CHAPTER LXX
TRANQUILITY
It is because I was foolish then that I am wise to-day. Oh thou philosopher who seest nothing except the actual instant. How short-sighted are thy views! Thine eye is not adapted to follow the subterranean work of the passions.—M. Goethe.
This conversation was interrupted by an interrogation followed by a conference with the advocate entrusted with the defence. These moments were the only absolutely unpleasant ones in a life made up of nonchalance and tender reveries.
"There is murder, and murder with premeditation," said Julien to the judge as he had done to the advocate, "I am sorry, gentlemen, he added with a smile, that this reduces your functions to a very small compass."
"After all," said Julien to himself, when he had managed to rid himself of those two persons, "I must really be brave, and apparently braver than those two men. They regard that duel with an unfortunate termination, which I can only seriously bother myself about on the actual day, as the greatest of evils and the arch-terror."
"The fact is that I have known a much greater unhappiness," continued Julien, as he went on philosophising with himself. "I suffered far more acutely during my first journey to Strasbourg, when I thought I was abandoned by Mathilde—and to think that I desired so passionately that same perfect intimacy which to-day leaves me so cold—as a matter of fact I am more happy alone than when that handsome girl shares my solitude."
The advocate, who was a red-tape pedant, thought him mad, and believed, with the public, that it was jealousy which had
