Part 34

--I will not assert to you, he said in a singular voice, that I do not care about the ministry.

It is demonstrated to me, gentlemen, that my name doubles the strength of the Jacobins by deciding many moderates against us. I would therefore withdraw willingly; but the ways of the Lord are visible to but a few; but, he added, fixing his eyes steadily on the cardinal, I have a mission; heaven has said to me: Thou shalt carry thy head to the scaffold, or thou shalt reestablish the monarchy in France, and reduce the Chambers to what the parliament was under Louis XV, and that, gentlemen, _I shall do_.

He fell silent, sat down again, and there was a great silence.

There is a fine actor, thought Julien. He was mistaken as usual, in attributing too much cleverness to people. Animated by the debates of so lively an evening, and above all by the sincerity of the discussion at that moment, M. de Nerval believed in his mission. With great courage, the man had no sense.

Midnight struck during the silence that followed the fine phrase _I shall do_. Julien found something imposing and funereal in the sound of the clock. He was moved.

The discussion soon resumed with growing energy, and above all an incredible naivety. These people will have me poisoned, thought Julien at certain moments. How can such things be said before a plebeian?

Two o'clock was striking and they were still talking. The master of the house had long been asleep; M. de La Mole was obliged to ring for fresh candles. M. de Nerval, the minister, had left at a quarter to two, not without often studying Julien's face in a mirror the minister had beside him. His departure seemed to put everyone at ease.

While the candles were being renewed:

--God knows what that man will say to the king! said the man in waistcoats in a low voice to his neighbor. He may make us look ridiculous and spoil our future.

It must be admitted that he has a rare self-sufficiency, even effrontery, in showing himself here. He appeared before reaching the ministry, but the portfolio changes everything, drowns all a man's interests; he ought to have felt that.

Scarcely had the minister gone, when the general of Bonaparte closed his eyes. At that moment, he spoke of his health, of his wounds, consulted his watch, and went away.

--I would wager, said the man in waistcoats, that the general is running after the minister; he is going to excuse himself for having been here, and claim that he leads us.

When the half-asleep servants had finished renewing the candles:

--Let us at last deliberate, gentlemen, said the president; let us no longer try to persuade one another. Let us think of the tenor of the note which, within forty-eight hours, will be before the eyes of our friends outside. There has been talk of ministers. Now that M. de Nerval has left us, we may say it: what are ministers to us? we shall make them will what we will.

The cardinal approved with a subtle smile.

--Nothing seems easier to me than to sum up our position, said the young bishop of Agde, with the concentrated and constrained fire of the most exalted fanaticism. Until then he had kept silence; his eye, which Julien had observed, at first gentle and calm, had kindled after the first hour of discussion. Now his soul overflowed like the lava of Vesuvius.

--From 1806 to 1814, England had but one fault, he said; it was not to act directly and personally upon Napoleon. As soon as that man had made dukes and chamberlains, as soon as he had reestablished the throne, the mission God had entrusted to him was ended; he was good only to be sacrificed. Holy Scripture teaches us in more than one place how to make an end of tyrants. (Here there were several Latin quotations.)

Today, gentlemen, it is no longer a man that must be sacrificed, it is Paris. All France copies Paris. What is the use of arming your five hundred men per department? A hazardous enterprise that will never end. What is the use of involving France in a thing that is personal to Paris? Paris alone, with its newspapers and its salons, has done the evil; let the new Babylon perish.

Between the altar and Paris, an end must be made. This catastrophe is even in the worldly interests of the throne. Why did Paris not dare to breathe under Bonaparte? Ask it of the cannon of Saint-Roch...

* * * * *

It was only at three in the morning that Julien left with M. de La Mole.

The marquis was ashamed and tired. For the first time, in speaking to Julien, there was entreaty in his tone. He asked him for his word never to reveal the excesses of zeal—that was his word—of which chance had just made him witness.

--Speak of it to our friend abroad only if he seriously insists on knowing our young madmen. What is it to them if the state be overthrown? they will be cardinals, and take refuge in Rome. We, in our castles, shall be massacred by the peasants.

The secret note which the marquis drew up from the great minutes of twenty-six pages, written by Julien, was not ready until a quarter to five.

--I am dead tired, said the marquis, and it shows in this note, which lacks clarity toward the end; I am more dissatisfied with it than with anything I have done in my life. Here, my friend, he added, go rest a few hours, and for fear you be carried off, I shall lock you into your room.

The next day, the marquis took Julien to an isolated chateau rather far from Paris. There were singular guests there, whom Julien judged to be priests. He was given a passport bearing an assumed name, but indicating at last the true object of the journey he had always pretended to ignore. He got alone into a post-chaise.

