Part 24

He and his witness were kept waiting three good quarters of an hour; at last they were shown into an apartment of admirable elegance. They found a tall young man in a pink-orange and white frock coat, dressed like a doll; his features offered the perfection and insignificance of Greek beauty. His head, remarkably narrow, bore a pyramid of the finest blond hair. They were curled with great care, not a single hair overlapped another. It is to have his hair curled like that, thought the lieutenant of the 96th, that this damned fop made us wait. The brocaded dressing gown, the morning trousers, everything, down to the embroidered slippers, was correct and marvellously well cared for. His countenance, noble and vacant, announced proper ideas and rare ones—the ideal of an agreeable man, horror of the unforeseen and of joking, a great deal of gravity.

Julien, to whom his lieutenant of the 96th had explained that to keep them waiting so long, after having so rudely flung his card in his face, was an added insult, entered M. de Beauvoisis's rooms abruptly. He intended to be insolent, but would at the same time have liked to be in good form.

He was so struck by the gentleness of M. de Beauvoisis's manners, by his bearing at once stiff, important and self-satisfied, by the admirable elegance of all around him, that in the twinkling of an eye he lost all thought of being insolent. This was not his man of the previous day. His astonishment at encountering so distinguished a being instead of the boorish person met at the café was such that he could not find a single word. He presented one of the cards that had been flung at him.

—That is my name, said the man of fashion, upon whom Julien's black coat at seven in the morning inspired but little regard; but I do not understand, upon my honour...

The manner of pronouncing these last words restored to Julien part of his humour.

—I have come to fight you, sir, and he explained the whole affair in a breath.

M. Charles de Beauvoisis, having maturely reflected upon it, was rather pleased with the cut of Julien's black coat. It is from Staub, that is clear, he said to himself as he listened to him; that waistcoat is in good taste, those boots are well made; but, on the other hand, this black coat so early in the morning!... It will be to better escape the bullet, said the chevalier de Beauvoisis to himself.

As soon as he had found this explanation, he returned to perfect politeness, and almost as one equal to another towards Julien. The colloquy was rather long, the matter was delicate, but at last Julien could not refuse the evidence. The well-born young man before him bore no point of resemblance to the boorish person who had insulted him the day before.

Julien felt an invincible repugnance to take his leave; he prolonged the explanation. He observed the self-sufficiency of the chevalier de Beauvoisis, as he had called himself in speaking of himself, offended that Julien addressed him simply as sir.

He admired his gravity, mingled with a certain modest conceit, but which never left him for an instant. He was astonished at his singular way of moving his tongue in pronouncing words... But after all, in all this there was not the slightest reason to pick a quarrel with him.

The young diplomat offered to fight with much grace, but the ex-lieutenant of the 96th, seated for an hour, legs apart, hands on his thighs, and elbows outwards, decided that his friend M. Sorel was not made to pick a German-style quarrel with a man, because that man had had his visiting cards stolen.

Julien left in a very bad humour. The chevalier de Beauvoisis's carriage awaited him in the courtyard, before the steps; by chance, Julien raised his eyes and recognised his man of the previous day in the coachman.

To see him, pull him by his great jacket, drag him from his seat and overwhelm him with blows of the whip was but the work of an instant. Two footmen would have defended their comrade; Julien received blows with the fist: at the same instant he cocked one of his small pistols and fired at them; they took to flight. All this was the work of a minute.

The chevalier de Beauvoisis was coming down the stairs with the most comical gravity, repeating in his great-lord pronunciation:

—What is this? what is this?

He was evidently vastly curious, but diplomatic importance did not permit him to show more interest. When he knew what it was about, haughtiness disputed in his features with the slightly playful coolness that must never leave a diplomat's face.

The lieutenant of the 96th understood that M. de Beauvoisis had a mind to fight; he wished, diplomatically also, to preserve his friend the advantages of the initiative.

—This time, cried he, here is matter for a duel!

—I should think so, replied the diplomat.

—I dismiss this scoundrel, said he to his footmen; let another mount.

The carriage door was opened: the chevalier absolutely insisted on doing the honours of it to Julien and his witness. They went to fetch a friend of M. de Beauvoisis, who indicated a quiet spot. The conversation on the way was truly pleasant. The only singular thing was the diplomat in his dressing gown.

These gentlemen, though very noble, thought Julien, are not tiresome like the persons who come to dine with M. de La Mole, and I see why, he added an instant later: they allow themselves to be indecent. They spoke of the dancers whom the public had distinguished in a ballet given the night before. These gentlemen alluded to piquant anecdotes of which Julien and his witness, the lieutenant of the 96th, were utterly ignorant. Julien had not the folly to pretend to know them; he frankly avowed his ignorance. This frankness pleased the friend of the chevalier, who related these anecdotes to him in the greatest detail, and very well.

