Part 27

--Mlle Mathilde despises her brother, because, as you see, he gives not the slightest thought to all this ancient history, and does not go into mourning on the 30th of April. It is since that famous execution, and to recall the intimate friendship of La Mole for Coconasso—who, being an Italian, was called Annibal—that all the men of this 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 24th of August 1572... But how is it possible, my dear Sorel, that you should be ignorant of these things, you, who are a commensal of this house?

--So that is why, twice at dinner, Mlle de La Mole called her brother Annibal. I thought I had misheard.

--It was a reproach. It is strange that the marquise should tolerate such follies... The husband of that tall girl will see fine doings!

This remark was followed by five or six satirical phrases. The joy and intimacy shining in the academician's eyes shocked Julien. Here we have two servants busy disparaging their masters, he thought. But nothing should surprise me from this man of the academy.

One day Julien had surprised him on his knees before the marquise de La Mole; he was asking her for a tobacco recipe for a nephew from the provinces. In the evening, a little lady's maid of Mlle de La Mole, who was courting Julien as Élisa had once done, gave him the notion that her mistress's mourning was not assumed to attract attention. This oddity sprang from the depths of her character. She genuinely loved that La Mole, the beloved lover of the wittiest queen of her century, who died for having wished to restore liberty to his friends. And what friends! the first prince of the blood and Henri IV.

Accustomed to the perfect naturalness that shone through all of Mme de Rênal's conduct, Julien saw nothing but affectation in all the women of Paris; and, were he at all inclined to melancholy, he found nothing to say to them. Mlle de La Mole was an exception.

He began no longer to take for coldness of heart that kind of beauty which belongs to nobility of bearing. He had long conversations with Mlle de La Mole, who, during the fine days of spring, walked with him in the garden, along the open windows of the salon. One day she told him she was reading the history of d'Aubigné, and Brantôme. Strange reading, thought Julien; and the marquise does not allow him to read the novels of Walter Scott!

One day she related to him, with those eyes shining with pleasure that prove the sincerity of admiration, this trait of a young woman of the reign of Henri III, which she had just read in the Mémoires de l'Étoile: Finding her husband unfaithful, she stabbed him.

Julien's self-esteem was flattered. A person surrounded by so much respect, and who, according to the academician, ruled the whole house, deigned to speak to him in a manner that might almost resemble friendship.

I was mistaken, Julien soon thought, this is not familiarity; I am merely a tragic confidant; it is the need to talk. I pass for a scholar in this family. I shall go and read Brantôme, d'Aubigné, l'Estoile. I shall be able to dispute some of the anecdotes Mlle de La Mole tells me. I mean to escape this role of passive confidant.

Little by little his conversations with this young girl, of so imposing yet so easy a bearing, became more interesting. He forgot his sorry role of rebellious plebeian. He found her learned, and even reasonable. Her opinions in the garden were very different from those she avowed in the salon. Sometimes she showed with him an enthusiasm and frankness that formed a perfect contrast with her usual manner, so haughty and so cold.

The wars of the League are the heroic age of France, she said to him one day, with eyes sparkling with genius and enthusiasm. Then everyone fought to obtain something he desired, to make his party triumph, and not basely to win a cross, as in the time of your emperor. Admit that there was less selfishness and pettiness. I love that century.

--And Boniface de La Mole was its hero, he said to her.

--At least he was loved as perhaps it is sweet to be loved. What living woman today would not shudder to touch the head of her decapitated lover?

Mme de La Mole called her daughter. Hypocrisy, to be useful, must hide itself; and Julien, as we see, had made a half-confidence to Mlle de La Mole regarding his admiration for Napoleon.

That is the immense advantage they have over us, Julien said to himself, left alone in the garden. The history of their ancestors lifts them above vulgar sentiments, and they do not always have to think of their livelihood! What misery! he added bitterly, I am unworthy to reason upon these great interests. I surely see them ill. My life is but a series of hypocrisies, because I have not a thousand francs of income to buy bread.

--What are you dreaming of there, sir? said Mathilde, who was coming back running.

There was intimacy in the question, and she came back running and out of breath to be with him. Julien was weary of despising himself. Out of pride, he frankly stated his thought. He blushed deeply in speaking of his poverty to a person so rich. He sought to express by his proud tone that he asked for nothing. Never had he seemed so handsome to Mathilde; she found in him an expression of sensibility and frankness that he often lacked.

Less than a month later, Julien was walking pensively in the garden of the hôtel de La Mole, but his face no longer bore the hardness and philosophical arrogance imprinted on it by the continual sense of his inferiority. He had just escorted Mlle de La Mole to the salon door; she claimed to have hurt her foot running with her brother.

