The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the Nineteenth Century

by Stendhal

  My little Julien, on the other hand, only likes acting on his own. Never the slightest thought, in this privileged creature, of turning to others for support and help! He despises others, and that's why I don't despise him.

  If, for all his poverty, Julien was noble, my love would merely be vulgar folly, a boring misalliance; I'd want none of it; it wouldn't have what characterizes grand passions: the vastness of the difficulty to be overcome and the black uncertainty of the outcome.

  Mlle de La Mole was so preoccupied with these fine arguments that the next day, without realizing it, she praised Julien

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  to the Marquis de Croisenois and her brother. Her eloquence went so far that it rankled with them.

  'Watch out for that young man, who has so much energy,' exclaimed her brother. 'If the revolution starts up again, he'll have us all guillotined.'

  She was careful not to reply, and hastened to tease her brother and the Marquis de Croisenois for their fear of energy--nothing more, basically, than fear of facing the unexpected, or terror of being caught short by the unexpected...

  'Every time, gentlemen, every time it's fear of ridicule, the monster which unfortunately died in 1816.' *

  'Ridicule no longer exists', M. de La Mole used to say, 'in a country with two political parties.'

  His daughter had taken the point.

  'So you see, gentlemen,' she said to Julien's enemies, 'you'll have been thoroughly frightened all your lives, and at the end you'll be told:

  It was not a wolf, it was only its shadow.' *

  Mathilde soon left them. Her brother's words appalled her; they worried her considerably; but by the next day she took them as the finest form of praise.

  In this century, when all energy is dead, his energy frightens them. I'll repeat my brother's words to him; I want to see what his answer is. But I'll choose one of those moments when his eyes are shining. He can't lie to me then.

  He'd be a Danton! she went on after her mind had rambled confusedly for a long time. Well then! the Revolution would have started up again. What roles would Croisenois and my brother be playing in that case? It's laid down in advance: sublime resignation. They'd be heroic lambs, letting their throats be cut without a word. Their only fear as they died would be yet again of being in bad taste. My little Julien would blow out the brains of any Jacobin who came to arrest him, if he had the slightest hope of getting away. He's not afraid of being in bad taste, not he.

  This last thought made her pensive; it reawakened painful memories, and took away all her boldness. This thought

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  reminded her of all the quips made by Messrs de Caylus, de Croisenois, de Luz and her brother. These gentlemen were unanimous in holding against Julien his ecclesiastical air: humble and hypocritical.

  But, she resumed suddenly, with a gleam of joy in her eye, the bitterness and the frequency of their jokes prove, in spite of them, that he's the most distinguished man we've seen this winter. What do his faults, his ridiculous sides matter? He has greatness about him, and they are shocked by it, for all their kindness and indulgence. It's undoubtedly true that he's poor, and that he has studied to become a priest; while they are squadron commanders, and didn't need to pursue any studies; much easier for them.

  In spite of all the disadvantages of his eternal black suit, and that ecclesiastical expression of his, which he actually has to have, poor boy, to avoid starving to death, his talent frightens them, nothing could be plainer. And the ecclesiastical expression vanishes as soon as we're alone together for a few moments. And when these gentlemen say something they think is subtle and unexpected, isn't their first glance directed at Julien? I've noticed that quite clearly. And yet they know full well that he never speaks to them unless questioned. I'm the only one he talks to unsolicited, he thinks I have a lofty mind. He only replies to their objections just enough to be polite. He lapses into deference right away. With me, he goes on discussing things for hours, he isn't sure of his ideas as long as I put forward the slightest objection to them. Anyway, all this winter no one has drawn pistols; all that's happened is a bit of verbal attention-seeking. Well, my father, who's a superior being, and will do great things for the fortunes of our house--my father respects Julien. The rest of them hate him, nobody despises him apart from my mother's pious women friends.

