CHAPTER XL

QUEEN MARGUERITE

        Love! In what madness do you not manage to make us find
        pleasure!
                                      Letters of a Portuguese Nun.

Julien reread his letters. "How ridiculous I must have appeared in the
eyes of that Parisian doll," he said to himself when the dinner-bell
rang. "How foolish to have really told her what I was thinking! Perhaps
it was not so foolish. Telling the truth on that occasion was worthy of
me. Why did she come to question me on personal matters? That question
was indiscreet on her part. She broke the convention. My thoughts about
Danton are not part of the sacrifice which her father pays me to make."

When he came into the dining-room Julien's thoughts were distracted
from his bad temper by mademoiselle de la Mole's mourning which was all
the more striking because none of the other members of the family were
in black.

After dinner he felt completely rid of the feeling which had obsessed
him all day. Fortunately the academician who knew Latin was at dinner.
"That's the man who will make the least fun of me," said Julien to
himself, "if, as I surmise, my question about mademoiselle de la Mole's
mourning is in bad taste."

Mathilde was looking at him with a singular expression. "So this is the
coquetry of the women of this part of the country, just as madame de
Renal described it to me," said Julien to himself. "I was not nice to
her this morning. I did not humour her caprice of talking to me. I got
up in value in her eyes. The Devil doubtless is no loser by it.

"Later on her haughty disdain will manage to revenge herself. I defy
her to do her worst. What a contrast with what I have lost! What
charming naturalness? What naivety! I used to know her thoughts before
she did herself. I used to see them come into existence. The only rival
she had in her heart was the fear of her childrens' death. It was a
reasonable, natural feeling to me, and even though I suffered from it I
found it charming. I have been a fool. The ideas I had in my head about
Paris prevented me from appreciating that sublime woman.

"Great God what a contrast and what do I find here? Arid, haughty
vanity: all the fine shades of wounded egotism and nothing more."

They got up from table. "I must not let my academician get snapped up,"
said Julien to himself. He went up to him as they were passing into the
garden, assumed an air of soft submissiveness and shared in his fury
against the success of Hernani.

"If only we were still in the days of _lettres de cachet_!" he said.

"Then he would not have dared," exclaimed the academician with a
gesture worthy of Talma.

Julien quoted some words from Virgil's Georgics in reference to a
flower and expressed the opinion that nothing was equal to the abbe
Delille's verses. In a word he flattered the academician in every
possible way. He then said to him with the utmost indifference, "I
suppose mademoiselle de la Mole has inherited something from some uncle
for whom she is in mourning."

"What! you belong to the house?" said the academician stopping short,
"and you do not know her folly? As a matter of fact it is strange her
mother should allow her to do such things, but between ourselves, they
do not shine in this household exactly by their force of character.
Mademoiselle's share has to do for all of them, and governs them.
To-day is the thirtieth of April!" and the academician stopped and
looked meaningly at Julien. Julien smiled with the most knowing
expression he could master. "What connection can there be between
ruling a household, wearing a black dress, and the thirtieth April?" he
said to himself. "I must be even sillier than I thought."

"I must confess...." he said to the academician while he continued to
question him with his look. "Let us take a turn round the garden,"
said the academician delighted at seeing an opportunity of telling a
long and well-turned story.

"What! is it really possible you do not know what happened on the 30th
April, 1574?"

"And where?" said Julien in astonishment.

"At the place de Greve."

Julien was extremely astonished that these words did not supply him
with the key. His curiosity and his expectation of a tragic interest
which would be in such harmony with his own character gave his eyes
that brilliance which the teller of a story likes to see so much in
the person who is listening to him. The academician was delighted at
finding a virgin ear, and narrated at length to Julien how Boniface de
la Mole, the handsomest young man of this century together with Annibal
de Coconasso, his friend, a gentleman of Piedmont, had been beheaded on
the 30th April, 1574. La Mole was the adored lover of Queen Marguerite
of Navarre and "observe," continued the academician, "that mademoiselle
de La Mole's full name is Mathilde Marguerite. La Mole was at the same
time a favourite of the Duke d'Alencon and the intimate friend of
his mistress's husband, the King of Navarre, subsequently Henri IV.
On Shrove Tuesday of that year 1574, the court happened to be at St.
Germain with the poor king Charles IX. who was dying. La Mole wished
to rescue his friends the princes, whom Queen Catherine of Medici was
keeping prisoner in her Court. He advanced two hundred cavalry under
the walls of St. Germain; the Duke d'Alencon was frightened and La Mole
was thrown to the executioner.

"But the thing which affects mademoiselle Mathilde, and what she has
admitted to me herself seven or eight years ago when she was twelve,
is a head! a head!----and the academician lifted up his eyes to the
heavens. What struck her in this political catastrophe, was the hiding
of Queen Marguerite de Navarre in a house in the place de Greve and
her then asking for her lover's head. At midnight on the following day
she took that head in her carriage and went and buried it herself in a
chapel at the foot of the hill at Montmartre."

"Impossible?" cried Julien really moved.

"Mademoiselle Mathilde despises her brother because, as you see, he
does not bother one whit about this ancient history, and never wears
mourning on the thirtieth of April. It is since the time of this
celebrated execution and in order to recall the intimate friendship
of La Mole for the said Coconasso, who Italian that he was, bore
the name of Annibal that all the men of that family bear that name.
And," added the academician lowering his voice, "this Coconasso was,
according to Charles IX. himself, one of the cruellest assassins of the
twenty-fourth August, 1572. But how is it possible, my dear Sorel, that
you should be ignorant of these things--you who take your meals with
the family."

"So that is why mademoiselle de la Mole twice called her brother
Annibal at dinner. I thought I had heard wrong."

"It was a reproach. It is strange that the marquise should allow such
follies. The husband of that great girl will have a fine time of it."

This remark was followed by five or six satiric phrases. Julien was
shocked by the joy which shone in the academician's eyes. "We are just
a couple of servants," he thought, "engaged in talking scandal about
our masters. But I ought not to be astonished at anything this academy
man does."

Julien had surprised him on his knees one day before the marquise de
la Mole; he was asking her for a tobacco receivership for a nephew in
the provinces. In the evening a little chambermaid of mademoiselle de
la Mole, who was paying court to Julien, just as Elisa had used to do,
gave him to understand that her mistress's mourning was very far from
being worn simply to attract attention. This eccentricity was rooted in
her character. She really loved that la Mole, the beloved lover of the
most witty queen of the century, who had died through trying to set his
friends at liberty--and what friends! The first prince of the blood and
Henri IV.

Accustomed as he had been to the perfect naturalness which shone
throughout madame de Renal's whole demeanour, Julien could not help
finding all the women of Paris affected, and, though by no means of a
morose disposition, found nothing to say to them. Mademoiselle de la
Mole was an exception.

He now began to cease taking for coldness of heart that kind of beauty
which attaches importance to a noble bearing. He had long conversations
with mademoiselle de la Mole, who would sometimes walk with him in
the garden after dinner. She told him one day that she was reading
the History of D'Aubigne and also Brantome. "Strange books to read,"
thought Julien; "and the marquis does not allow her to read Walter
Scott's novels!"

She told him one day, with that pleased brilliancy in her eyes, which
is the real test of genuine admiration, about a characteristic act of a
young woman of the reign of Henry III., which she had just read in the
memoirs of L'Etoile. Finding her husband unfaithful she stabbed him.

Julien's vanity was nattered. A person who was surrounded by so much
homage, and who governed the whole house, according to the academician,
deigned to talk to him on a footing almost resembling friendship.

"I made a mistake," thought Julien soon afterwards. "This is not
familiarity, I am simply the confidante of a tragedy, she needs to
speak to someone. I pass in this family for a man of learning. I will
go and read Brantome, D'Aubigne, L'Etoile. I shall then be able to
challenge some of the anecdotes which madame de la Mole speaks to me
about. I want to leave off this role of the passive confidante."

His conversations with this young girl, whose demeanour was so
impressive and yet so easy, gradually became more interesting. He
forgot his grim role of the rebel plebian. He found her well-informed
and even logical. Her opinions in the gardens were very different to
those which she owned to in the salon. Sometimes she exhibited an
enthusiasm and a frankness which were in absolute contrast to her usual
cold haughtiness.

"The wars of the League were the heroic days of France," she said
to him one day, with eyes shining with enthusiasm. "Then everyone
fought to gain something which he desired, for the sake of his party's
triumph, and not just in order to win a cross as in the days of your
emperor. Admit that there was then less egotism and less pettiness. I
love that century."

"And Boniface de la Mole was the hero of it," he said to her.

"At least he was loved in a way that it is perhaps sweet to be loved.
What woman alive now would not be horrified at touching the head of her
decapitated lover?"

Madame de la Mole called her daughter. To be effective hypocrisy
ought to hide itself, yet Julien had half confided his admiration for
Napoleon to mademoiselle de la Mole.

Julien remained alone in the garden. "That is the immense advantage
they have over us," he said to himself. "Their ancestors lift them
above vulgar sentiments, and they have not got always to be thinking
about their subsistence! What misery," he added bitterly. "I am not
worthy to discuss these great matters. My life is nothing more than a
series of hypocrisies because I have not got a thousand francs a year
with which to buy my bread and butter."

Mathilde came running back. "What are you dreaming about, monsieur?"
she said to him.

Julien was tired of despising himself. Through sheer pride he frankly
told her his thoughts. He blushed a great deal while talking to such
a person about his own poverty. He tried to make it as plain as he
could that he was not asking for anything. Mathilde never thought
him so handsome; she detected in him an expression of frankness and
sensitiveness which he often lacked.

Within a month of this episode Julien was pensively walking in the
garden of the hotel; but his face had no longer the hardness and
philosophic superciliousness which the chronic consciousness of his
inferior position had used to write upon it. He had just escorted
mademoiselle de la Mole to the door of the salon. She said she had hurt
her foot while running with her brother.

"She leaned on my arm in a very singular way," said Julien to himself.
"Am I a coxcomb, or is it true that she has taken a fancy to me? She
listens to me so gently, even when I confess to her all the sufferings
of my pride! She too, who is so haughty to everyone! They would be
very astonished in the salon if they saw that expression of hers. It
is quite certain that she does not show anyone else such sweetness and
goodness."

Julien endeavoured not to exaggerate this singular friendship. He
himself compared it to an armed truce. When they met again each day,
they almost seemed before they took up the almost intimate tone of the
previous day to ask themselves "are we going to be friends or enemies
to-day?" Julien had realised that to allow himself to be insulted
with impunity even once by this haughty girl would mean the loss of
everything. "If I have got to quarrel would it not be better that it
should be straight away in defending the rights of my own pride,
than in parrying the expressions of contempt which would follow the
slightest abandonment of my duty to my own self-respect?"

On many occasions, on days when she was in a bad temper Mathilde, tried
to play the great lady with him. These attempts were extremely subtle,
but Julien rebuffed them roughly.

One day he brusquely interrupted her. "Has mademoiselle de la Mole any
orders to give her father's secretary?" he said to her. "If so he must
listen to her orders, and execute them, but apart from that he has not
a single word to say to her. He is not paid to tell her his thoughts."

This kind of life, together with the singular surmises which it
occasioned, dissipated the boredom which he had been accustomed to
experience in that magnificent salon, where everyone was afraid, and
where any kind of jest was in bad form.

"It would be humorous if she loved me but whether she loves me or
not," went on Julien, "I have for my confidential friend a girl of
spirit before whom I see the whole household quake, while the marquis
de Croisenois does so more than anyone else. Yes, to be sure, that
same young man who is so polite, so gentle, and so brave, and who has
combined all those advantages of birth and fortune a single one of
which would put my heart at rest--he is madly in love with her, he
ought to marry her. How many letters has M. de la Mole made me write
to the two notaries in order to arrange the contract? And I, though I
am an absolute inferior when I have my pen in my hand, why, I triumph
over that young man two hours afterwards in this very garden; for,
after all, her preference is striking and direct. Perhaps she hates
him because she sees in him a future husband. She is haughty enough
for that. As for her kindness to me, I receive it in my capacity of
confidential servant.

"But no, I am either mad or she is making advances to me; the colder
and more respectful I show myself to her, the more she runs after me.
It may be a deliberate piece of affectation; but I see her eyes become
animated when I appear unexpectedly. Can the women of Paris manage to
act to such an extent. What does it matter to me! I have appearances in
my favour, let us enjoy appearances. Heavens, how beautiful she is!
How I like her great blue eyes when I see them at close quarters, and
they look at me in the way they often do? What a difference between
this spring and that of last year, when I lived an unhappy life among
three hundred dirty malicious hypocrites, and only kept myself afloat
through sheer force of character, I was almost as malicious as they
were."

"That young girl is making fun of me," Julien would think in his
suspicious days. "She is acting in concert with her brother to make
a fool of me. But she seems to have an absolute contempt for her
brother's lack of energy. He is brave and that is all. He has not a
thought which dares to deviate from the conventional. It is always
I who have to take up the cudgels in his defence. A young girl of
nineteen! Can one at that age act up faithfully every second of the
day to the part which one has determined to play. On the other hand
whenever mademoiselle de la Mole fixes her eyes on me with a singular
expression comte Norbert always goes away. I think that suspicious.
Ought he not to be indignant at his sister singling out a servant of
her household? For that is how I heard the Duke de Chaulnes speak about
me. This recollection caused anger to supersede every other emotion. It
is simply a fashion for old fashioned phraseology on the part of the
eccentric duke?"

"Well, she is pretty!" continued Julien with a tigerish expression, "I
will have her, I will then go away, and woe to him who disturbs me in
my flight."

This idea became Julien's sole preoccupation. He could not think of
anything else. His days passed like hours.

Every moment when he tried to concentrate on some important matter
his mind became a blank, and he would wake up a quarter of an hour
afterwards with a beating heart and an anxious mind, brooding over this
idea "does she love me?"

CHAPTER XLI

A YOUNG GIRL'S DOMINION

        I admire her beauty but I fear her intellect.--_Merimee_.

If Julien had employed the time which he spent in exaggerating
Matilde's beauty or in working himself up into a rage against that
family haughtiness which she was forgetting for his sake in examining
what was going on in the salon, he would have understood the secret of
her dominion over all that surrounded her.

When anyone displeased mademoiselle de La Mole she managed to punish
the offender by a jest which was so guarded, so well chosen, so polite
and so neatly timed, that the more the victim thought about it, the
sorer grew the wound. She gradually became positively terrible to
wounded vanity. As she attached no value to many things which the
rest of her family very seriously wanted, she always struck them as
self-possessed. The salons of the aristocracy are nice enough to brag
about when you leave them, but that is all; mere politeness alone only
counts for something in its own right during the first few days. Julien
experienced this after the first fascination and the first astonishment
had passed off. "Politeness," he said to himself "is nothing but the
absence of that bad temper which would be occasioned by bad manners."
Mathilde was frequently bored; perhaps she would have been bored
anywhere. She then found a real distraction and real pleasure in
sharpening an epigram.

It was perhaps in order to have more amusing victims than her great
relations, the academician and the five or six other men of inferior
class who paid her court, that she had given encouragement to the
marquis de Croisenois, the comte Caylus and two or three other young
men of the highest rank. They simply represented new subjects for
epigrams.

We will admit with reluctance, for we are fond of Mathilde, that she
had received many letters from several of them and had sometimes
answered them. We hasten to add that this person constitutes an
exception to the manners of the century. Lack of prudence is not
generally the fault with which the pupils of the noble convent of the
Sacred Heart can be reproached.

