"The fact is your effete society prizes conventionalism above everything else. You will never get beyond military bravery. You will have Murats, never Washingtons.
I can see nothing in France except vanity.
A man who goes on speaking on the spur of the moment may easily come to make an imprudent witticism and the master of the house thinks himself insulted."
As he was saying this, the carriage in which the comte was seeing Julien home stopped before the Hotel de la Mole.
Julien was in love with his conspirator.
Altamira had paid him this great compliment which was evidently the expression of a sound conviction.
"You have not got the French flippancy and you understand the principle of utility."
It happened that Julien had seen the day before Marino Faliero, a tragedy, by Casmir Delavigne.
"Has not Israel Bertuccio got more character than all those noble Venetians?" said our rebellious plebeian to himself, "and yet those are the people whose nobility goes back to the year seven hundred, a century before Charlemagne, while the cream of the nobility at M. de Ritz's ball to-night only goes back, and that rather lamely, to the thirteenth century.
Well, in spite of all the noble Venetians whose birth makes so great, it is Israel Bertuccio whom one remembers.
"A conspiracy annihilates all titles conferred by social caprice.
There, a man takes for his crest the rank that is given him by the way in which he faces death.
The intellect itself loses some of its power.
"What would Danton have been to-day in this age of the Valenods and the Renals?
Not even a deputy for the Public Prosecutor.
"What am I saying?
He would have sold himself to the priests, he would have been a minister, for after all the great Danton did steal.
Mirabeau also sold himself.
Napoleon stole millions in Italy, otherwise he would have been stopped short in his career by poverty like Pichegru.
Only La Fayette refrained from stealing.
Ought one to steal, ought one to sell oneself?" thought Julien.
This question pulled him up short.
He passed the rest of the night in reading the history of the revolution.
When he wrote his letters in the library the following day, his mind was still concentrated on his conversation with count Altamira.
"As a matter of fact," he said to himself after a long reverie,
"If the Spanish Liberals had not injured their nation by crimes they would not have been cleared out as easily as they were.
"They were haughty, talkative children—just like I am!" he suddenly exclaimed as though waking up with a start.
"What difficulty have I surmounted that entitles me to judge such devils who, once alive, dared to begin to act.
I am like a man who exclaims at the close of a meal, 'I won't dine to-morrow; but that won't prevent me from feeling as strong and merry like I do to-day.'
Who knows what one feels when one is half-way through a great action?"
These lofty thoughts were disturbed by the unexpected arrival in the library of mademoiselle de la Mole.
He was so animated by his admiration for the great qualities of such invincibles as Danton, Mirabeau, and Carnot that, though he fixed his eyes on mademoiselle de la Mole, he neither gave her a thought nor bowed to her, and scarcely even saw her.
When finally his big, open eyes realized her presence, their expression vanished.
Mademoiselle de la Mole noticed it with bitterness.
It was in vain that she asked him for Vely's History of France which was on the highest shelf, and thus necessitated Julien going to fetch the longer of the two ladders.
Julien had brought the ladder and had fetched the volume and given it to her, but had not yet been able to give her a single thought.
As he was taking the ladder back he hit in his hurry one of the glass panes in the library with his elbow; the noise of the glass falling on the floor finally brought him to himself.
He hastened to apologise to mademoiselle de la Mole. He tried to be polite and was certainly nothing more.
Mathilde saw clearly that she had disturbed him, and that he would have preferred to have gone on thinking about what he had been engrossed in before her arrival, to speaking to her.
After looking at him for some time she went slowly away.
Julien watched her walk.
He enjoyed the contrast of her present dress with the elegant magnificence of the previous night.
The difference between the two expressions was equally striking.
The young girl who had been so haughty at the Duke de Retz's ball, had, at the present moment, an almost plaintive expression.
"As a matter of fact," said Julien to himself, "that black dress makes the beauty of her figure all the more striking.
She has a queenly carriage; but why is she in mourning?"
"If I ask someone the reason for this mourning, they will think I am putting my foot in it again."
Julien had now quite emerged from the depth of his enthusiasm.
"I must read over again all the letters I have written this morning.
God knows how many missed out words and blunders I shall find.