The Red and the Black (45 page)

allow themselves to be improper. They were talking about the dancers
that the public had acclaimed in a ballet performed the previous
evening. These gentlemen alluded to some spicy anecdotes that Julien
and his second the lieutenant from the 96th were totally ignorant of.
Julien was not stupid enough to pretend he knew them; he admitted his
ignorance with a good grace. His frankness appealed to the chevalier's
friend; he related these anecdotes to him in the greatest of detail,
and did it very well.

One thing
astonished Julien beyond bounds. The carriage was held up for a moment
by an altar of repose that was being put up in the middle of the road
for the Corpus Christi day procession. These gentlemen took the
liberty of cracking a number of jokes; the priest, according to them,
was the son of an archbishop.
^*
In the house of the Marquis de La Mole, who wanted to become a duke, no one would ever have dared utter such a thing.

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

Goodness me! a duel--so that's all there is to it! Julien thought.
How glad I am to have found that coachman again! What misery if I'd
had to go on enduring that insult in a café! The entertaining
conversation had hardly been interrupted. Julien realized then that
diplomatic affectation does have its uses.

So boredom isn't inherent, he said to himself, in a conversation
between people of high birth! These two make jokes about the Corpus
Christi Day procession, they risk telling highly shocking anecdotes,
and in picturesque detail too. The only thing totally lacking is any
discussion of the political scene, and this lack is more than made up
for by the elegance of their tone and the perfect appropriateness of
their expressions.

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Julien felt a strong liking for them. How glad I would be to see a good deal of these two!

No sooner had they taken leave of one another than the Chevalier de
Beauvoisis sped off to find out all he could: it was not inspiring.

He was most curious to know his man; could he decently pay him a
visit? What little information he could gather was not of an
encouraging sort.

'This is all just
frightful!' he said to his second. 'It's impossible for me to admit
that I fought a duel with a mere secretary of M. de La Mole's, and
what's more, because my coachman stole my visiting cards.'

'It's certain there'd be a risk of ridicule in all this.'

That very evening the Chevalier de Beauvoisis and his friend
broadcast it everywhere that this M. Sorel, in any event an
irreproachable young man, was the illegitimate son of a close friend
of the Marquis de La Mole's. This fact gained acceptance without any
difficulty. Once it was established, the young diplomat and his friend
deigned to visit Julien once or twice during the fortnight he spent
confined to his room. Julien confessed to them that he had only once
in his life been to the Opera.

'That is dreadful,' they said to him, 'it's
the
place to go; the first time you go out, it simply must be to see
Count Ory
.'
^*

At the Opera the Chevalier de Beauvoisis introduced him to the famous
singer Geronimo, who was enjoying great success at the time.

Julien was virtually wooing the chevalier's friendship; he was
captivated by the young man's mixture of self-respect, mysterious
complacency and foppishness. For instance, the chevalier stammered a
little, because he had the honour of being on frequent visiting terms
with a great lord who suffered from this impediment. Never had Julien
seen amusing ridiculousness allied in a single individual with the
perfection of manners that a poor provincial must strive to imitate.

He was seen at the Opera with the Chevalier de Beauvoisis; this acquaintance brought his name to people's lips.

'Well now!' M. de La Mole said to him one day, 'so I see

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you're now the illegitimate son of a rich gentleman from the Franche-Comté, one of my intimate friends?'

The marquis cut Julien short as he tried to protest that he had not had any hand whatsoever in accrediting this rumour.

'M. de Beauvoisis didn't wish to have fought a duel with a carpenter's son.'

'I know, I know,' said M. de La Mole; 'it's up to me now to give
substance to this tale, which suits my purposes. But I have a favour
to ask of you, which will only take up half an hour of your time: on
Opera days,
^*
at eleven thirty, would you go and mingle with the people of fashion
in the foyer as they come out? I observe that you sometimes still
exhibit provincial mannerisms, and you need to get rid of them;
besides, it's no bad thing to get to know--at least by sight--some of
the important people I may one day send you to see on business. Call
at the box-office and make yourself known; I've arranged for you to
have the privilege of a free pass.'

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And I was given promotion, not for deserving it,
but because my master had gout.

BERTOLOTTI
^*

THE reader may perhaps be surprised at this open and almost friendly
tone; we had forgotten to say that for the past six weeks the marquis
had been kept at home by an attack of gout.

M
^lle
de La Mole and her mother were at Hyères,
^*
staying with the marquise's mother. Count Norbert only saw his father
for brief moments; they were on excellent terms, but had nothing to
say to each other. M. de La Mole, reduced to Julien, was astonished
to find ideas in his head. He had him read the newspapers out loud to
him. Soon the young secretary was in a position to select the
interesting passages. There was a new paper
^*
that the marquis could not abide; he had sworn never to read it, and
every day he talked about it. Julien laughed. In his irritation at
modern times, the marquis had Livy read aloud to him; he was
entertained by Julien's improvised translation of the Latin text.

One day the marquis said in the tones of excessive politeness that often irked Julien:

'Allow me, my dear Sorel, to make you a gift of a blue suit: when you
see fit to don it and to call upon me, I shall regard 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 really understand what was going on; that same evening
he tried out a visit wearing a blue suit. The marquis treated him as
an equal. Julien had a heart worthy to appreciate true politeness, but
he had no idea of nuances. He would have sworn, before the marquis
had this whim, that it was impossible to be received by him with
greater courtesy. What admirable talent! Julien said to himself; when
he rose to go, the marquis made his apologies for being unable to see
him out on account of his gout.

