He is taking you into his house, so that you may spare him that kind of trouble.
Will you have enough brains to execute efficiently all the instructions which he will give you with scarcely a word of explanation?
The future will show, look after yourself."
Julien entered the shops indicated by the addresses without saying a single word. He observed that he was received with respect, and that the bootmaker as he wrote his name down in the ledger put M. de Sorel.
When he was in the Cemetery of Pere La Chaise a very obliging gentleman, and what is more, one who was Liberal in his views, suggested that he should show Julien the tomb of Marshal Ney which a sagacious statecraft had deprived of the honour of an epitaph, but when he left this Liberal, who with tears in his eyes almost clasped him in his arms, Julien was without his watch.
Enriched by this experience two days afterwards he presented himself to the abbe Pirard, who looked at him for a long time.
"Perhaps you are going to become a fop," said the abbe to him severely.
Julien looked like a very young man in full mourning; as a matter of fact, he looked very well, but the good abbe was too provincial himself to see that Julien still carried his shoulders in that particular way which signifies in the provinces both elegance and importance.
When the marquis saw Julien his opinion of his graces differed so radically from that of the good abbe as he said,
"Would you have any objection to M. le Sorel taking some dancing lessons?"
The abbe was thunderstruck.
"No," he answered at last. "Julien is not a priest."
The marquis went up the steps of a little secret staircase two at a time, and installed our hero in a pretty attic which looked out on the big garden of the hotel.
He asked him how many shirts he had got at the linen drapers.
"Two," answered Julien, intimidated at seeing so great a lord condescend to such details.
"Very good," replied the marquis quite seriously, and with a certain curt imperiousness which gave Julien food for thought. "Very good, get twenty-two more shirts.
Here are your first quarter's wages."
As he went down from the attic the marquis called an old man.
"Arsene," he said to him, "you will serve M. Sorel."
A few minutes afterwards Julien found himself alone in a magnificent library.
It was a delicious moment.
To prevent his emotion being discovered he went and hid in a little dark corner. From there he contemplated with rapture the brilliant backs of the books.
"I shall be able to read all these," he said to himself. "How can I fail to like it here?
M. de Renal would have thought himself dishonoured for ever by doing one-hundredth part of what the Marquis de la Mole has just done for me. "But let me have a look at the copies I have to make."
Having finished this work Julien ventured to approach the books. He almost went mad with joy as he opened an edition of Voltaire. He ran and opened the door of the library to avoid being surprised.
He then indulged in the luxury of opening each of the eighty volumes.
They were magnificently bound and were the masterpiece of the best binder in London.
It was even more than was required to raise Julien's admiration to the maximum.
An hour afterwards the marquis came in and was surprised to notice that Julien spelt cela with two "ll" cella.
"Is all that the abbe told me of his knowledge simply a fairy tale?"
The marquis was greatly discouraged and gently said to him,
"You are not sure of your spelling?"
"That is true," said Julien without thinking in the least of the injustice that he was doing to himself.
He was overcome by the kindness of the marquis which recalled to him through sheer force of contrast the superciliousness of M. de Renal.
"This trial of the little Franc-comtois abbe is waste of time," thought the marquis, "but I had such great need of a reliable man."
"You spell cela with one 'l,'" said the marquis to him, "and when you have finished your copies look the words whose spelling you are not sure of up in the dictionary."
The marquis sent for him at six o'clock. He looked at Julien's boots with manifest pain.
"I am sorry for a mistake I made. I did not tell you that you must dress every day at half-past five."
Julien looked at him but did not understand.
"I mean to say put on stockings.
Arsene will remind you.
To-day I will make your apologies."
As he finished the sentence M. de la Mole escorted Julien into a salon resplendent with gilding.
On similar occasions M. de Renal always made a point of doubling his pace so as to have the privilege of being the first to pass the threshold.
His former employer's petty vanity caused Julien to tread on the marquis's feet and hurt him a great deal because of his gout.
"So he is clumsy to the bargain," he said to himself.
He presented him to a woman of high stature and of imposing appearance.
It was the marquise. Julien thought that her manner was impertinent, and that she was a little like Madame de Maugiron, the wife of the sub-prefect of the arrondissement of Verrieres when she was present at the Saint-Charles dinner.
Rendered somewhat nervous by the extreme magnificence of the salon Julien did not hear what M. de la Mole was saying.
The marquise scarcely deigned to look at him.