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

by Stendhal

  'You are predestined for this, my dear Sorel,' they said to him; 'your natural look is the cold expression, utterly remote from the sensation of the moment, that we try so hard to adopt.'

  'You haven't understood your century,' Prince Korasov said to him: 'always do the opposite of what is expected of you. This, on my honour, is the only religion for our time. Don't be either mad or affected, for then acts of folly and affectation would be expected of you, and the precept would fail to be carried out.'

  Julien was crowned with glory one day in the salon of the Duke of Fitz-Folke, who had invited him to dinner along with Prince Korasov. They had to wait for an hour. The way Julien behaved in the midst of the twenty people waiting there is still quoted by the young Embassy secretaries in London. His expression was priceless.

  He determined, in spite of his dandy friends, to see the famous Philip Vane, * the only philosopher England has produced since Locke. He found him serving his seventh year in prison. The aristocracy doesn't fool around in this country, Julien thought; Vane is dishonoured, vilified etc.

  Julien found him in fine spirits; the fury of the aristocracy kept him from being bored. There sits, said Julien to himself

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  as he left the prison, the only cheerful man I've seen in England.

  'The idea that is of greatest use to tyrants is that of God,' Vane had said to him...

  We shall leave out the rest of his system as being too cynical. On his return: 'What entertaining idea are you bringing back from England for me?' M. de La Mole asked him... He remained silent. 'What idea are you bringing back, entertaining or not?' insisted the marquis.

  'Primo,' said Julien, 'the wisest Englishman has an hour of folly every day; he is visited by the demon of suicide, who is the god of the country.

  '20 Wit and genius lose twenty-five per cent of their value on landing in England.

  '30 Nothing in the world is as beautiful, as worthy of admiration, or as moving as English landscapes.'

  'My turn,' said the marquis:

  'Primo, why did you go and say at the Russian Ambassador's ball that there are three hundred thousand young men of twenty-five in France who passionately desire war? Do you think that's something our kings will like to hear?'

  'One doesn't know what to do when talking to our great diplomats,' said Julien. 'They have a way of embarking on serious discussions. If you stick to the platitudes of the press, you are taken for a fool. If you allow yourself to say something true and novel, they are astonished, they don't know what to answer, and at seven o'clock the next day they have you informed through the First Secretary at the Embassy that you said the wrong thing.'

  'Not bad,' said the marquis laughing. 'Anyway, I bet you, Mister profound thinker, that you haven't guessed what you went to England for.'

  'Begging your pardon,' replied Julien; 'I went there to dine once a week with the King's Ambassador, who is the most civil of men.'

  'You went to get the Legion of Honour cross that you see over there,' the marquis said to him. 'I don't wish to make you abandon your black suit, and I've grown accustomed to the more entertaining tone I've adopted with the man wearing the

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  blue suit. Until further notice, take this as understood: when I see this cross, you will be the youngest son of my friend the Duc de Chaulnes, who, without realizing it, has been employed in the Diplomatic Service for the past six months. Take note', added the marquis with a very serious air, cutting short Julien's expressions of gratitude, 'that I do not wish to raise you from your position. It's always a mistake and a misfortune for the patron as well as for the protégé. When my lawsuits bore you, or you cease to suit my needs, I shall request a good living for you, like the one our good friend Father Pirard has, and nothing more,' the marquis added in a very curt tone of voice.

  This cross set Julien's pride at rest; he spoke much more readily. He was less often inclined to believe himself singled out for insult by those remarks capable of some unflattering interpretation that anyone can let slip in an animated conversation.

  This cross also earned him an unusual visit: that of the honourable Baron de Valenod, who had come to Paris to thank the Cabinet for his rifle, and to establish good relations. He was about to be appointed mayor of Verrières to replace M. de Rênal.

