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

by Stendhal

  Mathilde had almost forgotten him while he was off on his

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  journey. After all, he's only a common sort of person, she thought; his name will always remind me of the greatest lapse in my life. I must revert in good faith to vulgar notions of chaste behaviour and honour; a woman has everything to lose by forgetting them. She appeared willing to agree at last to the conclusion of the settlement with the Marquis de Croisenois, which had been drawn up ready for so long. He was beside himself with joy; he would have been most astonished to be told that resignation lay at the bottom of Mathilde's disposition towards him, which made him so proud.

  All Mlle de La Mole's ideas changed on seeing Julien. In reality, he's my husband, she told herself; if I revert in good faith to notions of chaste behaviour, then he's the one I must marry.

  She was expecting unwelcome entreaties and wretched looks from Julien; she prepared her responses: for surely when they got up from dinner, he would try to have a few words with her. Quite the contrary, he stayed put in the drawing-room, his eyes didn't even turn towards the garden, God alone knows at what cost! It's better to have it out with him right away, thought Mlle de La Mole; she went into the garden alone, Julien did not appear. Mathilde came over and strolled by the French windows of the drawing-room; she saw him utterly taken up with describing to Mme de Fervaques the old ruined castles that crown the hillsides along the Rhine and give them such character. He was beginning to make quite a good showing at the sentimental and picturesque turn of phrase that is called wit in certain salons.

  Prince Korasov would have been thoroughly proud if he had happened to be in Paris: that evening went exactly as he had predicted.

  He would have approved of Julien's conduct on the following days.

  An intrigue among the members of the clandestine government * was about to make a number of Blue Sashes available; Mme de Fervaques insisted on her great-uncle's becoming a knight of the order. M. de La Mole laid the same claim on behalf of his father-in-law; they united their efforts, and the maréchale came to the Hôtel de La Mole almost every day. It

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  was from her that Julien learned that the marquis was about to become a minister: he was offering the Camarilla * a most ingenious plan for abolishing the Charter, without any upheaval, in the space of three years.

  Julien could expect to be made a bishop if M. de La Mole got into the Cabinet; but to his eyes all these great concerns had been somehow shrouded in a veil. His imagination only glimpsed them dimly now, in the far distance so to speak. The dreadful misfortune which was making him obsessional caused him to see all life's concerns wrapped up in his relationship with Mlle de La Mole. He reckoned that after five or six years of careful effort, he would manage to make her love him again.

  His calm and rational mind had sunk, as you observe, into a state of total derangement. Of the many qualities that had distinguished him formerly, all that remained was a degree of persistence. Outwardly faithful to the plan of conduct laid down by Prince Korasov, he would seat himself every evening quite close to Mme de Fervaques's chair, but it was quite beyond him to find anything to say to her.

  The effort he was putting in to appear cured in Mathilde's eyes swallowed up all his emotional energy, and he sat beside the marshal's widow like a creature barely alive; even his eyes, as happens in extreme physical suffering, had lost all their fire.

  As Mme de La Mole's attitude was always a mere replica of the opinions of a husband who might make her a duchess, for some days now she had been praising Julien's qualities to the skies.

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  CHAPTER 26

  Propriety in love

  There also was of course in Adeline

  That calm patrician polish in the address,

  Which ne'er can pass the equinoctial line

  Of any thing which Nature would express:

  Just as a Mandarin finds nothing fine,

  At least his manner suffers not to guess

  That any thing he views can greatly please.

  Don Juan, C. XIII, st. 84

  THERE'S a streak of madness in the attitude of this entire family, thought the maréchale; they're infatuated with this young priest of theirs, whose only qualification is listening-with rather lovely eyes, it's true.

  Julien for his part took Mme de Fervaques's ways as an almost perfect example of that patrician calm which radiates punctilious civility and, even more so, declares the impossibility of any powerful emotion. Any unpredictable reactions, any failure of self control, would have scandalized Mme de Fervaques almost as much as a lack of majesty towards her inferiors. The slightest outward sign of emotion would have struck her as some kind of moral inebriation to be ashamed of, and most prejudicial to the duties that a person of high rank owes to herself. Her great pleasure was talking about the king's latest hunt, her favourite book the Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon, * especially the part concerned with genealogy.

  Julien knew which part of the room, given the arrangement of the lights, was flattering to Mme de Fervaques's type of beauty. He made sure he was there before her, but took great care to turn his chair in such a way as not to see Mathilde. Astonished at the constancy with which he was hiding from her, one day she left the blue sofa and brought her needlework over to a little table next to the maréchale's chair. Julien got a fairly close view of her from underneath Mme de Fervaques's hat. Those eyes, which controlled his destiny, alarmed him at

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  first, then jolted him out of his habitual apathy; he talked, and very well too.

  He addressed his words to the maréchale, but his sole aim was to produce an effect on Mathilde. He grew so animated that Mme de Fervaques found she no longer understood what he was saying.

