6 Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy, known as Girodet-Trioson (1767–1824), is more famous for his painting than his writing.
The Red and the Black
Her soul, afraid of everything, was for the first time stirred by something foreign to her social ambitions and social superiority. The old porter noticed that, when he brought her a letter from this handsome young man, whose demeanor was so sorrowful, he was sure to see the disappearance of that distracted, discontented air with which his mistress always, and most carefully, greeted her servants. The weariness of living a life completely dependent on public performance, without, at bottom, taking any real joy in such success, had become so intolerable, since she'd begun thinking about Julien, that it was enough to keep her chambermaids from being mistreated, the entire day, if she'd spent a single hour, the night before, with this odd young man. His standing, constantly increasing, withstood some extremely well-written anonymous letters. Little Monsieur Tanbeau worked hard, and in vain, supplying Messieurs de Luz, de Croisenois, and de Caylus with two or three very clever slanders, which these gentlemen took pleasure in amplifying, though not so wildly as to cast doubt on the reliability of their accusations. The marshall's widow, whose mind was not capable of withstanding such vulgar onslaughts, would tell Mathilde her doubts, and was always reassured. One day, after having three times asked whether any letters had come, Madame de Fervaques suddenly decided to reply to Julien. This victory was attributable to boredom. By the second word, the marshall's widow was almost brought to a halt by the indelicacy of having to write, in her own hand, an address so vulgar as To Monsieur Sorel, in care of the Marquis de La Mole. "It will be necessary," she said to Julien that evening, very wryly, "for you to bring me some envelopes bearing your address." "And thus," thought Julien, "I've been made a footman-lover," and he bowed, taking a certain pleasure in making himself look like old Arsène, the marquis's manservant. He brought the envelopes that same evening, and the next day, very early indeed, he had a third letter from her. He read five or six lines at the beginning, and two or three toward the end. She'd written four pages, in an extremely small hand, squeezed very tight. Gradually, they got into the sweet habit of writing almost every day. Julien replied with exact copies of the Russian letters and, this being an advantage of grandiloquence, Madame de Fervaques was not at all surprised that his responses did not in any way match her letters. How tiny Tanbeau's pride would have suffered, having constituted himself an unpaid spy on Julien's proceedings, had he learned that all her unopened letters were tossed, at random, into the drawer of Julien's desk. One morning, her porter came to him, in the library, bringing a letter from Madame de Fervaques. Mathilde recognized the man, saw the letter, and noted the address, as written in Julien's hand. She came into the library just as the porter left; the letter was still on the edge of the table; Julien, busily writing, had not yet put it in his desk drawer. "Now this I cannot endure," cried Mathilde, seizing the letter. "You're completely forgetting me—I, who am your wife. Your behavior is frightful, monsieur." At these words, her pride, stunned by the dreadful indelicacy of her behavior, choked her. She dissolved in tears, and soon it seemed to Julien as if she had ceased to breathe. Astonished, confused, Julien had very little notion just how excellent, how fortunate, this scene was for him. He helped Mathilde to a chair; she virtually surrendered herself to his arms. His first reaction to this was extraordinary joy. His second was a thought derived from Korasoff: "Just one word, and I may be utterly ruined." His arms grew rigid, so painfully difficult was the effort imposed by diplomacy. "I must not even let myself press this soft, lovely body to my heart, or she will scorn me, she will mistreat me. What a horrible person!"
