Part 35

Every day they went horseback riding: the prince was infatuated with Julien, and not knowing how to show his sudden friendship, he ended up offering him the hand of one of his cousins, a rich heiress from Moscow.

—And once married, he added, my influence and the cross you wear there will make you a colonel in two years.

—But that cross wasn't given by Napoleon, far from it.

—What does it matter, said the prince, didn't he invent it? It is still by far the first in Europe.

Julien was on the point of accepting; but his duty called him back to the great man, and on leaving Korasoff, he promised to write. He received the reply to the secret note he had brought, and hurried toward Paris; but hardly had he been alone for two days in a row than leaving France and Mathilde seemed a torment worse than death. I shall not marry the millions Korasoff offers me, he told himself, but I will follow his advice.

After all, the art of seduction is his profession; he has thought of nothing but this single matter for more than fifteen years, for he is thirty. One cannot say he lacks wit; he is subtle and cunning; enthusiasm, poetry are an impossibility in that character: he is a lawyer; all the more reason he should not be mistaken.

It must be done, I am going to pay court to Mme de Fervaques.

She will perhaps bore me a little, but I shall look into those eyes so beautiful, and which so resemble those that loved me most in the world.

She is a foreigner; she is a new character to observe.

I am mad, I am drowning, I must follow a friend's advice and not trust myself.

CHAPTER XXV

THE MINISTRY OF VIRTUE

But if I take this pleasure with so much prudence and circumspection, it will no longer be a pleasure for me.

LOPE DE VEGA.

Scarcely back in Paris, and upon leaving the cabinet of the Marquis de La Mole, who seemed quite disconcerted by the dispatches presented to him, our hero ran to Count Altamira's. To the advantage of being condemned to death, this handsome foreigner joined much gravity and the good fortune of being devout; these two merits, and, more than all, the high birth of the count, suited Mme de Fervaques perfectly, who saw him often.

Julien gravely confessed to him that he was quite in love with her.

—She is the purest and loftiest virtue, replied Altamira, only somewhat Jesuitical and emphatic. There are days when I understand each of the words she uses, but I do not understand the whole phrase. She often gives me the idea that I do not know French as well as is said. This acquaintance will have your name pronounced, it will give you weight in the world. But let us go to Bustos, said Count Altamira, who was a man of order; he paid court to the Marshal's lady.

Don Diego Bustos had the matter explained to him at length, saying nothing, like a lawyer in his office. He had a fat monk's face with black mustaches, and unmatched gravity; otherwise, a good carbonaro.

—I understand, he said at last to Julien. Has the Marshaless of Fervaques had lovers, has she not had any? Have you thus some hope of succeeding? That is the question. This is to tell you that, for my part, I failed. Now that I am no longer piqued, I reason thus: often she is ill-humored, and, as I shall soon tell you, she is not unvindictive.

I do not find in her that bilious temperament which is that of genius, and casts over all actions like a varnish of passion. It is on the contrary to the phlegmatic and tranquil way of being of the Dutch that she owes her rare beauty and her so fresh colors.

Julien grew impatient at the slowness and unshakable phlegm of the Spaniard; from time to time, despite himself, a few monosyllables escaped him.

—Will you listen to me? said Don Diego Bustos gravely.

—Pardon the _furia francese_; I am all ears, said Julien.

—The Marshaless of Fervaques is then much given to hatred; she mercilessly pursues people she has never seen, lawyers, poor devil men of letters who have made songs like Collé. You know?

_I have the whim_ _Of loving Marote._

etc.

And Julien had to endure the whole quotation. The Spaniard was glad to sing in French.

This divine song was never listened to with more impatience. When it was finished:

—The Marshaless, said Don Diego Bustos, had the author of this song dismissed:

One day love at the tavern...

Julien shuddered lest he should sing it. He contented himself with analyzing it. Really it was impious and indecent.

—When the Marshaless took offense at this song, said Don Diego, I observed to her that a woman of her rank ought not to read all the foolishness that is published. However much piety and gravity may advance, there will always be in France a tavern literature. When Mme de Fervaques had taken from the author, a poor devil on half-pay, a place of eighteen hundred francs: Take care, I said to her, you have attacked this rhymester with your weapons, he can answer you with his rhymes: he will make a song upon virtue. The gilded salons will be for you; those who love to laugh will repeat his epigrams. Do you know, sir, what the Marshaless answered me?—For the interest of the Lord, all Paris would see me march to martyrdom; it would be a spectacle new in France. The people would learn to respect quality. It would be the finest day of my life. Never were her eyes more beautiful.

—And she has them superb, cried Julien.

