The Red and the Black (52 page)

Unconnected remarks, chance encounters are transformed into the most
blatant proof in the eyes of a man of imagination if he has any spark
of fire in his heart.

SCHILLER
^*

THE next day Julien again caught Norbert and his sister talking about
him. His arrival prompted a deathly silence, as on the previous
evening. His suspicions ran riot. Have these agreeable young people by
any chance undertaken to make fun of me? That's much more likely,
much more natural, I must confess, than a putative passion of M
^lle
de La Mole's for a poor devil of a secretary. In the first place,
do people of this sort have passions? Mystification is their strong
point. They're jealous of my wretched superiority in using words.
Being jealous is again one of their weaknesses. Everything hangs
together in this scheme of things. M
^lle
de La Mole wants to
persuade me that she's singling me out, simply in order to produce a
spectacle for the benefit of her suitor.

This cruel suspicion altered the whole of Julien's psychological
stance. His insight found a nascent feeling of love in his heart, and
had no difficulty in destroying it. This love was based only on
Mathilde's rare beauty, or rather on her queenly ways and her wondrous
style of dress. In this respect Julien was still a social climber. A
pretty woman from high society is, so they maintain, what most
astonishes a peasant with a sharp mind when he reaches the upper
classes of society. It was not Mathilde's character that had set
Julien dreaming these past few days. He had enough sense to realize
that he did not understand her character at all. Everything he saw of
it might be no more than an outward appearance.

For instance, nothing in the whole world would have made Mathilde
miss Mass on a Sunday. She accompanied her mother to church almost
every day. If some rash guest in the

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drawing-room of the Hôtel de La Mole forgot where he was and allowed
himself the remotest allusion to a joke against the real or supposed
interests of throne or altar, Mathilde would instantly freeze into icy
seriousness. Her look, always so piercing, took on all the
inscrutable hauteur of an old family portrait.

But Julien had ascertained that she still had one or two of the most
philosophical of Voltaire's works in her room. He himself often made
off with a few volumes of the fine edition in its magnificent binding.
By separating each volume a little from its neighbour, he concealed
the absence of the one he was taking, but he soon noticed that some
other person was reading Voltaire. He resorted to a ruse learned in
the seminary, and put a few strands of horsehair on the volumes he
imagined might be of interest to M
^lle
de La Mole. They disappeared for weeks on end.

M. de La Mole, who had grown impatient with his bookseller for sending him all the
fake
Memoirs
^*
that came out, instructed Julien to buy any new titles that were at
all titillating. But lest poison should spread through the household,
the secretary had orders to deposit these books in a small bookcase in
the marquis's own room. He was soon quite certain that these new
books only had to be hostile to the interests of throne and altar, and
they would disappear in no time. And it was scarcely Norbert who was
the reader.

Exaggerating the significance of this discovery, Julien attributed a Machiavellian duplicity to M
^lle
de La Mole. This alleged wickedness was one of her charms in his
eyes, almost the only psychological charm she had. Boredom with
hypocrisy and the language of virtue threw him into this excess.

What was happening was that he was whipping up his own imagination rather than being carried away by love.

It was after losing himself in fantasies about the elegance of M
^lle
de La Mole's figure, the excellent taste of her attire, the whiteness of her hands, the beauty of her arms, the
disinvoltura
^*
of all her movements, that he found himself in love. At that point,
to complete the spell, he believed she was a Catherine de Medici.
Nothing was too profound or too wicked for the character he imputed to
her. She was the ideal

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of the Maslons, the Frilairs and the Castanèdes he had admired in his
youth. In short, for him she represented the ideal of Paris.

Was ever anything funnier than attributing profundity or wickedness to the Parisian character?

It's possible that this trio is making fun of me, thought Julien. You
have very little understanding of his character if you can't already
see the sullen and cold expression assumed by his gaze when it met
Mathilde's. Bitter irony repelled the assurances of friendship that M
^lle
de La Mole was bold enough to venture on one or two occasions.

Stung by the sudden oddness of his response, this girl's heart, which
was naturally cold, bored and receptive to things of the mind, became
as passionate as it was in her nature to be. But there was also a
great deal of pride in Mathilde's character, and the birth of a
sentiment which made her whole happiness depend on someone else was
accompanied by gloom and sadness.

