A StormMy God, give me mediocrity!

　　MIRABEAUHe was completely absorbed; he made only a half-hearted response tothe keen affection that she showed for him. He remained taciturn andsombre. Never had he appeared so great, so adorable in the eyes ofMathilde. She feared some subtle refinement of his pride which wouldpresently upset the whole position.

　　Almost every morning, she saw the abbe Pirard come to the Hotel.

　　Through his agency might not Julien have penetrated to some extent intoher father's intentions? Might not the Marquis himself, in a moment ofcaprice, have written to him? After so great a happiness, how was she toaccount for Julien's air of severity? She dared not question him.

　　Dared not! She, Mathilde! There was, from that moment, in her feelingfor Julien, something vague, unaccountable, almost akin to terror. Thatsere heart felt all the passion that is possible in one brought up amid allthat excess of civilisation which Paris admires.

　　Early next morning, Julien was in the abbe Pirard's presbytery. A pairof post-horses arrived in the courtyard drawing a dilapidated chaise,hired at the nearest post.

　　'Such an equipage is no longer in keeping,' the stern abbe told him,with a cantankerous air. 'Here are twenty thousand francs, of which M.

　　de La Mole makes you a present; he expects you to spend them withinthe year, but to try and make yourself as little ridiculous as possible.' (Inso large a sum, bestowed on a young man, the priest saw only an occasion of sin.)'The Marquis adds: "M. Julien de La Vernaye will have received thismoney from his father, whom there is no use in my identifying more precisely. M. de La Vernaye will doubtless think it proper to make a present to M. Sorel, carpenter at Verrieres, who looked after him in his childhood … " I will undertake this part of the commission,' the abbe went on;'I have at last made M. de La Mole decide to compromise with that abbede Frilair, who is such a Jesuit. His position is unquestionably too strongfor us. The implicit recognition of your noble birth by that man who governs Besancon will be one of the implied conditions of the arrangement.'

　　Julien was no longer able to control his enthusiasm, he embraced theabbe, he saw himself recognised.

　　'Fie!' said M. Pirard, and thrust him away; 'what is the meaning of thisworldly vanity? As for Sorel and his sons, I shall offer them, in my name,an annual pension of five hundred francs, which will be paid to each ofthem separately, so long as I am satisfied with them.'

　　Julien was by this time cold and stiff. He thanked the abbe, but in thevaguest terms and without binding himself to anything. 'Can it indeedbe possible,' he asked himself, 'that I am the natural son of some greatnobleman, banished among our mountains by the terrible Napoleon?'

　　Every moment this idea seemed to him less improbable … 'My hatred formy father would be a proof … I should no longer be a monster!'

　　A few days after this monologue, the Fifteenth Regiment of Hussars,one of the smartest in the Army, was drawn up in order of battle on theparade ground of Strasbourg. M. le Chevalier de La Vernaye was mounted upon the finest horse in Alsace, which had cost him six thousandfrancs. He had joined as Lieutenant, without having ever been a SecondLieutenant, save on the muster-roll of a Regiment of which he had nevereven heard.

　　His impassive air, his severe and almost cruel eyes, his pallor, his unalterable coolness won him a reputation from the first day. In a shorttime, his perfect and entirely measured courtesy, his skill with the pistoland sabre, which he made known without undue affectation, removedall temptation to joke audibly at his expense. After five or six days ofhesitation, the general opinion of the Regiment declared itself in his favour. 'This young man has everything,' said the older officers who wereinclined to banter, 'except youth.'

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　　From Strasbourg, Julien wrote to M. Chelan, the former cure of Verrieres, who was now reaching the extreme limits of old age:

　　'You will have learned with a joy, of which I have no doubt, of theevents that have led my family to make me rich. Here are five hundred francs which I beg you to distribute without display, and with no mention of my name, among the needy, who are poor now as I was once, andwhom you are doubtless assisting as in the past you assisted me.'

　　Julien was intoxicated with ambition and not with vanity; he still applied a great deal of his attention to his outward appearance. His horses,his uniforms, the liveries of his servants were kept up with a nicetywhich would have done credit to the punctiliousness of a great Englishnobleman. Though only just a Lieutenant, promoted by favour and aftertwo days' service, he was already calculating that, in order to be Commander in Chief at thirty, at latest, like all the great Generals, he wouldneed at three and twenty to be something more than Lieutenant. Hecould think of nothing but glory and his son.

　　It was in the midst of the transports of the most frenzied ambition thathe was interrupted by a young footman from the Hotel de La Mole, whoarrived with a letter.

　　'All is lost,' Mathilde wrote to him; 'hasten here as quickly as possible,sacrifice everything, desert if need be. As soon as you arrive, wait for mein a cab, outside the little gate of the gar............