The Red and the Black (64 page)

This scene cheered our hero up a bit; he was on the verge of smiling.
And here is the pious Altamira, he said to himself, helping me in an
adulterous venture.

Throughout the
whole of the grave conversation with Don Diego Bustos, Julien had been
attentive to the hours struck by the clock on the
Hôtel d'Aligre
.
^*

The hour for dinner was drawing near, he was therefore going to see
Mathilde again! He went home and dressed with great care.

First piece of stupidity, he said to himself as he went downstairs; I must follow the prince's prescription to the letter.

He went back up to his room and chose the plainest travelling outfit imaginable.

Now, he thought, there's the matter of how I look at her. It was only
five thirty, and dinner was at six. He decided to go down to the
drawing-room, which he found deserted. The sight of the blue sofa
moved him to tears; soon his cheeks were burning hot. I must wear down
this foolish hypersensitivity of mine, he told himself angrily; it
might betray me. He picked up a newspaper to appear to be doing
something, and went out three or four times from the drawing-room into
the garden.

It was only in great fear and trembling, and when he was well hidden behind a large oak tree, that he dared to look up at M
^lle
de La Mole's window. It was hermetically shut; he almost collapsed,
and stood leaning against the oak for some considerable time; then he
walked over with tottering steps to look at the gardener's ladder
again.

The link in the chain, which
he had once forced open in circumstances, alas! so different from now,
had not been repaired. Carried away by a mad impulse, Julien pressed
it to his lips.

Having spent a long
time wandering between the drawingroom and the garden, Julien found he
was terribly tired; this was a first victory which he was keenly aware
of. The look in my eyes will be listless and won't betray me!
Gradually the dinner guests foregathered in the drawing-room; the door
did not open once without causing dire turmoil in Julien's heart.

The company sat down to table. At last M
^lle
de La Mole

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appeared, ever faithful to her habit of keeping people waiting. She
blushed deeply on seeing Julien; no one had told her of his arrival.
In accordance with Prince Korasov's advice, Julien looked at her
hands: they were trembling. Agitated beyond measure as he was by this
discovery, he was fortunate enough not to appear other than tired.

M. de La Mole praised him openly. The marquise spoke to him
immediately afterwards, and complimented him on his look of fatigue.
Julien kept saying to himself: I mustn't look at M
^lle
de La
Mole too much, but then nor must I avoid looking at her either. I
must appear to be the way I really was a week before my misfortune...
He had occasion to be satisfied with his success, and he stayed on in
the drawing-room. For the first time he was attentive towards his
hostess, and made every effort to draw out the men in her company, and
to keep up a lively conversation.

His civility was rewarded: at about eight o'clock the Maréchale de
Fervaques was announced. Julien slipped away and soon reappeared,
dressed with the greatest care. M
^me
de La Mole was
infinitely appreciative of this mark of respect, and made a point of
showing him her satisfaction by telling M
^me
de Fervaques
about his journey. Julien seated himself next to the maréchale in such
a way as to keep his eyes hidden from Mathilde. From this position,
following all the rules of the art, he made M
^me
de
Fervaques the target of his most dumbfounded admiration. A tirade on
this sentiment formed the opening of the first of the fifty-three
letters presented to him by Prince Korasov.

The
maréchale
announced that she was going to the OperaBuffa.
^*
Julien made his way there in haste; he ran into the Chevalier de
Beauvoisis, who took him off to a box reserved for gentlemen of the
royal household, which just happened to be next to M
^me
de
Fervaques's box. Julien kept on gazing at her. It's vital, he said to
himself on returning home, that I keep a siege diary; otherwise I
might forget my attacking moves. He forced himself to write two or
three pages on this boring subject, and in so doing succeeded--most
miraculously!--in almost not thinking about M
^lle
de La Mole.

Mathilde had almost forgotten him while he was off on his

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journey. After all, he's only a common sort of person, she thought;
his name will always remind me of the greatest lapse in my life. I
must revert in good faith to vulgar notions of chaste behaviour and
honour; a woman has everything to lose by forgetting them. She
appeared willing to agree at last to the conclusion of the settlement
with the Marquis de Croisenois, which had been drawn up ready for so
long. He was beside himself with joy; he would have been most
astonished to be told that resignation lay at the bottom of Mathilde's
disposition towards him, which made him so proud.

