The Red and the Black (74 page)

saw almost pleading before him. He resumed all his selfcontrol and did not hesitate to turn the knife in her wounded heart.

'I shouldn't be surprised in the end', he told her casually, 'if we
were to learn that jealousy caused M. Sorel to fire two shots at this
woman he once loved so much. She is far from lacking in charms, and
she had recently been seeing a great deal of a certain Abbé Marquinot
from Dijon, a sort of Jansenist-devoid of morals, as they all are.'

M. de Frilair took voluptuous pleasure in inflicting slow torture on
the heart of this pretty girl whose weak point he had unexpectedly
discovered.

'Why', he said, fixing
his burning eyes on Mathilde, 'should M. Sorel have chosen the church,
if not because precisely at that moment his rival was celebrating
Mass there? Everyone credits your fortunate protégé with limitless
intelligence, exceeded only by his caution. What could have been
simpler than to have hidden in M. de Rênal's gardens which he knows
so well? There, with virtual certainty of not being seen, caught or
suspected, he could have killed the woman he was jealous of.'

This seemingly sound argument finally succeeded in causing Mathilde
to lose all control of herself. Her haughty spirit, imbued through and
through, nevertheless, with all the arid caution which is taken in
high society as a faithful reflection of the human heart, was
constitutionally incapable of understanding in a flash the pleasure that
comes from scorning all caution--an experience that can be so intense
for a passionate spirit. Among the upper classes of Parisian society
where Mathilde had grown up, passion only very rarely manages to
divest itself of caution, and people choose the fifth floor when they
decide to fling themselves out of the window.

The Abbé de Frilair was at last sure of his hold over Mathilde. He
intimated to her (lying no doubt) that he could answer fully for the
public ministry in charge of bringing the prosecution against Julien.

After the thirty-six jurors had been drawn by lot for the assizes, he
would make a direct, personal approach to at least thirty of their
number.

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If Mathilde had not seemed so attractive to M. de Frilair, he would
not have spoken so openly to her until the fifth or sixth interview.

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March 3 1, 1676. He that endeavoured to kil his sister in our house,
had before kild a man, & it had cost his father 500 escus to get
him off, by their secret distribution gaining the favour of the
Counsellors.

LOCKE,
Travels in France
*

ON leaving the bishop's palace, Mathilde did not hesitate to send a
missive to Mme de Fervaques; fear of compromising herself did not hold
her back for a single second. She entreated her rival to procure a
letter for M. de Frilair, written from start to finish in the hand of
Monsignor the Bishop of -----. She went so far as to beseech her to
come with all speed in person to Besançon. This was a heroic action on
the part of a jealous and proud spirit.

Acting on Fouqué's advice, she had been prudent enough not to tell
Julien about the steps she was taking. Her presence was disturbing
enough for him as it was. More of a gentleman now that death was near
than he had been in his lifetime, he felt remorse not only about M. de
La Mole, but also for Mathilde.

How dreadful! he said to himself, when I'm with her I find my mind
wandering at times, and even getting bored. She's sacrificing her
reputation for me, and this is how I reward her! So does this mean I'm
a swine? The question would scarcely have bothered him when he was
ambitious; at that time the only thing he regarded as shameful was not
achieving success.

His moral
unease in Mathilde's company was all the more pronounced as he
inspired in her at that moment the most outlandish and demented
passion. She talked of nothing else but the strange sacrifices she
wanted to make to save him.

Uplifted
by a sentiment she was proud of, and one which quite got the better of
her arrogance, she would have liked to let no moment of her life go
by without filling it with some

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remarkable act. The strangest projects entailing great risk to
herself filled her long conversations with Julien. The polers, well
paid, let her reign supreme in the prison. Mathilde's ideas did not
stop at the sacrifice of her own reputation; she didn't care if she
proclaimed her condition to the whole of society. Flinging herself on
her knees in front of the king's galloping horses to beg for Julien's
reprieve, attracting the monarch's attention at the repeated risk of
being trampled to death, was one of the lesser flights of fancy of
this exalted and fearless imagination. With the aid of her friends in
the king's service, she was certain to be allowed into the reserved
areas in the park at Saint-Cloud.

Julien felt himself most unworthy of such devotion; he was in all
honesty tired of heroism. It would have taken tenderness of a
straightforward, innocent, almost timid variety to have touched him,
whereas on the contrary the notion of an audience--
of other people
--was indispensable to Mathilde's haughty spirit.

In the midst of all her anguish, of all her fears for the life of
this lover whom she had no desire to survive, she felt a secret need
to amaze the public by the excess of her love and the sublime
character of her exploits.

Julien was
getting irritated at not finding himself moved by all this heroism.
Just think what would have happened if he had found out about all the
crazy ideas with which Mathilde assailed the mind of the devoted but
eminently reasonable and essentially limited Fouqué!

Fouqué did not quite know what to criticize in Mathilde's devotion;
for he would himself have sacrificed the whole of his fortune and
exposed his life to the greatest of risks to save Julien. He was
flabbergasted at the amount of gold that Mathilde flung away. For the
first few days, the sums she spent like this made a deep impression on
Fouqué, who regarded money with all the veneration of a provincial.

In the end he found out that Mlle de La Mole's plans frequently
altered, and to his great relief he hit upon an epithet to denigrate
this character he found so tiring: she was
changeable
. From this qualification to the term
unsound
--the greatest anathema in the provinces--there is but one small step.

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It's most odd, Julien said to himself one day as Mathilde was leaving
his prison, that such an ardent passion, and one directed at me,
should leave me so cold! And I adored her two months ago! I had indeed
read that the approach of death detaches you from everything; but
it's awful to feel ungrateful and not to be able to do anything about
it. Does it mean I'm an egoist?' He subjected himself to the most
humiliating reproaches on this score.

