CHAPTER LVI
MORAL LOVE
That calm patrician polish in the address,
Which ne'er can pass the equinoctial line
Of anything which Nature would express;
Just as a Mandarin finds nothing fine.
At least his manner suffers not to guess
That anything he views can greatly please.
"There is an element of madness in all this family's way of looking at things," thought the maréchale; "they are infatuated with their young abbé, whose only accomplishment is to be a good listener, though his eyes are fine enough, it is true."
Julien, on his side, found in the maréchale's manners an almost perfect instance of that patrician calm which exhales a scrupulous politeness; and, what is more, announces at the same time the impossibility of any violent emotion. Madame de Fervaques would have been as much scandalised by any unexpected movement or any lack of self-control, as by a lack of dignity towards one's inferiors. She would have regarded the slightest symptom of sensibility as a kind of moral drunkenness which puts one to the blush and was extremely prejudicial to what a person of high rank owed to herself. Her great happiness was to talk of the king's last hunt; her favourite book, was the Memoirs of the Duke de Saint Simon, especially the genealogical part.
Julien knew the place where the arrangement of the light suited madame de Fervaques' particular style of beauty. He got there in advance, but was careful to turn his chair in such a way as not to see Mathilde.
