feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Red and the Black/section_5_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 2.chapters 1-9
feat_summary_id: book ii, chapters 1-9
feat_summary: {"name": "", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210301223854/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/redblack/section6/", "summary": "Julien instantly feels like a noble when he arrives in Paris. While buying boots, he is registered as Julien de Sorel. M. Pirard warns him against becoming a Parisian fop. He cautions that Julien's provincial background will be a source of ridicule for many of the Parisian aristocrats he will meet. But Julien pays no attention to Pirard, completely overwhelmed by the beauty and luxury of the Hotel de la Mole. Pirard's advice does prove helpful, since Julien must immediately impress the eclectic group of Parisians at the Marquis de la Mole's salon. But Julien soon realizes that he does not fit in. He tries to go riding with Comte Norbert, the Marquis'ss son, but falls off his horse. His social blunders make him feel isolated and resented by the servants of the house. Julien begins to distrust the members of the salon, who have been asking favors of the Marquis for years and soon see Julien as an enemy. He also grows bored with these members of Parisian society, but notices that Mathilde, the Marquis's daughter, is often yawning too. To overcome his boredom, Julien tries to lead an aristocratic lifestyle. He learns to fence, shoot, and ride expensive horses. He soon grows arrogant and, because of an argument in a cafe, ends up fighting a duel with a famous nobleman, M. de Beauvoisis. Julien is wounded in the arm, but de Beauvoisis is so embarrassed after discovering that Julien is just a carpenter's son that he spreads a rumor that Julien is the illegitimate son of one of the Marquis de la Mole's close friends. This turn of events ironically brings Julien and the Marquis closer together. After the latter has an attack of gout, Julien spends a great deal of time with him and they become friends. Although the Marquis gives Julien advice on how to succeed in Paris, he only treats Julien as an equal when Julien is dressed properly. When Julien wears his habitual black suit instead of the blue one given to him by the Marquis, he remains a simple secretary. However, Julien does rise in the family's esteem. While dancing at a ball, Julien and Mathilde begin to attract each other's attention.", "analysis": "Commentary In Stendhal's time, Paris was not just the capital of France, but the world. Julien has spent his whole life preparing for his grand entrance on the Parisian stage. However, his provincial background proves to be an even greater impediment than his \"low\" birth. He is thus not ready for two major aspects of Parisian life: ridicule and boredom. Julien is able to fend off a number of witticisms at the salon but still ends up being ridiculed when he falls off his horse. Boredom is also a significant theme in the novel. Stendhal claims that, since Napoleon's fall in 1814, France became a passionless society. He felt that the Restoration, with its hypocritical emphasis on piety, had taken all the pleasure out of day-to-day interactions. As a result, most of the Parisian aristocrats are terribly bored, something which takes a provincial man like Julien by surprise. This proves to be an advantage to Julien, since many of the nobles he meets, and especially Mathilde, find him to be very interesting. Everyone seems to be scheming about how to best impress the Marquis. Julien even meets M. Valenod at the salon, who has been made a baron by the Marquis. Stendhal's use of irony to condemn modern French politics is especially strong in this passage, when Valenod tells Julien that M. de Renal is no longer the mayor of Verrieres and is suspected of being a liberal. The ease with which M. Valenod and M. de Renal have changed parties reveals the farcical natures of Restoration politics and French society. But Julien stands out among the \"den of thieves intriguers\" who make up the Marquis's salon. Despite his ambitious nature, he doesn't try to flatter the Marquis. However, Julien's hard work does impress the Marquis, and he soon begins to treat Julien like a surrogate son. He gives Julien a blue suit to wear when they spend time together. Unlike Julien's previous father-figures, such as M. Chelan and M. Pirard, the Marquis does take account of Julien's social class. Whenever Julien wears his own black suit, the Marquis treats him like an employee. Stendhal is not only criticizing the aristocracy's inherent snobbishness, but the superficial nature of French society during the Restoration: people are defined by the clothes they wear. Just as Julien can be a soldier one minute and a priest the next simply by changing his clothes, the Marquis sees Julien differently based on the color of his suit."}
text: CHAPTER XXXI
  
  THE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY
  
       O rus quando ego te aspiciam?--_Horace_
  
  
  "You've no doubt come to wait for the Paris mail, Monsieur," said the
  host of an inn where he had stopped to breakfast.
  
  "To-day or to-morrow, it matters little," said Julien.
  
  The mail arrived while he was still posing as indifferent. There were
  two free places.
  
  "Why! it's you my poor Falcoz," said the traveller who was coming from
  the Geneva side to the one who was getting in at the same time as
  Julien.
  
  "I thought you were settled in the outskirts of Lyons," said Falcoz,
  "in a delicious valley near the Rhone."
  
  "Nicely settled! I am running away."
  
  "What! you are running away? you Saint Giraud! Have you, who look so
  virtuous, committed some crime?" said Falcoz with a smile.
  
  "On my faith it comes to the same thing. I am running away from the
  abominable life which one leads in the provinces. I like the freshness
  of the woods and the country tranquillity, as you know. You have often
  accused me of being romantic. I don't want to hear politics talked as
  long as I live, and politics are hounding me out."
  
  "But what party do you belong to?"
  
  "To none and that's what ruins me. That's all there is to be said
  about my political life--I like music and painting. A good book is
  an event for me. I am going to be forty-four. How much longer have I
  got to live? Fifteen--twenty--thirty years at the outside. Well, I
  want the ministers in thirty years' time to be a little cleverer than
  those of to-day but quite as honest. The history of England serves as
  a mirror for our own future. There will always be a king who will try
  to increase his prerogative. The ambition of becoming a deputy, the
  fame of Mirabeau and the hundreds of thousand francs which he won for
  himself will always prevent the rich people in the province from going
  to sleep: they will call that being Liberal and loving the people. The
  desire of becoming a peer or a gentleman of the chamber will always win
  over the ultras. On the ship of state every one is anxious to take over
  the steering because it is well paid. Will there be never a poor little
  place for the simple passenger?"
  
  "Is it the last elections which are forcing you out of the province?"
  
  "My misfortune goes further back. Four years ago I was forty and
  possessed 500,000 francs. I am four years older to-day and probably
  50,000 francs to the bad, as I shall lose that sum on the sale of my
  chateau of Monfleury in a superb position near the Rhone.
  
  "At Paris I was tired of that perpetual comedy which is rendered
  obligatory by what you call nineteenth-century civilisation. I thirsted
  for good nature and simplicity. I bought an estate in the mountains
  near the Rhine, there was no more beautiful place under the heavens.
  
  "The village clergyman and the gentry of the locality pay me court for
  six months; I invite them to dinner; I have left Paris, I tell them, so
  as to avoid talking politics or hearing politics talked for the rest of
  my life. As you know I do not subscribe to any paper, the less letters
  the postman brought me the happier I was.
  
  "That did not suit the vicar's book. I was soon the victim of a
  thousand unreasonable requests, annoyances, etc. I wished to give two
  or three hundred francs a year to the poor, I was asked to give it
  to the Paris associations, that of Saint Joseph, that of the Virgin,
  etc. I refused. I was then insulted in a hundred ways. I was foolish
  enough to be upset by it. I could not go out in the morning to enjoy
  the beauty of our mountain without finding some annoyance which
  distracted me from my reveries and recalled unpleasantly both men and
  their wickedness. On the Rogation processions, for instance whose
  chanting I enjoy (it is probably a Greek melody) they will not bless
  my fields because, says the clergyman, they belong to an infidel. A
  cow dies belonging to a devout old peasant woman. She says the reason
  is the neighbourhood of a pond which belongs to my infidel self, a
  philosopher coming from Paris, and eight days afterwards I find my
  fish in agonies poisoned by lime. Intrigue in all its forms envelops
  me. The justice of the peace, who is an honest man, but frightened of
  losing his place, always decides against me. The peace of the country
  proved a hell for me. Once they saw that I was abandoned by the vicar,
  the head of the village congregation, and that I was not supported by
  the retired captain who was the head of the Liberals they all fell upon
  me, down to the mason whom I had supported for a year, down to the very
  wheel-wright who wanted to cheat me with impunity over the repairing of
  my ploughs.
  
  "In order to find some support, and to win at any rate some of my law
  suits I became a Liberal, but, as you say, those damned elections come
  along. They asked me for my vote."
  
  "For an unknown man?"
  
  "Not at all, for a man whom I knew only too well. I refused. It was
  terribly imprudent. From that moment I had the Liberals on my hands as
  well, and my position became intolerable. I believe that if the vicar
  had got it into his head to accuse me of assassinating my servant,
  there would be twenty witnesses of the two parties who would swear that
  they had seen me committing the crime."
  
  "You mean to say you want to live in the country without pandering
  to the passions of your neighbours, without even listening to their
  gossip. What a mistake!"
  
  "It is rectified at last. Monfleury is for sale. I will lose 50,000
  francs if necessary, but I am over-joyed I am leaving that hell of
  hypocrisy and annoyance. I am going to look for solitude and rustic
  peace in the only place where those things are to be found in France,
  on a fourth storey looking on to the Champs-Elysees; and, moreover, I
  am actually deliberating if I shall not commence my political career by
  giving consecrated bread to the parish in the Roule quarter."
  
  "All this would not have happened under Bonaparte," said Falcoz with
  eyes shining with rage and sorrow.
  
  "Very good, but why didn't your Bonaparte manage to keep his position?
  Everything which I suffer to-day is his work."
  
  At this point Julien's attention was redoubled. He had realised from
  the first word that the Bonapartist Falcoz was the old boyhood friend
  of M. de Renal, who had been repudiated by him in 1816, and that the
  philosopher Saint-Giraud must be the brother of that chief of the
  prefecture of----who managed to get the houses of the municipality
  knocked down to him at a cheap price.
  
  "And all this is the work of your Bonaparte. An honest man, aged forty,
  and possessed of five hundred thousand francs however inoffensive he
  is, cannot settle in the provinces and find peace there; those priests
  and nobles of his will turn him out."
  
  "Oh don't talk evil of him," exclaimed Falcoz. "France was never so
  high in the esteem of the nations as during the thirteen years of his
  reign; then every single act was great."
  
  "Your emperor, devil take him," replied the man of forty-four, "was
  only great on his battle fields and when he reorganised the finances
  about 1802. What is the meaning of all his conduct since then? What
  with his chamberlains, his pomp, and his receptions in the Tuileries,
  he has simply provided a new edition of all the monarchical tomfoolery.
  It was a revised edition and might possibly have lasted for a century
  or two. The nobles and the priests wish to go back to the old one, but
  they did not have the iron hand necessary to impose it on the public."
  
  "Yes, that's just how an old printer would talk."
  
