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‘But is it true that he has betrayed people?’ said Mademoiselle de La Mole. ‘Who is there that has not?’
‘What!’ said the Comte de Caylus to Norbert, ‘you have M. Sainclair here, the notorious Liberal; what the devil can he have come for? I must go over to him, and talk to him, and make him talk; they say he is so clever.’
‘But how can your mother have him in the house?’ said M de Croisenois. ‘His ideas are so extravagant, so enthusiastic, so independent . . . ’
‘Look,’ said Mademoiselle de La Mole, ‘there is your independent man, bowing to the ground before M. Descoulis, and seizing his hand. I almost thought he was going to raise it to his lips.’
‘Descoulis must stand better with the authorities than we thought,’ put in M. de Croisenois.
‘Sainclair comes here to get into the Academy,’ said Norbert; ‘look how he is bowing to Baron L— — Croisenois.’
‘He would be less servile if he went on his knees,’ put in M. de Luz.
‘My dear Sorel,’ said Norbert, ‘you who are a man of brains, but have just come down from your mountains, see that you never bow to people as that great poet does, not even to God Almighty.’
‘Ah! Here comes a man of brains if you like, M. le Baron Baton,’ said Mademoiselle de La Mole, imitating the voice of the footman who had just announced him.
‘I think even your servants laugh at him. What a name, Baron Baton!’ said M. de Caylus.
‘“What’s in a name?” as he said to us the other day,’ retorted Mathilde. ‘“Imagine the Duc de Bouillon announced for the first time. All the public needs, in my case, is to have grown accustomed to it.”’
Julien quitted the circle round the sofa. Still but little sensible of the charming subtleties of a light-handed mockery, if he were to laugh at a witticism, he required that it should be founded on reason. He could see nothing in the talk of these young men, but the tone of general depreciation, and this shocked him. His provincial or English prudery went so far as to detect envy in it, wherein he was certainly mistaken.
‘Comte Norbert,’ he said to himself, ‘whom I have seen make three rough copies of a letter of twenty lines to his Colonel, would be very glad to have written a single page in his life like those of M. Sainclair.’
Passing unperceived owing to his lack of importance, Julien approached several groups in turn; he was following Baron Baton at a distance, and wished to hear him talk. This man of such intelligence wore a troubled air, and Julien saw him recover himself a little only when he had hit upon three or four sparkling sentences. It seemed to Julien that this kind of wit required ample room to develop itself.
The Baron could not produce epigrams; he required at least four sentences of six lines each to be brilliant.
‘This man is holding forth, he is not talking,’ said someone behind Julien’s back. He turned round and flushed with pleasure when he heard the name of Comte Chalvet. This was the cleverest man of the day. Julien had often come upon his name in the Memorial de Sainte–Helene and in the fragments of history dictated by Napoleon. Comte Chalvet was curt in his speech; his remarks were flashes of lightning, accurate, keen, profound. If he spoke of any public matter, immediately one saw the discussion reach a fresh stage. He brought facts to bear on it, it was a pleasure to listen to him. In politics, however, he was a brazen cynic.
‘I am independent, myself,’ he was saying to a gentleman wearing three decorations, whom he was apparently quizzing. ‘Why should I be expected to hold the same opinion today that I held six weeks ago? If I did, I should be a slave to my opinion.’
Four grave young men who stood round him made grimaces at this; these gentlemen do not care for the flippant style. The Comte saw that he had gone too far. Fortunately he caught sight of the honest M. Balland, a tartuffe of honesty. The Comte began talking to him: people gathered round them, guessing that poor Balland was going to be scarified. By dint of morals and morality, although horribly ugly, and after early struggles with the world which it would be hard to describe, M. Balland had married an extremely rich wife, who died; then a second extremely rich wife, who was never seen in society. He enjoyed in all humility an income of sixty thousand livres, and had flatterers of his own. Comte Chalvet spoke to him of all this, without pity. Presently they were surrounded by a circle of thirty people. Everyone smiled, even the grave young men, the hope of the age.
‘Why does he come to M. de La Mole’s, where he is obviously made a butt?’ thought Julien. He went across to the abbe Pirard, to ask him.
M. Balland left the room.
‘Good!’ said Norbert, ‘there’s one of my father’s spies gone; that leaves only the little cripple Napier.’
‘Can that be the clue to the riddle?’ thought Julien. ‘But, in that case, why does the Marquis invite M. Balland?’
The stern abbe Pirard was making faces in a corner of the room, as he heard fresh names announced.
‘Why, it is a den,’ he said, like Basilic, ‘I see none but villains enter.’
The fact was that the stern abbe did not recognise the distinguishing marks of good society. But, from his Jansenist friends, he had a very accurate notion of the men who make their way into drawing-rooms only by their extreme cleverness in the service of all parties, or by a fortune of notorious origin. For some minutes, that evening, he replied from the abundance of his heart to Julien’s eager questions, then cut himself short, distressed to find himself speaking ill of everyone, and imputing it to himself as a sin. Being choleric and a Jansenist, and regarding Christian charity as a duty, his life in society was a perpetual conflict.
‘How frightful that abbe Pirard looks!’ Mademoiselle de La Mole was saying, as Julien returned to the sofa.
Julien felt a sting of irritation, and yet she was right. M. Pirard was beyond question the most honest man in the room, but his blotched face, distorted by the pangs of conscience, made him hideous at the moment. ‘Never judge by appearances after this,’ thought Julien; ‘it is at the moment when the abbe’s scruples are reproaching him with some peccadillo that he looks terrible; whereas on the face of that Napier, whom everyone knows to be a spy, one sees a pure and tranquil happiness.’ The abbe Pirard had nevertheless made a great concession to his party; he had engaged a valet, and was quite well dressed.
Julien remarked a singular occurrence in the drawing-room: this was a general movement of all eyes towards the door, with a lull in the conversation. A footman announced the famous Baron de Tolly, to whom the recent elections had attracted universal attention. Julien moved forward and had an excellent view of him. The Baron was returning officer in a certain constituency: he had had the bright idea of making away with the little slips of paper bearing the votes of one of the parties. But, to compensate for this, he duly replaced them with other little slips of paper bearing a name of which he himself approved. This decisive manoeuvre was observed by some of the electors, who lost no time in presenting their compliments to Baron de Tolly. The worthy man was still pale after his great excitement. Evil tongues had uttered the word galleys. M. de La Mole received him coldly. The poor Baron hurriedly made his escape.
‘If he leaves us so soon, it must be to go to M. Comte’s,’[6] said Comte Chalvet; and the others laughed.
Amid a crowd of great noblemen who remained silent, and of intriguers, mostly disreputable, but all of them clever fellows, who arrived one after another that evening, in M. de La Mole’s drawing-room (people were speaking of him for a vacant Ministry), young Tanbeau was winning his spurs. If he had not yet acquired any fineness of perception, he made up for the deficiency, as we shall see, by the vigour of his language.
‘Why not sentence the man to ten years’ imprisonment?’ he was saying at the moment when Julien joined his group; ‘it is in a dungeon underground that we ought