One thing astonished Julien infinitely. A temporary altar that was being built in the middle of the street, for the Corpus Christi procession, stopped the carriage for an instant. These gentlemen permitted themselves several jests; the curate, according to them, was the son of an archbishop. Never at the marquis de La Mole's, who wished to be a duke, would one have dared utter such a word.

The duel was over in an instant: Julien had a bullet in the arm, they bound it with handkerchiefs; they moistened them with brandy and the chevalier de Beauvoisis very politely begged Julien to allow him to take him home in the same carriage that had brought him. When Julien indicated the Hôtel de La Mole, there was an exchange of glances between the young diplomat and his friend. Julien's cab was there, but he found the conversation of these gentlemen infinitely more amusing than that of the good lieutenant of the 96th.

Good heavens! a duel, is that all? thought Julien. How happy I am to have found this coachman again! What would my misfortune have been, had I had to swallow that insult still in a café! The amusing conversation had scarce been interrupted. Julien then understood that diplomatic affectation is good for something.

Boredom is then not inherent, he said to himself, to a conversation among high-born people! These jest about the Corpus Christi procession, they dare tell, and with picturesque detail, very scandalous anecdotes. They lack absolutely nothing but reasoning upon political matters, and that lack is more than compensated by the grace of their tone and the perfect correctness of their expressions. Julien felt a lively inclination towards them. How happy I should be to see them often!

Scarcely had they parted, than the chevalier de Beauvoisis ran to make inquiries: they were not brilliant.

He was vastly curious to know his man; could he decently pay him a visit? The little information he could obtain was not of an encouraging nature.

—All this is dreadful! said he to his witness. It is impossible that I admit to having fought with a mere secretary of M. de La Mole, and moreover because my coachman stole my visiting cards.

—It is sure that there would be in all this a possibility of the ridiculous.

That very evening the chevalier de Beauvoisis and his friend said everywhere that this M. Sorel, otherwise a perfect young man, was the natural son of an intimate friend of the marquis de La Mole. This fact passed without difficulty. Once it was established, the young diplomat and his friend deigned to pay Julien a few visits, during the fortnight he spent in his room. Julien confessed to them that he had been to the Opera but once in his life.

—That is frightful, they told him, one goes nowhere but there; your first outing must be for the Comte Ory.

At the Opera, the chevalier de Beauvoisis presented him to the famous singer Geronimo, who then had an immense success.

Julien almost paid court to the chevalier; this mixture of respect for himself, of mysterious importance and of young-man conceit enchanted him. For example the chevalier stammered a little, because he had the honour of often seeing a great lord who had that defect. Never had Julien found united in a single being the ridiculous that amuses and the perfection of manners that a poor provincial must seek to imitate.

He was seen at the Opera with the chevalier de Beauvoisis; this connection caused his name to be pronounced.

—Well! said M. de La Mole to him one day, so you are the natural son of a rich gentleman of Franche-Comté, my intimate friend?

The marquis cut short Julien, who wished to protest that he had in no way contributed to spreading this rumour.

—M. de Beauvoisis would not have it that he fought against the son of a carpenter.

—I know, I know, said M. de La Mole; it is for me now to give substance to this tale, which suits me. But I have a favour to ask of you, and which will cost you but a small half-hour of your time: every Opera day, at half past eleven, go and stand in the vestibule at the departure of the fashionable world. I still see in you now and then some provincial ways, you must rid yourself of them, besides it is not amiss to know, at least by sight, great personages near whom I may one day give you some mission. Call at the box office to have yourself recognised; they have given you the entrées.

CHAPTER VII

AN ATTACK OF GOUT

And I had advancement, not for my merit, but because my master had the gout.

BERTOLOTTI.

The reader is perhaps surprised at this free and almost friendly tone; we have forgotten to say that, for six weeks, the marquis had been kept at home by an attack of gout.

Mlle de La Mole and her mother were at Hyères, near the marchioness's mother. Count Norbert saw his father but for moments, they were very well disposed towards each other, but had nothing to say. M. de La Mole, reduced to Julien, was astonished to find him possessed of ideas. He had papers read to him. Soon the young secretary was able to choose the interesting passages. There was a new paper that the marquis abhorred; he had sworn never to read it, and spoke of it every day. Julien laughed and admired the poverty of the duel between power and an idea. This pettiness of the marquis restored to him all the coolness he was tempted to lose in spending evenings tête-à-tête with so great a lord. The marquis, irritated against the present time, had Titus Livius read to him; the improvised translation upon the Latin text amused him.