  "Who has turned me out of my estate?" continued the printer, angrily.
  "The priests, whom Napoleon called back by his Concordat instead
  of treating them like the State treats doctors, barristers, and
  astronomers, simply seeing in them ordinary citizens, and not bothering
  about the particular calling by which they are trying to earn their
  livelihood. Should we be saddled with these insolent gentlemen today,
  if your Bonaparte had not created barons and counts? No, they were out
  of fashion. Next to the priests, it's the little country nobility who
  have annoyed me the most, and compelled me to become a Liberal."
  
  The conversation was endless. The theme will occupy France for another
  half-century. As Saint-Giraud kept always repeating that it was
  impossible to live in the provinces, Julien timidly suggested the case
  of M. de Renal.
  
  "Zounds, young man, you're a nice one," exclaimed Falcoz. "He turned
  spider so as not to be fly, and a terrible spider into the bargain.
  But I see that he is beaten by that man Valenod. Do you know that
  scoundrel? He's the villain of the piece. What will your M. de Renal
  say if he sees himself turned out one of these fine days, and Valenod
  put in his place?"
  
  "He will be left to brood over his crimes," said Saint-Giraud. "Do
  you know Verrieres, young man? Well, Bonaparte, heaven confound him!
  Bonaparte and his monarchical tomfoolery rendered possible the reign
  of the Renals and the Chelans, which brought about the reign of the
  Valenods and the Maslons."
  
  This conversation, with its gloomy politics, astonished Julien and
  distracted him from his delicious reveries.
  
  He appreciated but little the first sight of Paris as perceived in the
  distance. The castles in the air he had built about his future had to
  struggle with the still present memory of the twenty-four hours that
  he had just passed in Verrieres. He vowed that he would never abandon
  his mistress's children, and that he would leave everything in order
  to protect them, if the impertinence of the priests brought about a
  republic and the persecution of the nobles.
  
  What would have happened on the night of his arrival in Verrieres if,
  at the moment when he had leant his ladder against the casement of
  Madame de Renal's bedroom he had found that room occupied by a stranger
  or by M. de Renal?
  
  But how delicious, too, had been those first two hours when his
  sweetheart had been sincerely anxious to send him away and he had
  pleaded his cause, sitting down by her in the darkness! A soul like
  Julien's is haunted by such memories for a lifetime. The rest of the
  interview was already becoming merged in the first period of their
  love, fourteen months previous.
  
  Julien was awakened from his deep meditation by the stopping of the
  coach. They had just entered the courtyard of the Post in the Rue
  Rousseau. "I want to go to La Malmaison," he said to a cabriolet which
  approached.
  
  "At this time, Monsieur--what for?"
  
  "What's that got to do with you? Get on."
  
  Every real passion only thinks about itself. That is why, in my view,
  passions are ridiculous at Paris, where one's neighbour always insists
  on one's considering him a great deal. I shall refrain from recounting
  Julien's ecstasy at La Malmaison. He wept. What! in spite of those
  wretched white walls, built this very year, which cut the path up into
  bits? Yes, monsieur, for Julien, as for posterity, there was nothing to
  choose between Arcole, Saint Helena, and La Malmaison.
  
  In the evening, Julien hesitated a great deal before going to the
  theatre. He had strange ideas about that place of perdition.
  
  A deep distrust prevented him from admiring actual Paris. He was only
  affected by the monuments left behind by his hero.
  
  "So here I am in the centre of intrigue and hypocrisy. Here reign the
  protectors of the abbe de Frilair." On the evening of the third day
  his curiosity got the better of his plan of seeing everything before
  presenting himself to the abbe Pirard. The abbe explained to him coldly
  the kind of life which he was to expect at M. de la Mole's.
  
  "If you do not prove useful to him at the end of some months you will
  go back to the seminary, but not in disgrace. You will live in the
  house of the marquis, who is one of the greatest seigneurs of France.
  You will wear black, but like a man who is in mourning, and not like
  an ecclesiastic. I insist on your following your theological studies
  three days a week in a seminary where I will introduce you. Every day
  at twelve o'clock you will establish yourself in the marquis's library;
  he counts on making use of you in drafting letters concerning his
  lawsuits and other matters. The marquis will scribble on the margin
  of each letter he gets the kind of answer which is required. I have
  assured him that at the end of three months you will be so competent to
  draft the answers, that out of every dozen you hand to the marquis for
  signature, he will be able to sign eight or nine. In the evening, at
  eight o'clock, you will tidy up his bureau, and at ten you will be free.
  
  "It may be," continued the abbe Pirard, "that some old lady or some
  smooth-voiced man will hint at immense advantages, or will crudely
  offer you gold, to show him the letters which the marquis has received."
  
  "Ah, monsieur," exclaimed Julien, blushing.
  
  "It is singular," said the abbe with a bitter smile, "that poor as
  you are, and after a year at a seminary, you still have any of this
  virtuous indignation left. You must have been very blind."
  
  "Can it be that blood will tell," muttered the abbe in a whisper, as
  though speaking to himself. "The singular thing is," he added, looking
  at Julien, "that the marquis knows you--I don't know how. He will give
  you a salary of a hundred louis to commence with. He is a man who only
  acts by his whim. That is his weakness. He will quarrel with you about
  the most childish matters. If he is satisfied, your wages may rise in
  consequence up to eight thousand francs.
  
  "But you realise," went on the abbe, sourly, "that he is not giving
  you all this money simply on account of your personal charm. The thing
  is to prove yourself useful. If I were in your place I would talk very
  little, and I would never talk about what I know nothing about.
  
  "Oh, yes," said the abbe, "I have made some enquiries for you. I was
  forgetting M. de la Mole's family. He has two children--a daughter and
  a son of nineteen, eminently elegant--the kind of madman who never
  knows to-day what he will do to-morrow. He has spirit and valour; he
  has been through the Spanish war. The marquis hopes, I don't know why,
  that you will become a friend of the young count Norbert. I told him
  that you were a great classic, and possibly he reckons on your teaching
  his son some ready-made phrases about Cicero and Virgil.
  
  "If I were you, I should never allow that handsome young man to make
  fun of me, and before I accepted his advances, which you will find
  perfectly polite but a little ironical, I would make him repeat them
  more than once.
  
  "I will not hide from you the fact that the young count de La Mole is
  bound to despise you at first, because you are nothing more than a
  little bourgeois. His grandfather belonged to the court, and had the
  honour of having his head cut off in the Place de Greve on the 26th
  April, 1574, on account of a political intrigue.
  
  "As for you, you are the son of a carpenter of Verrieres, and what
  is more, in receipt of his father's wages. Ponder well over these
  differences, and look up the family history in Moreri. All the
  flatterers who dine at their house make from time to time what they
  call delicate allusions to it.
  
  "Be careful of how you answer the pleasantries of M. the count de La
  Mole, chief of a squadron of hussars, and a future peer of France, and
  don't come and complain to me later on."
  
  "It seems to me," said Julien, blushing violently, "that I ought not
  even to answer a man who despises me."
  
  "You have no idea of his contempt. It will only manifest itself by
  inflated compliments. If you were a fool, you might be taken in by it.
  If you want to make your fortune, you ought to let yourself be taken in
  by it."
  
  "Shall I be looked upon as ungrateful," said Julien, "if I return to my
  little cell Number 108 when I find that all this no longer suits me?"
  
  "All the toadies of the house will no doubt calumniate you," said the
  abbe, "but I myself will come to the rescue. Adsum qui feci. I will say
  that I am responsible for that resolution."
  
  Julien was overwhelmed by the bitter and almost vindictive tone which
  he noticed in M. Pirard; that tone completely infected his last answer.
  
  The fact is that the abbe had a conscientious scruple about loving
  Julien, and it was with a kind of religious fear that he took so direct
  a part in another's life.
  
  "You will also see," he added with the same bad grace, as though
  accomplishing a painful duty, "you also will see Madame the marquise
  de La Mole. She is a big blonde woman about forty, devout, perfectly
  polite, and even more insignificant. She is the daughter of the old
  Duke de Chaulnes so well known for his aristocratic prejudices. This
  great lady is a kind of synopsis in high relief of all the fundamental
  characteristics of women of her rank. She does not conceal for her own
  part that the possession of ancestors who went through the crusades
  is the sole advantage which she respects. Money only comes a long way
  afterwards. Does that astonish you? We are no longer in the provinces,
  my friend.
  
  "You will see many great lords in her salon talk about our princes in
  a tone of singular flippancy. As for Madame de la Mole, she lowers her
  voice out of respect every time she mentions the name of a Prince, and
  above all the name of a Princess. I would not advise you to say in her
  hearing that Philip II. or Henry VII. were monsters. They were kings, a
  fact which gives them indisputable rights to the respect of creatures
  without birth like you and me. Nevertheless," added M. Pirard, "we are
  priests, for she will take you for one; that being our capacity, she
  considers us as spiritual valets necessary for her salvation."
  
  "Monsieur," said Julien, "I do not think I shall be long at Paris."
  
  "Good, but remember that no man of our class can make his fortune
  except through the great lords. With that indefinable element in your
  character, at any rate I think it is, you will be persecuted if you
  do not make your fortune. There is no middle course for you, make no
  mistake about it; people see that they do not give you pleasure when
  they speak to you; in a social country like this you are condemned to
  unhappiness if you do not succeed in winning respect."
  
  "What would have become of you at Besancon without this whim of the
  marquis de la Mole? One day you will realise the extraordinary extent
  of what he has done for you, and if you are not a monster you will be
  eternally grateful to him and his family. How many poor abbes more
  learned than you have lived years at Paris on the fifteen sous they
  got for their mass and their ten sous they got for their dissertations
  in the Sorbonne. Remember what I told you last winter about the first
  years of that bad man Cardinal Dubois. Are you proud enough by chance
  to think yourself more talented than he was?
  
  "Take, for instance, a quiet and average man like myself; I reckoned
  on dying in my seminary. I was childish enough to get attached to
  it. Well I was on the point of being turned out, when I handed in
  my resignation. You know what my fortune consisted of. I had five
  hundred and twenty francs capital neither more nor less, not a friend,
  scarcely two or three acquaintances. M. de la Mole, whom I had never
  seen, extricated me from that quandary. He only had to say the word
  and I was given a living where the parishioners are well-to-do people
  above all crude vices, and where the income puts me to shame, it is so
  disproportionate to my work. I refrained from talking to you all this
  time simply to enable you to find your level a bit.
  
  "One word more, I have the misfortune to be irritable. It is possible
  that you and I will cease to be on speaking terms.
  
  "If the airs of the marquise or the spiteful pleasantries of her son
  make the house absolutely intolerable for you I advise you to finish
  your studies in some seminary thirty leagues from Paris and rather
  north than south. There is more civilisation in the north, and, he
  added lowering his voice, I must admit that the nearness of the Paris
  papers puts fear into our petty tyrants.
  
  "If we continue to find pleasure in each other's society and if the
  marquis's house does not suit you, I will offer you the post of my
  curate, and will go equal shares with you in what I get from the
  living. I owe you that and even more, he added interrupting Julien's
  thanks, for the extraordinary offer which you made me at Besancon. If
  instead of having five hundred and twenty francs I had had nothing you
  would have saved me."
  
