The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830

half-century. As Saint-Giraud kept always repeating that it was impossible to live in the provinces, Julien timidly suggested the case of M. de Rênal. "Zounds, young man, you're a nice one," exclaimed Falcoz. "He turned spider so as not to be fly, and a terrible spider into the bargain. But I see that he is beaten by that man Valenod. Do you know that scoundrel? He's the villain of the piece. What will your M. de Rênal say if he sees himself turned out one of these fine days, and Valenod put in his place?" "He will be left to brood over his crimes," said Saint-Giraud. "Do you know Verrières, young man? Well, Bonaparte, heaven confound him! Bonaparte and his monarchical tomfoolery rendered possible the reign of the Rênals and the Chélans, which brought about the reign of the Valenods and the Maslons." This conversation, with its gloomy politics, astonished Julien and distracted him from his delicious reveries. He appreciated but little the first sight of Paris as perceived in the distance. The castles in the air he had built about his future had to struggle with the still present memory of the twenty-four hours that he had just passed in Verrières. He vowed that he would never abandon his mistress's children, and that he would leave everything in order to protect them, if the impertinence of the priests brought about a republic and the persecution of the nobles. What would have happened on the night of his arrival in Verrières if, at the moment when he had leant his ladder against the casement of Madame de Rênal's bedroom he had found that room occupied by a stranger or by M. de Rênal? But how delicious, too, had been those first two hours when his sweetheart had been sincerely anxious to send him away and he had pleaded his cause, sitting down by her in the darkness! A soul like Julien's is haunted by such memories for a lifetime. The rest of the interview was already becoming merged in the first period of their love, fourteen months previous. Julien was awakened from his deep meditation by the stopping of the coach. They had just entered the courtyard of the Post in the Rue Rousseau. "I want to go to La Malmaison," he said to a cabriolet which approached. "At this time, Monsieur--what for?" "What's that got to do with you? Get on." Every real passion only thinks about itself. That is why, in my view, passions are ridiculous at Paris, where one's neighbour always insists on one's considering him a great deal. I shall refrain from recounting Julien's ecstasy at La Malmaison. He wept. What! in spite of those wretched white walls, built this very year, which cut the path up into bits? Yes, monsieur, for Julien, as for posterity, there was nothing to choose between Arcole, Saint Helena, and La Malmaison. In the evening, Julien hesitated a great deal before going to the theatre. He had strange ideas about that place of perdition. A deep distrust prevented him from admiring actual Paris. He was only affected by the monuments left behind by his hero. "So here I am in the centre of intrigue and hypocrisy. Here reign the protectors of the abbé de Frilair." On the evening of the third day his curiosity got the better of his plan of seeing everything before presenting himself to the abbé Pirard. The abbé explained to him coldly the kind of life which he was to expect at M. de la Mole's. "If you do not prove useful to him at the end of some months you will go back to the seminary, but not in disgrace. You will live in the house of the marquis, who is one of the greatest seigneurs of France. You will wear black, but like a man who is in mourning, and not like an ecclesiastic. I insist on your following your theological studies three days a week in a seminary where I will introduce you. Every day at twelve o'clock you will establish yourself in the marquis's library; he counts on making use of you in drafting letters concerning his lawsuits and other matters. The marquis will scribble on the margin of each letter he gets the kind of answer which is required. I have assured him that at the end of three months you will be so competent to draft the answers, that out of every dozen you hand to the marquis for signature, he will be able to sign eight or nine. In the evening, at eight o'clock, you will tidy up his bureau, and at ten you will be free. "It may be," continued the abbé Pirard, "that some old lady or some smooth-voiced man will hint at immense advantages, or will crudely offer you gold, to show him the letters which the marquis has received." "Ah, monsieur," exclaimed Julien, blushing. "It is singular," said the abbé with a bitter smile, "that poor as you are, and after a year at a seminary, you still have any of this virtuous indignation left. You must have been very blind." "Can it be that blood will tell," muttered the abbé in a whisper, as though speaking to himself. "The singular thing is," he added, looking at Julien, "that the marquis knows you--I don't know how. He will give you a salary of a hundred louis to commence with. He is a man who only acts by his whim. That is his weakness. He will quarrel with you about the most childish matters. If he is satisfied, your wages may rise in consequence up to eight thousand francs. "But you realise," went on the abbé, sourly, "that he is not giving you all this money simply on account of your personal charm. The thing is to prove yourself useful. If I were in your place I would talk very little, and I would never talk about what I know nothing about. "Oh, yes," said the abbé, "I have made some enquiries for you. I was forgetting M. de la Mole's family. He has two children--a daughter and a son of nineteen, eminently elegant--the kind of madman who never knows to-day what he will do to-morrow. He has spirit and valour; he has been through the Spanish war. The marquis hopes, I don't