The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830
"Frighten her!" he suddenly exclaimed, hurling away the book. "The
enemy will only obey me in so far as I frighten him, but then he will
not dare to show contempt for me."
Intoxicated with joy he walked up and down his little room. In point of
fact his happiness was based rather on pride than on love.
"Frighten her!" he repeated proudly, and he had cause to be proud.
"Madame de Rênal always doubted even in her happiest moments if my
love was equal to her own. In this case I have to subjugate a demon,
consequently I must subjugate her." He knew quite well that Mathilde
would be in the library at eight o'clock in the morning of the
following day. He did not appear before nine o'clock. He was burning
with love, but his head dominated his heart.
Scarcely a single minute passed without his repeating to himself. "Keep
her obsessed by this great doubt. Does he love me?" Her own brilliant
position, together with the flattery of all who speak to her, tend a
little too much to make her reassure herself.
He found her sitting on the divan pale and calm, but apparently
completely incapable of making a single movement. She held out her
hand,
"Dear one, it is true I have offended you, perhaps you are angry with
me."
Julien had not been expecting this simple tone. He was on the point of
betraying himself.
"You want guarantees, my dear, she added after a silence which she had
hoped would be broken. Take me away, let us leave for London. I shall
be ruined, dishonoured for ever." She had the courage to take her hand
away from Julien to cover her eyes with it.
All her feelings of reserve and feminine virtue had come back into her
soul. "Well, dishonour me," she said at last with a sigh, "that will be
a guarantee."
"I was happy yesterday, because I had the courage to be severe with
myself," thought Julien. After a short silence he had sufficient
control over his heart to say in an icy tone,
"Once we are on the road to London, once you are dishonoured, to employ
your own expression, who will answer that you will still love me? that
my very presence in the post-chaise will not seem importunate? I am not
a monster; to have ruined your reputation will only make me still more
unhappy. It is not your position in society which is the obstacle, it
is unfortunately your own character. Can you yourself guarantee that
you will love me for eight days?"
"Ah! let her love me for eight days, just eight days," whispered
Julien to himself, "and I will die of happiness. What do I care for
the future, what do I care for life? And yet if I wish that divine
happiness can commence this very minute, it only depends on me."
Mathilde saw that he was pensive.
"So I am completely unworthy of you," she said to him, taking his hand.
Julien kissed her, but at the same time the iron hand of duty gripped
his heart. If she sees how much I adore her I shall lose her. And
before leaving her arms, he had reassumed all that dignity which is
proper to a man.
He managed on this and the following days to conceal his inordinate
happiness. There were moments when he even refused himself the pleasure
of clasping her in his arms. At other times the delirium of happiness
prevailed over all the counsels of prudence.
He had been accustomed to station himself near a bower of honeysuckle
in the garden arranged in such a way so as to conceal the ladder when
he had looked up at Mathilde's blind in the distance, and lamented her
inconstancy. A very big oak tree was quite near, and the trunk of that
tree prevented him from being seen by the indiscreet.
As he passed with Mathilde over this very place which recalled his
excessive unhappiness so vividly, the contrast between his former
despair and his present happiness proved too much for his character.
Tears inundated his eyes, and he carried his sweetheart's hand to his
lips: "It was here I used to live in my thoughts of you, it was from
here that I used to look at that blind, and waited whole hours for the
happy moment when I would see that hand open it."
His weakness was unreserved. He portrayed the extremity of his former
despair in genuine colours which could not possibly have been invented.
Short interjections testified to that present happiness which had put
an end to that awful agony.
"My God, what am I doing?" thought Julien, suddenly recovering himself.
"I am ruining myself."
In his excessive alarm he thought that he already detected a diminution
of the love in mademoiselle de la Mole's eyes. It was an illusion, but
Julien's face suddenly changed its expression and became overspread
by a mortal pallor. His eyes lost their fire, and an expression of
haughtiness touched with malice soon succeeded to his look of the most
genuine and unreserved love.
"But what is the matter with you, my dear," said Mathilde to him, both
tenderly and anxiously.
"I am lying," said Julien irritably, "and I am lying to you. I am
reproaching myself for it, and yet God knows that I respect you
sufficiently not to lie to you. You love me, you are devoted to me, and
I have no need of praises in order to please you."
"Great heavens! are all the charming things you have been telling me
for the last two minutes mere phrases?"
"And I reproach myself for it keenly, dear one. I once made them up for
a woman who loved me, and bored me--it is the weakness of my character.
I denounce myself to you, forgive me."
Bitter tears streamed over Mathilde's cheeks.
"As soon as some trifle offends me and throws me back on my
meditation," continued Julien, "my abominable memory, which I curse at
this very minute, offers me a resource, and I abuse it."
"So I must have slipped, without knowing it, into some action which has
displeased you," said Mathilde with a charming simplicity.