  The abbe's voice had lost its tone of cruelty, Julien was ashamed to
  feel tears in his eyes. He was desperately anxious to throw himself
  into his friend's arms. He could not help saying to him in the most
  manly manner he could assume:
  
  "I was hated by my father from the cradle; it was one of my great
  misfortunes, but I shall no longer complain of my luck, I have found
  another father in you, monsieur."
  
  "That is good, that is good," said the embarrassed abbe, then suddenly
  remembering quite appropriately a seminary platitude "you must never
  say luck, my child, always say providence."
  
  The fiacre stopped. The coachman lifted up the bronze knocker of an
  immense door. It was the Hotel de la Mole, and to prevent the passers
  by having any doubt on the subject these words could be read in black
  marble over the door.
  
  This affectation displeased Julien. "They are so frightened of the
  Jacobins. They see a Robespierre and his tumbril behind every head.
  Their panic is often gloriously grotesque and they advertise their
  house like this so that in the event of a rising the rabble can
  recognise it and loot it." He communicated his thought to the abbe
  Pirard.
  
  "Yes, poor child, you will soon be my curate. What a dreadful idea you
  have got into your head."
  
  "Nothing could be simpler," said Julien.
  
  The gravity of the porter, and above all, the cleanness of the the
  court, struck him with admiration. It was fine sunshine. "What
  magnificent architecture," he said to his friend. The hotel in question
  was one of those buildings of the Faubourg Saint-Germain with a flat
  facade built about the time of Voltaire's death. At no other period had
  fashion and beauty been so far from one another.
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER XXXII
  
  ENTRY INTO SOCIETY
  
  
          Ludicrous and pathetic memory: the first drawing-room
          where one appeared alone and without support at the
          age of eighteen! the look of a woman sufficed to
          intimidate me. The more I wished to please the more
          clumsy I became. I evolved the most unfounded ideas
          about everything. I would either abandon myself without
          any reason, or I would regard a man as an enemy simply
          because he had looked at me with a serious air; but
          all the same, in the middle of the unhappiness of
          my timidity, how beautiful did I find a beautiful
          day--_Kant_.
  
  
  Julien stopped in amazement in the middle of the courtyard. "Pull
  yourself together," said the abbe Pirard. "You get horrible ideas into
  your head, besides you are only a child. What has happened to the
  nil mirari of Horace (no enthusiasm) remember that when they see you
  established here this crowd of lackeys will make fun of you. They will
  see in you an equal who has been unjustly placed above them; and, under
  a masquerade of good advice and a desire to help you, they will try to
  make you fall into some gross blunder."
  
  "Let them do their worst," said Julien biting his lip, and he became as
  distrustful as ever.
  
  The salons on the first storey which our gentlemen went through before
  reaching the marquis' study, would have seemed to you, my reader, as
  gloomy as they were magnificent. If they had been given to you just as
  they were, you would have refused to live in them. This was the domain
  of yawning and melancholy reasoning. They redoubled Julien's rapture.
  "How can any one be unhappy?" he thought, "who lives in so splendid an
  abode."
  
  Finally our gentlemen arrived at the ugliest rooms in this superb
  suite. There was scarcely any light. They found there a little keen
  man with a lively eye and a blonde wig. The abbe turned round
  to Julien and presented him. It was the marquis. Julien had much
  difficulty in recognising him, he found his manner was so polite.
  It was no longer the grand seigneur with that haughty manner of the
  abbey of Bray-le-Haut. Julien thought that his wig had much too many
  hairs. As the result of this opinion he was not at all intimidated.
  The descendant of the friend of Henry III. seemed to him at first of
  a rather insignificant appearance. He was extremely thin and very
  restless, but he soon noticed that the marquis had a politeness which
  was even more pleasant to his listener than that of the Bishop of
  Besancon himself. The audience only lasted three minutes. As they went
  out the abbe said to Julien,
  
  "You looked at the marquis just as you would have looked at a picture.
  I am not a great expert in what these people here call politeness. You
  will soon know more about it than I do, but really the boldness of your
  looks seemed scarcely polite."
  
  They had got back into the fiacre. The driver stopped near the
  boulevard; the abbe ushered Julien into a suite of large rooms. Julien
  noticed that there was no furniture. He was looking at the magnificent
  gilded clock representing a subject which he thought very indecent,
  when a very elegant gentleman approached him with a smiling air. Julien
  bowed slightly.
  
  The gentleman smiled and put his hand on his shoulder. Julien shuddered
  and leapt back, he reddened with rage. The abbe Pirard, in spite of his
  gravity, laughed till the tears came into his eyes. The gentleman was a
  tailor.
  
  "I give you your liberty for two days," said the abbe as they went
  out. "You cannot be introduced before then to Madame de la Mole. Any
  one else would watch over you as if you were a young girl during these
  first few moments of your life in this new Babylon. Get ruined at once
  if you have got to be ruined, and I will be rid of my own weakness of
  being fond of you. The day after to-morrow this tailor will bring you
  two suits, you will give the man who tries them on five francs. Apart
  from that don't let these Parisians hear the sound of your voice. If
  you say a word they will manage somehow to make fun of you. They have a
  talent for it. Come and see me the day after to-morrow at noon.... Go
  and ruin yourself.... I was forgetting, go and order boots and a hat at
  these addresses."
  
  Julien scrutinised the handwriting of the addresses.
  
  "It's the marquis's hand," said the abbe; "he is an energetic man who
  foresees everything, and prefers doing to ordering. He is taking you
  into his house, so that you may spare him that kind of trouble. Will
  you have enough brains to execute efficiently all the instructions
  which he will give you with scarcely a word of explanation? The future
  will show, look after yourself."
  
  Julien entered the shops indicated by the addresses without saying a
  single word. He observed that he was received with respect, and that
  the bootmaker as he wrote his name down in the ledger put M. de Sorel.
  
  When he was in the Cemetery of Pere La Chaise a very obliging
  gentleman, and what is more, one who was Liberal in his views,
  suggested that he should show Julien the tomb of Marshal Ney which a
  sagacious statecraft had deprived of the honour of an epitaph, but when
  he left this Liberal, who with tears in his eyes almost clasped him in
  his arms, Julien was without his watch. Enriched by this experience two
  days afterwards he presented himself to the abbe Pirard, who looked at
  him for a long time.
  
  "Perhaps you are going to become a fop," said the abbe to him severely.
  Julien looked like a very young man in full mourning; as a matter of
  fact, he looked very well, but the good abbe was too provincial himself
  to see that Julien still carried his shoulders in that particular way
  which signifies in the provinces both elegance and importance. When the
  marquis saw Julien his opinion of his graces differed so radically from
  that of the good abbe as he said,
  
  "Would you have any objection to M. le Sorel taking some dancing
  lessons?"
  
  The abbe was thunderstruck.
  
  "No," he answered at last. "Julien is not a priest."
  
  The marquis went up the steps of a little secret staircase two at a
  time, and installed our hero in a pretty attic which looked out on the
  big garden of the hotel. He asked him how many shirts he had got at the
  linen drapers.
  
  "Two," answered Julien, intimidated at seeing so great a lord
  condescend to such details.
  
  "Very good," replied the marquis quite seriously, and with a certain
  curt imperiousness which gave Julien food for thought. "Very good, get
  twenty-two more shirts. Here are your first quarter's wages."
  
  As he went down from the attic the marquis called an old man. "Arsene,"
  he said to him, "you will serve M. Sorel." A few minutes afterwards
  Julien found himself alone in a magnificent library. It was a delicious
  moment. To prevent his emotion being discovered he went and hid in
  a little dark corner. From there he contemplated with rapture the
  brilliant backs of the books. "I shall be able to read all these," he
  said to himself. "How can I fail to like it here? M. de Renal would
  have thought himself dishonoured for ever by doing one-hundredth part
  of what the Marquis de la Mole has just done for me.
  
  "But let me have a look at the copies I have to make." Having finished
  this work Julien ventured to approach the books. He almost went mad
  with joy as he opened an edition of Voltaire. He ran and opened the
  door of the library to avoid being surprised. He then indulged in the
  luxury of opening each of the eighty volumes. They were magnificently
  bound and were the masterpiece of the best binder in London. It was
  even more than was required to raise Julien's admiration to the maximum.
  
  An hour afterwards the marquis came in and was surprised to notice that
  Julien spelt cela with two "ll" cella. "Is all that the abbe told me of
  his knowledge simply a fairy tale?" The marquis was greatly discouraged
  and gently said to him,
  
  "You are not sure of your spelling?"
  
  "That is true," said Julien without thinking in the least of the
  injustice that he was doing to himself. He was overcome by the kindness
  of the marquis which recalled to him through sheer force of contrast
  the superciliousness of M. de Renal.
  
  "This trial of the little Franc-comtois abbe is waste of time," thought
  the marquis, "but I had such great need of a reliable man."
  
  "You spell cela with one 'l,'" said the marquis to him, "and when you
  have finished your copies look the words whose spelling you are not
  sure of up in the dictionary."
  
  The marquis sent for him at six o'clock. He looked at Julien's boots
  with manifest pain. "I am sorry for a mistake I made. I did not tell
  you that you must dress every day at half-past five."
  
  Julien looked at him but did not understand.
  
  "I mean to say put on stockings. Arsene will remind you. To-day I will
  make your apologies."
  
  As he finished the sentence M. de la Mole escorted Julien into a salon
  resplendent with gilding. On similar occasions M. de Renal always made
  a point of doubling his pace so as to have the privilege of being the
  first to pass the threshold. His former employer's petty vanity caused
  Julien to tread on the marquis's feet and hurt him a great deal because
  of his gout. "So he is clumsy to the bargain," he said to himself. He
  presented him to a woman of high stature and of imposing appearance.
  It was the marquise. Julien thought that her manner was impertinent,
  and that she was a little like Madame de Maugiron, the wife of the
  sub-prefect of the arrondissement of Verrieres when she was present
  at the Saint-Charles dinner. Rendered somewhat nervous by the extreme
  magnificence of the salon Julien did not hear what M. de la Mole was
  saying. The marquise scarcely deigned to look at him. There were
  several men there, among whom Julien recognised with an inexpressible
  pleasure the young bishop of Agde who had deigned to speak to him some
  months before at the ceremony of Bray-le-Haut. This young prelate was
  doubtless frightened by the tender look which the timidity of Julien
  fixed on him, and did not bother to recognise "the provincial."
  
  The men assembled in this salon seemed to Julien to have a certain
  element of gloom and constraint. Conversation takes place in a low
  voice in Paris and little details are not exaggerated.
  
  A handsome young man with moustaches, came in about half-past six. He
  was very pale, and had a very small head.
  
  "You always keep us waiting" said the marquise, as he kissed her hand.
  
