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380 surprise you? Does your suspiciousness guess the secret? Yes, my friend, one of the venerable personages you are going to hear deliver his opinion, is perfectly capable of giving information as the result of which you stand a very good chance of being given at least opium some fine evening in some good inn where you will have asked for supper."

"It is better," said Julien, "to do an extra thirty leagues and not take the direct road. It is a case of Rome, I suppose.…" The marquis assumed an expression of extreme haughtiness and dissatisfaction which Julien had never seen him wear since Bray-le-Haut.

"That is what you will know, monsieur, when I think it proper to tell you. I do not like questions."

"That was not one," answered Julien eagerly. "I swear, monsieur, I was thinking quite aloud. My mind was trying to find out the safest route."

"Yes, it seems your mind was a very long way off. Remember that an emissary, and particularly one of your age should not appear to be a man who forces confidences."

Julien was very mortified; he was in the wrong. His vanity tried to find an excuse and did not find one.

"You understand," added monsieur de la Mole, "that one always falls back on one's heart when one has committed some mistake."

An hour afterwards Julien was in the marquis's antechamber. He looked quite like a servant with his old clothes, a tie of a dubious white, and a certain touch of the usher in his whole appearance. The marquis burst out laughing as he saw him, and it was only then that Julien's justification was complete.

"If this young man betrays me," said M. de la Mole to himself, "whom is one to trust? And yet, when one acts, one must trust someone. My son and his brilliant friends of the same calibre have as much courage and loyalty as a hundred thousand men. If it were necessary to fight, they would die on the steps of the throne. They know everything except what one needs in emergency. Devil take me if I can find a single one among them who can learn four pages by heart and do a hundred leagues without being tracked down. Norbert would know how to sell his life as dearly as his grandfathers did. But any conscript could do as much."