CHAPTER XXXVIII

WHAT IS THE DECORATION WHICH CONFERS DISTINCTION?

    "Thy water refreshes me not," said the transformed genie.
    "'Tis nevertheless the freshest well in all Diar-Bekir"--_Pellico_.

One day Julien had just returned from the charming estate of Villequier
on the banks of the Seine, which was the especial subject of M. de la
Mole's interest because it was the only one of all his properties which
had belonged to the celebrated Boniface de la Mole.

He found the marquise and her daughter, who had just come back from
Hyeres, in the hotel. Julien was a dandy now, and understood the art of
Paris life. He manifested a perfect coldness towards mademoiselle de la
Mole. He seemed to have retained no recollection of the day when she
had asked him so gaily for details of his fall from his horse.

Mademoiselle de la Mole thought that he had grown taller and paler.
There was no longer anything of the provincial in his figure or his
appearance. It was not so with his conversation. Too much of the
serious and too much of the positive element were still noticeable. In
spite of these sober qualities, his conversation, thanks to his pride,
was destitute of any trace of the subordinate. One simply felt that
there were still too many things which he took seriously. But one saw
that he was the kind of man to stick to his guns.

"He lacks lightness of touch, but not brains," said mademoiselle de la
Mole to her father, as she rallied him on the cross that he had given
Julien. "My brother has been asking you for it for sixteen months, and
he is a La Mole."

"Yes, but Julien has surprises, and that's what the de la Mole, whom
you were referring to, has never been guilty of."

M. the duc de Retz was announced.

Mathilde felt herself seized by an irresistible attack of yawning. She
knew so well the old gildings and the old habitues of her father's
salon. She conjured up an absolutely boring picture of the life which
she was going to take up at Paris, and yet, when at Hyeres, she had
regretted Paris.

"And yet I am nineteen," she thought. "That's the age of happiness, say
all those gilt-edged ninnies."

She looked at eight or ten new volumes of poetry which had accumulated
on the table in the salon during her journey in Provence. She had the
misfortune to have more brains than M.M. de Croisnois, de Caylus, de
Luz, and her other friends. She anticipated all that they were going to
tell her about the fine sky of Provence, poetry, the South, etc., etc.

These fine eyes, which were the home of the deepest ennui, and worse
still, of the despair of ever finding pleasure, lingered on Julien. At
any rate, he was not exactly like the others.

"Monsieur Sorel," she said, in that short, sharp voice, destitute of
all femininity, which is so frequent among young women of the upper
class.

"Monsieur Sorel, are you coming to-night to M. de Retz's ball?"

"Mademoiselle, I have not had the honour of being presented to M. the
duke." (One would have said that these words and that title seared the
mouth of the proud provincial).

"He asked my brother to take you there, and if you go, you could
tell me some details about the Villequier estate. We are thinking of
going there in the spring, and I would like to know if the chateau is
habitable, and if the neighbouring places are as pretty as they say.
There are so many unmerited reputations."

Julien did not answer.

"Come to the ball with my brother," she added, very dryly. Julien bowed
respectfully.

"So I owe my due to the members of the family, even in the middle of a
ball. Am I not paid to be their business man?" His bad temper added,
"God knows, moreover, if what I tell the daughter will not put out the
plans of the father, brother, and mother. It is just like the court of
a sovereign prince. You have to be absolutely negative, and yet give no
one any right to complain."

"How that big girl displeases me!" he thought, as he watched the walk
of Mademoiselle de la Mole, whom her mother had called to present to
several women friends of hers. She exaggerates all the fashions. Her
dress almost falls down to her shoulders, she is even paler than before
she went away. How nondescript her hair has grown as the result of
being blonde! You would say that the light passed through it.

What a haughty way of bowing and of looking at you! What queenly
gestures! Mademoiselle de la Mole had just called her brother at the
moment when he was leaving the salon.

The comte de Norbert approached Julien.

"My dear Sorel," he said to him. "Where would you like me to pick you
up to-night for Monsieur's ball. He expressly asked me to bring you."

"I know well whom I have to thank for so much kindness," answered
Julien bowing to the ground.

His bad temper, being unable to find anything to lay hold of in the
polite and almost sympathetic tone in which Norbert had spoken to
him, set itself to work on the answer he had made to that courteous
invitation. He detected in it a trace of subservience.

When he arrived at the ball in the evening, he was struck with the
magnificence of the Hotel de Retz. The courtyard at the entrance was
covered with an immense tent of crimson with golden stars. Nothing
could have been more elegant. Beyond the tent, the court had been
transformed into a wood of orange trees and of pink laurels in full
flower. As they had been careful to bury the vases sufficiently deep,
the laurel trees and the orange trees appeared to come straight out of
the ground. The road which the carriages traversed was sanded.

