Part 36

He only then remembered the letters from Mme de Fervaques whose originals he had forgotten to return to the grave Spaniard don Diego Bustos. He searched for them; they were truly almost as nonsensical as those of the young Russian lord. The vagueness was complete. They meant everything and nothing. It is the aeolian harp of style, Julien thought. Amid the loftiest thoughts on nothingness, on death, on the infinite, etc., the only real thing I see is an abominable fear of ridicule.

The monologue we have just abridged was repeated for fifteen days in a row. To fall asleep while transcribing a sort of commentary on the Apocalypse, the next day to deliver a letter with a melancholy air, to return the horse to the stable with the hope of catching a glimpse of Mathilde's dress, to work, in the evening to appear at the Opera when Mme de Fervaques did not come to the Hôtel de La Mole—such were the monotonous events of Julien's life. It had more interest when Mme de Fervaques came to the marquise's; then he could catch sight of Mathilde's eyes beneath the brim of the marshal's hat, and he was eloquent. His picturesque and sentimental phrases were beginning to take on a form at once more striking and more elegant.

He was well aware that what he said was absurd in Mathilde's eyes, but he wished to strike her by the elegance of his diction. The more false what I say is, the more I must please her, Julien thought, and then, with an abominable boldness, he exaggerated certain aspects of nature. He soon noticed that, in order not to seem vulgar in the eyes of the marshal, he must above all beware of simple and reasonable ideas. He continued thus, or abridged his amplifications according as he saw success or indifference in the eyes of the two great ladies he had to please.

On the whole, his life was less awful than when his days were passed in idleness.

But, he said to himself one evening, here I am transcribing the fifteenth of these abominable dissertations; the first fourteen have been faithfully handed to the marshal's porter. I am going to have the honour of filling every slot in his desk. And yet she treats me exactly as if I were not writing! What can be the end of all this? Can my constancy bore her as much as it does me? It must be admitted that this Russian, friend of Korasoff and lover of the beautiful Quakeress of Richemond, was in his time a terrible man; one could not be more wearisome.

Like all mediocre beings whom chance brings face to face with the manoeuvres of a great general, Julien understood nothing of the attack executed by the young Russian upon the heart of the severe Englishwoman. The first forty letters were intended only to obtain pardon for the boldness of writing. It was necessary to lead this gentle person, who was perhaps infinitely bored, to contract the habit of receiving letters perhaps a little less insipid than her everyday life.

One morning, a letter was handed to Julien; he recognized the arms of Mme de Fervaques, and broke the seal with an eagerness that would have seemed quite impossible to him a few days before: it was merely an invitation to dinner.

He ran to the instructions of Prince Korasoff. Unfortunately, the young Russian had wished to be light as Dorat, where he ought to have been simple and intelligible; Julien could not guess the moral position he was to occupy at the marshal's dinner.

The salon was of the highest magnificence, gilded like the gallery of Diana at the Tuileries, with oil paintings on the wainscoting. There were light patches in these paintings. Julien learned later that the subjects had seemed indecent to the mistress of the house, who had had the paintings corrected. *Moral century!* he thought.

In this salon, he noticed three of the personages who had assisted at the drafting of the secret note. One of them, Mgr the bishop of ***, uncle of the marshal, held the list of benefices and, it was said, refused nothing to his niece. What an immense step I have taken, Julien said to himself, smiling with melancholy, and how indifferent it is to me! Here I am dining with the famous bishop of ***.

The dinner was mediocre and the conversation irritating. It is the table of a bad book, Julien thought. All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly approached there. Listen for three minutes, and one asks what prevails, the speaker's bombast or his abominable ignorance.

The reader has no doubt forgotten that little man of letters, named Tanbeau, nephew of the academician and future professor, who, by his base calumnies, seemed charged with poisoning the salon of the Hôtel de La Mole.

It was through this little man that Julien first had the idea that Mme de Fervaques, while not answering his letters, might view with indulgence the sentiment that dictated them. The black soul of M. Tanbeau was torn at the thought of Julien's successes, but as, on the other hand, a man of merit no more than a fool can be in two places at once, if Sorel becomes the lover of the sublime marshal, the future professor said to himself, she will place him in the Church in some advantageous way, and I shall be rid of him at the Hôtel de La Mole.

M. l'abbé Pirard also addressed long sermons to Julien on his successes at the Hôtel de Fervaques. There was *sectarian jealousy* between the austere Jansenist and the Jesuitical, regenerating and monarchic salon of the virtuous marshal.

CHAPTER XXVIII

MANON LESCAUT

Now, once he was well convinced of the foolishness and asininity of the prior, he ordinarily succeeded by calling black what was white, and white what was black.

LICHTENBERG.

