letters I have received, together with my notes. You will write out the answers and send them back to me, putting each letter inside the answer. I have ascertained that the delay will be no more than five days."
As he took the post down the Calais route, Julien was astonished at the triviality of the alleged business on which he had been sent.
We will say nothing about the feeling of hate and almost horror with which he touched English soil. His mad passion for Bonaparte is already known. He saw in every officer a Sir Hudson Low, in every great noble a Lord Bathurst, ordering the infamies of St. Helena and being recompensed by six years of office.
At London he really got to know the meaning of sublime fatuity. He had struck up a friendship with some young Russian nobles who initiated him.
"Your future is assured, my dear Sorel," they said to him. "You naturally have that cold demeanour, a thousand leagues away from the sensation one has at the moment, that we have been making such efforts to acquire."
"You have not understood your century," said the Prince Korasoff to him. "Always do the opposite of what is expected of you. On my honour there you have the sole religion of the period. Don't be foolish or affected, for then follies and affectations will be expected of you, and the maxim will not longer prove true."
Julien covered himself with glory one day in the Salon of the Duke of Fitz-Folke who had invited him to dinner together with the Prince Korasoff. They waited for an hour. The way in which Julien conducted himself in the middle of twenty people who were waiting is still quoted as a precedent among the young secretaries of the London Embassy. His demeanour was unimpeachable.
In spite of his friends, the dandies, he made a point of seeing the celebrated Philip Vane, the one philosopher that England has had since Locke. He found him finishing his seventh year in prison. The aristocracy doesn't joke in this country, thought Julien. Moreover Vane is disgraced, calumniated, etc.
Julien found him in cheery spirits. The rage of the aristocracy prevented him from being bored. "There's the
