13 Refers to the failed liberal uprisings in both countries in the early 1820s.
The Red and the Black
Chapter Ten: Queen Marguerite Love! What madness won't you descend to, in order to bring us pleasure? —Letters of a Portuguese Nun1 Julien reread his letters. When the dinner bell was heard: "How ridiculous I must have seemed, to this Parisian doll," he said to himself. "What idiocy to tell her what I was actually thinking! Speaking the truth, here, was truly worthy of me. "But why come and ask me such private questions? She was acting most indiscreetly. It's bad manners. My thoughts on Danton are no part of the work her father pays me for." Coming into the dining room, Julien's ill humor was shunted to the side, seeing Mademoiselle de La Mole wearing such deep mourning, which was all the more remarkable because no one else in the family was wearing black. After dinner, he realized that the flooding enthusiasm he had felt the entire day had completely left him. Luckily, the academician who knew Latin had been dining with them. "Here's a man who wouldn't likely make fun of me," Julien told himself, "if, as I suspect it is, asking Mademoiselle de La Mole about her mourning would be a stupid blunder." Mathilde had been looking at him very strangely. "Here, then, is female flirtatiousness, Parisian style, exactly as Madame de Rênal described it for me," he told himself. "I wasn't pleasant to her this morning. I didn't give in to the silly notion of having a chat with her. And that made her think better of me. I have no doubt there'll be the devil to pay on that score! Later on, her arrogant contempt will know exactly how to take vengeance. Let her do her worst. How different she is from the woman I've lost. What natural charm that was! What innocence! I knew her thoughts before she did, I saw them as they were being born. The only enemy I had, in her heart, was the fear that her children might die. It was rational, natural affection, kind and gentle even for me, though it made me suffer. I've been a fool. The ideas I'd formed about Paris stopped me from appreciating that sublime woman. "God in heaven, what a difference! What do I find here? Dry, arrogant vanity, every shade of narcissism, and nothing more." The diners rose from the table. "Let's not have anyone else snaring my academician," Julien said to himself. He went over to him, as they were going into the garden, took on a pleasant, dutiful air, and shared his fury at the success of Victor Hugo's modernist drama, Hernani.2 "If only we still lived in the era when bad art could be banned!..." he said. "Then Hugo would never have dared," exclaimed the academician, with a gesture worthy of the great tragedian, Talma. As they were discussing flowers, Julien quoted lines from Virgil's Georgica, and affirmed that nothing was so fine as the tame, mediocre verse of Jacques Delille. In short, he flattered the academician right and left. This accomplished, he noted, most casually: "I dare say Mademoiselle de La Mole has had some money from a deceased uncle, for whom she's wearing mourning." "Ha! You live in this house," said the academician, suddenly interrupting their stroll, "and you don't know how crazy she is? Really, it's most peculiar that her mother allows her to do