CHAPTER XXXVI
PRONUNCIATION
If fatuity is pardonable it is in one's first youth, for it is then the exaggeration of an amiable thing. It needs an air of love, gaiety, nonchalance. But fatuity coupled with self-importance; fatuity with a solemn and self-sufficient manner! This extravagance of stupidity was reserved for the XIXth century. Such are the persons who want to unchain the hydra of revolutions!—LE JOHANNISBURG, Pamphlet.
Considering that he was a new arrival who was too disdainful to put any questions, Julien did not fall into unduly great mistakes. One day when he was forced into a café in the Rue St. Honoré by a sudden shower, a big man in a beaver coat, surprised by his gloomy look, looked at him in return just as mademoiselle Amanda's lover had done before at Besançon.
Julien had reproached himself too often for having endured the other insult to put up with this stare. He asked for an explanation. The man in the tail-coat immediately addressed him in the lowest and most insulting language. All the people in the café surrounded them. The passers-by stopped before the door. Julien always carried some little pistols as a matter of precaution. His hand was grasping them nervously in his pocket. Nevertheless he behaved wisely and confined himself to repeating to his man "Monsieur, your address, I despise you."
The persistency in which he kept repeating these six words eventually impressed the crowd.
"By Jove, the other who's talking all to himself ought to give him his address," they exclaimed. The man in the tail-coat hearing this repeated several times, flung five or six cards in Julien's face.