  That was a preliminary point in his favour. If it had occurred to Julien to back it up with a few sentences of German mysticism, high religiosity and Jesuitry, the maréchale would have classed him on the spot as one of the superior men whose calling it is to regenerate our century.

  Since he's sufficiently ill-mannered, Mlle de La Mole said to herself, to talk for as long as this, and with so much ardour, to Mme de Fervaques, I shan't listen to him any more. For the whole of the rest of that evening she kept her word, although with difficulty.

  At midnight when Mathilde took her mother's candlestick to accompany her up to her room, Mme de La Mole paused on the stairs to produce a full-blown eulogy of Julien. This put the finishing touches to Mathilde's ill-temper; she was unable to fall asleep. One thought calmed her down: Someone I despise can still be a man of great worth in the maréchale's eyes.

  As for Julien, he had done something, he was less miserable; his eyes alighted by chance on the Russian-leather case in which Prince Korasov had enclosed his present of fifty-three love letters. Julien saw in a note at the bottom of the first letter: Number One is to be sent a week after the first meeting.

  I've fallen behind! Julien exclaimed, for I've been seeing Mme de Fervaques for some time now. He settled down at once to copying out this first love letter; it was a homily full of pronouncements on virtue, and deadly dull; Julien was fortunate enough to fall asleep at the second page.

  Some hours later, bright sunlight surprised him slumped over the table. One of the hardest moments in his life was when, each morning on waking up, he learned of his wretchedness. That day, he was almost laughing as he finished copying out his letter. Is it possible, he said to himself, that there ever existed a young man who writes like this! He counted several

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  sentences nine lines long. At the end of the original, he saw a note in pencil:

  These letters are to be delivered personally: on horseback, with black tie and blue greatcoat. Letter to be handed to the porter with a contrite air and look of deep melancholy. If any chambermaid is sighted, eyes to be furtively wiped. Speak to the chambermaid.

  All this was faithfully executed.

  What I'm doing takes some nerve, Julien thought as he left the Hôtel de
Fervaques, but so much the worse for Korasov. Daring to write to such a notorious pillar of virtue! I shall be treated by her with the utmost disdain, and nothing will amuse me more. It's ultimately the only comedy I can appreciate. Yes, heaping ridicule on that most odious creature I call myself will amuse me. If I followed my own lights, I'd commit some crime or other to distract myself.

  For the past month, the most wonderful moment in Julien's life had been when he put his horse back in the stable. Korasov had expressly forbidden him to glance, on any pretext whatsoever, at the mistress who had abandoned him. But the sound she knew so well of that horse's hoofs, Julien's way of cracking his whip at the stable door to summon a groom, sometimes drew Mathilde over to her window, behind the curtain. The lace was so fine that Julien could see through. By looking up in a certain way from under the brim of his hat, he could see Mathilde's figure without seeing her eyes. Consequently, he said to himself, she can't see mine, and that doesn't count as looking at her.

  That evening, Mme de Fervaques behaved towards him exactly as if she had not received the philosophical, mystical and religious disquisition which he had handed to her porter that morning with such melancholy. On the previous day, chance had shown Julien how to be eloquent; he positioned himself in such a way as to see Mathilde's eyes. She, for her part, left the blue sofa the moment Mme de Fervaques arrived: she was deserting her habitual company. M. de Croisenois showed consternation at this latest whim; his obvious suffering took the keen edge off Julien's misery.

  This unexpected turn in his life made him talk like an angel;

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  and as self-regard worms its way even into hearts that are temples of the most august virtue: Mme de La Mole is right, the maréchale said to herself as she climbed into her carriage again, there is something distinguished about this young priest. It must be that, to start with, my presence intimidated him. In point of fact, everything one comes across in this house is rather frivolous; such virtue as I see here has had the helping hand of old age, and badly needed the frosts of passing years. This young man must have the discernment to have seen the difference; he writes well; but I very much fear that the entreaty he makes in his letter for me to enlighten him with my advice will turn out to be none other than a sentiment that is unaware of its own nature.

  Nevertheless, how many conversations have begun like this! What makes me augur well of this one is the difference between his style and that of the young men whose letters I have had the opportunity of reading. One can't help seeing spirituality, deep seriousness and real conviction in the prose of this young Levite; he must have the sweet virtue of Massillon. *

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  CHAPTER 27

  The best positions in the Church

  Services! talents! qualities! bah! Join a coterie.

  TELEMACHUS *

  THUS the thought of a bishopric was associated for the first time with Julien in the mind of a woman who was sooner or later to be handing out the best positions in the Church of France. This trump card she held would scarcely have swayed Julien; at that moment his thoughts did not rise to anything beyond his present plight. Everything made it worse; the sight of his room, for instance, had become unbearable to him. In the evening, when he returned to it with his candle, every piece of furniture, every little embellishment seemed to acquire a voice to acquaint him sourly with some fresh detail of his misery.

  That day as he came in: I've got forced labour to do, he said to himself with an eagerness he had not detected in himself for a long while; let's hope the second letter will be as tedious as the first.

  It was more so. What he was copying seemed to him so absurd that he found himself transcribing it line by line without thinking of the meaning.

