Success is assured."
Julien was thinking of madame the marechale de Fervaques who often came to the Hotel de la Mole.
She was a beautiful foreigner who had married the marechal a year before his death.
The one object of her whole life seemed to be to make people forget that she was the daughter of a manufacturer. In order to cut some figure in Paris she had placed herself at the head of the party of piety.
Julien sincerely admired the prince; what would he not have given to have possessed his affectations!
The conversation between the two friends was interminable. Korasoff was delighted: No Frenchman had ever listened to him for so long.
"So I have succeeded at last," said the prince to himself complacently, "in getting a proper hearing and that too through giving lessons to my master."
"So we are quite agreed," he repeated to Julien for the tenth time.
"When you talk to the young beauty, I mean the daughter of the Strasbourg stocking merchant in the presence of madame de Dubois, not a trace of passion.
But on the other hand be ardently passionate when you write.
Reading a well-written love-letter is a prude's supremest pleasure.
It is a moment of relaxation.
She leaves off posing and dares to listen to her own heart; consequently two letters a day."
"Never, never," said Julien despondently,
"I would rather be ground in a mortar than make up three phrases. I am a corpse, my dear fellow, hope nothing from me.
Let me die by the road side."
"And who is talking about making up phrases?
I have got six volumes of copied-out love-letters in my bag.
I have letters to suit every variation of feminine character, including the most highly virtuous.
Did not Kalisky pay court at Richmond-on-the-Thames at three leagues from London, you know, to the prettiest Quakeress in the whole of England?"
Julien was less unhappy when he left his friend at two o'clock in the morning.
The prince summoned a copyist on the following day, and two days afterwards Julien was the possessor of fifty-three carefully numbered love-letters intended for the most sublime and the most melancholy virtue.
"The reason why there is not fifty-four," said the prince "is because Kalisky allowed himself to be dismissed.
But what does it matter to you, if you are badly treated by the stocking-merchant's daughter since you only wish to produce an impression upon madame de Dubois' heart."
They went out riding every day, the prince was mad on Julien.
Not knowing how else to manifest his sudden friendship, he finished up by offering him the hand of one of his cousins, a rich Moscow heiress; "and once married," he added, "my influence and that cross of yours will get you made a Colonel within two years."
"But that cross was not given me by Napoleon, far from it."
"What does it matter?" said the prince, "didn't he invent it.
It is still the first in Europe by a long way."
Julien was on the point of accepting; but his duty called him back to the great personage. When he left Korasoff he promised to write.
He received the answer to the secret note which he had brought, and posted towards Paris; but he had scarcely been alone for two successive days before leaving France, and Mathilde seemed a worse punishment than death.
"I will not marry the millions Korasoff offers me," he said to himself, "and I will follow his advice.
"After all the art of seduction is his speciality.
He has thought about nothing else except that alone for more than fifteen years, for he is now thirty.
"One can't say that he lacks intelligence; he is subtle and cunning; enthusiasm and poetry are impossible in such a character.
He is an attorney: an additional reason for his not making a mistake.
"I must do it, I will pay court to madame de Fervaques.
"It is very likely she will bore me a little, but I will look at her beautiful eyes which are so like those other eyes which have loved me more than anyone in the world.
"She is a foreigner; she is a new character to observe.
"I feel mad, and as though I were going to the devil. I must follow the advice of a friend and not trust myself." _____
CHAPTER LV
THE MINISTRY OF VIRTUE _____
But if I take this pleasure with so much prudence and circumspection I shall no longer find it a pleasure.—Lope de Vega. _____
As soon as our hero had returned to Paris and had come out of the study of the marquis de La Mole, who seemed very displeased with the despatches that were given him, he rushed off for the comte Altamira.
This noble foreigner combined with the advantage of having once been condemned to death a very grave demeanour together with the good fortune of a devout temperament; these two qualities, and more than anything, the comte's high birth, made an especial appeal to madame de Fervaques who saw a lot of him.
Julien solemnly confessed to him that he was very much in love with her.
"Her virtue is the purest and the highest," answered Altamira, "only it is a little Jesuitical and dogmatic.
"There are days when, though I understand each of the expressions which she makes use of, I never understand the whole sentence.
She often makes me think that I do not know French as well as I am said to.
But your acquaintance with her will get you talked about; it will give you weight in the world.