She leaned on my arm in a very singular way! Julien said to himself. Am I a coxcomb, or could it be true that she has a taste for me? She listens to me with so gentle an air, even when I confess to her all the sufferings of my pride! She who has such pride with everyone else! They would be much astonished in the salon, if they saw that look on her face. Very certainly that soft and good air she has with no one else.

Julien sought not to exaggerate this singular friendship. He compared it himself to an armed truce. Each day on meeting again, before resuming the almost intimate tone of the day before, they almost asked each other: Shall we be friends or enemies today? In the first words exchanged, the substance of things was nothing. Both sides attended only to form. Julien had understood that to let himself be offended with impunity even once by this haughty girl was to lose all. If I must quarrel, is it not better that it be at once, in defending the just rights of my pride, than in repelling the marks of contempt that would soon follow the least abandonment of what I owe to my personal dignity?

Several times, on ill-humoured days, Mathilde tried to take with him the tone of a great lady; she showed a rare finesse in these attempts, but Julien repulsed them roughly.

One day he interrupted her abruptly:

--Does Mademoiselle de La Mole have some order to give to her father's secretary? he said to her; he must listen to her orders and execute them with respect, but otherwise he has not a single word to address to her. He is not paid to communicate his thoughts to her.

This manner of being, and the singular doubts Julien had, made disappear the boredom he had found during the first months in that magnificent salon, but where one was afraid of everything, and where it was proper to jest at nothing.

It would be amusing if she loved me! Whether she loves me or not, Julien continued, I have as intimate confidante a girl of wit, before whom I see the whole house tremble, and, more than all others, the marquis de Croisenois. This young man so polite, so gentle, so brave, and who unites all the advantages of birth and fortune of which even one alone would put my heart so at ease! He is madly in love with her, that is to say as much as a Parisian can be in love; he is to marry her. How many letters M. de La Mole has had me write to the two notaries to arrange the contract! And I who see myself, in the morning, so subordinate with pen in hand, two hours later, here in the garden, I triumph over this amiable young man; for, after all, the preferences are striking, direct. Perhaps too she hates in him a future husband. She has enough haughtiness for that. And then, the kindnesses she shows me, I obtain them as a subordinate confidant!

But no; either I am mad, or she is courting me the colder and more respectful I show myself toward her, the more she seeks me out. This might be a settled plan, an affectation; but I see her eyes light up when I appear unexpectedly. Can the women of Paris feign to that degree? What matter to me! I have appearance on my side; let us enjoy appearances. My God, how beautiful she is! How her great blue eyes please me, seen close, and looking at me as they often do! What a difference from last spring, when I lived unhappily and sustained myself by force of character, amid those three hundred wicked and dirty hypocrites! I was almost as wicked as they.

On days of distrust: This young girl is mocking me, Julien thought. She is in agreement with her brother to mystify me. But she seems to so despise the lack of energy in that brother! He is brave, and that is all, she tells me. And even then, brave before the swords of the Spaniards. In Paris everything frightens him, he sees the danger of ridicule everywhere. He has not a thought that dares stray from fashion. It is always I who am obliged to take his defence. A young girl of nineteen! At that age can one be faithful every instant of the day to the hypocrisy one has prescribed for oneself?

On the other hand, when Mlle de La Mole fixes on me her great blue eyes with a certain singular expression, always Count Norbert moves away. This is suspicious to me; should he not be indignant that his sister should distinguish a domestic of their house? for I have heard the duke de Chaulnes speak of me thus. At this memory, anger replaced every other sentiment. Is it love of old language in this maniac duke?

Well, she is pretty! Julien continued with the look of a tiger. I shall have her, and then I shall go away, and woe to whoever troubles me in my flight!

This idea became Julien's sole concern; he could no longer think of anything else. His days passed like hours.

Every instant, seeking to occupy himself with some serious matter, his thought was lost in a deep reverie and he woke a quarter of an hour later, his heart palpitating with ambition, his head troubled and dreaming of this idea: Does she love me?

CHAPTER XI

THE EMPIRE OF A YOUNG GIRL!

I admire her beauty, but I fear her wit.

MERIMÉE.

If Julien had employed in examining what passed in the salon the time he spent exaggerating Mathilde's beauty, or growing passionate against the natural haughtiness of her family, which she forgot for him, he would have understood wherein consisted her empire over all around her. As soon as one displeased Mlle de La Mole, she knew how to punish by a jest so measured, so well chosen, so seemingly proper, launched so opportunely, that the wound grew each moment, the more one reflected on it. Little by little it became atrocious to the offended self-esteem. As she attached no value to many things that were objects of serious desire for the rest of the family, she always appeared cool-blooded in their eyes.

