The DiscussionThe republic—for every person today willing to sacrifice all to thecommon good, there are thousands and millions who know onlytheir own pleasures and their vanity. One is esteemed in Paris forone's carriage, not for one's virtue.

　　NAPOLEON, MemorialThe footman burst in, announcing: 'Monsieur le Duc de ——.'

　　'Hold your tongue, you fool,' said the Duke as he entered the room. Hesaid this so well, and with such majesty that Julien could not help thinking that knowing how to lose his temper with a footman was the wholeextent of this great personage's knowledge. Julien raised his eyes and atonce lowered them again. He had so clearly divined the importance ofthis new arrival that he trembled lest his glance should be thought anindiscretion.

　　This Duke was a man of fifty, dressed like a dandy, and treading asthough on springs. He had a narrow head with a large nose, and acurved face which he kept thrusting forward. It would have been hardfor anyone to appear at once so noble and so insignificant. His comingwas a signal for the opening of the discussion.

　　Julien was sharply interrupted in his physiognomical studies by thevoice of M. de La Mole. 'Let me present to you M. l'abbe Sorel,' said theMarquis. 'He is endowed with an astonishing memory; it was only anhour ago that I spoke to him of the mission with which he might perhapsbe honoured, and, in order to furnish us with a proof of his memory, hehas learned by heart the first page of the Quotidienne.'

　　'Ah! The foreign news, from poor N ——,' said the master of thehouse. He picked up the paper eagerly and, looking at Julien with awhimsical air, in the effort to appear important: 'Begin, Sir,' he said tohim.

　　 The silence was profound, every eye was fixed on Julien; he repeatedhis lesson so well that after twenty lines: 'That will do,' said the Duke.

　　The little man with the boar's eyes sat down. He was the chairman for, assoon as he had taken his place, he indicated a card table to Julien, andmade a sign to him to bring it up to his side. Julien established himselfthere with writing materials. He counted twelve people seated round thegreen cloth.

　　'M. Sorel,' said the Duke, 'retire to the next room. We shall send foryou.'

　　The master of the house assumed an uneasy expression. 'The shuttersare not closed,' he murmured to his neighbour. 'It is no use your lookingout of the window,' he foolishly exclaimed to Julien. 'Here I am thrust into a conspiracy at the very least,' was the latter's thought. 'Fortunately, itis not one of the kind that end on the Place de Greve. Even if there weredanger, I owe that and more to the Marquis. I should be fortunate, wereit granted me to atone for all the misery which my follies may one daycause him!'

　　Without ceasing to think of his follies and of his misery, he studied hissurroundings in such a way that he could never forget them. Only thendid he remember that he had not heard the Marquis tell his footman thename of the street, and the Marquis had sent for a cab, a thing he neverdid.

　　Julien was left for a long time to his reflections. He was in a parlourhung in green velvet with broad stripes of gold. There was on the side-table a large ivory crucifix, and on the mantelpiece the book Du Pape, byM. de Maistre, with gilt edges, and magnificently bound. Julien opened itso as not to appear to be eavesdropping. Every now and then there was asound of raised voices from the next room. At length the door opened,his name was called.

　　'Remember, Gentlemen,' said the chairman, 'that from this moment weare addressing the Duc de ——. This gentleman,' he said, pointing toJulien, 'is a young Levite, devoted to our sacred cause, who will have nodifficulty in repeating, thanks to his astonishing memory, our most trivial words.

　　'Monsieur has the floor,' he said, indicating the personage with thefatherly air, who was wearing three or four waistcoats. Julien felt that itwould have been more natural to call him the gentleman with the waistcoats. He supplied himself with paper and wrote copiously.

　　 (Here the author would have liked to insert a page of dots. 'That willnot look pretty,' says the publisher, 'and for so frivolous a work not tolook pretty means death.'

　　'Politics,' the author resumes, 'are a stone attached to the neck of literature, which, in less than six months, drowns it. Politics in the middle ofimaginative interests are like a pistol-shot in the middle of a concert. Thenoise is deafening without being emphatic. It is not in harmony with thesound of any of the instruments. This mention of politics is going to givedeadly offence to half my readers, and to bore the other half, who havealready found far more interesting and emphatic politics in their morning paper.'

　　'If your characters do not talk politics,' the publisher retorts, 'they areno longer Frenchmen of 1830, and your book ceases to hold a mirror, asyou claim… .')Julien's report amounted to twenty-six pages; the following is a quitecolourless extract; for I have been obliged, as usual, to suppress the absurdities, the frequency of which would have appeared tedious or highlyimprobable. (Compare the Gazette des Tribunaux. )The man with the waistcoats and the fatherly air (he was a Bishop,perhaps), smiled often, and then his eyes, between their tremulous lids,assumed a strange brilliance and an expression less undecided than washis wont. This personage, who was invited to speak first, before theDuke ('but what Duke?' Julien asked himself), apparently to expressopinions and to perform the functions of Attorney General, appeared toJulien to fall into the uncertainty and absence of definite conclusionswith which those officers are often reproached. In the course of the discussion the Duke went so far as to rebuke him for this.

　　After several phrases of morality and indulgent philosophy, the manwith the waistcoats said:

　　'Noble England, guided by a great man, the immortal Pitt, spent fortythousand million francs in destroying the Revolution. If this assemblywill permit me to express somewhat boldly a melancholy reflection, England does not sufficiently understand that with a man like Bonaparte, especially when one had had to oppose to him only a collection of good intentions, there was nothing decisive save personal measures … '

　　'Ah! Praise of assassination again!' said the master of the house with anuneasy air.

　　 'Spare us your sentimental homilies,' exclaimed the chairman angrily;his boar's eye gleamed with a savage light. 'Continue,' he said to the manwith the waistcoats. The chairman's cheeks and brow turned purple.

　　'Noble England,' the speaker went on, 'is crushed today, for every Englishman, before paying for his daily bread, is obliged to pay the intereston the forty thousand million francs which were employed against theJacobins. She has no longer a Pitt … '

　　'She has the Duke of Wellington,' said a military personage who assumed an air of great importance.

　　'Silence, please, Gentlemen,' cried the chairman; 'if we continue to disagree, there will have been no use in our sending for M. Sorel.'

　　'We know that Monsieur is full of ideas,' said the Duke with an air ofvexation and a glance at the interrupter, one of Napoleon's Generals.

　　Julien saw that this was an allusion to something personal and highly offensive. Everyone smiled; the turncoat General seemed beside himselfwith rage.

　　'There is no longer a Pitt,' the speaker went on, with the discouragedair of a man who despairs of making his hearers listen to reason. 'Werethere a fresh Pitt in England, one does not hoodwink a nation twice bythe same means … '

　　'That is why a conquering General, a Bonaparte is impossible now inFrance,' cried the military interrupter.

　　On this occasion, neither the chairman nor the Duke dared show annoyance, though Julien thought he could read in their eyes that theywere tempted to do so. They lowered their eyes, and the Duke contentedhimself with a sigh loud enough to be audi............