The Red and the Black (51 page)

the greatest ventures. What would I not do with a valiant king like
Louis XIII sighing at my feet! I'd lead him into the Vendée,
^*
as the Baron de Tolly is always saying, and from there he'd recapture his kingdom; and then no more Charter
^*
... and Julien would help me. What's he lacking? A name and a
fortune. He'd make a name for himself, and he'd acquire a fortune.

Croisenois lacks nothing; and he'll never be more than a half-Ultra,
half-liberal duke all his life, an indecisive creature always keeping
away from extremes, and
consequently in second place everywhere.

What great action isn't
an extreme
at the moment when it is undertaken? Only when it is accomplished
does it seems possible to ordinary mortals. Yes, it's love with all
its miracles that's going to reign in my heart; I can feel it from the
fire burning within me. Heaven owed me this favour. It won't have
heaped all these advantages on a single individual in vain. My
happiness will be worthy of me. Each one of my days will cease to be a
cold replica of the one before. There's already proof of greatness
and daring in being bold enough to love a man so far removed from me
on the social scale. We shall see: will he continue to be worthy of
me? At the first sign of weakness I see in him, I shall abandon him. A
girl of my birth, with the chivalrous character too that people are
good enough to credit me with (this was one of her father's
expressions), must not behave like a silly fool.

Isn't that precisely the role I'd be playing if I loved the Marquis
de Croisenois? I'd have a new edition of my cousins' happiness, which I
despise so utterly. I know in advance everything the poor marquis
would say to me, and everything I'd have to reply to him. What sort of
a love is it that makes you yawn? Might as well go in for religion.
I'd have a celebration to mark the signing of the contract, just like
my youngest cousin had, with the grandparents getting all
sentimental--that is, if they weren't miffed because of a last-minute
condition that had been slipped into the contract the day before by
the other party's solicitor.

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The need to be on edge:
such was the character of the fair Marguerite de Valois, my aunt who
soon married the King of Navarre, whom we now see reigning in France
under the name of Henri IV. Her need to gamble was the key to this
amiable princess's character; whence her quarrels and her
reconciliations, starting with her brothers from the age of sixteen.
Now what does a young lady have to gamble with? Her most precious
possession: her reputation, the basis of esteem for the rest of her
life.

Memoirs of the
DUC D'ANGOULÉME
^*

natural son of Charles IX

JULIEN and I have no signed contract between us, no solicitor,
everything is heroic, everything will be born of chance. Apart from
noble birth, which he lacks, this is Marguerite de Valois's love for
young La Mole, the most distinguished man of his time. Is it my fault
if the young men at Court are such staunch followers of
the conventional,
and turn pale at the mere idea of any adventure in the least bit out of the ordinary? A little trip to Greece or Africa
^*
is the height of daring for them, and even then they only know how to
march with their troops. As soon as they find themselves alone
they're afraid, not of Bedouin spears but of ridicule, and this fear
drives them mad.

My little Julien, on
the other hand, only likes acting on his own. Never the slightest
thought, in this privileged creature, of turning to others for support
and help! He despises others, and that's why I don't despise him.

If, for all his poverty, Julien was noble, my love would merely be
vulgar folly, a boring misalliance; I'd want none of it; it wouldn't
have what characterizes grand passions: the vastness of the difficulty
to be overcome and the black uncertainty of the outcome.

M
^lle
de La Mole was so preoccupied with these fine arguments that the next day, without realizing it, she praised Julien

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to the Marquis de Croisenois and her brother. Her eloquence went so far that it rankled with them.

'Watch out for that young man, who has so much energy,' exclaimed her
brother. 'If the revolution starts up again, he'll have us all
guillotined.'

She was careful not to
reply, and hastened to tease her brother and the Marquis de Croisenois
for their fear of energy--nothing more, basically, than fear of
facing the unexpected, or terror of being caught short by the
unexpected...

'Every time, gentlemen, every time it's fear of ridicule, the monster which unfortunately died in 1816.'
^*

'Ridicule no longer exists', M. de La Mole used to say, 'in a country with two political parties.'

His daughter had taken the point.

