The Red and the Black (63 page)

contrary, it's what tried in vain to please you that is inferior. So
you must understand, old fellow, how serious it is to confuse the
two.'

Julien flung a crown to the peasant who was listening to them open-mouthed.

'Good,' said the prince, 'there's graciousness, and a noble disdain!
Very good!' And he set his horse at a gallop. Julien followed him,
filled with dumb admiration.

Ah! if
I'd been like that, she wouldn't have preferred Croisenois to me! The
more his reason was shocked at the prince's ridiculous ways, the more
he despised himself for not admiring them, and considered himself
unfortunate in not having them. Self-loathing cannot be carried to
greater extremes.

Finding him
decidedly miserable, the prince said, when they got back to Strasburg:
'Come now! old fellow, have you lost all your money, or might you be
in love with some little actress?'

Russians copy French customs, but always fifty years behind the times. They've now reached the century of Louis XV.

This joking about love brought tears to Julien's eyes: Why shouldn't I
consult an amiable man like this? he asked himself all of a sudden.

'Well yes, actually, old fellow,' he said to the prince, 'here I am
in Strasburg, as you see, very much in love, and even jilted. A
delightful woman who lives in a nearby town called it off after three
days of passion, and the reversal is killing me.'

He gave the prince a full account of Mathilde's behaviour and character, disguising the identities of the people involved.

'Don't go on to the end,' said Korasov: 'to give you confidence in
your doctor, I shall finish off the confession. This young woman's
husband is exceedingly wealthy, or rather she belongs to the
highest-ranking nobility in the region. She must have something to be
so proud about.'

Julien nodded, he was in no state to say any more.

'Very good,' said the prince, 'here are three rather bitter pills for you to swallow forthwith:

'1. Call daily on Madame..., what's her name?'

'M
^me
de Dubois.'

'What a name!' said the prince, bursting out laughing; 'I'm

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so sorry, to you it's sublime. You must see M
^me
de Dubois every day; whatever you do, don't look cold and
ill-humoured in her presence; remember the great principle of your
century: be the opposite of what people expect. Behave exactly as you
did a week before being honoured with her favours.'

'Ah! I didn't have anything to worry about then,' Julien exclaimed in despair, 'I thought I was taking pity on her...'

'Moths get burnt on candles,' the prince went on, 'it's a saying as old as the hills.

'1. You will see her every day;

'2. You will pay court to a woman of her acquaintance, but without
putting on any outward signs of passion, d'you understand? I won't
conceal from you that your role is a difficult one; you're acting a
part, and if there's any suspicion of this, all is lost for you.'

'She's so intelligent, and I'm not! All is lost for me,' said Julien sadly.

'No, it's just that you're more in love than I thought. M
^me
de Dubois is deeply wrapped up in herself, like all women to whom
heaven has given either too much nobility or too much money. She looks
at herself instead of looking at you, and so she doesn't know you.
During the two or three fits of passion for you that she induced in
herself, by a great effort of the imagination, she was seeing in you
the hero she had dreamed of, not what you really are...

'But the devil take it! this is elementary stuff, my dear Sorel, are you a total schoolboy...?

"Pon my word! let's go into this shop; look at that charming black
collar: anyone would think it was designed by John Anderson of
Burlington Street; do me the pleasure of taking it, and throwing out
for good that sordid bit of black rope you have round your neck.

'Well now,' the prince went on as they stepped out of the finest
haberdasher's shop in Strasburg, 'what sort of company does M
^me
de Dubois keep? For Christ's sake! What a name! Don't get angry, my
dear Sorel, I can't help it... Who shall you make advances to?'

'A prude to end all prudes, the daughter of an immensely rich hosier. She has the loveliest eyes in the world, and I find

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them infinitely charming; she is surely one of the highestranking women
in the region; but in the midst of all her grandeur, she blushes so
much that she quite goes to pieces if anyone happens to mention
business or shops. And unfortunately, her father was one of the
best-known merchants in Strasburg.'

'And so if the subject of
trade
comes up,' the prince said, laughing, 'you can be sure that your fair
lady is thinking of herself and not of you. This weak spot of hers is
sheer heaven, and exceedingly useful; it will prevent you from having
the slightest moment of folly in the presence of her lovely eyes.
Success is assured.'

