The Red and the Black (32 page)

“Do you know the Comte Altamira?” she said to M. de Croisenois.

Her thoughts seemed to have been so far away, and this question had so little connection with all that the poor marquis had been saying for the last five minutes, that his good temper was ruffled. He was nevertheless a man of wit and celebrated for being so.

“Mathilde is eccentric,” he thought, “that's a nuisance, but she will give her husband such a fine social position. I don't know how the Marquis de la Mole manages. He is connected with all that is best in all parties. He is a man who is bound to come out on top. And, besides, this eccentricity of Mathilde's may pass for genius. Genius, when allied with good birth and a large fortune, so far from being ridiculous, is highly distinguished. She has wit; moreover, when she wants to, that mixture in fact of brains, character, and ready wit which constitute perfection.”

As it is difficult to do two things at the same time, the marquis answered Mathilde with a vacant expression as though he were reciting a lesson.

“Who does not know that poor Altamira?” and he told her the history of his conspiracy, abortive, ridiculous and absurd.

“Very absurd,” said Mathilde as if she were talking to herself, “but he has done something. I want to see the man; bring him to me,” she said to the scandalized marquis.

Comte Altamira was one of the most avowed admirers of Mademoiselle de la Mole's haughty and impertinent manner. In his opinion she was one of the most beautiful persons in Paris.

“How fine she would be on a throne,” he said to M. de Croisenois; and made no demur at being taken up to Mathilde.

There are a good number of people in society who would like to establish the fact that nothing is in such bad form as a conspiracy in the nineteenth century; it smacks of Jacobinism. And what could be more sordid than unsuccessful Jacobinism?

Mathilde's expression made fun a little of Altamira and M. de Croisenois, but she listened to him with pleasure.

“A conspirator at a ball, what a pretty contrast,” she thought. She thought that this man with his black moustache looked like a lion at rest, but she soon perceived that his mind had only one point of view: utility, admiration for utility.

The young comte thought nothing worthy his attention except what tended to give his country two-chamber government. He left Mathilde, who was the prettiest person at the ball, with alacrity, because he saw a Peruvian general come in. Despairing of Europe such as M. de Metternich had arranged it, poor Altamira had been reduced to thinking that when the states of South America had become strong and powerful they could restore to Europe the liberty which Mirabeau had given it.

A crowd of moustachioed young men had approached Mathilde. She realised that Altamira had not felt allured, and was piqued by his departure. She saw his black eye gleam as he talked to the Peruvian general. Mademoiselle de la Mole looked at the young Frenchmen with that profound seriousness which none of her arrivals could imitate. “Which of them,” she thought, “could get himself condemned to death, even supposing he had a favourable opportunity?”

This singular look flattered those who were not very intelligent, but disconcerted the others. They feared the discharge of some stinging epigram that would be difficult to answer.

“Good birth vouchsafes a hundred qualities whose absence would offend me. I see as much in the case of Julien,” thought Mathilde, “but it withers up those qualities of soul which make a man get condemned to death.”

At that moment someone was saying near her: “Comte Altamira is the second son of the Prince of San Nazaro-Pimentel; it was a Pimentel who tried to save Conradin, beheaded in 1268. It is one of the noblest families in Naples.”

“So,” said Mathilde to herself, “what a pretty proof this is of my maxim, that good birth deprives a man of that force of character in default of which a man does not get condemned to death. I seem doomed to reason falsely to-night. Since I am only a woman like any other, well I must dance.” She yielded to the solicitations of M. de Croisenois who had been asking for a gallop for the last hour. To distract herself from her failure in philosophy, Mathilde made a point of being perfectly fascinating. M. de Croisenois was enchanted. But neither the dance nor her wish to please one of the handsomest men at court, nor anything at all, succeeded in distracting Mathilde. She could not possibly have been more of a success. She was the queen of the ball. She coldly appreciated the fact.

