4 Rousseau's sentimental novel of love, thought risqué in some circles. The title alludes to Abélard's Héloïse (see note for p. 320, l. 28).
She had decided that if he were courageous enough to come to her, via the gardener's ladder, as she had directed he should, she would be entirely his. But never were such tender words spoken more coldly and politely. To this point, their rendezvous had been utterly frigid. It was almost enough to turn love into something detestable. What a lesson in morality, for a young, careless girl! Was a moment like this worth the pain of losing one's whole future? After long hesitation, which an observer might have thought caused by strong distaste— so hard is it for a woman to abandon her sense of what she owes herself, even in yielding to a will equally strong—Mathilde ended by becoming his loving mistress. In truth, their ecstasies were a bit willed. Passionate love was still a model they were imitating, rather than something real. Mademoiselle de La Mole felt that she had fulfilled her duty to herself and to her lover. "The poor boy," she told herself, "has demonstrated perfect bravery; he ought to be happy; or else I'm the one with a deficient character." But she wished she could buy off, in return for an eternity of misfortunes, the cruel necessity in which she found herself caught up. In spite of the horrible violence she was doing to herself, she remained absolutely in control of her words. There was no regret, no reproach, to spoil this night that seemed to Julien strange rather than happy. What a difference, Good Lord! from his final twenty-four hours in Verrières! "These lovely Parisian manners have acquired the secret of spoiling everything, even love," he told himself, most unfairly. He shaped these reflections while standing in one of the large mahogany armoires, which he'd gone into at the first sounds heard in the adjoining rooms, which belonged to Madame de La Mole. Mathilde went to mass with her mother, the maids were soon out of the rooms, and Julien escaped quite easily, before they returned to finish their work. He mounted his horse and hunted up the most solitary parts of a forest close to Paris. He remained far more amazed than happy. The sort of happiness that now and then filled his heart was like that of a young second lieutenant, who, after an astonishing battle, has just been made a colonel, on the spot, by the commanding general. He felt himself borne to an immense height. Everything that had been above him, the night before, was now at his level or even below him. Little by little, the farther he got from Paris, the more his happiness grew. If he had no tenderness in his soul, it was because—however strange the words may seem—Mathilde, in everything she had done with him, had been fulfilling a duty. She had experienced nothing unforeseen in all that happened during their night together, except the misery and shame she'd found, instead of the absolute felicity of which novels had told her. "Was I wrong? Was I not in love with him?" she asked herself.
I now mean to be serious; —it is time, Since laughter nowadays is deemed too serious. A jest at vice by virtue's called a crime. —Byron, Don Juan She did not come down to dinner. Later, she appeared in the drawing room, very briefly, but did not look at Julien. Her conduct seemed to him strange. "But," he thought, "I don't know their customs; she'll give me some good reason for these things." All the same, impelled by the strongest curiosity, he studied Mathilde's expression, and could not conceal from himself that she seemed wry and nasty. This was obviously not the same woman who, the night before, had enjoyed—or had feigned—an ecstatic happiness far too great to be real. The next day, and the day after that, her coldness remained the same; she did not look at him; she was not aware of his existence. Gripped by intense discomfort, Julien was a thousand miles from the triumphant feelings which, that first day, had been all there was in his heart. "Could this, by any chance," he asked himself, "be a return to virtue?" But this was too bourgeois a word for haughty Mathilde. "In everyday life," Julien thought, "she has hardly any religious belief. She approves of it as useful to the interests of her class. "But couldn't plain female delicacy be reproaching her for the sin she's committed?" Julien now believed he had been her first lover. "Still," he told himself, at other moments, "it must be conceded that there is nothing naïve, simple, or tender in her whole manner of being. I've never seen her haughtier. Does she despise me? It would be like her to reproach herself for what she's done for me, strictly on account of my low birth." While Julien, full of preconceived judgments, drawn from books as well as his memories of Verrières, was haunted by the chimera of a tender mistress who, from the moment she had made her lover happy, was no longer concerned with his existence, Mathilde's vanity was wildly angry with him. Since she had not been bored in two months, she was no longer worried about boredom; thus, without having the slightest suspicion of it, Julien had lost his greatest advantage. "I've given myself a master!" Mademoiselle de La Mole told herself, succumbing to the blackest, most sorrowful regret. "He's enormously honorable, for what that's worth, but if I push his vanity over the edge, he'll take his revenge by letting the world know our relationship." Mathilde had never had a lover, and being in a state which makes even the sourest souls dream tender illusions, she was consumed by the bitterest of black thoughts. "He has immense power over me, since he rules by terror and can punish me with tremendous pain if I push at him too hard." This alone was enough to lead Mademoiselle de La Mole to show him stern disrespect: her character's primary attribute was courage. Nothing could have set her in restless motion, and cure her of her endless boredom, without forever quickening her sense that she was gambling for the highest of all stakes, her very existence at risk. On the third day, with Mademoiselle de La Mole stubbornly refusing to acknowledge him, after dinner Julien followed her, clearly against her will, into the billiard room. "So, sir, you feel possessed of some mighty power over me," she said, with barely restrained anger, "since, quite directly against my wishes, unmistakably expressed, you intend to speak to me? ... Are you aware that no one in the world has ever dared do that?"
