by Stendhal
Looking at me like that may just be play-acting, thought Julien; but what about the fast breathing, what about all the emotion! Bah! he said to himself, who am I to pronounce on all these matters? I'm dealing with the most sublime and most subtle of all Parisian women. The fast breathing that was on the point of moving me will have been copied from Léontine Fay * whom she so admires.
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They were left alone together; the conversation was visibly flagging. No! Julien has no feelings for me, said Mathilde to herself with real unhappiness.
As he was taking leave of her, she squeezed his arm tightly:
'You'll be getting a letter from me tonight,' she said to him in a tone of voice so altered that the sound was unrecognizable. Julien was at once moved by this.
'My father', she went on, 'has a rightful esteem for the services you perform for him. It's imperative you don't leave tomorrow; find an excuse.' And off she ran.
Her figure was delightful. You couldn't imagine anyone with a daintier pair of feet, and she ran with a gracefulness that Julien found ravishing; but would you ever guess what his next thought was after she had completely disappeared from sight? He took offence at the peremptory tone in which she had uttered the phrase it's imperative. Louis XV on his deathbed was likewise stung to the quick by this phrase it's imperative tactlessly used by his physician in chief, and Louis XV was hardly a parvenu.
An hour later a footman handed Julien a letter; it was quite simply a declaration of love.
There isn't too much affectation in the style, Julien said to himself, attempting by his literary comments to contain the joy which made his cheeks go taut and forced him to laugh in spite of himself.
But me of all people, he suddenly exclaimed, passion being too strong to be contained, a poor peasant like me getting a declaration of love from a great lady!
On my side of the picture, things look pretty good, he added, suppressing his joy as much as he could. I've managed to preserve the dignity befitting my character. I haven't told her I love her. He began to study the shape of the letters; Mlle de La Mole had nice English handwriting. * He needed some sort of physical occupation to take his mind off a joy that was verging on delirium.
'Your departure forces me to speak... It would be more than my strength could bear not to see you any more.'
A sudden thought struck Julien like a discovery, interrupted his scrutiny of Mathilde's letter, and increased his joy twofold.
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I've got the better of the Marquis de Croisenois, he exclaimed--me, with nothing but serious things to say! And he's so handsome! He's got a moustache and a fine uniform; he always comes up with some witty and subtle remark just at the right moment.
Julien spent a few exquisite moments; he wandered aimlessly through the garden, out of his mind with happiness.
Later he went up to his study and had himself announced to the Marquis de La Mole, who had fortunately not gone out. By showing him some papers marked as having just arrived from Normandy he had no difficulty in convincing him that in order to look after the Normandy lawsuits he needed to postpone his departure for the Languedoc.
'I'm so glad you're not leaving,' the marquis said to him when they had finished discussing business. 'I like having you around. Julien left the room; this remark made him feel uncomfortable.
And here am I about to seduce his daughter! to put a stop, maybe, to this marriage of hers with the Marquis de Croisenois, which is his great delight for the future: if he isn't a duke himself, at least his daughter will get a footstool. * It occurred to Julien that he should set off for the Languedoc in spite of Mathilde's letter, in spite of the explanation he had given the marquis. This flash of virtue soon vanished.
How kind I am, he said to himself, a plebeian like me taking pity on a family of this rank! when the Duc de Chaulnes calls me a domestic! How does the marquis increase his enormous fortune? By selling off some of his stocks when he finds out at Court that a coup d'état is going to be staged. And here am I, cast down on the bottom rung by a cruel Providence--giving me a noble heart and not so much as a thousand francs in income, in other words no bread to live on, literally speaking no bread; am I the one to refuse a pleasure on offer! A limpid spring welling up to quench my thirst in the burning desert of mediocrity I'm struggling to cross! Not on your life, I'm not that much of a fool; every man for himself in this desert of egoism they call life.
And he remembered a number of disdainful glances cast in his direction by Mme de La Mole, and especially by her lady friends.
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The pleasure of triumphing over the Marquis de Croisenois finally succeeded in routing Julien's last recollection of virtue.
How I should like him to take offence! he said. How confidently I'd strike him now with my sword. And he made the gesture of someone thrusting in Seconde position. Before this I was a know-all, basely misusing a touch of pluck. After this letter, I'm his equal.
Yes, he said to himself, dwelling on the words with infinite voluptuousness, our respective worth--the marquis's and mine--has been weighed up, and the poor carpenter from the Jura has come out best.
Good! he exclaimed, there's the signature for my reply all waiting. Don't go imagining, Mlle de La Mole, that I'm forgetting my station. I'll make sure you understand and really feel that it's for the sake of a carpenter's son that you're betraying a descendant of the famous Guy de Croisenois who followed St Louis * to the Crusades.
Julien was unable to contain his joy. He was obliged to go down into the garden. His room where he had locked himself up seemed to him too cramped to breathe in.
