The Best Positions in the ChurchService! talent! merit! bah! belong to a coterie.

　　TELEMACHUSThus the idea of a Bishopric was for the first time blended with that ofJulien in the head of a woman who sooner or later would be distributingthe best positions in the Church of France. This prospect would havemade little difference to him; for the moment, his thoughts rose to nothing that was alien to his present misery: everything intensified it; for instance the sight of his bedroom had become intolerable to him. At night,when he came upstairs with his candle, each piece of furniture, everylittle ornament seemed to acquire the power of speech to inform himharshly of some fresh detail of his misery.

　　This evening, 'I am a galley slave,' he said to himself, as he entered it,with a vivacity long unfamiliar to him: 'let us hope that the second letterwill be as boring as the first.'

　　It was even more so. What he was copying seemed to him so absurdthat he began to transcribe it line for line, without a thought of themeaning.

　　'It is even more emphatic,' he said to himself, 'than the official documents of the Treaty of Muenster, which my tutor in diplomacy made mecopy out in London.'

　　It was only then that he remembered the letters from Madame de Fervaques, the originals of which he had forgotten to restore to the graveSpaniard, Don Diego Bustos. He searched for them; they were really almost as fantastic a rigmarole as those of the young Russian gentleman.

　　They were completely vague. They expressed everything and nothing. 'Itis the Aeolian harp of style,' thought Julien. 'Amid the most loftythoughts about annihilation, death, the infinite, etc., I can see no realitysave a shocking fear of ridicule.'

　　 The monologue which we have here abridged was repeated nightly fora fortnight. Falling asleep while transcribing a sort of commentary on theApocalypse, going next day to deliver a letter with a melancholy air,leaving his horse in the stable yard with the hope of catching a glimpseof Mathilde's gown, working, putting in an appearance in the evening atthe Opera when Madame de Fervaques did not come to the Hotel de LaMole; such were the monotonous events of Julien's existence. They became more interesting when Madame de Fervaques paid a visit to theMarquise; then he could steal a glance at Mathilde's eyes beneath theside of the Marechale's hat, and would wax eloquent. His picturesqueand sentimental phrases began to assume a turn at once more strikingand more elegant.

　　He was fully aware that what he was saying seemed absurd to Mathilde, but he sought to impress her by the elegance of his diction. 'Thefalser the things I say, the more I ought to appeal to her,' thought Julien;and then, with a shocking boldness, he began to exaggerate certain aspects of nature. He very soon perceived that, if he were not to appearvulgar in the eyes of the Marechale, he must above all avoid any simpleor reasonable idea. He continued on these lines, or abridged his amplifications according as he read success or indifference in the eyes of the twogreat ladies to whom he must appeal.

　　On the whole, his life was less horrible than at the time when his dayspassed in inaction.

　　'But,' he said to himself one evening, 'here I am transcribing the fifteenth of these abominable dissertations; the first fourteen have beenfaithfully delivered to the Marechale's Swiss. I shall soon have the honour of filling all the pigeonholes in her desk. And yet she treats me exactly as thou............