"I remember one day that when you passed near this honeysuckle you
picked a flower, M. de Luz took it from you and you let him keep it. I
was two paces away."
"M. de Luz? It is impossible," replied Mathilde with all her natural
haughtiness. "I do not do things like that."
"I am sure of it," Julien replied sharply.
"Well, my dear, it is true," said Mathilde, as she sadly lowered her
eyes. She knew positively that many months had elapsed since she had
allowed M. de Luz to do such a thing.
Julien looked at her with ineffable tenderness, "No," he said to
himself, "she does not love me less."
In the evening she rallied him with a laugh on his fancy for madame de
Fervaques. "Think of a bourgeois loving a parvenu, those are perhaps
the only type of hearts that my Julien cannot make mad with love. She
has made you into a real dandy," she said playing with his hair.
During the period when he thought himself scorned by Mathilde, Julien
had become one of the best dressed men in Paris. He had, moreover,
a further advantage over other dandies, in as much as once he had
finished dressing he never gave a further thought to his appearance.
One thing still piqued Mathilde, Julien continued to copy out the
Russian letters and send them to the maréchale.
CHAPTER LXII
THE TIGER
Alas, why these things and not other
things?--_Beaumarchais_.
An English traveller tells of the intimacy in which he lived with a
tiger. He had trained it and would caress it, but he always kept a
cocked pistol on his table.
Julien only abandoned himself to the fulness of his happiness in those
moments when Mathilde could not read the expression in his eyes. He
scrupulously performed his duty of addressing some harsh word to her
from time to time.
When Mathilde's sweetness, which he noticed with some surprise,
together with the completeness of her devotion were on the point of
depriving him of all self-control, he was courageous enough to leave
her suddenly.
Mathilde loved for the first time in her life.
Life had previously always dragged along at a tortoise pace, but now it
flew.
As, however, her pride required to find a vent in some way or other,
she wished to expose herself to all the dangers in which her love could
involve her. It was Julien who was prudent, and it was only when it was
a question of danger that she did not follow her own inclination; but
submissive, and almost humble as she was when with him, she only showed
additional haughtiness to everyone in the house who came near her,
whether relatives or friends.
In the evening she would call Julien to her in the salon in the
presence of sixty people, and have a long and private conversation with
him.
The little Tanbeau installed himself one day close to them. She
requested him to go and fetch from the library the volume of Smollet
which deals with the revolution of 1688, and when he hesitated, added
with an expression of insulting haughtiness, which was a veritable balm
to Julien's soul, "Don't hurry."
"Have you noticed that little monster's expression?" he said to her.
"His uncle has been in attendance in this salon for ten or twelve
years, otherwise I would have had him packed off immediately."
Her behaviour towards MM. de Croisenois, de Luz, etc., though outwardly
perfectly polite, was in reality scarcely less provocative. Mathilde
keenly reproached herself for all the confidential remarks about them
which she had formerly made to Julien, and all the more so since she
did not dare to confess that she had exaggerated to him the, in fact,
almost absolutely innocent manifestations of interest of which these
gentlemen had been the objects. In spite of her best resolutions her
womanly pride invariably prevented her from saying to Julien, "It was
because I was talking to you that I found a pleasure in describing my
weakness in not drawing my hand away, when M. de Croisenois had placed
his on a marble table and had just touched it."
But now, as soon as one of these gentlemen had been speaking to her for
some moments, she found she had a question to put to Julien, and she
made this an excuse for keeping him by her side.
She discovered that she was _enceinte_ and joyfully informed Julien of
the fact.
"Do you doubt me now? Is it not a guarantee? I am your wife for ever."
This announcement struck Julien with profound astonishment. He was on
the point of forgetting the governing principle of his conduct. How am
I to be deliberately cold and insulting towards this poor young girl,
who is ruining herself for my sake. And if she looked at all ill,
he could not, even on those days when the terrible voice of wisdom
made itself heard, find the courage to address to her one of those
harsh remarks which his experience had found so indispensable to the
preservation of their love.
"I will write to my father," said Mathilde to him one day, "he is
more than a father to me, he is a friend; that being so, I think it
unworthy both of you and of myself to try and deceive him, even for a
single minute."
"Great heavens, what are you going to do?" said Julien in alarm.
"My duty," she answered with eyes shining with joy.
She thought she was showing more nobility than her lover.
"But he will pack me off in disgrace."
"It is his right to do so, we must respect it. I will give you my arm,
and we will go out by the front door in full daylight."
Julien was thunderstruck and requested her to put it off for a week.
"I cannot," she answered, "it is the voice of honour, I have seen my
duty, I must follow it, and follow it at once."
"Well, I order you to put it off," said Julien at last. "Your honour
is safe for the present. I am your husband. The position of us will be
changed by this momentous step. I too am within my rights. To-day is
Tuesday, next Tuesday is the duke de Retz's at home; when M. de la Mole
comes home in the evening the porter will give him the fatal letter.