The Red and the Black/Chapter 43
CHAPTER XLIII
A PLOT
Disconnected remarks, casual meetings, become transformed in the eyes of an imaginative man into the most convincing proofs, if he has any fire in his temperament.—Schiller.
The following day he again caught Norbert and his sister talking about him. A funereal silence was established on his arrival as on the previous day. His suspicions were now unbounded. "Can these charming young people have started to make fun of me? I must own this is much more probable, much more natural than any suggested passion on the part of madamoiselle de La Mole for a poor devil of a secretary. In the first place, have those people got any passions at all? Mystification is their strong point. They are jealous of my poor little superiority in speaking. Being jealous again is one of their weaknesses. On that basis everything is explicable. Mademoiselle de La Mole simply wants to persuade me that she is marking me out for special favour in order to show me off to her betrothed?"
This cruel suspicion completely changed Julien's psychological condition. The idea found in his heart a budding love which it had no difficulty in destroying. This love was only founded on Mathilde's rare beauty, or rather on her queenly manners and her admirable dresses. Julien was still a parvenu in this respect. We are assured that there is nothing equal to a pretty society women for dazzling a peasant who is at the same time a man of intellect, when he is admitted to first class society. It had not been Mathilde's character which had given Julien food for dreams in the days that had just passed. He had sufficient sense to realise that he knew nothing about her character. All he saw of it might be merely superficial.
For instance, Mathilde would not have missed mass on Sunday for anything in the world. She accompanied her mother there nearly every time. If when in the salon of the hôtel de La Mole some indiscreet man forgot where he was, and indulged in the remotest allusion to any jest against the real or supposed interests of Church or State, Mathilde immediately assumed an icy seriousness. Her previously arch expression re-assumed all the impassive haughtiness of an old family portrait.
But Julien had assured himself that she always had one or two of Voltaire's most philosophic volumes in her room. He himself would often steal some tomes of that fine edition which was so magnificently bound. By moving each volume a little distance from the one next to it he managed to hide the absence of the one he took away, but he soon noticed that someone else was reading Voltaire. He had recourse to a trick worthy of the seminary and placed some pieces of hair on those volumes which he thought were likely to interest mademoiselle de La Mole. They disappeared for whole weeks.
M. de La Mole had lost patience with his bookseller, who always sent him all the spurious memoirs, and had instructed Julien to buy all the new books, which were at all stimulating. But in order to prevent the poison spreading over the household, the secretary was ordered to place the books in a little book-case that stood in the marquis's own room. He was soon quite certain that although the new books were hostile to the interests of both State and Church, they very quickly disappeared. It was certainly not Norbert who read them.
Julien attached undue importance to this discovery, and attributed to mademoiselle de La Mole a Macchiavellian rôle. This seeming depravity constituted a charm in his eyes, the one moral charm, in fact, which she possessed. He was led into this extravagance by his boredom with hypocrisy and moral platitudes.
It was more a case of his exciting his own imagination than of his being swept away by his love.
It was only after he had abandoned himself to reveries about the elegance of mademoiselle de La Mole's figure, the excellent taste of he dress, the whiteness of her hand, the beauty of her arm, the disinvoltura of all her movements, that he began to find himself in love. Then in order to complete the charm he thought her a Catherine de Médicis. Nothing was too deep or too criminal for the character which he ascribed to her. She was the ideal of the Maslons, the Frilairs, and the Castanèdes whom he had admired so much in his youth. To put it shortly, she represented in his eyes the Paris ideal.
Could anything possibly be more humorous than believing in the depth or in the depravity of the Parisian character?
It is impossible that this trio is making fun of me thought Julien. The reader knows little of his character if he has not begun already to imagine his cold and gloomy expression when he answered Mathilde's looks. A bitter irony rebuffed those assurances of friendship which the astonished mademoiselle de La Mole ventured to hazard on two or three occasions.
