The Red and the Black (34 page)

“But no, I am either mad or she is making advances to me; the colder and more respectful I show myself to her, the more she runs after me. It may be a deliberate piece of affectation; but I see her eyes become animated when I appear unexpectedly. Can the women of Paris manage to act to such an extent? What does it matter to me? I have appearances in my favour, let us enjoy appearances. Heavens, how beautiful she is! How I like her great blue eyes when I see them at close quarters, and they look at me in the way they often do! What a difference between this spring and that of last year, when I lived an unhappy life among three hundred dirty malicious hypocrites, and only kept myself afloat through sheer force of character; I was almost as malicious as they were.”

“That young girl is making fun of me,” Julien would think in his suspicious days. “She is acting in concert with her brother to make a fool of me. But she seems to have an absolute contempt for her brother's lack of energy. He is brave and that is all. He has not a thought which dares to deviate from the conventional. It is always I who have to take up the cudgels in his defence. A young girl of nineteen! Can one at that age act up faithfully every second of the day to the part which one has determined to play? On the other hand whenever Mademoiselle de la Mole fixes her eyes on me with a singular expression Comte Norbert always goes away. I think that suspicious. Ought he not to be indignant at his sister singling out a servant of her household? For that is how I heard the Duke de Chaulnes speak about me.” This recollection caused anger to supersede every other emotion. “Is it simply a fashion for old fashioned phraseology on the part of the eccentric duke?”

“Well, she is pretty!” continued Julien with a tigerish expression, “I will have her, I will then go away, and woe to him who disturbs me in my flight.”

This idea became Julien's sole preoccupation. He could not think of anything else. His days passed like hours.

Every moment when he tried to concentrate on some important matter his mind became a blank, and he would wake up a quarter of an hour afterwards with a beating heart and an anxious mind, brooding over this idea “does she love me?”

I admire her beauty but I fear her intellect.—Merimée

 

If Julien had employed the time which he spent in exaggerating Mathilde's beauty or in working himself up into a rage against that family haughtiness which she was forgetting for his sake in examining what was going on in the salon, he would have understood the secret of her dominion over all that surrounded her.

When anyone displeased Mademoiselle de la Mole she managed to punish the offender by a jest which was so guarded, so well chosen, so polite and so neatly timed, that the more the victim thought about it, the sorer grew the wound. She gradually became positively terrible to wounded vanity. As she attached no value to many things which the rest of her family very seriously wanted, she always struck them as self-possessed. The salons of the aristocracy are nice enough to brag about when you leave them, but that is all; mere politeness alone only counts for something in its own right during the first few days. Julien experienced this after the first fascination and the first astonishment had passed off. “Politeness,” he said to himself “is nothing but the absence of that bad temper which would be occasioned by bad manners.” Mathilde was frequently bored; perhaps she would have been bored anywhere. She then found a real distraction and real pleasure in sharpening an epigram.

It was perhaps in order to have more amusing victims than her great relations, the academician and the five or six other men of inferior class who paid her court, that she had given encouragement to the Marquis de Croisenois, the Comte Caylus and two or three other young men of the highest rank. They simply represented new subjects for epigrams.

We will admit with reluctance, for we are fond of Mathilde, that she had received many letters from several of them and had sometimes answered them. We hasten to add that this person constitutes an exception to the manners of the century. Lack of prudence is not generally the fault with which the pupils of the noble convent of the Sacred Heart can be reproached.

One day the Marquis de Croisenois returned to Mathilde a fairly compromising letter which she had written the previous night. He thought that he was thereby advancing his cause a great deal by taking this highly prudent step. But the very imprudence of her correspondence was the very element in it Mathilde liked. Her pleasure was to stake her fate. She did not speak to him again for six weeks.

She amused herself with the letters of these young men, but in her view they were all like each other. It was invariably a case of the most profound, the most melancholy, passion.

“They all represent the same perfect man, ready to leave for Palestine,” she exclaimed to her cousin. “Can you conceive of anything more insipid? So these are the letters I am going to receive all my life! There can only be a change every twenty years according to the kind of vogue which happens to be fashionable. They must have had more colour in them in the days of the Empire. In those days all these young society men had seen or accomplished feats which really had an element of greatness. The Duke of N——my uncle, was at Wagram.”

“What brains do you need to deal a sabre blow? And when they have had the luck to do that, they talk of it so often!” said Mademoiselle de Sainte-Héredité, Mathilde's cousin.