All this seemed extraordinary to our provincial. He had never had any
idea of such magnificence. In a single instant his thrilled imagination
had left his bad temper a thousand leagues behind. In the carriage on
their way to the ball Norbert had been happy, while he saw everything
in black colours. They had scarcely entered the courtyard before the
roles changed.

Norbert was only struck by a few details which, in the midst of all
that magnificence, had not been able to be attended to. He calculated
the expense of each item, and Julien remarked that the nearer he got
to a sum total, the more jealous and bad-tempered he appeared.

As for himself, he was fascinated and full of admiration when he
reached the first of the salons where they were dancing. His emotion
was so great that it almost made him nervous. There was a crush at the
door of the second salon, and the crowd was so great that he found it
impossible to advance. The decorations of the second salon presented
the Alhambra of Grenada.

"That's the queen of the ball one must admit," said a young man with a
moustache whose shoulder stuck into Julien's chest.

"Mademoiselle Formant who has been the prettiest all the winter,
realises that she will have to go down to the second place. See how
strange she looks."

"In truth she is straining every nerve to please. Just look at that
gracious smile now that she is doing the figure in that quadrille all
alone. On my honour it is unique."

"Mademoiselle de la Mole looks as if she controlled the pleasure which
she derives from her triumph, of which she is perfectly conscious. One
might say that she fears to please anyone who talks to her."

"Very good. That is the art of alluring."

Julien vainly endeavoured to catch sight of the alluring woman. Seven
or eight men who were taller than he prevented him from seeing her.

"There is quite a lot of coquetry in that noble reserve," said the
young man with a moustache.

"And in those big blue eyes, which are lowered so slowly when one would
think they were on the point of betraying themselves," answered his
neighbour. "On my faith, nothing could be cleverer."

"See the pretty Formant looking quite common next to her," said the
first.

"That air of reserve means how much sweetness would I spend on you if
you were the man who was worthy of me."

"And who could be worthy of the sublime Mathilde," said the first man.
"Some sovereign prince, handsome, witty, well-made, a hero in war, and
twenty years old at the most."

"The natural son of the Emperor of Russia ... who would be made a
sovereign in honour of his marriage, or quite simply the comte de
Thaler, who looks like a dressed-up peasant."

The door was free, and Julien could go in.

"Since these puppets consider her so remarkable, it is worth while
for me to study her," he thought. "I shall then understand what these
people regard as perfection."

As his eyes were trying to find her, Mathilde looked at him. "My duty
calls me," said Julien to himself. But it was only his expression which
was bad-humoured.

His curiosity made him advance with a pleasure which the extremely low
cut dress on Mathilde's shoulder very quickly accentuated, in a manner
which was scarcely flattering for his own self-respect. "Her beauty has
youth," he thought. Five or six people, whom Julien recognised as those
who had been speaking at the door were between her and him.

"Now, Monsieur, you have been here all the winter," she said to him.
"Is it not true that this is the finest ball of the season."

He did not answer.

"This quadrille of Coulon's strikes me as admirable, and those ladies
dance it perfectly." The young men turned round to see who was the
happy man, an answer from whom was positively insisted on. The answer
was not encouraging.

"I shall not be able to be a good judge, mademoiselle, I pass my life
in writing. This is the first ball of this magnificence which I have
ever seen."

The young men with moustaches were scandalised.

"You are a wise man, Monsieur Sorel," came the answer with a more
marked interest. "You look upon all these balls, all these festivities,
like a philosopher, like J. J. Rousseau. All these follies astonish
without alluring you."

Julien's imagination had just hit upon an epigram which banished all
illusions from his mind. His mouth assumed the expression of a perhaps
slightly exaggerated disdain.

"J. J. Rousseau," he answered, "is in my view only a fool when he takes
it upon himself to criticise society. He did not understand it, and
he went into it with the spirit of a lackey who has risen above his
station."

"He wrote the _Contrat Social_," answered Mathilde reverently.

"While he preaches the Republic, and the overthrow of monarchical
dignities, the parvenu was intoxicated with happiness if a duke would
go out of his way after dinner to one of his friends."

"Oh yes, the Duke of Luxembourg at Montmorency, used to accompany a
Coindet from the neighbourhood of Paris," went on Mademoiselle de
la Mole, with all the pleasure and enthusiasm of her first flush of
pedantry. She was intoxicated with her knowledge, almost like the
academician who discovered the existence of King Feretrius.

