Part 28
But, she went on suddenly, her eye bright with joy, the bitterness and the frequency of their jests prove, in spite of themselves, that he is the most distinguished man we have had this winter. What matter his faults, his absurdities? He has greatness, and they are offended by it, they who are so good and so indulgent besides. It is certain that he is poor and that he studied to be a priest; they are squadron leaders, and needed no study, which is more convenient.
Despite all the disadvantages of his eternal black habit and that priest's face, which he must needs have, poor fellow, on pain of dying of hunger, his merit frightens them, nothing clearer. And that priest's face, he no longer has it as soon as we are alone together for a few moments. And when these gentlemen say a word they think clever and unexpected, is not their first glance for Julien? I have noticed it very well. And yet they know well that he never speaks to them unless questioned. It is to me alone that he addresses his words, he thinks me high-souled. He answers their objections only just enough to be polite. He turns at once to respect. With me, he discusses for whole hours, he is not sure of his ideas so long as I find the slightest objection. Finally, all this winter, we have had no gunshots, it was only a matter of attracting attention by words. Well, my father, a superior man, who will carry our house's fortune far, respects Julien. All the rest hate him, no one despises him, save the devout friends of my mother.
The Count de Caylus had or feigned a great passion for horses; he spent his life in his stable and often breakfasted there. This great passion, joined to the habit of never laughing, gave him much consideration among his friends: he was the eagle of this little circle.
As soon as he was gathered the next day behind Mme de La Mole's bergère, Julien being absent, M. de Caylus, supported by Croisenois and by Norbert, attacked vigorously the good opinion Mathilde had of Julien, and that without occasion, and almost at the first moment he saw Mlle de La Mole. She understood this finesse a league off, and was charmed by it.
They are all leagued, she said to herself, against a man of genius who has not ten louis of income, and who can answer them only as much as he is questioned. They fear him under his black habit. What would it be with epaulettes?
Never had she been more brilliant. At the first attacks, she covered Caylus and his allies with pleasant sarcasms. When the fire of these brilliant officers' jests was extinguished:
"Let some hobereau of the mountains of the Franche-Comté," she said to M. de Caylus, "perceive tomorrow that Julien is his natural son, and give him a name and a few thousand francs; in six weeks he has mustaches like you, gentlemen; in six months he is a hussar officer like you, gentlemen. And then the greatness of his character is no longer a ridiculous trait. I see you reduced, Monsieur the future duke, to that old poor reason: the superiority of nobility of heart over provincial nobility. But what will remain to you if I wish to push you to the limit, if I have the malice to give Julien for father a Spanish duke, prisoner of war at Besançon in Napoleon's time, and who, from scruple of conscience, acknowledges him on his deathbed?"
All these suppositions of illegitimate birth were found in rather bad taste by MM. de Caylus and de Croisenois. That was all they saw in Mathilde's reasoning.
However dominated Norbert was, his sister's words were so clear that he took a grave air which, it must be owned, went rather ill with his smiling and good physiognomy. He dared say a few words:
"Are you ill, my friend?" Mathilde answered him with a little serious air. "You must be very ill to answer jests with morality."
"Morality, you! Are you soliciting a prefect's post?"
Mathilde very soon forgot the piqued air of the Count de Caylus, the ill humor of Norbert and the silent despair of M. de Croisenois. She had to take a resolution on a fatal idea that had just seized her soul.
Julien is frank enough with me, she said to herself; at his age, in an inferior fortune, unhappy as he is through an astonishing ambition, one needs a friend. I am perhaps that friend; but I see no love in him. With the boldness of his character, he would have spoken to me of that love.
This uncertainty, this discussion with herself, which from that instant occupied each of Mathilde's moments, and for which, each time Julien spoke to her, she found new arguments, chased away altogether those moments of boredom to which she was so subject.
Daughter of a man of wit who might become minister and restore his woods to the clergy, Mlle de La Mole had been, at the convent of the Sacré-Coeur, the object of the most excessive flatteries. This misfortune is never repaired. She had been persuaded that, because of all her advantages of birth, fortune, etc., she must be happier than another. This is the source of the boredom of princes and of all their follies.
Mathilde had not escaped the fatal influence of this idea. However much wit one has, one is not on one's guard at ten years against the flatteries of a whole convent, and so well founded in appearance.
From the moment she had decided she loved Julien, she was bored no more. Every day, she congratulated herself on the step she had taken to give herself a great passion. This amusement has many dangers, she thought. So much the better! a thousand times so much the better!
Without a great passion, I was languishing with boredom at the finest time of life, from sixteen to twenty. I have already lost my finest years, forced for all pleasure to hear my mother's friends talk nonsense, who, at Coblentz in 1792, were not quite, it is said, as severe as their words of today.
