"You mean to say you want to live in the country without pandering to the passions of your neighbours, without even listening to their gossip.
What a mistake!"
"It is rectified at last.
Monfleury is for sale. I will lose 50,000 francs if necessary, but I am over-joyed I am leaving that hell of hypocrisy and annoyance.
I am going to look for solitude and rustic peace in the only place where those things are to be found in France, on a fourth storey looking on to the Champs-Elysees; and, moreover, I am actually deliberating if I shall not commence my political career by giving consecrated bread to the parish in the Roule quarter."
"All this would not have happened under Bonaparte," said Falcoz with eyes shining with rage and sorrow.
"Very good, but why didn't your Bonaparte manage to keep his position?
Everything which I suffer to-day is his work."
At this point Julien's attention was redoubled.
He had realised from the first word that the Bonapartist Falcoz was the old boyhood friend of M. de Renal, who had been repudiated by him in 1816, and that the philosopher Saint-Giraud must be the brother of that chief of the prefecture of——who managed to get the houses of the municipality knocked down to him at a cheap price.
"And all this is the work of your Bonaparte.
An honest man, aged forty, and possessed of five hundred thousand francs however inoffensive he is, cannot settle in the provinces and find peace there; those priests and nobles of his will turn him out."
"Oh don't talk evil of him," exclaimed Falcoz.
"France was never so high in the esteem of the nations as during the thirteen years of his reign; then every single act was great."
"Your emperor, devil take him," replied the man of forty-four, "was only great on his battle fields and when he reorganised the finances about 1802.
What is the meaning of all his conduct since then?
What with his chamberlains, his pomp, and his receptions in the Tuileries, he has simply provided a new edition of all the monarchical tomfoolery.
It was a revised edition and might possibly have lasted for a century or two.
The nobles and the priests wish to go back to the old one, but they did not have the iron hand necessary to impose it on the public."
"Yes, that's just how an old printer would talk."
"Who has turned me out of my estate?" continued the printer, angrily.
"The priests, whom Napoleon called back by his Concordat instead of treating them like the State treats doctors, barristers, and astronomers, simply seeing in them ordinary citizens, and not bothering about the particular calling by which they are trying to earn their livelihood.
Should we be saddled with these insolent gentlemen today, if your Bonaparte had not created barons and counts?
No, they were out of fashion.
Next to the priests, it's the little country nobility who have annoyed me the most, and compelled me to become a Liberal."
The conversation was endless. The theme will occupy France for another half-century. As Saint-Giraud kept always repeating that it was impossible to live in the provinces, Julien timidly suggested the case of M. de Renal.
"Zounds, young man, you're a nice one," exclaimed Falcoz.
"He turned spider so as not to be fly, and a terrible spider into the bargain.
But I see that he is beaten by that man Valenod.
Do you know that scoundrel?
He's the villain of the piece.
What will your M. de Renal say if he sees himself turned out one of these fine days, and Valenod put in his place?"
"He will be left to brood over his crimes," said Saint-Giraud. "Do you know Verrieres, young man?
Well, Bonaparte, heaven confound him! Bonaparte and his monarchical tomfoolery rendered possible the reign of the Renals and the Chelans, which brought about the reign of the Valenods and the Maslons."
This conversation, with its gloomy politics, astonished Julien and distracted him from his delicious reveries.
He appreciated but little the first sight of Paris as perceived in the distance.
The castles in the air he had built about his future had to struggle with the still present memory of the twenty-four hours that he had just passed in Verrieres.
He vowed that he would never abandon his mistress's children, and that he would leave everything in order to protect them, if the impertinence of the priests brought about a republic and the persecution of the nobles.
What would have happened on the night of his arrival in Verrieres if, at the moment when he had leant his ladder against the casement of Madame de Renal's bedroom he had found that room occupied by a stranger or by M. de Renal?
But how delicious, too, had been those first two hours when his sweetheart had been sincerely anxious to send him away and he had pleaded his cause, sitting down by her in the darkness!
A soul like Julien's is haunted by such memories for a lifetime.
The rest of the interview was already becoming merged in the first period of their love, fourteen months previous.
Julien was awakened from his deep meditation by the stopping of the coach.
They had just entered the courtyard of the Post in the Rue Rousseau.
"I want to go to La Malmaison," he said to a cabriolet which approached.
"At this time, Monsieur—what for?"
"What's that got to do with you?
Get on."
Every real passion only thinks about itself. That is why, in my view, passions are ridiculous at Paris, where one's neighbour always insists on one's considering him a great deal.
I shall refrain from recounting Julien's ecstasy at La Malmaison.