The Red and the Black (69 page)

came to him as clearly as this, M. de La Mole went through torture,
and his instinctive reactions were no longer under the control of his
will. Julien was afraid of being thrashed.

In his lucid phases, and as he began to get used to the idea of his
misfortune, the marquis's reproaches to Julien were quite reasonable:

'You should have fled, sir,' he said to him... 'It was your duty to flee... You're the lowest of the low.'

Julien went over to the table and wrote:

My life has long been unbearable to me; I am ending it. I beg my lord
Marquis to accept both my protestations of boundless gratitude and my
apologies for the embarrassment that my death in his house may cause.

'I humbly beg your
lordship to deign to cast an eye over this paper... Kill me,' said
Julien, 'or have your manservant do it. It's one o'clock in the
morning, I'll go and walk up and down in the garden near the far
wall.'

'Oh go to hell!' the marquis shouted after him as he left.

I understand, thought Julien; he wouldn't be displeased if I spared
his manservant the business of seeing to my death... Let him kill me,
fair enough, I'll offer him this by way of satisfaction... But, damn
it all, I love life... my duty is to my son.

This idea, which struck his imagination with such clarity for the
first time, absorbed him totally after the first few minutes of
walking up and down, during which he had been aware of nothing but
danger.

This interest, which was so
new to him, turned him into a creature of caution. I need advice on
how to behave towards this impetuous man... His reason is gone, he's
capable of anything. Fouqué is too far away, and besides, he wouldn't
understand what moves the heart of someone like the marquis.

Count Altamira... Can I be sure of silence for ever? Seeking advice
mustn't constitute an action that complicates my position. Alas! the
only person left is the dour Abbé Pirard... His mind has been narrowed
by Jansenism... A Jesuit rogue would have some worldly wisdom, and
would fit the bill better...

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M. Pirard is capable of thrashing me at the mere mention of the misdeed.

The genius of Tartuffe came to Julien's rescue: Right, then, I'll go
and make confession to him. This was the final decision he took in the
garden after walking about for a good two hours. He no longer
believed he might be surprised by a gunshot; he was succumbing to
sleep.

Very early the next morning,
Julien was several leagues away from Paris, knocking at the stern
Jansenist's door. He found, much to his astonishment, that the latter
was not unduly surprised by his revelation.

I ought perhaps to blame myself, the priest thought, more concerned
than angry. 'I had suspected this love. My friendship for you, you
wretched boy, prevented me from warning the father...'

'What's he going to do?' Julien asked eagerly.

(He felt great warmth towards the priest at that moment, and would have found a scene very painful.)

'I can see three courses of action,' Julien went on: '1) M. de La
Mole can have me killed;' and he told of the suicide note he had left
with the marquis; '2) he can have me shot pointblank by Count Norbert,
who would challenge me to a duel.'

'Would you accept?' said the priest, getting up in fury.

'You're not letting me finish. I should most certainly never shoot at my benefactor's son.

'3) He can send me away. If he says to me: "Go to Edinburgh or New York", I shall obey. Then M
^lle
de La Mole's situation can be concealed; but I shall not allow my son to be done away with.'

'And that, make no doubt about it, will be the first thing that corrupt man thinks of...'

Back in Paris Mathilde was in despair. She had seen her father at
about seven o'clock. He had shown her Julien's letter, and she was in
in fear and trembling lest he had decided that the noble way was to
put an end to his life: And without my permission? she said to herself
with anguish that was in fact a form of anger.

'If he is dead, I shall die,' she told her father. '
You
will be the cause of my death... You will perhaps be glad of it... But

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this I swear to his spirit: I shall first of all go into mourning, and be
M. Sorel's widow
in public; I shall send out announcements, you can count on that... You won't find me fainthearted or cowardly.'

Her love reached the proportions of folly. It was M. de La Mole's turn to be astounded.

He began to view events with some sort of reason. Mathilde did not
appear at lunch. The marquis was relieved of a tremendous weight on
his mind, and was in particular most flattered when he observed that
she had said nothing to her mother.

Julien was just dismounting from his horse. Mathilde summoned him and
flung herself into his arms almost in front of her chambermaid. Julien
was not very grateful for this passionate demonstration; he had emerged
in a highly diplomatic and calculating frame of mind from his long
conference with Father Pirard. His imagination was dulled from
calculating possible moves. With tears in her eyes, Mathilde informed
him that she had seen his suicide note.

'My father may change his mind; be so good as to set off this very
instant for Villequier. Get back on your horse and leave the house
before they get up from lunch.'

As Julien's look of cold astonishment remained unaltered, she had a fit of tears.

'Leave me to run our affairs, darling,' she exclaimed passionately,
clasping him in her arms. 'You know perfectly well that I'm not
undertaking this separation from you voluntarily. Write to me via my
chambermaid, make sure the address is in an unknown hand; and I shall
write reams back. Farewell! You must flee.'

Her last words wounded Julien; he obeyed all the same. There's
something inevitable about it, he thought: even in their best moments,
these people have the knack of rubbing me up the wrong way.

Mathilde strongly resisted all the
prudent
courses of action suggested by her father. She was never willing to
engage in negotiations on any basis other than this: she would be M
^me

Sorel, and would live in poverty with her husband in Switzer-

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land, or in her father's house in Paris. She utterly rejected the suggestion of a clandestine confinement.

'That would lay me open to slander and dishonour. Two months after
our wedding, I shall go on a journey with my husband, and it'll be
easy for us to assume that my son was born after a respectable
interval.'

Greeted at first by outbursts of anger, this firmness eventually succeeded in instilling doubts into the marquis.

