4 The knightly Order of the Golden Fleece was established by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, in 1429.

"She's happy," Count Altamira went on. "She was happy in 1815. I was hiding at her house, at the time, on her estate near Antibes. Well, as soon as she heard of Marshall Ney's execution, she began to dance." "Is such a thing possible?" asked Julien, thunderstruck. "It's simply political," Altamira answered. "We no longer have genuine passions, in the nineteenth century. That's why there's so much boredom, here in France. We do the most incredibly cruel things, but without cruelty." "So much the worse!" said Julien. "At the very least, crimes ought to be committed with pleasure. That's the only good about them: How can we even begin to justify them for any other reason?"5 Having completely forgotten her position, herself, and everything else, Mademoiselle de La Mole was now standing almost directly between Altamira and Julien. Her brother, whose arm she still grasped, was in the habit of doing whatever she wanted: he kept looking around the room and, to make matters look proper, was pretending that he'd been stopped by the crowd. "You're right," said Altamira. "We do everything without pleasure, and without bothering to remember what we've done, even committing crimes. I could probably show you ten men, here in this room, who'll go to hell as assassins. They've forgotten all about it, and so has the world. "They're often moved when their dog breaks its paw. When flowers are thrown onto these people's graves—as you put it so cheerfully, in Paris—we'll be told they embodied all the virtues of the bravest knights, and we'll hear about the grand deeds of their ancestor, who lived under Henri IV.6 If, in spite of the best efforts of Prince d'Araceli, I'm not about to be dead, and if I ever make my fortune in Paris, I'll be pleased to have you to dinner, together with eight or ten murderers, all honored men, all without any remorse. "You and I, at such a dinner, will be the only ones without blood on our hands, but I'll be scorned and virtually despised, as a sanguinary monster and a Jacobin, and you, you'll be scorned just because you're a man of the people who's intruded himself into good company." "Nothing could be truer," said Mademoiselle de La Mole. Altamira looked at her, startled; Julien would not grant her a glance. "Note that, in the revolution which I found myself leading," Count Altamira continued, "we failed only because I refused to have three heads cut off, and I would not distribute to our supporters seven or eight millions, deposited in a box to which I had the key. My king, who today is burning to grab me, and who before the revolt had been on first-name terms with me, would have given me the greatest medal in the land, had I cut off those three heads and handed out the money, because then I would have been at least half successful, and my country would have had a sort of constitution...That's how the world works, it's all a chess game." "But then," responded Julien, his eyes blazing, "you didn't know how to play. Now..."