As soon as they had reassembled the following day behind madame de la Mole's armchair, M. de Caylus, supported by Croisenois and by Norbert, began in Julien's absence to attack sharply the high opinion which Mathilde entertained for Julien. He did this without any provocation, and almost the very minute that he caught sight of mademeiselle de la Mole. She tumbled to the subtlety immediately and was delighted with it.
"So there they are all leagued together," she said to herself, "against a man of genius who has not ten louis a year to bless himself with and who cannot answer them except in so far as he is questioned. They are frightened of him, black coat and all. But how would things stand if he had epaulettes?"
She had never been more brilliant, hardly had Caylus and his allies opened their attack than she riddled them with sarcastic jests. When the fire of these brilliant officers was at length extinguished she said to M. de Caylus.
"Suppose that some gentleman in the Franche-Comté mountains finds out to-morrow that Julien is his natural son and gives him a name and some thousands of francs, why in six months he will be an officer of hussars like you, gentlemen, in six weeks he will have moustaches like you gentlemen. And then his greatness of character will no longer be an object of ridicule. I shall then see you reduced, monsieur the future duke, to this stale and bad argument, the superiority of the court nobility over the provincial nobility. But where will you be if I choose to push you to extremities and am mischievous enough to make Julien's father a Spanish duke, who was a prisoner of war at Besançon in the time of Napoleon, and who out of conscientious scruples acknowledges him on his death bed?" MM. de Caylus, and de Croisenois found all these assumptions of illegitimacy in rather bad taste. That was all they saw in Mathilde's reasoning.
His sister's words were so clear that Norbert, in spite of his submissiveness, assumed a solemn air, which one must admit did not harmonise very well with his amiable, smiling face. He ventured to say a few words.
"Are you ill? my dear," answered Mathilde with a little air of seriousness. "You must be very bad to answer jests by moralizing."
"Moralizing from you! Are you soliciting a job as prefect?"