“Well, those tales give me pleasure. Being in a real battle, a battle of Napoleon, where six thousand soldiers were killed, why, that's proof of courage. Exposing one's self to danger elevates the soul and saves it from the boredom in which my poor admirers seem to be sunk; and that boredom is contagious. Which of them ever thought of doing anything extraordinary? They are trying to win my hand, a pretty business to be sure! I am rich and my father will procure advancement for his son-in-law. Well! I hope he'll manage to find someone who is a little bit amusing.”

Mathilde's keen, sharp and picturesque view of life spoilt her language as one sees. An expression of hers would often constitute a blemish in the eyes of her polished friends. If she had been less fashionable they would almost have owned that her manner of speaking was, from the standpoint of feminine delicacy, to some extent unduly coloured.

She, on her side, was very unjust towards the handsome cavaliers who fill the Bois de Boulogne. She envisaged the future not with terror, that would have been a vivid emotion, but with a disgust which was very rare at her age.

What could she desire? Fortune, good birth, wit, beauty, according to what the world said, and according to what she believed, all these things had been lavished upon her by the hands of chance.

So this was the state of mind of the most envied heiress of the Faubourg Saint-Germain when she began to find pleasure in walking with Julien. She was astonished at his pride; she admired the ability of the little bourgeois. “He will manage to get made a bishop like the Abbé Mouray,” she said to herself.

Soon the sincere and unaffected opposition with which our hero received several of her ideas filled her mind; she continued to think about it, she told her friend the slightest details of the conversation, but thought that she would never succeed in fully rendering all their meaning.

An idea suddenly flashed across her; “I have the happiness of loving,” she said to herself one day with an incredible ecstasy of joy. “I am in love, I am in love, it is clear! Where can a young, witty and beautiful girl of my own age find sensations if not in love? It is no good. I shall never feel any love for Croisenois, Caylus, and tutti quanti. They are unimpeachable, perhaps too unimpeachable; anyway they bore me.”

She rehearsed in her mind all the descriptions of passion which she had read in Manon Lescaut, the Nouvelle Heloise, the Letters of a Portuguese Nun, etc., etc. It was only a question of course of the grand passion; light love was unworthy of a girl of her age and birth. She vouchsafed the name of love to that heroic sentiment which was met with in France in the time of Henry III. and Bassompierre. That love did not basely yield to obstacles, but, far from it, inspired great deeds. “How unfortunate for me that there is not a real court like that of Catherine de Medici or of Louis XIII. I feel equal to the boldest and greatest actions. What would I not make of a King who was a man of spirit like Louis XIII. if he were sighing at my feet! I would take him to the Vendée, as the Baron de Tolly is so fond of saying, and from that base he would re-conquer his kingdom; then no more about a charter—and Julien would help me. What does he lack? name and fortune. He will make a name, he will win a fortune.

“Croisenois lacks nothing, and he will never be anything else all his life but a duke who is half ‘ultra' and half Liberal, an undecided being who never goes to extremes and consequently always plays second fiddle.

“What great action is not an extreme at the moment when it is undertaken? It is only after accomplishment that it seems possible to commonplace individuals. Yes, it is love with all its miracles which is going to reign over my heart; I feel as much from the fire which is thrilling me. Heaven owed me this boon. It will not then have lavished in vain all its bounties on one single person. My happiness will be worthy of me. Each day will no longer be the cold replica of the day before. There is grandeur and audacity in the very fact of daring to love a man, placed so far beneath me by his social position. Let us see what happens, will he continue to deserve me? I will abandon him at the first sign of weakness which I detect. A girl of my birth and of that mediæval temperament which they are good enough to ascribe to me (she was quoting from her father) must not behave like a fool.

“But should I not be behaving like a fool if I were to love the Marquis de Croisenois? I should simply have a new edition over again of that happiness enjoyed by my girl cousins which I so utterly despise. I already know everything the poor marquis would say to me and every answer I should make. What's the good of a love which makes one yawn? One might as well be in a nunnery. I shall have a celebration of the signing of a contract just like my younger cousin when the grandparents all break down, provided of course that they are not annoyed by some condition introduced into the contract at the eleventh hour by the notary on the other side.”

“There is no contract to sign for Julien and me, there is no notary; everything is on the heroic plane, everything is the child of chance. Apart from the noble birth which he lacks, it is the love of Marguerite de Valois for the young La Mole, the most distinguished man of the time, over again. Is it my fault that the young men of the court are such great advocates of the conventional, and turn pale at the mere idea of the slightest adventure which is a little out of the ordinary? A little journey in Greece or Africa represents the highest pitch of their audacity, and moreover they can only march in troops. As soon as they find themselves alone they are frightened, not of the Bedouin's lance, but of ridicule and that fear makes them mad.

