me a little, but I will look at her beautiful eyes which are so like those other eyes which have loved me more than anyone in the world.

"She is a foreigner; she is a new character to observe.

CHAPTER LV

THE MINISTRY OF VIRTUE

But if I take this pleasure with so much prudence and circumspection I shall no longer find it a pleasure.— Lope de Vega .

As soon as our hero had returned to Paris and had come out of the study of the marquis de La Mole, who seemed very displeased with the despatches that were given him, he rushed off for the comte Altamira. This noble foreigner combined with the advantage of having once been condemned to death a very grave demeanour together with the good fortune of a devout temperament; these two qualities, and more than anything, the comte's high birth, made an especial appeal to madame de Fervaques who saw a lot of him.

Julien solemnly confessed to him that he was very much in love with her.

"Her virtue is the purest and the highest," answered Altamira, "only it is a little Jesuitical and dogmatic.

"There are days when, though I understand each of the expressions which she makes use of, I never understand the whole sentence. She often makes me think that I do not know French as well as I am said to. But your acquaintance with her will get you talked about; it will give you weight in the world. But let us go to Bustos," said Count Altamira who had a methodical turn of mind; "he once paid court to madame la maréchale."

Don Diego Bustos had the matter explained to him at length, while he said nothing, like a barrister in his chambers. He had a big monk-like face with black moustaches and an inimitable gravity; he was, however, a good carbonaro.

"I understand," he said to Julien at last. "Has the maréchale de Fervaques had lovers, or has she not? Have you consequently any hope of success? That is the question. I don't mind telling you, for my own part, that I have failed. Now that I am no more piqued I reason it out to myself in this way; she is often bad tempered, and as I will tell you in a minute, she is quite vindictive.

"I fail to detect in her that bilious temperament which is the sign of genius, and shows as it were a veneer of passion over all its actions. On the contrary, she owes her rare beauty and her fresh complexion to the phlegmatic, tranquil character of the Dutch."

Julien began to lose patience with the phlegmatic slowness of the imperturbable Spaniard; he could not help giving vent to some monosyllables from time to time.

"Will you listen to me?" Don Diego Bustos gravely said to him.

"Forgive the furia franchese; I am all ears," said Julien.

"The maréchale de Fervaques then is a great hater; she persecutes ruthlessly people she has never seen—advocates, poor devils of men of letters who have composed songs like Collé, you know?

" Jai la marotte D'aimer Marote, etc."

And Julien had to put up with the whole quotation.

The Spaniard was very pleased to get a chance of singing in French.

That divine song was never listened to more impatiently. When it was finished Don Diego said—"The maréchale procured the dismissal of the author of the song:

"Un jour l'amour au cabaret."

Julien shuddered lest he should want to sing it. He contented himself with analysing it. As a matter of fact, it was blasphemous and somewhat indecent.

"When the maréchale become enraged against that song," said Don Diego, "I remarked to her that a woman of her rank ought not to read all the stupid things that are published. Whatever progress piety and gravity may make France will always have a cabaret literature.

"'Be careful,' I said to madame de Fervaques when she had succeeded in depriving the author, a poor devil on half-pay, of a place worth eighteen hundred francs a year, 'you have attacked this rhymster with your own arms, he may answer you with his rhymes; he will make a song about virtue. The gilded salons will be on your side; but people who like to laugh will repeat his epigrams.' Do you know, monsieur, what the meréchale answered? 'Let all Paris come and see me walking to my martyrdom for the sake of the Lord. It will be a new spectacle for France. The people will learn to respect the quality. It will be the finest day of my life.' Her eyes never looked finer."

"And she has superb ones," exclaimed Julien.

"I see that you are in love. Further," went on Don Diego Bustos gravely, "she has not the bilious constitution which causes vindictiveness. If, however, she likes to do harm, it is because she is unhappy, I suspect some secret misfortune. May it not be quite well a case of prude tired of her rôle?"

The Spaniard looked at him in silence for a good minute.

"That's the whole point," he added gravely, "and that's what may give you ground for some hope. I have often reflected about it during the two years that I was her very humble servant. All your future, my amorous sir, depends on this great problem. Is she a prude tired of her rôle and only malicious because she is unhappy?"

"Or," said Altamira emerging at last from his deep silence, "can it be as I have said twenty times before, simply a case of French vanity; the memory of her father, the celebrated cloth merchant, constitutes the unhappiness of this frigid melancholy nature. The only happiness she could find would be to live in Toledo and to be tortured by a confessor who would show her hell wide open every day."

