These outpourings of Madame Thierry's heart gradually revealed Julien to Madame d'Estrelle, and the sort of instinctive respect which had taken her by surprise when she first saw him, became a sort of awe which made her love him all the more. It was no longer possible for her to look upon him as an inferior, and yet the young artist was one of the class whom her associates referred to as _those people!_ She made an effort sometimes, when she was talking with her friends, to plead for the strong and the intelligent in whatever class they might be found. Her friends were sufficiently far advanced to reply to her: "You are a thousand times right, birth is nothing, merit alone is of consequence;" but those were simply maxims for the benefit of enlightened persons, and nothing more. The actual practice of equality had in no wise been incorporated in the national morals, and the same persons were not at all backward, a moment later, in blaming the Duke of So-and-So for fertilizing his estates with a plebeian dowry, or Princess Blank for falling in love with a wretched adventurer to the point of wanting to marry him, to the great scandal of _virtuous folk._ A young woman, unmarried or widowed, might fall in love with a man of noble birth, even though he were poor; but, if he _had no birth_, it was a disgraceful infatuation, an indecent attachment; she sacrificed her principles to her passions; marriage failed to justify her and she became an object of public contempt. Julie, who had lived in the esteem and regard of her friends, her only compensation for her unhappy youth, had ice-cold shivers when she heard that sort of talk; and if the object of her secret passion had chanced at such a moment to enter her little circle, apparently so tolerant and good-humored, she would have been compelled to rise and say to him: "Why have you come here, monsieur?" But the little party separated at nine, and ten minutes later Julie was in the garden; she gazed at the light in the pavilion, twinkling like a green star through the foliage, and she fancied that, if Julien should appear at a bend in the path, she should not be able to fly. Throughout all this period of agitation on poor Julie's part, Julien was almost calm; his purpose was so upright, so sincere, that his mind had recovered its health sufficiently to deceive itself.