"I should like to have the honour of thanking you for the kindness which you have shewn me.
Believe me, monsieur," added Julien very seriously, "that I appreciate all I owe you.
If your horse has not been hurt by the reason of my clumsiness of yesterday, and if it is free I should like to ride it this afternoon."
"Well, upon my word, my dear Sorel, you do so at your own risk and peril; kindly assume that I have put forth all the objections required by prudence.
As a matter of fact it is four o'clock, we have no time to lose."
As soon as Julien was on horseback, he said to the young count, "What must one do not to fall off?"
"Lots of things," answered Norbert, bursting into laughter.
"Keep your body back for instance."
Julien put his horse to the trot.
They were at the Place Louis XVI.
"Oh, you foolhardy youngster," said Norbert "there are too many carriages here, and they are driven by careless drivers into the bargain.
Once you are on the ground their tilburies will run over your body, they will not risk spoiling their horses' mouths by pulling up short."
Norbert saw Julien twenty times on the point of tumbling, but in the end the excursion finished without misadventure.
As they came back the young count said to his sister,
"Allow me to introduce a dashing dare-devil."
When he talked to his father over the dinner from one end of the table to the other, he did justice to Julien's courage.
It was the only thing one could possibly praise about his style of riding.
The young count had heard in the morning the men who groomed the horses in the courtyard making Julien's fall an opportunity for the most outrageous jokes at his expense.
In spite of so much kindness Julien soon felt himself completely isolated in this family.
All their customs seemed strange to him, and he was cognizant of none of them.
His blunders were the delight of the valets.
The abbe Pirard had left for his living.
"If Julien is a weak reed, let him perish. If he is a man of spirit, let him get out of his difficulties all alone," he thought. _____
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE HOTEL DE LA MOLE _____
What is he doing here?
Will he like it there?
Will he try to please?—Ronsard. _____
If everything in the aristocratic salon of the Hotel de la Mole seemed strange to Julien, that pale young man in his black suit seemed in his turn very strange to those persons who deigned to notice him.
Madame de la Mole suggested to her husband that he should send him off on some business on those days when they had certain persons to dinner.
"I wish to carry the experiment to its logical conclusion," answered the marquis.
"The abbe Pirard contends that we are wrong in crushing the self-respect of the people whom we allow around us.
One can only lean on what resists.
The only thing against this man is his unknown face, apart from that he is a deaf mute."
"If I am to know my way about," said Julien to himself. "I must write down the names of the persons whom I see come to the salon together with a few words on their character."
He put at the head of the list five or six friends of the house who took every opportunity of paying court to him, believing that he was protected by a whim of the marquis.
They were poor dull devils. But it must be said in praise of this class of men, such as they are found to-day in the salons of the aristocracy, that every one did not find them equally tame.
One of them was now allowing himself to be bullied by the marquis, who was venting his irritation at a harsh remark which had been addressed to him by the marquise.
The masters of the house were too proud or too prone to boredom; they were too much used to finding their only distraction in the addressing of insults, to enable them to expect true friends.
But, except on rainy days and in rare moments of savage boredom, they always showed themselves perfectly polite.
If the five or six toadies who manifested so paternal an affection towards Julien had deserted the Hotel de la Mole, the marquise would have been exposed to long spells of solitude, and in the eyes of women of that class, solitude is awful, it is the symbol of disgrace.
The marquis was charming to his wife. He saw that her salon was sufficiently furnished, though not with peers, for he did not think his new colleagues were sufficiently noble to come to his house as friends, or sufficiently amusing to be admitted as inferiors.
It was only later that Julien fathomed these secrets.
The governing policy of a household, though it forms the staple of conversation in bourgeois families, is only alluded to in families of the class of that of the marquis in moments of distress.
So paramount even in this bored century is the necessity of amusing one's self, that even on the days of dinner-parties the marquis had scarcely left the salon before all the guests ran away.
Provided that one did not make any jests about either God or the priests or the king or the persons in office, or the artists who enjoyed the favour of the court, or of anything that was established, provided that one did not praise either Beranger or the opposition papers, or Voltaire or Rousseau or anything which involved any element of free speech, provided that above all that one never talked politics, one could discuss everything with freedom.
There is no income of a hundred thousand crowns a year and no blue ribbon which could sustain a contest against such a code of salon etiquette.
The slightest live idea appeared a crudity.
In spite of the prevailing good form, perfect politeness, and desire to please, ennui was visible in every face.
The young people who came to pay their calls were frightened of speaking of anything which might make them suspected of thinking or of betraying that they had read something prohibited, and relapsed into silence after a few elegant phrases about Rossini and the weather.