—I see that you are in love... Therefore, resumed Don Diego Bustos gravely, she has not the bilious constitution that leads to vengeance. If she likes to harm nonetheless, it is that she is unhappy; I suspect an inward unhappiness there. Might she not be a prude weary of her trade?

The Spaniard looked at him in silence for a full minute.

—That is the whole question, he added gravely, and it is from there that you may draw some hope. I have reflected much upon it during the two years that I bore myself her very humble servant. All your future, sir who are in love, depends upon this great problem: Is she a prude weary of her trade, and wicked because she is unhappy?

—Or else, said Altamira finally emerging from his deep silence, might it not be what I have told you twenty times? simply French vanity; it is the memory of her father, the famous cloth-merchant, that makes the unhappiness of this naturally morose and dry character. She would have but one happiness, that of dwelling in Toledo, and being tormented by a confessor who each day would show her hell wide open.

As Julien was leaving:

—Altamira tells me you are one of us, said Don Diego, ever graver. One day you will help us reconquer our liberty, thus I would help you in this little amusement. It is well that you know the style of the Marshaless; here are four letters in her hand.

—I shall copy them, cried Julien, and bring them back to you.

—And never shall anyone learn from you a word of what we have said?

—Never, upon my honor! cried Julien.

—So may God help you! added the Spaniard, and he silently saw Altamira and Julien down even to the stairway.

This scene amused our hero a little, he was near smiling. And there is the devout Altamira, he told himself, who helps me in an enterprise of adultery!

During the whole grave conversation of Don Diego Bustos, Julien had been attentive to the hours sounded by the clock of the Hôtel d'Aligre.

That of dinner approached, he was then about to see Mathilde again! He went in, and dressed with great care.

First folly, he told himself going down the stairs; one must follow to the letter the prince's prescription.

He went back up to his room, and took a traveling costume as simple as possible.

Now, he thought, it is a matter of looks. It was only half past five, and they dined at six. He had the idea of going down to the salon, which he found solitary. At sight of the blue sofa, he threw himself on his knees and kissed the spot where Mathilde leaned her arm, he shed tears, his cheeks grew burning. One must wear out this silly sensibility, he told himself angrily; it would betray me. He took up a newspaper to have a bearing, and passed three or four times from the salon to the garden.

It was only trembling and well hidden by a great oak that he dared lift his eyes to the window of Mlle de La Mole. It was hermetically closed; he was near falling and remained long leaning against the oak; then, with faltering step, he went to look again at the gardener's ladder.

The link, once forced by him in circumstances alas! so different, had not been mended. Carried away by a movement of madness, Julien pressed it to his lips.

After wandering long from salon to garden, Julien found himself horribly tired; it was a first success that he felt keenly. My looks will be dim and not betray me! Little by little the guests arrived at the salon, never did the door open without casting a mortal trouble into Julien's heart.

They sat down to table. At last appeared Mlle de La Mole, always faithful to her habit of making them wait. She blushed much on seeing Julien; no one had told her of his arrival. Following the recommendation of Prince Korasoff, Julien looked at her hands, they trembled. Troubled himself beyond all expression by this discovery, he was fortunate enough to seem only tired.

M. de La Mole praised him. The marchioness spoke to him shortly after, and complimented him on his air of fatigue. Julien told himself each instant: I must not look too much at Mlle de La Mole, but my looks must not flee her either. I must seem what I really was eight days before my misfortune... He had reason to be satisfied with the success and remained in the salon. Attentive for the first time toward the mistress of the house, he made every effort to make the men of her society speak and keep the conversation lively.

His politeness was rewarded, at about eight o'clock they announced Mme the Marshaless of Fervaques. Julien slipped away and reappeared soon, dressed with the greatest care. Mme de La Mole was infinitely grateful to him for this mark of respect, and wished to show her satisfaction, by speaking of his journey to Mme de Fervaques. Julien placed himself near the Marshaless, in a way that his eyes might not be seen by Mathilde. Placed thus, following all the rules of the art, Mme de Fervaques was for him the object of the most astonished admiration. It is with a tirade upon this sentiment that the first of the fifty-three letters of which Prince Korasoff had made him a gift began.

The Marshaless announced that she was going to the Opéra-Buffa. Julien ran there; he found the Chevalier de Beauvoisis, who took him into a box of the gentlemen of the chamber, exactly next to Mme de Fervaques's box. Julien looked at her constantly. I must keep a siege journal, he told himself returning to the hotel, otherwise I should forget my attacks. He forced himself to write two or three pages upon this tiresome subject, and achieved thus, admirably, to think almost not at all of Mlle de La Mole.