One day the marquis de Croisenois returned to Mathilde a fairly
compromising letter which she had written the previous night. He
thought that he was thereby advancing his cause a great deal by taking
this highly prudent step. But the very imprudence of her correspondence
was the very element in it Mathilde liked. Her pleasure was to stake
her fate. She did not speak to him again for six weeks.

She amused herself with the letters of these young men, but in her view
they were all like each other. It was invariably a case of the most
profound, the most melancholy, passion.

"They all represent the same perfect man, ready to leave for
Palestine," she exclaimed to her cousin. "Can you conceive of anything
more insipid? So these are the letters I am going to receive all my
life! There can only be a change every twenty years according to the
kind of vogue which happens to be fashionable. They must have had more
colour in them in the days of the Empire. In those days all these young
society men had seen or accomplished feats which really had an element
of greatness. The Duke of N---- my uncle was at Wagram."

"What brains do you need to deal a sabre blow? And when they have had
the luck to do that they talk of it so often!" said mademoiselle de
Sainte-Heredite, Mathilde's cousin.

"Well, those tales give me pleasure. Being in a real battle, a battle
of Napoleon, where six thousand soldiers were killed, why, that's proof
of courage. Exposing one's self to danger elevates the soul and saves
it from the boredom in which my poor admirers seem to be sunk; and that
boredom is contagious. Which of them ever thought of doing anything
extraordinary? They are trying to win my hand, a pretty business to
be sure! I am rich and my father will procure advancement for his
son-in-law. Well! I hope he'll manage to find someone who is a little
bit amusing."

Mathilde's keen, sharp and picturesque view of life spoilt her language
as one sees. An expression of hers would often constitute a blemish
in the eyes of her polished friends. If she had been less fashionable
they would almost have owned that her manner of speaking was, from the
standpoint of feminine delicacy, to some extent unduly coloured.

She, on her side, was very unjust towards the handsome cavaliers who
fill the Bois de Boulogne. She envisaged the future not with terror,
that would have been a vivid emotion, but with a disgust which was very
rare at her age.

What could she desire? Fortune, good birth, wit, beauty, according to
what the world said, and according to what she believed, all these
things had been lavished upon her by the hands of chance.

So this was the state of mind of the most envied heiress of the
faubourg Saint-Germain when she began to find pleasure in walking with
Julien. She was astonished at his pride; she admired the ability of the
little bourgeois. "He will manage to get made a bishop like the abbe
Mouray," she said to herself.

Soon the sincere and unaffected opposition with which our hero received
several of her ideas filled her mind; she continued to think about
it, she told her friend the slightest details of the conversation,
but thought that she would never succeed in fully rendering all their
meaning.

An idea suddenly flashed across her; "I have the happiness of loving,"
she said to herself one day with an incredible ecstasy of joy. "I am in
love, I am in love, it is clear! Where can a young, witty and beautiful
girl of my own age find sensations if not in love? It is no good. I
shall never feel any love for Croisenois, Caylus, and _tutti quanti_.
They are unimpeachable, perhaps too unimpeachable; any way they bore
me."

She rehearsed in her mind all the descriptions of passion which she
had read in _Manon Lescaut_, the _Nouvelle Heloise_, the _Letters of
a Portuguese Nun_, etc., etc. It was only a question of course of the
grand passion; light love was unworthy of a girl of her age and birth.
She vouchsafed the name of love to that heroic sentiment which was met
with in France in the time of Henri III. and Bassompierre. That love
did not basely yield to obstacles, but, far from it, inspired great
deeds. "How unfortunate for me that there is not a real court like that
of Catherine de' Medici or of Louis XIII. I feel equal to the boldest
and greatest actions. What would I not make of a king who was a man of
spirit like Louis XIII. if he were sighing at my feet! I would take
him to the Vendee, as the Baron de Tolly is so fond of saying, and
from that base he would re-conquer his kingdom; then no more about a
charter--and Julien would help me. What does he lack? name and fortune.
He will make a name, he will win a fortune.

"Croisenois lacks nothing, and he will never be anything else all his
life but a duke who is half 'ultra' and half Liberal, an undecided
being who never goes to extremes and consequently always plays second
fiddle.

"What great action is not an extreme at the moment when it is
undertaken? It is only after accomplishment that it seems possible to
commonplace individuals. Yes, it is love with all its miracles which
is going to reign over my heart; I feel as much from the fire which is
thrilling me. Heaven owed me this boon. It will not then have lavished
in vain all its bounties on one single person. My happiness will be
worthy of me. Each day will no longer be the cold replica of the day
before. There is grandeur and audacity in the very fact of daring to
love a man, placed so far beneath me by his social position. Let us see
what happens, will he continue to deserve me? I will abandon him at the
first sign of weakness which I detect. A girl of my birth and of that
mediaeval temperament which they are good enough to ascribe to me (she
was quoting from her father) must not behave like a fool.

"But should I not be behaving like a fool if I were to love the marquis
de Croisenois? I should simply have a new edition over again of that
happiness enjoyed by my girl cousins which I so utterly despise. I
already know everything the poor marquis would say to me and every
answer I should make. What's the good of a love which makes one
yawn? One might as well be in a nunnery. I shall have a celebration
of the signing of a contract just like my younger cousin when the
grandparents all break down, provided of course that they are not
annoyed by some condition introduced into the contract at the eleventh
hour by the notary on the other side."

CHAPTER XLII

IS HE A DANTON?

        The need of anxiety. These words summed up the character
        of my aunt, the beautiful Marguerite de Valois, who was
        soon to marry the King of Navarre whom we see reigning
        at present in France under the name of Henry IV. The
        need of staking something was the key to the character
        of this charming princess; hence her quarrels and
        reconciliations with her brothers from the time when she
        was sixteen. Now, what can a young girl stake? The most
        precious thing she has: her reputation, the esteem of a
        lifetime.
                        _Memoirs of the Duke d' Angouleme._
                        _the natural son of Charles IX_.

"There is no contract to sign for Julien and me, there is no notary;
everything is on the heroic plane, everything is the child of chance.
Apart from the noble birth which he lacks, it is the love of Marguerite
de Valois for the young La Mole, the most distinguished man of the
time, over again. Is it my fault that the young men of the court are
such great advocates of the conventional, and turn pale at the mere
idea of the slightest adventure which is a little out of the ordinary?
A little journey in Greece or Africa represents the highest pitch of
their audacity, and moreover they can only march in troops. As soon as
they find themselves alone they are frightened, not of the Bedouin's
lance, but of ridicule and that fear makes them mad.

"My little Julien on the other hand only likes to act alone. This
unique person never thinks for a minute of seeking help or support in
others! He despises others, and that is why I do not despise him.

"If Julien were noble as well as poor, my love would simply be a vulgar
piece of stupidity, a sheer mesalliance; I would have nothing to do
with it; it would be absolutely devoid of the characteristic traits of
grand passion--the immensity of the difficulty to be overcome and the
black uncertainty cf the result."

Mademoiselle de la Mole was so engrossed in these pretty arguments that
without realising what she was doing, she praised Julien to the marquis
de Croisenois and her brother on the following day. Her eloquence went
so far that it provoked them.

"You be careful of this young man who has so much energy," exclaimed
her brother; "if we have another revolution he will have us all
guillotined."

She was careful not to answer, but hastened to rally her brother and
the marquis de Croisenois on the apprehension which energy caused them.
"It is at bottom simply the fear of meeting the unexpected, the fear of
being non-plussed in the presence of the unexpected--"

"Always, always, gentlemen, the fear of ridicule, a monster which had
the misfortune to die in 1816."

"Ridicule has ceased to exist in a country where there are two
parties," M. de la Mole was fond of saying.

His daughter had understood the idea.

"So, gentlemen," she would say to Julien's enemies, "you will be
frightened all your life and you will be told afterwards,

          "Ce n'etait pas un loup, ce n'en etait que l'ombre."

Matilde soon left them. Her brother's words horrified her; they
occasioned her much anxiety, but the day afterwards she regarded them
as tantamount to the highest praise.

"His energy frightens them in this age where all energy is dead. I will
tell him my brother's phrase. I want to see what answer he will make.
But I will choose one of the moments when his eyes are shining. Then he
will not be able to lie to me.

"He must be a Danton!" she added after a long and vague reverie. "Well,
suppose the revolution begins again, what figures will Croisenois and
my brother cut then? It is settled in advance: Sublime resignation.
They will be heroic sheep who will allow their throats to be cut
without saying a word. Their one fear when they die will still be the
fear of being bad form. If a Jacobin came to arrest my little Julien he
would blow his brains out, however small a chance he had of escaping.
He is not frightened of doing anything in bad form."

These last words made her pensive; they recalled painful memories and
deprived her of all her boldness. These words reminded her of the jests
of MM. de Caylus, Croisenois, de Luz and her brother; these gentlemen
joined in censuring Julien for his priestly demeanour, which they said
was humble and hypocritical.

"But," she went on suddenly with her eyes gleaming with joy, "the very
bitterness and the very frequency of their jests prove in spite of
themselves that he is the most distinguished man whom we have seen this
winter. What matter his defects and the things which they make fun of?
He has the element of greatness and they are shocked by it. Yes, they,
the very men who are so good and so charitable in other matters. It is
a fact that he is poor and that he has studied in order to be a priest;
they are the heads of a squadron and never had any need of studying;
they found it less trouble.

"In spite of all the handicap of his everlasting black suit and of that
priestly expression which he must wear, poor boy, if he isn't to die of
hunger, his merit frightens them, nothing could be clearer. And as for
that priest-like expression, why he no longer has it after we have been
alone for some moments, and after those gentlemen have evolved what
they imagine to be a subtle and impromptu epigram, is not their first
look towards Julien? I have often noticed it. And yet they know well
that he never speaks to them unless he is questioned. I am the only one
whom he speaks to. He thinks I have a lofty soul. He only answers the
points they raise sufficiently to be polite. He immediately reverts
into respectfulness. But with me he will discuss things for whole
hours, he is not certain of his ideas so long as I find the slightest
objection to them. There has not been a single rifle-shot fired all
this winter; words have been the only means of attracting attention.
Well, my father, who is a superior man and will carry the fortunes of
our house very far, respects Julien. Every one else hates him, no one
despises him except my mother's devout friends."

The Comte de Caylus had or pretended to have a great passion for
horses; he passed his life in his stables and often breakfasted there.
This great passion, together with his habit of never laughing, won for
him much respect among his friends: he was the eagle of the little
circle.

As soon as they had reassembled the following day behind madame de la
Mole's armchair, M. de Caylus, supported by Croisenois and by Norbert,
began in Julien's absence to attack sharply the high opinion which
Mathilde entertained for Julien. He did this without any provocation,
and almost the very minute that he caught sight of mademoiselle de la
Mole. She tumbled to the subtlety immediately and was delighted with it.

"So there they are all leagued together," she said to herself, "against
a man of genius who has not ten louis a year to bless himself with and
who cannot answer them except in so far as he is questioned. They are
frightened of him, black coat and all. But how would things stand if he
had epaulettes?"

She had never been more brilliant, hardly had Caylus and his allies
opened their attack than she riddled them with sarcastic jests. When
the fire of these brilliant officers was at length extinguished she
said to M. de Caylus,

"Suppose that some gentleman in the Franche-Comte mountains finds out
to-morrow that Julien is his natural son and gives him a name and
some thousands of francs, why in six months he will be an officer of
hussars like you, gentlemen, in six weeks he will have moustaches like
you gentlemen. And then his greatness of character will no longer be
an object of ridicule. I shall then see you reduced, monsieur the
future duke, to this stale and bad argument, the superiority of the
court nobility over the provincial nobility. But where will you be
if I choose to push you to extremities and am mischievous enough to
make Julien's father a Spanish duke, who was a prisoner of war at
Besancon in the time of Napoleon, and who out of conscientious scruples
acknowledges him on his death bed?" MM. de Caylus, and de Croisenois
found all these assumptions of illegitimacy in rather bad taste. That
was all they saw in Mathilde's reasoning.

His sister's words were so clear that Norbert, in spite of his
submissiveness, assumed a solemn air, which one must admit did not
harmonise very well with his amiable, smiling face. He ventured to say
a few words.

"Are you ill? my dear," answered Mathilde with a little air of
seriousness. "You must be very bad to answer jests by moralizing."

"Moralizing from you! Are you soliciting a job as prefect?"

Mathilde soon forgot the irritation of the comte de Caylus, the bad
temper of Norbert, and the taciturn despair of M. de Croisenois. She
had to decide one way or the other a fatal question which had just
seized upon her soul.

"Julien is sincere enough with me," she said to herself, "a man at
his age, in a inferior position, and rendered unhappy as he is by an
extraordinary ambition, must have need of a woman friend. I am perhaps
that friend, but I see no sign of love in him. Taking into account the
audacity of his character he would surely have spoken to me about his
love."

This uncertainty and this discussion with herself which henceforth
monopolised Mathilde's time, and in connection with which she found new
arguments each time that Julien spoke to her, completely routed those
fits of boredom to which she had been so liable.

Daughter as she was of a man of intellect who might become a minister,
mademoiselle de la Mole had been when in the convent of the Sacred
Heart, the object of the most excessive flattery. This misfortune can
never be compensated for. She had been persuaded that by reason of all
her advantages of birth, fortune, etc., she ought to be happier than
any one else. This is the cause of the boredom of princes and of all
their follies.

Mathilde had not escaped the deadly influence of this idea. However
intelligent one may be, one cannot at the age of ten be on one's guard
against the flatteries of a whole convent, which are apparently so well
founded.

From the moment that she had decided that she loved Julien, she
was no longer bored. She congratulated herself every day on having
deliberately decided to indulge in a grand passion. "This amusement
is very dangerous," she thought. "All the better, all the better, a
thousand times. Without a grand passion I should be languishing in
boredom during the finest time of my life, the years from sixteen
to twenty. I have already wasted my finest years: all my pleasure
consisted in being obliged to listen to the silly arguments of my
mother's friends who when at Coblentz in 1792 were not quite so strict,
so they say, as their words of to-day."

It was while Mathilde was a prey to these great fits of uncertainty
that Julien was baffled by those long looks of hers which lingered upon
him. He noticed, no doubt, an increased frigidity in the manner of
comte Norbert, and a fresh touch of haughtiness in the manner of MM. de
Caylus, de Luz and de Croisenois. He was accustomed to that. He would
sometimes be their victim in this way at the end of an evening when, in
view of the position he occupied, he had been unduly brilliant. Had it
not been for the especial welcome with which Mathilde would greet him,
and the curiosity with which all this society inspired him, he would
have avoided following these brilliant moustachioed young men into the
garden, when they accompanied mademoiselle de La Mole there, in the
hour after dinner.

"Yes," Julien would say to himself, "it is impossible for me to deceive
myself, mademoiselle de la Mole looks at me in a very singular way.
But even when her fine blue open eyes are fixed on me, wide open with
the most abandon, I always detect behind them an element of scrutiny,
self-possession and malice. Is it possible that this may be love? But
how different to madame de Renal's looks!"