'So you see, gentlemen,' she said to Julien's enemies, 'you'll have
been thoroughly frightened all your lives, and at the end you'll be
told:

It was not a wolf, it was only its shadow.'
^*

Mathilde soon left them. Her brother's words appalled her; they
worried her considerably; but by the next day she took them as the
finest form of praise.

In this
century, when all energy is dead, his energy frightens them. I'll
repeat my brother's words to him; I want to see what his answer is.
But I'll choose one of those moments when his eyes are shining. He
can't lie to me then.

He'd be a
Danton! she went on after her mind had rambled confusedly for a long
time. Well then! the Revolution would have started up again. What
roles would Croisenois and my brother be playing in that case? It's
laid down in advance: sublime resignation. They'd be heroic lambs,
letting their throats be cut without a word. Their only fear as they
died would be yet again of being in bad taste. My little Julien would
blow out the brains of any Jacobin who came to arrest him, if he had
the slightest hope of getting away.
He's
not afraid of being in bad taste, not he.

This last thought made her pensive; it reawakened painful memories, and took away all her boldness. This thought

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reminded her of all the quips made by Messrs de Caylus, de
Croisenois, de Luz and her brother. These gentlemen were unanimous in
holding against Julien his ecclesiastical air: humble and
hypocritical.

But, she resumed
suddenly, with a gleam of joy in her eye, the bitterness and the
frequency of their jokes prove, in spite of them, that he's the most
distinguished man we've seen this winter. What do his faults, his
ridiculous sides matter? He has greatness about him, and they are
shocked by it, for all their kindness and indulgence. It's undoubtedly
true that he's poor, and that he has studied to become a priest;
while they are squadron commanders, and didn't need to pursue any
studies; much easier for them.

In
spite of all the disadvantages of his eternal black suit, and that
ecclesiastical expression of his, which he actually has to have, poor
boy, to avoid starving to death, his talent frightens them, nothing
could be plainer. And the ecclesiastical expression vanishes as soon
as we're alone together for a few moments. And when these gentlemen
say something they think is subtle and unexpected, isn't their first
glance directed at Julien? I've noticed that quite clearly. And yet
they know full well that he never speaks to them unless questioned.
I'm the only one he talks to unsolicited, he thinks I have a lofty
mind. He only replies to their objections just enough to be polite. He
lapses into deference right away. With me, he goes on discussing
things for hours, he isn't sure of his ideas as long as I put forward
the slightest objection to them. Anyway, all this winter no one has
drawn pistols; all that's happened is a bit of verbal
attention-seeking. Well, my father, who's a superior being, and will
do great things for the fortunes of our house--my father respects
Julien. The rest of them hate him, nobody despises him apart from my
mother's pious women friends.

The
Comte de Caylus had or pretended to have a great passion for horses;
he spent his life in his stable, and often had lunch there. This great
passion, coupled with his habit of never laughing, made him greatly
respected among his friends: he was the eagle of their little circle.

As soon as they had gathered the next day behind M
^me
de La

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Mole's sofa, without Julien there, M. de Caylus, backed by Croisenois
and Norbert, roundly attacked Mathilde's good opinion of Julien, and
this quite out of the blue, almost as soon as he saw M
^lle
de La Mole. She grasped this piece of subtlety from a mile off, and was charmed by it.

There they all are in league, she said to herself, against a man of
genius who hasn't so much as ten louis in income, and can only answer
them when he's questioned. They're afraid of him garbed in his black
suit. What would it be like with epaulettes?

She had never been more brilliant. Right from the first skirmishes,
she poured jocular sarcasm on Caylus and his allies. When the fire of
these brilliant officers' jokes had died down:

'If tomorrow some country squire from the Franche-Comté mountains',
she said to M. de Caylus, 'realizes that Julien is his natural son and
gives him a name and a few thousand francs, in six weeks he'll have
moustaches like you, gentlemen; in six months he'll be an officer in
the Hussars like you, gentlemen. And then the greatness of his
character won't be an object of ridicule any more. I see you reduced,
your grace the future duke, to the old, bad argument that the Court
nobility is superior to the nobility of the provinces. But what will
you be left with, if I decide to push you to the limits, if I'm
mischievous enough to give Julien a Spanish duke for a father, a
prisoner of war in Besançon in Napoleon's day, who has prickings of
conscience and recognizes him on his deathbed?'