Mathilde had almost forgotten him during his journey. He is after all but a common being, she thought; his name will always recall to me the greatest stain of my life. One must in good faith return to the vulgar ideas of wisdom and honor; a woman has everything to lose in forgetting them. She showed herself disposed at last to allow the conclusion of the arrangement with the Marquis de Croisenois, prepared so long. He was mad with joy; one would have much surprised him in telling him there was resignation at the bottom of this manner of feeling of Mathilde, which made him so proud.

All the ideas of Mlle de La Mole changed on seeing Julien. In truth, he is my husband, she told herself; if I return in good faith to the ideas of wisdom, it is evidently him I ought to marry.

She expected importunities, airs of unhappiness on Julien's part; she prepared her answers: for no doubt, on leaving dinner, he would try to address a few words to her. Far from that, he remained firm in the salon, his looks did not even turn toward the garden. God knows with what pain! It is better to have this explanation at once, said Mlle de La Mole; she went alone to the garden, Julien did not appear there. Mathilde came to walk near the French windows of the salon; she saw him much occupied in describing to Mme de Fervaques the old ruined castles which crown the slopes of the Rhine banks and give them so much physiognomy. He was beginning to get not badly out of the sentimental and picturesque phrase which is called _wit_ in certain salons.

Prince Korasoff would have been very proud, had he been in Paris: this evening was exactly what he had predicted.

He would have approved the conduct Julien held the following days.

An intrigue among the members of the occult government was about to dispose of some blue ribbons; Mme the Marshaless of Fervaques required that her grand-uncle be a knight of the order. The Marquis de La Mole had the same pretension for his father-in-law; they united their efforts, and the Marshaless came almost every day to the Hôtel de La Mole. It was from her that Julien learned that the marquis was to be minister: he offered the _Camarilla_ a very ingenious plan to annihilate the Charter, without commotion, in three years.

Julien might hope for a bishopric, if M. de La Mole reached the ministry; but, in his eyes, all these great interests were as if covered with a veil. His imagination no longer perceived them but vaguely and so to speak in the distance. The frightful misfortune which made him a maniac showed him all the interests of life in his manner of being with Mlle de La Mole. He calculated that after five or six years of care, he would succeed in making her love him again.

This so cold head was, as one sees, fallen into a state of complete derangement. Of all the qualities which had distinguished him formerly there remained to him but a little firmness. Materially faithful to the plan of conduct dictated by Prince Korasoff, each evening he placed himself near enough to the armchair of Mme de Fervaques, but it was impossible for him to find a word to say.

The effort he imposed on himself to seem cured in the eyes of Mathilde absorbed all the forces of his soul, he remained near the Marshaless like a barely animated being; his eyes even, as in extreme physical suffering, had lost all their fire.

As the way of seeing of Mme de La Mole was never but a counterproof of the opinions of this husband who could make her a duchess, for some days she had been carrying to the skies the merit of Julien.

CHAPTER XXVI

MORAL LOVE

There also was of course in Adeline That calm patrician polish in the address, Which ne'er can pass the equinoctial line Of any thing which Nature would express: Just as a Mandarin finds nothing fine, At least his manner suffers not to guess That any thing he views can greatly please.

_Don Juan_. C. XIII, stanza 84.

There is a little madness in the way of seeing of all this family, thought the Marshaless; they are infatuated with their young abbot, who knows only how to listen, with rather fine eyes, it is true.

Julien, for his part, found in the manners of the Marshaless an almost perfect example of this _calm patrician_ which breathes an exact politeness and still more the impossibility of any lively emotion. The unforeseen in movements, the lack of self-command, would have scandalized Mme de Fervaques almost as much as the absence of majesty toward inferiors. The least sign of sensibility would have been in her eyes like a sort of _moral intoxication_ of which one must blush, and which greatly harms what a person of high rank owes to herself. Her great happiness was to speak of the king's last hunt, her favorite book the _Memoirs of the Duke of Saint-Simon_, above all for the genealogical part.

Julien knew the place which, according to the disposition of the lights, suited the kind of beauty of Mme de Fervaques. He was there in advance, but took great care to turn his chair so as not to perceive Mathilde. Astonished at this constancy in hiding from her, one day she left the blue sofa and came to work near a small table next to the Marshaless's armchair. Julien saw her rather near under Mme de Fervaques's hat. These eyes, which disposed of his fate, frightened him at first, seen so close, then threw him violently out of his habitual apathy, he spoke and very well.

He addressed the Marshaless, but his unique aim was to act upon Mathilde's soul. He grew so animated that Mme de Fervaques came to no longer understand what he said.

That was a first merit. If Julien had had the idea of completing it by some phrases of German mysticism, of high religiosity and Jesuitism, the Marshaless would have ranked him at once among the superior men called to regenerate the century.

