First StepsThat immense valley filled with brilliant lights and with all thosethousands of people dazzles my sight. Not one of them knowsme, all are superior to me. My head reels.

　　Poemi dell' avvocato, REINAEarly in the morning of the following day, Julien was copying lettersin the library, when Mademoiselle Mathilde entered by a little privatedoor, cleverly concealed with shelves of dummy books. While Julien wasadmiring this device, Mademoiselle Mathilde appeared greatly surprisedand distinctly annoyed to see him there. Julien decided that her curlpapers gave her a hard, haughty, almost masculine air. Mademoiselle de LaMole had a secret habit of stealing books from her father's library, undetected. Julien's presence frustrated her expedition that morning, whichannoyed her all the more as she had come to secure the second volumeof Voltaire's Princesse de Babylone, a fitting complement to an eminentlymonarchical and religious education, a triumph on the part of the Sacre-Coeur! This poor girl, at nineteen, already required the spice of wit tomake her interested in a novel.

　　Comte Norbert appeared in the library about three o'clock; he hadcome to study a newspaper, in order to be able to talk politics that evening, and was quite pleased to find Julien, whose existence he had forgotten. He was charming to him, and offered to lend him a horse.

　　'My father is letting us off until dinner.'

　　Julien appreciated this us, and thought it charming.

　　'Heavens, Monsieur le Comte,' said Julien, 'if it were a question offelling an eighty-foot tree, trimming it and sawing it into planks, I venture to say that I should manage it well enough; but riding a horse is athing I haven't done six times in my life.'

　　'Well, this will be the seventh,' said Norbert.

　　 Privately, Julien remembered the entry of the King of —— into Verrieres and imagined himself a superior horseman. But, on their way backfrom the Bois de Boulogne, in the very middle of the Rue du Bac, he felloff, while trying to avoid a passing cab, and covered himself in mud. Itwas fortunate for him that he had a change of clothes. At the dinner theMarquis, wishing to include him in the conversation, asked him abouthis ride; Norbert made haste to reply in generous language.

　　'Monsieur le Comte is too kind to me,' put in Julien. 'I thank him for it,and fully appreciate his kindness. He has been so good as to give me thequietest and handsomest of horses; but after all he could not glue me onto it, and, that being so, I fell off right in the middle of that very longstreet near the bridge.'

　　Mademoiselle Mathilde tried in vain to stifle a peal of laughter; finallyindiscretion prevailed and she begged for details. Julien emerged fromthe difficulty with great simplicity; he had an unconscious grace.

　　'I augur well of this little priest,' the Marquis said to the Academician;'a simple countryman in such a scrape! Such a thing was never yet seenand never will be seen; in addition to which he relates his misadventurebefore the ladies!'

　　Julien set his listeners so thoroughly at ease over his mishap that at theend of dinner, when the general conversation had taken another turn,Mademoiselle Mathilde began to ply her brother with questions as to thedetails of the distressing event. As her inquiry continued, and as Julienmore than once caught her eye, he ventured to reply directly, althoughhe had n............