Julien's look was still penetrating and severe. Mathilde had had
a moment's enthusiasm. Her partner's coldness disconcerted her
profoundly. She was all the more astonished, as it was she who was
accustomed to produce that particular effect on others.

At this moment the marquis de Croisenois was advancing eagerly towards
mademoiselle de la Mole. He was for a moment three yards away from her.
He was unable to get closer because of the crowd. He smiled at the
obstacle. The young marquise de Rouvray was near her. She was a cousin
of Mathilde. She was giving her arm to her husband who had only married
her a fortnight ago. The marquis de Rouvray, who was also very young,
had all the love which seizes a man who, having contracted a marriage
of convenience exclusively arranged by the notaries, finds a person who
is ideally pretty. M. de Rouvray would be a duke on the death of a very
old uncle.

While the marquis de Croisenois was struggling to get through the
crowd, and smiling at Mathilde she fixed her big divinely blue eyes
on him and his neighbours. "Could anything be flatter," she said to
herself. "There is Croisenois who wants to marry me, he is gentle and
polite, he has perfect manners like M. de Rouvray. If they did not
bore, those gentlemen would be quite charming. He too, would accompany
me to the ball with that smug limited expression. One year after the
marriage I shall have my carriage, my horses, my dresses, my chateau
twenty leagues from Paris. All this would be as nice as possible, and
enough to make a Countess de Roiville, for example, die of envy and
afterwards--"

Mathilde bored herself in anticipation. The marquis de Croisenois
managed to approach her and spoke to her, but she was dreaming and
did not listen to him. The noise of his words began to get mixed
with the buzz of the ball. Her eye mechanically followed Julien who
had gone away, with an air which, though respectful, was yet proud
and discontented. She noticed in a corner far from the moving crowd,
the comte Altamira who had been condemned to death in his own country
and whom the reader knows already. One of his relatives had married a
Prince de Conti in the reign of Louis XIV. This historical fact was
some protection against the police of the congregation.

"I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction," said
Mathilde. "It is the only thing which cannot be bought."

"Why, that's an epigram, I just said, what a pity it did not come at a
moment when I could have reaped all the credit for it." Mathilde had
too much taste to work into the conversation a prepared epigram but
at the same time she was too vain not to be extremely pleased with
herself. A happy expression succeeded the palpable boredom of her face.
The marquis de Croisenois, who had never left off talking, saw a chance
of success and waxed twice as eloquent.

"What objection could a caviller find with my epigram," said Mathilde
to herself. "I would answer my critic in this way: The title of baron
or vicomte is to be bought; a cross, why it is a gift. My brother
has just got one. What has he done? A promotion, why that can be
obtained by being ten years in a garrison or have the minister of war
for a relative, and you'll be a chief of a squadron like Norbert. A
great fortune! That's rather more difficult, and consequently more
meritorious. It is really quite funny. It's the opposite of what
the books say. Well, to win a fortune why you marry M. Rothschild's
daughter. Really my epigram is quite deep. Being condemned to death is
still the one privilege which one has never thought of canvassing."

"Do you know the comte Altamira," she said to M. de Croisenois.

Her thoughts seemed to have been so far away, and this question had
so little connection with all that the poor marquis had been saying
for the last five minutes, that his good temper was ruffled. He was
nevertheless a man of wit and celebrated for being so.

"Mathilde is eccentric," he thought, "that's a nuisance, but she will
give her husband such a fine social position. I don't know how the
marquis de la Mole manages. He is connected with all that is best in
all parties. He is a man who is bound to come out on top. And, besides,
this eccentricity of Mathilde's may pass for genius. Genius when allied
with good birth and a large fortune, so far from being ridiculous, is
highly distinguished. She has wit, moreover, when she wants to, that
mixture in fact of brains, character, and ready wit which constitute
perfection."

As it is difficult to do two things at the same time, the marquis
answered Mathilde with a vacant expression as though he were reciting a
lesson.

"Who does not know that poor Altamira?" and he told her the history of
his conspiracy, abortive, ridiculous and absurd.

"Very absurd," said Mathilde as if she were talking to herself, "but he
has done something. I want to see a man; bring him to me," she said to
the scandalized marquis.

Comte Altamira was one of the most avowed admirers of mademoiselle de
la Mole's haughty and impertinent manner. In his opinion she was one of
the most beautiful persons in Paris.

"How fine she would be on a throne," he said to M. de Croisenois; and
made no demur at being taken up to Mathilde.

There are a good number of people in society who would like to
establish the fact that nothing is in such bad form as a conspiracy, in
the nineteenth century; it smacks of Jacobinism. And what could be more
sordid than unsuccessful Jacobinism.