Since he has the bad taste, said Mlle de La Mole to herself, to speak so long and with so much fire to Mme de Fervaques, I shall listen to him no more. During all the rest of the evening, she kept her word, though with pain.

At midnight, when she took her mother's candlestick to accompany her to her chamber, Mme de La Mole stopped on the stairs to make a complete eulogy of Julien. Mathilde ended by taking umbrage, she could not find sleep. An idea calmed her: what I despise can still make a man of great merit in the eyes of the Marshaless.

As for Julien, he had acted, he was less unhappy; his eyes fell by chance upon the Russian leather portfolio, where Prince Korasoff had locked the fifty-three love letters of which he had made him a gift. Julien saw in note, at the bottom of the first letter: _No. 1 is sent a week after the first sight_.

I am late! cried Julien, for it is long since I saw Mme de Fervaques. He at once set about transcribing this first love letter; it was a homily filled with phrases upon virtue and deadly boring; Julien had the good fortune to fall asleep at the second page.

Some hours after, the great sun surprised him leaning on his table. One of the most painful moments of his life was that when, each morning, on waking, he learned anew his misfortune. That day, he finished the copy of his letter almost laughing. Is it possible, he told himself, that there was a young man to write thus! He counted several phrases of nine lines. At the bottom of the original, he perceived a note in pencil:

_These letters are delivered in person: on horseback, our neckcloth, blue greatcoat. The letter is given to the porter with a contrite air; deep melancholy in the look. If one catches sight of some chambermaid, wipe one's eyes furtively. Speak to the chambermaid._

All that was executed faithfully.

What I do is bold, thought Julien leaving the Hôtel de Fervaques, but so much the worse for Korasoff. To dare write to a virtue so celebrated! I am going to be treated with the last contempt, and nothing will amuse me more. It is, at bottom, the only comedy to which I can be sensible. Yes to cover with ridicule this being so odious, that I call myself, will amuse me. If I trusted myself, I would commit some crime to distract myself.

For a month, the finest moment of Julien's life was that when he gave his horse to the stable. Korasoff had expressly forbidden to look, under any pretext whatever, at the mistress who had left him. But the step of this horse she knew so well, the manner with which Julien struck with his riding-whip at the stable door to call a man sometimes attracted Mathilde behind the curtain of her window. The muslin was so light that Julien saw through it. By looking in a certain way under the edge of his hat, he perceived Mathilde's waist without seeing her eyes. Consequently, he told himself, she cannot see mine, and this is not looking at her.

In the evening, Mme de Fervaques was for him exactly as if she had not received the philosophical, mystical and religious dissertation which, in the morning, he had given her porter with so much melancholy. The day before, chance had revealed to Julien the means of being eloquent; he arranged so as to see the eyes of Mathilde. She, for her part, an instant after the Marshaless's arrival, left the blue sofa: it was to desert her habitual society. M. de Croisenois appeared consternated at this new caprice; his evident grief took from Julien what was most atrocious in his misfortune.

This unforeseen in his life made him speak like an angel; and as self-love slips even into courts which serve as temple to the most august virtue—Mme de La Mole is right, said the Marshaless getting back into her carriage, this young priest has distinction. It must be that, the first days, my presence intimidated him. In fact, all that one meets in this house is very light; I see there only virtues aided by old age, and which had great need of the glasses of age. This young man will have known how to see the difference, he writes well but I much fear that this request to enlighten him with my counsels, which he makes me in his letter, is at bottom but a sentiment which does not know itself.

Still, how many conversions have thus begun! What makes me augur well of this one, is the difference of his style from that of the young men whose letters I have had occasion to see. It is impossible not to recognize unction, a profound seriousness and much conviction in the prose of this young levite; he will have the doubtful virtue of Massillon.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE FINEST PLACES OF THE CHURCH

Services! talents! merit! bah! be of a clique.

TELEMACHUS.

Thus the idea of a bishopric was for the first time mingled with that of Julien in the head of a woman who, sooner or later, was to distribute the finest places of the Church of France. This advantage would hardly have touched Julien; at this instant, his thought rose to nothing foreign to his present misfortune: everything redoubled it, for example, the sight of his room had become intolerable to him. In the evening, when he came in with his candle, each piece of furniture, each small ornament seemed to him to take a voice to announce bitterly to him some new detail of his misfortune.

That day, I have a forced labor, he told himself coming in and with a vivacity he had not known for long: let us hope the second letter will be as boring as the first.

It was more so. What he copied seemed to him so absurd, that he came to transcribe line by line, without thinking of the sense.

It is even more emphatic, he told himself, than the official pieces of the treaty of Münster, which my diplomacy professor made me copy in London.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”