What Is the Decoration that Confers Distinction?

　　Your water does not refresh me, said the thirsty genie. Yet it is thecoolest well in all the Diar Bekir.

　　PELLICOOne day Julien returned from the charming property of Villequier, onthe bank of the Seine, in which M. de La Mole took a special interest because, of all his estates, it was the only one that had belonged to the celebrated Boniface de La Mole. He found at the Hotel the Marquise andher daughter, who had returned from Hyeres.

　　Julien was now a dandy and understood the art of life in Paris. Hegreeted Mademoiselle de La Mole with perfect coolness. He appeared toremember nothing of the time when she asked him so gaily to tell her allabout his way of falling from his horse.

　　Mademoiselle de La Mole found him taller and paler. There was nolonger anything provincial about his figure or his attire; not so with hisconversation: this was still perceptibly too serious, too positive. In spiteof these sober qualities, and thanks to his pride, it conveyed no sense ofinferiority; one felt merely that he still regarded too many things as important. But one saw that he was a man who would stand by his word.

　　'He is wanting in lightness of touch, but not in intelligence,' Mademoiselle de La Mole said to her father, as she teased him over theCross he had given Julien. 'My brother has been asking you for it for thelast eighteen months, and he is a La Mole!'

　　'Yes; but Julien has novelty. That has never been the case with the LaMole you mention.'

　　M. le Duc de Retz was announced.

　　Mathilde felt herself seized by an irresistible desire to yawn; she recognised the antique decorations and the old frequenters of the paternal drawing-room. She formed an entirely boring picture of the life she wasgoing to resume in Paris. And yet at Hyeres she had longed for Paris.

　　'To think that I am nineteen!' she reflected: 'it is the age of happiness,according to all those gilt-edged idiots.' She looked at nine or tenvolumes of recent poetry that had accumulated, during her absence inProvence, on the drawing-room table. It was her misfortune to havemore intelligence than MM. de Croisenois, de Caylus, de Luz, and therest of her friends. She could imagine everything that they would say toher about the beautiful sky in Provence, poetry, the south, etc., etc.

　　Those lovely eyes, in which was revealed the most profound boredom,and, what was worse still, a despair of finding any pleasure, came to restupon Julien. At any rate, he was not exactly like all the rest.

　　'Monsieur Sorel,' she said in that short, sharp voice, with nothing feminine about it, which is used by young women of the highest rank,'Monsieur Sorel, are you coming to M. de Retz's ball tonight?'

　　'Mademoiselle, I have not had the honour to be presented to M. leDuc.' (One would have said that these words and the title burned the lipsof the proud provincial.)'He has asked my brother to bring you; and, if you came, you couldtell me all about Villequier; there is some talk of our going there in thespring. I should like to know whether the house is habitable, and if thecountry round it is as pretty as people say. There are so many undeserved reputations!'

　　Julien made no reply.

　　'Come to the ball with my brother,' she added, in the driest of tones.

　　Julien made a respectful bow. 'So, even in the middle of a ball, I mustrender accounts to all the members of the family. Am I not paid to betheir man of business?' In his ill humour, he added: 'Heaven only knowswhether what I tell the daughter may not upset the plans of her father,and brother, and mother! It is just like the court of a Sovereign Prince.

　　One is expected to be a complete nonentity, and at the same time give noone any grounds for complaint.

　　'How I dislike that great girl!' he thought, as he watched Mademoisellede La Mole cross the room, her mother having called her to introduce herto a number of women visitors. 'She overdoes all the fashions, her gownis falling off her shoulders … she is even paler than when she wentaway … What colourless hair, if that is what they call golden! You would say the light shone through it. How arrogant her way of bowing, of looking at people! What regal gestures!'

　　Mademoiselle de La Mole had called her brother back, as he was leaving the room.

　　Comte Norbert came up to Julien:

　　'My dear Sorel,' he began, 'where would you like me to call for you atmidnight for M. de Retz's ball? He told me particularly to bring you.'

　　'I know to whom I am indebted for such kindness,' replied Julien,bowing to the ground.

　　His ill humour, having no fault to find with the tone of politeness, indeed of personal interest, in which Norbert had addressed him, venteditself upon the reply which he himself had made to this friendly speech.

　　He detected a trace of servility in it.

　　That night, on arriving at the ball, he was struck by the magnificenceof the Hotel de Retz. The courtyard was covered with an immense crimson awning patterned with golden stars: nothing could have been moreelegant. Beneath this awning, the court was transformed into a grove oforange trees and oleanders in blossom. As their tubs had been carefullyburied at a sufficient depth, these oleanders and orange trees seemed tobe springing from the ground. The carriage drive had been sprinkledwith sand.

