There also was of course in Adeline
That calm patrician polish in the address,
Which ne’er can pass the equinoctial line
Of anything which Nature would express;
Just as a Mandarin finds nothing fine.
At least his manner suffers not to guess
That anything he views can greatly please.
Don Juan, c. xiii. st. 84.
“There is an element of madness in all this family’s way of looking at things,” thought the maréchale; “they are infatuated with their young abbé, whose only accomplishment is to be a good listener, though his eyes are fine enough, it is true.”
Julien, on his side, found in the maréchale’s manners an almost perfect instance of that patrician calm which exhales a scrupulous politeness; and, what is more, announces at the same time the impossibility of any violent emotion. Madame de Fervaques would have been as much scandalised by any unexpected movement or any lack of self-control, as by a lack of dignity towards one’s inferiors. She would have regarded the slightest symptom of sensibility as a kind of moral drunkenness which puts one to the blush and was extremely prejudicial to what a person of high rank owed to herself. Her great happiness was to talk of the king’s last hunt; her favourite book, was the Memoirs of the Duke de Saint Simon, especially the genealogical part.
Julien knew the place where the arrangement of the light suited madame de Fervaques’ particular style of beauty. He got there in advance, but was careful to turn his chair in such a way as not to see Mathilde.
Astonished one day at this consistent policy of hiding himself from her, she left the blue sofa and came to work by the little table near the maréchale’s armchair. Julien had a fairly close view of her over madame de Fervaques’ hat.
Those eyes, which were the arbiters of his fate, frightened him, and then hurled him violently out of his habitual apathy. He talked, and talked very well.
He was speaking to the maréchale, but his one aim was to produce an impression upon Mathilde’s soul. He became so animated that eventually madame de Fervaques did not manage to understand a word he said.
This was a prime merit. If it had occurred to Julien to follow it up by some phrases of German mysticism, lofty religion, and Jesuitism, the maréchale would have immediately given him a rank among the superior men whose mission it was to regenerate the age.