Part 26

But M. Sorel does not come, she said to herself again, after she had danced. She was almost searching for him with her eyes, when she caught sight of him in another salon. Astonishing thing, he seemed to have lost that tone of impassive coldness so natural to him; he no longer had the English air.

He is talking with Count Altamira, my condemned man! said Mathilde. His eye is full of a dark fire; he has the bearing of a disguised prince, his glance has redoubled in pride.

Julien drew nearer to where she was, still conversing with Altamira; she looked at him fixedly, studying his features to find those high qualities which can earn a man the honor of being condemned to death.

As he passed near her:

—Yes, he was saying to Count Altamira, Danton was a man!

O heavens! would he be a Danton, said Mathilde to herself, but he has such a noble face, and that Danton was so horribly ugly—a butcher, I believe. Julien was still quite near her; she did not hesitate to call to him, she had the conscience and the pride to ask a question extraordinary for a young girl.

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

—Yes, in the eyes of certain persons, he answered her, with the expression of the most ill-disguised contempt, and his eye still inflamed from his conversation with Altamira—but unfortunately for well-born people, he was a lawyer at Méry-sur-Seine; that is to say, mademoiselle, he added with a malicious air, that he began like several peers whom I see here. It is true that Danton had an enormous disadvantage in the eyes of beauty—he was very ugly.

These last words were said rapidly, with an extraordinary air and assuredly very impolite.

Julien waited a moment, his body slightly bent forward, with a proudly humble air. He seemed to say: I am paid to answer you, and I live by my salary. He did not deign to raise his eye to Mathilde. She, with her beautiful eyes extraordinarily wide open and fixed upon him, looked like his slave. At last, as the silence continued, he looked at her as a valet looks at his master, in order to take orders. Though his eyes met full those of Mathilde, still fixed on him with a strange gaze, he moved away with marked eagerness.

He, who is really so handsome, said Mathilde at last, emerging from her reverie, to make such an eulogy of ugliness! Never reflecting on himself! He is not like Caylus or Croisenois. This Sorel has something of the air my father takes when he does Napoleon so well at the ball. She had quite forgotten Danton. Decidedly this evening, I am bored. She seized her brother's arm, and, to his great sorrow, forced him to take a turn about the ballroom. The idea came to her to follow the conversation of the condemned man with Julien.

The crowd was enormous. She nevertheless managed to rejoin them at the moment when, two steps ahead of her, Altamira approached a tray to take an ice. He was speaking to Julien, his body half turned. He saw an embroidered sleeve of a coat which was taking an ice next to his own. The embroidery seemed to excite his attention; he turned completely around to see the person to whom the arm belonged. In an instant, those black eyes, so noble and so naive, took on a slight expression of disdain.

—You see that man, he said rather low to Julien; it is the Prince d'Araceli, ambassador of ***. This morning he asked for my extradition from your French minister of foreign affairs, M. de Nerval. See, there he is over there, playing whist. M. de Nerval is rather disposed to hand me over, for we gave you two or three conspirators in 1862. If they return me to my king I am hanged within twenty-four hours. And it will be one of those pretty mustachioed gentlemen who will seize me.

—The scoundrels! cried Julien half aloud.

Mathilde lost not a syllable of their conversation. Boredom had disappeared.

—Not such scoundrels, resumed Count Altamira. I spoke to you of myself to strike you with a vivid image. Look at the Prince d'Araceli; every five minutes he casts his eyes on his golden fleece, he cannot get over the pleasure of seeing that trinket on his chest. That poor man is at bottom but an anachronism. A hundred years ago, the fleece was a signal honor, but then it would have passed well above his head. Today, among well-born people, one must be an Araceli to be enchanted by it. He would have had a whole town hanged to obtain it.

—Did he get it at that price? said Julien anxiously.

—Not precisely, answered Altamira coldly; he has perhaps had some thirty rich landowners of his country, who passed for liberals, thrown into the river.

—What a monster! said Julien again.

Mlle de La Mole, bending her head with the liveliest interest, was so near him that her beautiful hair almost touched his shoulder.

—You are very young! Altamira answered. I told you I have a sister married in Provence; she is still pretty, good, gentle, an excellent mother of a family, faithful to all her duties, pious and not devout.

Where is he leading? thought Mlle de La Mole.

—She is happy, continued Count Altamira; she was so in 1815. Then I was hidden at her house, on her estate near Antibes; well, at the moment she learned of the execution of Marshal Ney, she began to dance!

—Is it possible? said Julien, appalled.

—It is the spirit of party, resumed Altamira. There are no longer any true passions in the nineteenth century; that is why one is so bored in France. The greatest cruelties are committed, but without cruelty.