  Julien had a good laugh, to himself, when M. de Valenod insinuated to him that M. de Rênal had just been discovered to be a Jacobin. The fact is that in a fresh round of elections that were in the offing, the new baron was the Government candidate, and in the electoral college of the département, which was in truth very reactionary, M. de Rênal was standing for the liberals. *

  Julien tried in vain to discover anything about Mme de Rênal; the baron appeared to remember their former rivalry and was inscrutable. He ended up by asking Julien for his father's vote in the forthcoming elections. Julien promised to write.

  'You should, noble sir, introduce me to his lordship the Marquis de La Mole.'

  'Quite right, I should,' Julien thought; 'but a rogue like you...!'

  'The truth is', he replied, 'that I'm too much of a new boy at the Hôtel de La Mole to take the initiative of introducing people.'

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  Julien used to tell the marquis everything: that evening he described Valenod's pretensions to him, and all his great deeds since 1814.

  'Not only', replied M. de La Mole with a most serious air, 'will you introduce the new baron to me tomorrow, but I shall invite him to dinner the day after. He shall be one of our new prefects.'

  'In that case', replied Julien coldly, 'I request the post of master of the workhouse for my father.'

  'Well done!' said the marquis, resuming his gaiety; 'granted; I was expecting you to moralize. You're getting the hang of things.'

  M. de Valenod informed Julien that the person who ran the lottery in Verrières had just died: Julien thought it amusing to give the office to M. de Cholin, the old fool whose petition he had picked up all that time ago in M. de La Mole's room. The marquis laughed wholeheartedly at the petition which Julien recited to him when getting him to sign the letter requesting this office from the Minister of Finance.

  M. de Cholin had hardly been appointed when Julien learned that this office had been requested by a deputation from the département on behalf of M. Gros, the famous geometer: this generous man only had an income of fourteen hundred francs, and every year he had lent six hundred francs to the recently deceased holder of the office, to help him bring up his family.

  Julien was amazed at what he had done. It doesn't matter, he said to himself, I shall have to resort to a good many other injustices if I want to make my way, and what's more, learn to hide them beneath fine sentimental phrases: poor M. Gros! He deserved the cross, I'm the one to get it, and I have to act in accordance with the desires of the Government who's giving it to me.

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  CHAPTER 8

  What decoration distinguishes a man?

  'Your water doesn't refresh me,' said the thirsty genie. 'All the same, it's the coolest well in the whole of Diarbekir.'

  PELLICO *

  ONE day Julien had just returned from the delightful estate at Villequier on the banks of the Seine, which M. de La Mole kept an interested eye on because it was the only one of all his estates that had belonged to the famous Boniface de La Mole. In the Paris house he found the marquise and her daughter, who were just back from Hyères.

  Julien was a dandy now, and understood the art of living in Paris. He behaved with exemplary coldness towards Mlle de La Mole. He appeared to have no recollection of the days when she asked him so gaily for details of how he fell off his horse.

  Mlle de La Mole found him taller and paler. His figure and appearance no longer bore any trace of the provincial; this was not the case with his conversation: it was noticeably still far too serious and assertive. However, despite the measured tone, his pride precluded any hint of subservience; it was just that you felt he still regarded too many things as
important. But you could tell he was a man to defend his point of view.

  'He lacks the flippant touch, but he does have a mind,' said Mlle de La Mole to her father, as she joked with him about the cross he had given Julien. 'My brother went on at you about getting one for eighteen months, and he's a La Mole!'

  'Yes, but Julien doesn't act as you'd expect him to, which can't be said of the La Mole you're talking about.'

  His grace the Duc de Retz was announced.

  Mathilde felt herself overcome by an irresistible yawn; she recognized the antique gilding and the familiar faces of her father's salon. She conjured up an utterly tedious image of the life she was about to resume in Paris. All the same, when in Hyères she missed Paris.

  Yet I'm nineteen! she thought: it's the age for happiness, so

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  say all these idiots in gold leaf. She was looking at nine or ten volumes of new poetry which had mounted up on the drawingroom table during her visit to Provence. It was her misfortune to have a sharper intellect than M. de Croisenois, M. de Caylus, M. de Luz and her other friends. She could just imagine everything they would say to her about the wonderful sky in Provence, poetry, the South, etc., etc.

