He wept.
What! in spite of those wretched white walls, built this very year, which cut the path up into bits?
Yes, monsieur, for Julien, as for posterity, there was nothing to choose between Arcole, Saint Helena, and La Malmaison.
In the evening, Julien hesitated a great deal before going to the theatre. He had strange ideas about that place of perdition.
A deep distrust prevented him from admiring actual Paris. He was only affected by the monuments left behind by his hero.
"So here I am in the centre of intrigue and hypocrisy.
Here reign the protectors of the abbe de Frilair."
On the evening of the third day his curiosity got the better of his plan of seeing everything before presenting himself to the abbe Pirard.
The abbe explained to him coldly the kind of life which he was to expect at M. de la Mole's.
"If you do not prove useful to him at the end of some months you will go back to the seminary, but not in disgrace.
You will live in the house of the marquis, who is one of the greatest seigneurs of France.
You will wear black, but like a man who is in mourning, and not like an ecclesiastic.
I insist on your following your theological studies three days a week in a seminary where I will introduce you.
Every day at twelve o'clock you will establish yourself in the marquis's library; he counts on making use of you in drafting letters concerning his lawsuits and other matters.
The marquis will scribble on the margin of each letter he gets the kind of answer which is required.
I have assured him that at the end of three months you will be so competent to draft the answers, that out of every dozen you hand to the marquis for signature, he will be able to sign eight or nine.
In the evening, at eight o'clock, you will tidy up his bureau, and at ten you will be free.
"It may be," continued the abbe Pirard, "that some old lady or some smooth-voiced man will hint at immense advantages, or will crudely offer you gold, to show him the letters which the marquis has received."
"Ah, monsieur," exclaimed Julien, blushing.
"It is singular," said the abbe with a bitter smile, "that poor as you are, and after a year at a seminary, you still have any of this virtuous indignation left.
You must have been very blind."
"Can it be that blood will tell," muttered the abbe in a whisper, as though speaking to himself.
"The singular thing is," he added, looking at Julien, "that the marquis knows you—I don't know how.
He will give you a salary of a hundred louis to commence with.
He is a man who only acts by his whim. That is his weakness.
He will quarrel with you about the most childish matters.
If he is satisfied, your wages may rise in consequence up to eight thousand francs.
"But you realise," went on the abbe, sourly, "that he is not giving you all this money simply on account of your personal charm.
The thing is to prove yourself useful.
If I were in your place I would talk very little, and I would never talk about what I know nothing about.
"Oh, yes," said the abbe, "I have made some enquiries for you. I was forgetting M. de la Mole's family.
He has two children—a daughter and a son of nineteen, eminently elegant—the kind of madman who never knows to-day what he will do to-morrow.
He has spirit and valour; he has been through the Spanish war.
The marquis hopes, I don't know why, that you will become a friend of the young count Norbert.
I told him that you were a great classic, and possibly he reckons on your teaching his son some ready-made phrases about Cicero and Virgil.
"If I were you, I should never allow that handsome young man to make fun of me, and before I accepted his advances, which you will find perfectly polite but a little ironical, I would make him repeat them more than once.
"I will not hide from you the fact that the young count de La Mole is bound to despise you at first, because you are nothing more than a little bourgeois. His grandfather belonged to the court, and had the honour of having his head cut off in the Place de Greve on the 26th April, 1574, on account of a political intrigue.
"As for you, you are the son of a carpenter of Verrieres, and what is more, in receipt of his father's wages.
Ponder well over these differences, and look up the family history in Moreri.
All the flatterers who dine at their house make from time to time what they call delicate allusions to it.
"Be careful of how you answer the pleasantries of M. the count de La Mole, chief of a squadron of hussars, and a future peer of France, and don't come and complain to me later on."
"It seems to me," said Julien, blushing violently, "that I ought not even to answer a man who despises me."
"You have no idea of his contempt. It will only manifest itself by inflated compliments.
If you were a fool, you might be taken in by it. If you want to make your fortune, you ought to let yourself be taken in by it."
"Shall I be looked upon as ungrateful," said Julien, "if I return to my little cell Number 108 when I find that all this no longer suits me?"
"All the toadies of the house will no doubt calumniate you," said the abbe, "but I myself will come to the rescue.
Adsum qui feci.
I will say that I am responsible for that resolution."
Julien was overwhelmed by the bitter and almost vindictive tone which he noticed in M. Pirard; that tone completely infected his last answer.
The fact is that the abbe had a conscientious scruple about loving Julien, and it was with a kind of religious fear that he took so direct a part in another's life.