And he went through the segoon thrust.
"Up till now I have been a mere usher, who exploited basely the little courage he had.
After this letter I am his equal.
"Yes," he slowly said to himself, with an infinite pleasure, "the merits of the marquis and myself have been weighed in the balance, and it is the poor carpenter from the Jura who turns the scale.
"Good!" he exclaimed, "this is how I shall sign my answer.
Don't imagine, mademoiselle de la Mole, that I am forgetting my place.
I will make you realise and fully appreciate that it is for a carpenter's son that you are betraying a descendant of the famous Guy de Croisenois who followed St. Louis to the Crusade."
Julien was unable to control his joy.
He was obliged to go down into the garden.
He had locked himself in his room, but he found it too narrow to breathe in.
"To think of it being me, the poor peasant from the Jura," he kept on repeating to himself, "to think of it being me who am eternally condemned to wear this gloomy black suit!
Alas twenty years ago I would have worn a uniform like they do!
In those days a man like me either got killed or became a general at thirty-six.
The letter which he held clenched in his hand gave him a heroic pose and stature.
Nowadays, it is true, if one sticks to this black suit, one gets at forty an income of a hundred thousand francs and the blue ribbon like my lord bishop of Beauvais.
"Well," he said to himself with a Mephistophelian smile, "I have more brains than they. I am shrewd enough to choose the uniform of my century.
And he felt a quickening of his ambition and of his attachment to his ecclesiastical dress.
What cardinals of even lower birth than mine have not succeeded in governing!
My compatriot Granvelle, for instance."
Julien's agitation became gradually calmed! Prudence emerged to the top.
He said to himself like his master Tartuffe whose part he knew by heart:
Je puis croire ces mots, un artifice honnete.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Je ne me firai point a des propos si doux,
Qu'un peu de ses faveurs apres quoi je soupire
Ne vienne m'assurer tout ce qu'ils m'ont pudire. Tartuffe, act iv. Scene v.
"Tartuffe, too, was ruined by a woman, and he was as good as most men.... My answer may be shown.... and the way out of that is this," he added pronouncing his words slowly with an intonation of deliberate and restrained ferocity.
"We will begin by quoting the most vivid passages from the letter of the sublime Mathilde."
"Quite so, but M. de Croisenois' lackeys will hurl themselves upon me and snatch the original away."
"No, they won't, for I am well armed, and as we know I am accustomed to firing on lackeys."
"Well, suppose one of them has courage, and hurls himself upon me. He has been promised a hundred napoleons.
I kill him, or wound him, good, that's what they want.
I shall be thrown into prison legally. I shall be had up in the police court and the judges will send me with all justice and all equity to keep Messieurs Fontan and Magalon company in Poissy.
There I shall be landed in the middle of four hundred scoundrels.... And am I to have the slightest pity on these people," he exclaimed getting up impetuously!
"Do they show any to persons of the third estate when they have them in their power!"
With these words his gratitude to M. de la Mole, which had been in spite of himself torturing his conscience up to this time, breathed its last.
"Softly, gentlemen, I follow this little Machiavellian trick, the abbe Maslon or M. Castanede of the seminary could not have done better.
You will take the provocative letter away from me and I shall exemplify the second volume of Colonel Caron at Colmar."
"One moment, gentlemen, I will send the fatal letter in a well-sealed packet to M. the abbe Pirard to take care of.
He's an honest man, a Jansenist, and consequently incorruptible.
Yes, but he will open the letters.... Fouque is the man to whom I must send it."
We must admit that Julien's expression was awful, his countenance ghastly; it breathed unmitigated criminality.
It represented the unhappy man at war with all society.
"To arms," exclaimed Julien.
And he bounded up the flight of steps of the hotel with one stride.
He entered the stall of the street scrivener; he frightened him.
"Copy this," he said, giving him mademoiselle de la Mole's letter.
While the scrivener was working, he himself wrote to Fouque. He asked him to take care of a valuable deposit.
"But he said to himself," breaking in upon his train of thought, "the secret service of the post-office will open my letter, and will give you gentlemen the one you are looking for ... not quite, gentlemen."
He went and bought an enormous Bible from a Protestant bookseller, skillfully hid Mathilde's letter in the cover, and packed it all up. His parcel left by the diligence addressed to one of Fouque's workmen, whose name was known to nobody at Paris.