—So much the worse! said Julien. At least, when one commits crimes, one should commit them with pleasure; they have only that good, and one can scarcely even justify them a little except by that reason.

Mlle de La Mole, quite forgetting what she owed to herself, had placed herself almost entirely between Altamira and Julien. Her brother, who was giving her his arm, accustomed to obeying her, looked elsewhere about the room, and, to keep up appearances, had the air of being stopped by the crowd.

—You are right, said Altamira; everything is done without pleasure and without remembering it, even crimes. I can show you in this ball perhaps ten men who are damned as murderers. They have forgotten it, and the world too.

Several are moved to tears if their dog hurts its paw. At Père-Lachaise, when flowers are thrown on their graves, as you say so pleasantly in Paris, we are told that they united all the virtues of the valiant knights, and one speaks of the great deeds of their great-grandfather who lived under Henri IV. If, despite the good offices of the Prince d'Araceli, I am not hanged and ever enjoy my fortune in Paris, I want to have you dine with eight or ten honored and remorseless assassins.

You and I, at that dinner, will be the only ones pure of blood; but I shall be despised and almost hated, as a sanguinary and Jacobin monster, and you, simply despised as a man of the people intruded into good society.

—Nothing more true, said Mlle de La Mole.

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

—Note that the revolution at the head of which I found myself, continued Count Altamira, did not succeed uniquely because I would not have three heads fall and distribute to our partisans seven or eight millions which were in a chest whose key I had. My king who, today, burns to have me hanged, and who, before the revolt, used the familiar tu with me, would have given me the grand cordon of his order if I had had those three heads fall and distributed the money from those chests, for I would have obtained at least a half-success, and my country would have had a charter of sorts... Thus goes the world, it is a game of chess.

—Then, resumed Julien, his eye on fire, you did not know the game; now...

—I would have heads fall, do you mean, and I would not be a Girondin as you made me understand the other day?... I shall answer you, said Altamira, with a sad air, when you have killed a man in a duel, which still is much less ugly than having him executed by a hangman.

—Upon my word! said Julien, who wills the end wills the means; if, instead of being an atom, I had some power, I would have three men hanged to save the lives of four.

His eyes expressed the fire of conscience and the contempt of vain human judgments; they met those of Mlle de La Mole quite near him, and that contempt, far from changing into a gracious and civil air, seemed to redouble.

She was profoundly shocked by it, but it was no longer in her power to forget Julien; she moved away with vexation, dragging her brother along.

I must take some punch and dance a great deal, she said to herself; I want to choose the best and make an impression at all costs. Good, here is that famous impertinent, the Count de Fervaques. She accepted his invitation, they danced. It is a question of seeing, she thought, which of the two will be the more impertinent; but, to mock him fully, I must make him talk. Soon the rest of the contradance danced only by way of bystanders. No one wanted to lose one of Mathilde's piquant repartees. M. de Fervaques grew confused, and, finding only elegant words instead of ideas, made faces; Mathilde, who was in a bad humor, was cruel to him, and made an enemy of him. She danced until daybreak, and at last withdrew horribly tired. But, in the carriage, the little strength left to her was still employed in making her sad and unhappy. She had been despised by Julien, and could not despise him.

Julien was at the height of happiness, ravished unawares by the music, the flowers, the beautiful women, the general elegance, and, more than all, by his imagination which dreamed of distinctions for himself and liberty for all.

—What a fine ball! he said to the count; nothing is lacking.

—Thought is lacking to it, answered Altamira.

And his physiognomy betrayed that contempt, which is only the more piquant because one sees that politeness imposes on itself the duty of hiding it.

—You are in it, Monsieur le Comte. Is it not thought, and conspiring still?

—I am here because of my name. But thought is hated in your salons. It must not rise above the point of a vaudeville couplet, then you reward it. But the man who thinks, if he has energy and novelty in his sallies, you call him cynic. Is it not that name one of your judges gave to Courier? You put him in prison, as well as Béranger. All that is worth anything, among you, by wit, the congregation throws to the correctional police; and good society applauds.

—That is because your aged society prizes above all proprieties... You will never rise above military bravery; you will have your Murats, and never a Washington. I see in France only vanity. A man who invents while speaking easily arrives at an imprudent sally, and the master of the house thinks himself dishonored.

At these words, the count's carriage, which was bringing Julien back, stopped before the Hôtel de La Mole. Julien was in love with his conspirator. Altamira had paid him that fine compliment, evidently escaped from a profound conviction: You have not French lightness and understand the principle of utility. Now it happened that, just the day before yesterday, Julien had seen Marino Faliero, tragedy by M. Casimir Delavigne.

