“No, they won’t, for I am well armed, and as we know I am accustomed to firing on lackeys.”
“Well, suppose one of them has courage, and hurls himself upon me. He has been promised a hundred napoleons. I kill him, or wound him, good, that’s what they want. I shall be thrown into prison legally. I shall be had up in the police court and the judges will send me with all justice and all equity to keep Messieurs Fontan and Magalon company in Poissy. There I shall be landed in the middle of four hundred scoundrels.... And am I to have the slightest pity on these people,” he exclaimed getting up impetuously! “Do they show any to persons of the third estate when they have them in their power!” With these words his gratitude to M. de la Mole, which had been in spite of himself torturing his conscience up to this time, breathed its last.
“Softly, gentlemen, I follow this little Machiavellian trick, the abbé Maslon or M. Castanède of the seminary could not have done better. You will take the provocative letter away from me and I shall exemplify the second volume of Colonel Caron at Colmar.”
“One moment, gentlemen, I will send the fatal letter in a well-sealed packet to M. the abbé Pirard to take care of. He’s an honest man, a Jansenist, and consequently incorruptible. Yes, but he will open the letters.... Fouqué is the man to whom I must send it.”
We must admit that Julien’s expression was awful, his countenance ghastly; it breathed unmitigated criminality. It represented the unhappy man at war with all society.
“To arms,” exclaimed Julien. And he bounded up the flight of steps of the hotel with one stride. He entered the stall of the street scrivener; he frightened him. “Copy this,” he said, giving him mademoiselle de la Mole’s letter.
While the scrivener was working, he himself wrote to Fouqué. He asked him to take care of a valuable deposit. “But he said to himself,” breaking in upon his train of thought, “the secret service of the post-office will open my letter, and will give you gentlemen the one you are looking for ... not quite, gentlemen.” He went and bought an enormous Bible from a Protestant bookseller, skillfully hid Mathilde’s letter in the cover, and packed it all up. His parcel left by the diligence addressed to one of Fouqué’s workmen, whose name was known to nobody at Paris.
This done, he returned to the Hôtel de la Mole, joyous and buoyant.
Now it’s our turn he exclaimed as he locked himself into the room and threw off his coat.
“What! mademoiselle,” he wrote to Mathilde, “is it mademoiselle de la Mole who gets Arsène her father’s lackey to hand an only too flattering letter to a poor carpenter from the Jura, in order no doubt to make fun of his simplicity?” And he copied out the most explicit phrases in the letter which he had just received. His own letter would have done honour to the diplomatic prudence of M. the Chevalier de Beauvoisis. It was still only ten o’clock when Julien entered the Italian opera, intoxicated with happiness and that feeling of his own power which was so novel for a poor devil like him. He heard his friend Geronimo sing. Music had never exalted him to such a pitch.