The Red and the Black

by Stendhal

  The Abbé Pirard passed in to an adjacent salon. Julien followed him.

  “I warn you the marquis does not like scribblers, it is his only prejudice. Know Latin and Greek if you can manage it, the history of the Egyptians, Persians, etc., he will honour and protect you as a learned man. But don’t write a page of French, especially on serious matters which are above your position in society, or he will call you a scribbler and take you for a scoundrel. How is it that living as you do in the hôtel of a great lord you don’t know the Duke de Castries’ epigram on Alembert and Rousseau: ‘the fellow wants to reason about everything and hasn’t got an income of a thousand crowns!’”

  “Everything leaks out here,” thought Julien, “just like the seminary.” He had written eight or six fairly drastic pages. It was a kind of historical eulogy of the old surgeon-major who had, he said, made a man of him. “The little note book,” said Julien to himself, “has always been locked.” He went up to his room, burnt his manuscript and returned to the salon. The brilliant scoundrels had left it, only the men with the stars were left.

  Seven or eight very aristocratic ladies, very devout, very affected, and of from thirty to thirty-five years of age, were grouped round the table that the servants had just brought in ready served. The brilliant Maréchale de Fervaques came in apologising for the lateness of the hour. It was more than midnight: she went and sat down near the marquise. Julien was deeply touched, she had the eyes and the expression of Madame de Rênal.

  Mademoiselle de la Mole’s circle was still full of people. She was engaged with her friends in making fun of the unfortunate Comte de Thaler. He was the only son of that celebrated Jew who was famous for the riches that he had won by lending money to kings to make war on the peoples.

  The Jew had just died, leaving his son an income of one hundred thousand crowns a month, and a name that was only too well known. This strange position required either a simple character or force of willpower.

  Unfortunately the comte was simply a fellow who was inflated by all kinds of pretensions which had been suggested to him by all his toadies.

  M. de Caylus asserted that they had induced him to make up his mind to ask for the hand of Mademoiselle de la Mole, to whom the Marquis de Croisenois, who would be a duke with a hundred thousand francs a year, was paying his attentions.

  “Oh, do not accuse him of having a mind,” said Norbert pitifully. Will power was what the poor Comte de Thaler lacked most of all. So far as this side of his character went he was worthy of being a king. He would take counsel from everybody, but he never had the courage to follow any advice to the bitter end.

  “His physiognomy would be sufficient in itself,” Mademoiselle de la Mole was fond of saying, “to have inspired her with a holy joy.” It was a singular mixture of anxiety and disappointment, but from time to time one could distinguish gusts of self-importance, and above all that trenchant tone suited to the richest man in France, especially when he had nothing to be ashamed of in his personal appearance and was not yet thirty-six. “He is timidly insolent,” M. de Croisenois would say. The Comte de Caylus, Norbert, and two or three moustachioed young people made fun of him to their heart’s content without him suspecting it, and finally packed him off as one o’clock struck.

  “Are those your famous Arab horses waiting for you at the door in this awful weather?” said Norbert to him.

  “No, it is a new pair which are much cheaper,” said M. de Thaler. “The horse on the left cost me five thousand francs, while the one on the right is only worth one hundred louis, but I would ask you to believe me when I say that I only have him out at night. His trot you see is exactly like the other ones.”

  Norbert’s remark made the comte think it was good form for a man like him to make a hobby of his horses, and that he must not let them get wet. He went away, and the other gentleman left a minute afterwards making fun of him all the time. “So,” thought Julien as he heard them laugh on the staircase, “I have the privilege of seeing the exact opposite of my own situation. I have not got twenty louis a year and I found myself side by side with a man who has twenty louis an hour and they made fun of him. Seeing a sight like that cures one of envy.”

  XXXV. Sensibility and a Great Pious Lady

  An idea which has any life in it seems like a crudity, so accustomed are they to colourless expression. Woe to him who introduces new ideas into his conversation!

