The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830
evening. On this particular occasion mademoiselle de la Mole asked him
what was the height of the mountain on which the citadel of Besançon
is planted. Julien had never any idea if this mountain was higher or
lower than Montmartre. He often laughed heartily at what was said in
this little knot, but he felt himself incapable of inventing anything
analagous. It was like a strange language which he understood but could
not speak.
On this particular day Matilde's friends manifested a continuous
hostility to the visitors who came into the vast salon. The friends of
the house were the favoured victims at first, inasmuch as they were
better known. You can form your opinion as to whether Julien paid
attention; everything interested him, both the substance of things and
the manner of making fun of them.
"And there is M. Descoulis," said Matilde; "he doesn't wear a wig any
more. Does he want to get a prefectship through sheer force of genius?
He is displaying that bald forehead which he says is filled with lofty
thoughts."
"He is a man who knows the whole world," said the marquis de
Croisenois. "He also goes to my uncle the cardinal's. He is capable of
cultivating a falsehood with each of his friends for years on end, and
he has two or three hundred friends. He knows how to nurse friendship,
that is his talent. He will go out, just as you see him, in the worst
winter weather, and be at the door of one of his friends by seven
o'clock in the morning.
"He quarrels from time to time and he writes seven or eight letters
for each quarrel. Then he has a reconciliation and he writes seven or
eight letters to express his bursts of friendship. But he shines most
brilliantly in the frank and sincere expansiveness of the honest man
who keeps nothing up his sleeve. This manœuvre is brought into play
when he has some favour to ask. One of my uncle's grand vicars is very
good at telling the life of M. Descoulis since the restoration. I will
bring him to you."
"Bah! I don't believe all that, it's professional jealousy among the
lower classes," said the comte de Caylus.
"M. Descoulis will live in history," replied the marquis. "He brought
about the restoration together with the abbé de Pradt and messieurs de
Talleyrand and Pozzo di Borgo."
"That man has handled millions," said Norbert, "and I can't conceive
why he should come here to swallow my father's epigrams which are
frequently atrocious. 'How many times have you betrayed your friends,
my dear Descoulis?' he shouted at him one day from one end of the table
to the other."
"But is it true that he has played the traitor?" asked mademoiselle de
la Mole. "Who has not played the traitor?"
"Why!" said the comte de Caylus to Norbert, "do you have that
celebrated Liberal, M. Sainclair, in your house. What the devil's he
come here for? I must go up to him and speak to him and make him speak.
He is said to be so clever."
"But how will your mother receive him?" said M. de Croisenois. "He has
such extravagant, generous and independent ideas."
"Look," said mademoiselle de la Mole, "look at the independent man who
bows down to the ground to M. Descoulis while he grabs hold of his
hand. I almost thought he was going to put it to his lips."
"Descoulis must stand better with the powers that be than we thought,"
answered M. de Croisenois.
"Sainclair comes here in order to get into the academy," said Norbert.
"See how he bows to the baron L----, Croisenois."
"It would be less base to kneel down," replied M. de Luz.
"My dear Sorel," said Norbert, "you are extremely smart, but you come
from the mountains. Mind you never bow like that great poet is doing,
even to God the Father."
"Ah there's a really witty man, M. the Baron Bâton," said mademoiselle
de la Mole, imitating a little the voice of the flunkey who had just
announced him.
"I think that even your servants make fun of him. What a name Baron
Bâton," said M. de Caylus.
"What's in a name?" he said to us the other day, went on Matilde.
"Imagine the Duke de Bouillon announced for the first time. So far as I
am concerned the public only need to get used to me."
"Julien left the vicinity of the sofa."
Still insufficiently appreciative of the charming subtleties of a
delicate raillery to laugh at a joke, he considered that a jest ought
to have some logical foundation. He saw nothing in these young peoples'
conversation except a vein of universal scandal-mongering and was
shocked by it. His provincial or English prudery went so far as to
detect envy in it, though in this he was certainly mistaken.
"Count Norbert," he said to himself, "who has had to make three drafts
for a twenty-line letter to his colonel would be only too glad to have
written once in his whole life one page as good as M. Sainclair."
Julien approached successively the several groups and attracted no
attention by reason of his lack of importance. He followed the Baron
Bâton from a distance and tried to hear him.
This witty man appeared nervous and Julien did not see him recover
his equanimity before he had hit upon three or four stinging phrases.
Julien thought that this kind of wit had great need of space.
The Baron could not make epigrams. He needed at least four sentences of
six lines each, in order to be brilliant.
"That man argues, he does not talk," said someone behind Julien. He
turned round and reddened with pleasure when he heard the name of the
comte Chalvet. He was the subtlest man of the century. Julien had often
found his name in the _Memorial of St. Helena_ and in the portions of
history dictated by Napoleon. The diction of comte Chalvet was laconic,
his phrases were flashes of lightning--just, vivid, deep. If he talked
about any matter the conversation immediately made a step forward; he
imported facts into it; it was a pleasure to hear him. In politics,
however, he was a brazen cynic.