And as he cursed Mathilde's character, he loved her a hundred times more. It seemed to him he had a queen in his arms. Julien's impassive coldness redoubled the prideful sickness tearing at Mademoiselle de La Mole's heart. She did not possess the calm to try to see from his eyes how, at that moment, he actually felt about her. She could not bring herself to look at him, so afraid was she of seeing him scornful. Seated on the library couch, unmoving, her head turned away from Julien, she was gripped by the sharpest sorrow pride and love can make a human heart feel. What horrible behavior she had fallen into! "He's aloof, unfortunate creature that I am! To see the most indecent advances repulsed! And repulsed by one of my father's servants." "This is what I will not endure," she said loudly. And, furious, she pulled open the drawer of Julien's writing desk, only two feet away. She stood as if frozen in horror, seeing eight or ten unopened letters, exactly like the one the porter had just delivered. She recognized Julien's handwriting, more or less disguised, on all of them. "So," she cried, absolutely beside herself, "not only are you in her good graces, but you despise her just the same. You, a man who has nothing, you're contemptuous of Marshall de Fervaques's widow! "Ah, forgive me, my dear," she continued, throwing herself to her knees, "despise me if you wish, but love me. I cannot live any longer, deprived of your love." And she fell at his feet, in a faint. "And there's the proud creature, at my feet!" Julien told himself. As the blackest sky Foretells the heaviest tempest. —Byron, Don Juan In the middle of these immense fluctuations, Julien was more astonished than overjoyed. Mathilde's insults had shown him just how wise Russian diplomacy was. "Say little, do little: this is, for me, the only road to salvation." He lifted Mathilde and, not saying a word, set her back on the couch. Slowly, gradually, she fell into weeping. To help restore herself, she picked up Madame de Fervaques's letters; she slowly opened them. She started, nervously and markedly, as she recognized the handwriting. She turned over all the pages, without reading them; most were six pages long. "At least answer me," Mathilde said at last, in the most suppliant of voices, not yet daring to look at Julien. "You know very well how proud I am: it's the sickness of my position, and even of my character. I admit it. So Madame de Fervaques has stolen your heart from me...Has she made the same sacrifices for you, as this fatal love swept me into doing?" A mournful silence was Julien's only reply. "By what right," he thought, "does she ask of me such a dishonorable indiscretion, unworthy of any honest man?" Mathilde tried to read the letters; her tear-filled eyes made that impossible. She had been miserable for a month, but her haughty heart was far from ready to admit it. Chance alone had led to this explosion. In an instant, jealousy and love had swept away pride. She was seated on the couch, very near him. He saw her hair and her alabaster neck. In that
The Red and the Black
moment he forgot everything he was supposed to do: he put his arms around her waist and pressed her against his chest. Slowly, she turned her head toward him. He was surprised by the extraordinary sorrow in her eyes; he could scarcely recognize her. Julien felt his strength leaving him, so mortally painful was the courageous act he imposed on himself. "Soon," he said to himself, "these eyes will express nothing but cold disdain, if I let the happiness of loving her carry me away." Meanwhile, her voice weak, and in words she was barely able to articulate, in this moment of reassurance she repeated her regret for everything her excessive pride had led her to do. "I, too, am proud," Julien told her, his voice muffled, his face exhibiting the signs of utter prostration. Mathilde turned quickly toward him. Hearing his voice was a joy for which she had almost given up hope. At that moment, all she could remember of her arrogance were curses directed at it. She wished she could think of some extraordinary behavior, something truly incredible, to show him how much she adored him and, simultaneously, how much she detested herself. "It is probably because of your pride," Julien went on, "that you briefly honored me. It is surely because of that courageous resolve, worthy of a man, that right now you respect me. Perhaps I am in love with Madame de Fervaques..." Mathilde shook; her eyes suddenly looked very strange. She had heard her sentence pronounced. None of this escaped Julien; he felt his courage ebbing. "Ah," he said to himself, hearing the empty words his mouth had pronounced, as if he had been emitting strange noises, "if I could cover those pale cheeks with kisses, and you never felt them!" "I may be in love with Madame de Fervaques," he continued...and his voice grew steadily weaker, "but then, I have as yet no decisive proof of her interest in me." Mathilde looked at him. He did not waver—at least, he hoped his face had not betrayed him. He felt love penetrating to the most intimate depths of his heart. He had never so adored her; he was almost as crazed as Mathilde. Had she found the calm, and the courage, to maneuver her way through the situation, he would have fallen at her feet, disavowing all this empty comedy. He had just enough strength to go on talking. "Ah, Korasoff!" he exclaimed inwardly, "why aren't you here! How desperately I need a word to guide me!" As he was thinking this, his voice was saying: "Lacking any other sentiment, gratitude would be sufficient to tie me to Madame de Fervaques. She has been indulgent; she has comforted me when people have been scornful. I cannot put unlimited faith in certain appearances, doubtless extremely flattering, but perhaps, just as likely, of no great durability." "Oh, Good Lord!" cried Mathilde. "So! What guarantee can I expect from you?" Julien resumed, his voice now firm and lively, apparently abandoning, for a moment, the cautious forms of diplomacy. "What guarantee? What God will tell me that the stance you appear to be taking toward me, right now, will last more than two days?" "The intensity of my love and of my misery, if you no longer love me," she said, taking his hands and turning toward him. The sudden movement had slightly displaced her neck scarf: Julien could see her lovely shoulders. Her faintly disordered hair brought back delicious memories.