  The Comte de Caylus had or pretended to have a great passion for horses; he spent his life in his stable, and often had lunch there. This great passion, coupled with his habit of never laughing, made him greatly respected among his friends: he was the eagle of their little circle.

  As soon as they had gathered the next day behind Mme de La

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  Mole's sofa, without Julien there, M. de Caylus, backed by Croisenois and Norbert, roundly attacked Mathilde's good opinion of Julien, and this quite out of the blue, almost as soon as he saw Mlle de La Mole. She grasped this piece of subtlety from a mile off, and was charmed by it.

  There they all are in league, she said to herself, against a man of genius who hasn't so much as ten louis in income, and can only answer them when he's questioned. They're afraid of him garbed in his black suit. What would it be like with epaulettes?

  She had never been more brilliant. Right from the first skirmishes, she poured jocular sarcasm on Caylus and his allies. When the fire of these brilliant officers' jokes had died down:

  'If tomorrow some country squire from the Franche-Comté mountains', she said to M. de Caylus, 'realizes that Julien is his natural son and gives him a name and a few thousand francs, in six weeks he'll have moustaches like you, gentlemen; in six months he'll be an officer in the Hussars like you, gentlemen. And then the greatness of his character won't be an object of ridicule any more. I see you reduced, your grace the future duke, to the old, bad argument that the Court nobility is superior to the nobility of the provinces. But what will you be left with, if I decide to push you to the limits, if I'm mischievous enough to give Julien a Spanish duke for a father, a prisoner of war in Besançon in Napoleon's day, who has prickings of conscience and recognizes him on his deathbed?'

  All these suppositions about an illegitimate birth were felt to be in rather poor taste by Messrs de Caylus and de Croisenois. That was all they saw in Mathilde's line of reasoning.

  However much Norbert was under her thumb, his sister's words were so clear that he put on a grave expression which, it must be admitted, ill suited his kind, smiling face. He plucked up the courage to say one or two words.

  'Are you ill, my dear?' Mathilde answered with a serious little expression on her face. 'You must be feeling pretty bad to counter my joking with moralizing.

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  'Moralizing, you of all people! Are you canvassing for a job as prefect?'

  Mathilde soon forgot the Comte de Caylus's look of annoyance, Norbert's bad temper and M. de Croisenois's silent despair. She had to make up her mind about a dreadful hypothesis which had just begun to obsess her.

  Julien is pretty sincere with me, she said to herself; at his age, someone so low on fortune's ladder who suffers as he does through his astonishing ambition needs a woman for a friend. Maybe I am that friend; but I don't detect any love in him. With his boldness of character he would have spoken to me of his love.

  This uncertainty, this debate with herself, which from then on filled Mathilde's every moment, and was fuelled with fresh arguments every time Julien spoke to her, completely banished those moments of boredom she was so prone to.

  As the daughter of an intelligent man who might become a minister and restore their forests to the clergy, * Mlle de La Mole had been an object of the most excessive flattery while at the convent of the Sacred Heart. There is no remedy for this misfortune. She had been persuaded that because of all her advantages of birth, wealth, etc., she ought to be happier than other girls. This is the source of the boredom suffered by princes, and of all their follies.

  Mathilde had not escaped the dire influence of this notion. However sharp y
ou are, you can't be on your guard at ten years old against the flattery of a whole convent, especially when it has the appearance of being so well founded.

  From that moment she had decided she was in love with Julien, she stopped feeling bored. Every day she congratulated herself on her decision to indulge in a grand passion. It's a pastime fraught with danger, she thought. So much the better! Thousands of times better!

  Without a grand passion, I was languishing with boredom at the best time of my life, between sixteen and twenty. I've already wasted my best years; forced for my only pleasure to listen to my mother's friends rabbiting on--women who, I gather, were not so strict in Coblenz * in 1792 as their pronouncements are today.

