An hour afterwards the marquis came in and was surprised to notice that Julien spelt cela with two “ll” cella. “Is all that the abbé told me of his knowledge simply a fairy tale?” The marquis was greatly discouraged and gently said to him,
“You are not sure of your spelling?”
“That is true,” said Julien without thinking in the least of the injustice that he was doing to himself. He was overcome by the kindness of the marquis which recalled to him through sheer force of contrast the superciliousness of M. de Rênal.
“This trial of the little Franc-comtois abbé is waste of time,” thought the marquis, “but I had such great need of a reliable man.”
“You spell cela with one ‘l,’” said the marquis to him, “and when you have finished your copies look the words whose spelling you are not sure of up in the dictionary.”
The marquis sent for him at six o’clock. He looked at Julien’s boots with manifest pain. “I am sorry for a mistake I made. I did not tell you that you must dress every day at half-past five.”
Julien looked at him but did not understand.
“I mean to say put on stockings. Arsène will remind you. To-day I will make your apologies.”
As he finished the sentence M. de la Mole escorted Julien into a salon resplendent with gilding. On similar occasions M. de Rênal always made a point of doubling his pace so as to have the privilege of being the first to pass the threshold. His former employer’s petty vanity caused Julien to tread on the marquis’s feet and hurt him a great deal because of his gout. “So he is clumsy to the bargain,” he said to himself. He presented him to a woman of high stature and of imposing appearance. It was the marquise. Julien thought that her manner was impertinent, and that she was a little like Madame de Maugiron, the wife of the sub-prefect of the arrondissement of Verrières when she was present at the Saint-Charles dinner. Rendered somewhat nervous by the extreme magnificence of the salon Julien did not hear what M. de la Mole was saying. The marquise scarcely deigned to look at him. There were several men there, among whom Julien recognised with an inexpressible pleasure the young bishop of Agde who had deigned to speak to him some months before at the ceremony of Bray-le-Haut. This young prelate was doubtless frightened by the tender look which the timidity of Julien fixed on him, and did not bother to recognise “the provincial.”
The men assembled in this salon seemed to Julien to have a certain element of gloom and constraint. Conversation takes place in a low voice in Paris and little details are not exaggerated.