The marquis had no anxiety as to his memory; Julien had recited the secret note to him several times, but he feared lest he be intercepted.

--Above all, look like a fop traveling to kill time, he said to him with friendliness, at the moment of leaving the salon. There was perhaps more than one false brother in our assembly last night.

The journey was rapid and very sad. Scarcely was Julien out of the marquis's sight than he forgot both the secret note and the mission, to think only of Mathilde's scorn.

In a village a few leagues beyond Metz, the postmaster came to tell him there were no horses. It was ten in the evening; Julien, much put out, asked for supper. He walked before the door, and insensibly, without seeming to, passed into the stable yard. He saw no horses there.

--Yet that man's air is singular, Julien said to himself; his coarse eye examined me.

He was beginning, as one sees, not to believe exactly all that was told him. He thought of escaping after supper, and, to learn always something of the country, he left his room to go warm himself at the kitchen fire. What was his joy to find there _il signor_ Geronimo, the celebrated singer!

Established in an armchair he had had brought near the fire, the Neapolitan was groaning aloud, and talking more, to himself alone, than the twenty German peasants around him, open-mouthed.

--These people are ruining me, he cried to Julien; I promised to sing tomorrow at Mayence. Seven sovereign princes have hurried there to hear me. But come, let us take the air, he added with a significant air.

When he was a hundred paces down the road, and out of earshot:

--Do you know what it is about? he said to Julien; this postmaster is a knave. While walking, I gave twenty sous to a little rogue who told me everything. There are more than twelve horses in a stable at the other end of the village. They want to delay some courier.

--Truly? said Julien with an innocent air.

It was not enough to discover the fraud; they must depart: this Geronimo and his friend could not manage.

--Let us wait for daylight, said the singer at last; they suspect us. It may be you or I they are after. Tomorrow morning we order a good breakfast; while it is being prepared we walk about, we escape, we hire horses and reach the next post.

--And your luggage? said Julien, who thought that perhaps Geronimo himself might have been sent to intercept him.

They had to sup and go to bed. Julien was still in his first sleep when he was startled awake by the voice of two persons talking in his room, without much restraint.

He recognized the postmaster, armed with a dark lantern. The light was directed toward the boot of the post-chaise, which Julien had had brought up into his room. Beside the postmaster was a man quietly searching in the open boot. Julien could distinguish only the sleeves of his coat, which were black and very tight.

--It is a cassock, he said to himself, and he gently seized the small pistols he had placed under his pillow.

--Fear not that he will wake, Mr. Curate, said the postmaster. The wine they were served was of that which you prepared yourself.

--I find no trace of papers, answered the curate. Much linen, essences, pomades, trifles; it is a young man of the world, occupied with his pleasures. The emissary will rather be the other, who affects to speak with an Italian accent.

These people came near Julien to search the pockets of his traveling coat. He was much tempted to kill them as thieves. Nothing less dangerous for the consequences. He had a good mind to... I should only be a fool, he told himself; I should compromise my mission. His coat searched:

--This is no diplomat, said the priest; he went away, and did well.

If he touches me in my bed, woe to him! Julien said to himself; he may very well come to stab me, and that I will not suffer.

The curate turned his head; Julien opened his eyes half-way; what was his astonishment! it was the Abbé Castanède! Indeed, though the two persons wished to speak rather low, he had seemed, from the first, to recognize one of the voices. Julien was seized with an immoderate desire to purge the earth of one of its basest scoundrels...

But my mission! he said to himself.

The curate and his acolyte went out. A quarter of an hour later, Julien pretended to wake. He called and woke the whole house.

--I am poisoned, he cried; I suffer horribly! He wanted a pretext to go to Geronimo's aid. He found him half-asphyxiated by the laudanum in the wine.

Julien, fearing some jest of this kind, had supped on chocolate brought from Paris. He could not succeed in waking Geronimo enough to decide him to depart.

--They might give me the whole kingdom of Naples, said the singer, that I would not in this moment renounce the voluptuousness of sleeping.

--But the seven sovereign princes!

--Let them wait.

Julien left alone and arrived without further incident at the great personage's. He lost a whole morning soliciting an audience in vain. Happily toward four o'clock, the duke wished to take the air. Julien saw him go out on foot; he did not hesitate to approach him and ask him for alms. Arrived within two paces of the great personage, he drew out the Marquis de La Mole's watch, and showed it affectedly.

--_Follow me from afar_, he was told without being looked at.

A quarter of a league thence the duke abruptly entered a small coffee-house. It was in a room of this inn of the lowest order that Julien had the honor of reciting his four pages to the duke. When he had finished:

--Begin again and go more slowly, he was told.

