The Red and the Black (58 page)

of tears to any indiscreet soul who might question him; he locked himself away in his room.

He saw Mathilde taking a long stroll in the garden; when at last she
had left it, he went down there; he went over to a rosebush where she
had picked a flower.

The night was dark, he could give himself up fully to his misery without fear of being seen. It was obvious to him that M
^lle
de La Mole loved one of those young officers she had just been talking to so gaily. She had loved
him
but she had discovered how worthless he was.

And I am indeed worthless! Julien said to himself with total
conviction; all in all, I'm a pretty insipid creature--pretty common,
pretty boring to others, pretty unbearable to myself. He was utterly
disgusted with all his good qualitites, with all the things he enjoyed
with enthusiasm; and in this state of
topsy-turvy imagination
, he was attempting to judge life with his imagination. This error bears the mark of a superior man.

On several occasions the idea of suicide came to him; it was a
seductive image, like a delectable haven; it was the glass of ice-cold
water offered to the poor wretch dying of thirst and heat in the
desert.

My death will increase the scorn she feels for me! he exclaimed. What a memory I'll leave behind!

Once he has sunk into this last abyss of misery, a human being has no
resources other than courage. Julien was not inspired enough to say: I
must be bold; but as he looked up at Mathilde's bedroom window, he
saw through the shutters that she was putting out her fight: he
pictured this charming room that he had only seen, alas! once in his
life. His imagination did not go any further.

One o'clock struck; to hear the sound of the bell and to say to
himself. I'm going to get the ladder and climb up, was the matter of
an instant.

It was a flash of genius;
sound reasons came crowding in. Can I possibly be more unhappy! he
said to himself. He ran to the ladder, the gardener had chained it up.
Using the hammer of one of his little pistols, which broke in the
attempt, Julien, endowed at that instant with superhuman strength,
bent one of the links in the chain securing the ladder; he had it at
his

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service in a matter of minutes, and positioned it against Mathilde's window.

She's going to get angry, to pour scorn on me, but what does it
matter? I'll give her a kiss, then go up to my room and kill myself...
my lips will touch her cheek before I die!

He flew up the ladder and knocked at the shutter; after a few seconds
Mathilde heard him and tried to open the shutter; the ladder was in
the way; Julien hung on to the iron hook used to fix the shutter open
and, at the repeated risk of sending himself crashing to the ground,
gave the ladder a violent jolt and shifted it slightly. Mathilde was
able to open the shutter.

He threw himself into the room more dead than alive:

'So it's you, is it, my love!' she said, flinging herself into his arms... ... ... ...

Who can describe Julien's inordinate happiness? Mathilde's was almost as great.

She spoke up against herself, she denounced herself to him.

'Punish me for my appalling pride,' she said to him, hugging him in
her arms till he could hardly breathe. 'You're my master, I'm your
slave, I must ask your pardon on my knees for having tried to rebel.'
She slipped out of his arms to fall at his feet. 'Yes, you're my
master,' she said to him, still intoxicated with happiness and love.
'Reign over me for ever, punish your slave severely when she tries to
rebel.'

At another moment she tore
herself from his arms, lit the candle, and Julien had the greatest
difficulty in the world in preventing her from cutting off all the
hair on one side of her head.

'I
want to remind myself', she told him, 'that I'm your servant: if ever
any loathsome pride comes along to lead me astray, show me this hair
and say:"it's no longer a matter of love, it's nothing to do with the
emotion you happen to be feeling at this moment, you have sworn to
obey, obey on your honour".'

But it is wiser to suppress the description of such excesses of folly and bliss.

Julien's virtue was a match for his happiness: 'I must go down by the ladder,' he said to Mathilde when he saw dawn

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breaking over the distant chimney-stacks in the east, beyond the
gardens. 'The sacrifice I'm imposing on myself is worthy of you, I'm
depriving myself of a few hours of the most amazing happiness a human
soul can taste; I'm making this sacrifice for your reputation: if you
know my heart, you'll understand how much I'm forcing myself. Will
your attitude towards me always be the same as it is now? But honour
calls, and that's enough. You should know that after our first
assignation, not all suspicion fell on thieves. M. de La Mole has set
up a watch in the garden. M. de Croisenois is surrounded with spies,
it's known what he does every night...'

