8 An officer executed for conspiring against the government. Stendhal saw Caron, like Fontan and Magalon, as a victim of the oppressive excesses of the Bourbons. Colmar: a small town in Alsace.
The Red and the Black
post office will open my letter. .. no, gentlemen." He went to the Protestant bookseller, bought an enormous Bible, hid Mathilde's letter, carefully and ingeniously, in the binding, had everything wrapped up, and sent his package via stagecoach, addressed to one of Fouqué's workmen; even the man's name was unknown to anyone in Paris. That done, he went happily, light-footedly back to the de La Mole house. "Our turn, now!" he exclaimed silently, as he turned the key and locked himself into his room. He threw off his black suit. "Really, Mademoiselle," he wrote to Mathilde, "Mademoiselle de La Mole writes, and uses her father's servant, Arsène, to deliver an exceedingly seductive letter to a poor carpenter from the Juras, surely to have fun at his simpleminded expense..." And then he copied out the plainest, most revealing sentences from the letter he'd just received. His letter would have done honor to the cautious diplomatic skills of the Chevalier de Beauvoisis. It was still only ten o'clock. Drunk with happiness and a sense of his own power, all very new to a poor devil, Julien went to the Italian Opera House. He heard his friend Géronimo singing. Never had music exalted him to such heights. He was godlike.
Chapter Fourteen: A Young Girl's Thoughts
Chapter Fourteen: A Young Girl's Thoughts Such bepuzzzlement! What sleepless nights! God in heaven! Am I going to make myself contemptible? He himself will scorn me. But he's leaving, he's going away. —Alfred De Musset1 It had not been easy for Mathilde to write. No matter what had awakened her interest in Julien, he'd soon come to dominate that pride which, from the first moment she'd become aware of it, had ruled, solitary, in her heart. Her haughty, cold spirit had been carried, for the very first time, into passionate feeling. But if it dominated over her pride, it remained loyal to that pride's customary behavior. Two months of internal struggle, and of new sensations, in a word, renovated her entire moral existence. Mathilde believed she was reaching happiness. This vista, all-powerful for courageous hearts bound to superior minds, had long been struggling against both her personal dignity and her sense of everyday responsibilities. One day she went to her mother, at seven in the morning, asking for permission to hide herself at Villequier. The marquise didn't bother to answer, suggesting only that the girl go back to bed. This was a final effort by ordinary common sense and deference to received notions. Fear of doing wrong and offending against the most sacred beliefs of the de Cayluses, the de Luzes, and the de Croisenoises, were hardly deeply seated in her soul. She did not think such people had been fashioned to understand her; had it been a question of buying a carriage, or a piece of property, she would have consulted them. Her true fear was that Julien might be disappointed in her. And perhaps she also worried: Was he only apparently rather than truly superior? She detested lack of character: this was her single objection to the handsome young men who surrounded her. The more gracefully they made jokes about whatever was not in fashion (or which tried to be fashionable, but did it badly), the lower they fell in her eyes. They were courageous, and that was all. "And still, just how brave, really?" she asked herself. "In duels, but duels are only a ritual. Duels are totally predictable, even as to what one says, falling to the ground. Stretched out on the green grass, hand on heart, the other combatant must be most nobly pardoned, and final words sent to a lovely one left behind (often an imaginary) beloved, who's likely to go to a ball on the day the fallen one dies, to keep from arousing suspicion. "It's one thing to face danger bravely, leading a squadron into battle, shining steel all around, but what about danger that's solitary, strange, unpredictable, and genuinely ugly? "Alas!" Mathilde told herself. "At Henry III's court there were men whose characters were as lofty as their birth! Ah, if Julien had fought at Jarnac, or at Montcontour, I'd have no doubts. In those strong, forceful times, the French were not dressed-up dolls. The day of battle, really, was the least of their problems. "Their lives were not all wrapped around, like an Egyptian mummy, confined in some common covering, shared by everyone, always the same. Yes," she added, "it took more genuine courage to go home alone, an hour before midnight, leaving the Soissons mansion2 where Catherine de Médici lived, all thronging with cutthroats, than it does today to go running off to Algeria.3 A man's life, then, involved taking one chance after another.