The Red and the Black (56 page)

books and from his memories of Verrières, was pursuing the fantasy of
a tender mistress who no longer thinks of her own existence once she
has given happiness to her lover, Mathilde's vanity was furious with
him.

As she had ceased to be bored
over the past two months, she no longer dreaded boredom; so with no
possible means of suspecting this, Julien had lost his chief
advantage.

I've got myself a master! said M
^lle
de La Mole to herself, in the throes of the blackest spite. He's a
man of honour, granted; but if I push his vanity to the limits, he'll
take his revenge by making known the nature of our relationship.
Mathilde had never before had a lover, and at this moment in life
which gives some tender illusions even to the most and of souls, she
was at the mercy of the most bitter reflections.

He has a tremendous hold over me, since he reigns through terror and
can inflict a dreadful punishment on me if I push him too far. The
mere idea of this was enough to drive M
^lle
de La Mole to
insult him. Courage was the foremost quality in her character. Nothing
could be more certain to cause her some degree of agitation and cure
her of a residual boredom that kept rearing its head than the idea
that her whole existence was staked on the toss of a coin.

On the third day, since M
^lle
de La Mole persisted in not looking at him, Julien followed her after
dinner into the billiard room, quite clearly against her will.

'Well, sir, so you think you've acquired some pretty strong rights
over me,' she said to him with barely restrained anger, 'since in
opposition to my quite plainly declared wishes, you presume to speak
to me...? Do you know that no one in the world has ever dared as
much?'

Nothing could have been more
amusing than the dialogue between these two lovers; without realizing
it they were impelled by feelings of the most dire hatred for each
other. As neither of them was long-suffering by nature, and besides,
they had the ways of polite society, they soon reached the point of
declaring plainly to each other that they were breaking it off for
good.

'I swear you eternal secrecy,' said Julien; 'I'd even add that I'll never address a word to you, if your reputation were not

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liable to suffer from so marked a change as that.' He bowed respectfully and left.

He did not find it too hard to carry out what he believed to be a
duty; he was a long way from believing himself deeply in love with M
^lle
de La Mole. Doubtless he did not love her three days previously, when
the lady had hidden him inside the large mahogany wardrobe. But
everything soon changed inside him as soon as he saw himself estranged
from her for ever.

His cruel memory began to go over the minutest details of that night which in real life had left him so cold.

During the very night after they had formally broken it off for ever
Julien almost went mad on finding himself obliged to admit to himself
that he loved M
^lle
de La Mole.

A terrible conflict followed this discovery: all his feelings were in turmoil.

Two days later, instead of lording it over M. de Croisenois, he was almost ready to fling his arms round him in tears.

Experience of misfortune gave him a glimmer of common sense; he
decided to set off for the Languedoc, packed his trunk and went to the
post-station.

He felt like
collapsing when, on arrival at the mail-coach office, he was told that
by some remarkable chance there was a seat the next day on the coach
for Toulouse. He reserved it and went back to the Hôtel de La Mole to
announce his departure to the marquis.

M. de La Mole had gone out. More dead than alive, Julien went into
the library to wait for him. Imagine his reaction on finding M
^lle
de La Mole there!

On seeing him appear she assumed an unmistakable expression of cruelty.

Carried away by his unhappiness, thrown by surprise, Julien committed
the weakness of saying to her, in the most tender and heartfelt of
tones: 'So you don't love me any more?'

'I'm appalled at having given myself to the first man who came along,' said Mathilde, weeping with rage at herself.

'
The first man who came along
!' exclaimed Julien, and he rushed towards an old sword from the Middle Ages which was kept in the library as a curiosity.

His suffering, which he considered extreme at the instant he

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had addressed M
^lle
de La Mole, had just been increased a hundredfold by the tears of
shame he saw her shed. He would have been the happiest of men to be
able to kill her.

At the very instant
when he had just drawn the sword with some difficulty from its
ancient sheath, Mathilde, happy at such a novel sensation, advanced
proudly towards him; her tears had dried up.

The image of the Marquis de La Mole his benefactor conjured itself up
vividly before Julien's eyes. Me, kill his daughter! he said to
himself, how appalling! He made as if to fling down the sword. It's
quite certain, he thought, that she'll burst out laughing at the sight
of this melodramatic gesture: the very idea served to restore all his
composure to him. He gazed at the blade of the old sword curiously,
as though looking for a rust mark, then he put it back in its sheath,
and, with the utmost calm, replaced it on the gilded bronze nail
which supported it.

This whole sequence, which was very slow towards the end, lasted a good minute; M
^lle
de La Mole watched him in amazement. So I've been on the verge of being killed by my lover! she was saying to herself.

This idea took her right back to the most heroic moments in the century of Charles IX
^*
and Henri III.

She stood motionless in front of Julien, who had just put back the
sword; she gazed at him with eyes which no longer held any hatred. It
must be admitted that she was terribly attractive at that moment:
certainly no woman had ever looked less like a Parisian doll (this
expression summed up Julien's great objection to the women in this
part of France).

I'm going to relapse
into some form of weakness for him, thought Mathilde; this time round
he would indeed believe himself my lord and master, after a relapse,
and at the precise moment when I've just spoken so sternly to him. She
fled.

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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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 M
^lle
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, M
^lle
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 M
^lle
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 M
^lle
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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