Me, a poor peasant from the Jura, he repeated to himself over and over again, me, with this dismal black suit I'm condemned to wear for ever! Alas! twenty years ago I'd have worn a uniform like the rest of them! At that time a man like me had either been killed or was a general by the age of thirtysix. The letter which he was clutching in his hand gave him the stature and the stance of a hero. Nowadays, it's true, with a black suit like this, a man has a salary of a hundred thousand francs and the Blue Sash at forty, like Monsignor the Bishop of Beauvais. *
All right then! he said to himself, laughing like Mephistopheles, I've got more intelligence than they have; I can pick the right uniform for my century. And he felt a resurgence of ambition and attachment for the robes of the priesthood. How many cardinals were born beneath me and went on to reign! My fellow countryman Granvelle, * for instance.
Gradually Julien's agitation subsided; caution surfaced again. He said to himself, like his mentor Tartuffe, whose part he knew by heart:
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I may believe such talk an honest ploy
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I shall not trust the sound of words so sweet
Until she grants some token here and now
Of favours I so ardently desire
To vouch the truth of all her words imply.
Tartuffe, act IV, scene v
Tartuffe too was brought down by a woman, and he was no worse than anyone else... My reply may be shown to someone... for which I can produce this remedy, he added, speaking slowly in tones of controlled ferociousness--I'll start off with the most vivid sentences from the sublime Mathilde's letter.
Yes, but four of M. de Croisenois's footmen pounce on me and snatch the original from me.
No they don't, because I'm armed, and in the habit, as people know, of firing at footmen.
All right then, one of them is plucky, he pounces on me. He's been promised a hundred gold napoléons. I kill or wound him, that's fine, just what they want. I'm thrown into prison perfectly legally; I'm tried in the criminal court and sent off, with all justice and fairness from the judges, to keep Messrs Fontan and Magalon company in Poissy. * There I have to sleep with four hundred beggars all lumped together... And am I to feel any pity for these people! he exclaimed, jumping impetuously to his feet. Do they have any for the lower orde
rs when they get their hands on them! This reflection was the dying gasp of his gratitude towards M. de La Mole, which had been tormenting him up till then, despite himself.
Steady on, good gentlemen, I understand this little piece of Machiavellian cunning; Father Maslon or M. Castanède from the seminary couldn't have done better. You'll get the provocative letter back from me, and I'll be the sequel to Colonel Caron * at Colmar.
Wait a minute, gentlemen, I'm going to send the fateful letter to the Reverend Father Pirard for safe-keeping in a wellsealed envelope. He's an honourable man, and a Jansenist, and as such immune from financial temptations. Yes, but he opens letters... Fouqué's the person to send this one to.
Julien, it must be admitted, had a dreadful look in his eye
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and a hideous countenance; it exuded unadulterated wickedness. He was the victim of misfortune at war with the whole of society.
To arms! Julien shouted out. And he leaped down the front steps of the Hôtel de La Mole in a single bound. He went into the writing clerk's booth on the street corner and gave him a good fright. 'Copy this!' he told him, handing him Mlle de La Mole's letter.
While the scribe was working, he himself wrote to Fouqué; he begged him to keep a precious object safe for him. But, he thought interrupting himself, the secret agency at the post office will open my letter and hand you back the one you're looking for... no, gentlemen. He went off and bought a fat Bible from a Protestant bookseller, hid Mathilde's letter very skilfully inside the cover, got the whole thing parcelled up, and his package left with the stage-coach, addressed to one of Fouqué's workmen, whose name was unknown to anyone in Paris.
This done, he went back to the Hôtel de La Mole joyful and lightfooted. Now for the two of us! he exclaimed, as he locked himself into his room and flung off his black suit:
'Indeed! mademoiselle,' he wrote to Mathilde, 'can this really be Mlle de La Mole who hands a letter via her father's manservant Arsène to a poor carpenter from the Jura--a most seductive letter no doubt meant to make fun of his gullibility...' And he copied out the most transparent sentences from the letter he had just received.
His reply would have been a credit to the Chevalier de Beauvoisis's diplomatic caution. It was still only ten o'clock; intoxicated with happiness and the feeling of his own power, so new to a poor devil like himself, Julien put in an appearance at the Italian Opera. He heard his friend Geronimo singing. Never had music brought him to such a pitch of exaltation. He was a god. 1
____________________ 1 Esprit per. pré. gui. II. A. 30. * [ Stendhal's footnote.]
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CHAPTER 14
A young lady's thoughts
What bewilderment! What sleepless nights! Great heavens! Am I going to make myself despicable? He'll despise me himself. But he's leaving, he's going away.
Alfred DE MUSSET *
IT was not without a struggle that Mathilde had written. Whatever the origin of her interest in Julien, it soon got the better of the pride which, ever since she had had any selfawareness, had reigned supreme in her heart. This haughty, cold individual was carried away for the first time in her life by a passionate sentiment. But if it got the better of her pride, it remained faithful to the habits of pride. Two months of struggle and new sensations replenished, so to speak, the whole of her psychological being.
Mathilde thought she glimpsed happiness. This vision, which takes a total hold over courageous souls when they are allied with superior minds, had to fight a long battle against a sense of dignity and every feeling of common duty. One day she went into her mother's room at seven in the morning and begged her to let her take refuge in Villequier. The marquise did not even deign to give her an answer, and suggested she went back to bed. This was the last effort put up by ordinary virtue and deference to generally accepted ideas.