Ambition had died in his heart, and another passion had risen from
its ashes there; he called it remorse at having murdered Mme de Rênal.

In actual fact, he was desperately
in love with her. He felt an extraordinary happiness when, left
entirely alone with no fear of interruption, he could give himself
over completely to the memory of the happy days he had spent long ago
in Verrières or at Vergy. The most minor incidents from those times
that had flown by too fast had an irresistible freshness and charm for
him. He never thought of his successes in Paris; they made him feel
uncomfortable.

The drift of Julien's
emotions, which grew rapidly more marked, was half-perceived by
Mathilde in her jealousy. She could see very clearly that she had to
fight his love of solitude. Sometimes in a voice of terror she uttered
the name of Mme de Rênal. She saw Julien tremble. Her passion from
then on knew no limits or measure.

If he dies, I die after him, she said to herself with all possible
sincerity. What would the Paris salons say on seeing a girl of my rank
carry to such a point her adoration of a lover destined to die? To
find sentiments like this, you have to go back to the heroic age; it
was passions of this sort that made hearts throb in the century of
Charles IX and Henri III.

In the
midst of the most intense moments of rapture, when she was clasping
Julien's head to her heart: Oh how dreadful! she said to herself in
horror, can this lovely head be destined to roll! Well, she added,
burning with a heroism not devoid of happiness, these lips of mine,
now pressed to these pretty locks, will be stone cold less than
twenty-four hours afterwards.

The memories of these moments of heroism and appalling

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ecstasy held her in an invincible grip. The idea of suicide, so
absorbing in itself, and hitherto so remote from this haughty spirit,
infiltrated it and soon reigned with absolute power. No, the blood of
my ancestors hasn't come down to me lukewarm, Mathilde said to herself
with pride.

'I have a favour to ask
you,' her lover said to her one day: 'put your child out to nurse in
Verrières, and Mme de Rênal will keep an eye on the nurse.'

'What you are saying there is very hard...' And Mathilde turned pale.

'So it is, and I apologize a thousand times, my love,' exclaimed
Julien coming out of his daydream and clasping her in his arms.

After drying her tears, he returned to his idea, but more skilfully.
He had steered the conversation into melancholy philosophizing. He was
talking of a future that was shortly to be cut off for him.

'One has to admit, my dearest, that passions are an accident of life,
but this accident only occurs with superior spirits... The death of
my son would really be a blessing for your family's pride, this is
what subordinates will sense. Negligence will be the lot of this child
of misfortune and shame... I hope that at a time I don't wish to
specify, but have the courage to perceive, you will obey my last
requests: you will marry the Marquis de Croisenois.'

'What! Dishonoured!'

'Dishonour won't get a hold on a name like yours. You'll be a widow, a
madman's widow, that's all. I'll go further: not having money as its
motive, my crime will not entail any dishonour. Perhaps by that time
some enlightened legislator will have wrested from the prejudices of
his contemporaries the suppression of the death penalty.
*
Some friendly voice will then say, to quote an example: "Look, Mlle
de La Mole's first husband was a madman, but not a wicked man or a
criminal. It was absurd to cut off his head..." And then my memory
won't be infamous; at least not after a while. Your position in
society, your fortune and, allow me to say so, your genius, will
enable M. de Croisenois, once he's your husband, to play a role he
couldn't aspire to on his own. He only possesses birth

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and bravery, and these qualities by themselves, which produced a man of
accomplishment in 1729, are an anachronism a century later, and only
give rise to pretensions. You need other things besides to become a
leader of the youth of France.

'You
will put your resolute and enterprising character to the service of
the political party in which you choose to launch your husband. You
will be able to succeed the Chevreuses and the Longuevilles of the
Fronde
*
... But by then, my dear, the celestial fire which blazes within you at this moment will have died down a bit.

'Allow me to say this to you,' he added after a good many other
preparatory remarks, 'in fifteen years' time you will regard the love
you once felt for me as an excusable moment of folly, but as folly
nevertheless...'

All of a sudden he
broke off and became wistful. He found himself once again
contemplating a thought that was utterly shocking in regard to
Mathilde: in fifteen years' time Mme de Rênal will adore my son, and
you will have forgotten him.

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It is because I was mad then that today I am wise. O philosopher, you
who take an instantaneous view of things, how short are your
perspectives! Your eye is not designed to follow the underground
workings of passions.

W. GOETHE

THIS conversation was interrupted by a formal interrogation followed by a meeting with the counsel for the defence.

These moments were the only wholly disagreeable ones in a life free of care and filled with tender dreaming.

'It's a case of murder, and murder with premeditation,' Julien said
to both the magistrate and the barrister. 'I'm extremely sorry about
it, gentlemen,' he added with a smile, 'but this reduces your task to a
very small matter.'

When it comes
down to it, Julien reflected when he had managed to get rid of these
two individuals, I must be brave, and braver it seems than these two
men. They regard this duel, with its fatal outcome, as the ultimate in
misfortune, as the
king of terrors
,
^*
and I shall only think seriously about it on the day itself.

It's because I've experienced a greater misfortune, Julien continued
his inner philosophizing. I suffered in an altogether different way
during my first journey to Strasburg, when I thought Mathilde had
abandoned me... And to think that I so passionately desired the
perfect intimacy that leaves me so cold today!... In fact I'm happier
alone than when this beautiful girl shares my solitude...

The barrister, a man guided by rules and formalities, thought he was
mad, and believed along with the public that jealousy was what had
made him take up a pistol. One day he risked hinting to Julien that
this allegation, true or false, would be an excellent basis for the
defence. But the accused instantly became passionate and incisive
again.

'If you value your life, sir,' exclaimed Julien, beside himself,

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