He was going to yield. "One careless word," he told himself, "and I go back to that long sequence of days spent in despair." Madame de Rênal found reasons to do what her heart dictated. This young girl of the highest society let her heart be moved only when, for good reasons, she felt she ought to be moved. He glimpsed this truth, in the twinkling of an eye, and in another instant rediscovered his courage. He withdrew the hands Mathilde had been pressing in hers, and with marked respect moved a bit away from her. A man's courage can go no further. Then he busied himself, gathering up all of Madame de Fervaques's letters, which had been scattered on the couch, doing all this with a politeness quite extraordinary—and, as he then added, a politeness savagely cruel: "If Mademoiselle de La Mole will be so good as to permit me to reflect on these matters." He moved quickly away and left the library. She heard him closing all the doors, one after the other. "The monster isn't a bit disturbed," she said to herself... "But what am I saying: monster! He's wise, cautious, good. It's I who am wrong, wronger than anyone could possibly imagine." This view of things lasted. That day, Mathilde was almost happy, because she was completely in love. You might have said this was a heart that had never been moved by pride—and by what pride! She shivered with horror when, in the dining room that night, a servant announced Madame de Fervaques: the very sound of the man's voice seemed to her sinister. She could not endure seeing the marshall's widow, and hurriedly left. Julien, not particularly proud of his painful victory, had been afraid his own appearance might betray him, and had not dined with the family. His love and his happiness grew rapidly, the more distant became the time of the battle; he had already begun to criticize himself. "How could I have resisted her?" he asked himself. "What if she won't ever love me anymore? One instant can change that haughty heart, and it must be plain that I treated her abominably." That evening, he felt he absolutely had to appear in Madame de Fervaques's box at the opera. She had expressly invited him, and Mathilde would certainly learn if he'd been there or if, impolitely, he had stayed away. It was persuasive reasoning, but he did not have the strength, when the hour came and the drawing rooms were opening their doors, to plunge into society. Just by talking, he'd lose half his happiness. Ten o'clock sounded: he absolutely had to be there. Luckily, he found Madame de Fervaques's box full of women, and was relegated to a place near the door, completely obscured by the ladies' hats. This position saved him from embarrassment: the divine sounds of Caroline's despair, in Il Matrimonio segreto,7 made him dissolve in tears. Madame de Fervaques saw the tears; they were in such sharp contrast to his usual masculine steadiness that the heart of this great lady, so long steeped in all the most corroding effects of social-climber pride, was moved. What little remained in her of a woman's heart led her to speak to him. At that moment, she wanted the pleasure of hearing his voice. "Have you seen the de La Mole ladies?" she asked him. "They're on the third level, tonight." Julien immediately bent forward, leaning rather impolitely on the front of the box. He saw Mathilde; her eyes were shining with tears. "But it isn't their night for the opera," Julien thought. "What eagerness!"