  Julien realised that it was the Count de la Mole. From the very first
  he thought he was charming.
  
  "Is it possible," he said to himself "that this is the man whose
  offensive jests are going to drive me out of the house."
  
  As the result of scrutinising count Norbert, Julien noticed that he
  was in boots and spurs. "And I have got to be in shoes just like
  an inferior apparently." They sat down at table, Julien heard the
  marquise raising her voice a little and saying something severe. Almost
  simultaneously he noticed an extremely blonde and very well developed
  young person who had just sat down opposite him. Nevertheless she
  made no appeal to him. Looking at her attentively he thought that he
  had never seen such beautiful eyes, although they betokened a great
  coldness of soul. Subsequently Julien thought that, though they
  looked bored and sceptical, they were conscious of the duty of being
  impressive. "Madame de Renal of course had very fine eyes" he said to
  himself, "she used to be universally complimented on them, but they had
  nothing in common with these." Julien did not know enough of society
  to appreciate that it was the fire of repartee which from time to time
  gave their brilliancy to the eyes of Mademoiselle Mathilde (for that
  was the name he heard her called by). When Madame de Renal's eyes
  became animated, it was with the fire of passion, or as the result of a
  generous indignation on hearing of some evil deed. Towards the end of
  the meal Julien found a word to express Mademoiselle de la Mole's type
  of beauty. Her eyes are scintillating, he said to himself. Apart from
  her eyes she was cruelly like her mother, whom he liked less and less,
  and he ceased looking at her. By way of compensation he thought Count
  Norbert admirable in every respect. Julien was so fascinated that the
  idea never occurred to him of being jealous, and hating him because he
  was richer and of nobler birth than he was himself.
  
  Julien thought that the marquis looked bored.
  
  About the second course he said to his son: "Norbert, I ask all your
  good offices for M. Julien Sorel, whom I have just taken into my staff
  and of whom I hope to make a man _si cella se peut_."
  
  "He is my secretary," said the marquis to his neighbour, "and he spells
  cela with two ll's." Everybody looked at Julien, who bowed to Norbert
  in a manner that was slightly too marked, but speaking generally they
  were satisfied with his expression.
  
  The marquis must have spoken about the kind of education which Julien
  had received for one of the guests tackled him on Horace. "It was
  just by talking about Horace that I succeeded with the bishop of
  Besancon," said Julien to himself. Apparently that is the only author
  they know. From that instant he was master of himself. This transition
  was rendered easy because he had just decided that he would never look
  upon Madamoiselle de la Mole as a woman after his own taste. Since the
  seminary he had the lowest opinion of men, and was not to be easily
  intimidated by them. He would have enjoyed all his self-possession if
  the dining-room had been furnished with less magnificence. It was,
  as a matter of fact, two mirrors each eight feet high in which he
  would look from time to time at the man who was speaking to him about
  Horace, which continued to impress him. His phrases were not too long
  for a provincial, he had fine eyes whose brilliancy was doubled by his
  quavering timidity, or by his happy bashfulness when he had given a
  good answer. They found him pleasant. This kind of examination gave
  a little interest to a solemn dinner. The marquis signed to Julien's
  questioner to press him sharply. "Can he possibly know something?" he
  thought.
  
  Julien answered and thought out new ideas. He lost sufficient of his
  nervousness, not indeed to exhibit any wit, for that is impossible
  for any one ignorant of the special language which is used in Paris,
  but to show himself possessed of ideas which, though presented out of
  place and ungracefully, were yet original. They saw that he knew Latin
  perfectly.
  
  Julien's adversary was a member of the Academy Inscriptions who chanced
  to know Latin. He found Julien a very good humanist, was not frightened
  of making him feel uncomfortable, and really tried to embarrass him. In
  the heat of the controversy Julien eventually forgot the magnificent
  furniture of the dining-room. He managed to expound theories concerning
  the Latin poets which his questioner had never read of anywhere. Like
  an honest man, he gave the young secretary all due credit for them.
  As luck would have it, they started a discussion on the question
  of whether Horace was poor or rich, a good humoured and careless
  voluptuary who made verses to amuse himself, like Chapelle the friend
  of Moliere and de la Fontaine, or a poor devil of a poet laureate who
  wrote odes for the king's birthday like Southey, the accuser of Lord
  Byron. They talked about the state of society under Augustus and under
  George IV. At both periods the aristocracy was all-powerful, but,
  while at Rome it was despoiled of its power by Maecenas who was only a
  simple knight, it had in England reduced George IV practically to the
  position of a Venetian doge. This discussion seemed to lift the marquis
  out of that state of bored torpor in which he had been plunged at the
  beginning of the dinner.
  
  Julien found meaningless such modern names as Southey, Lord Byron,
  and George IV, which he now heard pronounced for the first time. But
  every one noticed that whenever the conversation dealt with events that
  had taken place in Rome and about which knowledge could be obtained
  by a perusal of the works of Horace, Martial or Tacitus, etc., he
  showed an indisputable superiority. Julien coolly appropriated several
  ideas which he had learnt from the bishop of Besancon in the historic
  conversation which he had had with that prelate. These ideas were not
  the least appreciated.
  
  When every one was tired of talking about poets the marquise, who
  always made it a rule to admire whatever amused her husband, deigned
  to look at Julien. "Perhaps an educated man lies hid beneath the
  clumsy manners of this young abbe," said the Academician who happened
  to be near the marquise. Julien caught a few words of what he said.
  Ready-made phrases suited the intellect of the mistress of the house
  quite well. She adopted this one about Julien, and was very pleased
  with herself for having invited the academician to dinner. "He has
  amused M. de la Mole" she thought.
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER XXXIII
  
  THE FIRST STEPS
  
  
          This immense valley, filled with brilliant lights and so
          many thousands of men dazzles my sight. No one knows me.
          All are superior to me. I lose my head. _Poemi dell' av.
          REINA_.
  
  Julien was copying letters in the library very early the next day
  when Mademoiselle Mathilde came in by a little dummy door very well
  masked by the backs of the books. While Julien was admiring the
  device, Mademoiselle Mathilde seemed astonished and somewhat annoyed
  at finding him there: Julien saw that she was in curl-papers and had
  a hard, haughty, and masculine expression. Mademoiselle de la Mole
  had the habit of surreptitiously stealing books from her father's
  library. Julien's presence rendered this morning's journey abortive,
  a fact which annoyed her all the more as she had come to fetch the
  second volume of Voltaire's _Princess of Babylon_, a worthy climax to
  one of the most eminently monarchical and religious educations which
  the convent of the Sacred Heart had ever provided. This poor girl of
  nineteen already required some element of spiciness in order to get up
  an interest in a novel.
  
  Count Norbert put in an appearance in the library about three o'clock.
  He had come to study a paper so as to be able to talk politics in the
  evening, and was very glad to meet Julien, whose existence he had
  forgotten. He was charming, and offered him a ride on horseback.
  
  "My father will excuse us until dinner."
  
  Julien appreciated the us and thought it charming.
  
  "Great heavens! M. le Comte," said Julien, "if it were a question of
  felling an eighty-foot tree or hewing it out and making it into planks
  I would acquit myself all right, I daresay, but as for riding a horse,
  I haven't done such a thing six times in my life."
  
  "Well, this will be the seventh," said Norbert.
  
  As a matter of fact, Julien remembered the king of ----'s entry into
  Verrieres, and thought he rode extremely well. But as they were
  returning from the Bois de Boulogne he fell right in the middle of the
  Rue du Bac, as he suddenly tried to get out of the way of a cabriolet,
  and was spattered all over with mud. It was lucky that he had two
  suits. The marquis, wishing to favour him with a few words at dinner,
  asked him for news of his excursion. Norbert began immediately to
  answer him in general terms.
  
  "M. le Comte is extremely kind to me," answered Julien. "I thank him
  for it, and I fully appreciate it. He was good enough to have the
  quietest and prettiest horse given to me, but after all he could
  not tie me on to it, and owing to the lack of that precaution, I
  had a fall right in the middle of that long street near the bridge.
  Madame Mathilde made a futile effort to hide a burst of laughter, and
  subsequently was indiscreet enough to ask for details. Julien acquitted
  himself with much simplicity. He had grace without knowing it.
  
  "I prophesy favourably about that little priest," said the marquis to
  the academician. "Think of a provincial being simple over a matter like
  that. Such a thing has never been witnessed before, and will never be
  witnessed again; and what is more, he describes his misfortune before
  ladies."
  
  Julien put his listeners so thoroughly at their ease over his
  misfortune that at the end of the dinner, when the general conversation
  had gone off on to another subject, Mademoiselle Mathilde asked her
  brother some questions over the details of the unfortunate occurrence.
  As she put numerous questions, and as Julien met her eyes several
  times, he ventured to answer himself, although the questions had not
  been addressed to him, and all three of them finished up by laughing
  just as though they had all been inhabitants of some village in the
  depths of a forest.
  
  On the following day Julien attended two theology lectures, and then
  came back to copy out about twenty letters. He found a young man, who
  though very carefully dressed, had a mean appearance and an envious
  expression, established near him in the library.
  
  The marquis entered, "What are you doing here, M. Tanbeau?" he said
  severely to the new-comer.
  
  "I thought--" answered the young man, with a base smile.
  
  "No, monsieur, you thought nothing of the kind. This is a try-on, but
  it is an unfortunate one."
  
  Young Tanbeau got up in a rage and disappeared. He was a nephew of the
  academician who was a friend of Madame de la Mole, and intended to take
  up the profession of letters. The academician had induced the marquis
  to take him as a secretary. Tanbeau used to work in a separate room,
  but having heard of the favour that was vouchsafed to Julien he wished
  to share it, and he had gone this morning and established his desk in
  the library.
  
  At four o'clock Julien ventured, after a little hesitation, to present
  himself to Count Norbert. The latter was on the point of going riding,
  and being a man of perfect politeness felt embarrassed.
  
  "I think," he said to Julien, "that you had better go to the riding
  school, and after a few weeks, I shall be charmed to ride with you."
  
  "I should like to have the honour of thanking you for the kindness
  which you have shewn me. Believe me, monsieur," added Julien very
  seriously, "that I appreciate all I owe you. If your horse has not been
  hurt by the reason of my clumsiness of yesterday, and if it is free I
  should like to ride it this afternoon."
  
  "Well, upon my word, my dear Sorel, you do so at your own risk and
  peril; kindly assume that I have put forth all the objections required
  by prudence. As a matter of fact it is four o'clock, we have no time to
  lose."
  
  As soon as Julien was on horseback, he said to the young count, "What
  must one do not to fall off?"
  
  "Lots of things," answered Norbert, bursting into laughter. "Keep your
  body back for instance."
  
  Julien put his horse to the trot. They were at the Place Louis XVI.
  