One day the marquis said, with that tone of excessive politeness which often impatiented Julien:

—Permit me, my dear Sorel, to make you a gift of a blue coat: when it shall suit you to take it and come to me, you will be, in my eyes, the younger brother of the Count de Retz, that is to say the son of my friend the old duke.

Julien did not quite understand what it was about; that very evening, he tried a visit in the blue coat. The marquis treated him as an equal. Julien had a heart worthy to feel true politeness, but he had no idea of the shades. He would have sworn, before this whim of the marquis, that it was impossible to be received by him with more regard. What an admirable talent! said Julien to himself; when he rose to leave, the marquis apologised for not being able to accompany him because of his gout.

This singular idea occupied Julien: is he mocking me? he thought. He went to ask counsel of the abbé Pirard, who, less polite than the marquis, answered him only by whistling and speaking of something else. The next morning, Julien presented himself to the marquis, in black coat, with his portfolio and his letters to sign. He was received in the old manner. In the evening in blue coat, it was a quite different tone and absolutely as polite as the night before.

—Since you do not too much weary of the visits you have the kindness to pay a poor sick old man, said the marquis to him, you must tell him of all the little incidents of your life, but frankly and without thinking of aught but to relate clearly and in an amusing way. For one must amuse oneself, continued the marquis; there is nothing real but that in life. A man cannot save my life in war every day, or make me a gift of a million every day; but if I had Rivarol here, by my day-bed, every day he would take from me an hour of suffering and boredom. I saw much of him at Hamburg, during the emigration.

And the marquis told Julien the anecdotes of Rivarol with the Hamburgers who associated four to a man to understand a bon mot.

M. de La Mole, reduced to the society of this little abbé, wished to pique him. He challenged the pride of Julien. Since the truth was asked of him, Julien resolved to tell all; but concealing two things: his fanatical admiration for a name that put the marquis in a humour, and the perfect incredulity that did not too well befit a future curate. His little affair with the chevalier de Beauvoisis came most opportunely. The marquis laughed till he wept at the scene in the café in the rue Saint-Honoré with the coachman who overwhelmed him with filthy insults. This was the epoch of a perfect frankness in the relations between master and protégé.

M. de La Mole interested himself in this singular character. At first, he petted Julien's absurdities, in order to enjoy them; soon he found more interest in gently correcting the false ways of seeing of this young man. The other provincials who arrive in Paris admire everything, thought the marquis; this one hates everything. They have too much affectation, he has not enough, and fools take him for a fool.

The attack of gout was prolonged by the great colds of winter and lasted several months.

One grows attached well enough to a fine spaniel, said the marquis to himself, why should I be so ashamed to grow attached to this little abbé? he is original. I treat him as a son, well then! where is the inconvenience? This fancy, if it lasts, will cost me a diamond of five hundred louis in my will.

Once the marquis had understood the firm character of his protégé, each day he charged him with some new business.

Julien remarked with dread that it happened to this great lord to give him contradictory decisions upon the same object.

This might compromise him gravely. Julien no longer worked with the marquis without bringing a register upon which he wrote the decisions, and the marquis paragraphed them. Julien had taken a clerk who transcribed the decisions relative to each affair into a particular register. This register also received the copy of all letters.

This idea seemed at first the height of the ridiculous and the tiresome. But, in less than two months, the marquis felt the advantages of it. Julien proposed to him to take a clerk from a banker's, who would keep in double entry the account of all receipts and all expenses of the estates Julien was charged with administering.

These measures so clarified the marquis's own affairs in his eyes, that he could give himself the pleasure of undertaking two or three new speculations without the help of his straw man who robbed him.

—Take three thousand francs for yourself, said he one day to his young minister.

—Sir, my conduct may be calumniated.

—What is it you need then? resumed the marquis with ill humour.

—That you will be so good as to take a resolution and write it with your hand in the register; that resolution will give me a sum of three thousand francs. After all, it is M. l'abbé Pirard who had the idea of all this accounting. The marquis, with the bored air of the marquis de Moncade listening to the accounts of M. Poisson, his steward, wrote the decision.

In the evening, when Julien appeared in blue coat, there was never any question of business. The kindnesses of the marquis were so flattering to the ever-suffering self-love of our hero, that soon, in spite of himself, he felt a sort of attachment for this amiable old man. It is not that Julien was sensitive, as they understand it in Paris; but he was not a monster, and no one, since the death of the old surgeon-major, had spoken to him with so much kindness. He remarked with astonishment that the marquis had for his self-love those polite considerations which he had never found in the old surgeon-major. He understood at last that the surgeon was prouder of his cross than the marquis of his blue ribbon. The marquis's father was a great lord.

