The Red and the Black

by Stendhal

  The marquis had no anxiety on the score of his memory. Julien had recited the secret note to him several times but he was very apprehensive of his being intercepted.

  “Above all, mind you look like a coxcomb who is simply travelling to kill time,” he said affectionately to him when he was leaving the salon. “Perhaps there was more than one treacherous brother in this evening’s meeting.”

  The journey was quick and very melancholy. Julien had scarcely got out of the marquis’s sight before he forgot his secret note and his mission, and only thought about Mathilde’s disdain.

  At a village some leagues beyond Metz, the postmaster came and told him that there were no horses. It was ten o’clock in the evening. Julien was very annoyed and asked for supper. He walked in front of the door and gradually without being noticed passed into the stable-yard. He did not see any horses there.

  “That man looked strange though,” thought Julien to himself. “He was scrutinizing me with his brutal eyes.”

  As one sees, he was beginning to be slightly sceptical of all he heard. He thought of escaping after supper, and in order to learn at any rate something about the surrounding country, he left his room to go and warm himself at the kitchen fire. He was overjoyed to find there the celebrated singer, Signor Geronimo.

  The Neapolitan was ensconced in an armchair which he had had brought near the fire. He was groaning aloud, and was speaking more to himself than to the twenty dumbfounded German peasants who surrounded him.

  “Those people will be my ruin,” he cried to Julien. “I have promised to sing to-morrow at Mayence. Seven sovereign princes have gone there to hear me. Let us go and take the air,” he added, meaningly.

  When he had gone a hundred yards down the road, and it was impossible to be overheard, he said to Julien:

  “Do you know the real truth? The postmaster is a scoundrel. When I went out for a walk I gave twenty sous to a little ragamuffin who told me everything. There are twelve horses in the stable at the other end of the village. They want to stop some courier.”

  “Really,” said Julien innocently.

  Discovering the fraud was not enough; the thing was to get away, but Geronimo and his friends could not succeed in doing this.

  “Let us wait for daybreak,” said the singer at last, “they are mistrustful of us. It is perhaps you or me whom they suspect. We will order a good breakfast to-morrow morning, we will go for a walk while they are getting it ready, we will then escape, we will hire horses, and gain the next station.”

  “And how about your luggage?” said Julien, who thought perhaps Geronimo himself might have been sent to intercept him. They had to have supper and go to bed. Julien was still in his first sleep when he was woken up with a start by the voices of two persons who were speaking in his room with utmost freedom.

  He recognised the postmaster armed with a dark lantern. The light was turned on the carriage-seat which Julien had taken up into his room. Beside the postmaster was a man who was calmly searching the open seat. Julien could see nothing except the sleeves of his coat which were black and very tight.

  “It’s a cassock,” he said to himself and he softly seized the little pistol which he had placed under his pillow.

  “Don’t be frightened of his waking up, curé,” said the postmaster, “the wine that has been served him was the stuff prepared by yourself.”

  “I can’t find any trace of papers,” answered the curé. “A lot of linen and essences, pommades, and vanities. It’s a young man of the world on pleasure bent. The other one who effects an Italian accent is more likely to be the emissary.”

  The men approached Julien to search the pockets of his travelling coat. He felt very tempted to kill them for thieves. Nothing could be safer in its consequences. He was very desirous of doing so . . . “I should only be a fool,” he said to himself, “I should compromise my mission.” “He is not a diplomatist,” said the priest after searching his coat. He went away and did well to do so.

  “It will be a bad business for him,” Julien was saying to himself, “if he touches me in my bed. He may have quite well come to stab me, and I won’t put up with that.”

  The curé turned his head, Julien half opened his eyes. He was inordinately astonished, it was the Abbé Castenède. As a matter of fact, although these two persons had made a point of talking in a fairly low voice, he had thought from the first that he recognised one of the voices. Julien was seized with an inordinate desire to purge the earth of one of its most cowardly villains; “But my mission,” he said to himself.

  The curé and his acolyte went out. A quarter of an hour afterwards Julien pretended to have just woken up. He called out and woke up the whole house.

  “I am poisoned,” he exclaimed, “I am suffering horribly!” He wanted an excuse to go to Geronimo’s help. He found him half suffocated by the laudanum that had been contained in the wine.

  Julien had been apprehensive of some trick of this character and had supped on some chocolate which he had brought from Paris. He could not wake Geronimo up sufficiently to induce him to leave.

  “If they were to give me the whole kingdom of Naples,” said the singer, “I would not now give up the pleasure of sleeping.”

  “But the seven sovereign princes?”

  “Let them wait.”

  Julien left alone, and arrived at the house of the great personage without other incident. He wasted a whole morning in vainly soliciting an audience. Fortunately about four o’clock the duke wanted to take the air. Julien saw him go out on foot and he did not hesitate to ask him for alms. When at two yards’ distance from the great personage he pulled out the Marquis de la Mole’s watch and exhibited it ostentatiously. “Follow me at a distance,” said the man without looking at him.

  At a quarter of a league’s distance the duke suddenly entered a little coffee-house. It was in a room of this low class inn that Julien had the honour of reciting his four pages to the duke. When he had finished he was told to “start again and go more slowly.”