The Russian instructions imperatively prescribed never contradicting by word of mouth the person to whom one was writing. One was never to depart, on any pretext, from the role of the most ecstatic admiration; the letters always proceeded from this supposition.

One evening, at the Opera, in Mme de Fervaques' box, Julien extolled to the skies the ballet of *Manon Lescaut*. His only reason for speaking thus was that he found it insignificant.

The marshal said that this ballet was far inferior to the novel of the abbé Prévost.

What! Julien thought, astonished and amused; a person of such high virtue praising a novel! Mme de Fervaques professed, two or three times a week, the most complete contempt for writers who, by means of those flat works, seek to corrupt a youth which is, alas! only too disposed to the errors of the senses.

In this immoral and dangerous genre, *Manon Lescaut*, the marshal went on, occupies, it is said, one of the first ranks. The weaknesses and merited anguishes of a thoroughly criminal heart are, it is said, depicted there with a truth that has depth, which does not prevent your Bonaparte from pronouncing at Saint Helena that it is a novel written for lackeys.

This word restored all its activity to Julien's soul. Someone has wished to ruin me with the marshal; they have told her of my enthusiasm for Napoleon. This fact has piqued her enough to make her yield to the temptation of letting me feel it. This discovery amused him the whole evening, and made him amusing. As he took leave of the marshal under the vestibule of the Opera:

"Remember, sir," she said to him, "that one must not love Bonaparte when one loves me; one may at most accept him as a necessity imposed by Providence. Besides, that man had not a sufficiently flexible soul to feel the masterpieces of the arts."

*When one loves me!* Julien repeated to himself; that means nothing, or means everything. These are secrets of language that are lacking to us poor provincials. And he thought much of Mme de Rênal, while copying a vast letter destined for the marshal.

"How is it," she said to him the next day with an air of indifference which he found ill-feigned, "that you speak to me of *London* and of *Richmond* in a letter which you wrote yesterday evening, it seems, on leaving the Opera?"

Julien was much embarrassed; he had copied line by line, without thinking of what he wrote, and apparently had forgotten to substitute for the words *London* and *Richmond*, which were in the original, those of *Paris* and *Saint-Cloud*. He began two or three phrases, but without being able to finish them; he felt on the point of yielding to wild laughter. At last, in searching for his words, he arrived at this idea: Exalted by the discussion of the most sublime, the greatest interests of the human soul, mine, in writing to you, may have had a distraction.

I am producing an impression, he said to himself; therefore I can spare myself the boredom of the rest of the evening. He left the Hôtel de Fervaques running. That evening, on seeing again the original of the letter copied by him the day before, he very quickly came to the fatal passage where the young Russian spoke of London and Richmond. Julien was quite astonished to find this letter almost tender.

It was the contrast of the apparent lightness of his talk, with the sublime and almost apocalyptic depth of his letters, that had made him distinguished. The length of the sentences especially pleased the marshal; that is not the skipping style brought into fashion by Voltaire, that immoral man! Although our hero did all in the world to banish every sort of good sense from his conversation, it still had an antimonarchical and impious colour which did not escape Mme de Fervaques. Surrounded by eminently moral personages, but who often had not an idea per evening, this lady was profoundly struck by everything that resembled a novelty, but at the same time she believed she owed it to herself to be offended by it. She called this fault, *keeping the imprint of the levity of the age*...

But such salons are good to see only when one is petitioning. All the boredom of this life without interest that Julien was leading is no doubt shared by the reader. These are the moors of our journey.

During all the time usurped in Julien's life by the Fervaques episode, Mlle de La Mole needed to exert herself not to think of him. Her soul was prey to violent conflicts: sometimes she flattered herself that she despised this very sad young man; but, in spite of herself, his conversation captivated her. What astonished her above all was his perfect falseness; he did not say a word to the marshal that was not a lie, or at least an abominable disguise of his way of thinking, which Mathilde knew so perfectly on almost all subjects. This Machiavellianism struck her. What depth! she said to herself; what a difference from the emphatic simpletons or the common rogues, such as M. Tanbeau, who hold the same language!

However, Julien had awful days. It was to accomplish the most painful of duties that he appeared each day in the marshal's salon. His efforts to play a role finished by taking all strength from his soul. Often, at night, crossing the immense courtyard of the Hôtel de Fervaques, it was only by force of character and reasoning that he managed to keep himself a little above despair.

I conquered despair at the seminary, he said to himself; yet what an awful prospect I had then! I made or missed my fortune, in either case I saw myself obliged to spend my whole life in intimate society with what is under heaven most contemptible and most disgusting. The following spring, only eleven little months later, I was perhaps the happiest of young men my age.

But often all these fine reasonings were without effect against the awful reality. Each day he saw Mathilde at lunch and dinner. From the numerous letters dictated to him by M. de La Mole, he knew her to be on the eve of marrying M. de Croisenois. Already this amiable young man appeared twice a day at the Hôtel de La Mole: the jealous eye of a discarded lover lost not one of his moves.

