The Red and the Black (60 page)

The marquis fell to musing deeply: If it comes to getting killed, he
sighed, this Sorel might be just as good as Norbert . . .

'Let's get into the carriage,' said the marquis as if to banish an unwelcome thought.

'Sir,' said Julien, 'while I was having this suit fitted, I learned the first page of today's
Quotidienne
off by heart.' The marquis took the newspaper. Julien recited his
piece without getting a single word wrong. 'Good,' said the marquis,
at his most diplomatic that evening; all this time the young man isn't
noticing the streets we're passing through.

Eventually they found themselves in a large drawing-room of rather
dismal appearance, partly panelled and partly hung with green velvet.
In the middle of the room a sullen footman was just finishing setting
up a large dinner-table, which he later converted into a conference
table by means of a huge sheet of green baize all covered in ink
stains, salvaged from some ministry or other.

The host was an enormous man whose name was never uttered; Julien
thought he looked and talked like someone who had just had a heavy
meal.

At a sign from the marquis,
Julien had remained at the far end of the table. To cover up his
embarrassment, he set about trimming some pens. Out of the corner of
his eye he counted seven speakers, but he only got a back view of
them. It struck him that two of them were addressing M. de La Mole as
an equal, while the others seemed more or less respectful.

A new figure came in unannounced. This is odd, thought Julien, they
don't announce people in this salon. Could it be that this precaution
is being taken in my honour? Everyone got up to greet the newcomer. He
was wearing the same extremely distinguished decoration as three of
the other people already in the room. They spoke in rather low voices.
To judge the newcomer, Julien was reduced to what he could glean from
his features and his general bearing. He was short and stocky, with
high colour, a glint in his eye, and no expression other than the
viciousness of a wild boar.

Julien's attention was sharply distracted by the almost immediate arrival of a quite different individual. He was a tall,

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very thin man wearing three or four waistcoats. His gaze spelled reassurance and his gestures civility.

He's the very image of the old Bishop of Besançon, thought Julien. He
was clearly a man of the Church, and he did not look more than fifty
or fifty-five; no one could have had a more unctuous expression.

The young Bishop of Agde appeared, and looked most astonished when,
on casting a glance over the people present, his eye alighted on
Julien. He had not spoken to him since the ceremony at Bray-le-Haut.
His look of surprise embarrassed and annoyed Julien. For goodness'
sake! thought the latter, will it always work to my disadvantage to
know someone? All these great lords I've never set eyes on before
don't intimidate me in the least, and this young bishop's stare
freezes me to the spot! There's no denying I'm a most peculiar and
most unlucky individual.

Soon a
small, very dark man came into the room with a great clatter, and
began talking as soon as he had stepped inside the door; he had a
swarthy complexion and a rather mad look about him. As soon as this
relentless talker arrived the others gathered into small groups,
seemingly to escape the boredom of listening to him.

As they moved away from the fireplace, people drew closer to the far
end of the table where Julien was sitting. His expression became more
and more embarrassed; for after all, try as he might, he could not
fail to hear, and inexperienced as he was, he understood the full
significance of the things that were being openly discussed; and how
dearly the high-ranking figures he appeared to be observing must have
wished them to remain secret!

Julien had already, working as slowly as possible, trimmed himself
some twenty pens; this resource was going to run out on him. He looked
in vain for an order in M. de La Mole's eyes; the marquis had
forgotten him.

What I'm doing is
ridiculous, Julien said to himself as he trimmed his pens; but people
with such insignificant faces, who have such important concerns
entrusted to them by others or by themselves, must be extremely
touchy. I have an unfortunate way of looking at people that is somehow
questioning and

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disrespectful, and it would surely annoy them. If I keep my eyes
resolutely lowered, I'll look as if I'm taking in their every word.

His embarrassment was acute: he was hearing some very strange things.

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The republic: for each individual today who would sacrifice
everything for the public good, there are thousands and millions whose
only experience is of their own enjoyment and their vanity. A man is
respected in Paris for his carriage, not his virtue.

NAPOLEON,
Chronicle

THE footman rushed in calling: 'His grace the Duke of -----'

'Be quiet, you
are
a fool,' said the duke as he came in. He said it so well, and with so
much majesty, that in spite of himself Julien decided that knowing
how to get angry with a footman summed up all the wisdom of this
important personage. Julien raised his eyes, then lowered them again at
once. He had surmised the newcomer's significance so well that he
trembled lest his glance be considered an indiscretion.

The duke was a man of fifty, dressed like a dandy, who walked as if
on springs. He had a narrow head, a big nose, and a curved profile
with all his features drawn forwards; no one could have had more noble
and more insignificant an air. His arrival was the sign for the
meeting to begin.

Julien was sharply
interrupted in his observations of physiognomy by the voice of M. de La
Mole. 'May I introduce Father Julien Sorel,' the marquis was saying.
'He's gifted with an astonishing memory; it's only an hour since I
told him about the mission he might be honoured with, and in order to
demonstrate his memory, he has learned the first page of
La Quotidienne
off by heart.'

'Ah! the Foreign News section written by poor old N-----,' said the
host. He seized the newspaper eagerly, and, giving Julien a look that
was comic, so hard was he trying to appear important, 'Speak, sir,' he
said.

There was a deathly hush, with
all eyes riveted on Julien; he recited so well that after twenty
lines: 'That'll do,' said the duke. The little man who looked like a
wild boar sat down. He was presiding, for he was no sooner seated than
he pointed out

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a card-table to Julien and signalled to him to bring it up close to
him. Julien settled himself at it with the wherewithal to write. He
counted twelve people seated round the green baize.