  "Oh, you foolhardy youngster," said Norbert "there are too many
  carriages here, and they are driven by careless drivers into the
  bargain. Once you are on the ground their tilburies will run over your
  body, they will not risk spoiling their horses' mouths by pulling up
  short."
  
  Norbert saw Julien twenty times on the point of tumbling, but in the
  end the excursion finished without misadventure. As they came back the
  young count said to his sister,
  
  "Allow me to introduce a dashing dare-devil."
  
  When he talked to his father over the dinner from one end of the table
  to the other, he did justice to Julien's courage. It was the only
  thing one could possibly praise about his style of riding. The young
  count had heard in the morning the men who groomed the horses in the
  courtyard making Julien's fall an opportunity for the most outrageous
  jokes at his expense.
  
  In spite of so much kindness Julien soon felt himself completely
  isolated in this family. All their customs seemed strange to him, and
  he was cognizant of none of them. His blunders were the delight of the
  valets.
  
  The abbe Pirard had left for his living. "If Julien is a weak reed,
  let him perish. If he is a man of spirit, let him get out of his
  difficulties all alone," he thought.
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER XXXIV
  
  THE HOTEL DE LA MOLE
  
  
          What is he doing here? Will he like it there? Will he
          try to please?--_Ronsard_.
  
  
  If everything in the aristocratic salon of the Hotel de la Mole seemed
  strange to Julien, that pale young man in his black suit seemed in his
  turn very strange to those persons who deigned to notice him. Madame de
  la Mole suggested to her husband that he should send him off on some
  business on those days when they had certain persons to dinner.
  
  "I wish to carry the experiment to its logical conclusion," answered
  the marquis. "The abbe Pirard contends that we are wrong in crushing
  the self-respect of the people whom we allow around us. _One can only
  lean on what resists_. The only thing against this man is his unknown
  face, apart from that he is a deaf mute."
  
  "If I am to know my way about," said Julien to himself. "I must write
  down the names of the persons whom I see come to the salon together
  with a few words on their character."
  
  He put at the head of the list five or six friends of the house who
  took every opportunity of paying court to him, believing that he was
  protected by a whim of the marquis. They were poor dull devils. But it
  must be said in praise of this class of men, such as they are found
  to-day in the salons of the aristocracy, that every one did not find
  them equally tame. One of them was now allowing himself to be bullied
  by the marquis, who was venting his irritation at a harsh remark which
  had been addressed to him by the marquise.
  
  The masters of the house were too proud or too prone to boredom; they
  were too much used to finding their only distraction in the addressing
  of insults, to enable them to expect true friends. But, except on
  rainy days and in rare moments of savage boredom, they always showed
  themselves perfectly polite.
  
  If the five or six toadies who manifested so paternal an affection
  towards Julien had deserted the Hotel de la Mole, the marquise would
  have been exposed to long spells of solitude, and in the eyes of women
  of that class, solitude is awful, it is the symbol of _disgrace_.
  
  The marquis was charming to his wife. He saw that her salon was
  sufficiently furnished, though not with peers, for he did not think his
  new colleagues were sufficiently noble to come to his house as friends,
  or sufficiently amusing to be admitted as inferiors.
  
  It was only later that Julien fathomed these secrets. The governing
  policy of a household, though it forms the staple of conversation in
  bourgeois families, is only alluded to in families of the class of that
  of the marquis in moments of distress. So paramount even in this bored
  century is the necessity of amusing one's self, that even on the days
  of dinner-parties the marquis had scarcely left the salon before all
  the guests ran away. Provided that one did not make any jests about
  either God or the priests or the king or the persons in office, or the
  artists who enjoyed the favour of the court, or of anything that was
  established, provided that one did not praise either Beranger or the
  opposition papers, or Voltaire or Rousseau or anything which involved
  any element of free speech, provided that above all that one never
  talked politics, one could discuss everything with freedom.
  
  There is no income of a hundred thousand crowns a year and no blue
  ribbon which could sustain a contest against such a code of salon
  etiquette.
  
  The slightest live idea appeared a crudity. In spite of the prevailing
  good form, perfect politeness, and desire to please, _ennui_ was
  visible in every face. The young people who came to pay their calls
  were frightened of speaking of anything which might make them suspected
  of thinking or of betraying that they had read something prohibited,
  and relapsed into silence after a few elegant phrases about Rossini and
  the weather.
  
  Julien noticed that the conversation was usually kept alive by two
  viscounts and five barons whom M. de la Mole had known at the time of
  the emigration. These gentlemen enjoyed an income of from six to eight
  hundred thousand francs. Four swore by the _Quotidienne_ and three
  by the _Gazette de France_. One of them had every day some anecdote
  to tell about the Chateau, in which he made lavish use of the word
  _admirable_. Julien noticed that he had five crosses, the others as a
  rule only had three.
  
  By way of compensation six footmen in livery were to be seen in the
  ante-room, and during the whole evening ices or tea were served every
  quarter-of-an-hour, while about midnight there was a kind of supper
  with champagne.
  
  This was the reason that sometimes induced Julien to stay till the
  end. Apart from this he could scarcely understand why any one could
  bring himself to take seriously the ordinary conversation in this
  magnificently gilded salon. Sometimes he would look at the talkers to
  see if they themselves were not making fun of what they were saying.
  "My M. de Maistre, whom I know by heart," he thought, "has put it a
  hundred times better, and all the same he is pretty boring."
  
  Julien was not the only one to appreciate this stifling moral
  atmosphere. Some consoled themselves by taking a great quantity of
  ices, others by the pleasure of saying all the rest of the evening, "I
  have just come from the Hotel de la Mole where I learnt that Russia,
  etc."
  
  Julien learnt from one of the toadies that scarcely six months ago
  madame de la Mole had rewarded more than twenty years of assiduous
  attention by promoting the poor baron Le Bourguignon, who had been a
  sub-prefect since the restoration, to the rank of prefect.
  
  This great event had whetted the zeal of all these gentlemen.
  Previously there were few things to which they would have objected,
  now they objected to nothing. There was rarely any overt lack of
  consideration, but Julien had already caught at meals two or three
  little short dialogues between the marquis and his wife which were
  cruel to those who were seated near them. These noble personages did
  not conceal their sincere contempt for everyone who was not sprung
  from people who were entitled to ride in the carriages of the king.
  Julien noticed that the word crusade was the only word which gave their
  face an expression of deep seriousness akin to respect. Their ordinary
  respect had always a touch of condescension. In the middle of this
  magnificence and this boredom Julien was interested in nothing except
  M. de la Mole. He was delighted to hear him protest one day that he
  had had nothing to do with the promotion of that poor Le Bourguignon,
  it was an attention to the marquise. Julien knew the truth from the
  abbe Pirard.
  
  The abbe was working in the marquis's library with Julien one morning
  at the eternal de Frilair lawsuit.
  
  "Monsieur," said Julien suddenly, "is dining every day with madame la
  marquise one of my duties or a special favour that they show to me?"
  
  "It's a special honour," replied the scandalised abbe. "M. the
  Academician, who has been cultivating the family for fifteen years, has
  never been able to obtain so much for his M. Tanbeau."
  
  "I find it, sir, the most painful part of my employment. I was less
  bored at the seminary. Some times I see even mademoiselle de la Mole
  yawn, and yet she ought to be accustomed to the social charms of the
  friends of the house. I am frightened of falling asleep. As a favour,
  obtain permission for me to go and get a forty sous' dinner in some
  obscure inn."
  
  The abbe who was a true snob, was very appreciative of the honour of
  dining with a great lord. While he was endeavouring to get Julien to
  understand this point of view a slight noise made them turn round.
  Julien saw mademoiselle de la Mole listening. He reddened. She had come
  to fetch a book and had heard everything. She began to entertain some
  respect for Julien. "He has not been born servile," she thought, "like
  that old abbe. Heavens, how ugly he is."
  
  At dinner Julien did not venture to look at mademoiselle de la Mole
  but she was kind enough to speak to him. They were expecting a lot
  of visitors that day and she asked him to stay. The young girls of
  Paris are not at all fond of persons of a certain age, especially when
  they are slovenly. Julien did not need much penetration to realise
  that the colleagues of M. le Bourguignon who remained in the salon
  had the privilege of being the ordinary butt of mademoiselle de la
  Mole's jokes. On this particular day, whether or not by reason of some
  affectation on her part, she proved cruel to bores.
  
  Mademoiselle de la Mole was the centre of a little knot which used to
  form nearly every evening behind the marquise's immense arm-chair.
  There were to be found there the marquis de Croisenois, the comte
  de Caylus, the vicomte de Luz and two or three other young officers,
  the friends of Norbert or his sister. These gentlemen used to sit
  down on a large blue sofa. At the end of the sofa, opposite the part
  where the brilliant Mathilde was sitting, Julien sat in silence on a
  little, rather low straw chair. This modest position was envied by all
  the toadies; Norbert kept his father's young secretary in countenance
  by speaking to him, or mentioning him by name once or twice in the
  evening. On this particular occasion mademoiselle de la Mole asked him
  what was the height of the mountain on which the citadel of Besancon
  is planted. Julien had never any idea if this mountain was higher or
  lower than Montmartre. He often laughed heartily at what was said in
  this little knot, but he felt himself incapable of inventing anything
  analagous. It was like a strange language which he understood but could
  not speak.
  
  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 manoeuvre 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 abbe 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 Baton," 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
  Baton," 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
  Baton 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 abbe 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 abbe 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 abbe 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 abbe 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 abbe
  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 abbe 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 manoeuvre 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. Comte's,"[1] 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 abbe 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 abbe 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 marechale 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 Renal.
  
  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 moustachioed 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."
  
  
  [1] celebrated conjuror.
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER XXXV
  
  SENSIBILITY AND A GREAT PIOUS LADY
  
  
          An idea which has any life in it seems like a crudity,
          so accustomed are they to colourless expression. Woe to
          him who introduces new ideas into his conversation!
                                            --_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 administration of
  his estates in Brittany and Normandy. Julien made frequent journeys
  there. He had chief control of the correspondence relating to the
  famous lawsuit with the abbe 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
  constituted 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 Besancon; 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 abbe 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
  Jansenists became friendly with him and would give him advice. A new
  world opened before him. At the Jansenists he got to know a comte
  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 comte 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 Hotel de
  la Mole but he felt himself quite lost. His provincial common sense
  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 off. 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 Hotel
  de la Mole, but he often felt at the end of the day as though he would
  like to cry. A cafe-waiter in the provinces will take an interest in
  you if you happen to have some accident as you enter his cafe, 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 maitres 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 occasions 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 chateau, 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 cafe in the Rue St. Honore 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
  Besancon.
  
  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 cafe 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 Lievin, a poor devil with whom he often
  used to fence. Julien was frank with him.
  
  "I am quite willing to be your second," said Lievin, "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 Renal, 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 cure
  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 hotel, 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." The amusing 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
  natural son of a rich gentleman of Franche-Comte, 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 Hyeres 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 impossible 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 abbe 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 abbe, 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 cure. 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
  cafe 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 protege.
  
