LITMIR.BIZ

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good of fining him a thousand crowns? He is poor, very well, all the better; but his party will pay the fine for him. It should have been a fine of five hundred francs and ten years in a dungeon.’

      ‘Good God! Who can the monster be that they are discussing?’ thought Julien, marvelling at his colleague’s vehement tone and stilted gestures. The thin, drawn little face of the Academician’s favourite nephew was hideous as he spoke. Julien soon learned that the person in question was the greatest poet of the day.^[7]

      ‘Ah, monster!’ exclaimed Julien, half aloud, and generous tears sprang to his eyes. ‘Ah, little wretch, I shall make you eat those words.

      ‘And yet these,’ he thought, ‘are the waifs and strays of the party of which the Marquis is one of the leaders! And that illustrious man whom he is slandering, how many Crosses, how many sinecures might he not have collected, if he had sold himself, I do not say to the lifeless Ministry of M. de Nerval, but to one of those passably honest Ministers whom we have seen succeed one another in office?’

      The abbe Pirard beckoned to Julien; M. de La Mole had just been saying something to him. But when Julien, who at the moment was listening, with lowered gaze, to the lamentations of a Bishop, was free to move, and able to join his friend, he found him monopolised by that abominable young Tanbeau. The little monster loathed him as the source of the favour that Julien enjoyed, and had come to pay court to him.

      ‘When will death rid us of that old mass of corruption?’ It was in these terms, with Biblical emphasis, that the little man of letters was speaking at that moment of the eminent Lord Holland. His chief merit was a thorough knowledge of the biography of living men, and he had just been making a rapid survey of all those who might aspire to positions of influence under the new King of England.

      The abbe Pirard moved into an adjoining room; Julien followed him.

      ‘The Marquis does not like scribblers, I warn you; it is his one antipathy. Know Latin, Greek if you can, the History of the Egyptians, of the Persians, and so forth; he will honour you and protect you as a scholar. But do not go and write a single page in French, especially upon grave subjects, that are above your position in society; he would call you a scribbler, and would take a dislike to you. What, living in a great nobleman’s mansion, don’t you know the Duc de Castries’s saying about d’Alembert and Rousseau: “That sort of fellow wishes to argue about everything, and has not a thousand crowns a year?”’

      ‘Everything becomes known,’ thought Julien, ‘here as in the Seminary.’ He had written nine or ten pages with distinct emphasis: they were a sort of historical eulogy of the old Surgeon–Major, who, he said, had made a man of him. ‘And that little copy-book,’ Julien said to himself, ‘has always been kept under lock and key.’ He went upstairs, burned his manuscript and returned to the drawing-room. The brilliant rogues had departed, there remained only the stars and ribands.

      Round the table, which the servants had just brought in already laid, were seated seven or eight ladies, extremely noble, extremely religious, extremely affected, between thirty and thirty-five years of age. The brilliant wife of Marshal de Fervaques entered the room, apologising for the lateness of the hour. It was after midnight; she took her place next to the Marquise. Julien was deeply stirred; her eyes and her expression reminded him of Madame de Renal.

      The group round Mademoiselle de La Mole was still numerous. She and her friends were engaged in making fun of the unfortunate Comte de Thaler. This was the only son of the famous Jew, celebrated for the riches that he had acquired by lending money to Kings to make war on the common people. The Jew had recently died leaving his son a monthly income of one hundred thousand crowns, and a name that, alas, was only too well known! This singular position required either simplicity of character or great determination.

      Unfortunately, the Comte was nothing but a good fellow, adorned with all sorts of pretensions inspired in him by his flatterers.

      M. de Caylus asserted that he had been credited with the determination to propose for the hand of Mademoiselle de La Mole (to whom the Marquis de Croisenois, who was heir to a Dukedom with an income of one hundred thousand livres, was paying court).

      ‘Ah! Don’t accuse him of having any determination,’ Norbert pleaded compassionately.

      What this poor Comte de Thaler most lacked was, perhaps, the power to determine anything. In this respect, he would have made an excellent King. Taking advice incessantly from everybody, he had not the courage to follow out any suggestion to the end.

      His features would have been enough by themselves, said Mademoiselle de La Mole, to fill her with everlasting joy. His face was a curious blend of uneasiness and disappointment; but from time to time one could make out quite plainly bursts of self-importance, combined with that cutting tone which the wealthiest man in France ought to adopt, especially when he is by no means bad-looking, and is not yet thirty-six. ‘He is timidly insolent,’ said M. de Croisenois. The Comte de Caylus, Norbert and two or three young men with moustaches made fun of him to their hearts’ content, without his guessing it, and finally sent him away as one o’clock struck.

      ‘Is it your famous pair of arabs that you are keeping waiting in this weather?’ Norbert asked him.

      ‘No, I have a new pair that cost much less,’ replied M. de Thaler. ‘The near horse cost me five thousand francs, and the off horse is only worth a hundred louis; but I must have you understand that he is only brought out at night. The fact is that he trots perfectly with the other.’

      Norbert’s remark made the Comte think that it befitted a man in his position to have a passion for horses, and that he ought not to allow his to stand in the rain. He left, and the other gentlemen took their leave immediately, laughing at him as they went.

      ‘And so,’ thought Julien, as he heard the sound of their laughter on the staircase, ‘I have been allowed to see the opposite extreme to my own position! I have not an income of twenty louis, and I have found myself rubbing shoulders with a man who has an income of twenty louis an hour, and they laughed at him . . . A sight like that cures one of envy.’

      Chapter 5

      SENSIBILITY AND A PIOUS Lady

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      The smallest living idea seems an outrage, so accustomed are people there to words without colour. Woe to the man who innovates while he speaks!

      FAUBLAS

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      AFTER MANY MONTHS OF trial, this is the stage that Julien had reached on the day when the steward of the household paid him his third quarter’s salary. M. de La Mole had set him to study the management of his estates in Brittany and Normandy. Julien made frequent journeys to those parts. His principal duty was to take charge of the correspondence relative to the famous lawsuit with the abbe de Frilair. M. Pirard had given him the necessary instructions.

      >From the brief notes which the Marquis used to scribble on the margins of the papers of all kinds that came to him, Julien composed letters almost all of which were signed.

      At the school of theology, his teachers complained of his lack of industry, but regarded him none the less as one of their most distinguished pupils. These several labours, taken up with all the ardour of a chafed ambition, had soon robbed Julien of the fresh complexion he had brought with him from the country. His pallor was a merit in the eyes of the young seminarists his companions; he found them much less irritating, much less inclined to fall upon their knees before a coin of the realm than those at Besancon; they, for their part, supposed him to be consumptive. The Marquis had given him a horse.

      Afraid of their seeing him when he was out riding, Julien had told them that this exercise had been ordered him by the doctors. The abbe

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