“What a blank life I shall pass with a person like Croisenois,” she said to herself as he took her back to her place an hour afterwards. “What pleasure do I get,” she added sadly, “if after an absence of six months I find myself at a ball which all the women of Paris were mad with jealousy to go to? And what is more, I am surrounded by the homage of an ideally constituted circle of society. The only bourgeois are some peers and perhaps one or two Juliens. And yet,” she added with increasing sadness, “what advantages has not fate bestowed upon me! Distinction, fortune, youth, everything except happiness. My most dubious advantages are the very ones they have been speaking to me about all the evening. Wit, I believe I have, because I obviously frighten everyone. If they venture to tackle a serious subject, they will arrive after five minutes of conversation, and as though they had made a great discovery, at a conclusion which we have been repeating to them for the last hour. I am beautiful, I have that advantage for which Madame de Stael would have sacrificed everything, and yet I'm dying of boredom. Shall I have reason to be less bored when I have changed my name for that of the Marquis de Croisenois?

“My God though,” she added, while she almost felt as if she would like to cry, “isn't he really quite perfect? He's a paragon of the education of the age; you can't look at him without his finding something charming and even witty to say to you; he is brave. But that Sorel is strange,” she said to herself, and the expression of her eyes changed from melancholy to anger. “I told him that I had something to say to him and he hasn't deigned to reappear.”

“You are in a bad temper,” said the Marquise de la Mole to her; “let me caution you, it is ungracious at a ball.”

“I only have a headache,” answered Mathilde disdainfully, “it is too hot here.”

At this moment the old Baron Tolly became ill and fell down, as though to justify Mademoiselle de la Mole's remark. They were obliged to carry him away. They talked about apoplexy. It was a disagreeable incident.

Mathilde did not bother much about it.

She made a point of never looking at old men, or at anyone who had the reputation of being bad company.

She danced in order to escape the conversation about the apoplexy, which was not apoplexy inasmuch as the baron put in an appearance the following day.

“But Sorel does not come,” she said to herself after she had danced. She was almost looking round for him when she found him in another salon. Astonishing, but he seemed to have lost that impassive coldness that was so natural to him; he no longer looked English.

“He is talking to Comte Altamira who was sentenced to death,” said Mathilde to herself. “His eye is full of a sombre fire; he looks like a prince in disguise; his haughtiness has become twice as pronounced.”

Julien came back to where she was, still talking to Altamira. She looked at Altamira fixedly, studying his features in order to trace those lofty qualities which can earn a man the honour of being condemned to death.

“Yes,” he was saying to Comte Altamira as he passed by her, “Danton was a real man.”

“Heavens, can he be a Danton?” said Mathilde to herself, “but he has so noble a face, and that Danton was so horribly ugly, a butcher I believe.” Julien was still fairly near her. She did not hesitate to call him; she had the consciousness and the pride of putting a question that was unusual for a young girl.

“Was not Danton a butcher?” she said to him.

“Yes, in the eyes of certain persons,” Julien answered her with the most thinly disguised expression of contempt. His eyes were still ardent from his conversation with Altamira, “but unfortunately for the people of good birth he was an advocate at Méry-sur-Seine, that is to say, Mademoiselle,” he added maliciously, “he began like many peers whom I see here. It was true that Danton laboured under a great disadvantage in the eyes of beauty; he was ugly.”

These last few words were spoken rapidly in an extraordinary and, indeed, very discourteous manner.

Julien waited for a moment, leaning slightly forward and with an air of proud humility. He seemed to be saying, “I am paid to answer you and I live on my pay.” He did not deign to look up at Mathilde. She looked like his slave with her fine eyes open abnormally wide and fixed on him. Finally as the silence continued he looked at her, like a valet looking at his master to receive orders. Although his eyes met the full gaze of Mathilde which were fixed on him all the time with a strange expression, he went away with a marked eagerness.

“To think of a man who is as handsome as he is,” said Mathilde to herself as she emerged from her reverie, “praising ugliness in such a way, he is not like Caylus or Croisenois. This Sorel has something like my father's look when he goes to a fancy dress ball as Napoleon.” She had completely forgotten Danton. “Yes, I am decidedly bored to-night.” She took her brother's arm and to his great disgust made him take her round the ball-room. The idea occurred to her of following the conversation between Julien and the man who had been condemned to death.

The crowd was enormous. She managed to find them, however, at the moment when two yards in front of her, Altamira was going near a dumb-waiter to take an ice. He was talking to Julien with his body half turned round. He saw an arm in an embroidered coat which was taking an ice close by. The embroidery seemed to attract his attention. He turned round to look at the person to whom the arm belonged. His noble and yet simple eyes immediately assumed a slightly disdainful expression.