  These lovely eyes in which dwelled the most profound boredom, and worse still, despair at ever finding any pleasure, alighted on Julien. He at least was not quite like anyone else.

  'Monsieur Sorel,' she said in that bright, crisp and utterly unfeminine voice adopted by upper-class young women, 'Monsieur Sorel, are you coming to M. de Retz's ball this evening?'

  'Mademoiselle, I haven't had the honour of being introduced to his grace.' (It was as if these words and this title stuck in the proud provincial's throat.)

  'He has instructed my brother to take you along with him to his house; and if you were to come, you could give me some information about the Villequier estate; there's talk of going there in the spring. I'd like to know if the chêteau is habitable, and if the surrounding countryside is as pretty as they claim. There are so many undeserved reputations!'

  Julien made no reply.

  'Come to the ball with my brother,' she added in very curt tones.

  Julien bowed respectfully. So even in the middle of a ball, I'm accountable to all the members of the family. Aren't I being paid to engage in business? His bad temper added: What's more, God knows whether what I tell the daughter won't upset the plans made by the father, the brother or the mother! this is every bit the sovereign prince's Court. You'd have to be a real nonentity who at the same time would give nobody any cause for complaint.

  How I dislike that tall girl! he thought as he watched Mlle de La Mole walk towards her mother, who had called her over to introduce her to a number of her women friends. She carries all fashions to extremes, her dress is falling off her shoulders... she's even paler than before she went away... What colourless hair, it's so fair! It's as if the light went straight through it.

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  How haughty she is the way she greets people, in the way she looks at them! What queenly gestures!

  Mlle de La Mole had just called her brother over as he was leaving the drawing-room.

  Count Norbert came up to Julien:

  'My dear Sorel,' he said to him, 'where would you like me to pick you up at midnight for M. de Retz's ball? He's given me express instructions to bring you along.'

  'I'm very aware to whom I owe such kindness,' Julien replied, bowing to the ground.

  His bad temper, unable to find fault with the tone of civility and even interest which Norbert had adopted in speaking to him, began to get to work on the reply which he, Julien, had made to these obliging words. He detected in it a shade of servility.

  That evening, when he arrived at the ball, he was struck by the magnificence of the Hôtel de Retz. The front courtyard was covered over with a great awning of crimson twill with gold stars on it: the height of elegance. Beneath this awning the courtyard was transformed into a grove of flowering orange trees and oleanders. As care had been taken to bury the pots sufficiently deep, the oleanders and oranges looked as if they were growing straight out of the ground. The pathway for carriages was strewn with sand.

  The whole scene seemed amazing to our young provincial. He did not have the least inkling of such magnificence; in an instant his kindled imagination had left his bad temper thousands of miles behind. In the carriage on the way to the ball, Norbert had been cheerful while he, Julien, saw everything painted black; no sooner had they entered the courtyard than the roles were reversed.

  All that Norbert noticed was the few details which, in the midst of such magnificence, it had not been possible to attend to. He totted up the expenditure on each item, and as the total mounted up, Julien observed that he became almost envious and quite put out.

  Whereas Julien himself was won over, full of admiration and almost nervous with emotion when he reached the first of the rooms where the dancing was going on. People were crowding

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  round the door into the second, and there was such a throng that he was unable to move forward. The décor in this second room represented the Alhambra palace in Grenada.

  'She's the queen of the ball, you must agree,' a young man with a moustache was saying as his shoulder rammed into Julien's chest.

  'Mlle Fourmont, who was the prettiest of them all throughout the winter,' replied the man next to him, 'can tell she's slipping into second place: look at her strange air.'

  'She really does pull out all the stops to charm us. Just look at that gracious smile when she's dancing on her own in the quadrille. Word of honour, it's priceless.'

  'Mlle de La Mole seems to be in full control of the pleasure she derives from her victory, which she's well aware of. It's as if she were afraid of charming the person talking to her.'