One evening after dinner Julien, who had followed M. de la Mole into
his study, was rapidly walking back to the garden. He approached
Mathilde's circle without any warning, and caught some words pronounced
in a very loud voice. She was teasing her brother. Julien heard his
name distinctly pronounced twice. He appeared. There was immediately
a profound silence and abortive efforts were made to dissipate it.
Mademoiselle de la Mole and her brother were too animated to find
another topic of conversation. MM. de Caylus, de Croisenois, de Luz,
and one of their friends, manifested an icy coldness to Julien. He went
away.

CHAPTER XLIII

A PLOT

        Disconnected remarks, casual meetings, become
        transformed in the eyes of an imaginative man into
        the most convincing proofs, if he has any fire in his
        temperament.--_Schiller_.

The following day he again caught Norbert and his sister talking about
him. A funereal silence was established on his arrival as on the
previous day. His suspicions were now unbounded. "Can these charming
young people have started to make fun of me? I must own this is much
more probable, much more natural than any suggested passion on the part
of mademoiselle de La Mole for a poor devil of a secretary. In the
first place, have those people got any passions at all? Mystification
is their strong point. They are jealous of my poor little superiority
in speaking. Being jealous again is one of their weaknesses. On that
basis everything is explicable. Mademoiselle de La Mole simply wants to
persuade me that she is marking me out for special favour in order to
show me off to her betrothed?"

This cruel suspicion completely changed Julien's psychological
condition. The idea found in his heart a budding love which it had no
difficulty in destroying. This love was only founded on Mathilde's rare
beauty, or rather on her queenly manners and her admirable dresses.
Julien was still a parvenu in this respect. We are assured that there
is nothing equal to a pretty society women for dazzling a peasant
who is at the same time a man of intellect, when he is admitted to
first class society. It had not been Mathilde's character which had
given Julien food for dreams in the days that had just passed. He had
sufficient sense to realise that he knew nothing about her character.
All he saw of it might be merely superficial.

For instance, Mathilde would not have missed mass on Sunday for
anything in the world. She accompanied her mother there nearly every
time. If when in the salon of the Hotel de La Mole some indiscreet man
forgot where he was, and indulged in the remotest allusion to any jest
against the real or supposed interests of Church or State, Mathilde
immediately assumed an icy seriousness. Her previously arch expression
re-assumed all the impassive haughtiness of an old family portrait.

But Julien had assured himself that she always had one or two of
Voltaire's most philosophic volumes in her room. He himself would
often steal some tomes of that fine edition which was so magnificently
bound. By moving each volume a little distance from the one next to it
he managed to hide the absence of the one he took away, but he soon
noticed that someone else was reading Voltaire. He had recourse to a
trick worthy of the seminary and placed some pieces of hair on those
volumes which he thought were likely to interest mademoiselle de La
Mole. They disappeared for whole weeks.

M. de La Mole had lost patience with his bookseller, who always sent
him all the spurious memoirs, and had instructed Julien to buy all the
new books, which were at all stimulating. But in order to prevent the
poison spreading over the household, the secretary was ordered to place
the books in a little book-case that stood in the marquis's own room.
He was soon quite certain that although the new books were hostile to
the interests of both State and Church, they very quickly disappeared.
It was certainly not Norbert who read them.

Julien attached undue importance to this discovery, and attributed to
mademoiselle de la Mole a Machiavellian role. This seeming depravity
constituted a charm in his eyes, the one moral charm, in fact, which
she possessed. He was led into this extravagance by his boredom with
hypocrisy and moral platitudes.

It was more a case of his exciting his own imagination than of his
being swept away by his love.

It was only after he had abandoned himself to reveries about the
elegance of mademoiselle de la Mole's figure, the excellent taste
of he dress, the whiteness of her hand, the beauty of her arm, the
_disinvoltura_ of all her movements, that he began to find himself in
love. Then in order to complete the charm he thought her a Catherine
de' Medici. Nothing was too deep or too criminal for the character
which he ascribed to her. She was the ideal of the Maslons, the
Frilairs, and the Castanedes whom he had admired so much in his youth.
To put it shortly, she represented in his eyes the Paris ideal.

Could anything possibly be more humorous than believing in the depth or
in the depravity of the Parisian character?

It is impossible that this _trio_ is making fun of me thought Julien.
The reader knows little of his character if he has not begun already
to imagine his cold and gloomy expression when he answered Mathilde's
looks. A bitter irony rebuffed those assurances of friendship which the
astonished mademoiselle de la Mole ventured to hazard on two or three
occasions.

Piqued by this sudden eccentricity, the heart of this young girl,
though naturally cold, bored and intellectual, became as impassioned as
it was naturally capable of being. But there was also a large element
of pride in Mathilde's character, and the birth of a sentiment which
made all her happiness dependent on another, was accompanied by a
gloomy melancholy.

Julien had derived sufficient advantage from his stay in Paris to
appreciate that this was not the frigid melancholy of ennui. Instead
of being keen as she had been on at homes, theatres, and all kinds of
distractions, she now shunned them.

Music sung by Frenchmen bored Mathilde to death, yet Julien, who
always made a point of being present when the audience came out of the
Opera, noticed that she made a point of getting taken there as often
as she could. He thought he noticed that she had lost a little of that
brilliant neatness of touch which used to be manifest in everything
she did. She would sometimes answer her friends with jests rendered
positively outrageous through the sheer force of their stinging energy.
He thought that she made a special butt of the marquis de Croisenois.
That young man must be desperately in love with money not to give the
go-by to that girl, however rich she maybe, thought Julien. And as for
himself, indignant at these outrages on masculine self-respect, he
redoubled his frigidity towards her. Sometimes he went so far as to
answer her with scant courtesy.

In spite of his resolution not to become the dupe of Mathilde's signs
of interest, these manifestations were so palpable on certain days, and
Julien, whose eyes were beginning to be opened, began to find her so
pretty, that he was sometimes embarrassed.

"These young people of society will score in the long run by their
skill and their coolness over my inexperience," he said to himself. "I
must leave and put an end to all this." The marquis had just entrusted
him with the administration of a number of small estates and houses
which he possessed in Lower Languedoc. A journey was necessary; M. de
la Mole reluctantly consented. Julien had become his other self, except
in those matters which concerned his political career.

"So, when we come to balance the account," Julien said to himself,
as he prepared his departure, "they have not caught me. Whether the
jests that mademoiselle de la Mole made to those gentlemen are real,
or whether they were only intended to inspire me with confidence, they
have simply amused me.

"If there is no conspiracy against the carpenter's son, mademoiselle de
la Mole is an enigma, but at any rate, she is quite as much an enigma
for the marquis de Croisenois as she is to me. Yesterday, for instance,
her bad temper was very real, and I had the pleasure of seeing her
snub, thanks to her favour for me, a young man who is as noble and as
rich as I am a poor scoundrel of a plebeian. That is my finest triumph;
it will divert me in my post-chaise as I traverse the Languedoc plains."

He had kept his departure a secret, but Mathilde knew, even better than
he did himself, that he was going to leave Paris the following day for
a long time. She developed a maddening headache, which was rendered
worse by the stuffy salon. She walked a great deal in the garden, and
persecuted Norbert, the marquis de Croisenois, Caylus, de Luz, and
some other young men who had dined at the Hotel de la Mole, to such an
extent by her mordant witticisms, that she drove them to take their
leave. She kept looking at Julien in a strange way.

"Perhaps that look is a pose," thought Julien, "but how about that
hurried breathing and all that agitation? Bah," he said to himself,
"who am I to judge of such things? We are dealing with the cream of
Parisian sublimity and subtlety. As for that hurried breathing which
was on the point of affecting me, she no doubt studied it with Leontine
Fay, whom she likes so much."

They were left alone; the conversation was obviously languishing. "No,
Julien has no feeling for me," said Mathilde to herself, in a state of
real unhappiness.

As he was taking leave of her she took his arm violently.

"You will receive a letter from me this evening," she said to him in a
voice that was so changed that its tone was scarcely recognisable.

This circumstance affected Julien immediately.

"My father," she continued, "has a proper regard for the services you
render him. You must not leave to-morrow; find an excuse." And she ran
away.

Her figure was charming. It was impossible to have a prettier foot. She
ran with a grace which fascinated Julien, but will the reader guess
what he began to think about after she had finally left him? He felt
wounded by the imperious tone with which she had said the words, "you
must." Louis XV. too, when on his death-bed, had been keenly irritated
by the words "you must," which had been tactlessly pronounced by his
first physician, and yet Louis XV. was not a parvenu.

An hour afterwards a footman gave Julien a letter. It was quite simply
a declaration of love.

"The style is too affected," said Julien to himself, as he endeavoured
to control by his literary criticism the joy which was spreading over
his cheeks and forcing him to smile in spite of himself.

At last his passionate exultation was too strong to be controlled. "So
I," he suddenly exclaimed, "I, the poor peasant, get a declaration of
love from a great lady."

"As for myself, I haven't done so badly," he added, restraining his
joy as much as he could. "I have managed to preserve my self-respect.
I did not say that I loved her." He began to study the formation of
the letters. Mademoiselle de la Mole had a pretty little English
handwriting. He needed some concrete occupation to distract him from a
joy which verged on delirium.

"Your departure forces me to speak.... I could not bear not to see you
again."

A thought had just struck Julien like a new discovery. It interrupted
his examination of Mathilde's letter, and redoubled his joy. "So I
score over the marquis de Croisenois," he exclaimed. "Yes, I who could
only talk seriously! And he is so handsome. He has a moustache and a
charming uniform. He always manages to say something witty and clever
just at the psychological moment."

Julien experienced a delightful minute. He was wandering at random in
the garden, mad with happiness.

Afterwards he went up to his desk, and had himself ushered in to the
marquis de la Mole, who was fortunately still in. He showed him several
stamped papers which had come from Normandy, and had no difficulty
in convincing him that he was obliged to put off his departure for
Languedoc in order to look after the Normandy lawsuits.

"I am very glad that you are not going," said the marquis to him, when
they had finished talking business. "I like seeing you." Julien went
out; the words irritated him.

"And I--I am going to seduce his daughter! and perhaps render
impossible that marriage with the marquis de Croisenois to which the
marquis looks forward with such delight. If he does not get made a
duke, at any rate his daughter will have a coronet." Julien thought of
leaving for Languedoc in spite of Mathilde's letter, and in spite of
the explanation he had just given to the marquis. This flash of virtue
quickly disappeared.

"How kind it is of me," he said to himself, "me ... a plebeian, takes
pity on a family of this rank! Yes, me, whom the duke of Chaulnes
calls a servant! How does the marquis manage to increase his immense
fortune? By selling stock when he picks up information at the castle
that there will be a panic of a _coup d'etat_ on the following day.
And shall I, who have been flung down into the lowest class by a cruel
providence--I, whom providence has given a noble heart but not an
income of a thousand francs, that is to say, not enough to buy bread
with, literally not enough to buy bread with--shall I refuse a pleasure
that presents itself? A limpid fountain which will quench my thirst in
this scorching desert of mediocrity which I am traversing with such
difficulty! Upon my word, I am not such a fool! Each man for himself in
that desert of egoism which is called life."

And he remembered certain disdainful looks which madame de la Mole, and
especially her lady friends, had favoured him with.

The pleasure of scoring over the marquis de Croisenois completed the
rout of this echo of virtue.

"How I should like to make him angry," said Julien. "With what
confidence would I give him a sword thrust now!" And he went through
the segoon thrust. "Up till now I have been a mere usher, who exploited
basely the little courage he had. After this letter I am his equal.

"Yes," he slowly said to himself, with an infinite pleasure, "the
merits of the marquis and myself have been weighed in the balance, and
it is the poor carpenter from the Jura who turns the scale.

"Good!" he exclaimed, "this is how I shall sign my answer. Don't
imagine, mademoiselle de la Mole, that I am forgetting my place. I will
make you realise and fully appreciate that it is for a carpenter's son
that you are betraying a descendant of the famous Guy de Croisenois who
followed St. Louis to the Crusade."

Julien was unable to control his joy. He was obliged to go down into
the garden. He had locked himself in his room, but he found it too
narrow to breathe in.

"To think of it being me, the poor peasant from the Jura," he kept
on repeating to himself, "to think of it being me who am eternally
condemned to wear this gloomy black suit! Alas twenty years ago I would
have worn a uniform like they do! In those days a man like me either
got killed or became a general at thirty-six. The letter which he held
clenched in his hand gave him a heroic pose and stature. Nowadays, it
is true, if one sticks to this black suit, one gets at forty an income
of a hundred thousand francs and the blue ribbon like my lord bishop of
Beauvais.

"Well," he said to himself with a Mephistophelian smile, "I have more
brains than they. I am shrewd enough to choose the uniform of my
century. And he felt a quickening of his ambition and of his attachment
to his ecclesiastical dress. What cardinals of even lower birth than
mine have not succeeded in governing! My compatriot Granvelle, for
instance."

Julien's agitation became gradually calmed! Prudence emerged to the
top. He said to himself like his master Tartuffe whose part he knew by
heart:

    Je puis croire ces mots, un artifice honnete.
    *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
    Je ne me firai point a des propos si doux,
    Qu'un peu de ses faveurs apres quoi je soupire
    Ne vienne m'assurer tout ce qu'ils m'ont pudire.
                                  _Tartuffe, act iv. Scene v_.

"Tartuffe, too, was ruined by a woman, and he was as good as most
men.... My answer may be shown.... and the way out of that is this," he
added pronouncing his words slowly with an intonation of deliberate and
restrained ferocity. "We will begin by quoting the most vivid passages
from the letter of the sublime Mathilde."

"Quite so, but M. de Croisenois' lackeys will hurl themselves upon me
and snatch the original away."

"No, they won't, for I am well armed, and as we know I am accustomed to
firing on lackeys."

"Well, suppose one of them has courage, and hurls himself upon me. He
has been promised a hundred napoleons. I kill him, or wound him, good,
that's what they want. I shall be thrown into prison legally. I shall
be had up in the police court and the judges will send me with all
justice and all equity to keep Messieurs Fontan and Magalon company
in Poissy. There I shall be landed in the middle of four hundred
scoundrels.... And am I to have the slightest pity on these people,"
he exclaimed getting up impetuously! "Do they show any to persons of
the third estate when they have them in their power!" With these words
his gratitude to M. de la Mole, which had been in spite of himself
torturing his conscience up to this time, breathed its last.

"Softly, gentlemen, I follow this little Machiavellian trick, the abbe
Maslon or M. Castanede of the seminary could not have done better. You
will take the provocative letter away from me and I shall exemplify the
second volume of Colonel Caron at Colmar."

"One moment, gentlemen, I will send the fatal letter in a well-sealed
packet to M. the abbe Pirard to take care of. He's an honest man, a
Jansenist, and consequently incorruptible. Yes, but he will open the
letters.... Fouque is the man to whom I must send it."

We must admit that Julien's expression was awful, his countenance
ghastly; it breathed unmitigated criminality. It represented the
unhappy man at war with all society.

"To arms," exclaimed Julien. And he bounded up the flight of steps
of the hotel with one stride. He entered the stall of the street
scrivener; he frightened him. "Copy this," he said, giving him
mademoiselle de la Mole's letter.

While the scrivener was working, he himself wrote to Fouque. He asked
him to take care of a valuable deposit. "But he said to himself,"
breaking in upon his train of thought, "the secret service of the
post-office will open my letter, and will give you gentlemen the one
you are looking for ... not quite, gentlemen." He went and bought an
enormous Bible from a Protestant bookseller, skillfully hid Mathilde's
letter in the cover, and packed it all up. His parcel left by the
diligence addressed to one of Fouque's workmen, whose name was known to
nobody at Paris.

