7 The historical novels of Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832)—Ivanhoe, et al.—enjoyed immense popularity in France, contributing to the vogue of historical novels and plays in France.
Chapter Ten: Queen Marguerite
Julien's vanity was flattered. A woman raised in an environment so full of honor and respect, and someone who, according to the academician, led her whole family around by their noses, had thought it worthwhile to talk to him, and in a way that came rather close to friendliness. "No, I was wrong," he thought, later on. "This isn't intimacy. All I am is someone to whom she can tell this tragedy: she needs to speak about it. I'm considered a scholar, in this family. Well, I'm going to read Brantôme, d'Aubigné, l'Etoile.8 Then I'll be able to argue about some of these stories Mademoiselle de La Mole's been telling me. I want to stop playing this role of passive confidant." Gradually, these conversations with the girl—who carried herself with such a sense of importance, and at the same time with such ease—became more interesting. He forgot his sorrowful role as a working-class revolutionary. He found her knowledgeable, and even rational. The opinions she held, in the garden, were very different from those she exhibited in the drawing room. At times she showed him an enthusiasm, and an openness, that were in absolute contrast to her usual manner, so lofty and so cold. "Those sixteenth-century Wars of the League are France's heroic era," she was saying to him one day, her eyes glittering with intelligence and spirit. "Everyone was fighting for something they wanted, trying to make their party triumphant, and not just to ploddingly earn a medal, the way they did in your emperor's time. You'll surely agree there was less egoism, and less pettiness. I love that time." "And Boniface de La Mole was its hero," he said. "At least he was loved, as perhaps it's sweet to be loved. What woman alive today wouldn't be horrified to touch her lover's chopped-off head?" Madame de La Mole called to her daughter. To be useful, hypocrisy must be hidden, and Julien, as we have seen, had made Mademoiselle de La Mole more or less a confidante of his Napoleon worship. Now alone in the garden: "There's the huge advantage they have over us," Julien told himself. "Their ancestors' history lifts them above vulgar feelings, and they don't always have to focus on where their bread is coming from! What misery!" he added, bitterly. "I'm not worthy of thinking about these great matters. My life is nothing but a succession of hypocrisies, because I haven't got an income of a thousand francs, with which to buy my bread." "And what are you dreaming about, sir?" asked Mathilde, who had come running back. Julien was tired of self-contempt. His pride led him to tell her, frankly, the thoughts he'd been having. It made him blush quite violently, speaking of his poverty to someone so very rich. He tried to make clear, by his proud tone, that he was not asking for a thing. Mathilde had never thought him so handsome; his expression conveyed a sensitivity and an openness he'd often lacked. Less than a month later, Julien was walking, intensely thoughtful, in the de La Mole garden; his face no longer bore the hardness, the philosophic arrogance, imprinted on it by long-continued feelings of inferiority. He had just brought Mademoiselle de La Mole to the drawing room door: she was claiming to have hurt her foot, running with her brother. "She leaned on my arm in such a peculiar way!" Julien said to himself. "Am I an arrogant puppy, or can she really have taken a liking to me? She listens to me so sweetly, even when I'm telling her what suffering my pride causes me! She, who's so haughty with everyone! They'd be