The fear of doing wrong and upsetting notions held to be sacred by people like Caylus, de Luz and Croisenois had relatively little hold over her; such beings did not strike her as capable of understanding her; she would have consulted them if it had been a matter of buying a barouche or a piece of land. Her real dread was lest Julien be displeased with her.
Perhaps, though, he only has the outward appearance of a superior being?
She couldn't abide lack of character, it was her only objection to the handsome young men who surrounded her. The more they graciously mocked everything which deviates
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from fashion, or which fails to follow it properly while thinking it does so, the more they damned themselves in her eyes.
They were brave, that was all. And anyway, brave in what sense? she asked herself: in duels, but a duel has become just a ceremony. Every bit of it is known in advance, even down to what you have to say as you succumb. Stretched out on the grass, hand on heart, you have to produce a generous pardon for your adversary and a word for an often imaginary fair lady, or one who'll go to the ball on the day of your death, for fear of arousing suspicions.
They'll brave danger at the head of a cavalry squadron all glinting with steel, but what about danger when it's solitary, out of the ordinary, unforeseen and really sordid?
Alas! Mathilde said to herself, Henri III's Court was where you found men who were noble in character as well as by birth! Ah! if Julien had fought at Jarnac * or Moncontour, I shouldn't have any more hesitation. In those days of vigour and strength, Frenchmen weren't namby-pambys. The day of battle was almost the one of least bewilderment.
Their life wasn't imprisoned like an Egyptian mummy inside an outer casing that was always common to everyone, always the same. Yes, she went on, it took more real courage to make one's way home alone at eleven at night after leaving the Hôtel de Soissons where Catherine de Medici lived, than it takes today to flit off to Algiers * . A man's life was a succession of hazards. Nowadays hazard has been driven out by civilization, the unexpected has gone. If it appears in ideas, there aren't enough epigrams to attack it; if it appears in events, there are no limits to the base acts we'd perpetrate out of fear. Whatever folly we are induced to commit by fear, excuses are found for it. What a degenerate and boring century! What would Boniface de La Mole have said in 1793 if, lifting his severed head out of his tomb, he had seen seventeen of his descendants letting themselves be rounded up like sheep and guillotined two days later? Death was certain, but it would have been in bad taste to defend oneself and kill even one or two Jacobins. * Ah! in France's heroic days, in Boniface de La Mole's century, Julien would have been the squadron commander and my
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brother the well-behaved young priest with moderation in his eyes and sweet reason on his lips.
A few months back, Mathilde had despaired of meeting anyone in the least different from the common pattern. She had derived some pleasure from allowing herself to write to a number of young men in society. This boldness, so unseemly, so imprudent in a girl, carried the risk of dishonouring her in the eyes of M. de Croisenois, the Duc de Chaulnes her grandfather and all the house of Chaulnes who, on seeing her intended marriage broken off, would have wanted to know the reason why. At that time Mathilde was unable to sleep on days when she had written one of her letters. But those letters had the excuse of being replies.
Now she was daring to say that she was in love. She was writing an her own initiative (what a terrible expression!) to a man from the lowest ranks of society.
This fact guaranteed that if discovered, she would be eternally dishonoured. Which of the women who called on her mother would have dared to take her side? What form of words could they have been given to repeat to take the sting from the dreadful derision of society salons?
And anyway, saying something was dreadful enough, but writing! There are some things that cannot be put on paper, Napoleon exclaimed on learning of the surrender of Baylen. * And it was Julien who had told her this saying! as if to teach her a lesson in advance.
But all this counted for nothing as yet: Mathilde's anguish had other causes. Heedless of
the frightful effect on society, the inexpungible blot spreading derision, for it dishonoured her caste, Mathilde was about to write to a being of an utterly different nature from the Croisenois's, the de Luz's and the Caylus's.
The depth of Julien's character, the unknown in it, would have terrified her even if she had been starting up an ordinary social relationship with him. And she was actually about to make him her lover, perhaps even her lord and master!
Where will his claims end, if ever he can ask anything of me? Well! I shall say to myself like Medea: In the midst of so many perils I still have MYSELF. *
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Julien wasn't in the least in awe of noble blood, so she believed. More than this, perhaps he didn't feel any love at all for her!
In these last moments of terrible doubt, ideas of feminine pride came to her. Everything ought to be special in the fate of a girl like me, Mathilde exclaimed impatiently. The pride that had been instilled into her since the cradle was battling against virtue. It was at this moment that Julien's departure loomed up to bring everything to a head.
(Characters like this are fortunately very rare.)
Extremely late that evening Julien was mischievous enough to have a heavy trunk sent down to the porter's lodge; to carry it, he summoned the footman who was courting Mlle de La Mole's chambermaid. This move may have no effect, he said to himself, but if it succeeds, she'll think I'm gone. He fell asleep in high spirits over this joke. Mathilde did not sleep a wink.