  M. de la Mole became interested in this singular character. At the
  beginning he had encouraged Julian'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 abbe? 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 protege'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 abbe 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. le 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 abbe
  Pirard.
  
  "I must confess one thing to you, my dear abbe. 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 abbe 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 Verrieres, and to supersede M. de Renal.
  
  Julien did not fail to smile to himself when M. Valenod gave him to
  understand that they had just found out that M. de Renal 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
  Renal 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
  Renal. 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 Julien, 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
  Verrieres 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.
  
  "That's nothing," he said to himself. "It will be necessary to commit
  several other injustices if I mean to get on, and also to conceal them
  beneath pretty, sentimental speeches. Poor monsieur Gros! It is he who
  deserves the cross. It is I who have it, and I ought to conform to the
  spirit of the Government which gives it me."
  
  
  
  
  
  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-Bekir"--_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
  Hyeres, 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 habitues 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 Hyeres, 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 chateau 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 Hotel 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
  roles 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."
  
  As his eyes were trying to find her, Mathilde looked at him. "My duty
  calls me," said Julien to himself. But it was only his expression which
  was bad-humoured.
  
  His curiosity made him advance with a pleasure which the extremely low
  cut dress on Mathilde's shoulder very quickly accentuated, in a manner
  which was scarcely flattering for his own self-respect. "Her beauty has
  youth," he thought. Five or six people, whom Julien recognised as those
  who had been speaking at the door were between her and him.
  
  "Now, Monsieur, you have been here all the winter," she said to him.
  "Is it not true that this is the finest ball of the season."
  
  He did not answer.
  
  "This quadrille of Coulon's strikes me as admirable, and those ladies
  dance it perfectly." The young men turned round to see who was the
  happy man, an answer from whom was positively insisted on. The answer
  was not encouraging.
  
  "I shall not be able to be a good judge, mademoiselle, I pass my life
  in writing. This is the first ball of this magnificence which I have
  ever seen."
  
  The young men with moustaches were scandalised.
  
  "You are a wise man, Monsieur Sorel," came the answer with a more
  marked interest. "You look upon all these balls, all these festivities,
  like a philosopher, like J. J. Rousseau. All these follies astonish
  without alluring you."
  
  Julien's imagination had just hit upon an epigram which banished all
  illusions from his mind. His mouth assumed the expression of a perhaps
  slightly exaggerated disdain.
  
  "J. J. Rousseau," he answered, "is in my view only a fool when he takes
  it upon himself to criticise society. He did not understand it, and
  he went into it with the spirit of a lackey who has risen above his
  station."
  
  "He wrote the _Contrat Social_," answered Mathilde reverently.
  
  "While he preaches the Republic, and the overthrow of monarchical
  dignities, the parvenu was intoxicated with happiness if a duke would
  go out of his way after dinner to one of his friends."
  
  "Oh yes, the Duke of Luxembourg at Montmorency, used to accompany a
  Coindet from the neighbourhood of Paris," went on Mademoiselle de
  la Mole, with all the pleasure and enthusiasm of her first flush of
  pedantry. She was intoxicated with her knowledge, almost like the
  academician who discovered the existence of King Feretrius.
  
  Julien's look was still penetrating and severe. Mathilde had had
  a moment's enthusiasm. Her partner's coldness disconcerted her
  profoundly. She was all the more astonished, as it was she who was
  accustomed to produce that particular effect on others.
  
  At this moment the marquis de Croisenois was advancing eagerly towards
  mademoiselle de la Mole. He was for a moment three yards away from her.
  He was unable to get closer because of the crowd. He smiled at the
  obstacle. The young marquise de Rouvray was near her. She was a cousin
  of Mathilde. She was giving her arm to her husband who had only married
  her a fortnight ago. The marquis de Rouvray, who was also very young,
  had all the love which seizes a man who, having contracted a marriage
  of convenience exclusively arranged by the notaries, finds a person who
  is ideally pretty. M. de Rouvray would be a duke on the death of a very
  old uncle.
  
  While the marquis de Croisenois was struggling to get through the
  crowd, and smiling at Mathilde she fixed her big divinely blue eyes
  on him and his neighbours. "Could anything be flatter," she said to
  herself. "There is Croisenois who wants to marry me, he is gentle and
  polite, he has perfect manners like M. de Rouvray. If they did not
  bore, those gentlemen would be quite charming. He too, would accompany
  me to the ball with that smug limited expression. One year after the
  marriage I shall have my carriage, my horses, my dresses, my chateau
  twenty leagues from Paris. All this would be as nice as possible, and
  enough to make a Countess de Roiville, for example, die of envy and
  afterwards--"
  
  Mathilde bored herself in anticipation. The marquis de Croisenois
  managed to approach her and spoke to her, but she was dreaming and
  did not listen to him. The noise of his words began to get mixed
  with the buzz of the ball. Her eye mechanically followed Julien who
  had gone away, with an air which, though respectful, was yet proud
  and discontented. She noticed in a corner far from the moving crowd,
  the comte Altamira who had been condemned to death in his own country
  and whom the reader knows already. One of his relatives had married a
  Prince de Conti in the reign of Louis XIV. This historical fact was
  some protection against the police of the congregation.
  
  "I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction," said
  Mathilde. "It is the only thing which cannot be bought."
  
  "Why, that's an epigram, I just said, what a pity it did not come at a
  moment when I could have reaped all the credit for it." Mathilde had
  too much taste to work into the conversation a prepared epigram but
  at the same time she was too vain not to be extremely pleased with
  herself. A happy expression succeeded the palpable boredom of her face.
  The marquis de Croisenois, who had never left off talking, saw a chance
  of success and waxed twice as eloquent.
  
  "What objection could a caviller find with my epigram," said Mathilde
  to herself. "I would answer my critic in this way: The title of baron
  or vicomte is to be bought; a cross, why it is a gift. My brother
  has just got one. What has he done? A promotion, why that can be
  obtained by being ten years in a garrison or have the minister of war
  for a relative, and you'll be a chief of a squadron like Norbert. A
  great fortune! That's rather more difficult, and consequently more
  meritorious. It is really quite funny. It's the opposite of what
  the books say. Well, to win a fortune why you marry M. Rothschild's
  daughter. Really my epigram is quite deep. Being condemned to death is
  still the one privilege which one has never thought of canvassing."
  
  "Do you know the comte Altamira," she said to M. de Croisenois.
  
  Her thoughts seemed to have been so far away, and this question had
  so little connection with all that the poor marquis had been saying
  for the last five minutes, that his good temper was ruffled. He was
  nevertheless a man of wit and celebrated for being so.
  
  "Mathilde is eccentric," he thought, "that's a nuisance, but she will
  give her husband such a fine social position. I don't know how the
  marquis de la Mole manages. He is connected with all that is best in
  all parties. He is a man who is bound to come out on top. And, besides,
  this eccentricity of Mathilde's may pass for genius. Genius when allied
  with good birth and a large fortune, so far from being ridiculous, is
  highly distinguished. She has wit, moreover, when she wants to, that
  mixture in fact of brains, character, and ready wit which constitute
  perfection."
  
  As it is difficult to do two things at the same time, the marquis
  answered Mathilde with a vacant expression as though he were reciting a
  lesson.
  
  "Who does not know that poor Altamira?" and he told her the history of
  his conspiracy, abortive, ridiculous and absurd.
  
  "Very absurd," said Mathilde as if she were talking to herself, "but he
  has done something. I want to see a man; bring him to me," she said to
  the scandalized marquis.
  
  Comte Altamira was one of the most avowed admirers of mademoiselle de
  la Mole's haughty and impertinent manner. In his opinion she was one of
  the most beautiful persons in Paris.
  
  "How fine she would be on a throne," he said to M. de Croisenois; and
  made no demur at being taken up to Mathilde.
  
  There are a good number of people in society who would like to
  establish the fact that nothing is in such bad form as a conspiracy, in
  the nineteenth century; it smacks of Jacobinism. And what could be more
  sordid than unsuccessful Jacobinism.
  
  Mathilde's expression made fun a little of Altamira and M. de
  Croisenois, but she listened to him with pleasure.
  
  "A conspirator at a ball, what a pretty contrast," she thought. She
  thought that this man with his black moustache looked like a lion at
  rest, but she soon perceived that his mind had only one point of view:
  _utility, admiration for utility_.
  
  The young comte thought nothing worthy his attention except what tended
  to give his country two chamber government. He left Mathilde, who was
  the prettiest person at the ball, with alacrity, because he saw a
  Peruvian general come in. Desparing of Europe such as M. de Metternich
  had arranged it, poor Altamira had been reduced to thinking that when
  the States of South America had become strong and powerful they could
  restore to Europe the liberty which Mirabeau has given it.
  
  A crowd of moustachised young men had approached Mathilde. She realized
  that Altamira had not felt allured, and was piqued by his departure.
  She saw his black eye gleam as he talked to the Peruvian general.
  Mademoiselle de la Mole looked at the young Frenchmen with that
  profound seriousness which none of her rivals could imitate, "which
  of them," she thought, "could get himself condemned to death, even
  supposing he had a favourable opportunity?"
  
  This singular look flattered those who were not very intelligent, but
  disconcerted the others. They feared the discharge of some stinging
  epigram that would be difficult to answer.
  
  "Good birth vouchsafes a hundred qualities whose absence would offend
  me. I see as much in the case of Julien," thought Mathilde, "but it
  withers up those qualities of soul which make a man get condemned to
  death."
  
  At that moment some one was saying near her: "Comte Altamira is the
  second son of the Prince of San Nazaro-Pimentel; it was a Pimentel who
  tried to save Conradin, was beheaded in 1268. It is one of the noblest
  families in Naples."
  
  "So," said Mathilde to herself, "what a pretty proof this is of my
  maxim, that good birth deprives a man of that force of character
  in default of which a man does not get condemned to death. I seem
  doomed to reason falsely to-night. Since I am only a woman like any
  other, well I must dance." She yielded to the solicitations of M. de
  Croisenois who had been asking for a gallop for the last hour. To
  distract herself from her failure in philosophy, Mathilde made a point
  of being perfectly fascinating. M. de Croisenois was enchanted. But
  neither the dance nor her wish to please one of the handsomest men at
  court, nor anything at all, succeeded in distracting Mathilde. She
  could not possibly have been more of a success. She was the queen of
  the ball. She coldly appreciated the fact.
  
