The Red and the Black (46 page)

'Go and spend two months in London,' he said to Julien. 'The special
and other postal services will bring you the letters I receive,
together with my notes. You will prepare the replies and send them
back to me, putting each letter in with the reply to it. I've
calculated that the delay will only be five days.'

As he sped along the road to Calais, Julien was amazed at the triviality of the so-called business he was being sent on.

We shall not describe the feeling of hatred and almost horror with
which he set foot on English soil. The reader knows of his mad passion
for Bonaparte. He took every officer for a Sir Hudson Lowe,
^*
every great lord for a Lord Bathurst, ordering the infamies on St
Helena and being rewarded for it with ten years in the Cabinet.

In London he at last experienced the heights of foppery. He had
become acquainted with some young Russian nobles who initiated him.

'You are predestined for this, my dear Sorel,' they said to him; 'your natural look is the cold expression,
utterly remote from the sensation of the moment,
that we try so hard to adopt.'

'You haven't understood your century,' Prince Korasov said to him:
'always do the opposite of what is expected of you.
This, on my honour, is the only religion for our time. Don't be
either mad or affected, for then acts of folly and affectation would
be expected of you, and the precept would fail to be carried out.'

Julien was crowned with glory one day in the salon of the Duke of
Fitz-Folke, who had invited him to dinner along with Prince Korasov.
They had to wait for an hour. The way Julien behaved in the midst of
the twenty people waiting there is still quoted by the young Embassy
secretaries in London. His expression was priceless.

He determined, in spite of his dandy friends, to see the famous Philip Vane,
^*
the only philosopher England has produced since Locke. He found him
serving his seventh year in prison. The aristocracy doesn't fool
around in this country, Julien thought; Vane is dishonoured, vilified
etc.

Julien found him in fine spirits; the fury of the aristocracy kept him from being bored. There sits, said Julien to himself

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as he left the prison, the only cheerful man I've seen in England.

'The idea that is of greatest use to tyrants is that of God,'
Vane had said to him...

We shall leave out the rest of his system as being too
cynical.
On his return: 'What entertaining idea are you bringing back from
England for me?' M. de La Mole asked him... He remained silent. 'What
idea are you bringing back, entertaining or not?' insisted the marquis.

'Primo,'
said Julien, 'the wisest Englishman has an hour of folly every day;
he is visited by the demon of suicide, who is the god of the country.

'2
⁰
Wit and genius lose twenty-five per cent of their value on landing in England.

'3
⁰
Nothing in the world is as beautiful, as worthy of admiration, or as moving as English landscapes.'

'My turn,' said the marquis:

'Primo,
why did you go and say at the Russian Ambassador's ball that there
are three hundred thousand young men of twenty-five in France who
passionately desire war? Do you think that's something our kings will
like to hear?'

'One
doesn't know what to do when talking to our great diplomats,' said
Julien. 'They have a way of embarking on serious discussions. If you
stick to the platitudes of the press, you are taken for a fool. If you
allow yourself to say something true and novel, they are astonished,
they don't know what to answer, and at seven o'clock the next day they
have you informed through the First Secretary at the Embassy that you
said the wrong thing.'

'Not bad,'
said the marquis laughing. 'Anyway, I bet you, Mister profound
thinker, that you haven't guessed what you went to England for.'

'Begging your pardon,' replied Julien; 'I went there to dine once a
week with the King's Ambassador, who is the most civil of men.'

'You went to get the Legion of Honour cross that you see over there,'
the marquis said to him. 'I don't wish to make you abandon your black
suit, and I've grown accustomed to the more entertaining tone I've
adopted with the man wearing the

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blue suit. Until further notice, take this as understood: when I see
this cross, you will be the youngest son of my friend the Duc de
Chaulnes, who, without realizing it, has been employed in the
Diplomatic Service for the past six months. Take note', added the
marquis with a very serious air, cutting short Julien's expressions of
gratitude, 'that I do not wish to raise you from your position. It's
always a mistake and a misfortune for the patron as well as for the
protégé. When my lawsuits bore you, or you cease to suit my needs, I
shall request a good living for you, like the one our good friend
Father Pirard has,
and nothing more,'
the marquis added in a very curt tone of voice.

