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

by Stendhal

  Goodness, she's beautiful! said Julien as he saw her running away: this is the creature who was flinging herself into my arms with such frenzy less than a week ago... And those moments will never return! And it's all my fault! And, at the time of that encounter which was so out of the ordinary and so

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  intriguing for me, my feelings were dead...! I must admit that I was born with a pretty insipid and wretched character.

  The marquis appeared; Julien hastened to announce his departure.

  'Where to?' asked M. de La Mole.

  'The Languedoc.'

  'Under no circumstances, if you please; you are destined for higher things; if you leave, it shall be for the North... indeed, in military terms, I confine you to your quarters. You will oblige me by never being absent for more than two or three hours at a time, I may need you at any moment.'

  Julien bowed and withdrew without saying a word, leaving the marquis most astonished; he was in no state to talk, and locked himself into his room. There he was free to paint himself an exaggerated picture of his utterly atrocious fate.

  So, he thought, I can't even go away! God knows how many days the marquis will keep me in Paris. God Almighty! What'll become of me? And not a single friend to turn to: Father Pirard wouldn't let me finish my first sentence, and Count Altamira would suggest I join some conspiracy or other.

  And yet I'm out of my mind, I can feel it; I'm out of my mind!

  Who can guide me, what'll become of me?

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  CHAPTER 18

  Cruel moments

  And she confesses it to me! She goes into the minutest details! Her lovely eyes fixed on mine tell of the love she felt for another!

  SCHILLER

  MADEMOISELLE de La Mole thought rapturously of nothing but the thrill of having been on the point of being killed. She went so far as to say to herself: he's worthy of being my master, since he was on the point of killing me. How many fine young men from high society would you have to fuse together to get one passionate impulse like that?

  It must be admitted that he looked very attractive when he climbed on to the chair to put back the sword, in precisely the same picturesque position that the interior designer had arranged it! I wasn't that mad to love him after all.

  At that moment, if some honourable means of renewing the relationship had presented itself, she would have grasped it with pleasure. Julien, locked in his room with two turns of the key, was in the throes of the most violent despair. In his wildest thoughts, he considered flinging himself at her feet. If instead of hiding away in a remote place, he had wandered about the garden or the house in such a way as to be available for any opportunities that arose, he might perhaps have been able in the matter of an instant to transform his appalling misery into the most acute happiness.

  But the worldly wisdom we reproach him with lacking would have vetoed the sublime gesture of seizing the sword which, at that moment, rendered him so fetching in Mlle de La Mole's eyes. This caprice, which worked in Julien's favour, lasted the whole day; Mathilde conjured up a delightful image of the brief moments in which she had loved him, and she regretted them.

  In fact, she said to herself, my passion for this poor young man only lasted from his point of view from an hour after midnight, when I saw him coming up his ladder to my room

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  with all his pistols in the side pocket of his suit, until eight o'clock in the morning. It was a quarter of an hour later, when I was at Mass at St Valery's church, * that I began to think he would now believe himself my master, and might well try to make me obey by terrorizing me.

  After dinner, far from shunning Julien, Mlle de La Mole spoke to him and more or less requested him to follow her into the garden; he obeyed. He could have done without this ordeal. Mathilde was unwittingly yielding to the love she was beginning to feel for him again. She derived intense pleasure from walking by his side, and she looked with curiosity at the hands which that very morning had seized the sword to kill her.

  After such an action, after everything that had happened, it was out of the question to revert to their former mode of conversation.

  Gradually Mathilde began to confide intimately in him about the state of her affections. She derived a strange enjoyment from this kind of conversation; in due course she told him about the passing fancies she had had for M. de Croisenois, for M. de Caylus...

  'What! For M. de Caylus as well!' Julien exclaimed; and all the bitter jealousy of a jilted lover burst forth in this response. This was how Mathilde interpreted it, and she took no offence.

  She continued to torture Julien by recounting her former feelings to him in the most picturesque detail, and in a voice that rang with the most intimate truth. He could tell that she was depicting something she saw before her very eyes. He observed to his chagrin that as she spoke she was making discoveries about her own heart.

  The affliction of jealousy cannot go beyond this.

  To suspect that a rival is loved is already cruel enough, but to have to hear a detailed confession of the love he inspires from the woman one adores is surely the ultimate in suffering.

  O how Julien was punished, at that moment, for the surges of pride which had led him to put himself above the Caylus's and the Croisenois's! What intimate and heartfelt sorrow he experienced as he exaggerated to himself the least of their qualities! What ardent good faith he showed in despising his own self!

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  Mathilde seemed adorable to him; no form of words can adequately convey the excess of his admiration. As he walked by her side, he cast furtive glances at her hands, her arms, her queenly bearing. He was on the verge of falling at her feet, destroyed by love and misery, crying: Mercy!

  And this beautiful young woman, so utterly superior, who once loved me, will no doubt soon be loving M. de Caylus!