　　The general effect seemed extraordinary to our provincial. He had noidea that such magnificence could exist; in an instant his imagination hadtaken wings and flown a thousand leagues away from ill humour. In thecarriage, on their way to the ball, Norbert had been happy, and he hadseen everything in dark colours; as soon as they entered the courtyardtheir moods were reversed.

　　Norbert was conscious only of certain details, which, in the midst of allthis magnificence, had been overlooked. He reckoned up the cost ofeverything, and as he arrived at a high total, Julien remarked that he appeared almost jealous of the outlay and began to sulk.

　　As for Julien, he arrived spell-bound with admiration, and almost timid with excess of emotion in the first of the saloons in which the company were dancing. Everyone was making for the door of the secondroom, and the throng was so great that he found it impossible to move.

　　This great saloon was decorated to represent the Alhambra of Granada.

　　'She is the belle of the ball, no doubt about it,' said a young man withmoustaches, whose shoulder dug into Julien's chest.

　　 'Mademoiselle Fourmont, who has been the reigning beauty allwinter,' his companion rejoined, 'sees that she must now take the secondplace: look how strangely she is frowning.'

　　'Indeed she is hoisting all her canvas to attract. Look, look at that gracious smile as soon as she steps into the middle in that country dance. Itis inimitable, upon my honour.'

　　'Mademoiselle de La Mole has the air of being in full control of thepleasure she derives from her triumph, of which she is very well aware.

　　One would say that she was afraid of attracting whoever speaks to her.'

　　'Precisely! That is the art of seduction.'

　　Julien was making vain efforts to catch a glimpse of this seductive woman; seven or eight men taller than himself prevented him from seeingher.

　　'There is a good deal of coquetry in that noble reserve,' went on theyoung man with the moustaches.

　　'And those big blue eyes which droop so slowly just at the momentwhen one would say they were going to give her away,' his companionadded. 'Faith, she's a past master.'

　　'Look how common the fair Fourmont appears beside her,' said athird.

　　'That air of reserve is as much as to say: "How charming I should makemyself to you, if you were the man that was worthy of me."'

　　'And who could be worthy of the sublime Mathilde?' said the first:

　　'Some reigning Prince, handsome, clever, well made, a hero in battle, andaged twenty at the most.'

　　'The natural son of the Emperor of Russia, for whom, on the occasionof such a marriage, a Kingdom would be created; or simply the Comtede Thaler, with his air of a peasant in his Sunday clothes … '

　　The passage was now cleared, Julien was free to enter.

　　'Since she appears so remarkable in the eyes of these puppets, it isworth my while to study her,' he thought. 'I shall understand what perfection means to these people.'

　　As he was trying to catch her eye, Mathilde looked at him. 'Duty callsme,' Julien said to himself, but his resentment was now confined to hisexpression. Curiosity made him step forward with a pleasure which thelow cut of the gown on Mathilda's shoulders rapidly enhanced, in amanner, it must be admitted, by no means flattering to his self-esteem.

　　 'Her beauty has the charm of youth,' he thought. Five or six young men,among whom Julien recognised those whom he had heard talking in thedoorway, stood between her and him.

　　'You can tell me, Sir, as you have been here all the winter,' she said tohim, 'is it not true that this is the prettiest ball of the season?' He made noanswer.

　　'This Coulon quadrille seems to me admirable; and the ladies are dancing it quite perfectly.' The young men turned round to see who the fortunate person was who was being thus pressed for an answer. It was notencouraging.

　　'I should hardly be a good judge, Mademoiselle; I spend my time writing: this is the first ball on such a scale that I have seen.'

　　The moustached young men were shocked.

　　'You are a sage, Monsieur Sorel,' she went on with a more marked interest; 'you look upon all these balls, all these parties, like a philosopher,like a Jean-Jacques Rousseau. These follies surprise you without tempting you.'

　　A chance word had stifled Julien's imagination and banished every illusion from his heart. His lips assumed an expression of disdain that wasperhaps slightly exaggerated.

　　'Jean-Jacques Rousseau,' he replied, 'is nothing but a fool in my eyeswhen he takes it upon himself to criticise society; he did not understandit, and approached it with the heart of an upstart flunkey.'

　　'He wrote the Contrat Social,' said Mathilde in a tone of veneration.

　　'For all his preaching a Republic and the overthrow of monarchicaltitles, the upstart is mad with joy if a Duke alters the course of his after-dinner stroll to accompany one of his friends.'

　　'Ah, yes! The Due de Luxembourg at Montmorency acco............