Page:The red and the black (1916).djvu/323

Rh of a sound conviction. "You have not got the French flippancy and you understand the principle of utility." It happened that Julien had seen the day before Marino Faliero, a tragedy, by Casmir Delavigne.

"Has not Israel Bertuccio got more character than all those noble Venetians?" said our rebellious plebeian to himself, "and yet those are the people whose nobility goes back to the year seven hundred, a century before Charlemagne, while the cream of the nobility at M. de Ritz's ball to-night only goes back, and that rather lamely, to the thirteenth century. Well, in spite of all the noble Venetians whose birth makes so great, it is Israel Bertuccio whom one remembers.

"A conspiracy annihilates all titles conferred by social caprice. There, a man takes for his crest the rank that is given him by the way in which he faces death. The intellect itself loses some of its power.

"What would Danton have been to-day in this age of the Valenods and the Rênals? Not even a deputy for the Public Prosecutor.

"What am I saying? He would have sold himself to the priests, he would have been a minister, for after all the great Danton did steal. Mirabeau also sold himself. Napoleon stole millions in Italy, otherwise he would have been stopped short in his career by poverty like Pichegru. Only La Fayette refrained from stealing. Ought one to steal, ought one to sell oneself?" thought Julien. This question pulled him up short. He passed the rest of the night in reading the history of the revolution.

When he wrote his letters in the library the following day, his mind was still concentrated on his conversation with count Altamira.

"As a matter of fact," he said to himself after a long reverie, "If the Spanish Liberals had not injured their nation by crimes they would not have been cleared out as easily as they were.

"They were haughty, talkative children—just like I am!" he suddenly exclaimed as though waking up with a start.

"What difficulty have I surmounted that entitles me to judge such devils who, once alive, dared to begin to act. I am like a man who exclaims at the close of a meal, 'I won't dine to-morrow; but that won't prevent me from feeling as