  —Faublas

  This was the stage Julien had reached, when after several months of probation the steward of the household handed him the third quarter of his wages. M. de la Mole had entrusted him with the administration of his estates in Brittany and Normandy. Julien made frequent journeys there. He had chief control of the correspondence relating to the famous law-suit with the Abbé de Frilair. M. Pirard had instructed him.

  On the data of the short notes which the marquis would scribble on the margin of all the various papers which were addressed to him, Julien would compose answers which were nearly all signed.

  At the Theology School his professors complained of his lack of industry, but they did not fail to regard him as one of their most distinguished pupils. This varied work, tackled as it was with all the ardour of suffering ambition, soon robbed Julien of that fresh complexion which he had brought from the provinces. His pallor constituted one of his merits in the eyes of his comrades, the young seminarists; he found them much less malicious, much less ready to bow down to a silver crown than those of Besançon; they thought he was consumptive. The marquis had given him a horse.

  Julien, fearing that he might meet people during his rides on horseback, had given out that this exercise had been prescribed by the doctors. The Abbé Pirard had taken him into several Jansenist societies. Julien was astonished; the idea of religion was indissolubly connected in his mind with the ideas of hypocrisy and covetousness. He admired those austere pious men who never gave a thought to their income. Several Jansenists became friendly with him and would give him advice. A new world opened before him. At the Jansenists’ he got to know a Comte Altamira, who was nearly six feet high, was a Liberal, a believer, and had been condemned to death in his own country. He was struck by the strange contrast of devoutness and love of liberty.

  Julien’s relations with the young comte had become cool. Norbert had thought that he answered the jokes of his friends with too much sharpness. Julien had committed one or two breaches of social etiquette and vowed to himself that he would never speak to Mademoiselle Mathilde. They were always perfectly polite to him in the Hôtel de la Mole but he felt himself quite lost. His provincial common sense explained this result by the vulgar proverb Tout beau tout nouveau.

  He gradually came to have a little more penetration than during his first days, or it may have been that the first glamour of Parisian urbanity had passed off. As soon as he left off working, he fell a prey to a mortal boredom. He was experiencing the withering effects of that admirable politeness so typical of good society, which is so perfectly modulated to every degree of the social hierarchy.

  No doubt the provinces can be reproached with a commonness and lack of polish in their tone; but they show a certain amount of passion, when they answer you. Julien’s self-respect was never wounded at the Hôtel de la Mole, but he often felt at the end of the day as though he would like to cry. A café-waiter in the provinces will take an interest in you if you happen to have some accident as you enter his café, but if this accident has everything about it which is disagreeable to your vanity, he will repeat ten times in succession the very word which tortures you, as he tells you how sorry he is. At Paris they make a point of laughing in secret, but you always remain a stranger.

  We pass in silence over a number of little episodes which would have made Julien ridiculous, if he had not been to some extent above ridicule. A foolish sensibility resulted in his committing innumerable acts of bad taste. All his pleasures were precautions; he practiced pistol shooting every day, he was one of the promising pupils of the most famous m
aîtres d’armes. As soon as he had an instant to himself, instead of employing it in reading as he did before, he would rush off to the riding school and ask for the most vicious horses. When he went out with the master of the riding school he was almost invariably thrown.