This cross set Julien's pride at rest; he spoke much more readily. He
was less often inclined to believe himself singled out for insult by
those remarks capable of some unflattering interpretation that anyone
can let slip in an animated conversation.

This cross also earned him an unusual visit: that of the honourable
Baron de Valenod, who had come to Paris to thank the Cabinet for his
rifle, and to establish good relations. He was about to be appointed
mayor of Verrières to replace M. de Rênal.

Julien had a good laugh, to himself, when M. de Valenod insinuated to
him that M. de Rênal had just been discovered to be a Jacobin. The
fact is that in a fresh round of elections that were in the offing,
the new baron was the Government candidate, and in the electoral
college of the département, which was in truth very reactionary, M. de
Rênal was standing for the liberals.
^*

Julien tried in vain to discover anything about M
^me
de Rênal; the baron appeared to remember their former rivalry and was
inscrutable. He ended up by asking Julien for his father's vote in
the forthcoming elections. Julien promised to write.

'You should, noble sir, introduce me to his lordship the Marquis de La Mole.'

'Quite right,
I should,'
Julien thought; 'but a rogue like you...!'

'The truth is', he replied, 'that I'm too much of a new boy at the
Hôtel de La Mole to take the initiative of introducing people.'

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Julien used to tell the marquis everything: that evening he described
Valenod's pretensions to him, and all his great deeds since 1814.

'Not only', replied M. de La Mole with a most serious air, 'will you
introduce the new baron to me tomorrow, but I shall invite him to
dinner the day after. He shall be one of our new prefects.'

'In that case', replied Julien coldly, 'I request the post of master of the workhouse for my father.'

'Well done!' said the marquis, resuming his gaiety; 'granted; I was
expecting you to moralize. You're getting the hang of things.'

M. de Valenod informed Julien that the person who ran the lottery in
Verrières had just died: Julien thought it amusing to give the office
to M. de Cholin, the old fool whose petition he had picked up all that
time ago in M. de La Mole's room. The marquis laughed wholeheartedly
at the petition which Julien recited to him when getting him to sign
the letter requesting this office from the Minister of Finance.

M. de Cholin had hardly been appointed when Julien learned that this
office had been requested by a deputation from the département on
behalf of M. Gros, the famous geometer: this generous man only had an
income of fourteen hundred francs, and every year he had lent six
hundred francs to the recently deceased holder of the office, to help
him bring up his family.

Julien was
amazed at what he had done. It doesn't matter, he said to himself, I
shall have to resort to a good many other injustices if I want to make
my way, and what's more, learn to hide them beneath fine sentimental
phrases: poor M. Gros!
He
deserved the cross, I'm the one to
get it, and I have to act in accordance with the desires of the
Government who's giving it to me.

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'Your water doesn't refresh me,' said the thirsty genie. 'All the same, it's the coolest well in the whole of Diarbekir.'

PELLICO
^*

ONE day Julien had just returned from the delightful estate at
Villequier on the banks of the Seine, which M. de La Mole kept an
interested eye on because it was the only one of all his estates that
had belonged to the famous Boniface de La Mole. In the Paris house he
found the marquise and her daughter, who were just back from Hyères.

Julien was a dandy now, and understood the art of living in Paris. He behaved with exemplary coldness towards M
^lle
de La Mole. He appeared to have no recollection of the days when
she asked him so gaily for details of how he fell off his horse.

M
^lle
de La Mole found him taller and paler. His figure and appearance no
longer bore any trace of the provincial; this was not the case with
his conversation: it was noticeably still far too serious and
assertive. However, despite the measured tone, his pride precluded any
hint of subservience; it was just that you felt he still regarded too
many things as important. But you could tell he was a man to defend
his point of view.

'He lacks the flippant touch, but he does have a mind,' said M
^lle
de La Mole to her father, as she joked with him about the cross he
had given Julien. 'My brother went on at you about getting one for
eighteen months, and he's a La Mole!'