The salons of the aristocracy are agreeable to cite, when one leaves them, but that is all. Complete insignificance, and especially commonplace talk that goes even to meet finished hypocrisy, ends by irritating through nauseating gentleness. Politeness alone is something in itself only the first days. Julien experienced it; after the first enchantment, the first astonishment: Politeness, he said to himself, is but the absence of the anger that bad manners would give. Mathilde was often bored; perhaps she would have been bored everywhere. Then to sharpen an epigram was for her a distraction and a true pleasure.

It was perhaps to have victims a little more amusing than her grandparents, the academician and the five or six other subordinates who courted them, that she had given hopes to the marquis de Croisenois, the count de Caylus and two or three other young men of the highest distinction. They were for her but new objects of epigram.

We confess with reluctance, for we love Mathilde, that she had received letters from several of them and had sometimes answered. We hasten to add that this personage is an exception to the morals of the age. It is not generally want of prudence that can be reproached to the pupils of the noble convent of the Sacré-Cœur.

One day the marquis de Croisenois returned to Mathilde a rather compromising letter that she had written him the day before. He thought by this mark of high prudence to advance his cause greatly. But it was imprudence that Mathilde loved in her correspondences. Her pleasure was to play with her fate. She did not speak to him for six weeks.

She amused herself with the letters of these young men; but, according to her, they all resembled each other. It was always the most profound passion, the most melancholy.

--They are all the same perfect man, ready to depart for Palestine, she said to her cousin. Do you know anything more insipid? So these are the letters I am to receive all my life! Those letters are to change only every twenty years, according to the kind of occupation in fashion. They must have been less faded in the time of the Empire. Then all these young men of the great world had seen or done deeds that really had grandeur. The duke de N***, my uncle, was at Wagram.

--What wit does it take to give a sabre stroke? And when that has happened to them, they speak of it so often! said Mlle de Sainte-Hérédité, Mathilde's cousin.

--Well! those accounts please me. To be in a real battle, a battle of Napoleon, where one killed ten thousand soldiers, that proves courage. To expose oneself to danger elevates the soul and saves it from the boredom in which my poor adorers seem plunged; and it is contagious, that boredom. Which of them has the idea of doing something extraordinary? They seek to obtain my hand, a fine affair! I am rich and my father will advance his son-in-law. Ah! might he find one who was a little amusing!

Mathilde's quick, clear, picturesque way of seeing spoiled her language as one sees. Often a word of hers made a stain in the eyes of her so polite friends. They would almost have admitted, had she been less fashionable, that her speech had something a little coloured for feminine delicacy.

She, for her part, was quite unjust toward the pretty cavaliers who people the Bois de Boulogne. She saw the future not with terror, that would have been a lively sentiment, but with a disgust rare at her age.

What could she desire? fortune, high birth, wit, beauty as was said, and as she believed, all had been heaped upon her by the hands of chance.

Such were the thoughts 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 cleverness of this little bourgeois. He will know how to make himself bishop like the abbé Maury, she said to herself.

Soon this sincere and unplayed resistance, with which our hero received several of her ideas, occupied her; she thought of it; she recounted to her friend the slightest details of the conversations, and found that she never succeeded in rendering all their physiognomy.

An idea illuminated her all at once: I have the happiness of loving, she said to herself one day, with an incredible transport of joy. I love, I love, it is clear! At my age, a young, beautiful, witty girl, where can she find sensations, if not in love? I may do what I will, I shall never have love for Croisenois, Caylus, and tutti quanti. They are perfect, too perfect perhaps, in short, they bore me.

She ran over in her head all the descriptions of passion she had read in Manon Lescaut, the Nouvelle Héloïse, the Lettres d'une Religieuse portugaise, etc., etc. It was a question, evidently, only of great passion; light love was unworthy of a girl of her age and birth. She gave the name of love only to that heroic sentiment one met in France in the time of Henri III and of Bassompierre. That love yielded not basely to obstacles, but, far from that, made great things be done. What a misfortune for me that there is no true court, like that of Catherine de Médicis or of Louis XIII! I feel myself equal to all that is boldest and greatest. What would I not do with a king of a man of heart, like Louis XIII, sighing at my feet! I would lead him into Vendée, as the baron de Tolly so often says, and from there he would reconquer his kingdom; then no more charter... and Julien would second me. What does he lack? a name and fortune. He would make himself a name, he would acquire fortune.

