The Red and the Black (44 page)

An idea with any spark in it seems like a piece of rudeness there, so
accustomed have people become to colourless words. Woe betide
anyone who innovates in speech!

FAUBLAS
^*

AFTER several months of ordeals, this was the point Julien had
reached on the day the steward of the household handed him the third
quarterly instalment of his salary. M. de La Mole had put him in
charge of supervising the administration of his estates in Brittany
and Normandy. Julien visited them frequently. He was wholly in charge
of the correspondence relating to the notorious lawsuit with the Abbé
de Frilair. M. Pirard had briefed him.

On the basis of the short notes that the marquis scribbled in the
margins of all the various papers he received, Julien drafted letters
which were almost invariably signed.

His teachers at the theological college complained of his lack of
application, but none the less considered him to be one of their most
distinguished pupils. These different tasks, undertaken with all the
keenness of frustrated ambition, had soon robbed Julien of the fresh
complexion he had brought from the provinces. His pallor was an asset
in the eyes of his young contemporaries at the seminary; he found them
much less spiteful, much less inclined to worship Mammon than their
counterparts in Besançon; they thought he was suffering from
consumption. The marquis had given him a horse.

Fearful of being seen while out galloping, Julien had told them that
this was exercise ordered by the doctors. Father Pirard had introduced
him to several Jansenist societies. Julien was astonished; the idea
of religion was inextricably bound up in his mind with that of
hypocrisy and the hope of making money. He admired these pious, stern
men who don't think about accounts. A number of Jansenists had
befriended him and were offering him advice. A new world was opening
up

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before him. In Jansenist circles he met Count Altamira, who was
nearly six foot tall, a liberal sentenced to death in his own country,
and a religious man. He was struck by this strange contrast between
religious devotion and a love of liberty.

Relations were strained between Julien and the young count. Norbert
had felt that Julien reacted too sharply to some of his friends'
jokes. Having stepped beyond the bounds of propriety once or twice,
Julien made a point of never addressing any remarks to M
^lle
Mathilde. Everyone was always perfectly polite to him at the Hôtel de
La Mole, but he felt he was out of favour. His provincial common
sense explained this outcome by appeal to the popular saying:
new's beautiful
.

He was perhaps a little more perspicacious than at first, or else the first magic of Parisian sophistication had worn off.

As soon as he stopped working he fell victim to deadly boredom; this
is the withering effect of the politeness which distinguishes high
society: it is admirable, but oh so measured, so perfectly calibrated
in accordance with rank. Anyone with a sensitive nature sees straight
through it.

No doubt you can reproach
the provinces with their common or rather uncivil way of talking; but
people do show a bit of feeling when they answer you. Julien never
had his pride wounded at the Hôtel de La Mole, but he often felt close
to tears at the end of the day. In the provinces, a waiter will take
an interest in you if you have some kind of accident as you set foot
in his café; but if there is something about this accident that is
hurtful to your pride, the waiter, while expressing his sympathy for
you, will find ten occasions to repeat the word causing you such
agonies. In Paris, they are considerate enough not to laugh at you to
your face, but you are always a stranger.

We shall pass over in silence a host of little adventures which would
have made Julien look ridiculous if he had not been in some sense
beneath ridicule. His exaggerated sensitivity made him commit
thousands of blunders. All his pleasures were calculated ones: he
practised pistol shooting every day, he was one of the good pupils of
the most famous fencing masters. As soon as he had a moment to
himself, instead of spending it reading as he used to do, he dashed to
the riding school and

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asked for the most vicious horses. When he went out with the riding master he was almost invariably thrown off his horse.

The marquis found him easy to work with because of his dogged
application, his silence and his intelligence; and little by little he
entrusted him with the handling of any business that was the least
bit tricky to sort out. At times when his soaring ambition left him
some respite, the marquis was a shrewd businessman; with his ear close
to the ground, he was in a position to speculate with success. He
bought houses and forests; but he readily took offence. He gave away
hundreds of louis and went to court over a few hundred francs. Rich
men with noble hearts look to business for amusement, not results.
The marquis needed a chief of general staff to introduce a system that
was clear and easy to follow into all his financial affairs.