It was while these great uncertainties agitated Mathilde, that Julien did not understand her long glances which rested on him. He found indeed a redoubled coldness in Count Norbert's manners, and a new access of haughtiness in those of MM. de Caylus, de Luz and de Croisenois. He was used to it. This misfortune came to him sometimes after an evening where he had shone more than befitted his position. Without the particular welcome Mathilde gave him, and the curiosity that all this ensemble inspired in him, he would have avoided following into the garden these brilliant young men with mustaches, when, after dinner, they accompanied Mlle de La Mole there.
Yes, it is impossible that I hide it from myself, Julien said to himself, Mlle de La Mole looks at me in a singular way. But, even when her fine blue eyes fixed on me are opened with the most abandon, I always read in them a fund of examination, of coldness and of malice. Is it possible that this is love? What a difference from the glances of Mme de Rênal!
One afternoon, Julien, who had followed M. de La Mole into his study, was returning rapidly to the garden. As he approached without caution the group of Mathilde, he surprised a few words pronounced very loud. She was tormenting her brother. Julien heard his name pronounced distinctly twice. He appeared; a profound silence was suddenly established, and vain efforts were made to break it. Mlle de La Mole and her brother were too animated to find another subject of conversation. MM. de Caylus, de Croisenois, de Luz and a friend of theirs seemed to Julien of an icy coldness. He withdrew.
CHAPTER XIII
A PLOT
Loose talk, chance encounters transform themselves into proofs of the last evidence in the eyes of the imaginative man, if he has some fire in his heart.
SCHILLER.
The next day he surprised Norbert and his sister again talking of him. At his arrival, a deathlike silence was established, as the evening before. His suspicions knew no bounds. Would these amiable young people have undertaken to mock me? One must own that this is much more probable, much more natural than a pretended passion of Mlle de La Mole, for a poor devil of a secretary. First, do such people have passions? To mystify is their forte. They are jealous of my poor little superiority of words. To be jealous is yet another of their weaknesses. All is explained in this system. Mlle de La Mole wants to persuade me that she distinguishes me, simply to give me in spectacle to her supposed suitor.
This cruel suspicion changed all Julien's moral position. This idea found in his heart a beginning of love which it had no trouble destroying. This love was founded only on Mathilde's rare beauty, or rather on her queenly ways and her admirable toilette. In this Julien was still a parvenu. A pretty woman of the great world is, it is said, what most astonishes a peasant man of wit, when he arrives at the first classes of society. It was not Mathilde's character that made Julien dream the preceding days. He had sense enough to understand that he did not know that character. All he saw of it could be but appearance.
For example, for anything in the world, Mathilde would not have missed mass on a Sunday; almost every day she accompanied her mother there. If, in the salon of the hôtel de La Mole, some imprudent one forgot where he was and permitted himself the most distant allusion to a jest against the true or supposed interests of throne or altar, Mathilde became in an instant of an icy seriousness. Her glance, which was so piquant, resumed all the impassive haughtiness of an old family portrait.
But Julien had assured himself that she always had one or two of the most philosophical volumes of Voltaire in her room. He himself often stole some tomes from the fine, magnificently bound edition. By separating a little each volume from its neighbor, he hid the absence of the one he carried off; but soon he noticed that another person was reading Voltaire. He had recourse to a seminary finesse: he placed little bits of horsehair on the volumes he supposed might interest Mlle de La Mole. They disappeared for whole weeks.
M. de La Mole, impatient with his bookseller, who sent him all the _false Memoirs_, charged Julien with buying all the new works somewhat piquant. But, so that the venom should not spread through the house, the secretary had orders to deposit these books in a small library, placed in the marquis's own room. He soon had certainty that, if these new books were hostile to the interests of throne and altar, they were not long in disappearing. Certainly it was not Norbert who read them.
Julien, exaggerating this experiment, believed in Mlle de La Mole the duplicity of Machiavelli. This pretended wickedness was a charm in his eyes, almost the only moral charm she had. The boredom of hypocrisy and of virtuous talk threw him into this excess.
He excited his imagination more than he was carried away by his love.
It was after losing himself in reveries on the elegance of Mlle de La Mole's figure, on the excellent taste of her toilette, on the whiteness of her hand, on the beauty of her arm, on the disinvoltura of all her movements, that he found himself in love. Then, to complete the charm, he believed her a Catherine de Médicis. Nothing was too deep or too wicked for the character he attributed to her. It was the ideal of the Maslon, the Frilair and the Castanède whom he had admired in his youth. It was, in a word, for him the ideal of Paris.
Was there ever anything more amusing than to suppose depth or wickedness in the Parisian character?
