This incident amused the marquis. He told it in the evening to the abbé Pirard.
“I must confess one thing to you, my dear abbé. I know Julien’s birth, and I authorise you not to regard this confidence as a secret.”
His conduct this morning is noble, thought the marquis, so I will ennoble him myself.
Some time afterwards the marquis was able to go out.
“Go and pass a couple of months at London,” he said to Julien. “Ordinary and special couriers will bring you the letters I have received, together with my notes. You will write out the answers and send them back to me, putting each letter inside the answer. I have ascertained that the delay will be no more than five days.”
As he took the post down the Calais route, Julien was astonished at the triviality of the alleged business on which he had been sent.
We will say nothing about the feeling of hate and almost horror with which he touched English soil. His mad passion for Bonaparte is already known. He saw in every officer a Sir Hudson Low, in every great noble a Lord Bathurst, ordering the infamies of St. Helena and being recompensed by six years of office.
At London he really got to know the meaning of sublime fatuity. He had struck up a friendship with some young Russian nobles who initiated him.
“Your future is assured, my dear Sorel,” they said to him. “You naturally have that cold demeanour, a thousand leagues away from the sensation one has at the moment, that we have been making such efforts to acquire.”
“You have not understood your century,” said the Prince Korasoff to him. “Always do the opposite of what is expected of you. On my honour there you have the sole religion of the period. Don’t be foolish or affected, for then follies and affectations will be expected of you, and the maxim will not longer prove true.”