But one remark resulted in all the others being forgotten; the first cavalier in the ninth line was a very pretty, slim boy, who was not recognised at first.
He soon created a general sensation, as some uttered a cry of indignation, and others were dumbfounded with astonishment.
They recognised in this young man, who was sitting one of the Norman horses of M. Valenod, little Sorel, the carpenter's son.
There was a unanimous out-cry against the mayor, above all on the part of the Liberals.
What, because this little labourer, who masqueraded as an abbe, was tutor to his brats, he had the audacity to nominate him guard of honour to the prejudice of rich manufacturers like so-and-so and so-and-so!
"Those gentlemen," said a banker's wife, "ought to put that insolent gutter-boy in his proper place."
"He is cunning and carries a sabre," answered her neighbour.
"He would be dastardly enough to slash them in the face."
The conversation of aristocratic society was more dangerous.
The ladies began to ask each other if the mayor alone was responsible for this grave impropriety.
Speaking generally, they did justice to his contempt for lack of birth.
Julien was the happiest of men, while he was the subject of so much conversation.
Bold by nature, he sat a horse better than the majority of the young men of this mountain town.
He saw that, in the eyes of the women, he was the topic of interest.
His epaulettes were more brilliant than those of the others, because they were new. His horse pranced at every moment.
He reached the zenith of joy.
His happiness was unbounded when, as they passed by the old rampart, the noise of the little cannon made his horse prance outside the line.
By a great piece of luck he did not fall; from that moment he felt himself a hero.
He was one of Napoleon's officers of artillery, and was charging a battery.
One person was happier than he.
She had first seen him pass from one of the folding windows in the Hotel de Ville. Then taking her carriage and rapidly making a long detour, she arrived in time to shudder when his horse took him outside the line.
Finally she put her carriage to the gallop, left by another gate of the town, succeeded in rejoining the route by which the King was to pass, and was able to follow the Guard of Honour at twenty paces distance in the midst of a noble dust.
Six thousand peasants cried
"Long live the King," when the mayor had the honour to harangue his Majesty.
An hour afterwards, when all the speeches had been listened to, and the King was going to enter the town, the little cannon began again to discharge its spasmodic volleys.
But an accident ensued, the victim being, not one of the cannoneers who had proved their mettle at Leipsic and at Montreuil, but the future deputy-mayor, M. de Moirod.
His horse gently laid him in the one heap of mud on the high road, a somewhat scandalous circumstance, inasmuch as it was necessary to extricate him to allow the King to pass.
His Majesty alighted at the fine new church, which was decked out to-day with all its crimson curtains.
The King was due to dine, and then afterwards take his carriage again and go and pay his respects to the celebrated relic of Saint Clement.
Scarcely was the King in the church than Julien galloped towards the house of M. de Renal.
Once there he doffed with a sigh his fine sky-blue uniform, his sabre and his epaulettes, to put on again his shabby little black suit.
He mounted his horse again, and in a few moments was at Bray-le-Haut, which was on the summit of a very pretty hill.
"Enthusiasm is responsible for these numbers of peasants," thought Julien.
It was impossible to move a step at Verrieres, and here there were more than ten thousand round this ancient abbey.
Half ruined by the vandalism of the Revolution, it had been magnificently restored since the Restoration, and people were already beginning to talk of miracles.
Julien rejoined the abbe Chelan, who scolded him roundly and gave him a cassock and a surplice.
He dressed quickly and followed M. Chelan, who was going to pay a call on the young bishop of Agde.
He was a nephew of M. de la Mole, who had been recently nominated, and had been charged with the duty of showing the relic to the King.
But the bishop was not to be found.
The clergy began to get impatient.
It was awaiting its chief in the sombre Gothic cloister of the ancient abbey.
Twenty-four cures had been brought together so as to represent the ancient chapter of Bray-le-Haut, which before 1789 consisted of twenty-four canons.
The cures, having deplored the bishop's youth for three-quarters of an hour, thought it fitting for their senior to visit Monseigneur to apprise him that the King was on the point of arriving, and that it was time to betake himself to the choir.
The great age of M. Chelan gave him the seniority. In spite of the bad temper which he was manifesting to Julien, he signed him to follow.
Julien was wearing his surplice with distinction.
By means of some trick or other of ecclesiastical dress, he had made his fine curling hair very flat, but by a forgetfulness, which redoubled the anger of M. Chelan, the spurs of the Guard of Honour could be seen below the long folds of his cassock.
When they arrived at the bishop's apartment, the tall lackeys with their lace-frills scarcely deigned to answer the old cure to the effect that Monseigneur was not receiving.
They made fun of him when he tried to explain that in his capacity of senior member of the chapter of Bray-le-Haut, he had the privilege of being admitted at any time to the officiating bishop.
Julien's haughty temper was shocked by the lackeys' insolence.
He started to traverse the corridors of the ancient abbey, and to shake all the doors which he found.