Mathilde's expression made fun a little of Altamira and M. de
Croisenois, but she listened to him with pleasure.

"A conspirator at a ball, what a pretty contrast," she thought. She
thought that this man with his black moustache looked like a lion at
rest, but she soon perceived that his mind had only one point of view:
_utility, admiration for utility_.

The young comte thought nothing worthy his attention except what tended
to give his country two chamber government. He left Mathilde, who was
the prettiest person at the ball, with alacrity, because he saw a
Peruvian general come in. Desparing of Europe such as M. de Metternich
had arranged it, poor Altamira had been reduced to thinking that when
the States of South America had become strong and powerful they could
restore to Europe the liberty which Mirabeau has given it.

A crowd of moustachised young men had approached Mathilde. She realized
that Altamira had not felt allured, and was piqued by his departure.
She saw his black eye gleam as he talked to the Peruvian general.
Mademoiselle de la Mole looked at the young Frenchmen with that
profound seriousness which none of her rivals could imitate, "which
of them," she thought, "could get himself condemned to death, even
supposing he had a favourable opportunity?"

This singular look flattered those who were not very intelligent, but
disconcerted the others. They feared the discharge of some stinging
epigram that would be difficult to answer.

"Good birth vouchsafes a hundred qualities whose absence would offend
me. I see as much in the case of Julien," thought Mathilde, "but it
withers up those qualities of soul which make a man get condemned to
death."

At that moment some one was saying near her: "Comte Altamira is the
second son of the Prince of San Nazaro-Pimentel; it was a Pimentel who
tried to save Conradin, was beheaded in 1268. It is one of the noblest
families in Naples."

"So," said Mathilde to herself, "what a pretty proof this is of my
maxim, that good birth deprives a man of that force of character
in default of which a man does not get condemned to death. I seem
doomed to reason falsely to-night. Since I am only a woman like any
other, well I must dance." She yielded to the solicitations of M. de
Croisenois who had been asking for a gallop for the last hour. To
distract herself from her failure in philosophy, Mathilde made a point
of being perfectly fascinating. M. de Croisenois was enchanted. But
neither the dance nor her wish to please one of the handsomest men at
court, nor anything at all, succeeded in distracting Mathilde. She
could not possibly have been more of a success. She was the queen of
the ball. She coldly appreciated the fact.

"What a blank life I shall pass with a person like Croisenois," she
said to herself as he took her back to her place an hour afterwards.
"What pleasure do I get," she added sadly, "if after an absence of
six months I find myself at a ball which all the women of Paris were
mad with jealousy to go to? And what is more I am surrounded by the
homage of an ideally constituted circle of society. The only bourgeois
are some peers and perhaps one or two Juliens. And yet," she added
with increasing sadness, "what advantages has not fate bestowed upon
me! Distinction, fortune, youth, everything except happiness. My most
dubious advantages are the very ones they have been speaking to me
about all the evening. Wit, I believe I have it, because I obviously
frighten everyone. If they venture to tackle a serious subject, they
will arrive after five minutes of conversation and as though they had
made a great discovery at a conclusion which we have been repeating to
them for the last hour. I am beautiful, I have that advantage for which
madame de Stael would have sacrificed everything, and yet I'm dying of
boredom. Shall I have reason to be less bored when I have changed my
name for that of the marquis de Croisenois?

"My God though," she added, while she almost felt as if she would like
to cry, "isn't he really quite perfect? He's a paragon of the education
of the age; you can't look at him without his finding something
charming and even witty to say to you; he is brave. But that Sorel is
strange," she said to herself, and the expression of her eyes changed
from melancholy to anger. "I told him that I had something to say to
him and he hasn't deigned to reappear."

Mathilde de La Mole starts crushing on Julien when she realizes that she's reached the age of many heroines in romance novels. She invites Julien to attend a duke's ball and Count Norbert brings him. As Julien wanders around, he hears young men talking about how Mathilde de La Mole is the most beautiful girl at the ball. Mathilde comes over to talk to him, making the young men jealous. She asks him what he thinks of the ball and he tells her he's not sure, having never been to one before. She finds him refreshing because he isn't superficial like the rest of the party. Julien learns that there's a Spanish man at the party named Count Altamira who has been condemned to death in his own country for stirring up revolutionary sentiments. Being a free thinker himself, Julien wants to talk to this guy more than anyone. Mathilde is very aware of how little he thinks about her, and this of course just makes her want him more.


CHAPTER XXXIX

THE BALL

        The luxurious dresses, the glitter of the candles; all
        those pretty arms and fine shoulders; the bouquets,
        the intoxicating strains of Rossini, the paintings of
        Ciceri. I am beside myself.--_Journeys of Useri_.