Julien was thinking of M
^me
de Fervaques, the marshal's widow, who was a frequent visitor at the
Hôtel de La Mole. She was a beautiful foreigner who had married the
marshal a year before he died. Her whole life seemed entirely geared
towards getting people to forget that her father was in
trade
; and, to have something going for her in Paris, she had put herself at the head of the cohorts of virtue.

Julien had a sincere admiration for the prince; he would have given
anything to have his foibles! The conversation between the two friends
was endless; Korasov was delighted: never had a Frenchman listened to
him for so long. So I've at last reached the point, said the prince
to himself delightedly, where I'm listened to when I teach my masters a
lesson!

'We're quite clear about
this, aren't we?' he repeated to Julien for the tenth time, 'not the
slightest hint of passion when you talk to the young beauty--the
daughter of the Strasburg hosier--in M
^me
de Dubois's
presence. On the other hand, there must be burning passion when you
write. Reading a well-written love letter is the ultimate pleasure for
a prude; it's a moment when she can be off her guard. She's not
acting a part, she can dare to listen to her heart; so two letters a
day.'

'Never, never!' said Julien
despondently; 'I'd rather be pounded in a mortar than compose three
fine phrases; I'm a corpse, dear fellow, don't hope for anything more
from me. Let me die by the roadside.'

'Who's talking about composing fine phrases? In my writingcase I have six volumes of hand-written love letters. There are

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some for every possible kind of feminine character; I've got some for
high virtue. Didn't Kalisky go wooing the prettiest Quaker lady in
all England on Richmond Hill--you know, three leagues outside London?'

Julien was less miserable when he took leave of his friend at two o'clock in the morning.

The next day the prince sent for a clerk, and two days later Julien
received fifty-three carefully numbered love letters, designed for the
most sublime and dreary virtue.

'There aren't fifty-four of them', said the prince, 'because Kalisky
got shown the door; but what does it matter to you to be harshly
treated by the hosier's daughter, since all you want is to produce an
effect on M
^me
de Dubois's heart?'

They went riding every day: the prince was mad about Julien. Not
knowing what proof to give him of his sudden friendship, he eventually
offered him the hand of one of his cousins, a rich heiress in Moscow;
'and once you're married,' he added, 'my influence and the cross
you're wearing will make you a colonel in two years' time.'

'But this cross wasn't awarded by Napoleon, quite the opposite.'

'Who cares?' said the prince, 'He invented it, didn't he? It's still far and away the most distinguished in Europe.'

Julien was on the verge of accepting; but his duty summoned him back
to the important dignitary; when he took leave of Korasov, he promised
to write. He was given the answer to the secret memorandum he had
brought, and he sped off in the direction of Paris; but no sooner had
he been on his own for two days on end than the idea of leaving France
and Mathilde struck him as torture worse than death. I won't marry
the millions that Korasov is offering me, but I will take his advice.

After all, the art of seduction is his business; he's been thinking
of nothing else for over fifteen years, for he's now thirty. No one
could say he lacks wits; he's subtle and cunning; enthusiasm and
poetry are out of the question in a character like his; he acts for
other people; all the more reason for him to be right.

It's essential, I shall pay court to M
^me
de Fervaques.

She may well bore me a little, but I'll gaze at those lovely

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eyes of hers, which are so like the ones which loved me most in the whole world.

She's a foreigner; it'll be a new character to observe.

I'm mad, I'm going under, I must follow a friend's advice and not trust in myself.

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But if I sample this pleasure with so much prudence and circumspection, it won't be a pleasure for me any more.

LOPE DE VEGA
^*

As soon as he was back in Paris, and had stepped out of M .de La
Mole's study, leaving him most put out by the despatches in front of
him, our hero hurried off to see Count Altamira. To add to the
distinction of being sentenced to death, this handsome foreigner could
also boast a high degree of gravity and the good fortune of being
religious; these two qualities, and most importantly, the count's high
birth, were entirely to the liking of M
^me
de Fervaques, who saw a good deal of him.

Julien confessed gravely to him that he was deeply in love with her.

'There you have the purest and the highest virtue,' Altamira replied,
'just a trifle jesuitical and bombastic. There are days when I
understand each individual word she uses, but I don't understand the
whole sentence. She often makes me feel I don't understand French as
well as I'm said to. This is an acquaintance which will put your name
on people's lips; it will make you count in society. But let's go and
see Bustos,' said Count Altamira, who was a systematic thinker, 'he
has courted the marshal's widow.'