Nothing could be so amusing as the dialogue between these two lovers, unaware that they were each driven by intensely passionate hatred of the other. Neither of them endowed with much patience, and both being accustomed to the ways of good society, they were soon flatly declaring eternal enmity. "I am forever bound to secrecy, I swear it!" said Julien. "I might add that I'd never speak to you again, except that such a marked change could damage your reputation." He bowed respectfully and left. He had performed, without much difficulty, what seemed to him his duty; it would never have occurred to him that he was in love with Mademoiselle de La Mole. There was no question he hadn't loved her three days earlier, when he'd been hidden in the big mahogany armoire. But his soul suffered a sharp sea change the moment he saw he'd broken with her forever. His relentless memory made him retrace every detail of that night, which in truth had left him so cold. The very next night after the decisive rupture, Julien almost drove himself mad, forced to admit that he was in love with Mademoiselle de La Mole. Ghastly struggles followed on this discovery: his emotions had been tossed every which way. Two days later, instead of being haughty with Monsieur de Croisenois, he came close to tearfully embracing him. He was accustomed to misery, and that lent him a whiff of common sense: he decided to leave for Languedoc, packed his trunk, and went to arrange his trip. He felt faint when, arriving at the mail-coach office, he found that by a strange coincidence there was an available seat, for the next day, in the coach going to Toulouse, the capital of Languedoc. He bought his ticket and returned to inform the Marquis de La Mole of his departure. Monsieur de La Mole had gone out. More dead than alive, Julien went to the library to wait for him. How did he feel, when he there encountered Mademoiselle de La Mole? Seeing him, she put on a nasty expression, which he could not possibly misunderstand. Carried away by his misery, confused and surprised, Julien had the weakness to say to her, in the tenderest voice, and truly from the heart: "So you don't love me anymore?" "I'm horrified that I gave myself to the first one who came along," Mathilde said, weeping with self-directed fury. "The first one who came along!" Julien exclaimed, running over to where, hung in the library as a curiosity, there was an ancient, medieval sword. His misery, which he had thought at its height when he spoke to her, was intensified a hundredfold, seeing her tears of shame. He would have been the happiest of men if he could have killed her. Just as, with some difficulty, he'd drawn the sword from its ancient sheath, Mathilde, thrilled by this wonderfully new sensation, came toward him, haughtily; her tears had stopped. The thought of the Marquis de La Mole, his benefactor, came vividly into his mind. "I'd be killing his daughter!" he told himself. "How awful!" He started to throw the sword down. "Certainly," he thought, "she's going to howl with laughter, seeing this melodramatic gesture," and that idea made him once more calm and quite collected. He looked at the ancient sword's blade, suddenly curious: it was as if he were trying to find some rusty spot. Then he put the sword back in its sheath and, with immense, quiet poise, set it on the gilded brass nail from which it had been hung.