For all her restrained character, M
^me
de La Mole sometimes made fun of Julien. Great ladies are appalled by the
unpredictable
behaviour that heightened sensitivity produces; it is the very
opposite of propriety. Once or twice the marquis spoke in Julien's
defence: 'He may be ridiculous in your salon, but he scores in his
office.' For his part Julien thought he had discovered the marquise's
secret. She deigned to take an interest in everything as soon as the
Baron de La Joumate was announced. He was a cold individual with an
inscrutable countenance. He was short, thin, ugly, exceedingly well
dressed, spent his life at Court and, as a rule, never said anything
about anything. That was how his mind worked. M
^me
de La
Mole would have been passionately happy, for the first time in her
life, if she could have arranged for him to marry her daughter.

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Their lofty mission is to pass calm judgement on the minor events in
the daily lives of nations. Their wisdom must forestall mighty anger
over small causes, or over events that the voice of fame
transfigures when it carries them afar.

GRATIUS

FOR a newcomer who, out of pride, never asked any questions, Julien
did not make himself look too foolish. One day, when he was driven
into a café on the Rue Saint-Honoré by a sudden shower, a tall man in a
beaver overcoat, surprised at his sullen stare, stared back at him
exactly as M
^lle
Amanda's lover had done all that time ago in Besançon.

Julien had reproached himself too often with having let this first
insult pass to put up with such a stare now. He demanded an
explanation for it. The man in the overcoat immediately poured out a
torrent of foul abuse at him: the whole café clustered round them;
passers-by stopped by the door. Like a true provincial, Julien always
carried a pair of small pistols on him as a precaution; he clenched
them tightly inside his pocket. However he was sensible and did no
more than repeat to his man at regular intervals:
Your address, sir! I despise you
.

The tenacity with which he stuck to these six words ended up by impressing the crowd.

'Damn it all! the fellow doing all the talking must give him his
address!' Hearing this verdict repeated so often, the man in the
overcoat flung five or six cards in Julien's face. Luckily none of
them struck him; he had vowed he would only use his pistols if he was
hit. The man went away, not without turning round from time to time to
shake his fist and shout abuse at him.

Julien found himself bathed in sweat. So it's in the power of the
meanest of mortals to get me as worked up as this! he said to himself
in fury. How can I kill off my humiliating sensitivity?

What about finding a second? He didn't have any friends. He had had a number of acquaintances; but every time, after

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six weeks of seeing him, they had all become distant. I'm just not
sociable, and now I'm cruelly punished for it, he reflected. At length
he hit on the idea of seeking out a former lieutenant of the 96th
called Liéven, a poor devil he often fenced with. Julien was quite
open with him.

'I'm willing to be
your second,' said Liéven, 'but on one condition: if you don't wound
your man, you'll fight a duel with me, on the spot.'

'Agreed,' said Julien delightedly, and they went off in search of M.
C. de Beauvoisis at the address indicated on his cards, in the depths
of the Faubourg Saint-Germain.

It was
seven o'clock in the morning. It was only when giving his name at the
door that it occurred to Julien that this might be the young relative
of M
^me
de Rênal's who had worked at the Embassy in Rome or
Naples in the past, and had given a letter of introduction to the
singer Geronimo.

Julien had handed a tall footman one of the cards flung at him on the previous day and one of his own.

He and his second were kept waiting a good three-quarters of an hour;
at length they were introduced into a marvellously elegant suite,
where they found a tall young man dressed like a doll; his features
were handsome with all the perfection and the insignificance of a
Greek statue. His strikingly narrow head was crowned with a pyramid of
the loveliest fair hair. It had been curled with the greatest of
care; not a hair was out of place. Having his hair curled like that,
thought the lieutenant from the 96th, was what caused this cursed fop
to keep us waiting. The colourful dressing gown, the morning trousers,
everything down to the embroidered slippers was as it should be, and
wonderfully soigné. His noble, empty face suggested that ideas would
be conventional and rare: the cult of the agreeable gentleman, a horror
of anything unexpected or humorous, a great deal of gravity.