It is possible that this _trio_ mocks me, Julien thought. One knows his character very little, if one does not already see the somber and cold expression that his glances took in answering Mathilde's. A bitter irony repelled the assurances of friendship that Mlle de La Mole, astonished, dared hazard two or three times.
Piqued by this sudden oddness, the heart of this young girl, naturally cold, bored, sensitive to wit, became as passionate as it was in her nature to be. But there was also much pride in Mathilde's character, and the birth of a sentiment which made all her happiness depend on another was accompanied by a somber sadness.
Julien had already profited enough since his arrival in Paris, to distinguish that this was not the dry sadness of boredom. Instead of being eager, as before, for evenings, spectacles and distractions of all kinds, she fled them.
Music sung by Frenchmen bored Mathilde to death, and yet Julien, who made it a duty to attend the end of the Opera, noticed that she had herself taken there as often as she could. He thought he distinguished that she had lost a little of the perfect measure that shone in all her actions. She answered her friends sometimes with jests outrageous in their piquant energy. It seemed to him she took a dislike to the Marquis de Croisenois. That young man must love money furiously, not to leave this girl, rich as she is! thought Julien. And for him, indignant at the outrages done to masculine dignity, he redoubled his coldness toward her. Often he went as far as ill-polished replies.
However resolved he was not to be duped by Mathilde's marks of interest, they were so evident on certain days, and Julien, whose eyes were beginning to open, found her so pretty, that he was sometimes embarrassed by it.
The address and longanimity of these young people of the great world would end by triumphing over my little experience, he said to himself; I must leave and put an end to all this. The marquis had just entrusted him with the administration of a quantity of small lands and houses he possessed in the Lower Languedoc. A journey was necessary: M. de La Mole consented to it with regret. Except in matters of high ambition, Julien had become another self.
After all, they have not caught me, Julien said to himself, preparing his departure. Whether the jests Mlle de La Mole makes to these gentlemen are real or only meant to inspire me with confidence, I have amused myself by them.
If there is no conspiracy against the carpenter's son, Mlle de La Mole is inexplicable, but she is so for the Marquis de Croisenois at least as much as for me. Yesterday, for example, her humor was quite real, and I had the pleasure of making a young man as noble and as rich as I am beggarly and plebeian burst with my favor. That is the finest of my triumphs, it will cheer me in my post-chaise, running the plains of Languedoc.
He had made his departure a secret, but Mathilde knew better than he that he was leaving Paris the next day, and for long. She had recourse to a violent headache, increased by the stifling air of the salon. She walked much in the garden, and pursued so with her biting jests Norbert, the Marquis de Croisenois, Caylus, de Luz and some other young people who had dined at the hôtel de La Mole, that she forced them to leave. She looked at Julien in a strange way.
That glance is perhaps a comedy, Julien thought; but that hurried breathing, but all that trouble! Bah! said he, who am I to judge all these things? It is a matter here of what is most sublime and most refined among the women of Paris. That hurried breathing which was near touching me, she will have studied it with Léontine Fay, whom she loves so much.
They remained alone; the conversation evidently languished. No! Julien feels nothing for me, Mathilde said to herself, truly unhappy.
As he took leave of her, she pressed his arm forcefully:
"You will receive a letter from me this evening," she said to him in a voice so altered that the sound was not recognizable.
This circumstance touched Julien at once.
"My father," she continued, "has a just esteem for the services you render him. You must not leave tomorrow, find a pretext."
And she ran off.
Her figure was charming. It was impossible to have a prettier foot; she ran with a grace that delighted Julien; but would one guess what his second thought was after she had wholly disappeared? He was offended at the imperative tone with which she had said that word _must_. Louis XV also, at the moment of dying, was keenly piqued at the word _must_, awkwardly used by his first physician, and yet Louis XV was no parvenu.
An hour later, a footman handed Julien a letter; it was simply a declaration of love.
"There is not too much affectation in the style," said Julien, seeking by his literary remarks to contain the joy that contracted his cheeks and forced him to laugh in spite of himself.
"At last me," he cried suddenly, passion being too strong to be contained, "me, poor peasant, I then have a declaration of love from a great lady!"
"As for me, that is not bad," he added, compressing his joy as much as possible. "I have known how to preserve the dignity of my character. I have not said that I loved. " He set about studying the shape of the characters; Mlle de La Mole had a pretty little English handwriting. He needed a physical occupation to distract himself from a joy that went to delirium.
"Your departure obliges me to speak... It would be beyond my strength to see you no more..."
A thought struck Julien like a discovery, interrupting his examination of Mathilde's letter, and redoubling his joy. "I triumph over the Marquis de Croisenois," he cried, "I, who say only serious things! And he is so pretty! he has mustaches, a charming uniform; he always finds, just at the fitting moment, a witty and subtle word."