  The prince took notes. “Reach the next posting station on foot. Leave your luggage and your carriage here. Get to Strasbourg as best you can and at half-past twelve on the twenty-second of the month (it was at present the tenth) come to this same coffee-house. Do not leave for half-an-hour. Silence!”

  These were the only words which Julien heard. They sufficed to inspire him with the highest admiration. “That is the way,” he thought, “that real business is done; what would this great statesman say if he were to listen to the impassioned ranters heard three days ago?”

  Julien took two days to reach Strasbourg. He thought he would have nothing to do there. He made a great detour. “If that devil of an Abbé Castanède has recognised me he is not the kind of man to lose track of me easily . . . And how he would revel in making a fool of me, and causing my mission to fail.”

  Fortunately the Abbé Castanède, who was chief of the congregational police on all the northern frontier, had not recognised him. And the Strasbourg Jesuits, although very zealous, never gave a thought to observing Julien, who with his cross and his blue tail-coat looked like a young military man, very much engrossed in his own personal appearance.

  LIV. Strasbourg

  Fascination! Love gives thee all his love, energy and all his power of suffering unhappiness. It is only his enchanting pleasures, his sweet delights, which are outside thy sphere. When I saw her sleep I was made to say “With all her angelic beauty and her sweet weaknesses she is absolutely mine! There she is, quite in my power, such as Heaven made her in its pity in order to ravish a man’s heart.—Ode of Schiller

  Julien was compelled to spend eight days in Strasbourg and tried to distract himself by thoughts of military glory and patriotic devotion. Was he in love then? he could not tell, he only felt in his tortured soul that Mathilde was the absolute mistress both of his happiness and of his imagination. He needed all the energy of his character to keep himself from sinking into despair. It was out of his power
to think of anything unconnected with Mademoiselle de la Mole. His ambition and his simple personal successes had formerly distracted him from the sentiments which Madame de Rênal had inspired. Mathilde was all-absorbing; she loomed large over his whole future.

  Julien saw failure in every phase of that future. This same individual whom we remember to have been so presumptuous and haughty at Verrières, had fallen into an excess of grotesque modesty.

  Three days ago he would only have been too pleased to have killed the Abbé Castanède, and now, at Strasbourg, if a child had picked a quarrel with him he would have thought the child was in the right. In thinking again about the adversaries and enemies whom he had met in his life he always thought that he, Julien, had been in the wrong. The fact was that the same powerful imagination which had formerly been continuously employed in painting a successful future in the most brilliant colours had now been transformed into his implacable enemy.

  The absolute solicitude of a traveller’s life increased the ascendancy of this sinister imagination. What a boon a friend would have been! But Julien said to himself, “Is there a single heart which beats with affection for me? And even if I did have a friend, would not honour enjoin me to eternal silence?”

  He was riding gloomily in the outskirts of Kehl; it is a market town on the banks of the Rhine and immortalised by Desaix and Gouvion Saint-Cyr. A German peasant showed him the little brooks, roads and islands of the Rhine, which have acquired a name through the courage of these great generals. Julien was guiding his horse with his left hand, while he held unfolded in his right the superb map which adorns the Memoirs of the Marshal Saint-Cyr. A merry exclamation made him lift his head.

  It was the Prince Korasoff, that London friend of his, who had initiated him some months before into the elementary rules of high fatuity. Faithful to his great art, Korasoff, who had just arrived at Strasbourg, had been one hour in Kehl and had never read a single line in his whole life about the siege of 1796, began to explain it all to Julien. The German peasant looked at him in astonishment; for he knew enough French to appreciate the enormous blunders which the prince was making. Julien was a thousand leagues away from the peasant’s thoughts. He was looking in astonishment at the handsome young man and admiring his grace in sitting a horse.

  “What a lucky temperament,” he said to himself, “and how his trousers suit him and how elegantly his hair is cut! Alas, if I had been like him, it might have been that she would not have come to dislike me after loving me for three days.”

  When the prince had finished his siege of Kehl, he said to Julien, “You look like a Trappist, you are carrying to excess that principle of gravity which I enjoined upon you in London. A melancholy manner cannot be good form. What is wanted is an air of boredom. If you are melancholy, it is because you lack something, because you have failed in something.

  “That means showing one’s own inferiority; if, on the other hand you are bored, it is only what has made an unsuccessful attempt to please you, which is inferior. So realise, my dear friend, the enormity of your mistake.”

  Julien tossed a crown to the gaping peasant who was listening to them.

  “Good,” said the prince, “that shows grace and a noble disdain, very good!” And he put his horse to the gallop. Full of a stupid admiration, Julien followed him.

  “Ah! if I had been like that, she would not have preferred Croisenois to me!” The more his reason was offended by the grotesque affectations of the prince, the more he despised himself for not having them. It was impossible for self-disgust to be carried further.

  The prince still finding him distinctly melancholy, said to him as they re-entered Strasbourg, “Come, my dear fellow, have you lost all your money, or perhaps you are in love with some little actress.

  “The Russians copy French manners, but always at an interval of fifty years. They have now reached the age of Louis XV.”