“My little Julien on the other hand only likes to act alone. This unique person never thinks for a minute of seeking help or support in others! He despises others, and that is why I do not despise him.

“If Julien were noble as well as poor, my love would simply be a vulgar piece of stupidity, a sheer mésalliance; I would have nothing to do with it; it would be absolutely devoid of the characteristic traits of grand passion—the immensity of the difficulty to be overcome and the black uncertainty of the result.”

Mademoiselle de la Mole was so engrossed in these pretty arguments that without realising what she was doing, she praised Julien to the Marquis de Croisenois and her brother on the following day. Her eloquence went so far that it provoked them.

“You be careful of this young man who has so much energy,” exclaimed her brother; “if we have another revolution he will have us all guillotined.”

She was careful not to answer, but hastened to rally her brother and the Marquis de Croisenois on the apprehension which energy caused them. “It is at bottom simply the fear of meeting the unexpected, the fear of being non-plussed in the presence of the unexpected—”

“Always, always, gentlemen, the fear of ridicule, a monster which had the misfortune to die in 1816.”

“Ridicule has ceased to exist in a country where there are two parties,” M. de la Mole was fond of saying.

His daughter had understood the idea.

“So, gentlemen,” she would say to Julien's enemies, “you will be frightened all your life and you will be told afterwards,

Mathilde soon left them. Her brother's words horrified her; they occasioned her much anxiety, but the day afterwards she regarded them as tantamount to the highest praise.

“His energy frightens them in this age where all energy is dead. I will tell him my brother's phrase. I want to see what answer he will make. But I will choose one of the moments when his eyes are shining. Then he will not be able to lie to me.

“He must be a Danton! she added after a long and vague reverie. Well, suppose the revolution begins again, what figures will Croisenois and my brother cut then? It is settled in advance: Sublime resignation. They will be heroic sheep who will allow their throats to be cut without saying a word. Their one fear when they die will still be the fear of being in bad form. If a Jacobin came to arrest my little Julien he would blow his brains out, however small a chance he had of escaping. He is not frightened of doing anything in bad form.”

These last words made her pensive; they recalled painful memories and deprived her of all her boldness. These words reminded her of the jests of MM. de Caylus, Croisenois, de Luz and her brother; these gentlemen joined in censuring Julien for his priestly demeanour, which they said was humble and hypocritical.

“But,” she went on suddenly with her eyes gleaming with joy, “the very bitterness and the very frequency of their jests prove in spite of themselves that he is the most distinguished man whom we have seen this winter. What matter his defects and the things which they make fun of? He has the element of greatness and they are shocked by it. Yes, they, the very men who are so good and so charitable in other matters. It is a fact that he is poor and that he has studied in order to be a priest; they are the heads of a squadron and never had any need of studying; they found it less trouble.

“In spite of all the handicap of his everlasting black suit and of that priestly expression which he must wear, poor boy, if he isn't to die of hunger, his merit frightens them, nothing could be clearer. And as for that priest-like expression, why he no longer has it after we have been alone for some moments, and after those gentlemen have evolved what they imagine to be a subtle and impromptu epigram, is not their first look towards Julien? I have often noticed it. And yet they know well that he never speaks to them unless he is questioned. I am the only one whom he speaks to. He thinks I have a lofty soul. He only answers the points they raise sufficiently to be polite. He immediately reverts into respectfulness. But with me he will discuss things for whole hours, he is not certain of his ideas so long as I find the slightest objection to them. There has not been a single rifle-shot fired all this winter; words have been the only means of attracting attention. Well, my father, who is a superior man and will carry the fortunes of our house very far, respects Julien. Every one else hates him, no one despises him except my mother's devout friends.”

The Comte de Caylus had, or pretended to have, a great passion for horses; he passed his life in his stables and often breakfasted there. This great passion, together with his habit of never laughing, won for him much respect among his friends: he was the eagle of the little circle.

As soon as they had reassembled the following day behind Madame de la Mole's armchair, M. de Caylus, supported by Croisenois and by Norbert, began, in Julien's absence, to attack sharply the high opinion which Mathilde entertained for Julien. He did this without any provocation, and almost the very minute that he caught sight of Mademoiselle de la Mole. She tumbled to the subtlety immediately and was delighted with it.

“So there they are all leagued together,” she said to herself, “against a man of genius who has not ten louis a year to bless himself with and who cannot answer them except in so far as he is questioned. They are frightened of him, black coat and all. But how would things stand if he had epaulettes?”