Julien had a delicious instant; he wandered at random in the garden, mad with happiness.
Later he went up to his office and had himself announced to the Marquis de La Mole, who happily had not gone out. He proved to him easily, showing some marked papers arrived from Normandy, that the care of the Norman lawsuits obliged him to delay his departure for Languedoc.
"I am glad you are not leaving," the marquis said to him when they had finished speaking of business; "I like to see you." Julien went out; this word embarrassed him.
"And I am going to seduce his daughter! render perhaps impossible this marriage with the Marquis de Croisenois which makes the charm of his future: if he is not a duke, at least his daughter will have a stool. " Julien had the idea of leaving for Languedoc despite Mathilde's letter, despite the explanation given the marquis. This flash of virtue disappeared very quickly.
"How good I am," he said to himself; "I, plebeian, to pity a family of that rank! I whom the Duke de Chaulnes calls a domestic! How does the marquis increase his immense fortune? By selling annuities, when he learns at the château that there will be the next day an appearance of coup d'État. And I, thrown to the last rank by a stepmotherly providence, I to whom she has given a noble heart and not a thousand francs of income, that is to say no bread, strictly speaking, no bread, I refuse a pleasure that offers itself! A limpid source that comes to quench my thirst in the burning desert of mediocrity that I traverse so painfully! My faith, not so stupid; each for himself in this desert of egoism called life."
And he recalled some glances full of disdain, addressed to him by Mme de La Mole, and especially by her lady friends.
The pleasure of triumphing over the Marquis de Croisenois came to complete the rout of this memory of virtue.
"How I should like him to get angry!" said Julien; "with what assurance I would now give him a sword thrust." And he made the gesture of the thrust. "Before this I was a clown, basely abusing a little courage. After this letter, I am his equal."
"Yes," he said to himself with infinite voluptuousness and speaking slowly, "our merits, the marquis's and mine, have been weighed, and the poor carpenter of the Jura carries it."
"Good!" he cried, "there is the signature of my reply found. Do not go imagining, Mademoiselle de La Mole, that I forget my state. I will make you understand and feel well that it is for the son of a carpenter that you betray a descendant of the famous Guy de Croisenois, who followed Saint Louis to the crusade."
Julien could not contain his joy. He was obliged to go down into the garden. His room, where he had locked himself in, seemed too narrow to breathe in.
"Me, poor peasant of the Jura," he repeated without cease, "me, condemned to wear always this sad black habit! Alas! twenty years earlier, I should have worn the uniform like them! Then a man like me was killed, or general at thirty-six. This letter, which he held clasped in his hand, gave him the bearing and attitude of a hero. Now, it is true, with this black habit, at forty one has a hundred thousand francs of salary and the blue ribbon, like M. the Bishop of Beauvais."
"Well!" said he, laughing like Mephistopheles, "I have more wit than they; I know how to choose the uniform of my century." And he felt his ambition and his attachment to the ecclesiastical habit redouble. "How many cardinals born lower than I and who have governed! my compatriot Granvelle, for example."
Little by little Julien's agitation calmed; prudence surfaced. He said to himself, like his master Tartuffe, whose role he knew by heart:
I may believe these words an honest artifice. ................................ I shall not trust such sweet discourse; Until some favor, for which I sigh, Comes to assure me all they tell me is true.
TARTUFFE, Act IV, Scene V.
Tartuffe also was lost by a woman, and he was worth another... My reply may be shown... to which we find this remedy, he added, pronouncing slowly, and with the accent of contained ferocity, we begin it with the liveliest phrases of the letter of the sublime Mathilde.
"Yes, but four footmen of M. de Croisenois throw themselves on me and tear the original from me."
"No, for I am well armed, and have the habit, as is known, of firing on footmen."
"Well! one of them has courage; he throws himself on me. He has been promised a hundred napoleons. I kill him or wound him, so much the better, that is what is wanted. They throw me legally in prison; I appear in correctional police, and they send me, with all justice and equity on the part of the judges, to keep company in Poissy with MM. Fontan and Magallon. There, I sleep with four hundred blackguards pell-mell... And would I have some pity for those people!" he cried, rising impetuously. "Do they have any for the third-estate people, when they hold them?" This word was the last sigh of his gratitude toward M. de La Mole who, in spite of himself, tormented him up to then.
"Gently, gentlemen gentlefolk, I understand this little Machiavellian trait; the Abbé Maslon or M. Castanède of the seminary would not have done better. You will take from me the _provoking_ letter, and I shall be the second volume of Colonel Caron at Colmar."
“Stories of the world, in your language.”