"You are in a bad temper," said the marquise de la Mole to her; "let me
caution you, it is ungracious at a ball."

"I only have a headache," answered Mathilde disdainfully, "it is too
hot here."

At this moment the old Baron Tolly became ill and fell down, as though
to justify mademoiselle de la Mole's remark. They were obliged to carry
him away. They talked about apoplexy. It was a disagreeable incident.

Mathilde did not bother much about it.

She made a point of never looking at old men, or at anyone who had the
reputation of being bad company.

She danced in order to escape the conversation about the apoplexy,
which was not apoplexy inasmuch as the baron put in an appearance the
following day.

"But Sorel does not come," she said to herself after she had danced.
She was almost looking round for him when she found him in another
salon. Astonishing, but he seemed to have lost that impassive coldness
that was so natural to him; he no longer looked English.

"He is talking to comte Altamira who was sentenced to death," said
Mathilde to herself. "His eye is full of a sombre fire; he looks like a
prince in disguise; his haughtiness has become twice as pronounced."

Julien came back to where she was, still talking to Altamira. She
looked at Altamira fixedly, studying his features in order to trace
those lofty qualities which can earn a man the honour of being
condemned to death.

"Yes," he was saying to comte Altamira as he passed by her, "Danton was
a real man."

"Heavens can he be a Danton?" said Mathilde to herself, "but he has
so noble a face, and that Danton was so horribly ugly, a butcher I
believe." Julien was still fairly near her. She did not hesitate to
call him; she had the consciousness and the pride of putting a question
that was unusual for a young girl.

"Was not Danton a butcher?" she said to him.

"Yes, in the eyes of certain persons," Julien answered her with the
most thinly disguised expression of contempt. His eyes were still
ardent from his conversation with Altamira, "but unfortunately for
the people of good birth he was an advocate at Mery-sur-Seine, that
is to say, mademoiselle," he added maliciously, "he began like many
peers whom I see here. It was true that Danton laboured under a great
disadvantage in the eyes of beauty; he was ugly."

These last few words were spoken rapidly in an extraordinary and indeed
very discourteous manner.

Julien waited for a moment, leaning slightly forward and with an air of
proud humility. He seemed to be saying, "I am paid to answer you and I
live on my pay." He did not deign to look up at Mathilde. She looked
like his slave with her fine eyes open abnormally wide and fixed on
him. Finally as the silence continued he looked at her, like a valet
looking at his master to receive orders. Although his eyes met the full
gaze of Mathilde which were fixed on him all the time with a strange
expression, he went away with a marked eagerness.

"To think of a man who is as handsome as he is," said Mathilde to
herself as she emerged from her reverie, "praising ugliness in such a
way, he is not like Caylus or Croisenois. This Sorel has something like
my father's look when he goes to a fancy dress ball as Napoleon." She
had completely forgotten Danton. "Yes, I am decidedly bored to-night."
She took her brother's arm and to his great disgust made him take
her round the ball-room. The idea occurred to her of following the
conversation between Julien and the man who had been condemned to
death.

The crowd was enormous. She managed to find them, however, at the
moment when two yards in front of her Altamira was going near a
dumb-waiter to take an ice. He was talking to Julien with his body half
turned round. He saw an arm in an embroidered coat which was taking an
ice close by. The embroidery seemed to attract his attention. He turned
round to look at the person to whom the arm belonged. His noble and yet
simple eyes immediately assumed a slightly disdainful expression.

"You see that man," he said to Julien in a low voice; "that is the
Prince of Araceli Ambassador of ----. He asked M. de Nerval, your
Minister for Foreign Affairs, for my extradition this morning. See,
there he is over there playing whist. Monsieur de Nerval is willing
enough to give me up, for we gave up two or three conspirators to you
in 1816. If I am given up to my king I shall be hanged in twenty-four
hours. It will be one of those handsome moustachioed gentlemen who will
arrest me."

"The wretches!" exclaimed Julien half aloud.

Mathilde did not lose a syllable of their conversation. Her ennui had
vanished.

"They are not scoundrels," replied Count Altamira. "I talk to you about
myself in order to give you a vivid impression. Look at the Prince of
Araceli. He casts his eyes on his golden fleece every five minutes; he
cannot get over the pleasure of seeing that decoration on his breast.
In reality the poor man is really an anachronism. The fleece was a
signal honour a hundred years ago, but he would have been nowhere
near it in those days. But nowadays, so far as people of birth are
concerned, you have to be an Araceli to be delighted with it. He had a
whole town hanged in order to get it."

"Is that the price he had to pay?" said Julien anxiously.

