The ministry of virtue

Chapter summary

Back in Paris, Julien Sorel tells the Marquis de La Mole about the mission, which leaves him disconcerted, and hurries to the house of Count Altamira, a liberal condemned to death in his country and devout, to whom he confesses that he is very much in love with the Marechale de Fervaques, whom the count frequents. She is the false target of Prince Korasoff's plan, the friend from London whose recipe Julien has decided to follow to win back Mathilde. Altamira considers her the purest of virtues, only a little Jesuitical and pompous, and takes him to Don Diego Bustos, who once courted her. The two liberals describe her as vindictive and Jesuitical: Bustos recalls that she had the post of the author of an impious song taken away, and poses the riddle on which, in his view, the whole future of Julien depends, namely whether she is a devout woman tired of her profession and wicked because she is unhappy. Altamira attributes everything to French vanity and to the memory of her father, the famous cloth merchant. Bustos lends Julien four letters written by her, so that he may learn her style, and Julien promises to copy them and reveal nothing.

Julien follows the prince's directions to the letter: he dresses simply, watches the hands of Mathilde de La Mole, which tremble when they see him, and installs himself beside the Marechale when she arrives in the salon, so that Mathilde cannot see his eyes. In the evening he goes to the Opéra Bouffe, to a box beside the Marechale's, and begins to keep a diary of the siege. Mathilde, who had forgotten him during the trip and was prepared to allow her marriage to the Marquis de Croisenois, changes her mind on seeing him: if she returns to notions of decorum, it is with Julien that she must marry. In the following days, the scheming to obtain cordon bleu orders, which each person wants for a relative, brings the Marechale closer to the Marquis de La Mole, who may become minister, and Julien, who might otherwise hope for a bishopric, thinks only of winning back Mathilde in five or six years of devotion.