LITMIR.BIZ

      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 confined to the house by an attack of gout.

      Mademoiselle de La Mole and her mother were at Hyeres, with the Marquise’s mother. Comte Norbert saw his father only for brief moments; they were on the best of terms, but had nothing to say to one another. M. de La Mole, reduced to Julien’s company, was astonished to find him endowed with ideas. He made him read the newspapers aloud. Soon the young secretary was able to select the interesting passages. There was a new paper which the Marquis abhorred; he had vowed that he would never read it, and spoke of it every day. Julien laughed. The Marquis, out of patience with the times, made Julien read him Livy; the translation improvised from the Latin text amused him.

      One day the Marquis said, with that tone of over-elaborate politeness, which often tried Julien’s patience:

      ‘Allow me, my dear Sorel, to make you the present of a blue coat: when it suits you to put it on and to pay me a visit, you will be, in my eyes, the younger brother of the Comte de Chaulnes, that is to say, the son of my old friend the Duke.’

      Julien was somewhat in the dark as to what was happening; that evening he ventured to pay a visit in his blue coat. The Marquis treated him as an equal. Julien had a heart capable of appreciating true politeness, but he had no idea of the finer shades. He would have sworn, before this caprice of the Marquis, that it would be impossible to be received by him with greater deference. ‘What a marvellous talent!’ Julien said to himself; when he rose to go, the Marquis apologised for not being able to see him to the door on account of his gout.

      Julien was obsessed by this strange idea: ‘Can he be laughing at me?’ he wondered. He went to seek the advice of the abbe Pirard, who, less courteous than the Marquis, answered him only with a whistle and changed the subject. The following morning Julien appeared before the Marquis, in a black coat, with his portfolio and the letters to be signed. He was received in the old manner. That evening, in his blue coat, it was with an entirely different tone and one in every way as polite as the evening before.

      ‘Since you appear to find some interest in the visits which you are so kind as to pay to a poor, suffering old man,’ the Marquis said to him, ‘you must speak to him of all the little incidents in your life, but openly, and without thinking of anything but how to relate them clearly and in an amusing fashion. For one must have amusement,’ the Marquis went on; ‘that is the only real thing in life. A man cannot save my life on a battle-field every day, nor can he make me every day the present of a million; but if I had Rivarol here, by my couch, every day, he would relieve me of an hour of pain and boredom. I saw a great deal of him at Hamburg, during the Emigration.’

      And the Marquis told Julien stories of Rivarol among the Hamburgers, who would club together in fours to elucidate the point of a witty saying.

      M. de La Mole, reduced to the society of this young cleric, sought to enliven him. He stung Julien’s pride. Since he was asked for the truth, Julien determined to tell his whole story; but with the suppression of two things: his fanatical admiration for a name which made the Marquis furious, and his entire unbelief, which hardly became a future cure. His little affair with the Chevalier de Beauvoisis arrived most opportunely. The Marquis laughed till he cried at the scene in the cafe in the Rue Saint–Honore, with the coachman who covered him with foul abuse. It was a period of perfect frankness in the relations between employer and protege.

      M. de La Mole became interested in this singular character. At first, he played with Julien’s absurdities, for his own entertainment; soon he found it more interesting to correct, in the gentlest manner, the young man’s mistaken view of life. ‘Most provincials who come to Paris admire everything,’ thought the Marquis; ‘this fellow hates everything. They have too much sentiment, he has not enough, and fools take him for a fool.’

      The attack of gout was prolonged by the wintry weather and lasted for some months.

      ‘One becomes attached to a fine spaniel,’ the Marquis told himself; ‘why am I so ashamed of becoming attached to this young cleric? He is original. I treat him like a son; well, what harm is there in that! This fancy, if it lasts, will cost me a diamond worth five hundred louis in my will.’

      Once the Marquis had realised the firm character of his protege, he entrusted him with some fresh piece of business every day.

      Julien noticed with alarm that this great nobleman would occasionally give him contradictory instructions with regard to the same matter.

      This was liable to land him in serious trouble. Julien, when he came to work with the Marquis, invariably brought a diary in which he wrote down his instructions, and the Marquis initialled them. Julien had engaged a clerk who copied out the instructions relative to each piece of business in a special book. In this book were kept also copies of all letters.

      This idea seemed at first the most ridiculous and tiresome thing imaginable. But, in less than two months, the Marquis realised its advantages. Julien suggested engaging a clerk from a bank, who should keep an account by double entry of all the revenue from and expenditure on the estates of which he himself had charge.

      These measures so enlightened the Marquis as to his own financial position that he was able to give himself the pleasure of embarking on two or three fresh speculations without the assistance of his broker, who had been robbing him.

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

      ‘But, Sir, my conduct may be criticised.’

      ‘What do you want, then?’ replied the Marquis, with irritation.

      ‘I want you to be so kind as to make a formal agreement, and to write it down yourself in the book; the agreement will award me a sum of three thousand francs. Besides, it was M. l’abbe Pirard who first thought of all this book-keeping.’ The Marquis, with the bored expression of the Marquis de Moncade, listening to M. Poisson, his steward, reading his accounts, wrote out his instructions.

      In the evening, when Julien appeared in his blue coat, there was never any talk of business. The Marquis’s kindness was so flattering to our hero’s easily wounded vanity that presently,

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