Julien had already learned enough since his arrival in Paris to
discern that this was not the and sadness of boredom. Instead of being
eager, as before, for parties, shows and all manners of
entertainments, she shunned them.

Music sung by Frenchmen bored Mathilde to death, and yet Julien, who
made it his duty to be present when people came out of the Opera,
noticed that she arranged to be taken there as often as she could. He
thought he detected that she had lost some of the perfect moderation
that shone in all her actions. She sometimes answered her friends with
jokes that were offensive, they were so caustically hard-hitting. It
seemed to him that she had it in for the Marquis de Croisenois. This
young man really must have an insane love of money--not to walk out
on this girl, however rich she may be! Julien thought. And for his own
part, incensed at the way male dignity was being insulted, he stepped
up his coldness towards her. He often went so far as to produce
replies that were scarcely civil.

However firm his resolve not to be taken in by Mathilde's signs of
interest, they were so obvious on some days, and Julien, the scales
falling from his eyes, was beginning to

-332-

find her so pretty that he was sometimes quite embarrassed by it.

The skill and persistence shown by these young members of high
society might end up getting the better of my inexperience, he said to
himself; I must go away and put a stop to all this. The marquis had
just entrusted him with the administration of a number of small
estates and houses he owned in the lower Languedoc.
^*
A journey was necessary: M. de La Mole gave his unwilling consent.
Except in matters of high ambition, Julien had become his second self.

When you tot it all up, they haven't caught me out, Julien said to himself as he made ready to leave. Whether the jokes M
^lle
de La Mole makes at these gentlemen's expense are real or merely
designed to boost my confidence, I've had my amusement from them.

If there isn't a conspiracy against the carpenter's son, M
^lle
de La Mole is unfathomable, but she is to the Marquis de Croisenois
at least as much as to me. Yesterday, for instance, her ill-temper
was real, and I had the pleasure of seeing her preference for me
discountenance a young man who's as noble and rich as I'm a beggar and
a plebeian. That's the finest of my triumphs; it'll keep me laughing
in my post-chaise as I speed across the plains of the Languedoc.

He had kept his departure a secret, but Mathilde knew better than he
did that he was going to leave Paris the next morning, and for a long
while. She resorted to a dreadful headache, made worse by the stuffy
air in the drawing-room. She walked about a good deal in the garden,
and used her scathing jokes so effectively to harry Norbert, the
Marquis de Croisenois, Caylus, de Luz and a few other young men who
had dined at the Hôtel de La Mole, that she forced them to leave. She
looked at Julien with a strange expression.

Looking at me like that may just be play-acting, thought Julien; but
what about the fast breathing, what about all the emotion! Bah! he
said to himself, who am I to pronounce on all these matters? I'm
dealing with the most sublime and most subtle of all Parisian women.
The fast breathing that was on the point of moving me will have been
copied from Léontine Fay
^*
whom she so admires.

-333-

They were left alone together; the conversation was visibly flagging.
No! Julien has no feelings for me, said Mathilde to herself with real
unhappiness.

As he was taking leave of her, she squeezed his arm tightly:

'You'll be getting a letter from me tonight,' she said to him in a
tone of voice so altered that the sound was unrecognizable. Julien was
at once moved by this.

'My father', she went on, 'has a rightful esteem for the services you perform for him. It's
imperative
you don't leave tomorrow; find an excuse.' And off she ran.

Her figure was delightful. You couldn't imagine anyone with a
daintier pair of feet, and she ran with a gracefulness that Julien
found ravishing; but would you ever guess what his next thought was
after she had completely disappeared from sight? He took offence at
the peremptory tone in which she had uttered the phrase it's
imperative
. Louis XV on his deathbed was likewise stung to the quick by this phrase it's
imperative
tactlessly used by his physician in chief, and Louis XV was hardly a parvenu.

An hour later a footman handed Julien a letter; it was quite simply a declaration of love.

There isn't too much affectation in the style, Julien said to
himself, attempting by his literary comments to contain the joy which
made his cheeks go taut and forced him to laugh in spite of himself.

But me of all people, he suddenly exclaimed, passion being too strong
to be contained, a poor peasant like me getting a declaration of love
from a great lady!

