stood nothing of the attack executed by the young Russian on the heart of the young English girl. The only purpose of the first forty letters was to secure forgiveness for the boldness of writing at all. The sweet person, who perhaps lived a life of inordinate boredom, had to be induced to contract the habit of receiving letters, which were perhaps a little less insipid that her everyday life.
One morning a letter was delivered to Julien. He recognised the arms of madame la Fervaques, and broke the seal with an eagerness which would have seemed impossible to him some days before. It was only an. invitation to dinner.
He rushed to prince Korasoff's instructions. Unfortunately the young Russian had taken it into his head to be as flippant as Dorat, just when he should have been simple and intelligible! Julien was not able to form any idea of the moral position which he ought to take up at the maréchale's dinner.
The salon was extremely magnificent and decorated like the gallery de Diane in the Tuilleries with panelled oil-paintings.
There were some light spots on these pictures. Julien learnt later that the mistress of the house had thought the subject somewhat lacking in decency and that she had had the pictures corrected. "What a moral century! " he thought.
He noticed in this salon three of the persons who had been present at the drawing up of the secret note. One of them, my lord bishop of the marechale's uncle had the disposition of the ecclesiastical patronage, and could, it was said, refuse his niece nothing. "What immense progress I have made," said Julien to himself with a melancholy smile, "and how indifferent I am to it. Here I am dining with the famous bishop of ."
The dinner was mediocre and the conversation wearisome.
"It's like the small talk in a bad book," thought Julien. "All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly tackled. After listening for three minutes one asks oneself which is greater—the speaker's bombast, or his abominable ignorance?"
The reader has doubtless forgotten the little man of letters named Tanbeau, who was the nephew of the Academician, and intended to be professor, who seemed entrusted with the task of poisoning the salon of the hôtel de la Mole with his base calumnies.