She had never been more brilliant; hardly had Caylus and his allies opened their attack than she riddled them with sarcastic jests. When the fire of these brilliant officers was at length extinguished, she said to M. de Caylus,

“Suppose that some gentleman in the Franche-Comté mountains finds out to-morrow that Julien is his natural son and gives him a name and some thousands of francs; why in six months he will be an officer of hussars like you, gentlemen; in six weeks he will have moustaches like you gentlemen. And then his greatness of character will no longer be an object of ridicule. I shall then see you reduced, monsieur the future duke, to this tale and bad argument, the superiority of the court nobility over the provincial nobility. But where will you be if I choose to push you to extremities and am mischievous enough to make Julien's father a Spanish duke, who was a prisoner of war at Besançon in the time of Napoleon, and who out of conscientious scruples acknowledges him on his death bed?” MM. de Caylus, and de Croisenois found all these assumptions of illegitimacy in rather bad taste. That was all they saw in Mathilde's reasoning.

His sister's words were so clear that Norbert, in spite of his submissiveness, assumed a solemn air, which one must admit did not harmonise very well with his amiable, smiling face. He ventured to say a few words.

“Are you ill, my dear?” answered Mathilde with a little air of seriousness. “You must be very bad to answer jests by moralizing.”

“Moralizing from you! Are you soliciting a job as prefect?”

Mathilde soon forgot the irritation of the Comte de Caylus, the bad temper of Norbert, and the taciturn despair of M. de Croisenois. She had to decide one way or the other a fatal question which had just seized upon her soul.

“Julien is sincere enough with me,” she said to herself, “a man at his age, in an inferior position, and rendered unhappy as he is by an extraordinary ambition, must have need of a woman friend. I am perhaps that friend, but I see no sign of love in him. Taking into account the audacity of his character he would surely have spoken to me about his love.”

This uncertainty and this discussion with herself which henceforth monopolised Mathilde's time, and in connection with which she found new arguments each time that Julien spoke to her, completely routed those fits of boredom to which she had been so liable.

Daughter as she was of a man of intellect who might become a minister, Mademoiselle de la Mole had been, when in the convent of the Sacred Heart, the object of the most excessive flattery. This misfortune can never be compensated for. She had been persuaded that by reason of all her advantages of birth, fortune, etc., she ought to be happier than anyone else. This is the cause of the boredom of princes and of all their follies.

Mathilde had not escaped the deadly influence of this idea. However intelligent one may be, one cannot at the age of ten be on one's guard against the flatteries of a whole convent, which are apparently so well founded.

From the moment that she had decided that she loved Julien, she was no longer bored. She congratulated herself every day on having deliberately decided to indulge in a grand passion. “This amusement is very dangerous,” she thought. “All the better, all the better, a thousand times. Without a grand passion I should be languishing in boredom during the finest time of my life, the years from sixteen to twenty. I have already wasted my finest years: all my pleasure consisted in being obliged to listen to the silly arguments of my mother's friends who, when at Coblenz in 1792, were not quite so strict, so they say, as their words of to-day.”

It was while Mathilde was a prey to these great fits of uncertainty that Julien was baffled by those long looks of hers which lingered upon him. He noticed, no doubt, an increased frigidity in the manner of Comte Norbert, and a fresh touch of haughtiness in the manner of MM. de Caylus, de Luz and de Croisenois. He was accustomed to that. He would sometimes be their victim in this way at the end of an evening when, in view of the position he occupied, he had been unduly brilliant. Had it not been for the especial welcome with which Mathilde would greet him, and the curiosity with which all this society inspired him, he would have avoided following these brilliant moustachioed young men into the garden, when they accompanied Mademoiselle de la Mole there, in the hour after dinner.

“Yes,” Julien would say to himself, “it is impossible for me to deceive myself, Mademoiselle de la Mole looks at me in a very singular way. But even when her fine blue open eyes are fixed on me, wide open with the most abandon, I always detect behind them an element of scrutiny, self-possession and malice. Is it possible that this may be love? But how different to Madame de Rênal's looks!”

One evening after dinner, Julien, who had followed M. de la Mole into his study, was rapidly walking back to the garden. He approached Mathilde's circle without any warning, and caught some words pronounced in a very loud voice. She was teasing her brother. Julien heard his name distinctly pronounced twice. He appeared. There was immediately a profound silence and abortive efforts were made to dissipate it. Mademoiselle de la Mole and her brother were too animated to find another topic of conversation. MM. de Caylus, de Croisenois, de Luz, and one of their friends, manifested an icy coldness to Julien. He went away.