All M
^lle
de La Mole's ideas changed on seeing Julien. In reality,
he's
my husband, she told herself; if I revert in good faith to notions of chaste behaviour, then
he's
the one I must marry.

She was expecting unwelcome entreaties and wretched looks from
Julien; she prepared her responses: for surely when they got up from
dinner, he would try to have a few words with her. Quite the contrary,
he stayed put in the drawing-room, his eyes didn't even turn towards
the garden, God alone knows at what cost! It's better to have it out
with him right away, thought M
^lle
de La Mole; she went into
the garden alone, Julien did not appear. Mathilde came over and
strolled by the French windows of the drawing-room; she saw him
utterly taken up with describing to M
^me
de Fervaques the
old ruined castles that crown the hillsides along the Rhine and give
them such character. He was beginning to make quite a good showing
at the sentimental and picturesque turn of phrase that is called wit
in certain salons.

Prince Korasov
would have been thoroughly proud if he had happened to be in Paris:
that evening went exactly as he had predicted.

He would have approved of Julien's conduct on the following days.

An intrigue among the members of the clandestine government
^*
was about to make a number of Blue Sashes available; M
^me
de Fervaques insisted on her great-uncle's becoming a knight of the
order. M. de La Mole laid the same claim on behalf of his
father-in-law; they united their efforts, and the
maréchale
came to the Hôtel de La Mole almost every day. It

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was from her that Julien learned that the marquis was about to become a minister: he was offering the
Camarilla
^*
a most ingenious plan for abolishing the Charter, without any upheaval, in the space of three years.

Julien could expect to be made a bishop if M. de La Mole got into the
Cabinet; but to his eyes all these great concerns had been somehow
shrouded in a veil. His imagination only glimpsed them dimly now, in
the far distance so to speak. The dreadful misfortune which was making
him obsessional caused him to see all life's concerns wrapped up in
his relationship with M
^lle
de La Mole. He reckoned that after five or six years of careful effort, he would manage to make her love him again.

His calm and rational mind had sunk, as you observe, into a state of
total derangement. Of the many qualities that had distinguished him
formerly, all that remained was a degree of persistence. Outwardly
faithful to the plan of conduct laid down by Prince Korasov, he would
seat himself every evening quite close to M
^me
de Fervaques's chair, but it was quite beyond him to find anything to say to her.

The effort he was putting in to appear cured in Mathilde's eyes
swallowed up all his emotional energy, and he sat beside the marshal's
widow like a creature barely alive; even his eyes, as happens in
extreme physical suffering, had lost all their fire.

As M
^me
de La Mole's attitude was always a mere replica of the opinions of a
husband who might make her a duchess, for some days now she had been
praising Julien's qualities to the skies.

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There also was of course in Adeline
That calm patrician polish in the address,
Which ne'er can pass the equinoctial line
Of any thing which Nature would express:
Just as a Mandarin finds nothing fine,
At least his manner suffers not to guess
That any thing he views can greatly please.

Don Juan
, C. XIII, st. 84

THERE'S a streak of madness in the attitude of this entire family,
thought the maréchale; they're infatuated with this young priest of
theirs, whose only qualification is listening-with rather lovely eyes,
it's true.

Julien for his part took M
^me
de Fervaques's ways as an almost perfect example of that
patrician calm
which radiates punctilious civility and, even more so, declares the
impossibility of any powerful emotion. Any unpredictable reactions, any
failure of self control, would have scandalized M
^me
de
Fervaques almost as much as a lack of majesty towards her inferiors.
The slightest outward sign of emotion would have struck her as some
kind of moral inebriation to be ashamed of, and most prejudicial to
the duties that a person of high rank owes to herself. Her great
pleasure was talking about the king's latest hunt, her favourite book
the
Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon
,
^*
especially the part concerned with genealogy.

