7 The Conti family were a branch of the Condé family (see note for p. 38, l. 33), Princes of the Blood Royal.
The Red and the Black
An expression of pleasure replaced that of boredom. Marquis de Croisenois, who had gone on talking to her, felt he was being successful, and his glibness was heightened. "What could a spiteful person find to criticize, in this maxim of mine?" Mathilde asked herself. "I'd tell this critic: 'A baron's title, a vicomte's, these are things that can be bought. A medal they simply give you: my brother just got one, and what has he ever done? A promotion isn't hard to get. Ten years in the garrison, or a relative who's minister of war, and you're a squadron leader, like Norbert. Or an immense fortune! ... That's the hardest to get, so it's the worthiest.' How funny! It's exactly the opposite of everything they tell you, in books...So! If it's wealth you want, you marry Rothschild's daughter. "My witticism really has some depth. A death sentence is still the only thing no one will suggest that you look for." "Do you know Count Altamira?" she asked Monsieur de Croisenois. She seemed to be coming back from very far away, and this query had so little connection with everything the poor marquis had been saying to her, for the past five minutes, that his poise was shaken. But he was a man of spirit, and well known on that score. "Mathilde's rather odd," he thought. "That's a nuisance—but she'll bring her husband such a superb social position! I don't know how the Marquis de La Mole manages it. He's got ties to the best people in both parties; he's a man who really couldn't be pulled down. Anyway, Mathilde's strangeness might well pass for genius. When there's such noble birth, and so much money, genius is not at all ridiculous—and how distinguished she is! Also, when she wants to, she can exhibit such intelligence, mixed with character and a fine sense of social timing, that her manners, really, are quite perfect..." Doing two things at the same time, and doing them well, is difficult, so the marquis answered her question with a blank face, as if reciting back a lesson: "Who doesn't know poor Altamira?" And then he told her about his failed conspiracy—a ridiculous, absurd affair. "Highly absurd," said Mathilde, as if speaking to herself. "But he has acted. I'd like to see a man. Bring him to me," she said to the deeply shocked marquis. Count Altamira was one of the most open admirers of Mademoiselle de La Mole's haughtiness, which approached impertinence. He thought her one of the most beautiful women in Paris. "How lovely she'd look, on a throne!" he said to Monsieur de Croisenois, letting himself be brought to her without the slightest opposition. There is no shortage, in this world, of people wanting to create a fixed rule, which declares that nothing is so unfashionable as a conspiracy: it smells of Jacobinism. And could there be anything uglier than a failed Jacobin? Mathilde glanced at Monsieur de Croisenois as if amused by Altamira's liberalism. But she listened to him with pleasure. "A conspirator at a ball, that's a nice contrast," she thought. This one, with his thick black mustache, seemed to her like a sleeping lion. But she soon realized that his mind supported only a single intellectual position: utility, admiration for whatever is useful. Altamira, who was still a young man, thought nothing so worthy of his attention as something, anything, that could bring bicameral legislative government to his country. So he cheerfully left Mathilde, the most seductive woman at the ball, when he saw, coming into the room, a Peruvian general.
Chapter Eight: Which Medals Are Honorable?
Despairing of Europe, poor Altamira had been reduced to imagining that, when the United States of South America grew large and powerful, they would be able to give Europe back the liberty that Mirabeau, and the French Revolution, had given it.8 A whirlwind of young men with mustaches was approaching Mathilde. She was very much aware that Altamira had not been seduced, and was irritated by his departure; she could see his black eyes gleaming as he talked to the Peruvian general. She contemplated the crowd of young Frenchmen with a profound seriousness none of her rivals could imitate. "Which of them," she thought, "might be capable of having himself sentenced to death, even under the most favorable of circumstances?" The look on her face flattered the stupid among them, but made the rest uncomfortable. They dreaded an explosion of sharply pointed words, extremely hard to respond to. "Noble birth gives a man a hundred qualities, the absence of which would offend me. I can see this in Julien, for example," thought Mathilde. "But good birth weakens those characteristics of the soul which can get a man sentenced to death." Just then, someone near her said: "Count Altamira is the Prince of San Nazaro-Pimentel's second son. It was a Pimentel who tried to save Conradin,9 decapitated in 1268. It's one of the noblest families in Naples." "There," said Mathilde to herself. "That's a really lovely proof of my maxim. High birth deprives a man of the strength of character without which no one can get himself condemned to death! So I'm fated, tonight, to babble nonsense. Since I'm a mere woman, no different from the others, well! I've got to dance." She yielded to the Marquis de Croisenois's urging: he'd been asking her for the last hour to dance with him. To keep from thinking about her bad luck as a philosopher, Mathilde wanted to be perfectly seductive. Monsieur de Croisenois was rapturously happy. But neither dancing, nor any desire to please one of the most handsome men at court— nothing could distract her. No one could have had a greater success. She was the queen of the ball, and she knew it, but to her it did not matter. "What a washed-out life I'd experience, with someone like Croisenois!" she said to herself as, an hour later, he led her back to her place..."Where am I to find pleasure," she added sorrowfully, "if, after six months away, I can't find it right at the center of a ball which every woman in Paris would envy me? And yet, I'm surrounded by tokens of high respect from the very best society I can possibly imagine. Only a very few of these noblemen come from the bourgeosie,10 and there may be one or two Juliens. And then," she added, her sadness swelling, "what advantages Fate has given me—celebrity, wealth, youth! Alas! I've been given everything, except happiness. "The most dubious of my advantages, still, are exactly those of the people who've been talking to me all night long. I have a brain, I think, because it's quite clear I make everyone afraid of me. If they have the nerve to broach a serious topic, five minutes later they're completely out of breath, as if they've discovered something truly momentous, when it's something I've been saying over and over for an hour. I'm beautiful, that's an advantage I have,