10 Mainz, important German city at the confluence of the Rhine and the Main Rivers.
The Red and the Black
"Do you think so?" Julien said innocently. Uncovering the fraud did not solve their problem. They had to be able to leave. And this, Géronimo and his friend could not arrange. "We'll wait till daylight," the singer finally said. "They don't trust us. Maybe it's you or me they're after. Tomorrow morning we'll order a good meal. While they're fixing it, we'll go for a little walk, we'll rent horses, and we'll go on to the next mail-coach stop." "And your baggage?" said Julien, who was wondering if perhaps Géronimo himself could have been sent to intercept him. They had to eat and go to bed. Julien was still in his first sleep when he was wakened, with a start, by the voices of two men who were talking, right in his room, without even pretending to be quiet. He recognized the postmaster, equipped with a muffled lantern. Its light was directed at his traveling trunk, which had been brought up to his room. Standing next to the postmaster was a man, calmly rummaging through the opened trunk. Julien could only make out the sleeves of his suit, which were black and exceedingly tight. "It's a cassock," he told himself, and quietly picked up the pistols he'd set under his pillow. "Don't worry about him waking up, Father," said the postmaster. "I gave him the wine you yourself prepared." "There's not a trace of any papers," said the priest. "A lot of linen, perfume, soap, nonsense like that. He's a young man of our time, only concerned with his pleasures. The courier must be the other one, putting on that Italian accent." They came closer to Julien, so they could look in the pockets of his traveling suit. He was powerfully tempted to kill them, as burglars. There could not be any serious consequences. He felt very attracted to the idea.. .. "But what a fool I'd be," he told himself. "I'd compromise my mission." After looking through Julien's pockets: "This is no diplomat," the priest said. He moved away, and it was an excellent thing that he did. "If they touch me, here in this bed, they'll be sorry indeed!" Julien said to himself. "They might be coming to stab me, and I'm not about to give them that opportunity." The priest turned his head, and Julien half opened his eyes. What an astonishing sight! It was Father Castaneda! And indeed, though the two men had tried to keep their voices down, he had thought from the first that he recognized one of the voices. Julien experienced a fierce desire to rid the earth of one of its most cowardly scoundrels. "But my mission," he told himself. The priest and his acolyte left. A quarter of an hour later, Julien pretended to wake up. He cried out, waking the whole house. "I've been poisoned!" he called. "I'm in terrible pain!" He wanted some pretext to go to Géronimo's assistance. He found him half suffocated by the opium the postmaster had put in his wine. Fearing some trick of this sort, Julien had drunk only the chocolate he'd brought from Paris. He was barely able to sufficiently waken Géronimo, so they could discuss whether to stay or to leave. "Give me the whole kingdom of Naples," said the singer, "but right now I cannot give up the delights of sleep." "But the seven sovereign princes!" "Let them wait." Julien left by himself, and without any further incident came to the great personage he was to see. He wasted an entire morning, soliciting an audience, and in vain. Luckily, at about four o'clock the duke wanted a breath of fresh air. Julien saw him leaving, and on foot; he
Chapter Twenty–Three: The Clergy, Their Woodlands, And Freedom
immediately went after him and asked for alms. When he was two steps away, he drew the Marquis de La Mole's watch and carefully displayed it. "Follow me, but not too closely," said the duke, not looking at him. Three-quarters of a mile farther along, the duke walked briskly into a small coffeehouse. In one of the rooms of this fourth-rate establishment, Julien was privileged to recite for the duke his four pages. When he had finished: "Start again, and go more slowly," he was told. The duke took his notes. Then: "Go to the next post stop, on foot. Leave everything there, including your trunk. Go to Strasbourg, as best you can, and on the twenty-second of the month (it was then the tenth) return here, to this same coffeehouse, at twelve-thirty. Don't leave for half an hour. Be silent!" These were the only words Julien heard. They were enough to imbue him with the highest admiration. "This is how to do business," he thought. "What would this great statesman say, had he heard those wild magpies chattering, three days ago?" It took Julien two days to get to Strasbourg. Having no business to conduct there, he took a leisurely route. "If that devil, Father Castaneda, recognized me, he's not a man to easily give me up...And how happy he'd be to mock me, and to ruin my mission." Happily, Father Castaneda, the Congregation of the Holy Virgin's police chief for the entire northern frontier, had not recognized him. And the Strasbourg Jesuits, though wonderfully zealous, never dreamed of keeping watch on Julien, who in his blue frock coat, and wearing his honored medal, seemed most like a young officer, totally self-concerned.
The Red and the Black
Chapter Twenty-Four: Strasbourg Spell-binding charmer! You have all love's energy, all its sweeping sorrow. Only its enchanting pleasures, its sweet joys, are beyond your sphere. But I could not say, watching her sleep: "She's all mine, her angelic beauty, her lovely weaknesses! There she is, completely in my power, exactly as Heaven in its gracious mercy made her, to bewitch a man's heart." —Schiller Obliged to spend a week in Strasbourg, Julien tried to distract himself with notions of military glory and patriotic devotion. Was he in love? He knew nothing: all he found, in his tormented heart, was Mathilde, absolute mistress of both his happiness and his imagination. All the energy of his character was required to keep from falling into despair. Thinking of anything that had no connection to Mademoiselle de La Mole was beyond his powers. Once, his ambition, and the lesser triumphs of vanity, had distracted him from feelings like those Madame de Rênal had inspired in him. Mathilde had absorbed everything; wherever he looked, in his future, he saw only her. And everywhere, in that future, he saw failure. This young person who, at Verrières, had been so full of presumption, so arrogant, had succumbed to ridiculously overzealous modesty. Three days earlier, he would have been delighted to kill Father Castaneda. But if, in Strasbourg, a child had quarreled with him, he would have taken the child's side. Thinking back to his adversaries, the enemies he had encountered all through his life, in each and every instance he judged himself, Julien, to have been in the wrong. His implacable enemy, now, was precisely that powerful imagination, once so interminably busy, painting for him a future full of brilliant successes. The absolute solitude of a traveler's life added to the reign of his dark imagination. What a treasure a friend would have been! "But," Julien asked himself, "is there any heart that beats for me? And if I should find a friend, wouldn't honor oblige me to keep eternally silent?" He was on horseback, riding sadly around the countryside near Kehl, a town on the banks of the Rhine, immortalized by the hard-fought victories of Desaix and Gouvion Saint-Cyr,1 making their way over the river under heavy fire. A German peasant showed him the little streams, the roads, the small islands in the Rhine, made famous by these great generals' courage. Leading his horse with his left hand, Julien had spread open, with his right, the superb battlefield map adorning Marshall Saint-Cyr's Memoirs. Then he lifted his head, startled by a cheerful exclamation. It was Prince Korasoff, his London friend, who some months earlier had revealed to Julien the basic principles of high foppishness. Faithful to this noble art, Korasoff, who no more than an hour ago had set foot in Kehl2, riding from Strasbourg, and who had never in his life read a line about the siege of 1796, set himself to explaining everything about it. The German peasant stared at them, astonished, for he knew enough French to make out the enormous blunders the prince was falling into. Julien's mind was far away. He was watching the handsome young nobleman, amazed; he was admiring the grace with which he mounted his horse.