At the thought of this, Mathilde laughed riotously. Her mother and
one of the women on duty were woken up; they suddenly spoke to her
through the door. Julien looked at her; she turned pale as she scolded
the chambermaid, and did not deign to answer her mother.

'But if they take it into their heads to open the window, they'll see the ladder!' Julien said to her.

He clasped her in his arms once more, flung himself onto the ladder
and let himself slide rather than climbing down; in a flash he was on
the ground.

Three seconds later the
ladder was under the row of limes, and Mathilde's honour was saved.
Coming to his senses, Julien found he was covered in blood and almost
naked: he had wounded himself as he slid carelessly down.

The intensity of his happiness had restored all the energy of his
character: had twenty men appeared before him, it would just have been
one more pleasure to attack them single-handed at that moment.
Fortunately his military prowess was not put to the test: he laid the
ladder in its usual place; he put back the chain that secured it; he
did not forget to remove the indentation left by the ladder in the bed
of exotic flowers beneath Mathilde's window.

As he was running his hand in the dark over the soft earth to make
sure that the indentation was completely removed, he felt something
drop onto his hands: it was Mathilde's hair from one side that she had
cut off and was throwing down to him.

She was at her window.

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'This is what your servant sends you,' she said to him quite audibly,
'it's the sign of eternal obedience. I renounce the use of my reason,
be my master.'

Julien in defeat was
on the point of going to get the ladder again and climbing back up to
her room. In the end reason got the upper hand.

Getting back into the house from the garden was no easy matter. He
managed to force open a cellar door; once inside the house, he was
obliged to break into his room as quietly as possible. In his turmoil
he had left everything in the little room he had just abandoned so
hastily, right down to his key which was in his suit pocket. 'So
long', he thought, 'as she thinks to hide all those earthly remains!'

At length exhaustion got the better of happiness, and as the sun rose he fell into a deep sleep.

The bell for lunch woke him only with extreme difficulty; he made his
appearance in the dining-room. Shortly afterwards Mathilde came in.
It was a really happy moment for Julien's pride when he saw the love
which shone from the eyes of this beautiful girl, the object of so
much homage; but soon his prudence had occasion to be alarmed.

Using the short time she had had to attend to her hairstyle as an
excuse, Mathilde had arranged her hair in such a way as to let Julien
see at a glance the full extent of the sacrifice she had made him when
she cut it off in the night. If so lovely a face could have been
spoiled by anything, Mathilde would have achieved this: the whole of
one side of her beautiful ashblond hair was cut off half an inch from
her scalp.

At lunch Mathilde's
behaviour wholly matched this first act of imprudence. It was as if
she had taken it upon herself to let everyone know of her mad passion
for Julien. Fortunately that day M. de La Mole and the marquise were
very preoccupied with the imminent award of some Blue Sashes, which
did not include M. de Chaulnes. Towards the end of the meal,
Mathilde, who was talking to Julien, let slip the term
master
when addressing him. He blushed to the roots of his hair.

Whether by chance or deliberately on M
^me
de La Mole's part, Mathilde was not alone for a single moment that
day. In the evening, as they moved from the dining-room to the

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drawing-room, she nevertheless found a moment to say to Julien:

'Are you going to think it's an excuse on my part? Mama has just
decided that one of her maids will spend the night in my room.'

That day went by in a flash. Julien was on top of the world. At seven
o'clock the next morning he was already settled in the library; he
hoped M
^lle
de La Mole would deign to put in an appearance; he had sent her an interminable letter.

He only saw her many hours later, at lunch. Her hair was arranged
that day with the greatest of care; wondrous artistry had taken charge
of concealing the place where the hair had been cut. She looked at
Julien once or twice, but her gaze was calm and polite; there was no
question of calling him master any more.

Julien's astonishment hampered his breathing... Mathilde seemed
almost to be reproaching herself with everything she had done for him.

On careful consideration, she had
decided that he was a being who, if not altogether common, none the
less did not stand out sufficiently from the rest to deserve all the
strange acts of folly she had ventured to commit for his sake. All in
all, her thoughts were hardly on love: that day she was weary of
loving.