This done, he returned to the Hotel de la Mole, joyous and buoyant.

Now it's our turn he exclaimed as he locked himself into the room and
threw off his coat.

"What! mademoiselle," he wrote to Mathilde, "is it mademoiselle de la
Mole who gets Arsene her father's lackey to hand an only too flattering
letter to a poor carpenter from the Jura, in order no doubt to make
fun of his simplicity?" And he copied out the most explicit phrases in
the letter which he had just received. His own letter would have done
honour to the diplomatic prudence of M. the Chevalier de Beauvoisis.
It was still only ten o'clock when Julien entered the Italian opera,
intoxicated with happiness and that feeling of his own power which was
so novel for a poor devil like him. He heard his friend Geronimo sing.
Music had never exalted him to such a pitch.

CHAPTER XLIV

A YOUNG GIRL'S THOUGHTS

        What perplexity! What sleepless nights! Great God. Am I
        going to make myself contemptible? He will despise me
        himself. But he is leaving, he is going away.
                                    _Alfred de Musset_

Mathilde had not written without a struggle. Whatever might have been
the beginning of her interest in Julien, it soon dominated that pride
which had reigned unchallenged in her heart since she had begun to know
herself. This cold and haughty soul was swept away for the first time
by a sentiment of passion, but if this passion dominated her pride,
it still kept faithfully to the habits of that pride. Two months of
struggles and new sensations had transformed, so to speak her whole
moral life.

Mathilde thought she was in sight of happiness. This vista,
irresistible as it is for those who combine a superior intellect with
a courageous soul, had to struggle for a long time against her self
respect and all her vulgar duties. One day she went into her mother's
room at seven o'clock in the morning and asked permission to take
refuge in Villequier. The marquise did not even deign to answer her,
and advised her to go back to bed. This was the last effort of vulgar
prudence and respect for tradition.

The fear of doing wrong and of offending those ideas which the
Caylus's, the de Luz's, the Croisenois' held for sacred had little
power over her soul. She considered such creatures incapable of
understanding her. She would have consulted them, if it had been a
matter of buying a carriage or an estate. Her real fear was that Julien
was displeased with her.

"Perhaps he, too, has only the appearance of a superior man?"

She abhorred lack of character; that was her one objection to the
handsome young men who surrounded her. The more they made elegant
fun of everything which deviated from the prevailing mode, or which
conformed to it but indifferently, the lower they fell in her eyes.

They were brave and that was all. "And after all in what way were they
brave?" she said to herself. "In duels, but the duel is nothing more
than a formality. The whole thing is mapped out beforehand, even the
correct thing to say when you fall. Stretched on the turf, and with
your hand on your heart, you must vouchsafe a generous forgiveness to
the adversary, and a few words for a fair lady, who is often imaginary,
or if she does exist, will go to a ball on the day of your death for
fear of arousing suspicion."

"One braves danger at the head of a squadron brilliant with steel, but
how about that danger which is solitary, strange, unforeseen and really
ugly."

"Alas," said Mathilde to herself, "it was at the court of Henri III.
that men who were great both by character and by birth were to be
found! Yes! If Julien had served at Jarnac or Moncontour, I should no
longer doubt. In those days of strength and vigour Frenchmen were not
dolls. The day of the battle was almost the one which presented the
fewest problems."

Their life was not imprisoned, like an Egyptian mummy in a covering
which was common to all, and always the same. "Yes," she added, "there
was more real courage in going home alone at eleven o'clock in the
evening when one came out of the Hotel de Soissons where Catherine
de' Medici lived than there is nowadays in running over to Algiers.
A man's life was then a series of hazards. Nowadays civilisation has
banished hazard. There are no more surprises. If anything new appears
in any idea there are not sufficient epigrams to immortalise it, but if
anything new appears in actual life, our panic reaches the lowest depth
of cowardice. Whatever folly panic makes us commit is excused. What a
degenerate and boring age! What would Boniface de la Mole have said
if, lifting his cut-off head out of the tomb, he had seen seventeen of
his descendants allow themselves to be caught like sheep in 1793 in
order to be guillotined two days afterwards! Death was certain, but it
would have been bad form to have defended themselves and to have killed
at least one or two Jacobins. Yes! in the heroic days of France, in
the age of Boniface de la Mole, Julien would have been the chief of
a squadron, while my brother would have been the young priest with
decorous manners, with wisdom in his eyes and reason on his lips." Some
months previously Mathilde had given up all hope of meeting any being
who was a little different from the common pattern. She had found some
happiness in allowing herself to write to some young society men. This
rash procedure, which was so unbecoming and so imprudent in a young
girl, might have disgraced her in the eyes of M. de Croisenois, the
Duke de Chaulnes, his father, and the whole Hotel de Chaulnes, who on
seeing the projected marriage broken off would have wanted to know the
reason. At that time Mathilde had been unable to sleep on those days
when she had written one of her letters. But those letters were only
answers. But now she ventured to declare her own love. She wrote first
(what a terrible word!) to a man of the lowest social grade.

This circumstance rendered her eternal disgrace quite inevitable in the
event of detection. Who of the women who visited her mother would have
dared to take her part? What official excuse could be evolved which
could successfully cope with the awful contempt of society.

Besides speaking was awful enough, but writing! "There are some
things which are not written!" Napoleon had exclaimed on learning of
the capitulation of Baylen. And it was Julien who had told her that
epigram, as though giving her a lesson that was to come in useful
subsequently.

But all this was comparatively unimportant, Mathilde's anguish had
other causes. Forgetting the terrible effect it would produce on
society, and the ineffable blot on her scutcheon that would follow such
an outrage on her own caste, Mathilde was going to write to a person
of a very different character to the Croisenois', the de Luz's, the
Caylus's.

She would have been frightened at the depth and mystery in Julien's
character, even if she had merely entered into a conventional
acquaintance with him. And she was going to make him her lover, perhaps
her master.

"What will his pretensions not be, if he is ever in a position to do
everything with me? Well! I shall say, like Medea: _Au milieu de tant
de perils il me reste Moi_." She believed that Julien had no respect
for nobility of blood. What was more, he probably did not love her.

In these last moments of awful doubt her feminine pride suggested to
her certain ideas. "Everything is bound to be extraordinary in the life
of a girl like me," exclaimed Mathilde impatiently. The pride, which
had been drilled into her since her cradle, began to struggle with her
virtue. It was at this moment that Julien's departure precipitated
everything.

(Such characters are luckily very rare.)

Very late in the evening, Julien was malicious enough to have a very
heavy trunk taken down to the porter's lodge. He called the valet, who
was courting mademoiselle de la Mole's chambermaid, to move it. "This
manoeuvre cannot result in anything," he said to himself, "but if it
does succeed, she will think that I have gone." Very tickled by this
humorous thought, he fell asleep. Mathilde did not sleep a wink.

Julien left the hotel very early the next morning without being seen,
but he came back before eight o'clock.

He had scarcely entered the library before M. de la Mole appeared
on the threshold. He handed her his answer. He thought that it was
his duty to speak to her, it was certainly perfectly feasible, but
mademoiselle de la Mole would not listen to him and disappeared. Julien
was delighted. He did not know what to say.

"If all this is not a put up job with comte Norbert, it is clear that
it is my cold looks which have kindled the strange love which this
aristocratic girl chooses to entertain for me. I should be really
too much of a fool if I ever allowed myself to take a fancy to that
big blonde doll." This train of reasoning left him colder and more
calculating than he had ever been.

"In the battle for which we are preparing," he added, "pride of birth
will be like a high hill which constitutes a military position between
her and me. That must be the field of the manoeuvres. I made a great
mistake in staying in Paris; this postponing of my departure cheapens
and exposes me, if all this is simply a trick. What danger was there in
leaving? If they were making fun of me, I was making fun of them. If
her interest for me was in any way real, I was making that interest a
hundred times more intense."

Mademoiselle de la Mole's letter had given Julien's vanity so keen a
pleasure, that wreathed as he was in smiles at his good fortune he had
forgotten to think seriously about the propriety of leaving.

It was one of the fatal elements of his character to be extremely
sensitive to his own weaknesses. He was extremely upset by this one,
and had almost forgotten the incredible victory which had preceded this
slight check, when about nine o'clock mademoiselle de la Mole appeared
on the threshold of the library, flung him a letter and ran away.

"So this is going to be the romance by letters," he said as he picked
it up. "The enemy makes a false move; I will reply by coldness and
virtue."

He was asked with a poignancy which merely increased his inner gaiety
to give a definite answer. He indulged in the pleasure of mystifying
those persons who he thought wanted to make fun of him for two pages,
and it was out of humour again that he announced towards the end of his
answer his definite departure on the following morning.

"The garden will be a useful place to hand her the letter," he thought
after he had finished it, and he went there. He looked at the window of
mademoiselle de la Mole's room.

It was on the first storey, next to her mother's apartment, but there
was a large ground floor.

This latter was so high that, as Julien walked under the avenue
of pines with his letter in his hands, he could not be seen from
mademoiselle de la Mole's window. The dome formed by the well clipped
pines intercepted the view. "What!" said Julien to himself angrily,
"another indiscretion! If they have really begun making fun of me,
showing myself with a letter is playing into my enemy's hands."

Norbert's room was exactly above his sister's and if Julien came out
from under the dome formed by the clipped branches of the pine, the
comte and his friend could follow all his movements.

Mademoiselle de la Mole appeared behind her window; he half showed his
letter; she lowered her head, then Julien ran up to his own room and
met accidentally on the main staircase the fair Mathilde, who seized
the letter with complete self-possession and smiling eyes.

"What passion there was in the eyes of that poor madame de Renal," said
Julien to himself, "when she ventured to receive a letter from me,
even after six months of intimate relationship! I don't think she ever
looked at me with smiling eyes in her whole life."

He did not formulate so precisely the rest of his answer; was he
perhaps ashamed of the triviality of the motive which were actuating
him?

"But how different too," he went on to think, "are her elegant morning
dress and her distinguished appearance! A man of taste on seeing
mademoiselle de la Mole thirty yards off would infer the position which
she occupies in society. That is what can be called a specific merit."

In spite of all this humorousness, Julien was not yet quite honest with
himself; madame de Renal had no marquis de Croisenois to sacrifice to
him. His only rival was that grotesque sub-prefect, M. Charcot, who
assumed the name of Maugiron, because there were no Maugirons left in
France.

At five o'clock Julien received a third letter. It was thrown to him
from the library door. Mademoiselle de la Mole ran away again. "What
a mania for writing," he said to himself with a laugh, "when one can
talk so easily. The enemy wants my letters, that is clear, and many of
them." He did not hurry to open this one. "More elegant phrases," he
thought; but he paled as he read it. There were only eight lines.

"I need to speak to you; I must speak to you this evening. Be in
the garden at the moment when one o'clock is striking. Take the big
gardeners' ladder near the well; place it against my window, and climb
up to my room. It is moonlight; never mind."

CHAPTER XLV

IS IT A PLOT?

Oh, how cruel is the interval between the conception
and the execution of a great project. What vain fears,
what fits of irresolution! It is a matter of life and
death--even more is at stake honour!--_Schiller_.

"This is getting serious," thought Julien, "and a little too clear,"
he added after thinking a little. "Why to be sure! This fine young
lady can talk to me in the library with a freedom which, thank heaven,
is absolutely complete; the marquis, frightened as he is that I show
him accounts, never sets foot in it. Why! M. de la Mole and the comte
Norbert, the only persons who ever come here, are absent nearly the
whole day, and the sublime Mathilde for whom a sovereign prince
would not be too noble a suitor, wants me to commit an abominable
indiscretion.

"It is clear they want to ruin me, or at the least make fun of me.
First they wanted to ruin me by my own letters; they happen to be
discreet; well, they want some act which is clearer than daylight.
These handsome little gentlemen think I am too silly or too conceited.
The devil! To think of climbing like this up a ladder to a storey
twenty-five feet high in the finest moonlight. They would have time to
see me, even from the neighbouring houses. I shall cut a pretty figure
to be sure on my ladder!" Julien went up to his room again and began
to pack his trunk whistling. He had decided to leave and not even to
answer.

But this wise resolution did not give him peace of mind. "If by
chance," he suddenly said to himself after he had closed his trunk,
"Mathilde is in good faith, why then I cut the figure of an arrant
coward in her eyes. I have no birth myself, so I need great qualities
attested straight away by speaking actions--money down--no charitable
credit."

He spent a quarter-of-an-hour in reflecting. "What is the good of
denying it?" he said at last. "She will think me a coward. I shall lose
not only the most brilliant person in high society, as they all said at
M. the duke de Retz's ball, but also the heavenly pleasure of seeing
the marquis de Croisenois, the son of a duke, who will be one day a
duke himself, sacrificed to me. A charming young man who has all the
qualities I lack. A happy wit, birth, fortune....

"This regret will haunt me all my life, not on her account, 'there are
so many mistresses!... but there is only one honour!' says old don
Diego. And here am I clearly and palpably shrinking from the first
danger that presents itself; for the duel with M. de Beauvoisis was
simply a joke. This is quite different. A servant may fire at me point
blank, but that is the least danger; I may be disgraced.

"This is getting serious, my boy," he added with a Gascon gaiety and
accent. "Honour is at stake. A poor devil flung by chance into as low a
grade as I am will never find such an opportunity again. I shall have
my conquests, but they will be inferior ones...."

He reflected for a long time, he walked up and down hurriedly, and
then from time to time would suddenly stop. A magnificent marble bust
of cardinal de Richelieu had been placed in his room. It attracted his
gaze in spite of himself. This bust seemed to look at him severely as
though reproaching him with the lack of that audacity which ought to be
so natural to the French character. "Would I have hesitated in your age
great man?"

"At the worst," said Julien to himself, "suppose all this is a trap,
it is pretty black and pretty compromising for a young girl. They know
that I am not the man to hold my tongue. They will therefore have to
kill me. That was right enough in 1574 in the days of Boniface de la
Mole, but nobody today would ever have the pluck. They are not the same
men. Mademoiselle de la Mole is the object of so much jealousy. Four
hundred salons would ring with her disgrace to-morrow, and how pleased
they would all be.

"The servants gossip among themselves about marked the favours of
which I am the recipient. I know it, I have heard them....

"On the other hand they're her letters. They may think that I have
them on me. They may surprise me in her room and take them from me. I
shall have to deal with two, three, or four men. How can I tell? But
where are they going to find these men? Where are they to find discreet
subordinates in Paris? Justice frightens them.... By God! It may be the
Caylus's, the Croisenois', the de Luz's themselves. The idea of the
ludicrous figure I should cut in the middle of them at the particular
minute may have attracted them. Look out for the fate of Abelard, M.
the secretary.

"Well, by heaven, I'll mark you. I'll strike at your faces like Caesar's
soldiers at Pharsalia. As for the letters, I can put them in a safe
place."

Julien copied out the two last, hid them in a fine volume of Voltaire
in the library and himself took the originals to the post.

"What folly am I going to rush into," he said to himself with surprise
and terror when he returned. He had been a quarter of an hour without
contemplating what he was to do on this coming night.

"But if I refuse, I am bound to despise myself afterwards. This matter
will always occasion me great doubt during my whole life, and to a man
like me such doubts are the most poignant unhappiness. Did I not feel
like that for Amanda's lover! I think I would find it easier to forgive
myself for a perfectly clear crime; once admitted, I could leave off
thinking of it.