  The marquis found him convenient by reason of his persistent industry, his silence and his intelligence, and gradually took him into his confidence with regard to all his affairs, which were in any way difficult to unravel. The marquis was a sagacious business man on all those occasions when his lofty ambition gave him some respite; having special information within his reach, he would speculate successfully on the Exchange. He would buy mansions and forests; but he would easily lose his temper. He would give away hundreds of louis, and would go to law for a few hundred francs. Rich men with a lofty spirit have recourse to business not so much for results as for distraction. The marquis needed a chief of staff who would put all his money affairs into clear and lucid order. Madame de la Mole, although of so even a character, sometimes made fun of Julien. Great ladies have a horror of those unexpected incidents which are produced by a sensitive character; they constitute the opposite pole of etiquette. On two or three occasions the marquis took his part. “If he is ridiculous in your salon, he triumphs in his office.” Julien on his side thought he had caught the marquise’s secret. She deigned to manifest an interest in everything the minute the Baron de la Joumate was announced. He was a cold individual with an expressionless physiognomy. He was tall, thin, ugly, very well dressed, passed his life in his château, and generally speaking said nothing about anything. Such was his outlook on life. Madame de la Mole would have been happy for the first time in her life if she could have made him her daughter’s husband.

  XXXVI. Pronunciation

  If fatuity is pardonable it is in one’s first youth, for it is then the exaggeration of an amiable thing. It needs an air of love, gaiety, nonchalance. But fatuity coupled with self-importance; fatuity with a solemn and self-sufficient manner! The extravagance of stupidity was reserved for the XIXth century. Such are the persons who want to unchain the hydra of revolutions!—

  LE JOHANNISBURG, Pamphlet

  Considering that he was a new arrival who was too disdainful to put any questions, Julien did not fall into unduly great mistakes. One day when he was forced into a café in the Rue St. Honoré by a sudden shower, a big man in a beaver coat, surprised by his gloomy look, looked at him in return just as Mademoiselle Amanda’s lover had done before at Besançon.

  Julien had reproached himself too often for having endured the other insult to put up with this stare. He asked for an explanation. The man in the tail-coat immediately addressed him in the lowest and most insulting language. All the people in the café surrounded them. The passers-by stopped before the door. Julien always carried some little pistols as a matter of precaution. His hand was grasping them nervously in his pocket. Nevertheless he behaved wisely and confined himself to repeating to his man “Monsieur, your address; I despise you.”

  The persistency in which he kept repeating these six words eventually impressed the crowd.

  “By Jove, the other who’s talking all to himself ought to give him his address,” they exclaimed. The man in the tailcoat, hearing this repeated several times, flung five or six cards in Julien’s face.

  Fortunately none of them hit him in the face; he had mentally resolved not to use his pistols except in the event of his being hit. The man went away, though not without turning round from time to time to shake his fist and hurl insults at him.

  Julien was bathed in sweat. “So,” he said angrily to himself, “the meanest of mankind has it in his power to affect me as much as this. How am I to kill so humiliating a sensitiveness?”

  Where was he to find a second? He did not have a single friend. He had several acquaintances, but they all regularly left him after six weeks of social intercourse. “I am unsociable,” he thought, and “I am now cruelly punished for it.” Finally it occurred to him to rout out an old lieutenant of the 96th, named Lieven, a poor devil with whom he often used to fence. Julien was frank with him.

  “I am quite willing to be your second,” said Lieven, “but on one condition. If you fail to wound your man you will fight with me straight away.”

  “Agreed,” said Julien quite delighted; and they went to find M. de Beauvoisis at the address indicated on his card at the end of the Faubourg Saint Germain.

  It was seven o’clock in the morning. It was only when he was being ushered in, that Julien thought that it might well be the young relation of Madame de Rênal, who had once been employed at the Rome or Naples Embassy, and who had given the singer Geronimo a letter of introduction.

  Julien gave one of the cards which had been flung at him the previous evening, together with one of his own, to a tall valet.

  He and his second were kept waiting for a good three-quarters of an hour. Eventually they were ushered into an elegantly furnished apartment. They found there a tall young man who was dressed like a doll. His features presented the perfection and the lack of expression of Greek beauty. His head, which was remarkably straight, had the finest blonde hair. It was dressed with great care and not a single hair was out of place.