“You see that man,” he said to Julien in a low voice; “that is the Prince of Araceli, ambassador of——. He asked M. de Nerval, your Minister for Foreign Affairs, for my extradition this morning. See, there he is over there playing whist. Monsieur de Nerval is willing enough to give me up, for we gave up two or three conspirators to you in 1816. If I am given up to my King, I shall be hanged in twenty-four hours. It will be one of those handsome moustachioed gentlemen who will arrest me.”

“The wretches!” exclaimed Julien half aloud.

Mathilde did not lose a syllable of their conversation. Her ennui had vanished.

“They are not scoundrels,” replied Count Altamira. “I talk to you about myself in order to give you a vivid impression. Look at the Prince of Araceli. He casts his eyes on his golden fleece every five minutes; he cannot get over the pleasure of seeing that decoration on his breast. In reality the poor man is really an anachronism. The fleece was a signal honour a hundred years ago, but he would have been nowhere near it in those days. But nowadays, so far as people of birth are concerned, you have to be an Araceli to be delighted with it. He had a whole town hanged in order to get it.”

“Is that the price he had to pay?” said Julien anxiously.

“Not exactly,” answered Altamira coldly, “he probably had about thirty rich landed proprietors in his district, who had the reputation of being Liberals, thrown into the river.”

“What a monster!” pursued Julien.

Mademoiselle de la Mole, who was leaning her head forward with keenest interest, was so near him that her beautiful hair almost touched his shoulder.

“You are very young,” answered Altamira. “I was telling you that I had a married sister in Provence. She is still pretty, good and gentle; she is an excellent mother, performs all her duties faithfully, is pious but not a bigot.”

“What is he driving at?” thought Mademoiselle de la Mole.

“She is happy,” continued the Comte Altamira; “she was so in 1815. I was then in hiding at her house on her estate near d'Antibos. Well the moment she learnt of Marshall Ney's execution she began to dance.”

“Is it possible?” said Julien, thunderstruck.

“It's party spirit,” replied Altamira. “There are no longer any real passions in the nineteenth century: that's why one is so bored in France. People commit acts of the greatest cruelty, but without any feeling of cruelty.”

“So much the worse,” said Julien; “when one does commit a crime one ought at least to take pleasure in committing it; that's the only good thing they have about them and that's the only way in which they have the slightest justification.”

Mademoiselle de la Mole had entirely forgotten what she owed to herself and placed herself completely between Altamira and Julien. Her brother, who was giving her his arm, and was accustomed to obey her, was looking at another part of the room, and in order to keep himself in countenance, was pretending to be stopped by the crowd.

“You are right,” Altamira went on, “one takes pleasure in nothing one does, and one does not remember it; this applies even to crimes. I can show you perhaps ten men in this ballroom who have been convicted of murder. They have forgotten all about it and everybody else as well.

“Many are moved to the point of tears if their dog breaks a paw. When you throw flowers on their grave at Père-la-Chaise, as you say so humorously in Paris, we learn they united all the virtues of the knights of chivalry, and we speak about the noble feats of their great-grandfather who lived in the reign of Henri IV. If, in spite of the good offices of the Prince de Araceli, I escape hanging and I ever manage to enjoy the use of my money in Paris, I will get you to dine with eight or ten of these respected and callous murderers.

“At that dinner you and I will be the only ones whose blood is pure, but I shall be despised and almost hated as a monster, while you will be simply despised as a man of the people who has pushed his way into good society.”

“Nothing could be truer,” said Mademoiselle de la Mole.

Altamira looked at her in astonishment; but Julien did not deign to look at her.

“Observe that the revolution, at whose head I found myself,” continued the Comte Altamira, “only failed for the one reason that I would not cut off three heads and distribute among our partisans seven or eight millions which happened to be in a box of which I happened to have the key. My King, who is burning to have me hanged to-day, and who called me by my Christian name before the rebellion, would have given me the great ribbon of his order if I had had those three heads cut off and had had the money in those boxes distributed; for I should have had at least a semi-success and my country would have had a charta like——So wags the world; it's a game of chess.”

