"To think of it being me, the poor peasant from the Jura," he kept on repeating to himself, "to think of it being me who am eternally condemned to wear this gloomy black suit! Alas twenty years ago I would have worn a uniform like they do! In those days a man like me either got killed or became a general at thirty-six. The letter which he held clenched in his hand gave him a heroic pose and stature. Nowadays, it is true, if one sticks to this black suit, one gets at forty an income of a hundred thousand francs and the blue ribbon like my lord bishop of Beauvais. "Well," he said to himself with a Mephistophelian smile, "I have more brains than they. I am shrewd enough to choose the uniform of my century. And he felt a quickening of his ambition and of his attachment to his ecclesiastical dress. What cardinals of even lower birth than mine have not succeeded in governing! My compatriot Granvelle, for instance." Julien's agitation became gradually calmed! Prudence emerged to the top. He said to himself like his master Tartuffe whose part he knew by heart: Je puis croire ces mots, un artifice honnête. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Je ne me firai point à des propos si doux, Qu'un peu de ses faveurs après quoi je soupire Ne vienne m'assurer tout ce qu'ils m'ont pudire. _Tartuffe, act iv. Scene v_. "Tartuffe, too, was ruined by a woman, and he was as good as most men.... My answer may be shown.... and the way out of that is this," he added pronouncing his words slowly with an intonation of deliberate and restrained ferocity. "We will begin by quoting the most vivid passages from the letter of the sublime Mathilde." "Quite so, but M. de Croisenois' lackeys will hurl themselves upon me and snatch the original away." "No, they won't, for I am well armed, and as we know I am accustomed to firing on lackeys." "Well, suppose one of them has courage, and hurls himself upon me. He has been promised a hundred napoleons. I kill him, or wound him, good, that's what they want. I shall be thrown into prison legally. I shall be had up in the police court and the judges will send me with all justice and all equity to keep Messieurs Fontan and Magalon company in Poissy. There I shall be landed in the middle of four hundred scoundrels.... And am I to have the slightest pity on these people," he exclaimed getting up impetuously! "Do they show any to persons of the third estate when they have them in their power!" With these words his gratitude to M. de la Mole, which had been in spite of himself torturing his conscience up to this time, breathed its last. "Softly, gentlemen, I follow this little Machiavellian trick, the abbé Maslon or M. Castanède of the seminary could not have done better. You will take the provocative letter away from me and I shall exemplify the second volume of Colonel Caron at Colmar."