The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830
transformed into a wood of orange trees and of pink laurels in full
flower. As they had been careful to bury the vases sufficiently deep,
the laurel trees and the orange trees appeared to come straight out of
the ground. The road which the carriages traversed was sanded.
All this seemed extraordinary to our provincial. He had never had any
idea of such magnificence. In a single instant his thrilled imagination
had left his bad temper a thousand leagues behind. In the carriage on
their way to the ball Norbert had been happy, while he saw everything
in black colours. They had scarcely entered the courtyard before the
rôles changed.
Norbert was only struck by a few details which, in the midst of all
that magnificence, had not been able to be attended to. He calculated
the expense of each item, and Julien remarked that the nearer he got
to a sum total, the more jealous and bad-tempered he appeared.
As for himself, he was fascinated and full of admiration when he
reached the first of the salons where they were dancing. His emotion
was so great that it almost made him nervous. There was a crush at the
door of the second salon, and the crowd was so great that he found it
impossible to advance. The decorations of the second salon presented
the Alhambra of Grenada.
"That's the queen of the ball one must admit," said a young man with a
moustache whose shoulder stuck into Julien's chest.
"Mademoiselle Formant who has been the prettiest all the winter,
realises that she will have to go down to the second place. See how
strange she looks."
"In truth she is straining every nerve to please. Just look at that
gracious smile now that she is doing the figure in that quadrille all
alone. On my honour it is unique."
"Mademoiselle de la Mole looks as if she controlled the pleasure which
she derives from her triumph, of which she is perfectly conscious. One
might say that she fears to please anyone who talks to her."
"Very good. That is the art of alluring."
Julien vainly endeavoured to catch sight of the alluring woman. Seven
or eight men who were taller than he prevented him from seeing her.
"There is quite a lot of coquetry in that noble reserve," said the
young man with a moustache.
"And in those big blue eyes, which are lowered so slowly when one would
think they were on the point of betraying themselves," answered his
neighbour. "On my faith, nothing could be cleverer."
"See the pretty Formant looking quite common next to her," said the
first.
"That air of reserve means how much sweetness would I spend on you if
you were the man who was worthy of me."
"And who could be worthy of the sublime Mathilde," said the first man.
"Some sovereign prince, handsome, witty, well-made, a hero in war, and
twenty years old at the most."
"The natural son of the Emperor of Russia ... who would be made a
sovereign in honour of his marriage, or quite simply the comte de
Thaler, who looks like a dressed-up peasant."
The door was free, and Julien could go in.
"Since these puppets consider her so remarkable, it is worth while
for me to study her," he thought. "I shall then understand what these
people regard as perfection."
As his eyes were trying to find her, Mathilde looked at him. "My duty
calls me," said Julien to himself. But it was only his expression which
was bad-humoured.
His curiosity made him advance with a pleasure which the extremely low
cut dress on Mathilde's shoulder very quickly accentuated, in a manner
which was scarcely flattering for his own self-respect. "Her beauty has
youth," he thought. Five or six people, whom Julien recognised as those
who had been speaking at the door were between her and him.
"Now, Monsieur, you have been here all the winter," she said to him.
"Is it not true that this is the finest ball of the season."
He did not answer.
"This quadrille of Coulon's strikes me as admirable, and those ladies
dance it perfectly." The young men turned round to see who was the
happy man, an answer from whom was positively insisted on. The answer
was not encouraging.
"I shall not be able to be a good judge, mademoiselle, I pass my life
in writing. This is the first ball of this magnificence which I have
ever seen."
The young men with moustaches were scandalised.
"You are a wise man, Monsieur Sorel," came the answer with a more
marked interest. "You look upon all these balls, all these festivities,
like a philosopher, like J. J. Rousseau. All these follies astonish
without alluring you."
Julien's imagination had just hit upon an epigram which banished all
illusions from his mind. His mouth assumed the expression of a perhaps
slightly exaggerated disdain.
"J. J. Rousseau," he answered, "is in my view only a fool when he takes
it upon himself to criticise society. He did not understand it, and
he went into it with the spirit of a lackey who has risen above his
station."
"He wrote the _Contrat Social_," answered Mathilde reverently.
"While he preaches the Republic, and the overthrow of monarchical
dignities, the parvenu was intoxicated with happiness if a duke would
go out of his way after dinner to one of his friends."
"Oh yes, the Duke of Luxembourg at Montmorency, used to accompany a
Coindet from the neighbourhood of Paris," went on Mademoiselle de
la Mole, with all the pleasure and enthusiasm of her first flush of
pedantry. She was intoxicated with her knowledge, almost like the
academician who discovered the existence of King Feretrius.
Julien's look was still penetrating and severe. Mathilde had had
a moment's enthusiasm. Her partner's coldness disconcerted her
profoundly. She was all the more astonished, as it was she who was
accustomed to produce that particular effect on others.
At this moment the marquis de Croisenois was advancing eagerly towards
mademoiselle de la Mole. He was for a moment three yards away from her.
