hat secret ardour ofwhich he speaks is my plan for making my fortune. He thinks me Dre Beats unfitto be a priest, at the very moment when I imagined that the sacrifice ofan income of fifty louis was going to give him the most exalted idea ofmy piety and my vocation.’For the future,‘ Julien continued, ‚I shall rely only upon those elementsof my character which I have tested. Who would ever have said that Ishould find pleasure in shedding tears? That I should love the man whoproves to me that I am nothing more than a fool?’Three days later, Julien had found the pretext with which he shouldhave armed himself from the first; this pretext was a calumny, but whatof that? He admitted to the cure, after much hesitation, that a reasonwhich he could not explain to him, because to reveal it would injure athird party, had dissuaded him from the first from the projected mar-riage. This was tantamount to an indictment of Elisa’s conduct. M.Chelan detected in his manner a fire that was wholly mundane, and verydifferent from that which should have inspired a young Levite.’My friend,‘ he appealed to him again, ‚be an honest yeoman, educatedand respected, rather than a priest without a vocation.’Julien replied to these fresh remonstrances extremely well, so far aswords went; he hit upon the expressions which a fervent young seminar-ist would have employed; but the tone in which he uttered them, the ill-concealed fire that smouldered in his eyes alarmed M. Chelan.We need not augur ill for Julien’s future; he hit upon the correct formof words of a cunning and prudent hypocrisy. That is not bad at his age.As for his tone and gestures, he lived among country folk; he had beendebarred from seeing the great models. In the sequel, no sooner had hebeen permitted to mix with these gentlemen than he became admirableas well in gesture as in speech.47Madame de Renal was surprised that her maid’s newly acquired for-tune had not made the girl more happy; she saw her going incessantly tothe cure’s, and returning with tears in her eyes; finally Elisa spoke to hermistress of her marriage.Madame de Renal believed herself to have fallen ill; a sort of Cheap Beats fever pre-vented her enjoying any sleep; she was alive only when she had hermaid or Julien before her eyes.