Julien knew which part of the room, given the arrangement of the lights, was flattering to M
^me
de Fervaques's type of beauty. He made sure he was there before her,
but took great care to turn his chair in such a way as not to see
Mathilde. Astonished at the constancy with which he was hiding from
her, one day she left the blue sofa and brought her needlework over to
a little table next to the maréchale's chair. Julien got a fairly
close view of her from underneath M
^me
de Fervaques's hat. Those eyes, which controlled his destiny, alarmed him at

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first, then jolted him out of his habitual apathy; he talked, and very well too.

He addressed his words to the maréchale, but his sole aim was to produce an effect on Mathilde. He grew so animated that M
^me
de Fervaques found she no longer understood what he was saying.

That was a preliminary point in his favour. If it had occurred to
Julien to back it up with a few sentences of German mysticism, high
religiosity and Jesuitry, the maréchale would have classed him on the
spot as one of the superior men whose calling it is to regenerate our
century.

Since he's sufficiently
ill-mannered, Mlle de La Mole said to herself, to talk for as long as
this, and with so much ardour, to M
^me
de Fervaques, I
shan't listen to him any more. For the whole of the rest of that
evening she kept her word, although with difficulty.

At midnight when Mathilde took her mother's candlestick to accompany her up to her room, M
^me
de La Mole paused on the stairs to produce a full-blown eulogy of
Julien. This put the finishing touches to Mathilde's ill-temper; she
was unable to fall asleep. One thought calmed her down: Someone I
despise can still be a man of great worth in the maréchale's eyes.

As for Julien, he had done something, he was less miserable; his eyes
alighted by chance on the Russian-leather case in which Prince
Korasov had enclosed his present of fifty-three love letters. Julien
saw in a note at the bottom of the first letter:
Number One is to be sent a week after the first meeting
.

I've fallen behind! Julien exclaimed, for I've been seeing M
^me
de Fervaques for some time now. He settled down at once to copying
out this first love letter; it was a homily full of pronouncements on
virtue, and deadly dull; Julien was fortunate enough to fall asleep at
the second page.

Some hours later,
bright sunlight surprised him slumped over the table. One of the
hardest moments in his life was when, each morning on waking up, he
learned of
his wretchedness. That day, he was almost laughing as he finished
copying out his letter. Is it possible, he said to himself, that there
ever existed a young man who writes like this! He counted several

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sentences nine lines long. At the end of the original, he saw a note in pencil:

These letters are to be delivered personally: on horseback, with
black tie and blue greatcoat. Letter to be handed to the porter with a
contrite air and look of deep melancholy. If any chambermaid is
sighted, eyes to be furtively wiped. Speak to the chambermaid.

All this was faithfully executed.

What I'm doing takes some nerve, Julien thought as he left the Hôtel
de Fervaques, but so much the worse for Korasov. Daring to write to
such a notorious pillar of virtue! I shall be treated by her with the
utmost disdain, and nothing will amuse me more. It's ultimately the
only comedy I can appreciate. Yes, heaping ridicule on that most
odious creature I call
myself
will amuse me. If I followed my own lights, I'd commit some crime or other to distract myself.

For the past month, the most wonderful moment in Julien's life had
been when he put his horse back in the stable. Korasov had expressly
forbidden him to glance, on any pretext whatsoever, at the mistress who
had abandoned him. But the sound she knew so well of that horse's
hoofs, Julien's way of cracking his whip at the stable door to summon a
groom, sometimes drew Mathilde over to her window, behind the
curtain. The lace was so fine that Julien could see through. By
looking up in a certain way from under the brim of his hat, he could
see Mathilde's figure without seeing her eyes. Consequently, he said
to himself, she can't see mine, and that doesn't count as looking at
her.

That evening, M
^me
de
Fervaques behaved towards him exactly as if she had not received the
philosophical, mystical and religious disquisition which he had handed
to her porter that morning with such melancholy. On the previous day,
chance had shown Julien how to be eloquent; he positioned himself
in such a way as to see Mathilde's eyes. She, for her part, left the
blue sofa the moment M
^me
de Fervaques arrived: she was
deserting her habitual company. M. de Croisenois showed consternation
at this latest whim; his obvious suffering took the keen edge off
Julien's misery.

This unexpected turn in his life made him talk like an angel;

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