When he had thought he saw that Mlle de La Mole treated her suitor well, on returning home Julien could not help looking at his pistols with love.

Ah! how much wiser I should be, he said to himself, to mark my linen, and go to some solitary forest, twenty leagues from Paris, to end this execrable life! Unknown in the country, my death would be hidden for a fortnight, and who would think of me after a fortnight!

This reasoning was very wise. But the next day, the arm of Mathilde, glimpsed between the sleeve of her dress and her glove, was enough to plunge our young philosopher into cruel memories, which yet attached him to life. Well! he then said to himself, I shall follow this Russian policy to the end. How will it end?

As to the marshal, certainly, after having transcribed these fifty-three letters, I shall write no more.

As to Mathilde, these six weeks of so painful comedy will either change nothing in her anger, or obtain me an instant of reconciliation. Great God! I should die of happiness! And he could not finish his thought.

When, after a long reverie, he managed to resume his reasoning: Thus, he said to himself, I should obtain a day of happiness, after which her rigours founded, alas! on the little power I have to please her would begin again, and I should have no resource left, I should be ruined, lost forever...

What guarantee can she give me with her character? Alas! my little merit answers for all. I shall lack elegance in my manners, my way of speaking will be heavy and monotonous. Great God! Why am I myself?

CHAPTER XXIX

BOREDOM

To sacrifice oneself to one's passions, that passes: but to passions one does not have! O sad nineteenth century!

GIRODET.

After having at first read without pleasure the long letters of Julien, Mme de Fervaques began to be occupied with them; but one thing desolated her: what a pity that M. Sorel is not decidedly a priest! One might admit him to a sort of intimacy; with that cross and that almost bourgeois dress, one is exposed to cruel questions, and what to answer? She did not finish her thought: some malign friend may suppose and even spread that he is a subordinate little cousin, a relation of my father, some shopkeeper decorated by the national guard.

Until the moment she had seen Julien, the greatest pleasure of Mme de Fervaques had been to write the word marshal beside her name. Afterwards, a parvenu vanity, morbid and offended by everything, fought against a beginning of interest.

How easy it would be for me, the marshal said to herself, to make him a grand vicar in some diocese near Paris! But plain M. Sorel, and still a little secretary of M. de La Mole! It is desolating.

For the first time, this soul which so feared, was moved by an interest foreign to its pretensions of rank and social superiority. Her old porter noticed that when he brought a letter from that handsome young man who looked so sad, he was sure to see disappear the absent and discontented air which the marshal always took care to assume at the arrival of one of her people.

The boredom of a way of living all ambitious of effect upon the public, without there being at bottom of the heart real enjoyment of this sort of success, had become so intolerable since one thought of Julien, that so the chambermaids might not be ill-treated for a whole day, it sufficed that, during the evening before, one had spent an hour with this singular young man. His nascent credit resisted anonymous letters, very well done. In vain the little Tanbeau supplied MM. de Luz, de Croisenois, de Caylus with two or three very clever calumnies, which these gentlemen took pleasure in spreading without too well knowing the truth of the accusations. The marshal, whose mind was not made to resist these vulgar means, told her doubts to Mathilde, and was always consoled.

One day, after having asked three times if there were letters, Mme de Fervaques suddenly decided to answer Julien. It was a victory of boredom. At the second letter, the marshal was almost stopped by the impropriety of writing with her own hand so vulgar an address: *To M. Sorel, at M. the marquis de La Mole's*.

"You must," she said to Julien that evening with a very dry air, "bring me envelopes on which your address will be written."

Here I am constituted lover-valet-de-chambre, Julien thought, and he bowed, taking pleasure in disguising himself like Arsène, the old valet-de-chambre of the marquis.

The same evening he brought envelopes, and the next day, very early, he had a third letter: he read five or six lines at the beginning, and two or three toward the end. It had four pages of very close small writing.

Little by little they took the sweet habit of writing almost every day. Julien answered by faithful copies of the Russian letters, and such is the advantage of the emphatic style: Mme de Fervaques was not at all astonished at the little relation of the answers to her letters.

What irritation of her pride there would have been, if the little Tanbeau, who had constituted himself voluntary spy of Julien's moves, had been able to tell her that all her letters, unopened, were thrown at random into Julien's drawer.

One morning, the porter brought him a letter from the marshal in the library; Mathilde met this man, saw the letter and the writing of Julien's address. She entered the library as the porter was leaving; the letter was still on the edge of the table; Julien, very busy writing, had not placed it in his drawer.

"That is what I cannot bear," cried Mathilde, seizing the letter; "you forget me entirely, me who am your wife. Your conduct is awful, Monsieur."