"Not exactly," answered Altamira coldly, "he probably had about thirty
rich landed proprietors in his district who had the reputation of being
Liberals thrown into the river."

"What a monster!" pursued Julien.

Mademoiselle de la Mole who was leaning her head forward with keenest
interest was so near him that her beautiful hair almost touched his
shoulder.

"You are very young," answered Altamira. "I was telling you that I had
a married sister in Provence. She is still pretty, good and gentle; she
is an excellent mother, performs all her duties faithfully, is pious
but not a bigot."

"What is he driving at?" thought mademoiselle de la Mole.

"She is happy," continued the comte Altamira; "she was so in 1815. I
was then in hiding at her house on her estate near the Antibes. Well
the moment she learnt of marshall Ney's execution she began to dance."

"Is it possible?" said Julien, thunderstruck.

"It's party spirit," replied Altamira. "There are no longer any real
passions in the nineteenth century: that's why one is so bored in
France. People commit acts of the greatest cruelty, but without any
feeling of cruelty."

"So much the worse," said Julien, "when one does commit a crime one
ought at least to take pleasure in committing it; that's the only good
thing they have about them and that's the only way in which they have
the slightest justification."

Mademoiselle de la Mole had entirely forgotten what she owed to herself
and placed herself completely between Altamira and Julien. Her brother,
who was giving her his arm, and was accustomed to obey her, was
looking at another part of the room, and in order to keep himself in
countenance was pretending to be stopped by the crowd.

"You are right," Altamira went on, "one takes pleasure in nothing one
does, and one does not remember it: this applies even to crimes. I can
show you perhaps ten men in this ballroom who have been convicted of
murder. They have forgotten all about it and everybody else as well."

"Many are moved to the point of tears if their dog breaks a paw.
When you throw flowers on their grave at Pere-la-Chaise, as you say
so humorously in Paris, we learn they united all the virtues of the
knights of chivalry, and we speak about the noble feats of their
great-grandfather who lived in the reign of Henri IV. If, in spite of
the good offices of the Prince de Araceli, I escape hanging and I ever
manage to enjoy the use of my money in Paris, I will get you to dine
with eight or ten of these respected and callous murderers.

"At that dinner you and I will be the only ones whose blood is pure,
but I shall be despised and almost hated as a monster, while you will
be simply despised as a man of the people who has pushed his way into
good society."

"Nothing could be truer," said mademoiselle de la Mole.

Altamira looked at her in astonishment; but Julien did not deign to
look at her.

"Observe that the revolution, at whose head I found myself," continued
the comte Altamira, "only failed for the one reason that I would not
cut off three heads and distribute among our partisans seven or eight
millions which happened to be in a box of which I happened to have the
key. My king, who is burning to have me hanged to-day, and who called
me by my christian name before the rebellion, would have given me the
great ribbon of his order if I had had those three heads cut off and
had had the money in those boxes distributed; for I should have had at
least a semi-success and my country would have had a charta like ----.
So wags the world; it's a game of chess."

"At that time," answered Julien with a fiery eye, "you did not know the
game; now...."

"You mean I would have the heads cut off, and I would not be a
Girondin, as you said I was the other day? I will give you your
answer," said Altamira sadly, "when you have killed a man in a duel--a
far less ugly matter than having him put to death by an executioner."

"Upon my word," said Julien, "the end justifies the means. If instead
of being an insignificant man I had some power I would have three men
hanged in order to save four men's lives."

His eyes expressed the fire of his own conscience; they met the eyes of
mademoiselle de la Mole who was close by him, and their contempt, so
far from changing into politeness seemed to redouble.

She was deeply shocked; but she found herself unable to forget Julien;
she dragged her brother away and went off in a temper.

"I must take some punch and dance a lot," she said to herself. "I will
pick out the best partner and cut some figure at any price. Good, there
is that celebrated cynic, the comte de Fervaques." She accepted his
invitation; they danced. "The question is," she thought, "which of us
two will be the more impertinent, but in order to make absolute fun
of him, I must get him to talk." Soon all the other members of the
quadrille were dancing as a matter of formality, they did not want to
lose any of Mathilde's cutting reparte. M. de Fervaques felt uneasy and
as he could only find elegant expressions instead of ideas, began to
scowl. Mathilde, who was in a bad temper was cruel, and made an enemy
of him. She danced till daylight and then went home terribly tired.
But when she was in the carriage the little vitality she had left, was
still employed in making her sad and unhappy. She had been despised by
Julien and could not despise him.

Julien was at the zenith of his happiness. He was enchanted without
his knowing it by the music, the flowers, the pretty women, the
general elegance, and above all by his own imagination which dreamt of
distinctions for himself and of liberty for all.