  It's even more bombastic, he said to himself, than the official documents relating to the treaty of Munster, which my instructor in diplomacy made me copy out in London.

  Only then did he remember Mme de Fervaques's letters: he had forgotten to hand back the originals to the grave Spaniard Don Diego Bustos. He looked them out; they were genuinely almost as amphigoric as the ones written by the young Russian nobleman. Vagueness was total. They said everything, yet said nothing. This is the aeolian harp of style, Julien thought. In the midst of the most lofty thoughts on nothingness, death, infinity etc., the only thing real I discern is an appalling fear of ridicule.

  The solitary scene we have just summed up was repeated for

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  a fortnight on end. Falling asleep as he copied out a sort of commentary on the Apocalypse, going off the next day with a melancholy air to deliver a letter, putting his horse back in the stable with the hope of catching sight of Mathilde's dress, working, putting in an appearance at the Opera in the evening when Mme de Fervaques did not come to the Hôtel de La Mole, such were the monotonous events in Julien's life. It was more interesting when Mme de Fervaques called on the marquise; then he could snatch a glimpse of Mathilde's eyes under one of the wings of the widow's hat, and he waxed eloquent. His picturesque and sentimental phrases were beginning to take a turn that was at once more striking and more elegant.

  He was well aware that what he was saying was absurd in Mathilde's eyes, but he wanted her to be struck by the elegance of his diction. The more what I say is false, the more I must make her admire me, Julien thought; and then, with appalling nerve, he exaggerated certain aspects of nature. He soon observed that in order not to appear vulgar in the maréchale's eyes, he had above all to avoid straightforward and rational ideas. He went on in this vein, or else cut short his amplifications, according as he read success or indifference in the eyes of the two great ladies he had to please.

  All in all, his life was less dreadful than when his days were spent in idleness.

  But, he said to himself one evening, here I am copying out the fifteenth of these appalling disquisitions; the first fourteen have been faithfully remitted to Mme de Fervaques's porter. I shall have the honour of filling up all the pigeon-holes in her desk. And yet she treats me exactly as if I wasn't writing to her! How will all this end? Could my constancy bore her as much as it does me? You just have to admit that this Russian friend of Korasov's who was in love with the fair Quaker lady from Richmond was a terror in his time; it simply isn't possible to be more deadly.

  Like all the mediocre beings who chance to witness the manœuvres of a great general, Julien did not understand the first thing about the attack mounted by the young Russian on the heart of the fair Englishwoman. The first forty letters were designed merely to obtain forgiveness for having made so bold

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  as to write at all. The point was to get this gentle creature, who might perhaps be bored beyond measure, into the habit of receiving letters that were perhaps a trifle less insipid than her everyday life.

  One morning, Julien was handed a letter; he recognized Mme de Fervaques's crest, and broke the seal with a haste that would have seemed quite impossible to him a few days previously: it was only an invitation to dinner.

  He hastened to consult Prince Korasov's instructions. Unfortunately, the young Russian had tried to be as frivolous as Dorat, * when what was required was to be straightforward and intelligible; Julien was unable to surmise what stance he should adopt at Mme de Fervaques's dinner party.

  The drawing-room was of the utmost magnificence, gilded like the Gallery of Diana at the Tuileries, with oil paintings on the panelling. There were lighter patches on these pictures. Julien learned later that the subjects had struck the mistress of the house as lacking in propriety, and she had had the pictures corrected. * What a moral century! he thought.

  In the drawing-room he noticed three of the important figures who had taken part in composing the secret memorandum. One of them, Monsignor the Bishop of, -----, * Mme de Fervaques's uncle, held the list of ecclesiastical benefices, and rumour had it that he never refused his niece anything. What an enormous step forward I've taken, Julien said to himself with a melancholy smile, and how indifferent I am to it!
Here I am having dinner with the famous Bishop of -----.

  The dinner was mediocre and the conversation exasperating. This table is like the contents of a bad book, Julien thought. All the most important subjects of human thought are confidently tackled. But you have only to listen for three minutes to wonder which carries the day: the speaker's bombast or his appalling ignorance.

  The reader has doubtless forgotten that little man of letters called Tanbeau, the academician's nephew and a future professor, whose job it seemed to be to poison the salon at the Hôtel de La Mole with his base slander.

  It was through this little man that Julien had the first inkling that Mme de Fervaques, while not replying to his letters, might

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  well take an indulgent view of the sentiment that dictated them. M. Tanbeau's black soul was ravaged at the thought of Julien's successes; but since from another point of view a man of quality cannot be in two places at once, any more than a fool can, if Sorel becomes the mistress of the sublime maréchale, said the future professor to himself, she will find him an advantageous situation in the Church, and I shall be rid of him at the Hôtel de La Mole.

  Father Pirard also gave Julien lengthy sermons on his successes at the Hôtel de Fervaques. There was sectarian jealousy between the austere Jansenist and the Jesuit, revivalist and monarchist salon of the virtuous maréhale.