Leo Tolstoy - 3 books to know Napoleonic Wars

Once the Marquis had realised the firm character of his protege, he entrusted him with some fresh piece of business every day.

Julien noticed with alarm that this great nobleman would occasionally give him contradictory instructions with regard to the same matter.

This was liable to land him in serious trouble. Julien, when he came to work with the Marquis, invariably brought a diary in which he wrote down his instructions, and the Marquis initialled them. Julien had engaged a clerk who copied out the instructions relative to each piece of business in a special book. In this book were kept also copies of all letters.

This idea seemed at first the most ridiculous and tiresome thing imaginable. But, in less than two months, the Marquis realised its advantages. Julien suggested engaging a clerk from a bank, who should keep an account by double entry of all the revenue from and expenditure on the estates of which he himself had charge.

These measures so enlightened the Marquis as to his own financial position that he was able to give himself the pleasure of embarking on two or three fresh speculations without the assistance of his broker, who had been robbing him.

‘Take three thousand francs for yourself,’ he said, one day to his young minister.

‘But, Sir, my conduct may be criticised.’

‘What do you want, then?’ replied the Marquis, with irritation.

‘I want you to be so kind as to make a formal agreement, and to write it down yourself in the book; the agreement will award me a sum of three thousand francs. Besides, it was M. l’abbe Pirard who first thought of all this book-keeping.’ The Marquis, with the bored expression of the Marquis de Moncade, listening to M. Poisson, his steward, reading his accounts, wrote out his instructions.

In the evening, when Julien appeared in his blue coat, there was never any talk of business. The Marquis’s kindness was so flattering to our hero’s easily wounded vanity that presently, in spite of himself, he felt a sort of attachment to this genial old man. Not that Julien was sensitive, as the word is understood in Paris; but he was not a monster, and no one, since the death of the old Surgeon–Major, had spoken to him so kindly. He remarked with astonishment that the Marquis showed a polite consideration for his self-esteem which he had never received from the old surgeon. Finally he realised that the surgeon had been prouder of his Cross than the Marquis was of his Blue Riband. The Marquis was the son of a great nobleman.

One day, at the end of a morning interview, in his black coat, and for the discussion of business, Julien amused the Marquis, who kept him for a couple of hours, and positively insisted upon giving him a handful of bank notes which his broker had just brought him from the Bourse.

‘I hope, Monsieur le Marquis, not to be wanting in the profound respect which I owe you if I ask you to allow me to say something.’

‘Speak, my friend.’

‘Will Monsieur le Marquis be graciously pleased to let me decline this gift. It is not to the man in black that it is offered, and it would at once put an end to the liberties which he is so kind as to tolerate from the man in blue.’ He bowed most respectfully, and left the room without looking round.

This attitude amused the Marquis, who reported it that evening to the abbe Pirard.

‘There is something that I must at last confess to you, my dear abbe. I know the truth about Julien’s birth, and I authorise you not to keep this confidence secret.

‘His behaviour this morning was noble,’ thought the Marquis, ‘and I shall ennoble him.’

Some time after this, the Marquis was at length able to leave his room.

‘Go and spend a couple of months in London,’ he told Julien. ‘The special couriers and other messengers will bring you the letters I receive, with my notes. You will write the replies and send them to me, enclosing each letter with its reply. I have calculated that the delay will not amount to more than five days.’

As he travelled post along the road to Calais, Julien thought with amazement of the futility of the alleged business on which he was being sent.

We shall not describe the feeling of horror, almost of hatred, with which he set foot on English soil. The reader is aware of his insane passion for Bonaparte. He saw in every officer a Sir Hudson Lowe, in every nobleman a Lord Bathurst, ordering the atrocities of Saint Helena, and receiving his reward in ten years of office.

In London he at last made acquaintance with the extremes of fatuity. He made friends with some young Russian gentlemen who initiated him.

‘You are predestined, my dear Sorel,’ they told him, ‘you are endowed by nature with that cold expression a thousand leagues from the sensation of the moment, which we try so hard to assume.’

‘You have not understood our age,’ Prince Korasoff said to him; ‘always do the opposite to what people expect of you. That, upon my honour, is the only religion of the day. Do not be either foolish or affected, for then people will expect foolishness and affectations, and you will not be obeying the rule.’

Julien covered himself with glory one day in the drawing-room of the Duke of Fitz–Fulke, who had invited him to dine, with Prince Korasoff. The party were kept waiting for an hour. The way in which Julien comported himself amid the score of persons who stood waiting is still quoted by the young Secretaries of Embassy in London. His expression was inimitable.

He was anxious to meet, notwithstanding his friends the dandies, the celebrated Philip Vane, the one philosopher that England has produced since Locke. He found him completing his seventh year in prison. ‘The aristocracy does not take things lightly in this country,’ thought Julien; ‘in addition to all this, Vane is disgraced, abused,’ etc.

Julien found him good company; the fury of the aristocracy kept him amused. ‘There,’ Julien said to himself, as he left the prison, ‘is the one cheerful man that I have met in England.’

‘The idea of most use to tyrants is that of God,’ Vane had said to him.

We suppress the rest of the philosopher’s system as being cynical.

On his return: ‘What amusing idea have you brought me from England?’ M. de La Mole asked him. He remained silent. ‘What idea have you brought, amusing or not?’ the Marquis went on, sharply.

‘First of all,’ said Julien, ‘the wisest man in England is mad for an hour daily; he is visited by the demon of suicide, who is the national deity.

‘Secondly, intelligence and genius forfeit twenty-five per cent of their value on landing in England.

‘Thirdly, nothing in the world is so beautiful, admirable, moving as the English countryside.’

‘Now, it is my turn,’ said the Marquis.

‘First of all, what made you say, at the ball at the Russian Embassy, that there are in France three hundred thousand young men of five and twenty who are passionately anxious for war? Do you think that that is quite polite to the Crowned Heads?’

‘One never knows what to say in speaking to our great diplomats,’ said Julien. They have a mania for starting serious discussions. If one confines oneself to the commonplaces of the newspapers, one is reckoned a fool. If one allows oneself to say something true and novel, they are astonished, they do not know how to answer, and next morning, at seven o’clock they send word to one by the First Secretary, that one has been impolite.’

‘Not bad,’ said the Marquis, with a laugh. ‘I wager, however, Master Philosopher, that you have not discovered what you went to England to do.’

‘Pardon me,’ replied Julien; ‘I went there to dine once a week with His Majesty’s Ambassador, who is the most courteous of men.’