CHAPTER XXXV
SENSIBILITY AND A GREAT PIOUS LADY
This was the stage Julien had reached, when after several months of probation the steward of the household handed him the third quarter of his wages. M. de la Mole had entrusted him with the adminisiration of his estates in Brittany and Normandy. Julien made frequent journeys there. He had chief control of the correspondence relating to the famous law-suit with the abbé de Frilair. M. Pirard had instructed him.
On the data of the short notes which the marquis would scribble on the margin of all the various paper which were addressed to him, Julien would compose answers which were nearly all signed.
At the Theology School his professors complained of his lack of industry, but they did not fail to regard him as one of their most distinguished pupils. This varied work, tackled as it was with all the ardour of suffering ambition, soon robbed Julien of that fresh complexion which he had brought from the provinces. His pallor consiituted one of his merits in the eyes of his comrades, the young seminarist; he found them much less malicious, much less ready to bow down to a silver crown than those of Besançon; they thought he was consumptive. The marquis had given him a horse.
Julien fearing that he might meet people during his rides on horseback, had given out that this exercise had been prescribed by the doctors. The abbé Pirard had taken him into several Jansenist Societies. Julien was astonished; the idea of religion was indissolubly connected in his mind with the ideas of hypocrisy and covetousness. He admired those austere pious men who never gave a thought to their income. Several Jansensists became friendly with him and would give him advice. A new world opened before him. At the Jansenists he got to know a comtè Altamira, who was nearly six feet high, was a Liberal, a believer, and had been condemned to death in his own country. He was struck by the strange contrast of devoutness and love of liberty.
Julien's relations with the young comtè had become cool. Norbert had thought that he answered the jokes of his friends with too much sharpness. Julien had committed one or two breaches of social etiquette and vowed to himself that he would never speak to mademoiselle Mathilde. They were always perfectly polite to him in the hôtel de la Mole but he felt himself quite lost. His provincial commonsense explained this result by the vulgar proverb Tout beau tout nouveau.
He gradually came to have a little more penetration than during his first days, or it may have been that the first glamour of Parisian urbanity had passed of. As soon as he left off working, he fell a prey to a mortal boredom. He was experiencing the withering effects of that admirable politeness so typical of good society, which is so perfectly modulated to every degree of the social hierarchy.
No doubt the provinces can be reproached with a commonness and lack of polish in their tone; but they show a certain amount of passion, when they answer you. Julien's self-respect was never wounded at the hôtel de la Mole, but he often felt at the end of the day as though he would like to cry. A café-waiter in the provinces will take an interest in you if you happen to have some accident as you enter his café, but if this accident has everything about it which is disagreeable to your vanity, he will repeat ten times in succession the very word which tortures you, as he tells you how sorry he is. At Paris they make a point of laughing in secret, but you always remain a stranger.
We pass in silence over a number of little episodes which would have made Julien ridiculous, if he had not been to some extent above ridicule. A foolish sensibility resulted in his committing innumerable acts of bad taste. All his pleasures were precautions; he practiced pistol shooting every day, he was one of the promising pupils of the most famous maîtres d'armes. As soon as he had an instant to himself, instead of employing it in reading as he did before, he would rush off to the riding school and ask for the most vicious horses. When he went out with the master of the riding school he was almost invariably thrown.
The marquis found him convenient by reason of his persistent industry, his silence and his intelligence, and gradually took him into his confidence with regard to all his affairs, which were in any way difficult to unravel. The marquis was a sagacious business man on all those occasious when his lofty ambition gave him some respite; having special information within his reach, he would speculate successfully on the Exchange. He would buy mansions and forests; but he would easily lose his temper. He would give away hundreds of louis, and would go to law for a few hundred francs. Rich men with a lofty spirit have recourse to business not so much for results as for distraction. The marquis needed a chief of staff who would put all his money affairs into clear and lucid order. Madame de la Mole, although of so even a character, sometimes made fun of Julien. Great ladies have a horror of those unexpected incidents which are produced by a sensitive character; they constitute the opposite pole of etiquette. On two or three occasions the marquis took his part. "If he is ridiculous in your salon, he triumphs in his office." Julien on his side thought he had caught the marquise's secret. She deigned to manifest an interest in everything the minute the Baron de la Joumate was announced. He was a cold individual with an expressionless physiognomy. He was tall, thin, ugly, very well dressed, passed his life in his château, and generally speaking said nothing about anything. Such was his outlook on life. Madame de la Mole would have been happy for the first time in her life if she could have made him her daughter's husband.