Piqued by this sudden eccentricity, the heart of this young girl, though naturally cold, bored and intellectual, became as impassioned as it was naturally capable of being. But there was also a large element of pride in Mathilde's character, and the birth of a sentiment which made all her happiness dependent on another, was accompanied by a gloomy melancholy.
Julien had derived sufficient advantage from his stay in Paris to appreciate that this was not the frigid melancholy of ennui. Instead of being keen as she had been on at-homes, theatres, and all kinds of distractions, she now shunned them.
Music sung by Frenchmen bored Mathilde to death, yet Julien, who always made a point of being present when the audience came out of the Opera, noticed that she made a point of getting taken there as often as she could. He thought he noticed that she had lost a little of that brilliant neatness of touch which used to be manifest in everything she did. She would sometimes answer her friends with jests rendered positively outrageous through the sheer force of their stinging energy. He thought that she made a special butt of the marquis de Croisenois. That young man must be desperately in love with money not to give the go-by to that girl, however rich she maybe, thought Julien. And as for himself, indignant at these outrages on masculine self-respect, he redoubled his frigidity towards her. Sometimes he went so far as to answer her with scant courtesy.
In spite of his resolution not to become the dupe of Mathilde's signs of interest, these manifestations were so palpable on certain days, and Julien, whose eyes were beginning to be opened, began to find her so pretty, that he was sometimes embarrassed.
"These young people of society will score in the long run by their skill and their coolness over my inexperience," he said to himself. "I must leave and put an end to all this." The marquis had just entrusted him with the administration of a number of small estates and houses which he possessed in Lower Languedoc. A journey was necessary; M. de la Mole reluctantly consented. Julien had become his other self, except in those matters which concerned his political career.
"So, when we come to balance the account," Julien said to himself, as he prepared his departure, "they have not caught me. Whether the jests that mademoiselle de La Mole made to those gentlemen are real, or whether they were only intended to inspire me with confidence, they have simply amused me.
"If there is no conspiracy against the carpenter's son, mademoiselle de La Mole is an enigma, but at any rate, she is quite as much an enigma for the marquis de Croisenois as she is to me. Yesterday, for instance, her bad temper was very real, and I had the pleasure of seeing her snub, thanks to her favour for me, a young man who is as noble and as rich as I am a poor scoundrel of a plebeian. That is my finest triumph; it will divert me in my post-chaise as I traverse the Languedoc plains."
He had kept his departure a secret, but Mathilde knew, even better than he did himself, that he was going to leave Paris the following day for a long time. She developed a maddening headache, which was rendered worse by the stuffy salon. She walked a great deal in the garden, and persecuted Norbert, the marquis de Croisenois, Caylus, de Luz, and some other young men who had dined at the hotel de La Mole, to such an extent by her mordant witticisms, that she drove them to take their leave. She kept looking at Julien in a strange way.
"Perhaps that look is a pose," thought Julien, "but how about that hurried breathing and all that agitation? Bah," he said to himself, "who am I to djuge of such things? We are dealing with the cream of Parisian sublimity and subtlety. As for that hurried breathing which was on the point of affecting me, she no doubt studied it with Léontine Fay, whom she likes so much."
They were left alone; the conversation was obviously languishing. "No, Julien has no feeling for me," said Mathilde to herself, in a state of real unhappiness.
As he was taking leave of her she took his arm violently.
"You will receive a letter from me this evening," she said to him in a voice that was so changed that its tone was scarcely recognisable.
This circumstance affected Julien immediately.
"My father," she continued, "has a proper regard for the services you render him. You must not leave to-morrow; find an excuse." And she ran away.
Her figure was charming. It was impossible to have a prettier foot. She ran with a grace which fascinated Julien, but will the reader guess what he began to think about after she had finally left him? He felt wounded by the imperious tone with which she had said the words, "you must." Louis XV. too, when on his death-bed, had been keenly irritated by the words "you must," which had been tactlessly pronounced by his first physician, and yet Louis XV. was not a parvenu.
