What would have happened on the night of his arrival in Verrières if, at the moment when he had leant his ladder against the casement of Madame de Rênal’s bedroom he had found that room occupied by a stranger or by M. de Rênal?
But how delicious, too, had been those first two hours when his sweetheart had been sincerely anxious to send him away and he had pleaded his cause, sitting down by her in the darkness! A soul like Julien’s is haunted by such memories for a lifetime. The rest of the interview was already becoming merged in the first period of their love, fourteen months previous.
Julien was awakened from his deep meditation by the stopping of the coach. They had just entered the courtyard of the Post in the Rue Rousseau. “I want to go to La Malmaison,” he said to a cabriolet which approached.
“At this time, Monsieur—what for?”
“What’s that got to do with you? Get on.”
Every real passion only thinks about itself. That is why, in my view, passions are ridiculous at Paris, where one’s neighbour always insists on one’s considering him a great deal. I shall refrain from recounting Julien’s ecstasy at La Malmaison. He wept. What! in spite of those wretched white walls, built this very year, which cut the path up into bits? Yes, monsieur, for Julien, as for posterity, there was nothing to choose between Arcole, Saint Helena, and La Malmaison.
In the evening, Julien hesitated a great deal before going to the theatre. He had strange ideas about that place of perdition.
A deep distrust prevented him from admiring actual Paris. He was only affected by the monuments left behind by his hero.
“So here I am in the centre of intrigue and hypocrisy. Here reign the protectors of the abbé de Frilair.” On the evening of the third day his curiosity got the better of his plan of seeing everything before presenting himself to the abbé Pirard. The abbé explained to him coldly the kind of life which he was to expect at M. de la Mole’s.
“If you do not prove useful to him at the end of some months you will go back to the seminary, but not in disgrace. You will live in the house of the marquis, who is one of the greatest seigneurs of France. You will wear black, but like a man who is in mourning, and not like an ecclesiastic. I insist on your following your theological studies three days a week in a seminary where I will introduce you. Every day at twelve o’clock you will establish yourself in the marquis’s library; he counts on making use of you in drafting letters concerning his lawsuits and other matters. The marquis will scribble on the margin of each letter he gets the kind of answer which is required. I have assured him that at the end of three months you will be so competent to draft the answers, that out of every dozen you hand to the marquis for signature, he will be able to sign eight or nine. In the evening, at eight o’clock, you will tidy up his bureau, and at ten you will be free.