The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830
rapidly, the key which was in the pocket of his coat. "I only hope she
thinks of hiding that fatal trophy," he thought.
Finally fatigue prevailed over happiness, and as the sun was rising he
fell into a deep sleep.
The breakfast bell only just managed to wake him up. He appeared in the
dining-room. Shortly afterwards Mathilde came in. Julien's pride felt
deliciously flattered as he saw the love which shone in the eyes of
this beautiful creature who was surrounded by so much homage; but soon
his discretion had occasion to be alarmed.
Making an excuse of the little time that she had had to do her hair,
Mathilde had arranged it in such a way that Julien could see at the
first glance the full extent of the sacrifice that she had made for his
sake, by cutting off her hair on the previous night.
If it had been possible to spoil so beautiful a face by anything
whatsoever, Mathilde would have succeeded in doing it. A whole tress
of her beautiful blonde hair was cut off to within half an inch of the
scalp.
Mathilde's whole manner during breakfast was in keeping with this
initial imprudence. One might have said that she had made a specific
point of trying to inform the whole world of her mad passion for
Julien. Happily on this particular day M. de la Mole and the marquis
were very much concerned about an approaching bestowal of "blue
ribbons" which was going to take place, and in which M. de Chaulnes was
not comprised. Towards the end of the meal, Mathilde, who was talking
to Julien, happened to call him "My Master." He blushed up to the
whites of his eyes.
Mathilde was not left alone for an instant that day, whether by chance
or the deliberate policy of madame de la Mole. In the evening when she
passed from the dining-room into the salon, however, she managed to say
to Julien: "You may be thinking I am making an excuse, but mamma has
just decided that one of her women is to spend the night in my room."
This day passed with lightning rapidity. Julien was at the zenith of
happiness. At seven o'clock in the morning of the following day he
installed himself in the library. He hoped the mademoiselle de la Mole
would deign to appear there; he had written her an interminable letter.
He only saw her several hours afterwards at breakfast. Her hair was
done to-day with the very greatest care; a marvellous art had managed
to hide the place where the hair had been cut. She looked at Julien
once or twice, but her eyes were polite and calm, and there was no
question of calling him "My Master."
Julien's astonishment prevented him from breathing--Mathilde was
reproaching herself for all she had done for him. After mature
reflection, she had come to the conclusion that he was a person who,
though not absolutely commonplace, was yet not sufficiently different
from the common ruck to deserve all the strange follies that she
had ventured for his sake. To sum up she did not give love a single
thought; on this particular day she was tired of loving.
As for Julien, his emotions were those of a child of sixteen. He was a
successive prey to awful doubt, astonishment and despair during this
breakfast which he thought would never end.
As soon as he could decently get up from the table, he flew rather than
ran to the stable, saddled his horse himself, and galloped off. "I
must kill my heart through sheer force of physical fatigue," he said
to himself as he galloped through the Meudon woods. "What have I done,
what have I said to deserve a disgrace like this?"
"I must do nothing and say nothing to-day," he thought as he re-entered
the hôtel. "I must be as dead physically as I am morally." Julien saw
nothing any more, it was only his corpse which kept moving.
CHAPTER L
THE JAPANESE VASE
His heart does not first realise the full extremity of
his unhappiness: he is more troubled than moved. But as
reason returns he feels the depth of his misfortune. All
the pleasures of life seem to have been destroyed, he
can only feel the sharp barbs of a lacerating despair.
But what is the use of talking of physical pain? What
pain which is only felt by the body can be compared to
this pain?--_Jean Paul_.
The dinner bell rang, Julien had barely time to dress: he found
Mathilde in the salon. She was pressing her brother and M. de
Croisenois to promise her that they would not go and spend the evening
at Suresnes with madame the maréchale de Fervaques.
It would have been difficult to have shown herself more amiable or
fascinating to them. M. de Luz, de Caylus and several of their friends
came in after dinner. One would have said that mademoiselle de la Mole
had commenced again to cultivate the most scrupulous conventionality
at the same time as her sisterly affection. Although the weather was
delightful this evening, she refused to go out into the garden, and
insisted on their all staying near the arm-chair where madame de la
Mole was sitting. The blue sofa was the centre of the group as it had
been in the winter.
Mathilde was out of temper with the garden, or at any rate she found it
absolutely boring: it was bound up with the memory of Julien.
Unhappiness blunts the edge of the intellect. Our hero had the bad
taste to stop by that little straw chair which had formerly witnessed
his most brilliant triumphs. To-day none spoke to him, his presence
seemed to be unnoticed, and worse than that. Those of mademoiselle de
la Mole's friends who were sitting near him at the end of the sofa,
made a point of somehow or other turning their back on him, at any rate
he thought so.
"It is a court disgrace," he thought. He tried to study for a moment
the people who were endeavouring to overwhelm him with their contempt.