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A strange idea preoccupied Julien: might he be making fun of me? he
wondered. He went to seek advice from Father Pirard, who, being less
polite than the marquis, merely whistled and changed the subject by
way of reply. The following morning Julien presented himself to the
marquis in a black suit, with his briefcase and his letters to be
signed. He was received in the old manner. In the evening, with a blue
suit, the tone was quite different, and every bit as polite as the
day before.

'Since you aren't too
bored during these visits you are kind enough to pay to a poor, sick
old man,' the marquis said to him, 'what you should do is talk to him
about all the little happenings in your life, but speak frankly, and
without any other concern than to tell a clear and entertaining story.
For it's vital to keep oneself entertained,' the marquis went on;
'that's the only real thing there is in life. It isn't every day that a
man can save my life at the wars, or make me the gift of a million;
but if I had Rivarol
^*
here, next to my chaise-longue, every day he would spare me an hour
of pain and boredom. I saw a lot of him in Hamburg during the
Emigration.'
^*

And the marquis told Julien the anecdotes about Rivarol and the
inhabitants of Hamburg; it took four of them together to understand
one of his witticisms.

Reduced to the
company of this little abbé, M. de La Mole tried to put some sparkle
into him. He appealed to Julien's honour by tickling his pride. Since
he was being asked for the truth, Julien resolved to tell all; but
keeping two things back: his fanatical admiration for a name which put
the marquis in an ill humour, and his total lack of faith, which
hardly suited a future parish priest. His little affair with the
Chevalier de Beauvoisis came at the right moment. The marquis laughed
till he cried at the scene in the café in the Rue Saint-Honoré, with
the coachman hurling foul abuse at him. It was a time of perfect
openness in the relationship between master and protégé.

M. de La Mole became interested in Julien's strikingly unusual
personality. To begin with, he flattered his ridiculous ways in order
to enjoy them; he soon found it more interesting to correct, very
gently, this young man's misguided ways of

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looking at things. Other provincials who come to Paris admire
everything, thought the marquis; this fellow hates everything. They
have too much affectation, he doesn't have enough, and fools take him
for a fool.

The attack of gout was prolonged by the bitter cold of winter, and it lasted several months.

It's perfectly acceptable to become attached to a fine spaniel, the
marquis reflected to himself; why am I so ashamed at becoming attached
to this little abbé? He's original. I treat him like a son; all
right! what's wrong with that? If it lasts, this caprice will cost me a
diamond worth five hundred louis in my will.

Once the marquis had fathomed his proton's resolute character, he entrusted him with some new piece of business daily.

Julien was alarmed to notice that this great lord was capable of giving him contradictory decisions on the same matter.

This might seriously compromise him. From then on Julien never worked
with the marquis without bringing a register in which he wrote down
decisions, and the marquis initialled them. Julien had taken on a
clerk who transcribed the decisions relating to each affair into a
special register. This register also received a copy of every letter.

At first this idea seemed the height of ridicule and tedium. But in
less than two months, the marquis appreciated its advantages. Julien
suggested employing a clerk who had recently worked for a banker, to
keep a record in duplicate of all the income and expenditure from the
estates that Julien was in charge of administering.

These measures shed so much light for the marquis on his own affairs
that he was able to treat himself to the pleasure of engaging in two
or three new pieces of speculation without the help of his broker, who
robbed him.

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

'Sir, my conduct may be slandered.'

'What do you want, then?' retorted the marquis in annoyance.

'Be so good as to make out a warrant and write it in the

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register in your own hand; this warrant will give me a sum of three
thousand francs. Actually, it was the Reverend Father Pirard who
thought up all this accounting.' The marquis, with the bored
expression of the Marquis de Moncade listening to his steward M.
Poisson's accounts,
^*
wrote out the decision.

In the evening, when Julien appeared in his blue suit, there was
never any talk of business. The marquis's displays of kindness were so
flattering to our hero's pride, which was still rather touchy, that
soon, in spite of himself, he felt a kind of attachment to this
agreeable old gentleman. It was not that Julien was responsive, as
this is understood in Paris; but nor was he a monster, and no one,
since the death of the old army surgeon, had spoken to him with such
kindness. He observed to his astonishment that out of politeness the
marquis showed consideration for his pride in a way that the old army
surgeon had never done. He realized in the end that the surgeon had
more pride in his cross than the marquis did in his Blue Sash. The
marquis's father was a great lord.

One day, at the end of one of his morning audiences, when he was
dressed in his black suit and there for business, Julien happened to
amuse the marquis, who kept him for a further two hours, and insisted
on giving him some bank notes that his agent had just brought him from
the Stock Exchange.

'I hope, your lordship, that I shall not fail to show the deep respect I owe you if I beseech you to let me say a word.'

'Speak, my dear fellow.'

'May his lordship deign to allow me to refuse this gift. The man in
the black suit is not the one it is meant for, and it would utterly
spoil the behaviour that his lordship is good enough to tolerate in
the man in the blue suit.' He bowed with great respect and left the
room without looking at the marquis.

This manifestation of Julien's character amused the marquis. He related it to Father Pirard that evening.

'I must finally confess something to you, my dear Father. I know
whose son Julien is, and I authorize you not to keep secret what I
confide in you.'

The behaviour he revealed this morning is noble, thought the marquis, and I am making him a nobleman.

Some time later, the marquis was at last able to go out.

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