' M. Sorel,' said the duke, 'please withdraw into the next room; you'll be summoned back.'

The host took on a worried expression. 'The shutters aren't closed,'
he said in a half-whisper to his neighbour. 'There's no need to look
out of the window,' he called foolishly after Julien. Here I am in the
thick of a conspiracy at the very least, thought the latter.
Fortunately it isn't one of the kind that leads to the Place de Grève
^*
. Even if there were danger in it, I owe this and more besides to the
marquis. How glad I'd be if I were granted a chance to make up for
all the sorrow my follies may one day cause him!

All the time he was thinking of his follies and his misfortune, he
was looking at his surroundings in such as way as never to forget
them. Only then did he remember that he hadn't heard the marquis tell
the footman the name of the street, and the marquis had arranged for a
cab to bring them here, which was unheard of for him.

For a long while Julien was left to his reflections. He was in a room
hung with red velvet edged with wide gold braid. On the side table
there was a large ivory crucifix, and on the mantlepiece a gilt-edged
copy of M. de Maistre book
On the Pope
,
^*
magnificently bound. Julien opened it so as not to appear to be
listening. At times voices were raised very loud in the next room. At
last the door opened and he was called in.

'Consider, gentlemen,' said the chairman, 'that from now on we are
speaking in front of the Duke of-----. This gentleman', he said with a
gesture in Julien's direction, 'is a young Levite devoted to our holy
cause, who will easily be able, thanks to his astonishing memory, to
transmit everything we say, down to the last word.

'It's this gentleman's turn to speak,' he said, indicating the
individual with an unctuous expression who was wearing three or four
waistcoats. Julien thought it would have been more natural to refer to
the gentleman in the waistcoats by name. He took some paper and wrote
down a great deal.

(At this point the author would have liked to put a page of

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dots. 'That's not very accommodating,' said his publisher. 'And if
you don't accommodate your readers' tastes it spells death for a
frivolous work like this one.'

'Politics', replied the author, 'is a millstone round the neck of
literature, which sinks it in less than six months. Politics in the
midst of concerns of the imagination is like a pistol-shot in the
middle of a concert. The noise is harsh without being dynamic. It
doesn't blend in with the sound of any instrument. All this politics
will mortally offend one half of my readers and bore the other, even
though they found it quite special and dynamic in the morning
paper...'

'If your characters don't
talk politics', the publisher rejoined, 'they cease to be Frenchmen of
1830, and your book is no longer a mirror, as you would have it...')

The minutes taken by Julien were twenty-six pages long; here is a
very colourless extract from them, for it was necessary, as always, to
suppress the ridiculous excesses which would have struck readers as
odious or scarcely credible (see
La Gazette des Tribunaux
).
^*

The man in the waistcoats with the unctuous look (he was perhaps a
bishop) smiled frequently, and this gave his eyes with their flabby
lids a strange gleam and a less indecisive expression than usual. This
figure, whom they invited to speak first in front of the duke (but
which duke? Julien wondered), apparently to expound the different
viewpoints and carry out the function of assistant public prosecutor,
struck Julien as lapsing into the hesitancy and inability to draw firm
conclusions that such lawyers are often reproached with. During the
course of the discussion, the duke himself went so far as to reproach
him with this.

After several sentences of moralizing and indulgent philosophizing, the man in the waistcoats said:

'Noble England, guided by a great man, the immortal Pitt, spent forty
billion francs to stem the revolution. If this gathering will allow
me to allude quite frankly to a dismal subject, England did not
realize clearly enough that with a man like Bonaparte, especially when
all they had to put in his way was a handful of good intentions, the
only decisive factor would have been individual initiative...'

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'Ah! advocating assassination
^*
again!' said the host uneasily. 'Spare us your sentimental homilies,'
the chairman exclaimed in annoyance; his boar's eye glinted
ferociously. 'Carry on,' he said to the man in the waistcoats. The
chairman's cheeks and forehead turned crimson.

'Noble England', went on the spokesman, 'is crushed today, for before
an Englishman can buy his bread, he is obliged to pay the interest on
the forty billion francs used against the Jacobins. The country
hasn't got a Pitt any more...'

'She does have the Duke of Wellington,' said a military gentleman who assumed an air of great importance.

'Silence, I beg you, gentlemen,' called out the chairman; 'if we
argue any more, it'll have been pointless to call in M. Sorel.'

'We all know that you, sir, are not short of ideas,' said the duke,
glaring at the interruption, from a man who had been one of Napoleon's
generals. Julien realized that this comment alluded to something
personal and highly offensive. Everyone smiled; the turncoat general
looked beside himself with anger.

'There's no Pitt any more, gentlemen,' the spokesman went on, with the
discouraged look of a man despairing of getting his listeners to see
reason. And were there to be a new Pitt in England, you can't pull the
wool over a nation's eyes twice in the same manner...'

'That's why a victorious general, a Bonaparte, is henceforth impossible in ` France,' interrupted the military man again.

This time round, neither the chairman nor the duke dared get angry,
although Julien thought he read in their eyes that they would have
dearly liked to. They lowered their gaze, and the duke was content
with sighing in such a way as to be heard by all.

But the spokesman had taken umbrage.

'No one can wait for me to finish,' he said vehemently, completely
dropping the smiling courtesy and measured language which Julien
believed to be the expression of his character. 'No one can wait for
me to finish; I'm not being given any credit for the effort I'm making
not to offend anyone's ears, however long they may be. All right
then, gentlemen, I shall be brief.'

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