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  It was while these great uncertainties were preying on Mathilde that Julien failed to understand the long gazes she fixed upon him. He certainty detected as increased coldness in Count Norbert's manners, and a fresh fit of haughtiness in Messrs de Caylus, de Luz and de Croisenois. he was accustomed to it. This misfortune sometimes befell him as a sequel to an evening when he has shone more brilliantly than befitted his station. Had it not been for the special reception which Mathilde gave him, and the curiosity aroused in him by this whole set-up, he would have avoided following these dazzling young men with moustaches into the garden when they accompanied Mlle de La Mole there after dinner.

  Yes, there's no way I can hide it from myself, thought Julien, Mlle de La Mole has a strange way of looking at me. But even when her lovely blue eyes are staring at me wide open with the greatest of abandon, I always decipher in them traces of scrutiny, detachment and cruelty. Can it really be that this is love? What a contrast with the way Mme de Rênal would look at me!

  One evening after dinner, Julien, who had followed M. de La Molle into his study, was making his way quickly back to the garden. As he drew up to Mathilde's group without signalling his presence, he overheard one or two words uttered very loud. She was tormenting her brother. Julien heard his name pronounced twice unmistakably. He appeared; a deep silence fell all of a sudden, and vain efforts were made to break it. Mlle de La Mole and her brother were too worked up to find any other subject of conversation. Messrs de Caylus, de Croisenois, de Luz and one of their friends struck Julien as being chilly as ice. he moved away.

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  CHAPTER 13

  A plot

  Unconnected remarks, chance encounters are transformed into the most blatant proof in the eyes of a man of imagination if he has any spark of fire in his heart.

  SCHILLER *

  THE next day Julien again caught Norbert and his sister talking about him. His arrival prompted a deathly silence, as on the previous evening. His suspicions ran riot. Have these agreeable young people by any chance undertaken to make fun of me? That's much more likely, much more natural, I must confess, than a putative passion of Mlle de La Mole's for a poor devil of a secretary. In the first place, do people of this sort have passions? Mystification is their strong point. They're jealous of my wretched superiority in using words. Being jealous is again one of their weaknesses. Everything hangs together in this scheme of things. Mlle de La Mole wants to persuade me that she's singling me out, simply in order to produce a spectacle for the benefit of her suitor.

  This cruel suspicion altered the whole of Julien's psychological stance. His insight found a nascent feeling of love in his heart, and had no difficulty in destroying it. This love was based only on Mathilde's rare beauty, or rather on her queenly ways and her wondrous style of dress. In this respect Julien was still a social climber. A pretty woman from high society is, so they maintain, what most astonishes a peasant with a sharp mind when he reaches the upper classes of society. It was not Mathilde's character that had set Julien dreaming these past few days. He had enough sense to realize that he did not understand her character at all. Everything he saw of it might be no more than an outward appearance.

  For instance, nothing in the whole world would have made Mathilde miss Mass on a Sunday. She accompanied her mother to church almost every day. If some rash guest in the

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  drawing-room of the Hôtel de La Mole forgot where he was and allowed himself the remotest allusion to a joke against the real or supposed interests of throne or altar, Mathilde would instantly freeze into icy seriousness. Her look, always so piercing, took on all the inscrutable hauteur of an old family portrait.

  But Julien had ascertained that she still had one or two of the most philosophical of Voltaire's works in her room. He himself often made off with a few volumes of the fine edition in its magnificent binding. By separating each volume a little from its neighbour, he concealed the absence of the one he was taking, but he soon noticed that some other person was reading Voltaire. He resorted to a ruse learned in the seminary, and put a few strands of horsehair on the volumes he imagined might be of interest to Mlle de La Mole. They disappeared for weeks on end.

  M. de La Mole, who had grown impatient with his bookseller for sending him all the fake Memoirs * that came out, instructed Julien to buy any new titles that were at all titillating. But lest poison should spread through the household, the secretary had orders to deposit these books in a small bookcase in the marquis's own room. He was soon quite certain that these new books only had to be hostile to the interests of throne and altar, and they would disappear in no time. And it was scarcely Norbert who was the reader.

