The Red and the Black (53 page)

I may believe such talk an honest ploy
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I shall not trust the sound of words so sweet
Until she grants some token here and now
Of favours I so ardently desire
To vouch the truth of all her words imply.
Tartuffe
, act IV, scene v

Tartuffe too was brought down by a woman, and he was no worse than
anyone else... My reply may be shown to someone... for which I can
produce this remedy, he added, speaking slowly in tones of controlled
ferociousness--I'll start off with the most vivid sentences from the
sublime Mathilde's letter.

Yes, but four of M. de Croisenois's footmen pounce on me and snatch the original from me.

No they don't, because I'm armed, and in the habit, as people know, of firing at footmen.

All right then, one of them is plucky, he pounces on me. He's been
promised a hundred gold napoléons. I kill or wound him, that's fine,
just what they want. I'm thrown into prison perfectly legally; I'm
tried in the criminal court and sent off, with all justice and
fairness from the judges, to keep Messrs Fontan and Magalon company in
Poissy.
^*
There I have to sleep with four hundred beggars all lumped
together... And am I to feel any pity for these people! he exclaimed,
jumping impetuously to his feet. Do they have any for the lower orders
when they get their hands on them! This reflection was the dying
gasp of his gratitude towards M. de La Mole, which had been tormenting
him up till then, despite himself.

Steady on, good gentlemen, I understand this little piece of
Machiavellian cunning; Father Maslon or M. Castanède from the seminary
couldn't have done better. You'll get the
provocative
letter back from me, and I'll be the sequel to Colonel Caron
^*
at Colmar.

Wait a minute, gentlemen, I'm going to send the fateful letter to the
Reverend Father Pirard for safe-keeping in a wellsealed envelope. He's
an honourable man, and a Jansenist, and as such immune from financial
temptations. Yes, but he opens letters... Fouqué's the person to send
this one to.

Julien, it must be admitted, had a dreadful look in his eye

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and a hideous countenance; it exuded unadulterated wickedness. He was
the victim of misfortune at war with the whole of society.

To arms
!
Julien shouted out. And he leaped down the front steps of the Hôtel
de La Mole in a single bound. He went into the writing clerk's booth
on the street corner and gave him a good fright. 'Copy this!' he told
him, handing him M
^lle
de La Mole's letter.

While the scribe was working, he himself wrote to Fouqué; he begged
him to keep a precious object safe for him. But, he thought
interrupting himself, the secret agency at the post office will open
my letter and hand you back the one you're looking for... no,
gentlemen. He went off and bought a fat Bible from a Protestant
bookseller, hid Mathilde's letter very skilfully inside the cover, got
the whole thing parcelled up, and his package left with the
stage-coach, addressed to one of Fouqué's workmen, whose name was
unknown to anyone in Paris.

This done, he went back to the Hôtel de La Mole joyful and lightfooted. Now for
the two of us
! he exclaimed, as he locked himself into his room and flung off his black suit:

'Indeed! mademoiselle,' he wrote to Mathilde, 'can this really be M
^lle
de La Mole who hands a letter via her father's manservant Arsène to a
poor carpenter from the Jura--a most seductive letter no doubt meant
to make fun of his gullibility...' And he copied out the most
transparent sentences from the letter he had just received.

His reply would have been a credit to the Chevalier de Beauvoisis's
diplomatic caution. It was still only ten o'clock; intoxicated with
happiness and the feeling of his own power, so new to a poor devil
like himself, Julien put in an appearance at the Italian Opera. He
heard his friend Geronimo singing. Never had music brought him to such
a pitch of exaltation. He was a god.
¹

-338-

What bewilderment! What sleepless nights! Great heavens! Am I going
to make myself despicable? He'll despise me himself. But he's leaving,
he's going away.

Alfred DE MUSSET
^*

IT was not without a struggle that Mathilde had written. Whatever the
origin of her interest in Julien, it soon got the better of the pride
which, ever since she had had any selfawareness, had reigned supreme in
her heart. This haughty, cold individual was carried away for the
first time in her life by a passionate sentiment. But if it got the
better of her pride, it remained faithful to the habits of pride. Two
months of struggle and new sensations replenished, so to speak, the
whole of her psychological being.