In a moment of tenderness:

'Well now!' he said to his daughter, 'here is a certificate for an
annuity of ten thousand pounds; send it to your Julien, and let him
hurry up and make it impossible for me to take it back.

To
obey
Mathilde, whose love of being in command was familiar to him, Julien
had made an unnecessary journey of forty leagues: he was at
Villequier, settling the farmers' accounts: this benefaction from the
marquis was a pretext for him to return. He went to seek asylum with
Father Pirard, who, in his absence, had become Mathilde's most useful
ally. Every time Father Pirard was questioned by the marquis, he
demonstrated to him that any course of action other than a public
marriage would be a crime in the sight of God.

'And fortunately,' the priest added, 'wordly wisdom is in agreement
on this occasion with religion. Could one count for a moment, with M
^lle
de La Mole's impetuous character, on her maintaining secrecy if she
hadn't imposed it on herself? If you don't accept the open step of a
public marriage, society will talk for far longer about this strange
misalliance. You must tell all in one go, without there being the
slightest mystery--in appearance or in reality.'

'That's right,' said the marquis thoughtfully. 'In this scenario, talk
of their marriage three days after the event will be nothing but the
burbling of people without an idea in their heads. The thing to do is
take advantage of some great antiJacobin measure by the Government so
that the whole thing can slip by unnoticed in the aftermath.'

Two or three of M. de La Mole's friends shared Father Pirard's way of
thinking. The great obstacle, to their minds, was Mathilde's resolute
character. But after all these fine arguments, the marquis in his
heart of hearts could not get

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used to the idea of renouncing the hope of a
footstool
^*
for his daughter.

His memory and his imagination were full of the rakish and
treacherous deeds of all kinds that had still been possible in his
youth. To give in to necessity, to fear the law struck him as an
absurd and demeaning thing for a man of his rank. He was paying dearly
now for the bewitching dreams he had indulged in for the past ten
years about the future of this beloved daughter.

Who could have foreseen it? he said to himself. A daughter with such
an arrogant character, with such a superior cast of mind, more proud
than I am of the name she bears! Whose hand had been requested of me
in advance by all the most illustrious nobles in France!

You have to throw caution to the winds. This century is destined to
cast everything into confusion! We're heading for chaos.

-456-

The prefect riding along on his horse said to himself: Why shouldn't I
be a minister, or head of the Cabinet, or a duke? This is how I shall
wage ...In this way I'd have innovators put in chains...

LE GLOBE

No argument is strong enough to break the hold of ten years of
enjoyable dreaming. The marquis did not think it reasonable to be
angry, but could not bring himself to forgive. If only this Julien
could die by accident, he said to himself at times... His grieving
imagination thus found some solace in pursuing the most absurd
fantasies. They counteracted the effect of Father Pirard's sensible
reasoning. A month went by in this fashion without any step forward in
the settlement.

In this family
matter, as in politics, the marquis had brilliant insights which
filled him with enthusiasm for three days on end. At such times some
course of action would fail to appeal to him because it was backed by
sound arguments; but then arguments only found favour with him in so
far as they supported his preferred plan. For three days running he
worked with all the ardour and enthusiasm of a poet to bring things to
a certain point; the next day he had forgotten all about it.

At first Julien was disconcerted by the marquis's delays; but after a
few weeks he began to surmise that in this matter M. de La Mole did
not have any firm plans.

M
^me
de La Mole and the rest of the household believed that Julien was off
travelling in the provinces, seeing to the administration of the
estates; he was hiding in Father Pirard's presbytery, and seeing
Mathilde almost every day. She went to see her father for an hour
every morning, but sometimes they let whole weeks go by without
discussing the matter that was constantly on their minds.

'I don't want to know that man's whereabouts,' the marquis said to her one day. 'Send him this letter.' Mathilde read:

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The Languedoc estates bring in 20,600 francs. I make over 10,600
francs to my daughter and 10,000 francs to M. Julien Sorel. I am of
course donating the estates themselves. Instruct the solicitor to draw
up two separate deeds of gift, and to bring them to me tomorrow;
after which, no further dealings between us. Ah! sir, was I to expect
all this?

La Mole.

'Thank you very much indeed,' said Mathilde brightly. 'We shall settle in the Château d'Aiguillon,
^*
between Agen and Marmande. They say the region is as beautiful as Italy.'

This gift came as a great surprise to Julien. He was no longer the
stern and cold man we knew earlier. The fate of his son took up all
his thoughts in anticipation. This fortune, unexpected and pretty
substantial for someone so poor, gave him ambitions. He saw himself
and his wife enjoying an income of 36,000 pounds between them. As for
Mathilde, all her emotion was absorbed in adoration of her husband,
for that was how her pride always referred to Julien. Her great, her
sole ambition was to have her marriage recognized. She spent her
days exaggerating to herself the great prudence she had shown in
throwing in her lot with that of a superior man. In her mind, personal
distinction was all the fashion.

The
effect of almost continuous absence, multifarious business, and scant
time available for talking of love, was to complete the good work of
the wise strategy Julien had devised earlier.

Mathilde finally grew impatient at seeing so little of the she had reached the point of genuinely loving.

In a moment of bad temper she wrote to her father, and began her letter like Othello.
^*

That I have preferred Julien to the delights society offered the
daughter of Monsieur le Marquis de La Mole is amply proved by my
choice. These pleasures of esteem and petty vanity mean nothing to me.
I have been living apart from my husband for almost six weeks now.
That is a sufficient demonstration of my respect for you. I shall
leave my family home by next Thursday. Your generous gifts have made
us rich. No one knows my secret apart from the respectable Abbé
Pirard. I shall go to his house, he will marry us, and an hour after
the ceremony we shall be on our way to the Languedoc, and we

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