"Altamira informs me you are one of us," said Don Diego, whose demeanour was growing graver and graver to Julien as he went out. "You will help us one day in re-winning our liberty, so I would like to help you in this little amusement. It is right that you should know the maréchale's style; here are four letters in her hand-writing."

"I will copy them out," exclaimed Julien, "and bring them back to you."

"And you will never let anyone know a word of what we have been saying."

"Never, on my honour," cried Julien.

"Well, God help you," added the Spaniard, and he silently escorted Altamira and Julien as far as the staircase.

This somewhat amused our hero; he was on the point of smiling. "So we have the devout Altamira," he said to himself, "aiding me in an adulterous enterprise."

During Don Diego's solemn conversation Julien had been attentive to the hours struck by the clock of the Hotel d' Aligre.

The dinner hour was drawing near, he was going to see Mathilde again. He went in and dressed with much care.

"Mistake No. 1," he said to himself as he descended the staircase: "I must follow the prince's instructions to the letter."

He went up to his room again and put on a travelling suit which was as simple as it could be. "All I have to do now," he thought, "is to keep control of my expression." It was only half-past five and they dined at six. He thought of going down to the salon which he found deserted. He was moved to the point of tears at the sight of the blue sofa. "I must make an end of this foolish sensitiveness," he said angrily, "it will betray me." He took up a paper in order to keep Iimself in countenance and passed three or four times from soe salon into the garden. tnd was only when he was well concealed by a large oak atiwtwas trembling all over, that he ventured to raise his eyes et mademoiselle de la Mole's window. It was hermetically sealed; he was on the point of falling and remained for a long hme leaning against the oak; then with a staggering step he hent to have another look at the gardener's ladder.

The chain which he had once forced asunder—in, alas, such different circumstances—had not yet been repaired. Carried away by a moment of madness, Julien pressed it to his lips.

After having wandered about for a long time between the salon and the garden, Julien felt horribly tired; he was now feeling acutely the effects of a first success. My eyes will be expressionless and will not betray me! The guests gradually arrived in the salon; the door never opened without instilling anxiety into Julien's heart.

They sat down at table. Mademoiselle de la Mole, always faithful to her habit of keeping people waiting, eventually appeared. She blushed a great deal on seeing Julien, she had not been told of his arrival. In accordance with Prince Korasoff's recommendation, Julien looked at his hands. They were trembling. Troubled though he was beyond words by this discovery, he was sufficiently happy to look merely tired.

M. de la Mole sang his praises. The marquise spoke to him a minute afterwards and complimented him on his tired appearance. Julien said to himself at every minute, "I ought not to look too much at mademoiselle de la Mole, I ought not to avoid looking at her too much either. I must appear as I was eight days before my unhappiness —— " He had occasion to be satisfied with his success and remained in the salon. Paying attention for the first time to the mistress of the house, he made every effort to make the visitors speak and to keep the conversation alive.

His politeness was rewarded; madame la maréchale de Fervaques was announced about eight o'clock. Julien retired and shortly afterwards appeared dressed with the greatest care. Madame de la Mole was infinitely grateful to him for this mark of respect and made a point of manifesting her satisfaction by telling madame de Fervaques about his journey. Julien established himself near the maréchale in such a position that Mathilde could not notice his eyes. In this position he lavished in accordance with all the rules in the art of love, the most abject admiration on madame de Fervaques. The first of the 53 letters with which Prince Korasoff had presented him commenced with a tirade on this sentiment.

The maréchale announced that she was going to the Opera-Bouffe. Julien rushed there. He ran across the Chevalier de Beauvoisis who took him into a box occupied by Messieurs the Gentlemen of the Chamber, just next to madame de Fervaques's box. Julien constantly looked at her. "I must keep a siege-journal," he said to himself as he went back to the hotel, "otherwise I shall forget my attacks." He wrote two or three pages on this boring theme, and in this way achieved the admirable result of scarcely thinking at all about mademoiselle de la Mole.

Mathilde had almost forgotten him during his journey. "He is simply a commonplace person after all," she thought, "his name will always recall to me the greatest mistake in my life. I must honestly go back to all my ideas about prudence and honour; a woman who forgets them has everything to lose." She showed herself inclined to allow the contract with the marquis de Croisenois, which had been prepared so long ago, to be at last concluded. He was mad with joy; he would have been very much astonished had he been told that there was an element of resignation at the bottom of those feelings of Mathilde which made him so proud.