The whole process, very slow toward the end, lasted a solid minute. ...Mademoiselle de La Mole was looking at him, stunned. "I've really been at the point of being killed by my lover!" she told herself. The idea carried her back to the most beautiful times of Charles IX's and Henry III's century. Julien had just replaced the sword; she stood immobile in front of him, and there was no longer any hate in her eyes. It must be admitted that she was exceedingly seductive just then; certainly, no woman had ever less resembled a Paris doll (this being Julien's major objection to Parisian women). "I'm going to fall back into caring for him," Mathilde thought. "And he'll be convinced, here and now, he's my lord and master, once I let myself relapse—and just when I've been speaking to him so strongly." She fled. "My God, but she's lovely!" said Julien, watching her run off. "Here's this creature who threw herself into my arms, just a week ago, and with such passion! ... And those moments will never return! And it's my fault! Right then, at such an extraordinary moment, so fascinating, I let myself be insensitive! ... I must confess I was born insipid and incredibly wretched." Monsieur de La Mole came in. Julien quickly told him of his departure. "For where?" asked the marquis. "For Languedoc." "No, if you please. I'm saving you for higher matters. If you do leave, it will be to the North...Accordingly, in military terms, I confine you to quarters. You will oblige me by never being absent for more than two or three hours. I may need you on very short notice." "So," he thought, "I can't even take myself away! God knows how long the marquis is going to keep me here in Paris. Good God! What's going to become of me? And I haven't got a friend I can look to for advice. Father Pirard wouldn't let me finish the first sentence; Count Altamira would suggest that I join him in some conspiracy. "But I'm insane, I know it. I'm out of my mind! "Who could help me, what's going to happen?"
Chapter Eighteen: Terrible Times And she admits it to me! She tells me everything, every little detail! Her beautiful eyes, watching me so intently, show me the love she feels for someone else! —Schiller
Thrilled to the bottom of her soul, Mademoiselle de La Mole could think of nothing but the happiness of having almost been killed. She even said it to herself: "He's worthy of being my master, having been about to kill me. How many handsome young society men would have to be melted into one, to reach such a fit of passion?" She had to admit how really handsome he'd been when he'd climbed up on a chair, replacing the sword exactly as the decorator had so picturesquely hung it! "After all, I wasn't so crazy, falling in love with him." Just then, had she been offered some more or less honorable way of restarting their love affair, she'd gladly have taken it. Julien, who'd double-locked himself into his room, was overcome by the most violent despair. Among other crazy notions, he thought of throwing himself at her feet. If, instead of hiding himself in a secluded place, he had gone wandering in the garden and around the house, so he could be ready for whatever might happen, he might conceivably, in no more than a second, have changed his frightful misery into the liveliest happiness. But we're now reproaching him for being deficient at what, had he not been thus lacking, would also have kept him from the sublime act of seizing the ancient sword which, at that very moment, had made him so handsome in Mademoiselle de La Mole's eyes. So favorable to Julien, this whim lasted the whole day. Mathilde painted a charming picture for herself, composed of the brief moments when she had loved him; she mourned them. "Really," she said to herself, "my passion for the poor boy only lasted, as far as he's concerned, from one in the morning, when I saw him coming up his ladder, his pistols stuffed into his pocket, until eight the next morning. It was fifteen minutes later, as I was hearing mass at Sainte-Valerie, that I began to think he'd fancy himself my master, and might well try to force me into obeying him, using terror as his weapon." After dinner, far from fleeing Julien, Mademoiselle de La Mole spoke to him and, as it were, coerced him into following her to the garden; he acquiesced. For him, it was a new sort of test. Not fully aware what she was doing, Mathilde yielded to the love she was beginning to feel for him once more. She took great delight in walking beside him, looking with great interest at his hands, which that morning had taken up the sword, intending to kill her. After that, and everything else that had happened, there could no longer be any question of conversing as once they had. Mathilde gradually began to talk to him, trustingly, intimately, about the state of her heart. She found an odd, sensual pleasure in this sort of talk; she began to tell him about her passing fancies for Monsieur de Croisenois, for Monsieur de Caylus... "No! For Monsieur de Caylus too!" Julien exclaimed, all the bitter jealousy of a discarded lover ringing in his words. That was how Mathilde took it, and was not a bit offended. She went on torturing Julien, detailing her sometime feelings in the most graphic fashion, and speaking both intimately and truthfully. He could tell she was describing what had really taken place. It was painful for him, noticing that as she spoke she was learning what was truly in her heart. Jealousy's miseries cannot get much worse.
Chapter Eighteen: Terrible Times
Suspecting that a rival is loved is horrible enough, but having the details of that love confessed to you, in detail, by the woman you adore is, surely, the worst of all miseries. How Julien was being punished for his arrogance, thinking himself favored over de Caylus and de Croisenois! With what intimate wretchedness and emotion he now exaggerated, to himself, every single one of their trifling advantages! With what ardent good faith he despised himself! Mathilde seemed to him adorable; words alone are too feeble to express his adoration. While walking beside her, he cast furtive glances at her hands, her feet, her queenly bearing. He was ready to fall at her feet, overpowered, annihilated by love and misery, and crying: "Have pity!" "And this bewitchingly beautiful woman, so far above all others, who once loved me, will surely soon be in love with Monsieur de Caylus!" Julien could not have doubted Mademoiselle de La Mole's sincerity: the tone of truth was too obvious in everything she was saying. So that his misery might be absolutely complete, there were moments when, because she was remembering so intently what, at one time, she had felt for Monsieur de Caylus, Mathilde would speak as if she were in fact still in love with him. Plainly, there was love in her voice. Julien could hear it very clearly. Had his chest been filled with boiling lead, he would have suffered less. How could the poor fellow, brought to this pitch of misery, possibly have imagined that, precisely because she was speaking to him, Mademoiselle de La Mole took such great pleasure in summoning up the old love fancies she had felt, once upon a time, for Monsieur de Caylus or Monsieur de Luz? Nothing can describe Julien's anguish. He was listening to these confiding, intimate details of the love she'd felt for others, even as they walked along the same row of lindens where, so few days before, he'd been waiting for the clock to sound and summon him to her room. No human soul can experience any greater misery. This kind of intimate cruelty went on for eight long days. Mathilde would sometimes seem to hunt for opportunities to speak to him, and would sometimes seem to do no more than keep herself from avoiding him. And the subject of their conversations, to which they both seemed to return, in a sort of ecstatic savagery, was the tale of her feelings for other men. She told him the letters she'd written, recalling even the precise words employed, sometimes reciting whole sentences from memory. Toward the end, she appeared to be contemplating Julien with a kind of malign pleasure. His sorrows were shining joys to her. It's clear that Julien had no experience of life; he had not even read novels. Had he been a bit less gauche, and had he been able to say, coolly and calmly, to this young girl he so adored, and who told him such intimate and strange secrets: "Let's face it; I may not be as lofty as all these other gentlemen, but just the same the one you love is me..." Perhaps she might have been happy to be understood. At least, his success would have been entirely dependent on the grace with which he'd expressed the idea, and the exact moment he'd chosen to say it. No matter what, he would have freed himself, and with positive effects for him, from a situation bound to become monotonous for her. "And you no longer love me, and I adore you!" Julien told her one day, frantic with love and misery. This stupidity was very nearly the worst he could have committed. His words destroyed, in the twinkling of an eye, all the pleasure Mademoiselle de La Mole had been finding, talking to him about the state of her heart. She began to be amazed that, after all of that, he had not taken offense at her accounts; she had started to think, just when he made this doltish remark, that perhaps he no longer loved her. "His pride has surely extinguished his love," she had told herself. "He's not a man to quietly listen to himself being
compared, unfavorably, to the likes of de Caylus, de Luz, de Croisenois, and admitting they're better than he is. No, I won't see him at my feet anymore!" In the days leading up to this moment, in all the innocence of his misery, Julien had often, and most sincerely, silently praised the brilliant qualities of these gentlemen; he even exaggerated them. This tendency had not escaped Mademoiselle de La Mole. It had amazed her. But she had not guessed its cause. Julien's frantic soul, by praising a rival he thought loved, was identifying with the other's happiness. His deeply candid, and totally stupid, remark changed everything in an instant. Certain of being loved, Mathilde utterly despised him. She had been walking with him when he'd spoken those blundering words; she left him on the spot, and her final glance expressed the most awful disgust. Back in the drawing room, she never looked at him again. The next day, scorn had completely taken over her heart. There was no longer any question of the urge that, for an entire week, had made her treat Julien as her most intimate friend. The