He was received in the old way, but when he wore the blue suit that evening, the marquis's tone was quite different, and absolutely as polite as on the previous day.
"As you are not exactly bored," said the marquis to him, "by these visits which you are kind enough to pay to a poor old man, you must tell him about all the little incidents of your life, but you must be frank and think of nothing except narrating them clearly and in an amusing way.
For one must amuse oneself," continued the marquis.
"That's the only reality in life.
I can't have my life saved in a battle every day, or get a present of a million francs every day, but if I had Rivarol here by my sofa he would rid me every day of an hour of suffering and boredom.
I saw a lot of him at Hamburg during the emigration."
And the marquis told Julien the stories of Rivarol and the inhabitants of Hamburg who needed the combined efforts of four individuals to understand an epigram.
M. de la Mole, being reduced to the society of this little abbe, tried to teach him.
He put Julien's pride on its mettle.
As he was asked to speak the truth, Julien resolved to tell everything, but to suppress two things, his fanatical admiration for the name which irritated the marquis, and that complete scepticism, which was not particularly appropriate to a prospective cure.
His little affair with the chevalier de Beauvoisis came in very handy. The marquis laughed till the tears came into his eyes at the scene in the cafe in the Rue St. Honore with the coachman who had loaded him with sordid insults.
The occasion was marked by a complete frankness between the marquis and the protege.
M. de la Mole became interested in this singular character.
At the beginning he had encouraged Julian's droll blunders in order to enjoy laughing at them. Soon he found it more interesting to correct very gently this young man's false outlook on life.
"All other provincials who come to Paris admire everything," thought the marquis. "This one hates everything.
They have too much affectation; he has not affectation enough; and fools take him for a fool."
The attack of gout was protracted by the great winter cold and lasted some months.
"One gets quite attached to a fine spaniel," thought the marquis.
"Why should I be so ashamed of being attached to this little abbe?
He is original.
I treat him as a son.
Well, where's the bother?
The whim, if it lasts, will cost me a diamond and five hundred louis in my will."
Once the marquis had realised his protege's strength of character, he entrusted him with some new business every day.
Julien noticed with alarm that this great lord would often give him inconsistent orders with regard to the same matter.
That might compromise him seriously.
Julien now made a point whenever he worked with him, of bringing a register with him in which he wrote his instructions which the marquis initialled.
Julien had now a clerk who would transcribe the instructions relating to each matter in a separate book.
This book also contained a copy of all the letters.
This idea seemed at first absolutely boring and ridiculous, but in two months the marquis appreciated its advantages.
Julien suggested to him that he should take a clerk out of a banker's who was to keep proper book-keeping accounts of all the receipts and of all the expenses of the estates which Julien had been charged to administer.
These measures so enlightened the marquis as to his own affairs that he could indulge the pleasure of undertaking two or three speculations without the help of his nominee who always robbed him.
"Take three thousand francs for yourself," he said one day to his young steward.
"Monsieur, I should lay myself open to calumny."
"What do you want then?" retorted the marquis irritably.
"Perhaps you will be kind enough to make out a statement of account and enter it in your own hand in the book.
That order will give me a sum of 3,000 francs.
Besides it's M. the abbe Pirard who had the idea of all this exactness in accounts."
The marquis wrote out his instructions in the register with the bored air of the Marquis de Moncade listening to the accounts of his steward M. Poisson.
Business was never talked when Julien appeared in the evening in his blue suit.
The kindness of the marquis was so flattering to the self-respect of our hero, which was always morbidly sensitive, that in spite of himself, he soon came to feel a kind of attachment for this nice old man.
It is not that Julien was a man of sensibility as the phrase is understood at Paris, but he was not a monster, and no one since the death of the old major had talked to him with so much kindness.
He observed that the marquis showed a politeness and consideration for his own personal feelings which he had never found in the old surgeon.
He now realised that the surgeon was much prouder of his cross than was the marquis of his blue ribbon.
The marquis's father had been a great lord.
One day, at the end of a morning audience for the transaction of business, when the black suit was worn, Julien happened to amuse the marquis who kept him for a couple of hours, and insisted on giving him some banknotes which his nominee had just brought from the house.
"I hope M. le Marquis, that I am not deviating from the profound respect which I owe you, if I beg you to allow me to say a word."
"Speak, my friend."
"M. le Marquis will deign to allow me to refuse this gift.
It is not meant for the man in the black suit, and it would completely spoil those manners which you have kindly put up with in the man in the blue suit."