Julien came back to where she was, still talking to Altamira. She looked at Altamira fixedly, studying his features in order to trace those lofty qualities which can earn a man the honour of being condemned to death.
"Yes," he was saying to comte Altamira as he passed by her, "Danton was a real man."
"Heavens can he be a Danton?" said Mathilde to herself, "but he has so noble a face, and that Danton was so horribly ugly, a butcher I believe."
Julien was still fairly near her. She did not hesitate to call him; she had the consciousness and the pride of putting a question that was unusual for a young girl.
"Was not Danton a butcher?" she said to him.
"Yes, in the eyes of certain persons," Julien answered her with the most thinly disguised expression of contempt. His eyes were still ardent from his conversation with Altamira, "but unfortunately for the people of good birth he was an advocate at Mery-sur-Seine, that is to say, mademoiselle," he added maliciously, "he began like many peers whom I see here.
It was true that Danton laboured under a great disadvantage in the eyes of beauty; he was ugly."
These last few words were spoken rapidly in an extraordinary and indeed very discourteous manner.
Julien waited for a moment, leaning slightly forward and with an air of proud humility.
He seemed to be saying,
"I am paid to answer you and I live on my pay."
He did not deign to look up at Mathilde. She looked like his slave with her fine eyes open abnormally wide and fixed on him.
Finally as the silence continued he looked at her, like a valet looking at his master to receive orders.
Although his eyes met the full gaze of Mathilde which were fixed on him all the time with a strange expression, he went away with a marked eagerness.
"To think of a man who is as handsome as he is," said Mathilde to herself as she emerged from her reverie, "praising ugliness in such a way, he is not like Caylus or Croisenois.
This Sorel has something like my father's look when he goes to a fancy dress ball as Napoleon."
She had completely forgotten Danton.
"Yes, I am decidedly bored to-night."
She took her brother's arm and to his great disgust made him take her round the ball-room.
The idea occurred to her of following the conversation between Julien and the man who had been condemned to death.
The crowd was enormous.
She managed to find them, however, at the moment when two yards in front of her Altamira was going near a dumb-waiter to take an ice.
He was talking to Julien with his body half turned round.
He saw an arm in an embroidered coat which was taking an ice close by.
The embroidery seemed to attract his attention. He turned round to look at the person to whom the arm belonged.
His noble and yet simple eyes immediately assumed a slightly disdainful expression.
"You see that man," he said to Julien in a low voice; "that is the Prince of Araceli Ambassador of ——.
He asked M. de Nerval, your Minister for Foreign Affairs, for my extradition this morning.
See, there he is over there playing whist.
Monsieur de Nerval is willing enough to give me up, for we gave up two or three conspirators to you in 1816.
If I am given up to my king I shall be hanged in twenty-four hours.
It will be one of those handsome moustachioed gentlemen who will arrest me."
"The wretches!" exclaimed Julien half aloud.
Mathilde did not lose a syllable of their conversation.
Her ennui had vanished.
"They are not scoundrels," replied Count Altamira.
"I talk to you about myself in order to give you a vivid impression.
Look at the Prince of Araceli. He casts his eyes on his golden fleece every five minutes; he cannot get over the pleasure of seeing that decoration on his breast.
In reality the poor man is really an anachronism.
The fleece was a signal honour a hundred years ago, but he would have been nowhere near it in those days.
But nowadays, so far as people of birth are concerned, you have to be an Araceli to be delighted with it.
He had a whole town hanged in order to get it."
"Is that the price he had to pay?" said Julien anxiously.
"Not exactly," answered Altamira coldly, "he probably had about thirty rich landed proprietors in his district who had the reputation of being Liberals thrown into the river."
"What a monster!" pursued Julien.
Mademoiselle de la Mole who was leaning her head forward with keenest interest was so near him that her beautiful hair almost touched his shoulder.
"You are very young," answered Altamira.
"I was telling you that I had a married sister in Provence.
She is still pretty, good and gentle; she is an excellent mother, performs all her duties faithfully, is pious but not a bigot."
"What is he driving at?" thought mademoiselle de la Mole.