He was unable to get closer because of the crowd. He smiled at the
obstacle. The young marquise de Rouvray was near her. She was a cousin
of Mathilde. She was giving her arm to her husband who had only married
her a fortnight ago. The marquis de Rouvray, who was also very young,
had all the love which seizes a man who, having contracted a marriage
of convenience exclusively arranged by the notaries, finds a person who
is ideally pretty. M. de Rouvray would be a duke on the death of a very
old uncle.
While the marquis de Croisenois was struggling to get through the
crowd, and smiling at Mathilde she fixed her big divinely blue eyes
on him and his neighbours. "Could anything be flatter," she said to
herself. "There is Croisenois who wants to marry me, he is gentle and
polite, he has perfect manners like M. de Rouvray. If they did not
bore, those gentlemen would be quite charming. He too, would accompany
me to the ball with that smug limited expression. One year after the
marriage I shall have my carriage, my horses, my dresses, my château
twenty leagues from Paris. All this would be as nice as possible, and
enough to make a Countess de Roiville, for example, die of envy and
afterwards--"
Mathilde bored herself in anticipation. The marquis de Croisenois
managed to approach her and spoke to her, but she was dreaming and
did not listen to him. The noise of his words began to get mixed
with the buzz of the ball. Her eye mechanically followed Julien who
had gone away, with an air which, though respectful, was yet proud
and discontented. She noticed in a corner far from the moving crowd,
the comte Altamira who had been condemned to death in his own country
and whom the reader knows already. One of his relatives had married a
Prince de Conti in the reign of Louis XIV. This historical fact was
some protection against the police of the congregation.
"I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction," said
Mathilde. "It is the only thing which cannot be bought."
"Why, that's an epigram, I just said, what a pity it did not come at a
moment when I could have reaped all the credit for it." Mathilde had
too much taste to work into the conversation a prepared epigram but
at the same time she was too vain not to be extremely pleased with
herself. A happy expression succeeded the palpable boredom of her face.
The marquis de Croisenois, who had never left off talking, saw a chance
of success and waxed twice as eloquent.
"What objection could a caviller find with my epigram," said Mathilde
to herself. "I would answer my critic in this way: The title of baron
or vicomte is to be bought; a cross, why it is a gift. My brother
has just got one. What has he done? A promotion, why that can be
obtained by being ten years in a garrison or have the minister of war
for a relative, and you'll be a chief of a squadron like Norbert. A
great fortune! That's rather more difficult, and consequently more
meritorious. It is really quite funny. It's the opposite of what
the books say. Well, to win a fortune why you marry M. Rothschild's
daughter. Really my epigram is quite deep. Being condemned to death is
still the one privilege which one has never thought of canvassing."
"Do you know the comte Altamira," she said to M. de Croisenois.
Her thoughts seemed to have been so far away, and this question had
so little connection with all that the poor marquis had been saying
for the last five minutes, that his good temper was ruffled. He was
nevertheless a man of wit and celebrated for being so.
"Mathilde is eccentric," he thought, "that's a nuisance, but she will
give her husband such a fine social position. I don't know how the
marquis de la Mole manages. He is connected with all that is best in
all parties. He is a man who is bound to come out on top. And, besides,
this eccentricity of Mathilde's may pass for genius. Genius when allied
with good birth and a large fortune, so far from being ridiculous, is
highly distinguished. She has wit, moreover, when she wants to, that
mixture in fact of brains, character, and ready wit which constitute
perfection."
As it is difficult to do two things at the same time, the marquis
answered Mathilde with a vacant expression as though he were reciting a
lesson.
"Who does not know that poor Altamira?" and he told her the history of
his conspiracy, abortive, ridiculous and absurd.
"Very absurd," said Mathilde as if she were talking to herself, "but he
has done something. I want to see a man; bring him to me," she said to
the scandalized marquis.
Comte Altamira was one of the most avowed admirers of mademoiselle de
la Mole's haughty and impertinent manner. In his opinion she was one of
the most beautiful persons in Paris.
"How fine she would be on a throne," he said to M. de Croisenois; and
made no demur at being taken up to Mathilde.
There are a good number of people in society who would like to
establish the fact that nothing is in such bad form as a conspiracy, in
the nineteenth century; it smacks of Jacobinism. And what could be more
sordid than unsuccessful Jacobinism.
Mathilde's expression made fun a little of Altamira and M. de
Croisenois, but she listened to him with pleasure.
"A conspirator at a ball, what a pretty contrast," she thought. She
thought that this man with his black moustache looked like a lion at
rest, but she soon perceived that his mind had only one point of view:
_utility, admiration for utility_.
The young comte thought nothing worthy his attention except what tended
to give his country two chamber government. He left Mathilde, who was
the prettiest person at the ball, with alacrity, because he saw a
Peruvian general come in. Desparing of Europe such as M. de Metternich
had arranged it, poor Altamira had been reduced to thinking that when
the States of South America had become strong and powerful they could