One day, at the end of a morning audience, in black coat and for business, Julien amused the marquis, who kept him two hours, and absolutely wished to give him some bank notes that his straw man had just brought him from the Bourse.

—I hope, Monsieur le Marquis, not to depart from the profound respect I owe you in beseeching you to permit me a word.

—Speak, my friend.

—That Monsieur le Marquis deign to suffer me to refuse this gift. It is not addressed to the man in black coat, and it would quite spoil the ways that one has the kindness to tolerate in the man in blue coat.

He bowed with much respect, and went out without looking back.

This trait amused the marquis. He told it that evening to the abbé Pirard.

—I must at last confess one thing to you, my dear abbé. I know Julien's birth, and I authorise you not to keep the secret of this confidence from me.

His proceeding this morning is noble, thought the marquis, and I ennoble him.

Some time after, the marquis could at last go out.

—Go spend two months in London, said he to Julien. The extraordinary couriers and others will bring you the letters received by me with my notes. You will make the replies and send them back to me, putting each letter in its reply. I have calculated that the delay will be but five days.

Posting along the road to Calais, Julien wondered at the futility of the pretended business for which he was sent.

We shall not say with what sentiment of hatred and almost of horror he touched English soil. His mad passion for Bonaparte is known. He saw in every officer a Sir Hudson Lowe, in every great lord a Lord Bathurst, ordaining the infamies of Saint Helena and receiving the reward by ten years of ministry.

In London, he at last knew high conceit. He had allied himself with young Russian lords who initiated him.

—You are predestined, my dear Sorel, they told him, you naturally have that cold look and a thousand leagues from the present sensation, which we seek so much to give ourselves.

—You have not understood your century, said Prince Korasoff to him: Always do the contrary of what is expected of you. That, upon my honour, is the only religion of the epoch; be neither mad nor affected, for then they would expect follies and affectations of you, and the precept would no longer be fulfilled.

Julien covered himself with glory one day in the salon of the Duke of Fitz-Folke, who had invited him to dinner, as well as Prince Korasoff. They waited for an hour. The way Julien conducted himself, amid the twenty persons who waited, is still cited among the young embassy secretaries in London. His look was priceless.

He wished to see, despite the jests of the dandies his friends, the celebrated Philippe Vane, the only philosopher England has had since Locke. He found him finishing his seventh year of imprisonment. Aristocracy does not jest in this country, thought Julien; moreover, Vane is dishonoured, vilified, etc.

Julien found him hearty; the rage of the aristocracy amused him. There, said Julien on leaving prison, is the only gay man I have seen in England.

The idea most useful to tyrants is that of God, Vane had said to him...

We suppress the rest of the system as cynical.

On his return:

—What amusing idea do you bring me from England? said M. de La Mole...

He was silent.

—What idea do you bring, amusing or not? resumed the marquis briskly.

—Primo, said Julien, the wisest Englishman is mad one hour a day; he is visited by the demon of suicide, who is the god of the country.

2º Wit and genius lose twenty-five per cent of their value on landing in England.

3º Nothing in the world is beautiful, admirable, touching like the English landscapes.

—My turn, said the marquis:

Primo, why go and say, at the ball at the Russian ambassador's, that there are in France three hundred thousand young men of twenty-five who passionately desire war? do you believe that to be obliging towards kings?

—One does not know how to act in speaking to our great diplomats, said Julien. They have the mania of opening serious discussions. If one keeps to the commonplaces of the newspapers, one passes for a fool. If one permits oneself something true and new, they are astonished, know not what to reply, and the next morning, at seven o'clock, they have you told by the first secretary of embassy that you have been improper.

—Not bad, said the marquis laughing. After all, I wager, Monsieur the profound man, that you have not guessed what you went to do in England.

—Pardon me, resumed Julien; I went there to dine once a week at the king's ambassador's, who is the most polite of men.

—You went to seek the cross that is there, said the marquis to him. I do not wish to make you quit your black coat and I am accustomed to the more amusing tone I have taken with the man wearing the blue coat. Until further orders, understand this well: when I see that cross you will be the younger brother of my friend the Duke de Retz, who, without suspecting it, has for six months been employed in diplomacy. Note, added the marquis, with a very serious air, and cutting short the thanks, that I do not wish to take you out of your state. It is always a fault and a misfortune for the protector as for the protégé. When my lawsuits weary you, or you no longer suit me, I shall ask for you a good living, such as that of our friend the abbé Pirard, and no more, added the marquis in a very dry tone.

This cross set Julien's pride at ease; he spoke much more. He believed himself less often offended and made game of by those speeches, susceptible of some impolite explanation and which, in an animated conversation, may escape everyone.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”