The prince took notes.

--_Go on foot to the neighboring post. Leave here your effects and your chaise. Go to Strasbourg as best you can, and on the twenty-second of the month_ (it was the tenth) _be at half past noon in this same coffee-house. Do not leave it for half an hour. Silence!_

Such were the only words Julien heard. They sufficed to fill him with the highest admiration. Thus, he thought, are affairs treated; what would this great statesman say, if he heard the passionate babblers of three days ago?

Julien took two days to reach Strasbourg; it seemed to him he had nothing to do there. He made a great detour. If that devil of an Abbé Castanède recognized me, he is not the man to lose my track easily. And what pleasure for him to mock me, and make my mission fail!

The Abbé Castanède, chief of the congregation's police on the whole northern frontier, had fortunately not recognized him. And the Jesuits of Strasbourg, though very zealous, thought not at all of observing Julien, who, with his cross and his blue redingote, looked like a young military man much taken up with himself.

CHAPTER XXIV

STRASBOURG

Fascination! thou hast all the energy of love, all its power to experience unhappiness. Its enchanting pleasures, its sweet enjoyments, are alone beyond thy sphere. I could not say, seeing her sleep: she is all mine, with her angelic beauty and her sweet weaknesses! Behold her delivered to my power, such as heaven made her in its mercy to enchant a man's heart.

_Ode_ by SCHILLER

Forced to spend a week at Strasbourg, Julien sought distraction in ideas of military glory and devotion to his country. Was he then in love? he knew not; he found only, in his tormented soul, Mathilde absolute mistress of his happiness as of his imagination. He needed all the energy of his character to keep himself above despair. To think of what had no relation to Mlle de La Mole was beyond his power. Ambition, the simple successes of vanity, had once distracted him from the feelings Mme de Rênal inspired. Mathilde had absorbed all; he found her everywhere in the future.

On every side, in that future, Julien saw lack of success. This being, seen at Verrières so full of presumption, so proud, had fallen into a ridiculously excessive modesty.

Three days before he would have killed the Abbé Castanède with pleasure, and if, at Strasbourg, a child had quarreled with him, he would have given the child right. In recalling the adversaries, the enemies he had met in life, he always found that he, Julien, had been wrong.

It is that he now had for implacable enemy that powerful imagination, formerly ceaselessly employed in picturing for him in the future such brilliant successes.

The absolute solitude of the traveler's life increased the dominion of this black imagination. What a treasure a friend would have been! But, Julien said to himself, is there then a heart that beats for me? And had I a friend, would not honor command me eternal silence?

He walked on horseback sadly in the environs of Kehl; it is a borough, on the bank of the Rhine, immortalized by Desaix and Gouvion Saint-Cyr. A German peasant was showing him the little streams, the roads, the islets of the Rhine, to which the courage of those great generals has given a name. Julien, leading his horse with his left hand, held unfolded in his right the superb map that adorns the _Memoirs of Marshal Saint-Cyr_. A cry of gaiety made him raise his head.

It was Prince Korasoff, that friend from London, who had revealed to him a few months before the first rules of supreme foppery. Faithful to that great art, Korasoff, arrived the day before at Strasbourg, for an hour at Kehl, and who in his life had never read a line on the siege of 1796, set about explaining everything to Julien. The German peasant looked at him astonished, for he knew enough French to distinguish the enormous blunders into which the prince fell. Julien was a thousand leagues from the peasant's ideas; he looked with astonishment at this handsome young man, he admired his grace on horseback.

Happy nature! he said to himself. How well his trousers fit, with what elegance his hair is cut! Alas! if I had been thus, perhaps after loving me three days she would not have taken an aversion to me.

When the prince had finished his siege of Kehl:

--You have the look of a Trappist, he said to Julien; you overdo the principle of gravity that I gave you in London. A sad air cannot be good ton; it is the bored air that is needed. If you are sad, it is that something is lacking to you, something that has not succeeded for you.

_It is to show oneself inferior_. Are you bored, on the contrary, it is what has vainly tried to please you that is inferior. Understand then, my dear, how grave the mistake is.

Julien tossed an écu to the peasant who listened open-mouthed.

--Good! said the prince; there is grace, a noble disdain! very good! and he put his horse to a gallop. Julien followed him, filled with stupid admiration.

Ah! if I had been thus, she would not have preferred Croisenois to me! The more his reason was shocked at the prince's absurdities, the more he despised himself for not admiring them, and esteemed himself unhappy at not having them. Disgust of self could go no further.

The prince found him decidedly sad:

--Ah, come, my dear, he said on reentering Strasbourg, you are poor company; have you lost all your money, or are you in love with some little actress?