At these words, her pride, astonished at the frightful impropriety of her step, suffocated her; she burst into tears, and soon seemed to Julien incapable of breathing.

Surprised, confounded, Julien did not clearly distinguish all that was admirable and happy for him in this scene. He helped Mathilde to sit down; she almost abandoned herself in his arms.

The first instant he perceived this movement was one of extreme joy. The second was a thought for Korasoff: I may lose all by a single word.

His arms stiffened, so painful was the effort imposed by policy. I must not even allow myself to press against my heart this supple and charming body, or she will despise me and maltreat me. What an awful character!

And cursing Mathilde's character, he loved her a hundred times more; it seemed to him he held a queen in his arms.

The impassible coldness of Julien redoubled the unhappiness of pride which tore the soul of Mlle de La Mole. She was far from having the coolness necessary to seek to divine in his eyes what he felt for her at this moment. She could not resolve to look at him; she trembled to meet the expression of contempt.

Seated on the library sofa, motionless and her head turned away from Julien, she was prey to the liveliest pains that pride and love can make a human soul suffer. Into what atrocious step she had just fallen!

It was reserved for me, unhappy that I am! to see the most indecent advances repulsed! and repulsed by whom? added the pride mad with grief; repulsed by a servant of my father!

"That is what I will not bear," she said aloud.

And, rising with fury, she opened the drawer of Julien's table placed two steps before her. She remained as if frozen with horror on seeing there eight or ten unopened letters, similar in every way to the one the porter had just brought up. On all the addresses, she recognized Julien's writing, more or less counterfeited.

"Thus," she cried, beside herself, "not only are you on good terms with her, but you even despise her! You, a man of nothing, despise Mme the marshal of Fervaques!"

"Ah! pardon, my friend," she added, throwing herself at his knees; "despise me if you will, but love me, I can no longer live deprived of your love." And she fell quite fainting.

There she is, this proud one, at my feet! Julien said to himself.

CHAPTER XXX

A BOX AT THE BUFFA

As the blackest sky Foretells the heaviest tempest.

*Don Juan*, C. I, st. 75.

Amid all these great emotions, Julien was more astonished than happy. Mathilde's insults showed him how wise the Russian policy was. *Speak little, do little*, that is my only means of salvation.

He raised Mathilde, and without a word replaced her on the sofa. Little by little tears overcame her.

To give herself a countenance, she took in her hands the letters of Mme de Fervaques; she opened them slowly. She had a marked nervous start when she recognized the marshal's writing. She turned the sheets of these letters without reading them; most had six pages.

"Answer me, at least," said Mathilde at last in the most supplicating tone of voice, but without daring to look at Julien. "You know well that I have pride; it is the misfortune of my position and even of my character, I shall avow it; Mme de Fervaques has therefore taken your heart from me... Has she made for you all the sacrifices to which this fatal love dragged me?"

A gloomy silence was all Julien's answer. By what right, he thought, does she ask me an indiscretion unworthy of an honest man?

Mathilde tried to read the letters; her eyes filled with tears made it impossible. For a month she had been unhappy, but this haughty soul was far from avowing its sentiments. Chance alone had brought on this explosion. For an instant jealousy and love had prevailed over pride. She was placed on the sofa and very near Julien. He saw her hair and her alabaster neck; for a moment he forgot all he owed himself; he passed his arm around her waist, and pressed her almost against his chest.

She turned her head toward him slowly: he was astonished at the extreme pain that was in her eyes; it was hardly to be recognized from their habitual expression.

Julien felt his strength abandon him, so mortally painful was the act of courage he imposed on himself.

Those eyes will soon express only the coldest disdain, Julien said to himself, if I let myself be carried away by the happiness of loving her. However, in a faint voice and with words she hardly had the strength to finish, she repeated to him, at this moment, the assurance of all her regrets for steps that too much pride had been able to counsel.

"I too have pride," Julien said to her in a scarcely formed voice, and his features painted the extreme point of physical dejection.

Mathilde turned quickly toward him. To hear his voice was a happiness to the hope of which she had almost renounced. At this moment she remembered her loftiness only to curse it; she would have wished to find unusual, incredible steps, to prove to him to what point she adored him and detested herself.

"It is probably because of this pride," Julien continued, "that you distinguished me an instant; it is certainly because of this courageous firmness which befits a man, that you esteem me at this moment. I may have love for the marshal..."

Mathilde trembled; her eyes took a strange expression. She was about to hear her sentence pronounced. This movement escaped not Julien; he felt his courage fail.

Ah! he said to himself, listening to the sound of the vain words his mouth pronounced, as if it were a strange noise; if I could cover with kisses those so pale cheeks, and you not feel it!

"I may have love for the marshal," he continued—and his voice grew ever weaker; "but certainly, I have no decisive proof of her interest in me..."

“Stories of the world, in your language.”