5 Mathilde's aria has not been found in any known opera.
Chapter Nineteen: Comic Opera
bored by all such advantages, these are usually precisely what they have their hearts most set upon. And if there is passion in their hearts, it is these things that have aroused it. (Nor is it love that beclouds the fortunes of gifted young men like Julien. They tie themselves by unbreakable bonds to some coterie and, when the coterie makes its fortune, society rains down on them all the good things it has to offer. But woe to the learned man who belongs to no coterie: even his minor, distinctly doubtful successes will be criticized, and noble virtue will be victorious, stealing them away. (Ah, my dear sir: a novel is a mirror, taking a walk down a big road. Sometimes you'll see nothing but blue skies; sometimes you'll see the muck in the mud piles along the road. And you'll accuse the man carrying the mirror in his basket of being immoral! His mirror reflects muck, so you'll accuse the mirror, too! Why not also accuse the highway where the mud is piled, or, more strongly still, the street inspector who leaves water wallowing in the roads, so the mud piles can come into being. (Then we're all agreed: Mathilde's character is impossible, in this time we live in, this age no less prudent than virtuous. I suspect you'll find it less irritating, now, as I continue telling the tale of this lovable girl's foolishness.) All the next day, she watched for chances to reaffirm her triumph over wild passion. Her central goal was to offend Julien in every possible way; still, nothing she did escaped him. Julien was too miserable, and above all too shaken, to comprehend so complicated a passionate maneuver; still less was he able to understand how strongly positive were her feelings about him. Her maneuver still further defeated him: never, in all probability, had his misery been so extreme. His mind had so little control over his actions that, if some sour- tongued philosopher had said to him—"Think how you can quickly take advantage of any favorable inclinations. In this sort of mind-made love, as one sees it in Paris, no state of being lasts longer than two days"—Julien would not have understood him. But however excited, however exalted he might be, he retained his sense of honor. His primary responsibility was discretion; he understood that. To seek advice, to tell his suffering to the first person who came along, would have been, for him, happiness like that experienced by the lost soul who, crossing a burning desert, is blessed by a falling drop of ice-cold water. He knew the danger, he was sure he'd reply to any indiscreet questioner with a flood of tears; he shut himself in his room. He saw Mathilde walking in the garden, at some length. When she left, he went down. He went over to a bush from which she had plucked a flower. It was a dark night; he could let himself feel all his misery without fear of being seen. It was obvious to him that Mademoiselle de La Mole was in love with one of the young officers; she had just been talking and laughing with a group of them. She had loved him, but she had recognized how unworthy of her he was. "And, really, I'm not worth very much," Julien told himself, with deep conviction. "All in all, I'm exceedingly dull, very common, terribly boring to other people, unbearable to myself." He was fatally revolted by every one of his good qualities, by everything he had once loved with such enthusiasm, and in this state of inverted imagination he set himself to judging life in terms of imagination. This is decidedly a superior man's mistake. Several times the idea of suicide came to him. It had many attractions, it was like some delicious sleep, it was a whole glass of ice water offered to the wretch who, in a desert, is dying of thirst and heat. "My death would make her despise me even more!" he cried to himself. "What a memory I'd leave behind me!"
The Red and the Black
Fallen into this final abyss of misery, the only resource a human being has left is courage. Julien wasn't clever enough to tell himself: "I have to keep trying." But as he looked up at the window of Mathilde's room, he saw through the blinds that she had put out her light. He pictured to himself that charming room, which he had seen, alas, only once in his life. His imagination could reach no further. He heard the clock sounding one, and he listened, and then he said, in a flash: "I'm going to climb up the ladder." This was a stroke of genius; good arguments came flocking after. "Could I be more miserable?" he asked himself. He ran over to the ladder; the gardener had chained it in place. Breaking the cocking hammer off one of his pistols, and working, now, with superhuman strength, he twisted a link from the chain and, in minutes, had the ladder set against Mathilde's window. "She's going to be furious, she'll pour scorn on me, but who cares? I'll kiss her, a final kiss, then I'll go up to my room and I'll kill myself. .. my lips will touch her cheek before I die!" He flew up the ladder, he knocked on the blinds. In a few moments Mathilde heard him, she tried to open the blinds, but the ladder was in the way. Julien clamped his fingers around the iron hook (meant to hold the blinds open) and, at the continuing risk of dashing himself to the ground, shook the ladder so violently that it moved to one side. Mathilde was able to open the blinds. He threw himself into the room, more dead than alive. "So it's you!"6 she said, as she ran into his arms... Who could describe Julien's overflowing happiness? Mathilde's was almost as great. She became her own enemy; she denounced herself to him: "Punish me for my horrible pride," she told him, wrapping him so tightly in her arms that she nearly suffocated him. "You're my master, I'm your slave, I need to beg your pardon, on my knees, for having revolted against you." She left his arms and fell at his feet. "Yes, you're my master," she told him, still drunk with happiness and love. "Rule over me forever; punish your slave, harshly, when she tries to revolt." The next minute, she pulled herself away from him, lit a candle—and then Julien had to struggle hard, to keep her from cutting off her hair, all down the one side. "I want to remember," she told him, "that I'm your servant. If I'm ever overwhelmed by my disgusting pride, just show me this hair and say: 'It's no longer a question of love, nor is it a matter of what emotion you feel in your heart, at this moment. You have sworn to obey: On your honor, obey.'" But it's better to suppress the details of such frenzy, such happiness. Julien's valor matched his happiness. "I must go back down the ladder," he told Mathilde, "when we can see dawn shining on the distant chimneys, off to the east, on the other side of the gardens. The sacrifice I impose on myself is worthy of you. I will be depriving myself of hours spent in the most amazing happiness the human heart can taste, but it's a sacrifice I make on behalf of your reputation. If you know my heart, you know the violence I'm doing to myself. Will you always be to me what you are at this moment? But honor speaks for you; it is enough. Let me inform you that, since we were first together, suspicion has not been directed solely at burglars. Monsieur de La Mole has set up a watch in the garden. Monsieur de Croisenois is surrounded by spies; they know everything he does, each and every night..."