M. de Luz had an important post in the King's suite, the result of
which was that the handsome officer began every conversation with
every listener who came along by telling him this special piece of
information. His uncle had started at seven o'clock for St. Cloud
and reckoned on spending the night there. This detail was introduced
with all the appearance of good nature but it never failed to be
worked in. As Julien scrutinized M. de Croisenois with a stern gaze of
unhappiness, he observed that this good amiable young man attributed
a great influence to occult causes. He even went so far as to become
melancholy and out of temper if he saw an event of the slightest
importance ascribed to a simple and perfectly natural cause.
"There is an element of madness in this," Julien said to himself.
This man's character has a striking analogy with that of the Emperor
Alexander, such as the Prince Korasoff described it to me. During the
first year of his stay in Paris poor Julien, fresh from the seminary
and dazzled by the graces of all these amiable young people, whom he
found so novel, had felt bound to admire them. Their true character was
only beginning to become outlined in his eyes.
"I am playing an undignified rôle here," he suddenly thought. The
question was, how he could leave the little straw chair without undue
awkwardness. He wanted to invent something, and tried to extract some
novel excuse from an imagination which was otherwise engrossed. He was
compelled to fall back on his memory, which was, it must be owned,
somewhat poor in resources of this kind.
The poor boy was still very much out of his element, and could not have
exhibited a more complete and noticeable awkwardness when he got up to
leave the salon. His misery was only too palpable in his whole manner.
He had been playing, for the last three quarters of an hour, the rôle
of an officious inferior from whom one does not take the trouble to
hide what one really thinks.
The critical observations he had just made on his rivals prevented
him, however, from taking his own unhappiness too tragically. His pride
could take support in what had taken place the previous day. "Whatever
may be their advantages over me," he thought, as he went into the
garden alone, "Mathilde has never been to a single one of them what,
twice in my life, she has deigned to be to me!" His penetration did not
go further. He absolutely failed to appreciate the character of the
extraordinary person whom chance had just made the supreme mistress of
all his happiness.
He tried, on the following day, to make himself and his horse dead
tired with fatigue. He made no attempt in the evening to go near the
blue sofa to which Mathilde remained constant. He noticed that comte
Norbert did not even deign to look at him when he met him about the
house. "He must be doing something very much against the grain," he
thought; "he is naturally so polite."
Sleep would have been a happiness to Julien. In spite of his physical
fatigue, memories which were only too seductive commenced to invade his
imagination. He had not the genius to see that, inasmuch as his long
rides on horseback over forests on the outskirts of Paris only affected
him, and had no affect at all on Mathilde's heart or mind, he was
consequently leaving his eventual destiny to the caprice of chance. He
thought that one thing would give his pain an infinite relief: it would
be to speak to Mathilde. Yet what would he venture to say to her?
He was dreaming deeply about this at seven o'clock one morning when he
suddenly saw her enter the library.
"I know, monsieur, that you are anxious to speak to me."
"Great heavens! who told you?"
"I know, anyway; that is enough. If you are dishonourable, you can
ruin me, or at least try to. But this danger, which I do not believe
to be real, will certainly not prevent me from being sincere. I do
not love you any more, monsieur, I have been led astray by my foolish
imagination."
Distracted by love and unhappiness, as a result of this terrible blow,
Julien tried to justify himself. Nothing could have been more absurd.
Does one make any excuses for failure to please? But reason had no
longer any control over his actions. A blind instinct urged him to get
the determination of his fate postponed. He thought that, so long as
he kept on speaking, all could not be over. Mathilde had not listened
to his words; their sound irritated her. She could not conceive how he
could have the audacity to interrupt her.
She was rendered equally unhappy this morning by remorseful virtue and
remorseful pride. She felt to some extent pulverised by the idea of
having given a little abbé, who was the son of a peasant, rights over
her. "It is almost," she said to herself, in those moments when she
exaggerated her own misfortune, "as though I had a weakness for one of
my footmen to reproach myself with." In bold, proud natures there is
only one step from anger against themselves to wrath against others. In
these cases the very transports of fury constitute a vivid pleasure.
In a single minute mademoiselle de la Mole reached the point of loading
Julien with the signs of the most extreme contempt. She had infinite
wit, and this wit was always triumphant in the art of torturing vanity
and wounding it cruelly.
For the first time in his life Julien found himself subjected to
the energy of a superior intellect, which was animated against him
by the most violent hate. Far from having at present the slightest
thought of defending himself, he came to despise himself. Hearing
himself overwhelmed with such marks of contempt which were so cleverly
calculated to destroy any good opinion that he might have of himself,
he thought that Mathilde was right, and that she did not say enough.
As for her, she found it deliciously gratifying to her pride to punish
in this way both herself and him for the adoration that she had felt
some days previously.
She did not have to invent and improvise the cruel remarks which she