3 The French colonization of North Africa began in 1830. Algiers fell to the French on July 4, 1830.
The Red and the Black
Civilization has now eliminated risks, especially unexpected ones. If anyone talks about such things, he's smothered in witticisms; if they actually occur, no cowardliness is too low to accommodate our fears. Whatever insanity fear makes us commit, it's forgiven. A degenerate, boring epoch! What would Boniface de La Mole have said, lifting his severed head out of his tomb, if he had seen seventeen of his descendants letting themselves be herded off like sheep, to be guillotined two days later? Death was absolutely certain, but it would have exhibited a lack of taste to defend themselves and, at least, kill a Jacobin or two. Ah! In France's heroic age, in Boniface de La Mole's time, Julien would have been a squadron leader, and my brother would have been the young priest, with very good manners, and caution in his eyes, reason in his mouth." Several months earlier, Mathilde had given up hope of meeting anyone even faintly out of the ordinary. She had taken some pleasure in letting herself write to some of these young aristocrats. This inappropriate boldness, so reckless in a young girl, might well have dishonored her in the eyes of Monsieur de Croisenois, as it might also to his father, the Duke of Chaulnes, and all their family, friends, and followers, who would have seen the intended marriage broken off and would have wanted to know why. When she'd written such a letter, in those days, she'd been unable to sleep. But those letters were nothing but replies. Now she'd dared to say she was in love. It was she who had written first (such a shocking word!), and to a man from the lowest levels of society. This would guarantee, if she should be discovered, eternal dishonor. Which of the women who came to see her mother would dare take her side? What words could they use, repeating them from one drawing room to another, to soften society's frightful scorn? Even to say these things would have been ghastly, but to write them! "There are things one does not write," exclaimed Napoleon when he heard that Bailen4 had been surrendered to the Spanish, and on what terms. And it was Julien who had told her this story, as if teaching her a lesson in advance. But all this was more or less trivial: Mathilde's anguish had other causes. Putting aside the awful effect on society, the ineradicable, totally open stain of social contempt (since she had grossly offended against her class), Mathilde had written to a creature of a totally different sort than the de Cayluses, the de Luzs, or the de Croisenoises. The depths, the mysteriousness of Julien's character would have been frightening, even in striking up an ordinary, everyday relationship. But she was going to make him her lover, perhaps her master! "What won't he demand, if he ever has me under his thumb? Well! I'll say, as Medea did: 'In the midst of all these perils, I remain me!'5 "Julien has absolutely no reverence for noble blood," she believed. What's more, quite possibly he had no love whatever for her! In these final moments of terrible doubt, ideas of womanly pride occurred to her. "Everything has to be unique, for the kind of girl I am," she exclaimed impatiently. Then the pride they'd instilled in her, from her very cradle, began to struggle against virtue. And at just that moment, Julien's departure accelerated everything. (Characters like hers, fortunately, are very rare indeed.) That evening, very late, Julien was malicious enough to have the porter bring down an exceedingly heavy trunk, and the servant he summoned was Mademoiselle de La Mole's