very sight of him seemed disagreeable. Her feelings bordered on utter disgust; there can be no way to express the extraordinary contempt she felt when her eyes happened to fall on him. Julien had not understood anything of what had been going on in Mathilde's heart, the past week, but he understood her contempt. He had the good sense to let himself be as invisible as he could, and never so much as glanced at her. But there was deadly pain in so completely depriving himself of her presence. He felt that his misery was constantly growing. "A man's heart contains only so much courage," he said to himself. He spent his days looking out his little window, up in the attic. He kept the blinds carefully though not fully closed; he could at least see Mademoiselle de La Mole when she went into the garden. How he felt, after dinner, when he saw her walking with Monsieur de Caylus, Monsieur de Luz, or someone else for whom, once upon a time, she had felt vague stirrings of love! Julien had not known such misery existed. He found himself at the edge of crying aloud; his once steady soul had been turned upside down, shaken awry from top to bottom. Thinking of anything other than Mademoiselle de La Mole had become obnoxious; he'd become incapable of composing even the simplest of letters. "You've gone crazy," the marquis told him. Trembling at the thought of being found out, Julien spoke of sickness and even began to believe it. Luckily for him, the marquis amused himself at dinner, teasing Julien about his coming trip: Mathilde understood it might be a very long one. There had already been days when he simply fled from her, and the brilliant young gentlemen, possessing everything missing in this pale, grave person, previously so attractive to her, were quite unable, now, to distract her from her meditative reveries. "Any ordinary girl," she told herself, "would have hunted among these young men for the one she wanted; they draw all the girls' glances, in drawing rooms. But it is characteristic of genius not to let its thoughts be dragged into ruts ordinary minds have created. "When I'm with someone like Julien, who is deficient only in wealth, as I am not, I will always draw people's attention; I will not go through life unnoticed. Far from endlessly worrying about a revolution, as all my cousins do—they're so afraid of the common people that they won't scold a coachman who takes them where they don't want to go—I'll make sure I play a role, and a great one, because the man I've chosen has real character, and boundless ambition. What is he lacking? Friends, money? I'll give him all that." But in her mind she rather tended to treat Julien as an inferior, someone to be loved when she felt like it.
Chapter Nineteen: Comic Opera
Chapter Nineteen: Comic Opera O how this spring of love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day, Which now shows all the beauty of the sun And by and by a cloud takes all away! —Shakespeare Busy with thoughts of the future, and the special role she expected to play, Mathilde soon began to long for the dry, metaphysical discussions she had often had with Julien. She could be wearied by such lofty notions, but sometimes she also missed the happy moments spent in his company. Nor did she remember these without feeling remorse, and at certain times it overwhelmed her. "But even having a weakness," she told herself, "a girl like me deserves to forget her duty only for a man who's worthy. It mustn't be said that his handsome mustache, or the graceful way he mounts his horse, were what seduced me, but his far-seeing thoughts on France's future, his perception of similarities between what's going to swoop down on us and the British Revolution of 1688.1 And, yes, I've been seduced," she replied to her sense of remorse, "I was a weak woman, but at least I wasn't misled by merely external matters, like a brainless doll. "If there is another revolution, why couldn't Julien play the role of Roland, and I the part of that Girondin leader, Madame Roland?2 I'd prefer being her to being Madame de Staël:3 in our time, personal immorality will be an obstacle. No one's ever going to reproach me for falling twice; I'd die of shame." Mathilde's reveries weren't all as somber as the notions just transcribed: that must be conceded. She looked at Julien, finding a charming grace in everything he did, no matter how unimportant. "No question about it," she said to herself. "I've managed to crush out of him even the slimmest sense that he has any rights. "The wretched look, the profound passion with which the poor fellow told me he loved me, a week ago, surely proves it. Yes, it's true, it was quite extraordinary how I flared up at words so glowing with respect, and spoken with such passion. I'm his wife, am I not? What he said was perfectly reasonable and, I must say, I found it pleasant. Julien still loves me, even after those endless conversations when all I talked to him about, and so cruelly—I agree— were just vague stirrings of love, born out of the boredom of my existence, love that I imagined