3 Stendhal has again borrowed a name from French history for his duke (see note for pg. 101, l. 11).
Chapter Eight: Which Medals Are Honorable?
and whether the neighborhood is as pretty as they say. So many reputations are so totally undeserved!" Julien did not reply. "Come to the ball with my brother," she added, very dryly. Julien bowed respectfully. "And this," he thought, "even at a ball, is what I owe every member of this family. I'm paid to handle the family's business, am I not? God only knows if what I'll say to the daughter might not conflict with the father's plans, or the brother's, or the mother's! This is exactly like a ruling prince's court. You need to be an absolute nothing, and yet no one should have any reason to complain about you. "How I dislike this towering little girl!" he thought, watching mademoiselle walk over to where her mother had summoned her, so she could be presented to the wives of some of their friends. "Whatever fashion she assumes, she overdoes it; her dress is falling off her shoulders...She's even paler than before she went on that trip...Her hair is absolutely colorless, it's so blonde! You could say the daylight goes right through it! ... And what arrogance, when she greets people, when she just looks at them! She holds herself, she moves, like a queen!" Mademoiselle de La Mole had just called to her brother, precisely when he was leaving the drawing room. Count Norbert came over to Julien. "My dear Sorel," he said, "where would you like me to fetch you from, at midnight, when I come to escort you to Monsieur de Retz's ball? He himself asked me, in very plain terms, to bring you." "I'm well aware to whom I owe so many kindnesses," replied Julien, bowing very deeply. His mood was so foul that, there being nothing to take offense at, in Norbert's polite, even concerned, manner of speech, he directed his annoyance toward his own response. It seemed to him clouded by a vulgar servility. That evening, arriving at the ball, he was struck by the magnificence of the de Retz mansion. The entranceway courtyard was roofed over by a huge, crimson-colored canvas awning, dotted with golden stars. Nothing could have been more elegant. Underneath the awning, the courtyard had been transformed into an orange-tree grove, with flowering oleanders in bloom. All the containers had been carefully set very deep, so orange trees and oleanders seemed to be growing right out of the ground. The pathway on which the carriages drove had been sanded. The whole thing seemed, to our provincial hero, utterly extraordinary. This kind of splendor was new to him: in a flash his mood changed from foul to fair. Norbert had been happy, as they traveled to the ball, but Julien had seen nothing but darkness. The moment they drove into the courtyard, they switched places. Norbert paid attention only to those few details, in the midst of such magnificence, which no one had been able to take care of. He calculated the cost of everything, and the higher the total went, the more jealous he seemed to grow—and, as Julien noticed, the worse his mood became. Our hero, already enchanted, admiring, and almost shy from so great a flood of emotion, reached the first drawing room, where people were dancing. The press of the crowd was so great, on the way to the second drawing room, that he had to stay where he was. (This second room was decorated to look like Grenada's Alhambra.) "She's the queen of the ball, you can't deny it," a young, mustached man was saying; his shoulder was pressed against Julien's chest. "Mademoiselle Fourmont, who's been the reigning beauty all winter," said the man next to him, "knows she has to settle for second place. Just see what a face she's making."