  “It was to have his hair done like this, that is why this damned fop has kept us waiting,” thought the lieutenant of the 96th. The variegated dressing gown, the morning trousers, everything down to the embroidered slippers was correct. He was marvelously well-groomed. His blank and aristocratic physiognomy betokened rare and orthodox ideas; the ideal of a Metternichian diplomatist. Napoleon as well did not like to have in his entourage officers who thought.

  Julien, to whom his lieutenant of the 96th had explained that keeping him waiting was an additional insult after having thrown his card so rudely in his face, entered brusquely M. de Beauvoisis’ room. He intended to be insolent, but at the same time to exhibit good form.

  Julien was so astonished by the niceness of M. de Beauvoisis’ manners and by the combination of formality, self-importance, and self-satisfaction in his demeanour, by the admirable elegance of everything that surrounded him, that he abandoned immediately all idea of being insolent. It was not his man of the day before. His astonishment was so great at meeting so distinguished a person, instead of the rude creature whom he was looking for, that he could not find a single word to say. He presented one of the cards which had been thrown at him.

  “That’s my name,” said the young diplomat, not at all impressed by Julien’s black suit at seven o’clock in the morning, “but I do not understand the honour.”

  His manner of pronouncing these last words revived a little of Julien’s bad temper.

  “I have come to fight you, Monsieur,” and he explained in a few words the whole matter.

  M. Charles de Beauvoisis, after mature reflection, was fairly satisfied with the cut of Julien’s black suit.

  “It comes from Staub, that’s clear,” he said to himself, as he heard him speak. “That waistcoat is in good taste. Those boots are all right, but on the other hand just think of wearing a black suit in the early morning! It must be to have a better chance of not being hit,” said the Chevalier de Beauvoisis to himself.

  After he had given himself this explanation he became again perfectly polite to Julien, and almost treated him as an equal. The conversation was fairly lengthy, for the matter was a delicate one, but eventually Julien could not refuse to acknowledge the actual facts. The perfectly mannered young man before him did not bear any resemblance to the vulgar fellow who had insulted him the previous day.

  Julien felt an invincible repugnance towards him. He noted the self-sufficiency of the Chevalier de Beauvoisis, for that was the name by which he had referred to himself, shocked as he was when Julien called him simply “Monsieur.”

  He admired his gravity which, though tinged with a certain modest fatuity, he never abandoned for a single moment. He was astonished at his singular manner of moving his tongue as he pronounced his words, but
after all, this did not present the slightest excuse for picking a quarrel.

  The young diplomatist very graciously offered to fight, but the ex-lieutenant of the 96th, who had been sitting down for an hour with his legs wide apart, his hands on his thighs, and his elbows stuck out, decided that his friend, Monsieur de Sorel, was not the kind to go and pick a quarrel with a man because someone else had stolen that man’s visiting cards.

  Julien went out in a very bad temper. The Chevalier de Beauvoisis’ carriage was waiting for him in the courtyard before the steps. By chance Julien raised his eyes and recognised in the coachman his man of the day before.

  Seeing him, catching hold of him by his big jacket, tumbling him down from his seat, and horse-whipping him thoroughly took scarcely a moment.

  Two lackeys tried to defend their comrade. Julien received some blows from their fists. At the same moment, he cocked one of his little pistols and fired on them. They took to flight. All this took about a minute.

  The Chevalier de Beauvoisis descended the staircase with the most pleasing gravity, repeating with his lordly pronunciation, “What is this? What is this?” He was manifestly very curious, but his diplomatic importance would not allow him to evince any greater interest.

  When he knew what it was all about, a certain haughtiness tried to assert itself in that expression of slightly playful nonchalance which should never leave a diplomatist’s face.

  The lieutenant of the 96th began to realise that M. de Beauvoisis was anxious to fight. He was also diplomatic enough to wish to reserve for his friend the advantage of taking the initiative.

  “This time,” he exclaimed, “there is ground for a duel.”

  “I think there’s enough,” answered the diplomat.

  “Turn that rascal out,” he said to his lackeys. “Let someone else get up.”