"Why! I shall have been the rival of a man who bears one of the finest
names in France, and then out of pure light-heartedness, declared
myself his inferior! After all, it is cowardly not to go; these words
clinch everything," exclaimed Julien as he got up ... "besides she is
quite pretty."

"If this is not a piece of treachery, what a folly is she not
committing for my sake. If it's a piece of mystification, by heaven,
gentlemen, it only depends on me to turn the jest into earnest and that
I will do.

"But supposing they tie my hands together at the moment I enter the
room: they may have placed some ingenious machine there.

"It's like a duel," he said to himself with a laugh. "Everyone makes
a full parade, says my _maitre d'armes_, but the good God, who wishes
the thing to end, makes one of them forget to parry. Besides, here's
something to answer them with." He drew his pistols out of his pocket,
and although the priming was shining, he renewed it.

There was still several hours to wait. Julien wrote to Fouque in order
to have something to do. "My friend, do not open the enclosed letter
except in the event of an accident, if you hear that something strange
has happened to me. In that case blot out the proper names in the
manuscript which I am sending you, make eight copies of it, and send
it to the papers of Marseilles, Bordeaux, Lyons, Brussels, etc. Ten
days later have the manuscript printed, send the first copy to M. the
marquis de la Mole, and a fortnight after that throw the other copies
at night into the streets of Verrieres."

Julien made this little memoir in defence of his position as little
compromising as possible for mademoiselle de la Mole. Fouque was only
to open it in the event of an accident. It was put in the form of a
story, but in fact it exactly described his situation.

Julien had just fastened his packet when the dinner bell rang. It made
his heart beat. His imagination was distracted by the story which he
had just composed, and fell a prey to tragic presentiments. He saw
himself seized by servants, trussed, and taken into a cellar with a gag
in his mouth. A servant was stationed there, who never let him out of
sight, and if the family honour required that the adventure should have
a tragic end, it was easy to finish everything with those poisons which
leave no trace. They could then say that he had died of an illness and
would carry his dead body back into his room.

Thrilled like a dramatic author by his own story, Julien was really
afraid when he entered the dining-room. He looked at all those liveried
servants--he studied their faces. "Which ones are chosen for to-night's
expedition?" he said to himself. "The memories of the court of Henri
III. are so vivid in this family, and so often recalled, that if they
think they have been insulted they will show more resolution than other
persons of the same rank." He looked at mademoiselle de la Mole in
order to read the family plans in her eyes; she was pale and looked
quite middle-aged. He thought that she had never looked so great: she
was really handsome and imposing; he almost fell in love with her.
"_Pallida morte futura_," he said to himself (her pallor indicates
her great plans). It was in vain that after dinner he made a point of
walking for a long time in the garden, mademoiselle did not appear.
Speaking to her at that moment would have lifted a great weight off his
heart.

Why not admit it? he was afraid. As he had resolved to act, he was not
ashamed to abandon himself to this emotion. "So long as I show the
necessary courage at the actual moment," he said to himself, "what
does it matter what I feel at this particular moment?" He went to
reconnoitre the situation and find out the weight of the ladder.

"This is an instrument," he said to himself with a smile, "which I am
fated to use both here and at Verrieres. What a difference! In those
days," he added with a sigh, "I was not obliged to distrust the person
for whom I exposed myself to danger. What a difference also in the
danger!"

"There would have been no dishonour for me if I had been killed in M.
de Renal's gardens. It would have been easy to have made my death into
a mystery. But here all kinds of abominable scandal will be talked in
the salons of the Hotel de Chaulnes, the Hotel de Caylus, de Retz,
etc., everywhere in fact. I shall go down to posterity as a monster."

"For two or three years," he went on with a laugh, making fun of
himself; but the idea paralysed him. "And how am I going to manage to
get justified? Suppose that Fouque does print my posthumous pamphlet,
it will only be taken for an additional infamy. Why! I get received
into a house, and I reward the hospitality which I have received,
the kindness with which I have been loaded by printing a pamphlet
about what has happened and attacking the honour of women! Nay! I'd a
thousand times rather be duped."

The evening was awful.

CHAPTER XLVI

ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING

        This garden was very big, it had been planned a
        few years ago in perfect taste. But the trees were
        more than a century old. It had a certain rustic
        atmosphere.--_Massinger_.

He was going to write a countermanding letter to Fouque when eleven
o'clock struck. He noisily turned the lock of the door of his room as
though he had locked himself in. He went with a sleuth-like step to
observe what was happening over the house, especially on the fourth
storey where the servants slept. There was nothing unusual. One of
madame de la Mole's chambermaids was giving an entertainment, the
servants were taking punch with much gaiety. "Those who laugh like
that," thought Julien, "cannot be participating in the nocturnal
expedition; if they were, they would be more serious."

Eventually he stationed himself in an obscure corner of the garden. "If
their plan is to hide themselves from the servants of the house, they
will despatch the persons whom they have told off to surprise me over
the garden wall.

"If M. de Croisenois shows any sense of proportion in this matter, he
is bound to find it less compromising for the young person, whom he
wishes to make his wife if he has me surprised before I enter her room."

He made a military and extremely detailed reconnaissance. "My honour is
at stake," he thought. "If I tumble into some pitfall it will not be an
excuse in my own eyes to say, 'I never thought of it.'"

The weather was desperately serene. About eleven o'clock the moon rose,
at half-past twelve it completely illuminated the facade of the hotel
looking out upon the garden.

"She is mad," Julien said to himself. As one o'clock struck there
was still a light in comte Norbert's windows. Julien had never been
so frightened in his life, he only saw the dangers of the enterprise
and had no enthusiasm at all. He went and took the immense ladder,
waited five minutes to give her time to tell him not to go, and five
minutes after one placed the ladder against Mathilde's window. He
mounted softly, pistol in hand, astonished at not being attacked. As he
approached the window it opened noiselessly.

"So there you are, monsieur," said Mathilde to him with considerable
emotion. "I have been following your movements for the last hour."

Julien was very much embarrassed. He did not know how to conduct
himself. He did not feel at all in love. He thought in his
embarrassment that he ought to be venturesome. He tried to kiss
Mathilde.

"For shame," she said to him, pushing him away.

Extremely glad at being rebuffed, he hastened to look round him. The
moon was so brilliant that the shadows which it made in mademoiselle de
la Mole's room were black. "It's quite possible for men to be concealed
without my seeing them," he thought.

"What have you got in your pocket at the side of your coat?" Mathilde
said to him, delighted at finding something to talk about. She was
suffering strangely; all those sentiments of reserve and timidity which
were so natural to a girl of good birth, had reasserted their dominion
and were torturing her.

"I have all kinds of arms and pistols," answered Julien equally glad at
having something to say.

"You must take the ladder away," said Mathilde.

"It is very big, and may break the windows of the salon down below or
the room on the ground floor."

"You must not break the windows," replied Mathilde making a vain effort
to assume an ordinary conversational tone; "it seems to me you can
lower the ladder by tying a cord to the first rung. I have always a
supply of cords at hand."

"So this is a woman in love," thought Julien. "She actually dares to
say that she is in love. So much self-possession and such shrewdness in
taking precautions are sufficient indications that I am not triumphing
over M. de Croisenois as I foolishly believed, but that I am simply
succeeding him. As a matter of fact, what does it matter to me? Do I
love her? I am triumphing over the marquis in so far as he would be
very angry at having a successor, and angrier still at that successor
being myself. How haughtily he looked at me this evening in the Cafe
Tortoni when he pretended not to recognise me! And how maliciously he
bowed to me afterwards, when he could not get out of it."

Julien had tied the cord to the last rung of the ladder. He lowered it
softly and leant far out of the balcony in order to avoid its touching
the window pane. "A fine opportunity to kill me," he thought, "if
anyone is hidden in Mathilde's room;" but a profound silence continued
to reign everywhere.

The ladder touched the ground. Julien succeeded in laying it on the
border of the exotic flowers along side the wall.

"What will my mother say," said Mathilde, "when she sees her beautiful
plants all crushed? You must throw down the cord," she added with great
self-possession. "If it were noticed going up to the balcony, it would
be a difficult circumstance to explain."

"And how am I to get away?" said Julien in a jesting tone affecting the
Creole accent. (One of the chambermaids of the household had been born
in Saint-Domingo.)

"You? Why you will leave by the door," said Mathilde, delighted at the
idea.

"Ah! how worthy this man is of all my love," she thought.

Julien had just let the cord fall into the garden; Mathilde grasped
his arm. He thought he had been seized by an enemy and turned round
sharply, drawing a dagger. She had thought that she had heard a window
opening. They remained motionless and scarcely breathed. The moonlight
lit up everything. The noise was not renewed and there was no more
cause for anxiety.

Then their embarrassment began again; it was great on both sides.
Julien assured himself that the door was completely locked; he thought
of looking under the bed, but he did not dare; "they might have
stationed one or two lackeys there." Finally he feared that he might
reproach himself in the future for this lack of prudence, and did
look. Mathilde had fallen into all the anguish of the most extreme
timidity. She was horrified at her position.

"What have you done with my letters?" she said at last.

"What a good opportunity to upset these gentlemen, if they are
eavesdropping, and thus avoiding the battle," thought Julien.

"The first is hid in a big Protestant Bible, which last night's
diligence is taking far away from here."

He spoke very distinctly as he went into these details, so as to be
heard by any persons who might be concealed in two large mahogany
cupboards which he had not dared to inspect.

"The other two are in the post and are bound for the same destination
as the first."

"Heavens, why all these precautions?" said Mathilde in alarm.

"What is the good of my lying?" thought Julien, and he confessed all
his suspicions.

"So that's the cause for the coldness of your letters, dear," exclaimed
Mathilde in a tone of madness rather than of tenderness.

Julien did not notice that nuance. The endearment made him lose his
head, or at any rate his suspicions vanished. He dared to clasp in his
arms that beautiful girl who inspired him with such respect. He was
only partially rebuffed. He fell back on his memory as he had once at
Besancon with Armanda Binet, and recited by heart several of the finest
phrases out of the _Nouvelle Heloise_.

"You have the heart of a man," was the answer she made without
listening too attentively to his phrases; "I wanted to test your
courage, I confess it. Your first suspicions and your resolutions show
you even more intrepid, dear, than I had believed."

Mathilde had to make an effort to call him "dear," and was evidently
paying more attention to this strange method of speech than to
the substance of what she was saying. Being called "dear" without
any tenderness in the tone afforded no pleasure to Julien; he was
astonished at not being happy, and eventually fell back on his
reasoning in order to be so. He saw that he was respected by this proud
young girl who never gave undeserved praise; by means of this reasoning
he managed to enjoy the happiness of satisfied vanity. It was not,
it was true, that soulful pleasure which he had sometimes found with
madame de Renal. There was no element of tenderness in the feelings
of these first few minutes. It was the keen happiness of a gratified
ambition, and Julien was, above all, ambitious. He talked again of
the people whom he had suspected and of the precautions which he had
devised. As he spoke, he thought of the best means of exploiting his
victory.

Mathilde was still very embarrassed and seemed paralysed by the
steps which she had taken. She appeared delighted to find a topic
of conversation. They talked of how they were to see each other
again. Julien extracted a delicious joy from the consciousness of
the intelligence and the courage, of which he again proved himself
possessed during this discussion. They had to reckon with extremely
sharp people, the little Tanbeau was certainly a spy, but Mathilde and
himself as well had their share of cleverness.

What was easier than to meet in the library, and there make all
arrangements?

"I can appear in all parts of the hotel," added Julien, "without
rousing suspicion almost, in fact, in madame de la Mole's own room."
It was absolutely necessary to go through it in order to reach her
daughter's room. If Mathilde thought it preferable for him always to
come by a ladder, then he would expose himself to that paltry danger
with a heart intoxicated with joy.

As she listened to him speaking, Mathilde was shocked by this air of
triumph. "So he is my master," she said to herself, she was already a
prey to remorse. Her reason was horrified at the signal folly which she
had just committed. If she had had the power she would have annihilated
both herself and Julien. When for a few moments she managed by sheer
will-power to silence her pangs of remorse, she was rendered very
unhappy by her timidity and wounded shame. She had quite failed to
foresee the awful plight in which she now found herself.

"I must speak to him, however," she said at last. "That is the proper
thing to do. One does talk to one's lover." And then with a view of
accomplishing a duty, and with a tenderness which was manifested rather
in the words which she employed than in the inflection of her voice,
she recounted various resolutions which she had made concerning him
during the last few days.

She had decided that if he should dare to come to her room by the help
of the gardener's ladder according to his instructions, she would be
entirely his. But never were such tender passages spoken in a more
polite and frigid tone. Up to the present this assignation had been
icy. It was enough to make one hate the name of love. What a lesson
in morality for a young and imprudent girl! Is it worth while to ruin
one's future for moments such as this?

After long fits of hesitation which a superficial observer might have
mistaken for the result of the most emphatic hate (so great is the
difficulty which a woman's self-respect finds in yielding even to so
firm a will as hers) Mathilde became eventually a charming mistress.

In point of fact, these ecstasies were a little artificial. Passionate
love was still more the model which they imitated than a real actuality.

Mademoiselle de la Mole thought she was fulfilling a duty towards
herself and towards her lover. "The poor boy," she said to herself,
"has shewn a consummate bravery. He deserves to be happy or it is
really I who will be shewing a lack of character." But she would have
been glad to have redeemed the cruel necessity in which she found
herself even at the price of an eternity of unhappiness.

In spite of the awful violence she was doing to herself she was
completely mistress of her words.

No regret and no reproach spoiled that night which Julien found
extraordinary rather than happy. Great heavens! what a difference to
his last twenty-four hours' stay in Verrieres. These fine Paris manners
manage to spoil everything, even love, he said to himself, quite
unjustly.

He abandoned himself to these reflections as he stood upright in one of
the great mahogany cupboards into which he had been put at the sign of
the first sounds of movement in the neighbouring apartment, which was
madame de la Mole's. Mathilde followed her mother to mass, the servants
soon left the apartment and Julien easily escaped before they came back
to finish their work.

He mounted a horse and tried to find the most solitary spots in one
of the forests near Paris. He was more astonished than happy. The
happiness which filled his soul from time to time resembled that of a
young sub-lieutenant who as the result of some surprising feat has just
been made a full-fledged colonel by the commander-in-chief; he felt
himself lifted up to an immense height. Everything which was above him
the day before was now on a level with him or even below him. Little
by little Julien's happiness increased in proportion as he got further
away from Paris.

If there was no tenderness in his soul, the reason was that, however
strange it may appear to say so, Mathilde had in everything she had
done, simply accomplished a duty. The only thing she had not foreseen
in all the events of that night, was the shame and unhappiness which
she had experienced instead of that absolute felicity which is found in
novels.

"Can I have made a mistake, and not be in love with him?" she said to
herself.

CHAPTER XLVII

AN OLD SWORD

I now mean to be serious; it is time
Since laughter now-a-days is deemed too serious.
A jest at vice by virtues called a crime.
                             _Don Juan, c. xiii._

She did not appear at dinner. She came for a minute into the salon in
the evening, but did not look at Julien. He considered this behaviour
strange, "but," he thought, "I do not know their usages. She will give
me some good reason for all this." None the less he was a prey to
the most extreme curiosity; he studied the expression of Mathilde's
features; he was bound to own to himself that she looked cold and
malicious. It was evidently not the same woman who on the proceeding
night had had, or pretended to have, transports of happiness which were
too extravagant to be genuine.

The day after, and the subsequent day she showed the same coldness;
she did not look at him, she did not notice his existence. Julien was
devoured by the keenest anxiety and was a thousand leagues removed from
that feeling of triumph which had been his only emotion on the first
day. "Can it be by chance," he said to himself, "a return to virtue?"
But this was a very bourgeois word to apply to the haughty Mathilde.

"Placed in an ordinary position in life she would disbelieve in
religion," thought Julien, "she only likes it in so far as it is very
useful to the interests of her class."

But perhaps she may as a mere matter of delicacy be keenly reproaching
herself for the mistake which she has committed. Julien believed that
he was her first lover.

"But," he said to himself at other moments, "I must admit that there is
no trace of naivety, simplicity, or tenderness in her own demeanour;
I have never seen her more haughty, can she despise me? It would be
worthy of her to reproach herself simply because of my low birth, for
what she has done for me."

While Julien, full of those preconceived ideas which he had found in
books and in his memories of Verrieres, was chasing the phantom of a
tender mistress, who from the minute when she has made her lover happy
no longer thinks of her own existence, Mathilde's vanity was infuriated
against him.

As for the last two months she had no longer been bored, she was not
frightened of boredom; consequently, without being able to have the
slightest suspicion of it, Julien had lost his greatest advantage.

"I have given myself a master," said mademoiselle de la Mole to
herself, a prey to the blackest sorrow. "Luckily he is honour itself,
but if I offend his vanity, he will revenge himself by making known
the nature of our relations." Mathilde had never had a lover, and
though passing through a stage of life which affords some tender
illusions even to the coldest souls, she fell a prey to the most bitter
reflections.

"He has an immense dominion over me since his reign is one of terror,
and he is capable, if I provoke him, of punishing me with an awful
penalty." This idea alone was enough to induce mademoiselle de la
Mole to insult him. Courage was the primary quality in her character.
The only thing which could give her any thrill and cure her from a
fundamental and chronically recurring ennui was the idea that she was
staking her entire existence on a single throw.

As mademoiselle de la Mole obstinately refused to look at him, Julien
on the third day in spite of her evident objection, followed her into
the billiard-room after dinner.

"Well, sir, you think you have acquired some very strong rights over
me?" she said to him with scarcely controlled anger, "since you venture
to speak to me, in spite of my very clearly manifested wish? Do you
know that no one in the world has had such effrontery?"

The dialogue of these two lovers was incomparably humourous. Without
suspecting it, they were animated by mutual sentiments of the most
vivid hate. As neither the one nor the other had a meekly patient
character, while they were both disciples of good form, they soon came
to informing each other quite clearly that they would break for ever.

"I swear eternal secrecy to you," said Julien. "I should like to add
that I would never address a single word to you, were it not that a
marked change might perhaps jeopardise your reputation." He saluted
respectfully and left.

He accomplished easily enough what he believed to be a duty; he was
very far from thinking himself much in love with mademoiselle de la
Mole. He had certainly not loved her three days before, when he had
been hidden in the big mahogany cupboard. But the moment that he found
himself estranged from her for ever his mood underwent a complete and
rapid change.

His memory tortured him by going over the least details in that night,
which had as a matter of fact left him so cold. In the very night that
followed this announcement of a final rupture, Julien almost went mad
at being obliged to own to himself that he loved mademoiselle de la
Mole.

This discovery was followed by awful struggles: all his emotions were
overwhelmed.

Two days later, instead of being haughty towards M. de Croisenois, he
could have almost burst out into tears and embraced him.

His habituation to unhappiness gave him a gleam of commonsense, he
decided to leave for Languedoc, packed his trunk and went to the post.

He felt he would faint, when on arriving at the office of the mails, he
was told that by a singular chance there was a place in the Toulouse
mail. He booked it and returned to the Hotel de la Mole to announce his
departure to the marquis.

M. de la Mole had gone out. More dead than alive Julien went into
the library to wait for him. What was his emotion when he found
mademoiselle de la Mole there.

As she saw him come, she assumed a malicious expression which it was
impossible to mistake.

In his unhappiness and surprise Julien lost his head and was weak
enough to say to her in a tone of the most heartfelt tenderness. "So
you love me no more."

"I am horrified at having given myself to the first man who came
along," said Mathilde crying with rage against herself.

"The first man who came along," cried Julien, and he made for an old
mediaeval sword which was kept in the library as a curiosity.

His grief--which he thought was at its maximum at the moment when he
had spoken to mademoiselle de la Mole--had been rendered a hundred
times more intense by the tears of shame which he saw her shedding.

He would have been the happiest of men if he had been able to kill her.

When he was on the point of drawing the sword with some difficulty from
its ancient scabbard, Mathilde, rendered happy by so novel a sensation,
advanced proudly towards him, her tears were dry.

The thought of his benefactor--the marquis de la Mole--presented
itself vividly to Julien. "Shall I kill his daughter?" he said to
himself, "how horrible." He made a movement to throw down the sword.
"She will certainly," he thought, "burst out laughing at the sight of
such a melodramatic pose:" that idea was responsible for his regaining
all his self-possession. He looked curiously at the blade of the old
sword as though he had been looking for some spot of rust, then put it
back in the scabbard and replaced it with the utmost tranquillity on
the gilt bronze nail from which it hung.

The whole manoeuvre, which towards the end was very slow, lasted quite
a minute; mademoiselle de la Mole looked at him in astonishment. "So
I have been on the verge of being killed by my lover," she said to
herself.

This idea transported her into the palmiest days of the age of Charles
IX. and of Henri III.

She stood motionless before Julien, who had just replaced the sword;
she looked at him with eyes whose hatred had disappeared. It must be
owned that she was very fascinating at this moment, certainly no woman
looked less like a Parisian doll (this expression symbolised Julien's
great objection to the women of this city).

"I shall relapse into some weakness for him," thought Mathilde; "it
is quite likely that he will think himself my lord and master after a
relapse like that at the very moment that I have been talking to him so
firmly." She ran away.

"By heaven, she is pretty said Julien as he watched her run and that's
the creature who threw herself into my arms with so much passion
scarcely a week ago ... and to think that those moments will never
come back? And that it's my fault, to think of my being lacking
in appreciation at the very moment when I was doing something so
extraordinarily interesting! I must own that I was born with a very
dull and unfortunate character."

The marquis appeared; Julien hastened to announce his departure.

"Where to?" said M. de la Mole.

"For Languedoc."

"No, if you please, you are reserved for higher destinies. If you leave
it will be for the North.... In military phraseology I actually confine
you in the hotel. You will compel me to be never more than two or three
hours away. I may have need of you at any moment."

Julien bowed and retired without a word, leaving the marquis in a state
of great astonishment. He was incapable of speaking. He shut himself
up in his room. He was there free to exaggerate to himself all the
awfulness of his fate.

"So," he thought, "I cannot even get away. God knows how many days
the marquis will keep me in Paris. Great God, what will become of me,
and not a friend whom I can consult? The abbe Pirard will never let
me finish my first sentence, while the comte Altamira will propose
enlisting me in some conspiracy. And yet I am mad; I feel it, I am mad.
Who will be able to guide me, what will become of me?"

CHAPTER XLVIII

CRUEL MOMENTS

        And she confesses it to me! She goes into even
        the smallest details! Her beautiful eyes fixed on
        mine, and describes the love which she felt for
        another.--_Schiller_.

The delighted mademoiselle de la Mole thought of nothing but the
happiness of having been nearly killed. She went so far as to say to
herself, "he is worthy of being my master since he was on the point of
killing me. How many handsome young society men would have to be melted
together before they were capable of so passionate a transport."

"I must admit that he was very handsome at the time when he climbed up
on the chair to replace the sword in the same picturesque position in
which the decorator hung it! After all it was not so foolish of me to
love him."

If at that moment some honourable means of reconciliation had presented
itself, she would have embraced it with pleasure. Julien locked in his
room was a prey to the most violent despair. He thought in his madness
of throwing himself at her feet. If instead of hiding himself in an out
of the way place, he had wandered about the garden of the hotel so as
to keep within reach of any opportunity, he would perhaps have changed
in a single moment his awful unhappiness into the keenest happiness.

But the tact for whose lack we are now reproaching him would have been
incompatible with that sublime seizure of the sword, which at the
present time rendered him so handsome in the eyes of mademoiselle de
la Mole. This whim in Julien's favour lasted the whole day; Mathilde
conjured up a charming image of the short moments during which she had
loved him: she regretted them.

"As a matter of fact," she said to herself, "my passion for this poor
boy can from his point of view only have lasted from one hour after
midnight when I saw him arrive by his ladder with all his pistols in
his coat pocket, till eight o'clock in the morning. It was a quarter of
an hour after that as I listened to mass at Sainte-Valere that I began
to think that he might very well try to terrify me into obedience."

After dinner mademoiselle de la Mole, so far from avoiding Julien,
spoke to him and made him promise to follow her into the garden. He
obeyed. It was a new experience.

Without suspecting it Mathilde was yielding to the love which she was
now feeling for him again. She found an extreme pleasure in walking by
his side, and she looked curiously at those hands which had seized the
sword to kill her that very morning.

After such an action, after all that had taken place, some of the
former conversation was out of the question.

Mathilde gradually began to talk confidentially to him about the
state of her heart. She found a singular pleasure in this kind of
conversation, she even went so far as to describe to him the fleeting
moments of enthusiasm which she had experienced for M. de Croisenois,
for M. de Caylus----

"What! M. de Caylus as well!" exclaimed Julien, and all the jealousy of
a discarded lover burst out in those words, Mathilde thought as much,
but did not feel at all insulted.

She continued torturing Julien by describing her former sentiments with
the most picturesque detail and the accent of the most intimate truth.
He saw that she was portraying what she had in her mind's eye. He had
the pain of noticing that as she spoke she made new discoveries in her
own heart.

The unhappiness of jealousy could not be carried further.

It is cruel enough to suspect that a rival is loved, but there is no
doubt that to hear the woman one adores confess in detail the love
which rivals inspires, is the utmost limit of anguish.

Oh, how great a punishment was there now for those impulses of pride
which had induced Julien to place himself as superior to the Caylus
and the Croisenois! How deeply did he feel his own unhappiness as he
exaggerated to himself their most petty advantages. With what hearty
good faith he despised himself.

Mathilde struck him as adorable. All words are weak to express his
excessive admiration. As he walked beside her he looked surreptitiously
at her hands, her arms, her queenly bearing. He was so completely
overcome by love and unhappiness as to be on the point of falling at
her feet and crying "pity."

"Yes, and that person who is so beautiful, who is so superior to
everything and who loved me once, will doubtless soon love M. de
Caylus."

Julien could have no doubts of mademoiselle de la Mole's sincerity,
the accent of truth was only too palpable in everything she said. In
order that nothing might be wanting to complete his unhappiness there
were moments when, as a result of thinking about the sentiments which
she had once experienced for M. de Caylus, Mathilde came to talk of
him, as though she loved him at the present time. She certainly put an
inflection of love into her voice. Julien distinguished it clearly.

He would have suffered less if his bosom had been filled inside with
molten lead. Plunged as he was in this abyss of unhappiness how could
the poor boy have guessed that it was simply because she was talking to
him, that mademoiselle de la Mole found so much pleasure in recalling
those weaknesses of love which she had formerly experienced for M. de
Caylus or M. de Luz.

Words fail to express Julien's anguish. He listened to these detailed
confidences of the love she had experienced for others in that very
avenue of pines where he had waited so few days ago for one o'clock
to strike that he might invade her room. No human being can undergo a
greater degree of unhappiness.

This kind of familiar cruelty lasted for eight long days. Mathilde
sometimes seemed to seek opportunities of speaking to him and sometimes
not to avoid them; and the one topic of conversation to which they both
seemed to revert with a kind of cruel pleasure, was the description of
the sentiments she had felt for others. She told him about the letters
which she had written, she remembered their very words, she recited
whole sentences by heart.

She seemed during these last days to be envisaging Julien with a kind
of malicious joy. She found a keen enjoyment in his pangs.

One sees that Julien had no experience of life; he had not even read
any novels. If he had been a little less awkward and he had coolly said
to the young girl, whom he adored so much and who had been giving him
such strange confidences: "admit that though I am not worth as much as
all these gentlemen, I am none the less the man whom you loved," she
would perhaps have been happy at being at thus guessed; at any rate
success would have entirely depended on the grace with which Julien had
expressed the idea, and on the moment which he had chosen to do so. In
any case he would have extricated himself well and advantageously from
a situation which Mathilde was beginning to find monotonous.

"And you love me no longer, me, who adores you!" said Julien to her one
day, overcome by love and unhappiness. This piece of folly was perhaps
the greatest which he could have committed. These words immediately
destroyed all the pleasure which mademoiselle de la Mole found in
talking to him about the state of her heart. She was beginning to be
surprised that he did not, after what had happened, take offence at
what she told him. She had even gone so far as to imagine at the very
moment when he made that foolish remark that perhaps he did not love
her any more. "His pride has doubtless extinguished his love," she was
saying to herself. "He is not the man to sit still and see people like
Caylus, de Luz, Croisenois whom he admits are so superior, preferred to
him. No, I shall never see him at my feet again."

Julien had often in the naivety of his unhappiness, during the previous
days praised sincerely the brilliant qualities of these gentlemen; he
would even go so far as to exaggerate them. This nuance had not escaped
mademoiselle de la Mole, she was astonished by it, but did not guess
its reason. Julien's frenzied soul, in praising a rival whom he thought
was loved, was sympathising with his happiness.

These frank but stupid words changed everything in a single moment;
confident that she was loved, Mathilde despised him utterly.

She was walking with him when he made his ill-timed remark; she left
him, and her parting look expressed the most awful contempt. She
returned to the salon and did not look at him again during the whole
evening. This contempt monopolised her mind the following day. The
impulse which during the last week had made her find so much pleasure
in treating Julien as her most intimate friend was out of the question;
the very sight of him was disagreeable. The sensation Mathilde felt
reached the point of disgust; nothing can express the extreme contempt
which she experienced when her eyes fell upon him.

Julien had understood nothing of the history of Mathilde's heart during
the last week, but he distinguished the contempt. He had the good sense
only to appear before her on the rarest possible occasions, and never
looked at her.

But it was not without a mortal anguish that he, as it were, deprived
himself of her presence. He thought he felt his unhappiness increasing
still further. "The courage of a man's heart cannot be carried
further," he said to himself. He passed his life seated at a little
window at the top of the hotel; the blind was carefully closed, and
from here at any rate he could see mademoiselle de la Mole when she
appeared in the garden.

What were his emotions when he saw her walking after dinner with M. de
Caylus, M. de Luz, or some other for whom she had confessed to him some
former amorous weakness!

Julien had no idea that unhappiness could be so intense; he was on
the point of shouting out. This firm soul was at last completely
overwhelmed.

Thinking about anything else except mademoiselle de la Mole had become
odious to him; he became incapable of writing the simplest letters.

"You are mad," the marquis said to him.

Julien was frightened that his secret might be guessed, talked
about illness and succeeded in being believed. Fortunately for him
the marquis rallied him at dinner about his next journey; Mathilde
understood that it might be a very long one. It was now several days
that Julien had avoided her, and the brilliant young men who had all
that this pale sombre being she had once loved was lacking, had no
longer the power of drawing her out of her reverie.

"An ordinary girl," she said to herself, "would have sought out the man
she preferred among those young people who are the cynosure of a salon;
but one of the characteristics of genius is not to drive its thoughts
over the rut traced by the vulgar.

"Why, if I were the companion of a man like Julien, who only lacks the
fortune that I possess, I should be continually exciting attention, I
should not pass through life unnoticed. Far from incessantly fearing
a revolution like my cousins who are so frightened of the people that
they have not the pluck to scold a postillion who drives them badly, I
should be certain of playing a role and a great role, for the man whom
I have chosen has a character and a boundless ambition. What does he
lack? Friends, money? I will give them him." But she treated Julien in
her thought as an inferior being whose love one could win whenever one
wanted.

CHAPTER XLIX

THE OPERA BOUFFE

    How the spring of love resembleth
    The uncertain glory of an April day,
    Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
    And by and by a cloud takes all away.--_Shakespeare_.

Engrossed by thoughts of her future and the singular role which
she hoped to play, Mathilde soon came to miss the dry metaphysical
conversations which she had often had with Julien. Fatigued by
these lofty thoughts she would sometimes also miss those moments of
happiness which she had found by his side; these last memories were not
unattended by remorse which at certain times even overwhelmed her.

"But one may have a weakness," she said to herself, "a girl like I am
should only forget herself for a man of real merit; they will not say
that it is his pretty moustache or his skill in horsemanship which have
fascinated me, but rather his deep discussions on the future of France
and his ideas on the analogy between the events which are going to
burst upon us and the English revolution of 1688."

"I have been seduced," she answered in her remorse. "I am a weak
woman, but at least I have not been led astray like a doll by exterior
advantages."

"If there is a revolution why should not Julien Sorel play the role of
Roland and I the role of Madame Roland? I prefer that part to Madame de
Stael's; the immorality of my conduct will constitute an obstacle in
this age of ours. I will certainly not let them reproach me with an act
of weakness; I should die of shame."

Mathilde's reveries were not all as grave, one must admit, as the
thoughts which we have just transcribed.

She would look at Julien and find a charming grace in his slightest
action.

"I have doubtless," she would say, "succeeded in destroying in him the
very faintest idea he had of any one else's rights."

"The air of unhappiness and deep passion with which the poor boy
declared his love to me eight days ago proves it; I must own it was
very extraordinary of me to manifest anger at words in which there
shone so much respect and so much of passion. Am I not his real wife?
Those words of his were quite natural, and I must admit, were really
very nice. Julien still continued to love me, even after those eternal
conversations in which I had only spoken to him (cruelly enough I
admit), about those weaknesses of love which the boredom of the life
I lead had inspired me for those young society men of whom he is so
jealous. Ah, if he only knew what little danger I have to fear from
them; how withered and stereotyped they seem to me in comparison with
him."

While indulging in these reflections Mathilde made a random pencil
sketch of a profile on a page of her album. One of the profiles she
had just finished surprised and delighted her. It had a striking
resemblance to Julien. "It is the voice of heaven. That's one of the
miracles of love," she cried ecstatically; "Without suspecting it, I
have drawn his portrait."

She fled to her room, shut herself up in it, and with much application
made strenuous endeavours to draw Julien's portrait, but she was unable
to succeed; the profile she had traced at random still remained the
most like him. Mathilde was delighted with it. She saw in it a palpable
proof of the grand passion.

She only left her album very late when the marquise had her called to
go to the Italian Opera. Her one idea was to catch sight of Julien, so
that she might get her mother to request him to keep them company.

He did not appear, and the ladies had only ordinary vulgar creatures in
their box. During the first act of the opera, Mathilde dreamt of the
man she loved with all the ecstasies of the most vivid passion; but a
love-maxim in the second act sung it must be owned to a melody worthy
of Cimarosa pierced her heart. The heroine of the opera said "You must
punish me for the excessive adoration which I feel for him. I love him
too much."

From the moment that Mathilde heard this sublime song everything in
the world ceased to exist. She was spoken to, she did not answer; her
mother reprimanded her, she could scarcely bring herself to look at
her. Her ecstasy reached a state of exultation and passion analogous
to the most violent transports which Julien had felt for her for some
days. The divinely graceful melody to which the maxim, which seemed
to have such a striking application to her own position, was sung,
engrossed all the minutes when she was not actually thinking of Julien.
Thanks to her love for music she was on this particular evening like
madame de Renal always was, when she thought of Julien. Love of the
head has doubtless more intelligence than true love, but it only has
moments of enthusiasm. It knows itself too well, it sits in judgment on
itself incessantly; far from distracting thought it is made by sheer
force of thought.

On returning home Mathilde, in spite of madame de la Mole's
remonstrances, pretended to have a fever and spent a part of the night
in going over this melody on her piano. She sang the words of the
celebrated air which had so fascinated her:--

     Devo punirmi, devo punirmi.
     Se troppo amai, etc.

As the result of this night of madness, she imagined that she had
succeeded in triumphing over her love. This page will be prejudicial
in more than one way to the unfortunate author. Frigid souls will
accuse him of indecency. But the young ladies who shine in the Paris
salons have no right to feel insulted at the supposition that one of
their number might be liable to those transports of madness which have
been degrading the character of Mathilde. That character is purely
imaginary, and is even drawn quite differently from that social code
which will guarantee so distinguished a place in the world's history to
nineteenth century civilization.

The young girls who have adorned this winter's balls are certainly not
lacking in prudence.

I do not think either that they can be accused of being unduly scornful
of a brilliant fortune, horses, fine estates and all the guarantees
of a pleasant position in society. Far from finding these advantages
simply equivalent to boredom, they usually concentrate on them their
most constant desires and and devote to them such passion as their
hearts possess.

Nor again is it love which is the dominant principle in the career of
young men who, like Julien, are gifted with some talent; they attach
themselves with an irresistible grip to some coterie, and when the
coterie succeeds all the good things of society are rained upon them.
Woe to the studious man who belongs to no coterie, even his smallest
and most doubtful successes will constitute a grievance, and lofty
virtue will rob him and triumph. Yes, monsieur, a novel is a mirror
which goes out on a highway. Sometimes it reflects the azure of the
heavens, sometimes the mire of the pools of mud on the way, and the
man who carries this mirror in his knapsack is forsooth to be accused
by you of being immoral! His mirror shows the mire, and you accuse the
mirror! Rather accuse the main road where the mud is, or rather the
inspector of roads who allows the water to accumulate and the mud to
form.

Now that it is quite understood that Mathilde's character is impossible
in our own age, which is as discreet as it is virtuous, I am less
frightened of offence by continuing the history of the follies of this
charming girl.

During the whole of the following day she looked out for opportunities
of convincing herself of her triumph over her mad passion. Her great
aim was to displease Julien in everything; but not one of his movements
escaped her.

Julien was too unhappy, and above all too agitated to appreciate so
complicated a stratagem of passion. Still less was he capable of
seeing how favourable it really was to him. He was duped by it. His
unhappiness had perhaps never been so extreme. His actions were so
little controlled by his intellect that if some mournful philosopher
had said to him, "Think how to exploit as quickly as you can those
symptoms which promise to be favourable to you. In this kind of
head-love which is seen at Paris, the same mood cannot last more than
two days," he would not have understood him. But however ecstatic he
might feel, Julien was a man of honour. Discretion was his first duty.
He appreciated it. Asking advice, describing his agony to the first
man who came along would have constituted a happiness analogous to
that of the unhappy man who, when traversing a burning desert receives
from heaven a drop of icy water. He realised the danger, was frightened
of answering an indiscreet question by a torrent of tears, and shut
himself up in his own room.

He saw Mathilde walking in the garden for a long time. When she at last
left it, he went down there and approached the rose bush from which she
had taken a flower.

The night was dark and he could abandon himself to his unhappiness
without fear of being seen. It was obvious to him that mademoiselle de
la Mole loved one of those young officers with whom she had chatted so
gaily. She had loved him, but she had realised his little merit, "and
as a matter of fact I had very little," Julien said to himself with
full conviction. "Taking me all round I am a very dull, vulgar person,
very boring to others and quite unbearable to myself." He was mortally
disgusted with all his good qualities, and with all the things which he
had once loved so enthusiastically; and it was when his imagination was
in this distorted condition that he undertook to judge life by means of
its aid. This mistake is typical of a superior man.

The idea of suicide presented itself to him several times; the idea was
full of charm, and like a delicious rest; because it was the glass of
iced water offered to the wretch dying of thirst and heat in the desert.

"My death will increase the contempt she has for me," he exclaimed.
"What a memory I should leave her."

Courage is the only resource of a human being who has fallen into this
last abyss of unhappiness. Julien did not have sufficient genius to say
to himself, "I must dare," but as he looked at the window of Mathilde's
room he saw through the blinds that she was putting out her light. He
conjured up that charming room which he had seen, alas! once in his
whole life. His imagination did not go any further.

One o'clock struck. Hearing the stroke of the clock and saying to
himself, "I will climb up the ladder," scarcely took a moment.

It was the flash of genius, good reasons crowded on his mind. "May I be
more fortunate than before," he said to himself. He ran to the ladder.
The gardener had chained it up. With the help of the cock of one of
his little pistols which he broke, Julien, who for the time being was
animated by a superhuman force, twisted one of the links of the chain
which held the ladder. He was master of it in a few minutes, and placed
it against Mathilde's window.

"She will be angry and riddle me with scornful words! What does it
matter? I will give her a kiss, one last kiss. I will go up to my room
and kill myself ... my lips will touch her cheek before I die."

He flew up the ladder and knocked at the blind; Mathilde heard him
after some minutes and tried to open the blind but the ladder was in
the way. Julien hung to the iron hook intending to keep the blind open,
and at the imminent risk of falling down, gave the ladder a violent
shake which moved it a little. Mathilde was able to open the blind.

He threw himself into the window more dead than alive.

"So it is you, dear," she said as she rushed into his arms.

       *       *       *       *       *

The excess of Julien's happiness was indescribable. Mathilde's almost
equalled his own.

She talked against herself to him and denounced herself.

"Punish me for my awful pride," she said to him, clasping him in her
arms so tightly as almost to choke him. "You are my master, dear, I
am your slave. I must ask your pardon on my knees for having tried to
rebel." She left his arms to fall at his feet. "Yes," she said to him,
still intoxicated with happiness and with love, "you are my master,
reign over me for ever. When your slave tries to revolt, punish her
severely."

In another moment she tore herself from his arms, and lit a candle,
and it was only by a supreme effort that Julien could prevent her from
cutting off a whole tress of her hair.

"I want to remind myself," she said to him, "that I am your handmaid.
If I am ever led astray again by my abominable pride, show me this hair
and say, 'It is not a question of the emotion which your soul may be
feeling at present, you have sworn to obey, obey on your honour.'"

But it is wiser to suppress the description of so intense a transport
of delirious happiness.

Julien's unselfishness was equal to his happiness. "I must go down by
the ladder," he said to Mathilde, when he saw the dawn of day appear
from the quarter of the east over the distant chimneys beyond the
garden. "The sacrifice that I impose on myself is worthy of you. I
deprive myself of some hours of the most astonishing happiness that a
human soul can savour, but it is a sacrifice I make for the sake of
your reputation. If you know my heart you will appreciate how violent
is the strain to which I am putting myself. Will you always be to me
what you are now? But honour speaks, it suffices. Let me tell you that
since our last interview, thieves have not been the only object of
suspicion. M. de la Mole has set a guard in the garden. M. Croisenois
is surrounded by spies: they know what he does every night."

Mathilde burst out laughing at this idea. Her mother and a chamber-maid
were woken up, they suddenly began to speak to her through the door.
Julien looked at her, she grew pale as she scolded the chamber-maid,
and she did not deign to speak to her mother. "But suppose they think
of opening the window, they will see the ladder," Julien said to her.

He clasped her again in his arms, rushed on to the ladder, and slid,
rather than climbed down; he was on the ground in a moment.

Three seconds after the ladder was in the avenue of pines, and
Mathilde's honour was saved. Julien returned to his room and found that
he was bleeding and almost naked. He had wounded himself in sliding
down in that dare-devil way.

Extreme happiness had made him regain all the energy of his character.
If twenty men had presented themselves it would have proved at this
moment only an additional pleasure to have attacked them unaided.
Happily his military prowess was not put to the proof. He laid the
ladder in its usual place and replaced the chain which held it. He did
not forget to efface the mark which the ladder had left on the bed of
exotic flowers under Mathilde's window.

As he was moving his hand over the soft ground in the darkness and
satisfying himself that the mark had entirely disappeared, he felt
something fall down on his hands. It was a whole tress of Mathilde's
hair which she had cut off and thrown down to him.

She was at the window.

"That's what your servant sends you," she said to him in a fairly loud
voice, "It is the sign of eternal gratitude. I renounce the exercise of
my reason, be my master."

Julien was quite overcome and was on the point of going to fetch the
ladder again and climbing back into her room. Finally reason prevailed.

Getting back into the hotel from the garden was not easy. He succeeded
in forcing the door of a cellar. Once in the house he was obliged to
break through the door of his room as silently as possible. In his
agitation he had left in the little room which he had just abandoned so
rapidly, the key which was in the pocket of his coat. "I only hope she
thinks of hiding that fatal trophy," he thought.

Finally fatigue prevailed over happiness, and as the sun was rising he
fell into a deep sleep.

The breakfast bell only just managed to wake him up. He appeared in the
dining-room. Shortly afterwards Mathilde came in. Julien's pride felt
deliciously flattered as he saw the love which shone in the eyes of
this beautiful creature who was surrounded by so much homage; but soon
his discretion had occasion to be alarmed.

Making an excuse of the little time that she had had to do her hair,
Mathilde had arranged it in such a way that Julien could see at the
first glance the full extent of the sacrifice that she had made for his
sake, by cutting off her hair on the previous night.

If it had been possible to spoil so beautiful a face by anything
whatsoever, Mathilde would have succeeded in doing it. A whole tress
of her beautiful blonde hair was cut off to within half an inch of the
scalp.

Mathilde's whole manner during breakfast was in keeping with this
initial imprudence. One might have said that she had made a specific
point of trying to inform the whole world of her mad passion for
Julien. Happily on this particular day M. de la Mole and the marquis
were very much concerned about an approaching bestowal of "blue
ribbons" which was going to take place, and in which M. de Chaulnes was
not comprised. Towards the end of the meal, Mathilde, who was talking
to Julien, happened to call him "My Master." He blushed up to the
whites of his eyes.

Mathilde was not left alone for an instant that day, whether by chance
or the deliberate policy of madame de la Mole. In the evening when she
passed from the dining-room into the salon, however, she managed to say
to Julien: "You may be thinking I am making an excuse, but mamma has
just decided that one of her women is to spend the night in my room."

This day passed with lightning rapidity. Julien was at the zenith of
happiness. At seven o'clock in the morning of the following day he
installed himself in the library. He hoped the mademoiselle de la Mole
would deign to appear there; he had written her an interminable letter.
He only saw her several hours afterwards at breakfast. Her hair was
done to-day with the very greatest care; a marvellous art had managed
to hide the place where the hair had been cut. She looked at Julien
once or twice, but her eyes were polite and calm, and there was no
question of calling him "My Master."

Julien's astonishment prevented him from breathing--Mathilde was
reproaching herself for all she had done for him. After mature
reflection, she had come to the conclusion that he was a person who,
though not absolutely commonplace, was yet not sufficiently different
from the common ruck to deserve all the strange follies that she
had ventured for his sake. To sum up she did not give love a single
thought; on this particular day she was tired of loving.

As for Julien, his emotions were those of a child of sixteen. He was a
successive prey to awful doubt, astonishment and despair during this
breakfast which he thought would never end.

As soon as he could decently get up from the table, he flew rather than
ran to the stable, saddled his horse himself, and galloped off. "I
must kill my heart through sheer force of physical fatigue," he said
to himself as he galloped through the Meudon woods. "What have I done,
what have I said to deserve a disgrace like this?"

"I must do nothing and say nothing to-day," he thought as he re-entered
the hotel. "I must be as dead physically as I am morally." Julien saw
nothing any more, it was only his corpse which kept moving.

CHAPTER L

THE JAPANESE VASE

        His heart does not first realise the full extremity of
        his unhappiness: he is more troubled than moved. But as
        reason returns he feels the depth of his misfortune. All
        the pleasures of life seem to have been destroyed, he
        can only feel the sharp barbs of a lacerating despair.
        But what is the use of talking of physical pain? What
        pain which is only felt by the body can be compared to
        this pain?--_Jean Paul_.

The dinner bell rang, Julien had barely time to dress: he found
Mathilde in the salon. She was pressing her brother and M. de
Croisenois to promise her that they would not go and spend the evening
at Suresnes with madame the marechale de Fervaques.

It would have been difficult to have shown herself more amiable or
fascinating to them. M. de Luz, de Caylus and several of their friends
came in after dinner. One would have said that mademoiselle de la Mole
had commenced again to cultivate the most scrupulous conventionality
at the same time as her sisterly affection. Although the weather was
delightful this evening, she refused to go out into the garden, and
insisted on their all staying near the arm-chair where madame de la
Mole was sitting. The blue sofa was the centre of the group as it had
been in the winter.

Mathilde was out of temper with the garden, or at any rate she found it
absolutely boring: it was bound up with the memory of Julien.

Unhappiness blunts the edge of the intellect. Our hero had the bad
taste to stop by that little straw chair which had formerly witnessed
his most brilliant triumphs. To-day none spoke to him, his presence
seemed to be unnoticed, and worse than that. Those of mademoiselle de
la Mole's friends who were sitting near him at the end of the sofa,
made a point of somehow or other turning their back on him, at any rate
he thought so.

"It is a court disgrace," he thought. He tried to study for a moment
the people who were endeavouring to overwhelm him with their contempt.
M. de Luz had an important post in the King's suite, the result of
which was that the handsome officer began every conversation with
every listener who came along by telling him this special piece of
information. His uncle had started at seven o'clock for St. Cloud
and reckoned on spending the night there. This detail was introduced
with all the appearance of good nature but it never failed to be
worked in. As Julien scrutinized M. de Croisenois with a stern gaze of
unhappiness, he observed that this good amiable young man attributed
a great influence to occult causes. He even went so far as to become
melancholy and out of temper if he saw an event of the slightest
importance ascribed to a simple and perfectly natural cause.

"There is an element of madness in this," Julien said to himself.
This man's character has a striking analogy with that of the Emperor
Alexander, such as the Prince Korasoff described it to me. During the
first year of his stay in Paris poor Julien, fresh from the seminary
and dazzled by the graces of all these amiable young people, whom he
found so novel, had felt bound to admire them. Their true character was
only beginning to become outlined in his eyes.

"I am playing an undignified role here," he suddenly thought. The
question was, how he could leave the little straw chair without undue
awkwardness. He wanted to invent something, and tried to extract some
novel excuse from an imagination which was otherwise engrossed. He was
compelled to fall back on his memory, which was, it must be owned,
somewhat poor in resources of this kind.

The poor boy was still very much out of his element, and could not have
exhibited a more complete and noticeable awkwardness when he got up to
leave the salon. His misery was only too palpable in his whole manner.
He had been playing, for the last three quarters of an hour, the role
of an officious inferior from whom one does not take the trouble to
hide what one really thinks.

The critical observations he had just made on his rivals prevented
him, however, from taking his own unhappiness too tragically. His pride
could take support in what had taken place the previous day. "Whatever
may be their advantages over me," he thought, as he went into the
garden alone, "Mathilde has never been to a single one of them what,
twice in my life, she has deigned to be to me!" His penetration did not
go further. He absolutely failed to appreciate the character of the
extraordinary person whom chance had just made the supreme mistress of
all his happiness.

He tried, on the following day, to make himself and his horse dead
tired with fatigue. He made no attempt in the evening to go near the
blue sofa to which Mathilde remained constant. He noticed that comte
Norbert did not even deign to look at him when he met him about the
house. "He must be doing something very much against the grain," he
thought; "he is naturally so polite."

Sleep would have been a happiness to Julien. In spite of his physical
fatigue, memories which were only too seductive commenced to invade his
imagination. He had not the genius to see that, inasmuch as his long
rides on horseback over forests on the outskirts of Paris only affected
him, and had no affect at all on Mathilde's heart or mind, he was
consequently leaving his eventual destiny to the caprice of chance. He
thought that one thing would give his pain an infinite relief: it would
be to speak to Mathilde. Yet what would he venture to say to her?

He was dreaming deeply about this at seven o'clock one morning when he
suddenly saw her enter the library.

"I know, monsieur, that you are anxious to speak to me."

"Great heavens! who told you?"

"I know, anyway; that is enough. If you are dishonourable, you can
ruin me, or at least try to. But this danger, which I do not believe
to be real, will certainly not prevent me from being sincere. I do
not love you any more, monsieur, I have been led astray by my foolish
imagination."

Distracted by love and unhappiness, as a result of this terrible blow,
Julien tried to justify himself. Nothing could have been more absurd.
Does one make any excuses for failure to please? But reason had no
longer any control over his actions. A blind instinct urged him to get
the determination of his fate postponed. He thought that, so long as
he kept on speaking, all could not be over. Mathilde had not listened
to his words; their sound irritated her. She could not conceive how he
could have the audacity to interrupt her.

She was rendered equally unhappy this morning by remorseful virtue and
remorseful pride. She felt to some extent pulverised by the idea of
having given a little abbe, who was the son of a peasant, rights over
her. "It is almost," she said to herself, in those moments when she
exaggerated her own misfortune, "as though I had a weakness for one of
my footmen to reproach myself with." In bold, proud natures there is
only one step from anger against themselves to wrath against others. In
these cases the very transports of fury constitute a vivid pleasure.

In a single minute mademoiselle de la Mole reached the point of loading
Julien with the signs of the most extreme contempt. She had infinite
wit, and this wit was always triumphant in the art of torturing vanity
and wounding it cruelly.

For the first time in his life Julien found himself subjected to
the energy of a superior intellect, which was animated against him
by the most violent hate. Far from having at present the slightest
thought of defending himself, he came to despise himself. Hearing
himself overwhelmed with such marks of contempt which were so cleverly
calculated to destroy any good opinion that he might have of himself,
he thought that Mathilde was right, and that she did not say enough.

As for her, she found it deliciously gratifying to her pride to punish
in this way both herself and him for the adoration that she had felt
some days previously.

She did not have to invent and improvise the cruel remarks which she
addressed to him with so much gusto.

All she had to do was to repeat what the advocate of the other side had
been saying against her love in her own heart for the last eight days.

Each word intensified a hundredfold Julien's awful unhappiness. He
wanted to run away, but mademoiselle de la Mole took hold of his arm
authoritatively.

"Be good enough to remark," he said to her, "that you are talking very
loud. You will be heard in the next room."

"What does it matter?" mademoiselle de la Mole answered haughtily. "Who
will dare to say they have heard me? I want to cure your miserable
vanity once and for all of any ideas you may have indulged in on my
account."

When Julien was allowed to leave the library he was so astonished
that he was less sensitive to his unhappiness. "She does not love me
any more," he repeated to himself, speaking aloud as though to teach
himself how he stood. "It seems that she has loved me eight or ten
days, but I shall love her all my life."

"Is it really possible she was nothing to me, nothing to my heart so
few days back?"

Mathilde's heart was inundated by the joy of satisfied pride. So she
had been able to break with him for ever! So complete a triumph over so
strong an inclination rendered her completely happy. "So this little
gentleman will understand, once and for all, that he has not, and will
never have, any dominion over me." She was so happy that in reality she
ceased to love at this particular moment.

In a less passionate being than Julien love would have become
impossible after a scene of such awful humiliation. Without deviating
for a single minute from the requirements of her own self-respect,
mademoiselle de la Mole had addressed to him some of those unpleasant
remarks which are so well thought out that they may seem true, even
when remembered in cold blood.

The conclusion which Julien drew in the first moment of so surprising a
scene, was that Mathilde was infinitely proud. He firmly believed that
all was over between them for ever, and none the less, he was awkward
and nervous towards her at breakfast on the following day. This was a
fault from which up to now he had been exempt.

Both in small things as in big it was his habit to know what he ought
and wanted to do, and he used to act accordingly.

The same day after breakfast madame de la Mole asked him for a fairly
rare, seditious pamphlet which her cure had surreptitiously brought her
in the morning, and Julien, as he took it from a bracket, knocked over
a blue porcelain vase which was as ugly as it could possibly be.

Madame de la Mole got up, uttering a cry of distress, and proceeded to
contemplate at close quarters the ruins of her beloved vase. "It was
old Japanese," she said. "It came to me from my great aunt, the abbess
of Chelles. It was a present from the Dutch to the Regent, the Duke of
Orleans, who had given it to his daughter...."

Mathilde had followed her mother's movements, and felt delighted at
seeing that the blue vase, that she had thought horribly ugly, was
broken. Julien was taciturn, and not unduly upset. He saw mademoiselle
de la Mole quite near him.

"This vase," he said to her, "has been destroyed for ever. The same is
the case with the sentiment which was once master of my heart. I would
ask you to accept my apologies for all the pieces of madness which it
has made me commit." And he went out.

"One would really say," said madame de la Mole, as he went out of the
room, "that this M. Sorel is quite proud of what he has just done."

These words went right home to Mathilde's heart. "It is true," she
said to herself; "my mother has guessed right. That is the sentiment
which animates him." It was only then that she ceased rejoicing over
yesterday's scene. "Well, it is all over," she said to herself, with
an apparent calm. "It is a great lesson, anyway. It is an awful and
humiliating mistake! It is enough to make me prudent all the rest of my
life."

"Why didn't I speak the truth?" thought Julien. "Why am I still
tortured by the love which I once had for that mad woman?"

Far, however, from being extinguished as he had hoped it would be, his
love grew more and more rapidly. "She is mad, it is true," he said
to himself. "Is she any the less adorable for that? Is it possible
for anyone to be prettier? Is not mademoiselle de la Mole the ideal
quintessence of all the most vivid pleasures of the most elegant
civilisation?" These memories of a bygone happiness seized hold of
Julien's mind, and quickly proceeded to destroy all the work of his
reason.

It is in vain that reason wrestles with memories of this character. Its
stern struggles only increase the fascination.

Twenty-four hours after the breaking of the Japanese vase, Julien was
unquestionably one of the most unhappy men in the world.

Julien is shocked one morning to see Mathilde dressed all in black. He tries to figure out who she is mourning, and learns that it is the anniversary of her famous ancestor's death. Her ancestor, Boniface de la Mole, was decapitated for leading an insurrection in 1574. His lover, Queen Margot, asked for his head and buried it. Impressed by this romantic tale, Julien spends more and more time with Mathilde and soon begins to confide in her. They find that they both admire Napoleon and a time when men were heroes. Mathilde is an admired beauty in high demand by Parisian society, so Julien decides to seduce her. But Mathilde has already fallen in love with him. Unlike the noblemen who declare their love to her everyday, she finds Julien exciting. More importantly, she is extremely attracted to the bold notion of a forbidden love between an aristocratic woman and a man so far below her on the social scale. Mathilde also finds his fiery ambitions and liberal political aspirations a welcome change from the boring nobles she is used to. Even before Julien forms a plan of seduction, Mathilde declares her love. Julien feels he has triumphed over the countless noblemen who have tried to seduce Mathilde, but worries that her declaration might be an elaborate trap to humiliate him. Mathilde is so impressed with Julien's precautions to come to her room  at one in the morning that she calls him her master and husband. They become lovers, but Mathilde feels less passion than a sense of duty toward Julien. The next day, Mathilde worries that Julien now holds too much power over her. They begin to argue, and Julien becomes so enraged that he threatens her with one of the Marquis's antique swords. Mathilde is so moved by the knight-like ferocity of Julien's gesture that she feels transported back to a time when jealous husbands often killed their wives. The sheer intensity of their relationship is too much for both of them and they begin quarreling again, only to rekindle their passion at the opera. Julien returns to her window with a ladder and Mathilde chops off half of her hair to give to Julien as a sign of her obedience. But she soon renounces her love for him again. Julien tries to forget her, but realizes that he is hopelessly in love.

Commentary Mathilde suffers from an acute case of Parisian boredom and, like Julien, yearns for a more adventurous epoch. Rather than looking for excitement in the recent past , Mathilde admires the romantic chivalry of the sixteenth century. She knows its history very well, especially that of her ancestor Boniface. Contemporary readers of Stendhal would also know the story of Boniface de la Mole and Queen Margot's love affair from Alexandre Dumas's Queen Margot. The plot of Dumas's novel mirrors the second half of The Red and the Black. This technique allows Stendhal to foreshadow Julien's fate as well as evoke the boredom of the nineteenth century: adventure is only experienced in books. Again, triangular desire plays a major role in Mathilde and Julien's relationship. Mathilde is looking for a modern day Boniface to sweep her off her feet. Julien's lack of exposure to Parisian society and fierce ambition make him stand out among the boring members of the salon. Mathilde often laments her "dull degenerate century" and thinks that Julien would make a great general in sixteenth-century France. She soon begins to imagine that Julien is a romantic throwback to a more exciting time. She thus loves Julien through the intermediary of the Boniface legend, forming yet another love triangle. Julien's love for Mathilde is tempered by two factors. Stendhal set out to write a novel about a France divided by class; Julien can not think of Mathilde without being aware of the wide social gulf between them. He first thinks that she is an arrogant snob and wants to seduce her just for the challenge. But when Mathilde breaks with tradition and declares her love first, Julien cannot help but think that it is some elaborate form of ridicule. His extreme caution and daring actually end up making Mathilde love him even more. As usual, he treats their secret meeting like a general planning an attack: after making sure that no one is following him, he climbs up to her window with a ladder, pistol in hand. Julien really thinks that he is risking his life, and Mathilde loves him for it. However, Stendhal is never satisfied with simple romanticism, and thus adds a second impediment to Julien's passion: Mathilde is crazy. Stendhal never claims that she is insane--only that the excessive boredom of Parisian life has driven her to excess. Her only understanding of life comes from novels and, as a result, she never quite knows what she wants. She hates Julien one day and is moved to give him half of her hair the next. She is also obsessed with the medieval notion of having a "master," although she can not reconcile the fact that Julien is her social inferior. This comic bickering between the two young lovers is reinforced by their reliance on history and novels to express their love. The strong parallels with Dumas and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet make Mathilde and Julien's relationship more of a farcical reenactment of triangular desire than true love.