Israel Bertuccio, a simple carpenter of the arsenal, has he not more character than all those noble Venetians? said our revolted plebeian to himself, and yet these are people whose proven nobility goes back to the year 700, a century before Charlemagne, while all that was most noble this evening, at M. de Retz's ball, goes back, and even then haltingly, only to the thirteenth century. Well! amid these nobles of Venice, so great by birth, but so etiolated, but so effaced by character, it is Israel Bertuccio one remembers.

A conspiracy annihilates all titles given by social caprices. There, a man takes at once the rank assigned him by his manner of envisaging death. Wit itself loses its empire...

What would Danton be today, in this century of Valenod and Rênal? not even deputy public prosecutor...

What am I saying? he would have sold himself to the congregation, he would be minister; for after all that great Danton stole. Mirabeau also sold himself. Napoleon had stolen millions in Italy, without which he would have been stopped short by poverty, like Pichegru. La Fayette alone never stole. Must one steal, must one sell oneself? thought Julien. This question stopped him short. He spent the rest of the night reading the history of the revolution.

The next day, while writing his letters in the library, he was still thinking only of Count Altamira's conversation.

In fact, he said to himself, after a long reverie, if those liberal Spaniards had compromised the people by crimes, they would not have been swept away with such ease. They were proud and babbling children... like me! cried Julien suddenly, as if waking with a start.

What hard thing have I done that gives me the right to judge poor devils, who at least, once in their lives, dared, began to act? I am like a man who, on leaving the table, cries: Tomorrow I shall not dine; which will not prevent me from being strong and lively as I am today. Who knows what one feels halfway through a great action? For after all those things are not done like firing a pistol... These high thoughts were troubled by the unforeseen arrival of Mlle de La Mole, who entered the library. He was so animated by his admiration for the great qualities of Danton, of Mirabeau, of Carnot, who knew how not to be vanquished, that his eyes rested on Mlle de La Mole, but without thinking of her, without greeting her, without almost seeing her. When at last his wide-open eyes perceived her presence, his gaze went out. Mlle de La Mole noticed it with bitterness.

In vain she asked him for a volume of Velly's Histoire de France, placed on the highest shelf, which obliged Julien to go fetch the larger of the two ladders; Julien had brought the ladder near, he had looked for the volume, he had handed it to her, without yet being able to think of her. In bringing the ladder back, in his preoccupation, he gave an elbow to one of the library mirrors; the shards, falling on the parquet floor, finally woke him. He hastened to apologize to Mlle de La Mole; he wanted to be polite, but he was only polite. Mathilde saw evidently that she had disturbed him, and that he would have preferred to think of what occupied him before her arrival, than to speak to her. After looking at him a great deal she went away slowly. Julien watched her walk. He enjoyed the contrast of the simplicity of her present toilette, with the magnificent elegance of the evening before. The difference between the two faces was almost as striking. This young girl, so haughty at the Duke de Retz's ball, had almost, at this moment, a supplicating glance. Really, said Julien to himself, this black dress makes the beauty of her figure shine even more. She has the bearing of a queen, but why is she in mourning?

If I ask anyone the cause of this mourning, it will turn out that I commit another awkwardness. Julien had quite emerged from the depths of his enthusiasm. I must reread all the letters I wrote this morning; God knows what skipped words and blunders I shall find in them. As he was reading with forced attention the first of those letters, he heard close to him the rustle of a silk dress; he turned around quickly; Mlle de La Mole was two steps from his table, she was laughing. This second interruption put Julien in a bad humor.

For Mathilde, she had just keenly felt that she was nothing to this young man; that laugh was meant to hide her embarrassment, and she succeeded.

—Evidently, you are thinking of something very interesting, Monsieur Sorel. Is it not some curious anecdote about the conspiracy which sent M. le Comte Altamira to Paris? Tell me what it is about, I am burning to know; I shall be discreet, I swear it to you.

She was astonished at this word as she heard herself pronounce it. What! she was begging a subordinate! Her embarrassment increasing, she added with a light little air:

—What could have made you, ordinarily so cold, into an inspired being, a sort of Michelangelo prophet?

This vivid and indiscreet interrogation, wounding Julien profoundly, restored to him all his madness.

—Did Danton do well to steal? he said to her brusquely and with an air that became more and more wild. Should the revolutionaries of Piedmont, of Spain, have compromised the people by crimes? given to even unmeritorious men all the posts in the army, all the crosses? would not those who would have worn those crosses have feared the return of the king? should the treasury of Turin have been put to pillage? In a word, mademoiselle, he said approaching her with a terrible air, must the man who wants to chase ignorance and crime from the earth pass like the tempest and do evil as if by chance?