"I am independent, I am," he was saying to a gentleman with three
stars, of whom apparently he was making fun. "Why insist on my having
to-day the same opinion I had six weeks ago. In that case my opinion
would be my master."
Four grave young men who were standing round scowled; these gentlemen
did not like flippancy. The comte saw that he had gone too far. Luckily
he perceived the honest M. Balland, a veritable hypocrite of honesty.
The count began to talk to him; people closed up, for they realised
that poor Balland was going to be the next victim.
M. Balland, although he was horribly ugly and his first steps in the
world were almost unmentionable, had by dint of his morals and his
morality married a very rich wife who had died; he subsequently married
a second very rich one who was never seen in society. He enjoyed, in
all humility, an income of sixty thousand francs, and had his own
flatterers. Comte Chalvet talked to him pitilessly about all this.
There was soon a circle of thirty persons around them. Everybody was
smiling, including the solemn young men who were the hope of the
century.
"Why does he come to M. de la Mole where he is obviously only a
laughing stock?" thought Julien. He approached the abbé Pirard to ask
him.
M. Balland made his escape.
"Good," said Norbert, "there is one of the spies of my father gone;
there is only the little limping Napier left."
"Can that be the key of the riddle?" thought Julien, "but if so, why
does the marquis receive M. Balland?"
The stern abbé Pirard was scowling in a corner of the salon listening
to the lackeys announcing the names.
"This is nothing more than a den," he was saying like another Basil, "I
see none but shady people come in."
As a matter of fact the severe abbé did not know what constitutes
high society. But his friends the Jansenites, had given him some very
precise notions about those men who only get into society by reason
of their extreme subtlety in the service of all parties, or of their
monstrous wealth. For some minutes that evening he answered Julien's
eager questions fully and freely, and then suddenly stopped short
grieved at having always to say ill of every one, and thinking he was
guilty of a sin. Bilious Jansenist as he was, and believing as he did
in the duty of Christian charity, his life was a perpetual conflict.
"How strange that abbé Pirard looks," said mademoiselle de la Mole, as
Julien came near the sofa.
Julien felt irritated, but she was right all the same. M. Pirard was
unquestionably the most honest man in the salon, but his pimply face,
which was suffering from the stings of conscience, made him look
hideous at this particular moment. "Trust physiognomy after this,"
thought Julien, "it is only when the delicate conscience of the abbé
Pirard is reproaching him for some trifling lapse that he looks so
awful; while the expression of that notorious spy Napier shows a pure
and tranquil happiness." The abbé Pirard, however, had made great
concessions to his party. He had taken a servant, and was very well
dressed.
Julien noticed something strange in the salon, it was that all eyes
were being turned towards the door, and there was a semi silence. The
flunkey was announcing the famous Barron Tolly, who had just become
publicly conspicuous by reason of the elections. Julien came forward
and had a very good view of him. The baron had been the president of
an electoral college; he had the brilliant idea of spiriting away
the little squares of paper which contained the votes of one of the
parties. But to make up for it he replaced them by an equal number of
other little pieces of paper containing a name agreeable to himself.
This drastic manœuvre had been noticed by some of the voters, who had
made an immediate point of congratulating the Baron de Tolly. The good
fellow was still pale from this great business. Malicious persons had
pronounced the word galleys. M. de la Mole received him coldly. The
poor Baron made his escape.
"If he leaves us so quickly it's to go to M. Comte's,"[1] said Comte
Chalvet and everyone laughed.
Little Tanbeau was trying to win his spurs by talking to some silent
noblemen and some intriguers who, though shady, were all men of wit,
and were on this particular night in great force in M. de la Mole's
salon (for he was mentioned for a place in the ministry). If he had not
yet any subtlety of perception he made up for it as one will see by the
energy of his words.
"Why not sentence that man to ten years' imprisonment," he was saying
at the moment when Julien approached his knot. "Those reptiles should
be confined in the bottom of a dungeon, they ought to languish to death
in gaol, otherwise their venom will grow and become more dangerous.
What is the good of sentencing him to a fine of a thousand crowns? He
is poor, so be it, all the better, but his party will pay for him. What
the case required was a five hundred francs fine and ten years in a
dungeon."
"Well to be sure, who is the monster they are speaking about?" thought
Julien who was viewing with amazement the vehement tone and hysterical
gestures of his colleague. At this moment the thin, drawn, little face
of the academician's nephew was hideous. Julien soon learnt that they
were talking of the greatest poet of the century.
"You monster," Julien exclaimed half aloud, while tears of generosity
moistened his eyes. "You little rascal," he thought, "I will pay you
out for this."
"Yet," he thought, "those are the unborn hopes of the party of which
the marquis is one of the chiefs. How many crosses and how many
sinecures would that celebrated man whom he is now defaming have
accumulated if he had sold himself--I won't say to the mediocre
ministry of M. de Nerval--but to one of those reasonably honest
ministries which we have seen follow each other in succession."