1 Father of the hero in Le Cid, a noble old soldier who, as a true Cornelian, puts honor before everything.
The Red and the Black
La Moles would never risk it. This family is no longer what it was. They're so jealous of Mademoiselle de La Mole! Tomorrow there'd be four hundred drawing rooms ringing with her shame—and with such pleasure! "The servants gossip among themselves about the obvious preference I've been shown. I know it, I've heard them... "On the other hand, her letters! ... They might believe I'll have them on me. If they can surprise me in her room, they could take them. I'd have to deal with two, three, four men— who knows? But where would they find such men? Where can you find discreet servants, here in Paris? The law frightens them...By God! the de Cayluses, the de Luzes, the de Croisenoises themselves! Being there just then, and the stupid figure I'd cut, in the middle of them—that might tempt them. Watch out for what happened to Abélard,2 Monsieur Secretary! "So, by God! Gentlemen, you'll carry the scars of our combat; I'll slash your faces, as Caesar's soldiers cut up Pompey's men, at Pharsalia3...And as for the letters, I can find them a safe hiding place." Julien made copies of the last two, hid them in a volume of the library's beautiful Voltaire, and brought the originals to the post. When he returned: "What madness am I throwing myself into?" he asked himself, surprised and alarmed. He had spent an entire quarter of an hour without looking straight ahead, facing what was to happen next, that same night. "But if I don't do it, I'll despise myself afterward. This will linger on, my whole life long, as something questionable—and for me that sort of uncertainty is the bitterest misery of all. Wasn't that what I felt about Amanda's lover? I think I'd be far readier to forgive myself some simple crime: once I admitted it, I'd stop thinking about it. "Hah! I'll have been competing against a man bearing one of the best names in all France—and then cheerfully, of my own volition, I'll have said he was the better, I was the inferior one! It's plain enough: not to do this is cowardice. And that settles it," Julien exclaimed silently, jumping to his feet..."Besides, she's so very pretty. "If this isn't a betrayal, what madness she's committing for my sake! ... It's a puzzle, by God! So, gentlemen, it's up to me, just me, to turn the joke into a serious affair, and that's what I intend to do. "Yet what if they tie up my arms, as I'm coming into the room. Maybe they've set up some ingenious device. "Well, it's like a duel," he assured himself, laughing. "'There's a riposte for every sword stroke,' as my fencing teacher says, 'but God, who wants it over and done with, makes one of the two forget how it's done.' In any case, here's how I'll deal with them." He pulled his pistols out of his pocket and, even though they were charged and loaded, he readied them all over again. He still had several hours of waiting. In order to be doing something, Julien wrote to Fouqué: