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.

Mathilde finds Julien gross now, although she tries to figure out why she ever would have slept with him to begin with. She keeps trying to think of what a great young man he is, but then she remembers how foolishly he told her he loved her. While sketching one afternoon, Mathilde catches herself drawing a portrait of Julien. She thinks it's a sign, since she had no conscious awareness of what she was drawing. Later that night, Mathilde goes to the opera and hears a song about someone loving so much that it makes them crazy. She goes home and plays the song on the piano over and over, thinking about how glorious it is to be in love. Nonetheless, she feels that the best thing for her ego is to treat Julien like garbage. So that's what she does. Meanwhile, Julien doubts himself more and more. For the first time, he starts to wonder whether he's as great a man as he thinks he is. He even thinks about committing suicide. One night, Julien runs out to garden and uses the ladder to sneak up into Mathilde's room again. Once he's in the room, Mathilde jumps out of bed and runs into his arms. After they've had sex again, Mathilde cuts off a bunch of her hair and gives it to him as a reminder that she is his slave. She asks him to show her the hair if she ever steps out of line in the future. Julien hugs her one last time and scampers away. The next morning, Mathilde styles her hair in a way that hides that massive chunk she's cut off. Again though, she loses interest in him and doesn't give him the time of day.


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 goes to dinner feeling depressed because Mathilde is ignoring him again. He spends his time observing the high class people who come to dinner, and reminds himself that Mathilde has done things with him that she hasn't with them. Mathilde comes to him in the library later that day and says she knows that he wants to speak to her. She tells him flat out that she no longer loves him. She follows this by unleashing a hurricane of insults on Julien, calling him a poor nobody. Julien tries to run away, but Mathilde catches him by the arm and holds him. Later on, Julien is so preoccupied with his romantic drama that he knocks over a Japanese blue vase owned by Madame de La Mole. Mathilde is delighted to see the blue vase break because she has always found it ugly. Julien says that he is sorry the vase has been destroyed, just like his heart. No one knows what this second part means except for Mathilde.


CHAPTER LI

THE SECRET NOTE

        I have seen everything I relate, and if I may have made
        a mistake when I saw it, I am certainly not deceiving
        you in telling you of it.
                                      _Letter to the author_.

The marquis summoned him; M. de la Mole looked rejuvenated, his eye was
brilliant.

"Let us discuss your memory a little," he said to Julien, "it is said
to be prodigious. Could you learn four pages by heart and go and say
them at London, but without altering a single word?"

The marquis was irritably fingering, the day's _Quotidienne_, and was
trying in vain to hide an extreme seriousness which Julien had never
noticed in him before, even when discussing the Frilair lawsuit.

Julien had already learned sufficient manners to appreciate that he
ought to appear completely taken in by the lightness of tone which was
being manifested.

"This number of the _Quotidienne_ is not very amusing possibly, but if
M. the marquis will allow me, I shall do myself the honour to-morrow
morning of reciting it to him from beginning to end."

"What, even the advertisements?"

"Quite accurately and without leaving out a word."

"You give me your word?" replied the marquis with sudden gravity.

"Yes, monsieur; the only thing which could upset my memory is the fear
of breaking my promise."

"The fact is, I forgot to put this question to you yesterday: I am
not going to ask for your oath never to repeat what you are going to
hear. I know you too well to insult you like that. I have answered for
you. I am going to take you into a salon where a dozen persons will he
assembled. You will make a note of what each one says.

"Do not be uneasy. It will not be a confused conversation by any means.
Each one will speak in his turn, though not necessarily in an orderly
manner," added the marquis falling back into that light, subtle manner
which was so natural to him. "While we are talking, you will write out
twenty pages and will come back here with me, and we will get those
twenty pages down to four, and those are the four pages you will recite
to me to-morrow morning instead of the four pages of the _Quotidienne_.
You will leave immediately afterwards. You must post about like a
young man travelling on pleasure. Your aim will be to avoid attracting
attention. You will arrive at the house of a great personage. You will
there need more skill. Your business will then be to take in all his
entourage, for among his secretaries and his servants are some people
who have sold themselves to our enemies, and who spy on our travelling
agents in order to intercept them.

"You will have an insignificant letter of introduction. At the moment
his Excellency looks at you, you will take out this watch of mine,
which I will lend you for the journey. Wear it now, it will be so much
done; at any rate give me yours.

"The duke himself will be good enough to write at your dictation the
four pages you have learnt by heart.

"Having done this, but not earlier, mind you, you can, if his
Excellency questions you, tell him about the meeting at which you are
now going to be present.

"You will be prevented from boring yourself on the journey between
Paris and the minister's residence by the thought that there are people
who would like nothing better than to fire a shot at M. the abbe Sorel.
In that case that gentleman's mission will be finished, and I see a
great delay, for how are we to know of your death, my dear friend? Even
your zeal cannot go to the length of informing us of it.

"Run straight away and buy a complete suit," went on the marquis
seriously. "Dress in the fashion of two years ago. To-night you must
look somewhat badly groomed. When you travel, on the other hand, you
will be as usual. Does this surprise you? Does your suspiciousness
guess the secret? Yes, my friend, one of the venerable personages you
are going to hear deliver his opinion, is perfectly capable of giving
information as the result of which you stand a very good chance of
being given at least opium some fine evening in some good inn where you
will have asked for supper."

"It is better," said Julien, "to do an extra thirty leagues and not
take the direct road. It is a case of Rome, I suppose...." The marquis
assumed an expression of extreme haughtiness and dissatisfaction which
Julien had never seen him wear since Bray-le-Haut.

"That is what you will know, monsieur, when I think it proper to tell
you. I do not like questions."

"That was not one," answered Julien eagerly. "I swear, monsieur, I was
thinking quite aloud. My mind was trying to find out the safest route."

"Yes, it seems your mind was a very long way off. Remember that an
emissary, and particularly one of your age should not appear to be a
man who forces confidences."

Julien was very mortified; he was in the wrong. His vanity tried to
find an excuse and did not find one.

"You understand," added monsieur de la Mole, "that one always falls
back on one's heart when one has committed some mistake."

An hour afterwards Julien was in the marquis's ante-chamber. He looked
quite like a servant with his old clothes, a tie of a dubious white,
and a certain touch of the usher in his whole appearance. The marquis
burst out laughing as he saw him, and it was only then that Julien's
justification was complete.

"If this young man betrays me," said M. de la Mole to himself, "whom is
one to trust? And yet, when one acts, one must trust someone. My son
and his brilliant friends of the same calibre have as much courage and
loyalty as a hundred thousand men. If it were necessary to fight, they
would die on the steps of the throne. They know everything--except
what one needs in emergency. Devil take me if I can find a single one
among them who can learn four pages by heart and do a hundred leagues
without being tracked down. Norbert would know how to sell his life as
dearly as his grandfathers did. But any conscript could do as much."

The marquis fell into a profound reverie. "As for selling one's life
too," he said with a sigh, "perhaps this Sorel would manage it quite as
well as he could.

"Let us get into the carriage," said the marquis as though to chase
away an unwanted idea.

"Monsieur," said Julien, "while they were getting this suit ready for
me, I learnt the first page of to-days _Quotidienne_ by heart."

The marquis took the paper. Julien recited it without making a single
mistake. "Good," said the marquis, who this night felt very diplomatic.
"During the time he takes over this our young man will not notice the
streets through which we are passing."

They arrived in a big salon that looked melancholy enough and was
partly upholstered in green velvet. In the middle of the room
a scowling lackey had just placed a big dining-table which he
subsequently changed into a writing-table by means of an immense green
inkstained tablecloth which had been plundered from some minister.

The master of the house was an enormous man whose name was not
pronounced. Julien thought he had the appearance and eloquence of a
man who ruminated. At a sign from the marquis, Julien had remained at
the lower end of the table. In order to keep himself in countenance,
he began to cut quills. He counted out of the corner of his eye seven
visitors, but Julien could only see their backs. Two seemed to him
to be speaking to M. de la Mole on a footing of equality, the others
seemed more or less respectful.

A new person entered without being announced. "This is strange,"
thought Julien. "People are not announced in this salon. Is this
precaution taken in my honour?" Everybody got up to welcome the new
arrival. He wore the same extremely distinguished decoration as three
of the other persons who were in the salon. They talked fairly low. In
endeavouring to form an opinion of the new comer, Julien was reduced to
seeing what he could learn from his features and his appearance. He was
short and thick-set. He had a high colour and a brilliant eye and an
expression that looked like a malignant boar, and nothing else.

Julien's attention was partly distracted by the almost immediate
arrival of a very different kind of person. It was a tall very thin
man who wore three or four waistcoats. His eye was caressing, his
demeanour polite.

"He looks exactly like the old bishop of Besancon," thought Julien.
This man evidently belonged to the church, was apparently not more than
fifty to fifty-five years of age, and no one could have looked more
paternal than he did.

The young bishop of Agde appeared. He looked very astonished when,
in making a scrutiny of those present, his gaze fell upon Julien. He
had not spoken to him since the ceremony of Bray-le-Haut. His look of
surprise embarrassed and irritated Julien. "What!" he said to himself,
"will knowing a man always turn out unfortunate for me? I don't feel
the least bit intimidated by all those great lords whom I have never
seen, but the look of that young bishop freezes me. I must admit that I
am a very strange and very unhappy person."

An extremely swarthy little man entered noisily soon afterwards and
started talking as soon as he reached the door. He had a yellow
complexion and looked a little mad. As soon as this ruthless talker
arrived, the others formed themselves into knots with the apparent
object of avoiding the bother of listening to him.

As they went away from the mantelpiece they came near the lower end
of the table where Julien was placed. His countenance became more and
more embarrassed, for whatever efforts he made, he could not avoid
hearing, and in spite of all his lack of experience he appreciated
all the moment of the things which they were discussing with such
complete frankness, and the importance which the high personages whom
he apparently had under his observation must attach to their being kept
secret.

Julien had already cut twenty quills as slowly as possible; this
distraction would shortly be no longer available. He looked in vain at
M. de la Mole's eyes for an order; the marquis had forgotten him.

"What I am doing is ridiculous," he said to himself as he cut his
quills, "but persons with so mediocre an appearance and who are
handling such great interests either for themselves or for others must
be extremely liable to take offence. My unfortunate look has a certain
questioning and scarcely respectful expression, which will doubtless
irritate them. But if I palpably lower my eyes I shall look as if I
were picking up every word they said."

His embarrassment was extreme, he was listening to strange things.

The Marquis de La Mole summons Julien and tests his famous memory to see whether he can memorize an entire page of a newspaper instantly. He wants Julien to come with him to a secret political meeting and to memorize everything he hears so that he can deliver the message to a duke form a foreign country. The marquis is worried that spies will try to stop Julien along the way and read anything that's written down. That's why Julien needs to have the thing in his memory. The marquis tells him to buy himself some new clothes in order to disguise his identity. The marquis takes Julien to a secret meeting, ensuring that Julien is not aware of where they are in Paris. One by one, a bunch of very important people, including bishops and event the Prime Minister, enter the room.


CHAPTER LII

THE DISCUSSION

        The republic:--For one man to day who will sacrifice
        everything for the public welfare, there are thousands
        and millions who think of nothing except their
        enjoyments and their vanity. One is requested in Paris
        by reason of the qualities not of one's self but of
        one's carriage.
                                        --NAPOLEON, Memorial.

The footman rushed in saying "Monsieur the duke de ----"

"Hold your tongue, you are just a fool," said the duke as he entered.
He spoke these words so well, and with so much majesty, that Julien
could not help thinking this great person's accomplishments were
limited to the science of snubbing a lackey. Julien raised his
eyes and immediately lowered them. He had so fully appreciated the
significance of the new arrival that he feared that his look might be
an indiscretion.

The duke was a man of fifty dressed like a dandy and with a jerky
walk. He had a narrow head with a large nose and a face that jutted
forward; it would have been difficult to have looked at the same time
more insignificant. His arrival was the signal for the opening of the
meeting.

Julien was sharply interrupted in his physiognomical observations by
de la Mole's voice. "I present to you M. the abbe Sorel," said the
Marquis. "He is gifted with an astonishing memory; it is scarcely an
hour ago since I spoke to him of the mission by which he might be
honoured, and he has learned the first page of the _Quotidienne_ by
heart in order to give proof of his memory."

"Ah! foreign news of that poor N--" said the master of the house. He
took up the paper eagerly and looked at Julien in a manner rendered
humorous by its own self-importance. "Speak, monsieur," he said to him.

The silence was profound, all eyes were fixed on Julien. He recited
so well that the duke said at the end of twenty lines, "That is
enough." The little man who looked like a boar sat down. He was the
president, for he had scarcely taken his place before he showed Julien
a card-table and signed to him to bring it near him. Julien established
himself at it with writing materials. He counted twelve persons seated
round the green table cloth.

"M. Sorel," said the Duke, "retire into next room, you will be called."

The master of the house began to look very anxious. "The shutters
are not shut," he said to his neighbour in a semi-whisper. "It is no
good looking out of the window," he stupidly cried to Julien--"so
here I am more or less mixed up in a conspiracy," thought the latter.
"Fortunately it is not one of those which lead to the Place-de-Greve.
Even though there were danger, I owe this and even more to the marquis,
and should be glad to be given the chance of making up for all the
sorrow which my madness may one day occasion him."

While thinking of his own madness and his own unhappiness he regarded
the place where he was, in such a way as to imprint it upon his memory
for ever. He then remembered for the first time that he had never heard
the lackey tell the name of the street, and that the marquis had taken
a fiacre which he never did in the ordinary way. Julien was left to
his own reflections for a long time. He was in a salon upholstered in
red velvet with large pieces of gold lace. A large ivory crucifix was
on the console-table and a gilt-edged, magnificently bound copy of M.
de Maistre's book _The Pope_ was on the mantelpiece. Julien opened it
so as not to appear to be eavesdropping. From time to time they talked
loudly in the next room. At last the door was opened and he was called
in.

"Remember, gentlemen," the president was saying "that from this moment
we are talking in the presence of the duke of ----. This gentleman,"
he said, pointing to Julien, "is a young acolyte devoted to our sacred
cause who by the aid of his marvellous memory will repeat quite easily
our very slightest words."

"It is your turn to speak, Monsieur," he said pointing to the paternal
looking personage who wore three or four waistcoats. Julien thought it
would have been more natural to have called him the gentleman in the
waistcoats. He took some paper and wrote a great deal.

(At this juncture the author would have liked to have put a page of
dots. "That," said his publisher, "would be clumsy and in the case of
so light a work clumsiness is death."

"Politics," replies the author, "is a stone tied round the neck of
literature which submerges it in less than six months. Politics in the
midst of imaginative matter is like a pistol shot in the middle of a
concert. The noise is racking without being energetic. It does not
harmonise with the sound of any instrument. These politics will give
mortal offence to one half of the readers and will bore the other half,
who will have already read the ideas in question as set out in the
morning paper in its own drastic manner."

"If your characters don't talk politics," replied the publisher, "they
cease to be Frenchmen of 1830, and your book is no longer a mirror as
you claim?")

Julien's record ran to twenty-six pages. Here is a very diluted
extract, for it has been necessary to adopt the invariable practice of
suppressing those ludicrous passages, whose violence would have seemed
either offensive or intolerable (see the _Gazette des Tribunaux_).

The man with the waistcoats and the paternal expression (he was perhaps
a bishop) often smiled and then his eyes, which were surrounded with
a floating forest of eyebrows, assumed a singular brilliance and an
unusually decided expression. This personage whom they made speak first
before the duke ("but what duke is it?" thought Julien to himself) with
the apparent object of expounding various points of view and fulfilling
the functions of an advocate-general, appeared to Julien to fall into
the uncertainty and lack of definiteness with which those officials
are so often taxed. During the course of the discussion the duke went
so far as to reproach him on this score. After several sentences of
morality and indulgent philosophy the man in the waistcoats said,

"Noble England, under the guiding hand of a great man, the immortal
Pitt, has spent forty milliards of francs in opposing the revolution.
If this meeting will allow me to treat so melancholy a subject with
some frankness, England fails to realise sufficiently that in dealing
with a man like Buonaparte, especially when they have nothing to
oppose him with, except a bundle of good intentions there is nothing
decisive except personal methods."

"Ah! praising assassination again!" said the master of the house
anxiously.

"Spare us your sentimental sermons," cried the president angrily. His
boarlike eye shone with a savage brilliance. "Go on," he said to the
man with the waistcoats. The cheeks and the forehead of the president
became purple.

"Noble England," replied the advocate-general, "is crushed to-day:
for each Englishman before paying for his own bread is obliged to pay
the interest on forty milliards of francs which were used against the
Jacobins. She has no more Pitt."

"She has the Duke of Wellington," said a military personage looking
very important.

"Please, gentlemen, silence," exclaimed the president. "If we are still
going to dispute, there was no point in having M. Sorel in."

"We know that monsieur has many ideas," said the duke irritably,
looking at the interrupter who was an old Napoleonic general. Julien
saw that these words contained some personal and very offensive
allusion. Everybody smiled, the turncoat general appeared beside
himself with rage.

"There is no longer a Pitt, gentlemen," went on the speaker with all
the despondency of a man who has given up all hope of bringing his
listeners to reason. "If there were a new Pitt in England, you would
not dupe a nation twice over by the same means."

"That's why a victorious general, a Buonaparte, will be henceforward
impossible in France," exclaimed the military interrupter.

On this occasion neither the president nor the duke ventured to get
angry, though Julien thought he read in their eyes that they would
very much like to have done so. They lowered their eyes, and the duke
contented himself with sighing in quite an audible manner. But the
speaker was put upon his mettle.

"My audience is eager for me to finish," he said vigorously, completely
discarding that smiling politeness and that balanced diction that
Julien thought had expressed his character so well. "It is eager for
me to finish, it is not grateful to me for the efforts I am making to
offend nobody's ears, however long they may be. Well, gentlemen, I will
be brief.

"I will tell you in quite common words: England has not got a sou with
which to help the good cause. If Pitt himself were to come back he
would never succeed with all his genius in duping the small English
landowners, for they know that the short Waterloo campaign alone cost
them a milliard of francs. As you like clear phrases," continued the
speaker, becoming more and more animated, "I will say this to you: Help
yourselves, for England has not got a guinea left to help you with,
and when England does not pay, Austria, Russia and Prussia--who will
only have courage but have no money--cannot launch more than one or two
campaigns against France.

"One may hope that the young soldiers who will be recruited by the
Jacobins will be beaten in the first campaign, and possibly in the
second; but, even though I seem a revolutionary in your prejudiced
eyes, in the third campaign--in the third campaign I say--you will have
the soldiers of 1794 who were no longer the soldiers enlisted in 1792."

At this point interruption broke out simultaneously from three or four
quarters.

"Monsieur," said the president to Julien, "Go and make a precis in the
next room of the beginning of the report which you have written out."

Julien went out to his great regret. The speaker was just dealing
with the question of probabilities which formed the usual subject
for his meditations. "They are frightened of my making fun of them,"
he thought. When he was called back, M. de la Mole was saying with a
seriousness which seemed quite humorous to Julien who knew him so well,

"Yes, gentlemen, one finds the phrase, 'is it god, table or tub?'
especially applicable to this unhappy people. '_It is god_' exclaims
the writer of fables. It is to you, gentlemen, that this noble and
profound phrase seems to apply. Act on your own initiative, and noble
France will appear again, almost such as our ancestors made her, and as
our own eyes have seen her before the death of Louis XVI.

"England execrates disgraceful Jacobinism as much as we do, or at any
rate her noble lords do. Without English gold, Austria and Prussia
would only be able to give battle two or three times. Would that be
sufficient to ensure a successful occupation like the one which M. de
Richelieu so foolishly failed to exploit in 1817? I do not think so."

At this point there was an interruption which was stifled by the hushes
of the whole room. It came again from the old Imperial general who
wanted the blue ribbon and wished to figure among the authors of the
secret note.

"I do not think so," replied M. de la Mole, after the uproar had
subsided. He laid stress on the "I" with an insolence which charmed
Julien.

"That's a pretty piece of acting," he said to himself, as he made his
pen almost keep pace with the marquis' words.

M. de la Mole annihilated the twenty campaigns of the turncoat with a
well turned phrase.

"It is not only on foreign powers," continued the marquis in a more
even tone, "on whom we shall be able to rely for a new military
occupation. All those young men who write inflammatory articles
in the _Globe_ will provide you with three or four thousand young
captains among whom you may find men with the genius, but not the good
intentions of a Kleber, a Hoche, a Jourdan, a Pichegru."

"We did not know how to glorify him," said the president. "He should
have been immortalized."

"Finally, it is necessary for France to have two parties," went on M.
de la Mole; "but two parties not merely in name, but with clear-cut
lines of cleavage. Let us realise what has got to be crushed. On
the one hand the journalists and the electors, in a word, public
opinion; youth and all that admire it. While it is stupefying itself
with the noise of its own vain words, we have certain advantages of
administrating the expenditure of the budget."

At this point there was another interruption.

"As for you, monsieur," said M. de la Mole to the interrupter, with an
admirable haughtiness and ease of manner, "you do not spend, if the
words chokes you, but you devour the forty thousand francs put down to
you in the State budget, and the eighty thousand which you receive from
the civil list."

"Well, monsieur, since you force me to it, I will be bold enough to
take you for an example. Like your noble ancestors, who followed Saint
Louis to the crusade, you ought in return for those hundred and twenty
thousand francs to show us at any rate a regiment; a company, why, what
am I saying? say half a company, even if it only had fifty men, ready
to fight and devoted to the good cause to the point of risking their
lives in its service. You have nothing but lackeys, who in the event of
a rebellion would frighten you yourselves."

"Throne, Church, Nobility are liable to perish to-morrow, gentlemen,
so long as you refrain from creating in each department a force of
five hundred devoted men, devoted I mean, not only with all the French
courage, but with all the Spanish constancy.

"Half of this force ought to be composed of our children, our nephews,
of real gentlemen, in fact. Each of them will have beside him not a
little talkative bourgeois ready to hoist the tricolor cockade, if 1815
turns up again, but a good, frank and simple peasant like Cathelineau.
Our gentleman will have educated him, it will be his own foster brother
if it is possible. Let each of us sacrifice the fifth of his income in
order to form this little devoted force of five hundred men in each
department. Then you will be able to reckon on a foreign occupation.
The foreign soldier will never penetrate even as far as Dijon if he
is not certain of finding five hundred friendly soldiers in each
department.

"The foreign kings will only listen to you when you are in a position
to announce to them that you have twenty thousand gentlemen ready to
take up arms in order to open to them the gates of France. The service
is troublesome, you say. Gentlemen, it is the only way of saving our
lives. There is war to the death between the liberty of the press and
our existence as gentlemen. Become manufacturers, become peasants, or
take up your guns. Be timid if you like, but do not be stupid. Open
your eyes.

"'_Form your battalions_,' I would say to you in the words of the
Jacobin songs. Some noble Gustavus Adolphus will then be found who,
touched by the imminent peril of the monarchical principle, will make
a dash three hundred leagues from his own country, and will do for
you what Gustavus did for the Protestant princes. Do you want to go
on talking without acting? In fifty years' time there will be only
presidents or republics in Europe and not one king, and with those
three letters R. O. I. you will see the last of the priests and the
gentlemen. I can see nothing but candidates paying court to squalid
majorities.

"It is no use your saying that at the present time France has not
a single accredited general who is universally known and loved,
that the army is only known and organised in the interests of the
throne and the church, and that it has been deprived of all its old
troopers, while each of the Prussian and Austrian regiments count fifty
non-commissioned officers who have seen fire.

"Two hundred thousand young men of the middle classes are spoiling for
war--"

"A truce to disagreeable truths," said a grave personage in a pompous
tone. He was apparently a very high ecclesiastical dignitary, for M.
de la Mole smiled pleasantly, instead of getting angry, a circumstance
which greatly impressed Julien.

"A truce to unpleasant truths, let us resume, gentlemen. The man who
needs to have a gangrened leg cut off would be ill advised to say to
his surgeon, 'this disease is very healthy.' If I may use the metaphor,
gentlemen, the noble duke of ---- is our surgeon."

"So the great words have at last been uttered," thought Julien. "It is
towards the ---- that I shall gallop to-night."

At the secret political meeting, a servant runs in and announces the arrival of an important Duke. The Duke tells him to be quiet before the guy can even finish, though. The marquis introduces the man to Julien. He mentions that Julien has an incredible memory. The man quizzes Julien on the content of that day's newspaper, and Julien has it all by heart. Julien is sent into the next room for a while, then called back. The men start talking all about what France needs and how they're going to achieve it. By the time he's done, Julien has twenty-six pages of notes. Despite his best intentions, the narrator decides to include some excerpts from these notes. There's some talk of an assassination in France, of a revolution, of an invasion by a foreign country... everyone just sounds like a big blowhard, though. In the end, Julien is asked to memorize the letter and deliver it's message to a certain Duke living outside of France.


CHAPTER LIII

THE CLERGY, THE FORESTS, LIBERTY

        The first law of every being, is to preserve itself and
        live. You sow hemlock, and expect to see ears of corn
        ripen.--_Machiavelli_.

The great personage continued. One could see that he knew his subject.
He proceeded to expound the following great truths with a soft and
tempered eloquence with which Julien was inordinately delighted:--

"1. England has not a guinea to help us with; economy and Hume are
the fashion there. Even the saints will not give us any money, and M.
Brougham will make fun of us.

"2. The impossibility of getting the kings of Europe to embark on more
than two campaigns without English gold; two campaigns will not be
enough to dispose of the middle classes.

"3. The necessity of forming an armed party in France. Without this,
the monarchical principle in Europe will not risk even two campaigns.

"The fourth point which I venture to suggest to you, as self-evident,
is this:

"The impossibility of forming an armed party in France without the
clergy. I am bold enough to tell you this because I will prove it to
you, gentlemen. You must make every sacrifice for the clergy.

"Firstly, because as it is occupied with its mission by day and by
night, and guided by highly capable men established far from these
storms at three hundred leagues from your frontiers----"

"Ah, Rome, Rome!" exclaimed the master of the house.

"Yes, monsieur, Rome," replied the Cardinal haughtily. "Whatever more
or less ingenious jokes may have been the fashion when you were young,
I have no hesitation in saying that in 1830 it is only the clergy,
under the guidance of Rome, who has the ear of the lower classes.

"Fifty thousand priests repeat the same words on the day appointed by
their chiefs, and the people--who after all provide soldiers--will be
more touched by the voices of its priests than by all the versifying in
the whole world." (This personality provoked some murmurs.)

"The clergy has a genius superior to yours," went on the cardinal
raising his voice. "All the progress that has been made towards this
essential point of having an armed party in France has been made by
us." At this juncture facts were introduced. "Who used eighty thousand
rifles in Vendee?" etc., etc.

"So long as the clergy is without its forests it is helpless. At
the first war the minister of finance will write to his agents that
there is no money to be had except for the cure. At bottom France
does not believe, and she loves war. Whoever gives her war will be
doubly popular, for making war is, to use a vulgar phrase, the same as
starving the Jesuits; making war means delivering those monsters of
pride--the men of France--from the menace of foreign intervention."

The cardinal had a favourable hearing. "M. de Nerval," he said, "will
have to leave the ministry, his name irritates and to no purpose."

At these words everybody got up and talked at the same time. "I will be
sent away again," thought Julien, but the sapient president himself had
forgotten both the presence and existence of Julien.

All eyes were turned upon a man whom Julien recognised. It was M. de
Nerval, the prime minister, whom he had seen at M. the duc de Retz's
ball.

The disorder was at its height, as the papers say when they talk of the
Chamber. At the end of a long quarter of an hour a little quiet was
established.

Then M. de Nerval got up and said in an apostolic tone and a singular
voice:

"I will not go so far as to say that I do not set great store on being
a minister.

"It has been demonstrated to me, gentlemen, that my name will double
the forces of the Jacobins by making many moderates divide against
us. I should therefore be willing to retire; but the ways of the Lord
are only visible to a small number; but," he added, looking fixedly
at the cardinal, "I have a mission. Heaven has said: 'You will either
loose your head on the scaffold or you will re-establish the monarchy
of France and reduce the Chambers to the condition of the parliament of
Louis XV.,' and that, gentlemen, I shall do."

He finished his speech, sat down, and there was a long silence.

"What a good actor," thought Julien. He made his usual mistake of
ascribing too much intelligence to the people. Excited by the debates
of so lively an evening, and above all by the sincerity of the
discussion, M. de Nerval did at this moment believe in his mission.
This man had great courage, but at the same time no sense.

During the silence that followed the impressive words, "I shall do it,"
midnight struck. Julien thought that the striking of the clock had in
it a certain element of funereal majesty. He felt moved.

The discussion was soon resumed with increasing energy, and above all
with an incredible naivety. "These people will have me poisoned,"
thought Julien at times. "How can they say such things before a
plebian."

They were still talking when two o'clock struck. The master of the
house had been sleeping for some time. M. de la Mole was obliged to
ring for new candles. M. de Nerval, the minister, had left at the
quarter to two, but not without having repeatedly studied Julien's face
in a mirror which was at the minister's side. His departure had seemed
to put everybody at their ease.

While they were bringing new candles, the man in the waistcoats,
whispered to his neighbour: "God knows what that man will say to the
king. He may throw ridicule upon us and spoil our future."

"One must own that he must possess an unusual self-assurance, not to
say impudence, to put in an appearance here There were signs of it
before he became a minister; but a portfolio changes everything and
swamps all a man's interests; he must have felt its effect."

The minister had scarcely left before the general of Buonaparte closed
his eyes. He now talked of his health and his wounds, consulted his
watch, and went away.

"I will wager," said the man in the waistcoats, "that the general is
running after the minister; he will apologise for having been here and
pretend that he is our leader."

"Let us now deliberate, gentlemen," said the president, after the
sleepy servants had finished bringing and lighting new candles. "Let us
leave off trying to persuade each other. Let us think of the contents
of the note which will be read by our friends outside in forty-eight
hours from now. We have heard ministers spoken of. Now that M. de
Nerval has left us, we are at liberty to say 'what we do care for
ministers.'"

The cardinal gave a subtle smile of approval.

"Nothing is easier it seems to me than summing up our position," said
the young bishop of Agde, with the restrained concentrated fire of the
most exalted fanaticism. He had kept silent up to this time; his eye,
which Julien had noticed as being soft and calm at the beginning, had
become fiery during the first hour of the discussion. His soul was now
bubbling over like lava from Vesuvius.

"England only made one mistake from 1806 to 1814," he said, "and that
was in not taking direct and personal measures against Napoleon. As
soon as that man had made dukes and chamberlains, as soon as he had
re-established the throne, the mission that God had entrusted to him
was finished. The only thing to do with him was to sacrifice him.
The scriptures teach us in more than one place how to make an end of
tyrants" (at this point there were several Latin quotations).

"To-day, gentlemen, it is not a man who has to be sacrificed, it
is Paris. What is the use of arming your five hundred men in each
department, a hazardous and interminable enterprise? What is the good
of involving France in a matter which is personal to Paris? Paris alone
has done the evil, with its journals and it salons. Let the new Babylon
perish.

"We must bring to an end the conflict between the church and Paris.
Such a catastrophe would even be in the worldly interests of the
throne. Why did not Paris dare to whisper a word under Buonaparte? Ask
the cannon of Saint-Roch?"

Julien did not leave with M. de la Mole before three o'clock in the
morning.

The marquis seemed tired and ashamed. For the first time in his life
in conversation with Julien, his tone was plaintive. He asked him for
his word never to reveal the excesses of zeal, that was his expression,
of which chance had just made him a witness. "Only mention it to our
foreign friend, if he seriously insists on knowing what our young
madmen are like. What does it matter to them if a state is overthrown,
they will become cardinals and will take refuge in Rome. As for us, we
shall be massacred by the peasants in our chateaus."

The secret note into which the marquis condensed Julien's full report
of twenty-six pages was not ready before a quarter to five.

"I am dead tired," said the marquis, "as is quite obvious from the lack
of clearness at the end of this note; I am more dissatisfied with it
than with anything I ever did in my whole life. Look here, my friend,"
he added, "go and rest for some hours, and as I am frightened you might
be kidnapped, I shall lock you up in your room."

The marquis took Julien on the following day to a lonely chateau at a
good distance from Paris. There were strange guests there whom Julien
thought were priests. He was given a passport which was made out in a
fictitious name, but indicated the real destination of his journey,
which he had always pretended not to know. He got into a carriage alone.

The marquis had no anxiety on the score of his memory. Julien
had recited the secret note to him several times but he was very
apprehensive of his being intercepted.

"Above all, mind you look like a coxcomb who is simply travelling to
kill time," he said affectionately to him when he was leaving the
salon. "Perhaps there was more than one treacherous brother in this
evening's meeting."

The journey was quick and very melancholy. Julien had scarcely got
out of the marquis's sight before he forgot his secret note and his
mission, and only thought about Mathilde's disdain.

At a village some leagues beyond Metz, the postmaster came and told him
that there were no horses. It was ten o'clock in the evening. Julien
was very annoyed and asked for supper. He walked in front of the door
and gradually without being noticed passed into the stable-yard. He did
not see any horses there.

"That man looked strange though," thought Julien to himself. "He was
scrutinizing me with his brutal eyes."

As one sees he was beginning to be slightly sceptical of all he heard.
He thought of escaping after supper, and in order to learn at any rate
something about the surrounding country, he left his room to go and
warm himself at the kitchen fire. He was overjoyed to find there the
celebrated singer, signor Geronimo.

The Neopolitan was ensconced in an armchair which he had had brought
near the fire. He was groaning aloud, and was speaking more to himself
than to the twenty dumbfounded German peasants who surrounded him.

"Those people will be my ruin," he cried to Julien, "I have promised to
sing to-morrow at Mayence. Seven sovereign princes have gone there to
hear me. Let us go and take the air," he added, meaningly.

When he had gone a hundred yards down the road, and it was impossible
to be overheard, he said to Julien:

"Do you know the real truth, the postmaster is a scoundrel. When I went
out for a walk I gave twenty sous to a little ragamuffin who told me
everything. There are twelve horses in the stable at the other end of
the village. They want to stop some courier."

"Really," said Julien innocently.

Discovering the fraud was not enough; the thing was to get away, but
Geronimo and his friends could not succeed in doing this.

"Let us wait for daybreak," said the singer at last, "they are
mistrustful of us. It is perhaps you or me whom they suspect. We will
order a good breakfast to-morrow morning, we will go for a walk while
they are getting it ready, we will then escape, we will hire horses,
and gain the next station."

"And how about your luggage?" said Julien, who thought perhaps Geronimo
himself might have been sent to intercept him. They had to have supper
and go to bed. Julien was still in his first sleep when he was woken
up with a start by the voices of two persons who were speaking in his
room with utmost freedom.

He recognised the postmaster armed with a dark lantern. The light was
turned on the carriage-seat which Julien had had taken up into his
room. Beside the postmaster was a man who was calmly searching the open
seat. Julien could see nothing except the sleeves of his coat which
were black and very tight.

"It's a cassock," he said to himself and he softly seized the little
pistol which he had placed under his pillow.

"Don't be frightened of his waking up, cure," said the postmaster, "the
wine that has been served him was the stuff prepared by yourself."

"I can't find any trace of papers," answered the cure. "A lot of linen
and essences, pommades, and vanities. It's a young man of the world
on pleasure bent. The other one who effects an Italian accent is more
likely to be the emissary."

The men approached Julien to search the pockets of his travelling coat.
He felt very tempted to kill them for thieves. Nothing could be safer
in its consequences. He was very desirous of doing so.... "I should
only be a fool," he said to himself, "I should compromise my mission."
"He is not a diplomatist," said the priest after searching his coat. He
went away and did well to do so.

"It will be a bad business for him," Julien was saying to himself, "if
he touches me in my bed. He may have quite well come to stab me, and I
won't put up with that."

The cure turned his head, Julien half opened his eyes. He was
inordinately astonished, he was the abbe Castanede. As a matter of
fact, although these two persons had made a point of talking in a
fairly low voice, he had thought from the first that he recognised one
of the voices. Julien was seized with an inordinate desire to purge the
earth of one of its most cowardly villains; "But my mission," he said
to himself.

The cure and his acolyte went out. A quarter of an hour afterwards
Julien pretended to have just woken up. He called out and woke up the
whole house.

"I am poisoned," he exclaimed, "I am suffering horribly!" He wanted an
excuse to go to Geronimo's help. He found him half suffocated by the
laudanum that had been contained in the wine.

Julien had been apprehensive of some trick of this character and had
supped on some chocolate which he had brought from Paris. He could not
wake Geronimo up sufficiently to induce him to leave.

"If they were to give me the whole kingdom of Naples," said the singer,
"I would not now give up the pleasure of sleeping."

"But the seven sovereign princes?"

"Let them wait."

Julien left alone, and arrived at the house of the great personage
without other incident. He wasted a whole morning in vainly soliciting
an audience. Fortunately about four o'clock the duke wanted to take
the air. Julien saw him go out on foot and he did not hesitate
to ask him for alms. When at two yards' distance from the great
personage he pulled out the Marquis de la Mole's watch and exhibited
it ostentatiously. "_Follow me at a distance_," said the man without
looking at him.

At a quarter of a league's distance the duke suddenly entered a little
_coffee-house_. It was in a room of this low class inn that Julien had
the honour of reciting his four pages to the duke. When he had finished
he was told to "_start again and go more slowly_."

The prince took notes. "Reach the next posting station on foot. Leave
your luggage and your carriage here. Get to Strasbourg as best you can
and at half-past twelve on the twenty-second of the month (it was at
present the tenth) come to this same coffee-house. Do not leave for
half-an-hour. Silence!"

These were the only words which Julien heard. They sufficed to inspire
him with the highest admiration. "That is the way," he thought, "that
real business is done; what would this great statesman say if he were
to listen to the impassioned ranters heard three days ago?"

Julien took two days to reach Strasbourg. He thought he would have
nothing to do there. He made a great detour. "If that devil of an abbe
Castanede has recognised me he is not the kind of man to loose track
of me easily.... And how he would revel in making a fool of me, and
causing my mission to fail."

Fortunately the abbe Castanede, who was chief of the congregational
police on all the northern frontier had not recognised him. And the
Strasbourg Jesuits, although very zealous, never gave a thought to
observing Julien, who with his cross and his blue tail-coat looked
like a young military man, very much engrossed in his own personal
appearance.

Julien wants to get on with his secret mission, but the men at the meeting just keep talking about the future of France. Every single one of them seems to have a different vision for what France should be like. When Julien and the Marquis de La Mole leave the meeting at three a.m., the marquis is embarrassed by how foolish some of the "great" men of France sounded at the meeting. He makes Julien promise never to breathe a word about the meeting to anyone. The next day, Julien is given a fake passport and pushed into a carriage. Julien gets stopped quickly on his trip, since there are apparently no horses available at his next stop. Julien thinks that something about the situation doesn't smell right. Julien meets up with an Italian singer who tells him that the whole horse situation is bogus. The man from their inn sent his horses across town to make it look like he doesn't have any. It's clear that someone knows about Julien. Julien is wakened from his sleep that night by two men rummaging through his room. They're looking for a letter, but little do they know that what they're looking for exists only inside Julien's head. Julien grips his pistols and wants to kill them, but just waits until they leave. Julien continues on his journey and meets up with the Duke whom he's supposed to deliver the "letter" in his head to. After the duke listens to his message, he tells Julien to take the next train out of town and to return on the twenty-second of the month and meet the duke in a special cafe.


CHAPTER LIV

STRASBOURG

        Fascination! Love gives thee all his love, energy and
        all his power of suffering unhappiness. It is only
        his enchanting pleasures, his sweet delights, which
        are outside thy sphere. When I saw her sleep I was
        made to say "With all her angelic beauty and her sweet
        weaknesses she is absolutely mine! There she is, quite
        in my power, such as Heaven made her in its pity in
        order to ravish a man's heart."--_Ode of Schiller_.

Julien was compelled to spend eight days in Strasbourg and tried to
distract himself by thoughts of military glory and patriotic devotion.
Was he in love then? he could not tell, he only felt in his tortured
soul that Mathilde was the absolute mistress both of his happiness
and of his imagination. He needed all the energy of his character
to keep himself from sinking into despair. It was out of his power
to think of anything unconnected with mademoiselle de la Mole. His
ambition and his simple personal successes had formerly distracted him
from the sentiments which madame de Renal had inspired. Mathilde was
all-absorbing; she loomed large over his whole future.

Julien saw failure in every phase of that future. This same individual
whom we remember to have been so presumptuous and haughty at Verrieres,
had fallen into an excess of grotesque modesty.

Three days ago he would only have been too pleased to have killed the
abbe Castanede, and now, at Strasbourg, if a child had picked a quarrel
with him he would have thought the child was in the right. In thinking
again about the adversaries and enemies whom he had met in his life he
always thought that he, Julien, had been in the wrong. The fact was
that the same powerful imagination which had formerly been continuously
employed in painting a successful future in the most brilliant colours
had now been transformed into his implacable enemy.

The absolute solicitude of a traveller's life increased the ascendancy
of this sinister imagination. What a boon a friend would have been!
But Julien said to himself, "Is there a single heart which beats with
affection for me? And even if I did have a friend, would not honour
enjoin me to eternal silence?"

He was riding gloomily in the outskirts of Kehl; it is a market town
on the banks of the Rhine and immortalised by Desaix and Gouvion
Saint-Cyr. A German peasant showed him the little brooks, roads and
islands of the Rhine, which have acquired a name through the courage of
these great generals. Julien was guiding his horse with his left hand,
while he held unfolded in his right the superb map which adorns the
_Memoirs of the Marshal Saint Cyr_. A merry exclamation made him lift
his head.

It was the Prince Korasoff, that London friend of his, who had
initiated him some months before into the elementary rules of high
fatuity. Faithful to his great art, Korasoff, who had just arrived at
Strasbourg, had been one hour in Kehl and had never read a single line
in his whole life about the siege of 1796, began to explain it all to
Julien. The German peasant looked at him in astonishment; for he knew
enough French to appreciate the enormous blunders which the prince was
making. Julien was a thousand leagues away from the peasant's thoughts.
He was looking in astonishment at the handsome young man and admiring
his grace in sitting a horse.

"What a lucky temperament," he said to himself, "and how his trousers
suit him and how elegantly his hair is cut! Alas, if I had been like
him, it might have been that she would not have come to dislike me
after loving me for three days."

When the prince had finished his siege of Kehl, he said to Julien,
"You look like a Trappist, you are carrying to excess that principle
of gravity which I enjoined upon you in London. A melancholy manner
cannot be good form. What is wanted is an air of boredom. If you are
melancholy, it is because you lack something, because you have failed
in something."

"That means showing one's own inferiority; if, on the other hand you
are bored, it is only what has made an unsuccessful attempt to please
you, which is inferior. So realise, my dear friend, the enormity of
your mistake."

Julien tossed a crown to the gaping peasant who was listening to them.

"Good," said the prince, "that shows grace and a noble disdain, very
good!" And he put his horse to the gallop. Full of a stupid admiration,
Julien followed him.

"Ah! if I have been like that, she would not have preferred Croisenois
to me!" The more his reason was offended by the grotesque affectations
of the prince the more he despised himself for not having them. It was
impossible for self-disgust to be carried further.

The prince still finding him distinctly melancholy, said to him as they
re-entered Strasbourg, "Come, my dear fellow, have you lost all your
money, or perhaps you are in love with some little actress.

"The Russians copy French manners, but always at an interval of fifty
years. They have now reached the age of Louis XV."

These jests about love brought the tears to Julien's eyes. "Why should
I not consult this charming man," he suddenly said to himself.

"Well, yes, my dear friend," he said to the prince, "you see in me a
man who is very much in love and jilted into the bargain. A charming
woman who lives in a neighbouring town has left me stranded here after
three passionate days, and the change kills me."

Using fictitious names, he described to the prince Mathilde's conduct
and character.

"You need not finish," said Korasoff. "In order to give you confidence
in your doctor, I will finish the story you have confided to me. This
young woman's husband enjoys an enormous income, or even more probably,
she belongs herself to the high nobility of the district. She must be
proud about something."

Julien nodded his head, he had no longer the courage to speak. "Very
good," said the prince, "here are three fairly bitter pills that you
will take without delay.

"1. See madame ----. What is her name, any way?"

"Madame de Dubois."