Mathilde thought she glimpsed happiness. This vision, which takes a
total hold over courageous souls when they are allied with superior
minds, had to fight a long battle against a sense of dignity and every
feeling of common duty. One day she went into her mother's room at
seven in the morning and begged her to let her take refuge in
Villequier. The marquise did not even deign to give her an answer, and
suggested she went back to bed. This was the last effort put up by
ordinary virtue and deference to generally accepted ideas.

The fear of doing wrong and upsetting notions held to be sacred by
people like Caylus, de Luz and Croisenois had relatively little hold
over her; such beings did not strike her as capable of understanding
her; she would have consulted them if it had been a matter of buying a
barouche or a piece of land. Her real dread was lest Julien be
displeased with her.

Perhaps, though, he only has the outward appearance of a superior being?

She couldn't abide lack of character, it was her only objection to
the handsome young men who surrounded her. The more they graciously
mocked everything which deviates

-339-

from fashion, or which fails to follow it properly while thinking it does so, the more they damned themselves in her eyes.

They were brave, that was all. And anyway, brave in what sense? she
asked herself: in duels, but a duel has become just a ceremony. Every
bit of it is known in advance, even down to what you have to say as
you succumb. Stretched out on the grass, hand on heart, you have to
produce a generous pardon for your adversary and a word for an often
imaginary fair lady, or one who'll go to the ball on the day of your
death, for fear of arousing suspicions.

They'll brave danger at the head of a cavalry squadron all glinting
with steel, but what about danger when it's solitary, out of the
ordinary, unforeseen and really sordid?

Alas! Mathilde said to herself, Henri III's Court was where you found
men who were noble in character as well as by birth! Ah! if Julien
had fought at Jarnac
^*
or Moncontour, I shouldn't have any more hesitation. In those days of
vigour and strength, Frenchmen weren't namby-pambys. The day of
battle was almost the one of least bewilderment.

Their life wasn't imprisoned like an Egyptian mummy inside an outer
casing that was always common to everyone, always the same. Yes, she
went on, it took more real courage to make one's way home alone at
eleven at night after leaving the Hôtel de Soissons where Catherine de
Medici lived, than it takes today to flit off to Algiers
^*
. A man's life was a succession of hazards. Nowadays hazard has been
driven out by civilization, the unexpected has gone. If it appears in
ideas, there aren't enough epigrams to attack it; if it appears in
events, there are no limits to the base acts we'd perpetrate out of
fear. Whatever folly we are induced to commit by fear, excuses are
found for it. What a degenerate and boring century! What would
Boniface de La Mole have said in 1793 if, lifting his severed head out
of his tomb, he had seen seventeen of his descendants letting
themselves be rounded up like sheep and guillotined two days later?
Death was certain, but it would have been in bad taste to defend
oneself and kill even one or two Jacobins.
^*
Ah! in France's heroic days, in Boniface de La Mole's century, Julien would have been the squadron commander and my

-340-

brother the well-behaved young priest with moderation in his eyes and sweet reason on his lips.

A few months back, Mathilde had despaired of meeting anyone in the
least different from the common pattern. She had derived some pleasure
from allowing herself to write to a number of young men in society.
This boldness, so unseemly, so imprudent in a girl, carried the risk
of dishonouring her in the eyes of M. de Croisenois, the Duc de
Chaulnes her grandfather and all the house of Chaulnes who, on seeing
her intended marriage broken off, would have wanted to know the
reason why. At that time Mathilde was unable to sleep on days when she
had written one of her letters. But those letters had the excuse of
being replies.

Now she was daring to say that she was in love. She was writing
an her own initiative
(what a terrible expression!) to a man from the lowest ranks of society.

This fact guaranteed that if discovered, she would be eternally
dishonoured. Which of the women who called on her mother would have
dared to take her side? What form of words could they have been given
to repeat to take the sting from the dreadful derision of society
salons?

And anyway, saying something was dreadful enough, but writing!
There are some things that cannot be put on paper,
Napoleon exclaimed on learning of the surrender of Baylen.
^*
And it was Julien who had told her this saying! as if to teach her a lesson in advance.