"What a fine ball," he said to the comte. "Nothing is lacking."

"Thought is lacking" answered Altamira, and his face betrayed that
contempt which is only more deadly from the very fact that a manifest
effort is being made to hide it as a matter of politeness.

"You are right, monsieur the comte, there isn't any thought at all, let
alone enough to make a conspiracy."

"I am here because of my name, but thought is hated in your salons.
Thought must not soar above the level of the point of a Vaudeville
couplet: it is then rewarded. But as for your man who thinks, if he
shows energy and originality we call him a cynic. Was not that name
given by one of your judges to Courier. You put him in prison as
well as Beranger. The priestly congregation hands over to the police
everyone who is worth anything amongst you individually; and good
society applauds.

"The fact is your effete society prizes conventionalism above
everything else. You will never get beyond military bravery. You will
have Murats, never Washingtons. I can see nothing in France except
vanity. A man who goes on speaking on the spur of the moment may easily
come to make an imprudent witticism and the master of the house thinks
himself insulted."

As he was saying this, the carriage in which the comte was seeing
Julien home stopped before the Hotel de la Mole. Julien was in love
with his conspirator. Altamira had paid him this great compliment which
was evidently the expression of a sound conviction. "You have not got
the French flippancy and you understand the principle of _utility_."
It happened that Julien had seen the day before _Marino Faliero_, a
tragedy, by Casmir Delavigne.

"Has not Israel Bertuccio got more character than all those noble
Venetians?" said our rebellious plebeian to himself, "and yet those
are the people whose nobility goes back to the year seven hundred, a
century before Charlemagne, while the cream of the nobility at M. de
Ritz's ball to-night only goes back, and that rather lamely, to the
thirteenth century. Well, in spite of all the noble Venetians whose
birth makes so great, it is Israel Bertuccio whom one remembers.

"A conspiracy annihilates all titles conferred by social caprice.
There, a man takes for his crest the rank that is given him by the way
in which he faces death. The intellect itself loses some of its power.

"What would Danton have been to-day in this age of the Valenods and the
Renals? Not even a deputy for the Public Prosecutor.

"What am I saying? He would have sold himself to the priests, he
would have been a minister, for after all the great Danton did steal.
Mirabeau also sold himself. Napoleon stole millions in Italy, otherwise
he would have been stopped short in his career by poverty like
Pichegru. Only La Fayette refrained from stealing. Ought one to steal,
ought one to sell oneself?" thought Julien. This question pulled him up
short. He passed the rest of the night in reading the history of the
revolution.

When he wrote his letters in the library the following day, his mind
was still concentrated on his conversation with count Altamira.

"As a matter of fact," he said to himself after a long reverie, "If the
Spanish Liberals had not injured their nation by crimes they would not
have been cleared out as easily as they were.

"They were haughty, talkative children--just like I am!" he suddenly
exclaimed as though waking up with a start.

"What difficulty have I surmounted that entitles me to judge such
devils who, once alive, dared to begin to act. I am like a man who
exclaims at the close of a meal, 'I won't dine to-morrow; but that
won't prevent me from feeling as strong and merry like I do to-day.'
Who knows what one feels when one is half-way through a great action?"

These lofty thoughts were disturbed by the unexpected arrival in
the library of mademoiselle de la Mole. He was so animated by his
admiration for the great qualities of such invincibles as Danton,
Mirabeau, and Carnot that, though he fixed his eyes on mademoiselle de
la Mole, he neither gave her a thought nor bowed to her, and scarcely
even saw her. When finally his big, open eyes realized her presence,
their expression vanished. Mademoiselle de la Mole noticed it with
bitterness.

It was in vain that she asked him for Vely's History of France which
was on the highest shelf, and thus necessitated Julien going to fetch
the longer of the two ladders. Julien had brought the ladder and had
fetched the volume and given it to her, but had not yet been able to
give her a single thought. As he was taking the ladder back he hit
in his hurry one of the glass panes in the library with his elbow;
the noise of the glass falling on the floor finally brought him to
himself. He hastened to apologise to mademoiselle de la Mole. He tried
to be polite and was certainly nothing more. Mathilde saw clearly that
she had disturbed him, and that he would have preferred to have gone
on thinking about what he had been engrossed in before her arrival,
to speaking to her. After looking at him for some time she went
slowly away. Julien watched her walk. He enjoyed the contrast of her
present dress with the elegant magnificence of the previous night. The
difference between the two expressions was equally striking. The young
girl who had been so haughty at the Duke de Retz's ball, had, at the
present moment, an almost plaintive expression. "As a matter of fact,"
said Julien to himself, "that black dress makes the beauty of her
figure all the more striking. She has a queenly carriage; but why is
she in mourning?"