Mathilde grew afraid, could not sustain his gaze, and recoiled two steps. She looked at him an instant; then, ashamed of her fear, with a light step she left the library.

CHAPTER X

THE QUEEN MARGUERITE

Love! to what folly dost thou not succeed in making us find pleasure?

Letter of a PORTUGUESE NUN.

Julien reread his letters. When the dinner bell sounded: How ridiculous I must have been in the eyes of that Parisian doll! he said to himself; what madness to really tell her what I was thinking! but perhaps not so great a madness. The truth on this occasion was worthy of me.

Why too come question me on intimate things? that question is indiscreet on her part. She lacked breeding. My thoughts on Danton form no part of the service for which her father pays me.

On arriving in the dining room, Julien was distracted from his humor by the deep mourning of Mlle de La Mole, which struck him all the more in that no other person of the family was in black.

After dinner, he found himself quite rid of the fit of enthusiasm which had obsessed him all day. Happily, the academician who knew Latin was at this dinner. There is the man who will mock me least, said Julien, if, as I suppose, my question about Mlle de La Mole's mourning is an awkwardness.

Mathilde looked at him with a singular expression. That is indeed the coquetry of the women of this country such as Mme de Rênal painted it to me, said Julien to himself. I was not amiable to her this morning, I did not yield to the fancy she had to talk. I thereby increase my price in her eyes. No doubt the devil loses nothing by it. Later, her disdainful haughtiness will know well how to avenge itself. I let her do her worst. What a difference with what I have lost! what charming naturalness! what naivety! I knew her thoughts before she did, I saw them born, I had for antagonist in her heart only the fear of the death of her children; it was a reasonable and natural affection, even amiable for me who suffered by it. I have been a fool. The ideas I had formed of Paris prevented me from appreciating that sublime woman.

What a difference, great God! and what do I find here? dry and haughty vanity, all the nuances of self-love and nothing more.

They were rising from table. Let me not let my academician get engaged, said Julien. He approached him as they passed into the garden, took a gentle and submissive air, and shared his fury against the success of Hernani.

—If we were still in the time of lettres de cachet!... said he.

—Then he would not have dared, cried the academician with a gesture à la Talma.

On the subject of a flower, Julien quoted a few words of Virgil's Georgics, and found that nothing equaled the verse of the abbé Delille. In a word, he flattered the academician in every way. After which, with the most indifferent air:

—I suppose, he said to him, that Mlle de La Mole has inherited from some uncle whose mourning she wears.

—What! you are of the house, said the academician stopping short, and you do not know her folly? To be sure, it is strange that her mother permits her such things; but, between us, it is not precisely by strength of character that one shines in this house. Mlle Mathilde has it over all of them and leads them. Today is the 30th of April! and the academician stopped, looking at Julien with a knowing air. Julien smiled with the most spirited air he could.

What relation can there be between leading a whole house, wearing a black dress, and the 30th of April? he said to himself. I must be even more awkward than I thought.

—I shall confess to you..., he said to the academician, and his eye continued to question.

—Let us take a turn in the garden, said the academician, foreseeing with delight the occasion to make an elegant long narration.

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

—And where? said Julien astonished.

—In the Place de Grève.

Julien was so astonished that this word did not enlighten him. Curiosity, the expectation of a tragic interest, so in keeping with his character, gave him those brilliant eyes a narrator so loves to see in his listener. The academician, delighted to find a virgin ear, related at length to Julien how, on the 30th of April 1574, the prettiest gentleman of his century, Boniface de La Mole and Annibal de Coconasso, a Piedmontese gentleman, his friend, had their heads cut off in the Place de Grève. La Mole was the adored lover of Queen Marguerite of Navarre.

—And note, added the academician, that Mlle de La Mole is named Mathilde-Marguerite. La Mole was at the same time the favorite of the Duke d'Alençon and the intimate friend of the King of Navarre, later Henri IV, husband of his mistress. On Shrove Tuesday of that year 1574, the court found itself at Saint-Germain with the poor King Charles IX, who was dying. La Mole wanted to carry off the princes his friends, whom Queen Catherine de Médicis held as prisoners at court. He advanced two hundred horses under the walls of Saint-Germain; the Duke d'Alençon grew afraid, and La Mole was thrown to the executioner.

But what touches Mlle Mathilde, what she confessed to me herself, seven or eight years ago, when she was twelve, for she is a head, a head!... and the academician raised his eyes to heaven. What struck her in this political catastrophe is that Queen Marguerite of Navarre, hidden in a house on the Place de Grève, dared to send to the executioner for the head of her lover. And the following night, at midnight, she took that head in her carriage, and went to bury it herself in a chapel situated at the foot of the Montmartre hill.

—Is it possible! cried Julien, touched.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”