'Yes, but Julien doesn't act as you'd expect him to, which can't be said of the La Mole you're talking about.'

His grace the Duc de Retz was announced.

Mathilde felt herself overcome by an irresistible yawn; she
recognized the antique gilding and the familiar faces of her father's
salon. She conjured up an utterly tedious image of the life she was
about to resume in Paris. All the same, when in Hyères she missed
Paris.

Yet I'm nineteen! she thought: it's the age for happiness, so

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say all these idiots in gold leaf. She was looking at nine or ten
volumes of new poetry which had mounted up on the drawingroom table
during her visit to Provence. It was her misfortune to have a sharper
intellect than M. de Croisenois, M. de Caylus, M. de Luz and her other
friends. She could just imagine everything they would say to her
about the wonderful sky in Provence, poetry, the South, etc., etc.

These lovely eyes in which dwelled the most profound boredom, and
worse still, despair at ever finding any pleasure, alighted on Julien.
He at least was not quite like anyone else.

'Monsieur Sorel,' she said in that bright, crisp and utterly
unfeminine voice adopted by upper-class young women, 'Monsieur Sorel,
are you coming to M. de Retz's ball this evening?'

'Mademoiselle, I haven't had the honour of being introduced to his
grace.' (It was as if these words and this title stuck in the proud
provincial's throat.)

'He has
instructed my brother to take you along with him to his house; and if
you were to come, you could give me some information about the
Villequier estate; there's talk of going there in the spring. I'd like
to know if the chêteau is habitable, and if the surrounding
countryside is as pretty as they claim. There are so many undeserved
reputations!'

Julien made no reply.

'Come to the ball with my brother,' she added in very curt tones.

Julien bowed respectfully. So even in the middle of a ball, I'm
accountable to all the members of the family. Aren't I being paid to
engage in business? His bad temper added: What's more, God knows
whether what I tell the daughter won't upset the plans made by the
father, the brother or the mother! this is every bit the sovereign
prince's Court. You'd have to be a real nonentity who at the same time
would give nobody any cause for complaint.

How I dislike that tall girl! he thought as he watched M
^lle
de La Mole walk towards her mother, who had called her over to
introduce her to a number of her women friends. She carries all
fashions to extremes, her dress is falling off her shoulders... she's
even paler than before she went away... What colourless hair, it's so
fair! It's as if the light went straight through it.

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How haughty she is the way she greets people, in the way she looks at them! What queenly gestures!

M
^lle
de La Mole had just called her brother over as he was leaving the drawing-room.

Count Norbert came up to Julien:

'My dear Sorel,' he said to him, 'where would you like me to pick you
up at midnight for M. de Retz's ball? He's given me express
instructions to bring you along.'

'I'm very aware to whom I owe such kindness,' Julien replied, bowing to the ground.

His bad temper, unable to find fault with the tone of civility and
even interest which Norbert had adopted in speaking to him, began to
get to work on the reply which he, Julien, had made to these obliging
words. He detected in it a shade of servility.

That evening, when he arrived at the ball, he was struck by the
magnificence of the Hôtel de Retz. The front courtyard was covered
over with a great awning of crimson twill with gold stars on it: the
height of elegance. Beneath this awning the courtyard was transformed
into a grove of flowering orange trees and oleanders. As care had been
taken to bury the pots sufficiently deep, the oleanders and oranges
looked as if they were growing straight out of the ground. The pathway
for carriages was strewn with sand.

The whole scene seemed amazing to our young provincial. He did not
have the least inkling of such magnificence; in an instant his kindled
imagination had left his bad temper thousands of miles behind. In the
carriage on the way to the ball, Norbert had been cheerful while he,
Julien, saw everything painted black; no sooner had they entered the
courtyard than the roles were reversed.

All that Norbert noticed was the few details which, in the midst of
such magnificence, it had not been possible to attend to. He totted up
the expenditure on each item, and as the total mounted up, Julien
observed that he became almost envious and quite put out.

Whereas Julien himself was won over, full of admiration and almost
nervous with emotion when he reached the first of the rooms where the
dancing was going on. People were crowding

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