2 For Danton, see note for p. 1, Epigraph. Danton was in fact quite ugly, and guilty of complicity in much of the violence of the Terror before he himself became its victim.
The Red and the Black
master, awaiting further orders. His eyes peered straight into hers, strange, fixed, and steady, but then he moved quickly away, with obvious haste. "He's really so handsome," Mathilde said to herself, emerging from her half-dream state, "and he eulogizes ugliness! He's always looking out, not in! He's not like Caylus or Croisenois. This Sorel looks a good deal like my father when he does such a good imitation of Napoleon, at a ball." She'd completely forgotten Danton. "I'm most definitely bored tonight." She grasped her brother's arm and, to his great regret, forced him to walk around the ballroom. She conceived the notion of listening in on Julien's conversation with Altamira, the man under a death sentence. There was a huge crowd. She managed to come up to them just when Altamira was about to take an ice from a tray. He was still speaking to Julien, but half turned away. Seeing a man's arm, clothed in an embroidered suit, taking the ice directly next to his, he grew excited. He turned completely around, the better to see the person to whom this arm belonged. And immediately his eyes, so noble and so naïve, took on an expression of casual disdain. "You see that man?" he said to Julien, his voice very low. "That's the Prince d'Araceli, the Ambassador of ———. This morning he requested that your minister of foreign affairs, Monsieur de Nerval,3 grant my extradition. Look, there the minister is, right over there, playing whist. Monsieur de Nerval is likely to hand me over, since back in 1816 we gave you some of your conspirators. If they do send me back to my king, I'll be dead in twenty-four hours. And it will be one of these handsome fellows with mustaches who will arrest me." "Scoundrels!" exclaimed Julien, rather more loudly. Mathilde had not lost a syllable of their conversation. Her boredom had vanished. "Not such scoundrels," replied Count Altamira. "I've been talking to you about myself, so I could conjure up a living picture. Look at Prince d'Araceli. Every five minutes he stares at his Golden Fleece medal.4 He's never recovered from his delight, seeing that geegaw on his chest. When you come right down to it, this poor fellow's an anachronism. A hundred years ago, a Golden Fleece was a genuine mark of distinction, but in those days it would have been far above his reach. Today, among well-born people, you really have to be an Araceli to be so immensely pleased. To get it for himself, he'd have killed everybody in an entire city." "And is this the price he paid?" Julien asked nervously. "Not quite," said Altamira coldly. "He probably tossed into the river thirty or so of the richest landowners in his country, who passed as liberals." "What a monster!" Julien said once again. Mademoiselle de La Mole, bending her head toward them, fascinated, was so near him that her lovely hair came very close to brushing against his shoulder. "You're terribly young!" Altamira responded. "I've told you that I have a married sister, living in Provence. She's still pretty, and good, and sweet; she's an excellent mother to her children, faithful to all her responsibilities, pious but not a fanatic." "Where is he going with this?" wondered Mademoiselle de La Mole.