3 A famous actress of the Parisian theaters.
The Red and the Black
Paris. He was able to demonstrate, fairly easily, by showing the marquis some documents newly arrived from Normandy, that taking care of the Normandy lawsuits would force him to defer his departure for Languedoc. "I'm very relieved you're not going," the marquis informed him when they were done talking business. "I like seeing you." Julien left; the remark embarrassed him. "And I'm going to seduce his daughter—me! Perhaps her marriage to de Croisenois will be impossible—a marriage that glows in Monsieur de La Mole's future. He may not become a duke himself, but his daughter will be a duchess." Julien thought about leaving for Languedoc, in spite of Mathilde's letter, in spite of the excuses he'd made to the marquis. That ray of virtue quickly flickered out. "How good of me," he told himself, "me, a plebeian, to take pity on a family of such high rank! Me, who the Duke de Chaulnes calls a mere servant! How does the marquis build up his immense fortune? By mortgaging some of his income as soon as he learns, at court, that the next day there'll be what looks like a coup d'état. And I, thrown to the lowest rungs by that harsh stepmother, Providence, me to whom she gave a noble heart and absolutely no income—which means no bread, to put it exactly, no bread at all —me, to turn down pleasure when it's offered to me! Clear water seeking to quench my thirst, in this burning desert of mediocrity which I cross so painfully! Good Lord, I'm not so stupid as that! Everyone for himself, in this desert of egoism, better known as life." And he recalled looks of disdain cast on him by Madame de La Mole, and especially by the ladies, her friends. The pleasure of triumphing over the Marquis de Croisenois was the final touch: his memory of virtue vanished. "Oh, how I wish he were furious!" said Julien. "How confidently I'd slash him with a sword, now." And he performed a deft maneuver with an imaginary weapon. "Before I could do that, I was a pedant, taking vulgar advantage of what little courage I had. After that letter, I am his equal. "Yes," he told himself, with infinite delight and slowly measuring out his unspoken words, "our worth, de Croisenois and I, has now been weighed, and the scale favors the poor carpenter from the Juras. "Fine!" he exclaimed to himself. "That will be the signature on my reply. Don't you go thinking, Mademoiselle de La Mole, that I'm forgetting what I am. I'm going to make you understand, and make you feel in your very bones, that you're betraying a fine descendant of the famous Guy de Croisenois, who followed Saint Louis4 to the Crusades, in favor of a carpenter's son." Julien could not restrain his joy. He had to go down to the garden. His room, into which he had locked himself, seemed too narrow for him to draw a breath. "Me, a poor peasant from the Juras," he repeated over and over to himself, "me, forever condemned to wearing this dreary black suit! Alas! Twenty years ago, I'd have worn a uniform like theirs! In those days, a man like me was either dead, or else he was a general at age thirty- six. "The letter, which he held folded in his hand, endowed him with the height and bearing of a hero. "Of course, these days it's true that, wearing such a black suit, at age forty you have a salary of a hundred thousand francs and you wear the noblest decoration in the land, like the Bishop of Beauvais.