But all this counted for nothing as yet: Mathilde's anguish had other
causes. Heedless of the frightful effect on society, the inexpungible
blot spreading derision, for it dishonoured her caste, Mathilde was
about to write to a being of an utterly different nature from the
Croisenois's, the de Luz's and the Caylus's.

The depth of Julien's character, the
unknown
in it, would have terrified her even if she had been starting up an
ordinary social relationship with him. And she was actually about to
make him her lover, perhaps even her lord and master!

Where will his claims end, if ever he can ask anything of me? Well! I shall say to myself like Medea:
In the midst of so many perils I still have MYSELF
.
^*

-341-

Julien wasn't in the least in awe of noble blood, so she believed.
More than this, perhaps he didn't feel any love at all for her!

In these last moments of terrible doubt, ideas of feminine pride came
to her. Everything ought to be special in the fate of a girl like me,
Mathilde exclaimed impatiently. The pride that had been instilled
into her since the cradle was battling against virtue. It was at this
moment that Julien's departure loomed up to bring everything to a
head.

(Characters like this are fortunately very rare.)

Extremely late that evening Julien was mischievous enough to have a
heavy trunk sent down to the porter's lodge; to carry it, he summoned
the footman who was courting M
^lle
de La Mole's chambermaid.
This move may have no effect, he said to himself, but if it succeeds,
she'll think I'm gone. He fell asleep in high spirits over this joke.
Mathilde did not sleep a wink.

Very early the next morning Julien left the house without being seen, but returned before eight o'clock.

He was scarcely in the library before M
^lle
de La Mole appeared at the door. He handed her his answer. He thought
it his duty to speak to her; nothing was easier, at any rate, but M
^lle
de La Mole did not want to listen and dashed off. Julien was enchanted; he did not know what to say to her.

If all this isn't a game agreed on with Count Norbert, it's clear the
cold look in my eyes is what has kindled the baroque love this girl
of such high birth has taken it into her head to feel for me. I'd be
rather more foolish than is appropriate if ever I allowed myself to be
carried away to the point of feeling any liking for this tall, fair
doll. This consideration left him more cold and calculating than ever
before.

In the impending battle, he
added, her pride in her birth will be like a high hill forming a
military position between her and me. That's where I'll have to
manœuvre. I did quite the wrong thing by staying in Paris; postponing
my departure like this is degrading, and exposes me if all this is
only a game. What was the risk in going? I'd have been mocking them,
if they're mocking me. If her interest in me is at all genuine, I'd
have increased it a hundredfold.

-342-

M
^lle
de La Mole's letter had given such a boost to Julien's vanity that,
in the midst of all his laughter at what was happening to him, he had
forgotten to think seriously about the expediency of his departure.

He was fated to have the kind of character that made him extremely
sensitive about his mistakes. He was very put out by this one, and had
almost given up thinking about the unbelievable victory that had
preceded this little set-back, when, around nine o'clock, M
^lle
de La Mole appeared on the threshold of the library, threw him a letter and fled.

It looks as if it's going to be a romance by letter, he said as he
picked up this one. The enemy is making a false move, so I shall order
up coldness and virtue.

A definitive
answer was being requested of him with a hauteur which increased his
inner merriment. He gave himself the pleasure of mystifying, for two
pages on end, any persons wishing to make fun of him, and he added a
further joke, near the end of his reply, announcing that his departure
was settled for the following morning.

When the letter was finished: the garden will provide a way for me to
hand it over, he thought, and out he went. He looked at the window of
M
^lle
de La Mole's room.

It was on the first floor, next to her mother's suite, but there was a large mezzanine floor separating it from the ground.

The first floor was so high that as he walked along the path under
the limes with his letter in his hand, Julien could not be seen from M
^lle
de La Mole's window. The arched canopy formed by the beautifully
trimmed lime trees cut off the view. Oh no! Julien said to himself in
annoyance, yet another rash move! If they're bent on making fun of me,
to be seen with a letter in my hand only furthers the cause of my
enemies.

Norbert's room was exactly
above his sister's, and if Julien stepped out from under the arch
formed by the trimmed branches of the limes, the count and his friends
could follow his every movement.

M
^lle
de La Mole appeared behind the window-pane; he showed a corner of his
letter; she lowered her head. Julien immediately ran back up to his
room, and happened to meet

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