  'Excellent! That's the art of seduction.'

  Julien was making vain attempts to catch a glimpse of this seductive woman; seven or eight men taller than himself prevented him from seeing her.

  'There's a good deal of coquettishness in her noble restraint,' said the young man with a moustache.

  'And those big blue eyes which are lowered so slowly just when you'd think they were on the verge of giving away their secret,' his neighbour continued. 'My goodness, there's nothing so crafty.'

  'Look how common the beautiful Mlle Fourmont seems beside her,' said a third man.

  'This air of restraint signifies: what charm I should lay on for you, if you were the man to be worthy of me!'

  'And who can be worthy of the sublime Mathilde?' asked the first speaker: 'some sovereign prince, handsome, witty, well-built, a hero in war and no older than twenty at the very most.'

  'The illegitimate son of the Emperor of Russia... for whom, for the sake of this marriage, a kingdom would be found; or quite simply the Comte de Thaler, looking like a peasant dressed up...'

  The doorway cleared and Julien was able to go through.

  Since she has a reputation of being so remarkable in the eyes

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  of these namby-pambys, it'd be worth my while to study her, he thought. I shall understand what makes perfection for that sort of person.

  As he was looking round for her, Mathilde glanced at him. My duty calls me, Julien told himself; but there was no bad temper left except in his expression. Curiosity drove him forward with a pleasure soon increased by the low cut of Mathilde's dress round the shoulders--hardly very flattering to his pride, if the truth be told. There is something youthful about her beauty, he thought. Five or six young men, among whom Julien recognized the ones he had overheard by the door, stood between her and him.

  'You, sir, who've been here all winter,' she said to him, 'isn't it true that this ball is the prettiest of the season?'

  He made no reply.

  'This quadrille of Coulon's * strikes me as admirable; and these ladies are dancing it perfectly.' The young men turned to see who the fortunate man was whose answer was so insistently sought. It was not an encouraging one. />
  'I should hardly qualify as a good judge, Mademoiselle; I spend my life writing: this is the first ball of such magnificence that I've ever seen.'

  The young men with moustaches were scandalized.

  'You are a wise man, Monsieur Sorel,' replied the lady with a greater show of interest; 'you observe all these balls, all these festivities, like a philosopher, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau. These follies amaze you without ensnaring you.'

  A single name had just quenched the fire of Julien's imagination and driven all illusions from his heart. His mouth took on an expression of disdain that was maybe somewhat exaggerated.

  ' Jean-Jacques Rousseau', he replied, 'is no more than a fool in my eyes when he takes it upon himself to judge high society; he didn't understand it, and brought to it the heart of an upstart lackey.'

  'He wrote The Social Contract,' said Mathilde in tones of veneration.

  'An upstart who, while preaching the republic and the overthrow of the high offices of the monarchy, is over the

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  moon if a duke alters the direction of his after-dinner stroll just to accompany one of the upstart's friends.'

  'Oh yes! the Duc de Luxembourg at Montmorency accompanying a M. Coindet * on his way to Paris...', Mlle de La Mole elaborated, with the pleasure and abandon of the first sweet taste of pedantry. She was intoxicated with her learning, rather like the academician who discovered the existence of King Feretrius. * Julien's eye remained searching and severe. Mathilde had had a moment of enthusiasm; she was deeply put out by her partner's coldness. She was all the more astonished as it was she who customarily produced this effect on others.

  At that moment the Marquis de Croisenois was making his way eagerly over towards Mlle de La Mole. For a moment he stood three paces away from her without being able to break through the throng. He looked at her with a smile at the obstacle in his path. The young Marquise de Rouvray was near him; she was a cousin of Mathilde's. She was leaning on the arm of her husband, who had only enjoyed matrimony for a fortnight. The Marquis de Rouvray, exceedingly young himself, showed all the foolish love that takes hold of a man who, on making a marriage of convenience entirely arranged by solicitors, discovers a perfectly lovely woman. M. de Rouvray was going to become a duke on the death a very old uncle.