“At that time,” answered Julien with a fiery eye, “you did not know the game; now . . .”

“You mean I would have the heads cut off, and I would not be a Girondin, as you said I was the other day? I will give you your answer,” said Altamira sadly, “when you have killed a man in a duel—a far less ugly matter than having him put to death by an executioner.”

“Upon my word,” said Julien, “the end justifies the means. If instead of being an insignificant man I had some power, I would have three men hanged in order to save four men's lives.”

His eyes expressed the fire of his own conscience; they met the eyes of Mademoiselle de la Mole who was close by him, and their contempt, so far from changing into politeness, seemed to redouble.

She was deeply shocked; but she found herself unable to forget Julien; she dragged her brother away and went off in a temper.

“I must take some punch and dance a lot,” she said to herself. “I will pick out the best partner and cut some figure at any price. Good, there is that celebrated cynic, the Comte de Fervaques.” She accepted his invitation; they danced. “The question is,” she thought, “which of us two will be the more impertinent, but in order to make absolute fun of him, I must get him to talk.” Soon all the other members of the quadrille were dancing as a matter of formality; they did not want to lose any of Mathilde's cutting repartee. M. de Fervaques felt uneasy and as he could only find elegant expressions instead of ideas, began to scowl. Mathilde, who was in a bad temper, was cruel, and made an enemy of him. She danced till daylight and then went home terribly tired. But when she was in the carriage the little vitality she had left was still employed in making her sad and unhappy. She had been despised by Julien and could not despise him.

Julien was at the zenith of his happiness. He was enchanted without his knowing it by the music, the flowers, the pretty women, the general elegance, and above all by his own imagination, which dreamt of distinctions for himself and of liberty for all.

“What a fine ball,” he said to the comte. “Nothing is lacking.”

“Thought is lacking,” answered Altamira, and his face betrayed that contempt which is only more deadly from the very fact that a manifest effort is being made to hide it as a matter of politeness.

“You are right, monsieur the comte, there isn't any thought at all, let alone enough to make a conspiracy.”

“I am here because of my name, but thought is hated in your salons. Thought must not soar above the level of the point of a Vaudeville couplet; it is then rewarded. But as for your man who thinks, if he shows energy and originality we call him a cynic. Was not that name given by one of your judges to Courier? You put him in prison as well as Bérenger. The priestly congregation hands over to the police everyone who is worth anything amongst you individually; and good society applauds.

“The fact is, your effete society prizes conventionalism above everything else. You will never get beyond military bravery. You will have Murats, never Washingtons. I can see nothing in France except vanity. A man who goes on speaking on the spur of the moment may easily come to make an imprudent witticism and the master of the house thinks himself insulted.”

As he was saying this, the carriage in which the comte was seeing Julien home stopped before the Hôtel de la Mole. Julien was in love with his conspirator. Altamira had paid him this great compliment which was evidently the expression of a sound conviction. “You have not got the French flippancy and you understand the principle of utility.” It happened that Julien had seen the day before Marino Faliero, a tragedy, by Casmir Delavigne.

“Has not Israel Bertuccio got more character than all those noble Venetians?” said our rebellious plebeian to himself, “and yet those are the people whose nobility goes back to the year seven hundred, a century before Charlemagne, while the cream of the nobility at M. de Retz's ball to-night only goes back, and that rather lamely, to the thirteenth century. Well, in spite of all the noble Venetians whose birth makes them so great, it is Israel Bertuccio whom one remembers.

“A conspiracy annihilates all titles conferred by social caprice. There, a man takes for his crest the rank that is given him by the way in which he faces death. The intellect itself loses some of its power.

“What would Danton have been to-day in this age of the Valenods and the Rênals? Not even a deputy for the Public Prosecutor.

“What am I saying? He would have sold himself to the priests, he would have been a minister, for after all, the great Danton did steal. Mirabeau also sold himself. Napoleon stole millions in Italy, otherwise he would have been stopped short in his career by poverty like Pichegru. Only La Fayette refrained from stealing. Ought one to steal? Ought one to sell oneself?” thought Julien. This question pulled him up short. He passed the rest of the night in reading the history of the revolution.

When he wrote his letters in the library the following day, his mind was still concentrated on his conversation with Count Altamira.