The Russians copy French manners, but always at fifty years' distance. They are now at the century of Louis XV.

These jests on love brought tears to Julien's eyes:

--Why should I not consult this amiable man? he suddenly said to himself.

--Well yes, my dear, he said to the prince, you see me at Strasbourg deeply in love and even abandoned. A charming woman, who lives in a neighboring town, dropped me after three days of passion, and this change is killing me.

He painted to the prince, under assumed names, the actions and character of Mathilde.

--Say no more, said Korasoff; to give you confidence in your physician, I shall finish the confidence. The husband of this young woman enjoys an enormous fortune, or rather she belongs herself to the highest nobility of the country. She must be proud of something.

Julien nodded; he no longer had the courage to speak.

--Very well, said the prince; here are three rather bitter drugs which you are to take without delay:

1º See Mme... what do you call her?

--Mme de Dubois.

--What a name! said the prince, bursting with laughter; but pardon, it is sublime for you. It is a question of seeing Mme de Dubois every day; above all do not appear cold and piqued in her eyes; remember the great principle of your century: be the contrary of what is expected. Show yourself precisely as you were a week before being honored with her kindnesses.

--Ah! I was tranquil then, cried Julien in despair; I believed I pitied her...

--The butterfly burns itself at the candle, continued the prince; a comparison old as the world.

1º You shall see her every day.

2º You shall pay court to a woman of her society but without the appearances of passion; do you hear? I do not hide from you, your role is difficult; you are playing comedy, and if it is guessed you are playing it, you are lost.

--She has so much wit and I so little! I am lost, said Julien sadly.

--No, you are only more in love than I thought. Mme de Dubois is profoundly occupied with herself, as are all women who have received from heaven too much nobility or too much money. She looks at herself instead of looking at you; therefore she does not know you. During the two or three fits of love she gave herself in your favor, by great effort of imagination, she saw in you the hero she had dreamed of, and not what you really are.

But the devil, these are the elements, my dear Sorel; are you quite a schoolboy?...

Bless me! let us go into this shop; there is a charming black stocking, one would say it was made by John Anderson, of Burlington-street; do me the pleasure of taking it, and throwing far away that ignoble black cord you have round your neck.

--Ah, come, continued the prince leaving the shop of the first haberdasher of Strasbourg; what is the society of Mme de Dubois? good God! what a name! Do not be angry, my dear Sorel, it is stronger than me... To whom will you pay court?

--To a prude par excellence, daughter of an immensely rich hosier. She has the finest eyes in the world and they please me infinitely; she no doubt holds the first rank in the country; but amid all her grandeur, she blushes to the point of being disconcerted if anyone comes to speak of commerce and shop. And unhappily, her father was one of the best-known merchants of Strasbourg.

--Thus if one speaks of _industry_, said the prince laughing, you are sure your beauty is thinking of herself and not of you. This absurdity is divine and most useful; it will prevent you from having the least moment of folly near those fine eyes. Success is certain.

Julien thought of Mme la maréchale de Fervaques, who came much to the Hôtel de La Mole. She was a beautiful foreigner who had married the marshal a year before his death. Her whole life seemed to have no other object than to make it forgotten that she was the daughter of an industrialist, and, to be something in Paris, she had put herself at the head of virtue.

Julien sincerely admired the prince; what would he not have given to have his absurdities! The conversation between the two friends was endless; Korasoff was delighted: never had a Frenchman listened to him so long. Thus, I have at last come, said the charmed prince to himself, to be listened to by giving lessons to my masters!

--We are well agreed, he repeated to Julien for the tenth time; not a shadow of passion when you speak to the young beauty, daughter of the Strasbourg hosier, in the presence of Mme de Dubois. On the contrary, burning passion in writing. To read a well-written love letter is the sovereign pleasure for a prude; it is a moment of relaxation. She is not playing comedy, she dares listen to her heart; therefore two letters a day.

--Never, never! said Julien discouraged. I would rather be pounded in a mortar than compose three phrases; I am a corpse, my dear, hope nothing more of me. Let me die by the roadside.

--And who speaks to you of composing phrases? I have in my case six volumes of manuscript love letters. There are some for every kind of woman; I have some for the highest virtue. Did not Kalisky court Richemond-la-Terrasse, you know, three leagues from London, the prettiest Quakeress in all England?

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

The next day the prince had a copyist called, and two days later Julien had fifty-three love letters well numbered, destined for the most sublime and saddest virtue.

--There are not fifty-four, said the prince, because Kalisky got himself dismissed; but what matters it to you to be ill-treated by the hosier's daughter, since you wish to act only on the heart of Mme de Dubois?

“Stories of the world, in your language.”