As for Julien, his emotions
swung wildly like those of a sixteen-year-old boy. Appalling doubt,
astonishment and despair took hold of him in turn throughout that
lunch which seemed to him to last an eternity.

As soon as he could decently get up from table, he rushed rather than
ran to the stables, saddled his horse himself and set off at a
gallop; he was afraid of disgracing himself by some act of weakness. I
must kill my heart with physical exhaustion, he said to himself as he
galloped through the woods at Meudon
^*
. What have I done, what have I said to deserve such a fall from favour?

I mustn't do anything or say anything today, he thought on returning
to the house, I must be as dead physically as I am mentally. Julien is
no longer alive, it's his corpse that is still twitching.

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His heart does not understand to begin with how acute is his
unhappiness; he is more disturbed than moved. But as his reason
gradually returns, he feels the depth of his misfortune. All the
pleasures of life are destroyed for him, he can only feel the sharp
prickings of despair tearing him apart. But what is the use of talking
of physical pain? What pain felt by the body alone can be compared
with this?

JEAN PAUL
^*

DINNER was being announced; Julien only just had time to dress. In
the drawing-room he found Mathilde, who was earnestly entreating her
brother and M. de Croisenois not to go and spend the evening at
Suresnes with the Maréchale de Fervaques.

No one could have been more charming and more amiable towards them.
After dinner Messrs de Luz, de Caylus and several of their friends
turned up. It looked as if M
^lle
de La Mole's resumption of
the cult of sisterly affection went hand in hand with that of the
strictest propriety. Although the weather was delightful that evening,
she insisted on not going out into the garden; she wanted everyone to
stay by the couch where M
^me
de La Mole was settled. The blue sofa was the focus of the group, as in winter.

Mathilde had taken against the garden, or at any rate it seemed
utterly boring to her: it was linked with the memory of Julien.

Unhappiness dulls the mind. Our hero was inept enough to come over to
the little wicker chair which had witnessed such brilliant triumphs
in the past. Today no one said a word to him: his presence was as good
as unnoticed, or worse. Those of M
^lle
de La Mole's friends
who were stationed near him at the foot of the sofa made a point of
turning their backs to him, or at least that was how it struck him.

It's exactly like falling from favour at Court, he reflected.

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He determined to spend a short while studying the people who presumed to crush him with their disdain.

M. de Luz had an uncle with an important post in the king's
entourage, on the strength of which this handsome officer slipped the
following amusing particular into the beginning of his conversation
with every interlocutor who came up to him: his uncle had set off at
seven o'clock for Saint-Cloud
^*
and was banking on spending the night there. This detail was brought
in with every sign of straightforwardness, but it never failed to
appear.

As he observed M. de
Croisenois with the severe eye of misfortune, Julien noticed the
excessive influence which this amiable and kindly young man imputed to
occult causes--to the point where he was saddened and annoyed if he
found an event of any importance being ascribed to a simple, quite
natural cause. There's a streak of madness in this, Julien said to
himself. His character is strikingly like the Emperor Alexander's, as
described to me by Prince Korasov. During his first year in Paris,
when he was just out of the seminary, Julien was dazzled by the
graceful accomplishments of all these amiable young men: they were so
new to him, all he could do was admire them. Their true character was
only just beginning to emerge to his gaze.

I'm playing an unworthy role here, he suddenly thought. It was a
matter of getting up from his little wicker chair in a way that would
not be too inept. He tried to improvise, but this meant asking
something new of an imagination that was too preoccupied elsewhere. He
had to resort to memory, and his was ill-endowed, it must be
admitted, with resources of this kind: the poor fellow was still
pretty lacking in social graces, and consequently displayed an
exemplary ineptitude which everyone noticed when he rose to leave the
drawing-room. Wretchedness was only too apparent in his whole manner.
For the past three-quarters of an hour he had been playing the part
of an unwelcome subordinate from whom no one takes the trouble of
concealing what they think of him.

The critical observations he had just made on his rivals prevented
him, however, from taking his misfortune too tragically; he did have,
to bolster his pride, the memory of

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