Page:The red and the black (1916).djvu/289

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CHAPTER XXXV


SENSIBILITY AND A GREAT PIOUS LADY


An idea which has any life in it seems like a crudity, so accustomed are they to colourless expression. Woe to him who introduces new ideas into his conversation!
Faublas.


This was the stage Julien had reached, when after several months of probation the steward of the household handed him the third quarter of his wages. M. de la Mole had entrusted him with the adminisiration of his estates in Brittany and Normandy. Julien made frequent journeys there. He had chief control of the correspondence relating to the famous law-suit with the abbé de Frilair. M. Pirard had instructed him.

On the data of the short notes which the marquis would scribble on the margin of all the various paper which were addressed to him, Julien would compose answers which were nearly all signed.

At the Theology School his professors complained of his lack of industry, but they did not fail to regard him as one of their most distinguished pupils. This varied work, tackled as it was with all the ardour of suffering ambition, soon robbed Julien of that fresh complexion which he had brought from the provinces. His pallor consiituted one of his merits in the eyes of his comrades, the young seminarist; he found them much less malicious, much less ready to bow down to a silver crown than those of Besançon; they thought he was consumptive. The marquis had given him a horse.

Julien fearing that he might meet people during his rides on horseback, had given out that this exercise had been prescribed by the doctors. The abbé Pirard had taken him into several