  Julien could not doubt Mlle de La Mole's sincerity; there was too obvious a ring of truth in everything she was saying. To make his misery absolutely complete, there were times when by concentrating on the feelings she had once entertained for M.de Caylus, Mathilde reached the point of speaking about him as if she loved him at the present moment. There certainly was love in her tone of voice; Julien discerned it clearly.

  Had molten lead been poured down into his chest, he would have suffered less. How on earth, when he had reached these extremes of unhappiness, could the poor fellow have guessed that it was because she was talking to him that Mlle de La Mole derived such pleasure from thinking back to flutterings of love she had felt formerly for M. de Caylus or M. de Luz?

  Nothing can possibly express Julien's feelings of anguish. He was listening to detailed confessions of love felt for others in the very lime walk where only a few days previously he had waited for one o'clock to strike in order to penetrate her room. No human being can endure a higher degree of misery.

  This form of cruel intimacy lasted a good week. Mathilde would at times appear to seek out, at times merely not shun opportunities for talking to him; and the topic of conversation they both seemed to come back to with a sort of cruel relish was the account of the feelings she had entertained for others: she told him of the letters she had written, she even recalled for him her actual words, she recited whole sentences to him. Towards the end of the week she seemed to be gazing at Julien with a sort of mischievous glee. His sufferings were a source of intense enjoyment to her.

  You can see that Julien had no experience of life, he hadn't even read any novels; if he had been a little less awkward and had said with some composure to this girl he so adored and who confided such strange things to him, 'Admit that although

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  I'm not the equal of all these gentlemen, nevertheless I'm the one you love...', perhaps she would have been glad to be seen through; at any rate, success would have depended entirely on the elegance with which Julien expressed this idea, and the moment he chose. Be that as it may, he was coming out rather well from a situation which was verging on the monotonous in
Mathilde's eyes.

  'You don't love me any more, and I adore you!' Julien said to her one day, distracted with love and unhappiness. This was more or less the greatest act of foolishness he could have committed.

  His words destroyed in a flash all the pleasure Mlle de La Mole derived from talking to him about the state of her affections. She was beginning to be surprised that after all that had passed he did not take offence at what she was telling him; she was even reaching the stage of imagining, just when he said this foolish thing to her, that perhaps he didn't love her any more. Pride has no doubt extinguished his love, she said to herself. He's not the sort of man to let someone get away with preferring people like Caylus, de Luz, or Croisenois, whom he admits to be so superior to him. No, I shan't see him at my feet any more!

  On the days leading up to this, in the naïvety of his misery, Julien had often voiced sincere praise for the brilliant qualitites of these gentlemen; he even went so far as to exaggerate them. This nuance had not escaped Mlle de La Mole, she was astonished by it, but did not guess the reason for it. In praising a rival he believed to be loved, Julien's frenetic nature was empathizing with the rival's happiness.

  His frank, but oh so stupid words caused everything to change in a flash: Mathilde, sure of being loved, despised him utterly.

  She was taking a stroll with him at the time of this inept remark; she walked away, and her last glance expressed the most terrible scorn. Back in the drawing-room she did not look at him again the whole evening. The next day this scorn took up all her emotional energy; gone was the impulse which for the past week had caused her to get such pleasure from treating Julien like the most intimate of friends; the sight of him was

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  disagreeable to her. Mathilde's reaction reached the proportions of revulsion; nothing can possibly convey the extremes of scorn she felt when she set eyes on him.

  Julien had understood nothing of what had been happening for the past week in Mathilde's heart, but he did discern this scorn. He had the good sense only to appear in her presence as rarely as possible, and he never looked at her.

  But it was not without mortal suffering that he so to speak deprived himself of her presence. He thought he felt his misery increasing on account of it. The courage in a man's heart can't hold out beyond this, he said to himself. He spent his time by a little window in the rafters of the house; the shutters had been closed with care, and from there at least he could catch a glimpse of Mlle de La Mole when she appeared in the garden.

  Just imagine how he felt when he saw her walking after dinner with M. de Caylus, M. de Luz or some other man for whom she had admitted feeling some flutterings of love in the past!

  Julien had no conception of such an intensity of misery; he was on the verge of shouting out loud; this resilient character was finally shattered through and through.

  Any thought unconnected with Mlle de La Mole had become hateful to him; he was incapable of writing the simplest of letters.

  'You're not in your right mind,' the marquis told him.

  Fearful of having his secret guessed, Julien spoke of illness and managed to be convincing. Fortunately for him, the marquis teased him at dinner about his forthcoming journey: Mathilde gathered that it might be very lengthy. Julien had been keeping out of her way for some days now, and her brilliant young men, who had everything lacking in the pale and sombre creature she had once loved, no longer had the power to rouse her from her dream-like state.

  Any ordinary girl, she said to herself, would have sought out a partner among these young men who are the centre of attention in any salon; but one of the characteristics of genius is not to trail its inspiration in the rut traced by vulgar folk.

