3 Characters from a 1728 play, L'école des bourgeois.
Chapter Seven: An Attack of Gout
startled to realize that the marquis was more deftly discreet, in dealing with our hero's sense of self-worth, than the old surgeon-major had been. It came to him, at last, that the surgeon- major was prouder of his small medal4 than the marquis was, wearing the noblest award5 in all France. The marquis's father had been a very great lord. One day, when they had finished their morning business, Julien being dressed in business black, he stayed on for two hours, so entertaining the marquis that he insisted Julien absolutely had to accept a sheaf of banknotes, just brought from the Stock Exchange by Monsieur de La Mole's intermediary. "I trust, Monsieur Marquis, I will not seem deficient in that deep respect which I owe you, if I request you to permit me a few words." "Speak, my friend." "I should prefer that Monsieur Marquis graciously allow me to decline this gift. It is not meant for the man in black, and it would entirely destroy the behavior so kindly permitted to the man in blue." He bowed with great respect, and left without a glance. This was very entertaining to the marquis. He told it to Father Pirard that night. "I must finally admit to something, my dear Father. I am aware of Julien's birth, and I authorize you not to keep any of this secret." "He behaved nobly, this morning," the marquis thought, "so I hereby ennoble him." Not long afterward, the marquis was able to go out once more. "Go spend some months in London," he told Julien. "Special couriers, and others, will bring you what letters I receive, bearing my notations. You will compose the replies and send them back to me, along with the original letters. I calculate that the delay will be no more than five days." Riding toward Calais, in the post carriage, Julien was shocked by the trivial, so-called business on which he had been dispatched. We will say nothing of the intense hate, virtually horror, that he felt, setting foot on English soil. You are well aware of his insane passion for Bonaparte. In every officer he saw Sir Hudson Lowe,6 commander at Saint-Helena; in every great lord he saw Lord Bathurst, war secretary, giving orders for the infamies Napoleon experienced in this island prison, and for that being rewarded by ten years in the government. At London, he finally understood high foppishness. He became friendly with young Russian noblemen, who initiated him. "My dear Sorel, you're absolutely born to it," they told him. "Nature has given you that cold bearing, a thousand leagues from feeling anything, which we have to work so hard to attain." "You've not understood your own time," Prince Korasoff told him. "Always do the opposite of what people expect from you. That, upon my honor, is our time's only religion. Avoid foolishness, and affectation, which would cause people to expect foolery and affectation from you, and you'd no longer be observing the rules." Julien covered himself with glory, one day, in the Duke de Fitz-Folke's drawing room, where he and Prince Korasoff had been invited to dine. They waited for an entire hour. There