"If I ask someone the reason for this mourning, they will think I am
putting my foot in it again." Julien had now quite emerged from the
depth of his enthusiasm. "I must read over again all the letters I have
written this morning. God knows how many missed out words and blunders
I shall find. As he was forcing himself to concentrate his mind on the
first of these letters he heard the rustle of a silk dress near him.
He suddenly turned round, mademoiselle de la Mole was two yards from
his table, she was smiling. This second interruption put Julien into a
bad temper. Mathilde had just fully realized that she meant nothing to
this young man. Her smile was intended to hide her embarrassment; she
succeeded in doing so.

"You are evidently thinking of something very interesting, Monsieur
Sorel. Is it not some curious anecdote about that conspiracy which
is responsible for comte Altamira being in Paris? Tell me what it is
about, I am burning to know. I will be discreet, I swear it." She was
astonished at hearing herself utter these words. What! was she asking a
favour of an inferior! Her embarrassment increased, and she added with
a little touch of flippancy,

"What has managed to turn such a usually cold person as yourself, into
an inspired being, a kind of Michael Angelo prophet?"

This sharp and indiscreet question wounded Julien deeply, and rendered
him madder than ever.

"Was Danton right in stealing?" he said to her brusquely in a manner
that grew more and more surly. "Ought the revolutionaries of Piedmont
and of Spain to have injured the people by crimes? To have given all
the places in the army and all the orders to undeserving persons? Would
not the persons who wore these orders have feared the return of the
king? Ought they to have allowed the treasure of Turin to be looted?
In a word, mademoiselle," he said, coming near her with a terrifying
expression, "ought the man who wishes to chase ignorance and crime from
the world to pass like the whirlwind and do evil indiscriminately?"

Mathilde felt frightened, was unable to stand his look, and retreated a
couples of paces. She looked at him a moment, and then ashamed of her
own fear, left the library with a light step.

Mathilde de La Mole dances with a bunch of dudes at the duke's ball to get her mind off Julien. But it doesn't really work. She keeps trying to listen in on Julien's conversation with Count Altamira, which seems to be all about revolution and politics. All she can think about is how much more interesting he is than the guy she's supposed to marry, a guy named Croisenois. Mathilde soon realizes that Julien takes away her boredom. That's why she's so interested in him. The days after the ball, Julien glows with revolutionary passion. Whenever he sees Mathilde around, this glow fades because he's afraid of giving his true thoughts away. All she sees, though, is a drop in his enthusiasm whenever he sees her. Julien notices that Mathilde is dressed in black as if she's in mourning. When Mathilde tries to ask him what he's thinking about, he boils over and tells her all the violent, revolutionary thoughts he's been having. He's so aggressive that he actually scares Mathilde.


CHAPTER XL

QUEEN MARGUERITE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And where?" said Julien in astonishment.

"At the place de Greve."

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

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

"Impossible?" cried Julien really moved.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Julien scolds himself for revealing his inner thoughts to Mathilde. He catches her later that day giving him strange looks, then realizes that being intense in front of her has made her like him. After dinner, Julien asks one of the de La Moles' friends why Mathilde is dressed in mourning clothes. It turns out that one of her ancestors was executed on this day a long time ago. After his head was cut off, his lover took his head and cradled it in her arms. The story makes Julien realize how much of a poetic, romantic soul Mathilde has. Now that the floodgates have opened between them, Julien tells Mathilde all of his thoughts about Napoleon and the corruption of the rich. Sometimes, Mathilde tries to regain power by acting like she's above him. But he always answers by becoming totally professional and treating her like an employer, which makes her back down. Julien decides that he wants to sleep with Mathilde and then leave the de La Mole house for good. He keeps wondering about whether Mathilde is actually in love with him.


CHAPTER XLI

A YOUNG GIRL'S DOMINION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The narrator tells us that if Julien were more observant, he'd realize just how crushing Mathilde can be to anyone who annoys her. She receives a lot of love letters from young men and is basically a heartbreaker. One day, Mathilde realizes that she's totally in love with Julien. She's never known the feeling before, and it feels great.


CHAPTER XLII

IS HE A DANTON?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His daughter had understood the idea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mathilde praises Julien in front of her brother and Croisenois, the guy who wants to marry her. They tell her to be careful, since people like Julien would have them all killed if they had their way. Pretty soon, all the young men around the de La Mole house band together to destroy Mathilde's opinion of Julien. One day, Julien follows Mathilde and the group of young men into the garden and hears Mathilde passionately defending him. Now he knows there must be something between them.