On my side of the
picture, things look pretty good, he added, suppressing his joy as
much as he could. I've managed to preserve the dignity befitting my
character. I haven't told her I love her. He began to study the shape
of the letters; M
^lle
de La Mole had nice English handwriting.
^*
He needed some sort of physical occupation to take his mind off a joy that was verging on delirium.

'Your departure forces me to speak... It would be more than my strength could bear not to see you any more.'

A sudden thought struck Julien like a discovery, interrupted his
scrutiny of Mathilde's letter, and increased his joy twofold.

-334-

I've got the better of the Marquis de Croisenois, he exclaimed--me,
with nothing but serious things to say! And he's so handsome! He's got
a moustache and a fine uniform; he always comes up with some witty
and subtle remark just at the right moment.

Julien spent a few exquisite moments; he wandered aimlessly through the garden, out of his mind with happiness.

Later he went up to his study and had himself announced to the
Marquis de La Mole, who had fortunately not gone out. By showing him
some papers marked as having just arrived from Normandy he had no
difficulty in convincing him that in order to look after the Normandy
lawsuits he needed to postpone his departure for the Languedoc.

'I'm so glad you're not leaving,' the marquis said to him when they had finished discussing business. '
I like having you around
. Julien left the room; this remark made him feel uncomfortable.

And here am I about to seduce his daughter! to put a stop, maybe, to
this marriage of hers with the Marquis de Croisenois, which is his great
delight for the future: if he isn't a duke himself, at least his
daughter will get a footstool.
^*
It occurred to Julien that he should set off for the Languedoc in
spite of Mathilde's letter, in spite of the explanation he had given
the marquis. This flash of virtue soon vanished.

How kind I am, he said to himself, a plebeian like me taking pity on a
family of this rank! when the Duc de Chaulnes calls me a domestic!
How does the marquis increase his enormous fortune? By selling off
some of his stocks when he finds out at Court that a
coup d'état
is going to be staged. And here am I, cast down on the bottom rung by
a cruel Providence--giving me a noble heart and not so much as a
thousand francs in income, in other words no bread to live on,
literally speaking no bread
;
am I the one to refuse a pleasure on offer! A limpid spring welling
up to quench my thirst in the burning desert of mediocrity I'm
struggling to cross! Not on your life, I'm not that much of a fool;
every man for himself in this desert of egoism they call life.

And he remembered a number of disdainful glances cast in his direction by M
^me
de La Mole, and especially by her lady friends.

-335-

The pleasure of triumphing over the Marquis de Croisenois finally succeeded in routing Julien's last recollection of virtue.

How I should like him to take offence! he said. How confidently I'd
strike him now with my sword. And he made the gesture of someone
thrusting in Seconde position. Before this I was a know-all, basely
misusing a touch of pluck. After this letter, I'm his equal.

Yes, he said to himself, dwelling on the words with infinite
voluptuousness, our respective worth--the marquis's and mine--has been
weighed up, and the poor carpenter from the Jura has come out best.

Good! he exclaimed, there's the signature for my reply all waiting. Don't go imagining, M
^lle
de La Mole, that I'm forgetting my station. I'll make sure you
understand and really feel that it's for the sake of a carpenter's son
that you're betraying a descendant of the famous Guy de Croisenois
who followed St Louis
^*
to the Crusades.

Julien was unable to contain his joy. He was obliged to go down into
the garden. His room where he had locked himself up seemed to him too
cramped to breathe in.

Me, a poor
peasant from the Jura, he repeated to himself over and over again, me,
with this dismal black suit I'm condemned to wear for ever! Alas!
twenty years ago I'd have worn a uniform like the rest of them! At
that time a man like me had either been killed or was
a general by the age of thirtysix
.
The letter which he was clutching in his hand gave him the stature
and the stance of a hero. Nowadays, it's true, with a black suit like
this, a man has a salary of a hundred thousand francs and the Blue
Sash at forty, like Monsignor the Bishop of Beauvais.
^*

All right then! he said to himself, laughing like Mephistopheles, I've
got more intelligence than they have; I can pick the right uniform for
my century. And he felt a resurgence of ambition and attachment for
the robes of the priesthood. How many cardinals were born beneath me
and went on to reign! My fellow countryman Granvelle,
^*
for instance.

Gradually Julien's agitation subsided; caution surfaced again. He
said to himself, like his mentor Tartuffe, whose part he knew by
heart:

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