  Exaggerating the significance of this discovery, Julien attributed a Machiavellian duplicity to Mlle de La Mole. This alleged wickedness was one of her charms in his eyes, almost the only psychological charm she had. Boredom with hypocrisy and the language of virtue threw him into this excess.

  What was happening was that he was whipping up his own imagination rather than being carried away by love.

  It was after losing himself in fantasies about the elegance of Mlle de La Mole's figure, the excellent taste of her attire, the whiteness of her hands, the beauty of her arms, the disinvoltura * of all her movements, that he found himself in love. At that point, to complete the spell, he believed she was a Catherine de Medici. Nothing was too profound or too wicked for the character he imputed to her. She was the ideal

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  of the Maslons, the Frilairs and the Castanèdes he had admired in his youth. In short, for him she represented the ideal of Paris.

  Was ever anything funnier than attributing profundity or wickedness to the Parisian character?

  It's possible that this trio is making fun of me, thought Julien. You have very little understanding of his character if you can't already see the sullen and cold expression assumed by his gaze when it met Mathilde's. Bitter irony repelled the assurances of friendship that Mlle de La Mole was bold enough to venture on one or two occasions.

  Stung by the sudden oddness of his response, this girl's heart, which was naturally cold, bored and receptive to things of the mind, became as passionate as it was in her nature to be. But there was also a great deal of pride in Mathilde's character, and the birth of a sentiment which made her whole happiness depend on someone else was accompanied by gloom and sadness.

  Julien had already learned enough since his arrival in Paris to discern that this was not the and sadness of boredom. Instead of being eager, as before, for parties, shows and all manners of entertainments, she shunned them.

  Music sung by Frenchmen bored Mathilde to death, and yet Julien, who made it his duty to be present when people came out of the Opera, noticed that she arranged to be taken there as often as she could. He thought he detected that she had lost some of the perfect moderation that shone in all her actions. She sometimes answered her friends with jokes that were offensive, they were so caustically hard-hitting. It seemed to him that she had it in for the Marquis de Croisenois. This young man really must have an insane love of money--not to walk out on this girl, however rich she may be! Julien thought. And for his own part, incensed at the way male dignity was being insulted, he stepped up his coldness towards her. He often went so far as
to produce replies that were scarcely civil.

  However firm his resolve not to be taken in by Mathilde's signs of interest, they were so obvious on some days, and Julien, the scales falling from his eyes, was beginning to

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  find her so pretty that he was sometimes quite embarrassed by it.

  The skill and persistence shown by these young members of high society might end up getting the better of my inexperience, he said to himself; I must go away and put a stop to all this. The marquis had just entrusted him with the administration of a number of small estates and houses he owned in the lower Languedoc. * A journey was necessary: M. de La Mole gave his unwilling consent. Except in matters of high ambition, Julien had become his second self.

  When you tot it all up, they haven't caught me out, Julien said to himself as he made ready to leave. Whether the jokes Mlle de La Mole makes at these gentlemen's expense are real or merely designed to boost my confidence, I've had my amusement from them.

  If there isn't a conspiracy against the carpenter's son, Mlle de La Mole is unfathomable, but she is to the Marquis de Croisenois at least as much as to me. Yesterday, for instance, her ill-temper was real, and I had the pleasure of seeing her preference for me discountenance a young man who's as noble and rich as I'm a beggar and a plebeian. That's the finest of my triumphs; it'll keep me laughing in my post-chaise as I speed across the plains of the Languedoc.

  He had kept his departure a secret, but Mathilde knew better than he did that he was going to leave Paris the next morning, and for a long while. She resorted to a dreadful headache, made worse by the stuffy air in the drawing-room. She walked about a good deal in the garden, and used her scathing jokes so effectively to harry Norbert, the Marquis de Croisenois, Caylus, de Luz and a few other young men who had dined at the Hôtel de La Mole, that she forced them to leave. She looked at Julien with a strange expression.