Julien, who had had it explained to him by his lieutenant from the
96th that keeping someone waiting for so long after rudely throwing a
visiting card in his face was yet another insult, strode briskly into
M. de Beauvoisis's room. He intended to be insolent, but he would
dearly have liked to be perfectly polite at the same time.

He was so struck by M. de Beauvoisis's gentle manners, by

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his expression that was at once affected, self-important and smug,
and by the marvellous elegance of his surroundings, that he abandoned
in a flash any idea of being insolent. This wasn't his man from the
day before. Such was his surprise at meeting so distinguished an
individual in place of the vulgar character he had met in the café
that he was at a loss for words. He handed him one of the cards that
had been flung at him.

'That's my
name,' said the fashionable young man, who was not induced to show
much respect by the sight of Julien's black suit, worn at seven in the
morning; 'but I don't understand, if I may make so bold...'

His way of uttering these last words brought back some of Julien's ill-temper.

'I've come to fight a duel with you, sir,' and he explained the whole affair straight out.

M. Charles de Beauvoisis, having given it due thought, was reasonably
pleased with the cut of Julien's black suit. It comes from Staub's,
^*
that's clear, he thought to himself as he listened to him speak; that
waistcoat is in good taste, those boots are nice; but on the other
hand, a black suit like that at this hour of the morning...! All the
better to escape bullets with, that must be it, said the Chevalier de
Beauvoisis to himself.

Once he had
produced this explanation for himself he resumed his exquisite
politeness, addressing Julien almost as an equal. Their exchange was
quite lengthy, the affair was a delicate one; but in the end Julien
could not refuse to accept the obvious. The young man of such high
birth standing before him did not have anything in common with the
vulgar character who had insulted him the day before.

Julien felt an overwhelming reluctance to leave, and spun out his
explanations. He observed the complacency of the Chevalier de
Beauvoisis--that was the title he had used when referring to himself,
being shocked that Julien should merely call him 'Mr'.

He admired his gravity, combined with a touch of discreet foppishness
that never left him for a single moment. He was astonished at his
curious way of moving his tongue as he pronounced his words... But all
the same, none of this gave the slightest justification for picking a
quarrel with him.

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The young diplomat volunteered to fight with a very good grace, but
the ex-lieutenant from the 96th who had been sitting there for an hour
with his legs apart, his hands on his thighs and his elbows sticking
out, decided that his friend M. Sorel was not the sort to pick a
quarrel with a man for nothing, just because the man had had his
visiting cards stolen.

Julien was in a
very bad temper when they left. The Chevalier de Beauvoisis's
carriage was waiting for him in the courtyard, in front of the porch;
Julien chanced to look up and recognized in the coachman his man from
the day before.

It was the matter of a
moment for Julien to see him, grab him by his long coat, pull him off
his seat and set about him with a horsewhip. Two footmen tried to
defend their comrade; Julien was punched several times: at the very
same moment he cocked one of his little pistols and fired at them;
they took to their heels.

The
Chevalier de Beauvoisis was coming downstairs with the most comic
gravity, repeating in his upper-class accent: 'What's all this, what's
all this?' He was clearly most curious, but diplomatic dignity did
not allow him to show any more interest than that. When he learned
what the matter was, haughtiness continued to do battle on his
features with the slightly playful composure which must never leave a
diplomat's face.

The lieutenant
from the 96th realized that M. de Beauvoisis was game for a fight: he
also wanted for reasons of diplomacy to make sure that his friend kept
the advantage of taking the initiative. 'This time', he exclaimed,
'there's matter enough for a duel!''I should rather think so,' the
diplomat replied.

'I'm dismissing
that rogue,' he said to his footmen; 'someone else can take his seat.'
The carriage door was opened: the chevalier insisted on doing Julien
and his second the honours. They went and fetched one of M. de
Beauvoisis's friends, who indicated a quiet spot to them. The
conversation during the drive was really good. The only odd thing was
the diplomat in his dressing gown.

These gentlemen, for all their wealth, thought Julien, aren't at all
boring like the people who come to dinner with M. de La Mole; and I
see why, he went on a moment later, they

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