Nothing is lacking to Croisenois, and he will be all his life but a half-ultra, half-liberal duke, a hesitant being speaking when one must act, always removed from extremes, and consequently finding himself second everywhere.

What great action is not an extreme at the moment one undertakes it? It is when it is accomplished that it seems possible to common beings. Yes, it is love with all its miracles that is to reign in my heart; I feel it by the fire that animates me. Heaven owed me this favour. It has not in vain heaped upon a single being all advantages. My happiness will be worthy of me. Each of my days will not coldly resemble that of the day before. There is already grandeur and boldness in daring to love a man placed so far from me by his social position. Let us see: will he continue to deserve me? At the first weakness I see in him, I abandon him. A girl of my birth, and with the chivalrous character I am kindly granted (it was a word of her father), must not conduct herself like a fool.

Is not that the role I would play if I loved the marquis de Croisenois? I would have a new edition of the happiness of my cousins, whom I so completely despise. I know in advance all my poor marquis would say to me, all I would have to answer him. What is love that makes one yawn? it were as well to be devout. I would have a contract signing like that of the youngest of my cousins, where the grandparents would grow tender, if yet they were not out of humour because of a last condition introduced the eve before into the contract by the notary of the other party.

CHAPTER XII

MIGHT HE BE A DANTON?

The need of anxiety, such was the character of the fair Marguerite de Valois, my aunt, who soon married the king of Navarre, whom we now see reigning in France, under the name of Henry IV. The need of play formed the whole secret of the character of this amiable princess; hence her quarrels and reconciliations with her brothers from the age of sixteen. Now what can a young girl play? That which she has most precious: her reputation, the consideration of all her life.

MEMOIRS OF THE DUKE D'ANGOULÊME, NATURAL SON OF CHARLES IX.

Between Julien and me there is no contract signing, no notary for the bourgeois ceremony; all is heroic, all shall be child of chance. Save nobility, which he lacks, it is the love of Marguerite de Valois for the young La Mole, the most distinguished man of his time. Is it my fault if the young men of the Court are such great partisans of propriety, and turn pale at the mere idea of the least somewhat singular adventure? A little voyage in Greece or in Africa is, for them, the height of audacity, and yet they know how to march only in a troop. As soon as they see themselves alone, they are afraid, not of the Bedouin's lance, but of ridicule, and this fear drives them mad.

My little Julien, on the contrary, likes to act only alone. Never, in this privileged being, the least idea of seeking support and help in others! he despises others and that is why I do not despise him.

If, with his poverty, Julien were noble, my love would be but a vulgar folly, a flat misalliance; I would not have it; he would lack that which characterises great passions: the immensity of the difficulty to overcome and the black uncertainty of the event.

Mlle de La Mole was so preoccupied with these fine reasonings, that the next day, without suspecting it, she was praising Julien to the marquis de Croisenois and to her brother. Her eloquence went so far that she piqued them.

--Take good care of this young man who has so much energy, cried her brother; if the revolution begins again, he will have us all guillotined.

She took care not to answer, and hastened to jest at her brother and the marquis de Croisenois about the fear that energy gave them. It is at bottom only the fear of meeting the unforeseen, the dread of being at a loss before the unforeseen...

--Always, always, gentlemen, the fear of ridicule, monster which, unhappily, died in 1816.

--There is no more ridicule, said M. de La Mole, in a country where there are two parties.

His daughter had understood this idea.

--Thus, gentlemen, she said to the enemies of Julien, you will have been much afraid all your life, and afterwards they will say to you:

It was not a wolf, it was but its shadow.

Mathilde soon left them. Her brother's word horrified her; it troubled her greatly; but the next day she saw in it the finest of praises.

In this century, where all energy is dead, his energy frightens them. I shall tell him my brother's word, I wish to see the answer he will make to it. But I shall choose one of the moments when his eyes shine. Then he cannot lie to me.

He would be a Danton! she added after a long and indistinct reverie. Well! the revolution would have begun again. What roles would Croisenois and my brother then play? It is written in advance: Sublime resignation. They would be heroic sheep, letting themselves be slaughtered without a word. Their only fear in dying would again be of being in bad taste. My little Julien would blow out the brains of the Jacobin who came to arrest him, provided he had some hope of escaping. He is not afraid of being in bad taste, he.

This last word made her passive; it revived painful memories, and took from her all her boldness. This word recalled to her the jests of MM. de Caylus, de Croisenois, de Luz and of her brother. These gentlemen unanimously reproached Julien with the air of a priest: humble and hypocritical.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”