  As the consort of a man like Julien, who only lacks some of the fortune I possess, I shall constantly be the focus of

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  attention, I shan't go through life unnoticed. Far from constantly dreading a revolution like my cousins, who from fear of the common people don't dare scold a postillion who's driving them incompetently, I shall be sure of playing a part, and an important one too, for the man I've chosen has character and unbounded ambition. What does he lack? Friends, money? I'll provide them. But her mind treated Julien somewhat as an inferior being, who can be made to love one when it suits.

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  CHAPTER 19

  The Opera Bouffe *

  O how this spring of love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day; Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, And by and by a cloud takes all away!

  SHAKESPEARE

  PREOCCUPIED by the future and the unusual role she was hoping for, Mathilde soon reached the point of regretting the dry, metaphysical discussions she often had with Julien. Weary of such lofty thoughts, sometimes too she regretted the moments of happiness she had experienced with him; these last memories did not come without remorse, she was overwhelmed by it at times.

  But if one is to lapse, she said to herself, it is worthy of a girl like myself only to neglect my duty for a man of quality; no one shall say it was his pretty moustache or his graceful style on horseback that seduced me, but his profound discussions on the future awaiting France, his ideas on the parallel that may be drawn between the events about to burst upon us and the revolution of 1688 in England * . I've been seduced, she replied to her remorse, I'm a weak woman, but at least I haven't been led astray like some pretty little doll by external attributes.

  If there is a revolution, why shouldn't Julien Sorel play the part of Roland, * and I that of Mme Roland? I prefer her role to Mme de Staël's: * immoral conduct will hold you back in our century. I'm adamant that no one shall reproach me with a second lapse; I'd die of shame.

  Mathilde's musings were not all as grave, admittedly, as the thoughts we have just transcribed.

  She would look at Julien and find delightful charm in his most trivial actions.

  Surely, she said to herself, I've succeeded in destroying the remotest idea he might have had that he has any rights.

  The look of unhappiness and deep passion on the poor boy's

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  face when he said those words of love to me a week ago more than prove it; I must concede that it was pretty extraordinary of me to take offence at a remark brimming with so much respect, so much passion. Am I not his wife? This word came very naturally, and, it must be admitted, was very pleasing. Julien still loved me after endless conversations in which I only talked to him--and with a great deal of cruelty, I agree-about the passing attraction which the boredom of my life had inspired in me for these young men from high society who give him such pangs of jealousy. Ah! if he knew what little danger they represent for me! How wan they strike me in comparison with him, and all exact copies one of another.

  As she reflected thus, Mathilde was doodling with a pencil on a page in her album. One of the profiles she had just finished astonished and delighted her: it bore a striking resemblance to Julien. It's the voice of heaven! This is one of love's miracles, she exclaimed in rapture: without meaning to, I've done his portrait.

  She ran off to her room, locked herself in, and applied herself assiduously, trying to do a portrait of Julien; but she did not succeed: the profile sketched by chance still remained the best likeness. Mathilde was delighted by this: she took it as clear proof of a grand passion.

  She did not get up from her album until very late, when the marquise summoned her to go to the Italian Opera. She only had one thought in her head: to look everywhere for Julien so as to get her mother to entreat him to sit with them.

  He did not turn up; the ladies only had vulgar mortals in their box. During the whole of the first act of the opera, Mathilde dreamed with the most intensely passionate rapture of the man she loved; but in the second act one of love's adages sung, admittedly, to a tune worthy of Cimarosa, pierced her heart. The heroine of the opera was saying: 'I must punish myself for the extremes of adoration I feel for him, I love him too much!'

  From the moment she had heard th
is sublime aria * everything in the real world vanished for Mathilde. People spoke to her; she did not answer; her mother scolded her, she could scarcely bring herself to look at her. Her ecstasy reached a

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  pitch of passionate exaltation, comparable in its power to the emotion that Julien had been feeling for her over the past few days. The divinely graceful aria filled every moment that she did not spend thinking directly about Julien; and how strikingly applicable she found the adage to her own situation. Thanks to her love of music, she felt that evening the way Mme de Rênal always did when thinking of Julien. Cerebral love doubtless has more wit than real love, but it only has brief moments of enthusiasm; it is too self-conscious, it is forever passing judgement on itself; far from leading thought astray, it is entirely constructed out of thoughts.

  Once they were back home, despite everything Mme de La Mole could say, Mathilde claimed to be feverish, and spent part of the night practising this tune on her piano. She sang the words of the famous aria which had captivated her:

  Devo punirmi, devo punirmi, Se troppo amai, etc. *

  The outcome of this night of folly was that she believed she had succeeded in triumphing over her love.

  (This page will be detrimental to the unfortunate author in more ways than one. The unresponsive among you will accuse him of impropriety. But he isn't insulting the young women who dazzle the Paris salons by supposing that a single one of them is capable of the mad impulses which spoil Mathilde's character. She is a purely imaginary figure, * and besides, imagined quite without reference to the social customs which, in the succession of centuries, will guarantee nineteenthcentury civilization a place of such distinction.