An hour afterwards a footman gave Julien a letter. It was quite simply a declaration of love.
"The style is too affected," said Julien to himself, as he endeavoured to control by his literary criticism the joy which was spreading over his cheeks and forcing him to smile in spite of himself.
At last his passionate exultation was too strong to be controlled. "So I," he suddenly exclaimed, "I, the poor peasant, get a declaration of love from a great lady."
"As for myself, I haven't done so badly," he added, restraining his joy as much as he could. "I have managed to preserve my self-respect. I did not say that I loved her." He began to study the formation of the letters. Mademoiselle de La Mole had a pretty little English handwriting. He needed some concrete occupation to distract him from a joy which verged on delirium.
"Your departure forces me to speak.… I could not bear not to see you again."
A thought had just struck Julien like a new discovery. It interrupted his examination of Mathilde's letter, and redoubled his joy. "So I score over the marquis de Croisenois," he exclaimed. "Yes, I who could only talk seriously! And he is so handsome. He has a moustache and a charming uniform. He always manages to say something witty and clever just at the psychological moment."
Julien experienced a delightful minute. He was wandering at random in the garden, mad with happiness.
Afterwards he went up to his desk, and had himself ushered in to the marquis de La Mole, who was fortunately still in. He showed him several stamped papers which had come from Normandy, and had no difficulty in convincing him that he was obliged to put off his departure for Languedoc in order to look after the Normandy lawsuits.
"I am very glad that you are not going," said the marquis to him, when they had finished talking business. "I like seeing you." Julien went out; the words irritated him.
"And I—I am going to seduce his daughter! and perhaps render impossible that marriage with the marquis de Croisenois to which the marquis looks forward with such delight. If he does not get made a duke, at any rate his daughter will have a coronet." Julien thought of leaving for Languedoc in spite of Mathilde's letter, and in spite of the explanation he had just given to the marquis. This flash of virtue quickly disappeared.
"How kind it is of me," he said to himself, "me … a plebeian, takes pity on a family of this rank! Yes, me, whom the duke of Chaulnes calls a servant! How does the marquis manage to increase his immense fortune? By selling stock when he picks up information at the castle that there will be a panic of a coup d'etat on the following day. And shall I, who have been flung down into the lowest class by a cruel providence—I, whom providence has given a noble heart but not an income of a thousand francs, that is to say, not enough to buy bread with, literally not enough to buy bread with—shall I refuse a pleasure that presents itself? A limpid fountain which will quench my thirst in this scorching desert of mediocrity which I am traversing with such difficulty! Upon my word, I am not such a fool! Each man for himself in that desert of egoism which is called life."
And he remembered certain disdainful looks which madame de La Mole, and especially her lady friends, had favoured him with.
The pleasure of scoring over the marquis de Croisenois completed the rout of this echo of virtue.
"How I should like to make him angry," said Julien. "With what confidence would I give him a sword thrust now!" And he went through the segoon thrust. "Up till now I have been a mere usher, who exploited basely the little courage he had. After this letter I am his equal.
"Yes," he slowly said to himself, with an infinite pleasure, "the merits of the marquis and myself have been weighed in the balance, and it is the poor carpenter from the Jura who turns the scale.
"Good!" he exclaimed, "this is how I shall sign my answer. Don't imagine, mademoiselle de La Mole, that I am forgetting my place. I will make you realise and fully appreciate that it is for a carpenter's son that you are betraying a descendant of the famous Guy de Croisenois who followed St. Louis to the Crusade."
Julien was unable to control his joy. He was obliged to go down into the garden. He had locked himself in his room, but he found it too narrow to breathe in.