know why, that you will become a friend of the young count Norbert. I told him that you were a great classic, and possibly he reckons on your teaching his son some ready-made phrases about Cicero and Virgil. "If I were you, I should never allow that handsome young man to make fun of me, and before I accepted his advances, which you will find perfectly polite but a little ironical, I would make him repeat them more than once. "I will not hide from you the fact that the young count de La Mole is bound to despise you at first, because you are nothing more than a little bourgeois. His grandfather belonged to the court, and had the honour of having his head cut off in the Place de Grève on the 26th April, 1574, on account of a political intrigue. "As for you, you are the son of a carpenter of Verrières, and what is more, in receipt of his father's wages. Ponder well over these differences, and look up the family history in Moreri. All the flatterers who dine at their house make from time to time what they call delicate allusions to it. "Be careful of how you answer the pleasantries of M. the count de La Mole, chief of a squadron of hussars, and a future peer of France, and don't come and complain to me later on." "It seems to me," said Julien, blushing violently, "that I ought not even to answer a man who despises me." "You have no idea of his contempt. It will only manifest itself by inflated compliments. If you were a fool, you might be taken in by it. If you want to make your fortune, you ought to let yourself be taken in by it." "Shall I be looked upon as ungrateful," said Julien, "if I return to my little cell Number 108 when I find that all this no longer suits me?" "All the toadies of the house will no doubt calumniate you," said the abbé, "but I myself will come to the rescue. Adsum qui feci. I will say that I am responsible for that resolution." Julien was overwhelmed by the bitter and almost vindictive tone which he noticed in M. Pirard; that tone completely infected his last answer. The fact is that the abbé had a conscientious scruple about loving Julien, and it was with a kind of religious fear that he took so direct a part in another's life. "You will also see," he added with the same bad grace, as though accomplishing a painful duty, "you also will see Madame the marquise de La Mole. She is a big blonde woman about forty, devout, perfectly polite, and even more insignificant. She is the daughter of the old Duke de Chaulnes so well known for his aristocratic prejudices. This great lady is a kind of synopsis in high relief of all the fundamental characteristics of women of her rank. She does not conceal for her own part that the possession of ancestors who went through the crusades is the sole advantage which she respects. Money only comes a long way afterwards. Does that astonish you? We are no longer in the provinces, my friend. "You will see many great lords in her salon talk about our princes in a tone of singular flippancy. As for Madame de la Mole, she lowers her voice out of respect every time she mentions the name of a Prince, and above all the name of a Princess. I would not advise you to say in her hearing that Philip II. or Henry VII. were monsters. They were kings, a fact which gives them indisputable rights to the respect of creatures without birth like you and me. Nevertheless," added M. Pirard, "we are priests, for she will take you for one; that being our capacity, she considers us as spiritual valets necessary for her salvation." "Monsieur," said Julien, "I do not think I shall be long at Paris." "Good, but remember that no man of our class can make his fortune except through the great lords. With that indefinable element in your character, at any rate I think it is, you will be persecuted if you do not make your fortune. There is no middle course for you, make no mistake about it; people see that they do not give you pleasure when they speak to you; in a social country like this you are condemned to unhappiness if you do not succeed in winning respect." "What would have become of you at Besançon without this whim of the marquis de la Mole? One day you will realise the extraordinary extent of what he has done for you, and if you are not a monster you will be eternally grateful to him and his family. How many poor abbés more learned than you have lived years at Paris on the fifteen sous they got for their mass and their ten sous they got for their dissertations in the Sorbonne. Remember what I told you last winter about the first years of that bad man Cardinal Dubois. Are you proud enough by chance to think yourself more talented than he was? "Take, for instance, a quiet and average man like myself; I reckoned on dying in my seminary. I was childish enough to get attached to it. Well I was on the point of being turned out, when I handed in my resignation. You know what my fortune consisted of. I had five hundred and twenty francs capital neither more nor less, not a friend, scarcely two or three acquaintances. M. de la Mole, whom I had never seen, extricated me from that quandary. He only had to say the word and I was given a living where the parishioners are well-to-do people above all crude vices, and where the income puts me to shame, it is so disproportionate to my work. I refrained from talking to you all this time simply to enable you to find your level a bit. "One word more, I have the misfortune to be irritable. It is possible that you and I will cease to be on speaking terms. "If the airs of the marquise or the spiteful pleasantries of her son make the house absolutely intolerable for you I advise you to finish your studies in some seminary thirty leagues from Paris and rather north than south. There is more civilisation in the north, and, he added lowering his voice, I must admit that the nearness of the Paris papers puts fear into our petty tyrants.