"What a name!" said the prince bursting into laughter. "But forgive me,
you find it sublime. Your tactics must be to see Madame de Dubois every
day; above all do not appear to be cold and piqued. Remember the great
principle of your century: be the opposite of what is expected. Be
exactly as you were the week before you were honoured by her favours."

"Ah! I was calm enough then," exclaimed Julien in despair, "I thought I
was taking pity on her...."

"The moth is burning itself at the candle," continued the prince using
a metaphor as old as the world.

"1. You will see her every day.

"2. You will pay court to a woman in her own set, but without
manifesting a passion, do you understand? I do not disguise from
you that your role is difficult; you are playing a part, and if she
realises you are playing it you are lost."

"She has so much intelligence and I have so little, I shall be lost,"
said Julien sadly.

"No, you are only more in love than I thought. Madame de Dubois is
preoccupied with herself as are all women who have been favoured
by heaven either with too much pedigree or too much money. She
contemplates herself instead of contemplating you, consequently she
does not know you. During the two or three fits of love into which she
managed to work herself for your especial benefit, she saw in you the
hero of her dreams, and not the man you really are.

"But, deuce take it, this is elementary, my dear Sorel, are you an
absolute novice?

"Oddslife! Let us go into this shop. Look at that charming black
cravat, one would say it was made by John Anderson of Burlington
Street. Be kind enough to take it and throw far away that awful black
cord which you are wearing round your neck."

"And now," continued the prince as they came out of the shop of the
first hosier of Strasbourg, "what is the society in which madame de
Dubois lives? Great God, what a name, don't be angry, my dear Sorel, I
can't help it.... Now, whom are you going to pay court to?"

"To an absolute prude, the daughter of an immensely rich
stocking-merchant. She has the finest eyes in the world and they please
me infinitely; she doubtless holds the highest place in the society
of the district, but in the midst of all her greatness she blushes
and becomes positively confused if anyone starts talking about trade
or shops. And, unfortunately, her father was one of the best known
merchants in Strasbourg."

"So," said the prince with a laugh, "you are sure that when one talks
about trade your fair lady thinks about herself and not about you. This
silly weakness is divine and extremely useful, it will prevent you
from yielding to a single moment's folly when near her sparkling eyes.
Success is assured."

Julien was thinking of madame the marechale de Fervaques who often
came to the Hotel de la Mole. She was a beautiful foreigner who had
married the marechal a year before his death. The one object of her
whole life seemed to be to make people forget that she was the daughter
of a manufacturer. In order to cut some figure in Paris she had placed
herself at the head of the party of piety.

Julien sincerely admired the prince; what would he not have given to
have possessed his affectations! The conversation between the two
friends was interminable. Korasoff was delighted: No Frenchman had ever
listened to him for so long. "So I have succeeded at last," said the
prince to himself complacently, "in getting a proper hearing and that
too through giving lessons to my master."

"So we are quite agreed," he repeated to Julien for the tenth time.
"When you talk to the young beauty, I mean the daughter of the
Strasbourg stocking merchant in the presence of madame de Dubois, not
a trace of passion. But on the other hand be ardently passionate when
you write. Reading a well-written love-letter is a prude's supremest
pleasure. It is a moment of relaxation. She leaves off posing and dares
to listen to her own heart; consequently two letters a day."

"Never, never," said Julien despondently, "I would rather be ground in
a mortar than make up three phrases. I am a corpse, my dear fellow,
hope nothing from me. Let me die by the road side."

"And who is talking about making up phrases? I have got six volumes
of copied-out love-letters in my bag. I have letters to suit every
variation of feminine character, including the most highly virtuous.
Did not Kalisky pay court at Richmond-on-the-Thames at three leagues
from London, you know, to the prettiest Quakeress in the whole of
England?"

Julien was less unhappy when he left his friend at two o'clock in the
morning.

The prince summoned a copyist on the following day, and two days
afterwards Julien was the possessor of fifty-three carefully numbered
love-letters intended for the most sublime and the most melancholy
virtue.

"The reason why there is not fifty-four," said the prince "is because
Kalisky allowed himself to be dismissed. But what does it matter to
you, if you are badly treated by the stocking-merchant's daughter since
you only wish to produce an impression upon madame de Dubois' heart."

They went out riding every day, the prince was mad on Julien. Not
knowing how else to manifest his sudden friendship, he finished up by
offering him the hand of one of his cousins, a rich Moscow heiress;
"and once married," he added, "my influence and that cross of yours
will get you made a Colonel within two years."

"But that cross was not given me by Napoleon, far from it."

"What does it matter?" said the prince, "didn't he invent it. It is
still the first in Europe by a long way."

Julien was on the point of accepting; but his duty called him back to
the great personage. When he left Korasoff he promised to write. He
received the answer to the secret note which he had brought, and posted
towards Paris; but he had scarcely been alone for two successive days
before leaving France, and Mathilde seemed a worse punishment than
death. "I will not marry the millions Korasoff offers me," he said to
himself, "and I will follow his advice.

"After all the art of seduction is his speciality. He has thought about
nothing else except that alone for more than fifteen years, for he is
now thirty.

"One can't say that he lacks intelligence; he is subtle and cunning;
enthusiasm and poetry are impossible in such a character. He is an
attorney: an additional reason for his not making a mistake.

"I must do it, I will pay court to madame de Fervaques.

"It is very likely she will bore me a little, but I will look at her
beautiful eyes which are so like those other eyes which have loved me
more than anyone in the world.

"She is a foreigner; she is a new character to observe.

"I feel mad, and as though I were going to the devil. I must follow the
advice of a friend and not trust myself."

While waiting to reconnoiter with the duke, Julien just hangs out and feels bad about his life. He knows he'll never be respected by the de La Mole family and never loved by Mathide. He feels like he's gotten nowhere in his life, despite how others might see it. While riding his horse one day, he runs into Prince Korasoff, his old buddy from his trip to England. He quickly realizes that if he acted more like Korasoff, Mathilde wouldn't have dumped him. Korasoff acts like he's totally better than everyone around him, and this is what Mathilde is looking for. Korasoff gives Julien tips to help him win back Mathilde. His main advice is for Julien to start paying a lot of attention to some other woman and to always do it in front of Mathilde. This will make her jealous. To make things easier, Korasoff gives Julien a stack of love letters for him to copy out and give to this new woman one by one. Korasoff promises that they'll win the woman's heart, making the defeat all the more bitter for Mathilde. Julien leaves to meet the duke again, feeling confident that he can follow Korasoff's instructions.