"To think of it being me, the poor peasant from the Jura," he kept on repeating to himself, "to think of it being me who am eternally condemned to wear this gloomy black suit! Alas twenty years ago I would have worn a uniform like they do! In those days a man like me either got killed or became a general at thirty-six. The letter which he held clenched in his hand gave him a heroic pose and stature. Nowadays, it is true, if one sticks to this black suit, one gets at forty an income of a hundred thousand francs and the blue ribbon like my lord bishop of Beauvais.
"Well," he said to himself with a Mephistophelian smile, "I have more brains than they. I am shrewd enough to choose the uniform of my century. And he felt a quickening of his ambition and of his attachment to his ecclesiastical dress. What cardinals of even lower birth than mine have not succeeded in governing! My compatriot Granvelle, for instance."
Julien's agitation became gradually calmed! Prudence emerged to the top. He said to himself like his master Tartufe whose part he knew by heart:
Qu'un peu de ses faveurs apres quoi je soupire
Ne vienne m'assurer tout ce qu'ils m'ont pudire.
"Tartufe, too, was ruined by a woman, and he was as good as most men … My answer may be shown … and the way out of that is this," he added pronouncing his words slowly with an intonation of deliberate and restrained ferocity. "We will begin by quoting the most vivid passages from the letter of the sublime Mathilde."
"Quite so, but M. de Croisenois' lackeys will hurl themselves upon me and snatch the original away."
"No, they won't, for I am well armed, and as we know I am accustomed to firing on lackeys."
"Well, suppose one of them has courage, and hurls himself upon me. He has been promised a hundred napoleons. I kill him, or wound him, good, that's what they want. I shall be thrown into prison legally. I shall be had up in the police court and the judges will send me with all justice and all equity to keep Messieurs Fontan and Magalon company in Poissy. There I shall be landed in the middle of four hundred scoundrels … And am I to have the slightest pity on these people," he exclaimed getting up impetuously! "Do they show any to persons of the third estate when they have them in their power!" With these words his gratitude to M. de La Mole, which had been in spite of himself torturing his conscience up to this time, breathed its last.
"Softly, gentlemen, I follow this little Macchiavellian trick, the abbé Maslon or M. Castanède of the seminary could not have done better. You will take the provocative letter away from me and I shall exemplify the second volume of Colonel Caron at Colmar."
"One moment, gentlemen, I will send the fatal letter in a well-sealed packet to M. the abbé Pirard to take care of. He's an honest man, a Jansenist, and consequently incorruptible. Yes, but he will open the letters … Fouqué is the man to whom I must send it."
We must admit that Julien's expression was awful, his countenance ghastly; it breathed unmitigated criminality. It represented the unhappy man at war with all society.
"To arms," exclaimed Julien. And he bounded up the flight of steps of the hotel with one stride. He entered the stall of the street scrivener; he frightened him. "Copy this," he said, giving him mademoiselle de La Mole's letter.
While the scrivener was working, he himself wrote to Fouqué. He asked him to take care of a valuable deposit. "But he said to himself," breaking in upon his train of thought, "the secret service of the post-office will open my letter, and will give you gentlemen the one you are looking for … not quite, gentlemen." He went and bought an enormous Bible from a Protestant bookseller, skilfully hid Mathilde's letter in the cover, and packed it all up. His parcel left by the diligence addressed to one of Fouqué's workmen, whose name was known to nobody at Paris.
This done, he returned to the hôtel de La Mole, joyous and buoyant.
Now it's our turn he exclaimed as he locked himself into the room and threw off his coat.
"What! mademoiselle," he wrote to Mathilde, "is it mademoiselle de La Mole who gets Arsène her father's lackey to hand an only too flattering letter to a poor carpenter from the Jura, in order no doubt to make fun of his simplicity?" And he copied out the most explicit phrases in the letter which he had just received. His own letter would have done honour to the diplomatic prudence of M. the Chevalier de Beauvoisis. It was still only ten o'clock when Julien entered the Italian opera, intoxicated with happiness and that feeling of his own power which was so novel for a poor devil like him. He heard his friend Geronimo sing. Music had never exalted him to such a pitch.