Considering that he was a new arrival who was too disdainful to put any questions, Julien did not fall into unduly great mistakes.
One day when he was forced into a cafe in the Rue St. Honore by a sudden shower, a big man in a beaver coat, surprised by his gloomy look, looked at him in return just as mademoiselle Amanda's lover had done before at Besancon.
Julien had reproached himself too often for having endured the other insult to put up with this stare.
He asked for an explanation.
The man in the tail-coat immediately addressed him in the lowest and most insulting language. All the people in the cafe surrounded them. The passers-by stopped before the door.
Julien always carried some little pistols as a matter of precaution. His hand was grasping them nervously in his pocket.
Nevertheless he behaved wisely and confined himself to repeating to his man
"Monsieur, your address, I despise you."
The persistency in which he kept repeating these six words eventually impressed the crowd.
"By Jove, the other who's talking all to himself ought to give him his address," they exclaimed.
The man in the tail-coat hearing this repeated several times, flung five or six cards in Julien's face.
Fortunately none of them hit him in the face; he had mentally resolved not to use his pistols except in the event of his being hit.
The man went away, though not without turning round from time to time to shake his fist and hurl insults at him.
Julien was bathed in sweat.
"So," he said angrily to himself, "the meanest of mankind has it in his power to affect me as much as this.
How am I to kill so humiliating a sensitiveness?"
Where was he to find a second?
He did not have a single friend.
He had several acquaintances, but they all regularly left him after six weeks of social intercourse.
"I am unsociable," he thought, and "I am now cruelly punished for it."
Finally it occurred to him to rout out an old lieutenant of the 96th, named Lievin, a poor devil with whom he often used to fence.
Julien was frank with him.
"I am quite willing to be your second," said Lievin, "but on one condition. If you fail to wound your man you will fight with me straight away."
"Agreed," said Julien quite delighted; and they went to find M. de Beauvoisis at the address indicated on his card at the end of the Faubourg Saint Germain.
It was seven o'clock in the morning.
It was only when he was being ushered in, that Julien thought that it might quite well be the young relation of Madame de Renal, who had once been employed at the Rome or Naples Embassy, and who had given the singer Geronimo a letter of introduction.
Julien gave one of the cards which had been flung at him the previous evening together with one of his own to a tall valet.
He and his second were kept waiting for a good three-quarters of an hour. Eventually they were ushered in to a elegantly furnished apartment.
They found there a tall young man who was dressed like a doll. His features presented the perfection and the lack of expression of Greek beauty.
His head, which was remarkably straight, had the finest blonde hair.
It was dressed with great care and not a single hair was out of place.
"It was to have his hair done like this, that is why this damned fop has kept us waiting," thought the lieutenant of the 96th.
The variegated dressing gown, the morning trousers, everything down to the embroidered slippers was correct. He was marvellously well-groomed.
His blank and aristocratic physiognomy betokened rare and orthodox ideas; the ideal of a Metternichian diplomatist. Napoleon as well did not like to have in his entourage officers who thought.
Julien, to whom his lieutenant of the 96th had explained, that keeping him waiting was an additional insult after having thrown his card so rudely in his face, entered brusquely M. de Beauvoisis' room.
He intended to be insolent, but at the same time to exhibit good form.
Julien was so astonished by the niceness of M. de Beauvoisis' manners and by the combination of formality, self-importance, and self-satisfaction in his demeanour, by the admirable elegance of everything that surrounded him, that he abandoned immediately all idea of being insolent.
It was not his man of the day before.
His astonishment was so great at meeting so distinguished a person, instead of the rude creature whom he was looking for, that he could not find a single word to say.
He presented one of the cards which had been thrown at him.
"That's my name," said the young diplomat, not at all impressed by Julien's black suit at seven o'clock in the morning, "but I do not understand the honour."
His manner of pronouncing these last words revived a little of Julien's bad temper.
"I have come to fight you, monsieur," and he explained in a few words the whole matter.
M. Charles de Beauvoisis, after mature reflection, was fairly satisfied with the cut of Julien's black suit.
"It comes from Staub, that's clear," he said to himself, as he heard him speak.
"That waistcoat is in good taste. Those boots are all right, but on the other hand just think of wearing a black suit in the early morning!
It must be to have a better chance of not being hit," said the chevalier de Beauvoisis to himself.
After he had given himself this explanation he became again perfectly polite to Julien, and almost treated him as an equal.
The conversation was fairly lengthy, for the matter was a delicate one, but eventually Julien could not refuse to acknowledge the actual facts.
The perfectly mannered young man before him did not bear any resemblance to the vulgar fellow who had insulted him the previous day.