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But all this, and much more, Julien had learned in seven merciless days seven successive and terrible shocks of experience. The enormous world had not missed him; and his place therein was not void society had simply forgotten him.
When she was within a few feet of Julien, she recognized him, and her brow clouded over; but almost immediately she noticed his altered features and that one of his feet was shoeless, and divined that something unusual had happened. Going straight up to him, she said: "You seem to be suffering, Monsieur de Buxieres. What is the matter?"
You can understand that I would not, for any consideration, allow her to think that I am courting her for her money " "Still, you desire to marry her, and you hope that she will not say no you acknowledge that!" cried Julien, vociferously. Claudet, struck with the violence and bitterness of tone of his companion, came up to him.
She had thought she should be so pleased to see her parents again, and now, instead of joy, she felt a coldness around her heart, and it seemed as if she could not regain all her former love for them until they had all dropped back into their ordinary ways again. Dinner seemed very long that evening; no one spoke, and Julien did not pay the least attention to his wife.
Our little sandy-headed friend has been summoned from the room. I saw the commissionaire come up and whisper in his ear. Mademoiselle is writing a note. A hundred to one it is to you!" Julien frowned. He, too, turned his head, and he met the girl's eyes. She was looking at him curiously.
Julien, anxious to show a conciliatory spirit, and making an effort to quell his own repugnance, approached the 'grand chasserot', who was standing at one side by himself, and invited him to take his seat at the table. "Thank you," replied Claudet, coldly, "I have breakfasted." So saying, he turned his back on M. de Buxieres, who returned to the hall, vexed and disconcerted.
"If that infernal little band would keep quiet," Julien grumbled, "one might hear oneself talk!" "Let us have no more criticisms," Kendricks begged. "To-night you are of the working class. You may perhaps be a small manufacturer, the agent of a manufacturing firm in the country, a clerk with a moderate salary, or a mechanic in his best clothes. Remember that and do not complain of the music.
"If the dinner is not perfect, permit that I wait upon you again. A word to the waiter and I arrive. Madame! Monsieur!" He retreated, with a bow to each. Julien, with a little laugh, took his place at the table. "Madame," he said, "your entertainment is charming." "The entertainment is nothing," Madame replied, "but here at least is one advantage we are really alone.
Julien stood out in trenchant gloom against a cold glitter in the east; and the intervening field of hills had fallen together into one broad wash of shadow, except here and there the outline of a wooded sugar-loaf in black, here and there a white irregular patch to represent a cultivated farm, and here and there a blot where the Loire, the Gazeille, or the Laussonne wandered in a gorge.
She gazed at him, trying to find any likeness to her husband or her son. He was robust and ruddy-cheeked and had his mother's fair hair and blue eyes, but there was something in his face which reminded Jeanne of Julien, though she could not discover where the resemblance lay. "I should be very much obliged if you could show me the things now," continued the lad.
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