  "What a blank life I shall pass with a person like Croisenois," she
  said to herself as he took her back to her place an hour afterwards.
  "What pleasure do I get," she added sadly, "if after an absence of
  six months I find myself at a ball which all the women of Paris were
  mad with jealousy to go to? And what is more I am surrounded by the
  homage of an ideally constituted circle of society. The only bourgeois
  are some peers and perhaps one or two Juliens. And yet," she added
  with increasing sadness, "what advantages has not fate bestowed upon
  me! Distinction, fortune, youth, everything except happiness. My most
  dubious advantages are the very ones they have been speaking to me
  about all the evening. Wit, I believe I have it, because I obviously
  frighten everyone. If they venture to tackle a serious subject, they
  will arrive after five minutes of conversation and as though they had
  made a great discovery at a conclusion which we have been repeating to
  them for the last hour. I am beautiful, I have that advantage for which
  madame de Stael would have sacrificed everything, and yet I'm dying of
  boredom. Shall I have reason to be less bored when I have changed my
  name for that of the marquis de Croisenois?
  
  "My God though," she added, while she almost felt as if she would like
  to cry, "isn't he really quite perfect? He's a paragon of the education
  of the age; you can't look at him without his finding something
  charming and even witty to say to you; he is brave. But that Sorel is
  strange," she said to herself, and the expression of her eyes changed
  from melancholy to anger. "I told him that I had something to say to
  him and he hasn't deigned to reappear."
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER XXXIX
  
  THE BALL
  
  
          The luxurious dresses, the glitter of the candles; all
          those pretty arms and fine shoulders; the bouquets,
          the intoxicating strains of Rossini, the paintings of
          Ciceri. I am beside myself.--_Journeys of Useri_.
  
  
  "You are in a bad temper," said the marquise de la Mole to her; "let me
  caution you, it is ungracious at a ball."
  
  "I only have a headache," answered Mathilde disdainfully, "it is too
  hot here."
  
  At this moment the old Baron Tolly became ill and fell down, as though
  to justify mademoiselle de la Mole's remark. They were obliged to carry
  him away. They talked about apoplexy. It was a disagreeable incident.
  
  Mathilde did not bother much about it.
  
  She made a point of never looking at old men, or at anyone who had the
  reputation of being bad company.
  
  She danced in order to escape the conversation about the apoplexy,
  which was not apoplexy inasmuch as the baron put in an appearance the
  following day.
  
  "But Sorel does not come," she said to herself after she had danced.
  She was almost looking round for him when she found him in another
  salon. Astonishing, but he seemed to have lost that impassive coldness
  that was so natural to him; he no longer looked English.
  
  "He is talking to comte Altamira who was sentenced to death," said
  Mathilde to herself. "His eye is full of a sombre fire; he looks like a
  prince in disguise; his haughtiness has become twice as pronounced."
  
  Julien came back to where she was, still talking to Altamira. She
  looked at Altamira fixedly, studying his features in order to trace
  those lofty qualities which can earn a man the honour of being
  condemned to death.
  
  "Yes," he was saying to comte Altamira as he passed by her, "Danton was
  a real man."
  
  "Heavens can he be a Danton?" said Mathilde to herself, "but he has
  so noble a face, and that Danton was so horribly ugly, a butcher I
  believe." Julien was still fairly near her. She did not hesitate to
  call him; she had the consciousness and the pride of putting a question
  that was unusual for a young girl.
  
  "Was not Danton a butcher?" she said to him.
  
  "Yes, in the eyes of certain persons," Julien answered her with the
  most thinly disguised expression of contempt. His eyes were still
  ardent from his conversation with Altamira, "but unfortunately for
  the people of good birth he was an advocate at Mery-sur-Seine, that
  is to say, mademoiselle," he added maliciously, "he began like many
  peers whom I see here. It was true that Danton laboured under a great
  disadvantage in the eyes of beauty; he was ugly."
  
  These last few words were spoken rapidly in an extraordinary and indeed
  very discourteous manner.
  
  Julien waited for a moment, leaning slightly forward and with an air of
  proud humility. He seemed to be saying, "I am paid to answer you and I
  live on my pay." He did not deign to look up at Mathilde. She looked
  like his slave with her fine eyes open abnormally wide and fixed on
  him. Finally as the silence continued he looked at her, like a valet
  looking at his master to receive orders. Although his eyes met the full
  gaze of Mathilde which were fixed on him all the time with a strange
  expression, he went away with a marked eagerness.
  
  "To think of a man who is as handsome as he is," said Mathilde to
  herself as she emerged from her reverie, "praising ugliness in such a
  way, he is not like Caylus or Croisenois. This Sorel has something like
  my father's look when he goes to a fancy dress ball as Napoleon." She
  had completely forgotten Danton. "Yes, I am decidedly bored to-night."
  She took her brother's arm and to his great disgust made him take
  her round the ball-room. The idea occurred to her of following the
  conversation between Julien and the man who had been condemned to
  death.
  
  The crowd was enormous. She managed to find them, however, at the
  moment when two yards in front of her Altamira was going near a
  dumb-waiter to take an ice. He was talking to Julien with his body half
  turned round. He saw an arm in an embroidered coat which was taking an
  ice close by. The embroidery seemed to attract his attention. He turned
  round to look at the person to whom the arm belonged. His noble and yet
  simple eyes immediately assumed a slightly disdainful expression.
  
  "You see that man," he said to Julien in a low voice; "that is the
  Prince of Araceli Ambassador of ----. He asked M. de Nerval, your
  Minister for Foreign Affairs, for my extradition this morning. See,
  there he is over there playing whist. Monsieur de Nerval is willing
  enough to give me up, for we gave up two or three conspirators to you
  in 1816. If I am given up to my king I shall be hanged in twenty-four
  hours. It will be one of those handsome moustachioed gentlemen who will
  arrest me."
  
  "The wretches!" exclaimed Julien half aloud.
  
  Mathilde did not lose a syllable of their conversation. Her ennui had
  vanished.
  
  "They are not scoundrels," replied Count Altamira. "I talk to you about
  myself in order to give you a vivid impression. Look at the Prince of
  Araceli. He casts his eyes on his golden fleece every five minutes; he
  cannot get over the pleasure of seeing that decoration on his breast.
  In reality the poor man is really an anachronism. The fleece was a
  signal honour a hundred years ago, but he would have been nowhere
  near it in those days. But nowadays, so far as people of birth are
  concerned, you have to be an Araceli to be delighted with it. He had a
  whole town hanged in order to get it."
  
  "Is that the price he had to pay?" said Julien anxiously.
  
  "Not exactly," answered Altamira coldly, "he probably had about thirty
  rich landed proprietors in his district who had the reputation of being
  Liberals thrown into the river."
  
  "What a monster!" pursued Julien.
  
  Mademoiselle de la Mole who was leaning her head forward with keenest
  interest was so near him that her beautiful hair almost touched his
  shoulder.
  
  "You are very young," answered Altamira. "I was telling you that I had
  a married sister in Provence. She is still pretty, good and gentle; she
  is an excellent mother, performs all her duties faithfully, is pious
  but not a bigot."
  
  "What is he driving at?" thought mademoiselle de la Mole.
  
  "She is happy," continued the comte Altamira; "she was so in 1815. I
  was then in hiding at her house on her estate near the Antibes. Well
  the moment she learnt of marshall Ney's execution she began to dance."
  
  "Is it possible?" said Julien, thunderstruck.
  
  "It's party spirit," replied Altamira. "There are no longer any real
  passions in the nineteenth century: that's why one is so bored in
  France. People commit acts of the greatest cruelty, but without any
  feeling of cruelty."
  
  "So much the worse," said Julien, "when one does commit a crime one
  ought at least to take pleasure in committing it; that's the only good
  thing they have about them and that's the only way in which they have
  the slightest justification."
  
  Mademoiselle de la Mole had entirely forgotten what she owed to herself
  and placed herself completely between Altamira and Julien. Her brother,
  who was giving her his arm, and was accustomed to obey her, was
  looking at another part of the room, and in order to keep himself in
  countenance was pretending to be stopped by the crowd.
  
  "You are right," Altamira went on, "one takes pleasure in nothing one
  does, and one does not remember it: this applies even to crimes. I can
  show you perhaps ten men in this ballroom who have been convicted of
  murder. They have forgotten all about it and everybody else as well."
  
  "Many are moved to the point of tears if their dog breaks a paw.
  When you throw flowers on their grave at Pere-la-Chaise, as you say
  so humorously in Paris, we learn they united all the virtues of the
  knights of chivalry, and we speak about the noble feats of their
  great-grandfather who lived in the reign of Henri IV. If, in spite of
  the good offices of the Prince de Araceli, I escape hanging and I ever
  manage to enjoy the use of my money in Paris, I will get you to dine
  with eight or ten of these respected and callous murderers.
  
  "At that dinner you and I will be the only ones whose blood is pure,
  but I shall be despised and almost hated as a monster, while you will
  be simply despised as a man of the people who has pushed his way into
  good society."
  
  "Nothing could be truer," said mademoiselle de la Mole.
  
  Altamira looked at her in astonishment; but Julien did not deign to
  look at her.
  
  "Observe that the revolution, at whose head I found myself," continued
  the comte Altamira, "only failed for the one reason that I would not
  cut off three heads and distribute among our partisans seven or eight
  millions which happened to be in a box of which I happened to have the
  key. My king, who is burning to have me hanged to-day, and who called
  me by my christian name before the rebellion, would have given me the
  great ribbon of his order if I had had those three heads cut off and
  had had the money in those boxes distributed; for I should have had at
  least a semi-success and my country would have had a charta like ----.
  So wags the world; it's a game of chess."
  
  "At that time," answered Julien with a fiery eye, "you did not know the
  game; now...."
  
  "You mean I would have the heads cut off, and I would not be a
  Girondin, as you said I was the other day? I will give you your
  answer," said Altamira sadly, "when you have killed a man in a duel--a
  far less ugly matter than having him put to death by an executioner."
  
  "Upon my word," said Julien, "the end justifies the means. If instead
  of being an insignificant man I had some power I would have three men
  hanged in order to save four men's lives."
  
  His eyes expressed the fire of his own conscience; they met the eyes of
  mademoiselle de la Mole who was close by him, and their contempt, so
  far from changing into politeness seemed to redouble.
  
  She was deeply shocked; but she found herself unable to forget Julien;
  she dragged her brother away and went off in a temper.
  
  "I must take some punch and dance a lot," she said to herself. "I will
  pick out the best partner and cut some figure at any price. Good, there
  is that celebrated cynic, the comte de Fervaques." She accepted his
  invitation; they danced. "The question is," she thought, "which of us
  two will be the more impertinent, but in order to make absolute fun
  of him, I must get him to talk." Soon all the other members of the
  quadrille were dancing as a matter of formality, they did not want to
  lose any of Mathilde's cutting reparte. M. de Fervaques felt uneasy and
  as he could only find elegant expressions instead of ideas, began to
  scowl. Mathilde, who was in a bad temper was cruel, and made an enemy
  of him. She danced till daylight and then went home terribly tired.
  But when she was in the carriage the little vitality she had left, was
  still employed in making her sad and unhappy. She had been despised by
  Julien and could not despise him.
  