The Red and the Black
"Really, Fourmont's set all her sails, determined to please. Look—look at that gracious smile, the instant the dance sets her off by herself. On my honor, that's simply hysterical." "Mademoiselle de La Mole keeps her pleasure extremely well in hand, even though she's fully aware what a triumph she's having. She seems to be trying not to appear too pleasant, if she does speak to anyone." "Now there's the art of seduction!" Julien tried, unsuccessfully, to catch a glimpse of this seductive woman: seven or eight taller men blocked his view. "There's a good deal of the coquette in that terribly grand modesty," said the young man with a mustache. "And those big blue eyes, which she lowers so slowly, just when you think they're about to betray her," said his neighbor. "My Lord, how very cunning." "Notice how, next to her, the lovely Mademoiselle Fourmont seems downright common," said a third man. "That modesty is really saying: 'How nice I could be to you, if you were the man worthy of me!'" "And just who could be worthy of the sublime Mathilde?" said the first man. "Some royal prince, handsome, witty, strong, a military hero, and no older than twenty." "The Emperor of Russia's natural son...for whom, in recognition of such a marriage, a kingdom would be created...or perhaps, in the end, Count de Thaler, who looks like a dressed- up peasant..." The doorway had opened. Julien was able to go in. "If she strikes these toy soldiers as so remarkable," he thought, "she's worth having a look at. I'll find out what these fellows imagine is true perfection." While he was trying to catch her eye, Mathilde looked at him. "Duty calls," Julien told himself. But he was not feeling wretched, though his enjoyment could not be told from his face. His curiosity grew, the nearer he came, and it grew still quicker on account of Mathilde's gown, extremely low on her shoulders—a sensation, however, that did not do much for his self-esteem. "She's lovely, yes, but she's also very young," he thought. There were still five or six young men, among them those he had heard discussing her, between him and Mathilde. "You, sir," she said to Julien, "you've been here the entire winter. Isn't this really the best ball of the season?" He did not reply. "I think," she went on, "this is a fine Coulon they're dancing, and these ladies are doing it to perfection." The other young men turned around to see who might be the happy man from whom, clearly, she wanted to have an answer. It was not an encouraging one. "I wouldn't know how to properly judge, mademoiselle. I spend my life writing: this is the first ball of such magnificence I've ever seen." The young, mustached men were horrified. "How wise you are, Monsieur Sorel," came her reply, her interest more marked. "You see all these balls, all these festivities, like a philosopher—like Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Such extravagance astonishes, but it does not seduce you." The mention of Rousseau cooled his mind and drove all illusions from his heart. His mouth framed a look of disdain, perhaps a bit exaggerated. "Jean-Jacques Rousseau," he answered, "is simply a fool when he tries to analyze high society. He knows nothing about it; he displays the soul of an upstart servant."
Chapter Eight: Which Medals Are Honorable?
"He wrote The Social Contract,4" she said worshipfully. "But even as he argues for a republic, and the overthrow of monarchical ranks and stations, this upstart is absolutely drunk with joy if a duke condescends to alter his after- dinner walk so he can accompany one of his friends." "Oh, yes: at Montmorency,5 when the Duke de Luxembourg walked toward Paris, with a certain Monsieur Coindet..." replied Mademoiselle de La Mole, with the unrestrained delight of her very first bookish pedantry. Her knowledge intoxicated her, almost like the scholar who proves the existence of King Feretrius.6 Julien's glance remained piercing, severe. Mathilde had experienced a rush of enthusiasm; her coparticipant's chilliness deeply shocked her. Even more, she was astonished, because she was accustomed to having exactly this effect on others. Just then, Marquis de Croisenois pushed his way toward Mademoiselle de La Mole. He paused for a moment, three feet away, unable to get through the crowd. He looked at her, laughing at how he was being hindered. Young Marquise de Rouvray was near him; she was Mathilde's cousin. She held on to her husband's arm; they had been married only two weeks before. Marquis de Rouvray, quite as young as his wife, loved her with all the wild affection that overcomes a man who, entering upon a marriage of convenience, arranged from beginning to end by lawyers, finds a wonderfully beautiful bride. Monsieur de Rouvray was to become a duke, on the death of an exceedingly old uncle. As the Marquis de Croisenois, unable to move toward her, looked at Mathilde, laughing, she let her big eyes, celestially blue, linger on him and his neighbors. "Could anything be as tepid," she was saying to herself, "as the whole lot of them! There's Croisenois, who'd like to marry me; he's sweet, polite, his manners are as perfect as de Rouvray's. Except for how boring they are, these are impressive people. He'd go to balls with me, looking exactly this narrow- minded, this perfectly pleased. A year after the wedding, my carriage, my hair, my clothes, my house sixty miles from Paris—it would all be as fine as it could be, precisely what ought to make an upstart, like perhaps the Countess de Roivelle, simply die of envy. And then...?" Just thinking about it bored her. Marquis de Croisenois reached her and began a conversation, but she was lost in dreams and did not listen. For her, the sound of his words mingled with the droning noise of the ball. Her eyes followed mechanically after Julien, who had moved off, respectful but proud and discontented. She noticed, off in a corner, away from the circulating crowd, Count Altamira, under a death sentence in his own country; the reader has already heard of him. In the reign of Louis XIV, one of his ancestors had married a Prince de Conti;7 this connection helped protect him against the Congregation of the Holy Virgin's police. "Nothing can so distinguish a man as a death sentence," thought Mathilde. "It's the only thing one can't buy. "Ah! What I just said to myself was indeed very well said! What a pity it didn't pop out when it could have earned me a reputation!" She had too much taste to toss a prefabricated witticism into a conversation, but she also had too much vanity not to be delighted at herself.