All these suppositions about an illegitimate birth were felt to be in
rather poor taste by Messrs de Caylus and de Croisenois. That was all
they saw in Mathilde's line of reasoning.

However much Norbert was under her thumb, his sister's words were so
clear that he put on a grave expression which, it must be admitted,
ill suited his kind, smiling face. He plucked up the courage to say
one or two words.

'Are you ill, my
dear?' Mathilde answered with a serious little expression on her face.
'You must be feeling pretty bad to counter my joking with moralizing.

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'Moralizing, you of all people! Are you canvassing for a job as prefect?'

Mathilde soon forgot the Comte de Caylus's look of annoyance, Norbert's
bad temper and M. de Croisenois's silent despair. She had to make up
her mind about a dreadful hypothesis which had just begun to obsess
her.

Julien is pretty sincere with
me, she said to herself; at his age, someone so low on fortune's
ladder who suffers as he does through his astonishing ambition needs a
woman for a friend. Maybe I am that friend; but I don't detect any
love in him. With his boldness of character he would have spoken to me
of his love.

This uncertainty,
this debate with herself, which from then on filled Mathilde's every
moment, and was fuelled with fresh arguments every time Julien spoke
to her, completely banished those moments of boredom she was so prone
to.

As the daughter of an intelligent man who might become a minister and restore their forests to the clergy,
^*
M
^lle
de La Mole had been an object of the most excessive flattery while at
the convent of the Sacred Heart. There is no remedy for this
misfortune. She had been persuaded that because of all her advantages
of birth, wealth, etc., she ought to be happier than other girls. This
is the source of the boredom suffered by princes, and of all their
follies.

Mathilde had not escaped the
dire influence of this notion. However sharp you are, you can't be on
your guard at ten years old against the flattery of a whole convent,
especially when it has the appearance of being so well founded.

From that moment she had decided she was in love with Julien, she
stopped feeling bored. Every day she congratulated herself on her
decision to indulge in a grand passion. It's a pastime fraught with
danger, she thought. So much the better! Thousands of times better!

Without a grand passion, I was languishing with boredom at the best
time of my life, between sixteen and twenty. I've already wasted my
best years; forced for my only pleasure to listen to my mother's
friends rabbiting on--women who, I gather, were not so strict in
Coblenz
^*
in 1792 as their pronouncements are today.

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It was while these great uncertainties were preying on Mathilde that
Julien failed to understand the long gazes she fixed upon him. He
certainty detected as increased coldness in Count Norbert's manners,
and a fresh fit of haughtiness in Messrs de Caylus, de Luz and de
Croisenois. he was accustomed to it. This misfortune sometimes befell
him as a sequel to an evening when he has shone more brilliantly than
befitted his station. Had it not been for the special reception which
Mathilde gave him, and the curiosity aroused in him by this whole
set-up, he would have avoided following these dazzling young men with
moustaches into the garden when they accompanied M
^lle
de La Mole there after dinner.

Yes, there's no way I can hide it from myself, thought Julien, M
^lle
de La Mole has a strange way of looking at me. But even when her
lovely blue eyes are staring at me wide open with the greatest of
abandon, I always decipher in them traces of scrutiny, detachment and
cruelty. Can it really be that
this
is love? What a contrast with the way M
^me
de Rênal would look at me!

One evening after dinner, Julien, who had followed M. de La Molle
into his study, was making his way quickly back to the garden. As he
drew up to Mathilde's group without signalling his presence, he
overheard one or two words uttered very loud. She was tormenting her
brother. Julien heard his name pronounced twice unmistakably. He
appeared; a deep silence fell all of a sudden, and vain efforts were
made to break it. M
^lle
de La Mole and her brother were too
worked up to find any other subject of conversation. Messrs de Caylus,
de Croisenois, de Luz and one of their friends struck Julien as
being chilly as ice. he moved away.

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