You can form your opinion as to whether Julien paid attention; everything interested him, both the substance of things and the manner of making fun of them.
"And there is M. Descoulis," said Matilde; "he doesn't wear a wig any more. Does he want to get a prefectship through sheer force of genius? He is displaying that bald forehead which he says is filled with lofty thoughts."
"He is a man who knows the whole world," said the marquis de Croisenois. "He also goes to my uncle the cardinal's.
He is capable of cultivating a falsehood with each of his friends for years on end, and he has two or three hundred friends.
He knows how to nurse friendship, that is his talent.
He will go out, just as you see him, in the worst winter weather, and be at the door of one of his friends by seven o'clock in the morning.
"He quarrels from time to time and he writes seven or eight letters for each quarrel.
Then he has a reconciliation and he writes seven or eight letters to express his bursts of friendship.
But he shines most brilliantly in the frank and sincere expansiveness of the honest man who keeps nothing up his sleeve.
This man?uvre is brought into play when he has some favour to ask.
One of my uncle's grand vicars is very good at telling the life of M. Descoulis since the restoration.
I will bring him to you."
"Bah! I don't believe all that, it's professional jealousy among the lower classes," said the comte de Caylus.
"M. Descoulis will live in history," replied the marquis. "He brought about the restoration together with the abbe de Pradt and messieurs de Talleyrand and Pozzo di Borgo."
"That man has handled millions," said Norbert, "and I can't conceive why he should come here to swallow my father's epigrams which are frequently atrocious.
'How many times have you betrayed your friends, my dear Descoulis?' he shouted at him one day from one end of the table to the other."
"But is it true that he has played the traitor?" asked mademoiselle de la Mole.
"Who has not played the traitor?"
"Why!" said the comte de Caylus to Norbert, "do you have that celebrated Liberal, M. Sainclair, in your house.
What the devil's he come here for?
I must go up to him and speak to him and make him speak. He is said to be so clever."
"But how will your mother receive him?" said M. de Croisenois.
"He has such extravagant, generous and independent ideas."
"Look," said mademoiselle de la Mole, "look at the independent man who bows down to the ground to M. Descoulis while he grabs hold of his hand.
I almost thought he was going to put it to his lips."
"Descoulis must stand better with the powers that be than we thought," answered M. de Croisenois.
"Sainclair comes here in order to get into the academy," said Norbert.
"See how he bows to the baron L——, Croisenois."
"It would be less base to kneel down," replied M. de Luz.
"My dear Sorel," said Norbert, "you are extremely smart, but you come from the mountains. Mind you never bow like that great poet is doing, even to God the Father."
"Ah there's a really witty man, M. the Baron Baton," said mademoiselle de la Mole, imitating a little the voice of the flunkey who had just announced him.
"I think that even your servants make fun of him.
What a name Baron Baton," said M. de Caylus.
"What's in a name?" he said to us the other day, went on Matilde.
"Imagine the Duke de Bouillon announced for the first time. So far as I am concerned the public only need to get used to me."
"Julien left the vicinity of the sofa."
Still insufficiently appreciative of the charming subtleties of a delicate raillery to laugh at a joke, he considered that a jest ought to have some logical foundation.
He saw nothing in these young peoples' conversation except a vein of universal scandal-mongering and was shocked by it.
His provincial or English prudery went so far as to detect envy in it, though in this he was certainly mistaken.
"Count Norbert," he said to himself, "who has had to make three drafts for a twenty-line letter to his colonel would be only too glad to have written once in his whole life one page as good as M. Sainclair."
Julien approached successively the several groups and attracted no attention by reason of his lack of importance.
He followed the Baron Baton from a distance and tried to hear him.
This witty man appeared nervous and Julien did not see him recover his equanimity before he had hit upon three or four stinging phrases.
Julien thought that this kind of wit had great need of space.
The Baron could not make epigrams. He needed at least four sentences of six lines each, in order to be brilliant.
"That man argues, he does not talk," said someone behind Julien.
He turned round and reddened with pleasure when he heard the name of the comte Chalvet.
He was the subtlest man of the century.
Julien had often found his name in the Memorial of St. Helena and in the portions of history dictated by Napoleon.
The diction of comte Chalvet was laconic, his phrases were flashes of lightning—just, vivid, deep.