Don Diego Bustos
^*
wanted the matter explained to him at length, and listened without a
word, like a barrister in chambers. He had the chubby face of a monk,
with a black moustache, and an air of incomparable gravity; apart
from that, he was every inch the good
carbonaro
^*
.

'I understand,' he said to Julien at last. 'Has the Maréchale de
Fervaques had any lovers or hasn't she? Do you therefore have any hope
of success? That's the question. This is to admit that for my part, I
got nowhere. Now that it no longer rankles, I reason things out like
this: she's often ill-tempered, and as I shall explain in a minute,
she's really quite vindictive.

-413-

'I don't detect in her the bilious temperament of genius, which puts
something like a veneer of passion over every action. On the contrary,
it's the phlegmatic and calm manner characteristic of the Dutch which
gives her such rare beauty and fresh colouring.'

Julien was growing impatient with the Spaniard's longwindedness and
imperturbable phlegm; from time to time, in spite of himself, he let
slip one or two monosyllables.

'Do you mind hearing me out?' Don Diego Bustos said to him gravely.

'Do forgive my
furia francese
,
^*
I'm all ears,' said Julien.

'As I was saying, the maréchale is very prone to hatred; she is
merciless in her pursuit of people she has never seen, lawyers,
wretched men of letters who have composed songs like Collé,
^*
you know?

'Tis my caprice To love Bernice, etc.
^*

And Julien had to listen to him reeling off the whole thing. The Spaniard was very glad of a chance to sing in French.

This divine song was never listened to with more impatience. When it
was over: 'The marshal's widow', said Don Diego Bustos, 'had the
author of this song sacked:

'One day the lover at the inn...'

Julien shuddered lest he should decide to sing it, but he was content
with analysing it. It genuinely was sacrilegious and quite improper.

'When M
^me
de Fervaques took against this song,'
^*
said Don Diego, 'I pointed out to her that a woman of her rank
shouldn't read all the silly rubbish that gets published. Whatever the
advances in piety and gravity, there will always be a good
collection of drinking songs in France. When M
^me
de Fervaques
had had the author, a poor devil on half pay, sacked from a position
worth eighteen hundred francs, "Watch out," I said to her, "you've
attacked this versemonger with your weapons; he may answer back with
his verse: he'll write a song about virtue. The gilded salons will be
on your side; people who enjoy a laugh will repeat his epigrams." Do
you know,

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sir, what the
maréchale
replied to me? "In the cause of the Lord the whole of Paris would see
me march to martyrdom; it would be a new spectacle in France. The
common people would learn to respect quality. It would be the most
glorious day in my life." Never had her eyes looked more glorious.'

'Aren't they magnificent!' Julien exclaimed.

'I see you're in love... So', Don Diego Bustos went on gravely, 'she
doesn't have the bilious constitution which drives people to revenge.
If she nevertheless enjoys causing harm, it's because she's unhappy; I
suspect some
inner unhappiness
there. Might she not be a prude grown weary of her profession?

The Spaniard looked at him in silence for a full minute.

'That's the real question,' he added gravely, 'and that's where you
can draw some hope. I thought a lot about it throughout the two years
when I made myself her most humble servant. Your whole future--you,
sir, who are in love--hangs on this great uncertainty: Is she a prude
grown weary of her profession, and spiteful because she's unhappy?'

'Or alternatively,' said Altamira, emerging at last from his deep
silence, 'is it something I've suggested to you over and over again?
Quite simply French vanity; it's the memory of her father, the famous
draper, which is causing such misery to this naturally morose and arid
character. I suppose there's only one way for her to be happy; to
live in Toledo, and be tormented by a confessor who conjures up daily
visions of hell gaping open.'

As
Julien was leaving: ' Altamira tells me you're one of us,' said Don
Diego, more grave than ever. 'One day you'll help us win back our
freedom, so I'm ready to help you with this little distraction. You
need to know M
^me
de Fervaques's style; here are four letters in her hand.'

'I shall copy them out,' said Julien, 'and bring them back to you.'

'And no one shall ever learn through you a single word of what we have said?'

'Never, upon my honour!' Julien exclaimed.

'Then may God help you!' the Spaniard added; and he accompanied Altamira and Julien in silence right out on to the stairs.

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