  These jests about love brought the tears to Julien’s eyes. “Why should I not consult this charming man,” he suddenly said to himself.

  “Well, yes, my dear friend,” he said to the prince, “you see in me a man who is very much in love and jilted into the bargain. A charming woman who lives in a neighbouring town has left me stranded here after three passionate days, and the change kills me.”

  Using fictitious names, he described to the prince Mathilde’s conduct and character.

  “You need not finish,” said Korasoff. “In order to give you confidence in your doctor, I will finish the story you have confided to me. This young woman’s husband enjoys an enormous income, or even more probably, she belongs herself to the high nobility of the district. She must be proud about something.”

  Julien nodded his head, he had no longer the courage to speak. “Very good,” said the prince, “here are three fairly bitter pills that you will take without delay.

  “1. See madame——What is her name, every day?”

  “Madame de Dubois.”

  “What a name!” said the prince bursting into laughter. “But forgive me, you find it sublime. Your tactics must be to see Madame de Dubois every day; above all do not appear to be cold and piqued. Remember the great principle of your century: be the opposite of what is expected. Be exactly as you were the week before you were honoured by her favours.”

  “Ah! I was calm enough then,” exclaimed Julien in despair, “I thought I was taking pity on her. . . .”

  “The moth is burning itself at the candle,” continued the prince, using a metaphor as old as the world.

  “1. You will see her every day.

  “2. You will pay court to a woman in her own set, but without manifesting a passion, do you understand? I do not disguise from you that your rôle is difficult; you are playing a part, and if she realises you are playing it you are lost.”

  “She has so much intelligence and I have so little, I shall be lost,” said Julien sadly.

  “No, you are only more in love than I thought. Madame de Dubois is preoccupied with herself as are all women who have been favoured by heaven either with too much pedigree or too much money. She contemplates herself instead of contemplating you, consequently she does not know you. During the two or three fits of love into which she managed to work herself for your especial benefit, she saw in you the hero of her dreams, and not the man you really are.

  “But, deuce take it, this is elementary, my dear Sorel, are you an absolute novice?

  “Oddslife! Let us go into this shop. Look at that charming black cravat, one would say it was made by John Anderson of Burlington Street. Be kind enough to take it and throw far away that awful black cord which you are wearing round your neck.

  “And now,” continued the prince as they came out of the shop of the first hosier of Strasbourg, “what is the society in which madame de Dubois lives? Great God, what a name, don’t be angry, my dear Sorel, I can’t help it.... Now, whom are you going to pay court to?”

  “To an absolute prude, the daughter of an immensely rich stocking-merchant. She has the finest eyes in the world and they please me infinitely; she doubtless holds the highest place in the society of the district, but in the midst of all her greatness she blushes and becomes positively confused if anyone starts talking about trade or shops. And, unfortunately, her father was one of the best-known merchants in Strasbourg.”

  “So,” said the prince with a laugh, “you are sure that when one talks about trade your fair lady thinks about herself and not about you. This silly weakness is divine and extremely useful, it will prevent you from yielding to a single moment’s folly when near her sparkling eyes. Success is assured.”

  Julien was thinking of madame the Maréchale de Fervaques who often came to the Hôtel de la Mole. She was a beautiful foreigner who had married the maréchal a year before his death. The one object of her whole life seemed to be to make people forget that she was the daughter of a manufacturer. In order to cut some figure in Paris she had placed herself at the head of the party of piety.

  Julien si
ncerely admired the prince; what would he not have given to have possessed his affectations! The conversation between the two friends was interminable. Korasoff was delighted: No Frenchman had ever listened to him for so long. “So I have succeeded at last,” said the prince to himself complacently, “in getting a proper hearing and that too through giving lessons to my master.”

  “So we are quite agreed,” he repeated to Julien for the tenth time. “When you talk to the young beauty, I mean the daughter of the Strasbourg stocking merchant in the presence of Madame de Dubois, not a trace of passion. But on the other hand be ardently passionate when you write. Reading a well-written love-letter is a prude’s supremest pleasure. It is a moment of relaxation. She leaves off posing and dares to listen to her own heart; consequently two letters a day.”

  “Never, never,” said Julien despondently, “I would rather be ground in a mortar than make up three phrases. I am a corpse, my dear fellow, hope nothing from me. Let me die by the road side.”

  “And who is talking about making up phrases? I have got six volumes of copied-out love-letters in my bag. I have letters to suit every variation of feminine character, including the most highly virtuous. Did not Kalisky pay court at Richmond-on-the-Thames at three leagues from London, you know, to the prettiest Quakeress in the whole of England?”

  Julien was less unhappy when he left his friend at two o’clock in the morning.

  The prince summoned a copyist on the following day, and two days afterwards Julien was the possessor of fifty-three carefully numbered love-letters intended for the most sublime and the most melancholy virtue.

  “The reason why there is not fifty-four,” said the prince, “is because Kalisky allowed himself to be dismissed. But what does it matter to you, if you are badly treated by the stocking-merchant’s daughter, since you only wish to produce an impression upon madame de Dubois’ heart.”