  Julien was at the zenith of his happiness. He was enchanted without
  his knowing it by the music, the flowers, the pretty women, the
  general elegance, and above all by his own imagination which dreamt of
  distinctions for himself and of liberty for all.
  
  "What a fine ball," he said to the comte. "Nothing is lacking."
  
  "Thought is lacking" answered Altamira, and his face betrayed that
  contempt which is only more deadly from the very fact that a manifest
  effort is being made to hide it as a matter of politeness.
  
  "You are right, monsieur the comte, there isn't any thought at all, let
  alone enough to make a conspiracy."
  
  "I am here because of my name, but thought is hated in your salons.
  Thought must not soar above the level of the point of a Vaudeville
  couplet: it is then rewarded. But as for your man who thinks, if he
  shows energy and originality we call him a cynic. Was not that name
  given by one of your judges to Courier. You put him in prison as
  well as Beranger. The priestly congregation hands over to the police
  everyone who is worth anything amongst you individually; and good
  society applauds.
  
  "The fact is your effete society prizes conventionalism above
  everything else. You will never get beyond military bravery. You will
  have Murats, never Washingtons. I can see nothing in France except
  vanity. A man who goes on speaking on the spur of the moment may easily
  come to make an imprudent witticism and the master of the house thinks
  himself insulted."
  
  As he was saying this, the carriage in which the comte was seeing
  Julien home stopped before the Hotel de la Mole. Julien was in love
  with his conspirator. Altamira had paid him this great compliment which
  was evidently the expression of a sound conviction. "You have not got
  the French flippancy and you understand the principle of _utility_."
  It happened that Julien had seen the day before _Marino Faliero_, a
  tragedy, by Casmir Delavigne.
  
  "Has not Israel Bertuccio got more character than all those noble
  Venetians?" said our rebellious plebeian to himself, "and yet those
  are the people whose nobility goes back to the year seven hundred, a
  century before Charlemagne, while the cream of the nobility at M. de
  Ritz's ball to-night only goes back, and that rather lamely, to the
  thirteenth century. Well, in spite of all the noble Venetians whose
  birth makes so great, it is Israel Bertuccio whom one remembers.
  
  "A conspiracy annihilates all titles conferred by social caprice.
  There, a man takes for his crest the rank that is given him by the way
  in which he faces death. The intellect itself loses some of its power.
  
  "What would Danton have been to-day in this age of the Valenods and the
  Renals? Not even a deputy for the Public Prosecutor.
  
  "What am I saying? He would have sold himself to the priests, he
  would have been a minister, for after all the great Danton did steal.
  Mirabeau also sold himself. Napoleon stole millions in Italy, otherwise
  he would have been stopped short in his career by poverty like
  Pichegru. Only La Fayette refrained from stealing. Ought one to steal,
  ought one to sell oneself?" thought Julien. This question pulled him up
  short. He passed the rest of the night in reading the history of the
  revolution.
  
  When he wrote his letters in the library the following day, his mind
  was still concentrated on his conversation with count Altamira.
  
  "As a matter of fact," he said to himself after a long reverie, "If the
  Spanish Liberals had not injured their nation by crimes they would not
  have been cleared out as easily as they were.
  
  "They were haughty, talkative children--just like I am!" he suddenly
  exclaimed as though waking up with a start.
  
  "What difficulty have I surmounted that entitles me to judge such
  devils who, once alive, dared to begin to act. I am like a man who
  exclaims at the close of a meal, 'I won't dine to-morrow; but that
  won't prevent me from feeling as strong and merry like I do to-day.'
  Who knows what one feels when one is half-way through a great action?"
  
  These lofty thoughts were disturbed by the unexpected arrival in
  the library of mademoiselle de la Mole. He was so animated by his
  admiration for the great qualities of such invincibles as Danton,
  Mirabeau, and Carnot that, though he fixed his eyes on mademoiselle de
  la Mole, he neither gave her a thought nor bowed to her, and scarcely
  even saw her. When finally his big, open eyes realized her presence,
  their expression vanished. Mademoiselle de la Mole noticed it with
  bitterness.
  
  It was in vain that she asked him for Vely's History of France which
  was on the highest shelf, and thus necessitated Julien going to fetch
  the longer of the two ladders. Julien had brought the ladder and had
  fetched the volume and given it to her, but had not yet been able to
  give her a single thought. As he was taking the ladder back he hit
  in his hurry one of the glass panes in the library with his elbow;
  the noise of the glass falling on the floor finally brought him to
  himself. He hastened to apologise to mademoiselle de la Mole. He tried
  to be polite and was certainly nothing more. Mathilde saw clearly that
  she had disturbed him, and that he would have preferred to have gone
  on thinking about what he had been engrossed in before her arrival,
  to speaking to her. After looking at him for some time she went
  slowly away. Julien watched her walk. He enjoyed the contrast of her
  present dress with the elegant magnificence of the previous night. The
  difference between the two expressions was equally striking. The young
  girl who had been so haughty at the Duke de Retz's ball, had, at the
  present moment, an almost plaintive expression. "As a matter of fact,"
  said Julien to himself, "that black dress makes the beauty of her
  figure all the more striking. She has a queenly carriage; but why is
  she in mourning?"
  
  "If I ask someone the reason for this mourning, they will think I am
  putting my foot in it again." Julien had now quite emerged from the
  depth of his enthusiasm. "I must read over again all the letters I have
  written this morning. God knows how many missed out words and blunders
  I shall find. As he was forcing himself to concentrate his mind on the
  first of these letters he heard the rustle of a silk dress near him.
  He suddenly turned round, mademoiselle de la Mole was two yards from
  his table, she was smiling. This second interruption put Julien into a
  bad temper. Mathilde had just fully realized that she meant nothing to
  this young man. Her smile was intended to hide her embarrassment; she
  succeeded in doing so.
  
  "You are evidently thinking of something very interesting, Monsieur
  Sorel. Is it not some curious anecdote about that conspiracy which
  is responsible for comte Altamira being in Paris? Tell me what it is
  about, I am burning to know. I will be discreet, I swear it." She was
  astonished at hearing herself utter these words. What! was she asking a
  favour of an inferior! Her embarrassment increased, and she added with
  a little touch of flippancy,
  
  "What has managed to turn such a usually cold person as yourself, into
  an inspired being, a kind of Michael Angelo prophet?"
  
  This sharp and indiscreet question wounded Julien deeply, and rendered
  him madder than ever.
  
  "Was Danton right in stealing?" he said to her brusquely in a manner
  that grew more and more surly. "Ought the revolutionaries of Piedmont
  and of Spain to have injured the people by crimes? To have given all
  the places in the army and all the orders to undeserving persons? Would
  not the persons who wore these orders have feared the return of the
  king? Ought they to have allowed the treasure of Turin to be looted?
  In a word, mademoiselle," he said, coming near her with a terrifying
  expression, "ought the man who wishes to chase ignorance and crime from
  the world to pass like the whirlwind and do evil indiscriminately?"
  
  Mathilde felt frightened, was unable to stand his look, and retreated a
  couples of paces. She looked at him a moment, and then ashamed of her
  own fear, left the library with a light step.
  
  
  
  
  
  
target: Julien instantly feels like a noble when he arrives in Paris. While buying boots, he is registered as Julien de Sorel. M. Pirard warns him against becoming a Parisian fop. He cautions that Julien's provincial background will be a source of ridicule for many of the Parisian aristocrats he will meet. But Julien pays no attention to Pirard, completely overwhelmed by the beauty and luxury of the Hotel de la Mole. Pirard's advice does prove helpful, since Julien must immediately impress the eclectic group of Parisians at the Marquis de la Mole's salon. But Julien soon realizes that he does not fit in. He tries to go riding with Comte Norbert, the Marquis'ss son, but falls off his horse. His social blunders make him feel isolated and resented by the servants of the house. Julien begins to distrust the members of the salon, who have been asking favors of the Marquis for years and soon see Julien as an enemy. He also grows bored with these members of Parisian society, but notices that Mathilde, the Marquis's daughter, is often yawning too. To overcome his boredom, Julien tries to lead an aristocratic lifestyle. He learns to fence, shoot, and ride expensive horses. He soon grows arrogant and, because of an argument in a cafe, ends up fighting a duel with a famous nobleman, M. de Beauvoisis. Julien is wounded in the arm, but de Beauvoisis is so embarrassed after discovering that Julien is just a carpenter's son that he spreads a rumor that Julien is the illegitimate son of one of the Marquis de la Mole's close friends. This turn of events ironically brings Julien and the Marquis closer together. After the latter has an attack of gout, Julien spends a great deal of time with him and they become friends. Although the Marquis gives Julien advice on how to succeed in Paris, he only treats Julien as an equal when Julien is dressed properly. When Julien wears his habitual black suit instead of the blue one given to him by the Marquis, he remains a simple secretary. However, Julien does rise in the family's esteem. While dancing at a ball, Julien and Mathilde begin to attract each other's attention.
feat_summary_analysis: Commentary In Stendhal's time, Paris was not just the capital of France, but the world. Julien has spent his whole life preparing for his grand entrance on the Parisian stage. However, his provincial background proves to be an even greater impediment than his "low" birth. He is thus not ready for two major aspects of Parisian life: ridicule and boredom. Julien is able to fend off a number of witticisms at the salon but still ends up being ridiculed when he falls off his horse. Boredom is also a significant theme in the novel. Stendhal claims that, since Napoleon's fall in 1814, France became a passionless society. He felt that the Restoration, with its hypocritical emphasis on piety, had taken all the pleasure out of day-to-day interactions. As a result, most of the Parisian aristocrats are terribly bored, something which takes a provincial man like Julien by surprise. This proves to be an advantage to Julien, since many of the nobles he meets, and especially Mathilde, find him to be very interesting. Everyone seems to be scheming about how to best impress the Marquis. Julien even meets M. Valenod at the salon, who has been made a baron by the Marquis. Stendhal's use of irony to condemn modern French politics is especially strong in this passage, when Valenod tells Julien that M. de Renal is no longer the mayor of Verrieres and is suspected of being a liberal. The ease with which M. Valenod and M. de Renal have changed parties reveals the farcical natures of Restoration politics and French society. But Julien stands out among the "den of thieves intriguers" who make up the Marquis's salon. Despite his ambitious nature, he doesn't try to flatter the Marquis. However, Julien's hard work does impress the Marquis, and he soon begins to treat Julien like a surrogate son. He gives Julien a blue suit to wear when they spend time together. Unlike Julien's previous father-figures, such as M. Chelan and M. Pirard, the Marquis does take account of Julien's social class. Whenever Julien wears his own black suit, the Marquis treats him like an employee. Stendhal is not only criticizing the aristocracy's inherent snobbishness, but the superficial nature of French society during the Restoration: people are defined by the clothes they wear. Just as Julien can be a soldier one minute and a priest the next simply by changing his clothes, the Marquis sees Julien differently based on the color of his suit.