2 Count Antoine de Rivarol (1743–1801), a writer and aristocrat famous for his wit and conversation. A fierce opponent of the Revolution, he had to flee in 1792 because of his published attacks. Hamburg was one of the many German cities where émigrés (see note for p. 195, l. 26) awaited the fall of their enemies.
The Red and the Black
Reduced to the company of his little ecclesiastic, Monsieur de La Mole sought to liven him up. He pushed at Julien's pride. Since he'd been asked to tell the truth, Julien made up his mind to tell everything. But he was silent about two matters: his fanatical adoration of a man whose very name would put the marquis in a foul mood, and his own utter lack of faith, which did not fit well with a priestly future. The episode with the Chevalier de Beauvoisis fitted very well indeed. The marquis laughed until he cried, hearing the scene at the café in Saint-Honoré Street, when the coachman had covered our hero with filthy insults. It was a time of perfect, frank openness between protector and protected. Monsieur de La Mole grew more interested in this strange person. To start with, he indulged Julien's absurdities, in order to be entertained by them, but soon found it even more interesting to gently correct the young man's faulty sense of the world. "Other provincials who come to Paris," the marquis thought, "admire everything. This one hates everything. They're dreadfully affected; he's not affected enough, so the fools take him for a fool." Winter's cold chills prolonged his attack of gout; it lasted some months. "One grows attached to a fine spaniel," the marquis said to himself, "so why do I feel ashamed of growing attached to this little ecclesiastic? He's odd, but fresh. I treat him like a son. All right: What harm does that do? This whim, if it lasts, will cost me a two-thousand- franc diamond, in my will." Having once understood Julien's steadiness, the marquis gave him new responsibilities every day. Julien was frightened to discover that this great lord sometimes gave him contradictory instructions on the same subject. This could seriously compromise him. Accordingly, Julien regularly brought along an account book, in which he wrote down his orders, and the marquis initialed them. Julien hired a clerk, who copied every directive, in each and every instance, into a private notebook. All letters were copied into the same book. It seemed, at first, the most ridiculous, boring procedure in the world. But in less than two months the marquis became aware of its advantages. Julien suggested that they hire another clerk, with banking experience, who would maintain double-entry accounts for all receipts, and all expenses, in connection with Julien's property administration. These procedures so enlightened the marquis about the actual state of his affairs that he could, with great pleasure, undertake two or three new speculations without the assistance of his usual intermediary, who had been swindling him. "Take yourself three thousand francs," the marquis told his young assistant one day. "That could be misunderstood, sir." "So how would you prefer it?" asked the marquis, annoyed. "I'd like you to write an order and set it down, signed, in the account book. The order ought to give me three thousand francs. In any case, it was Father Pirard who thought up all this accounting." With an expression every bit as bored as that of the actor who plays the Marquis de Moncade, while he listens to his steward, Monsieur Poisson,3 giving his report, the marquis wrote the order. That evening, when Julien appeared in his blue suit, no business matters were even mentioned. The marquis's benevolence was so flattering to our hero's perpetually painful self- respect that, in spite of himself, he soon felt a degree of affection for the pleasant old man. Not that, in Parisian terms, Julien possessed any sensibility, but simply that he was not a monster, and that no one, since the old surgeon-major's death, had spoken to him so kindly. And he was