11 Among the busy society of the Parisian monde, many aristocrats reserved one day a week when they received guests.
in-law of a carpenter from Verrières. There is the name it so hurts me to write. I dread, on Julien's behalf, the anger which will seem to you so just. I will not be a duchess, my father, but I knew that from the moment I loved him—and it was I who first fell in love, it was I who seduced him. It is from you that I come by a soul too lofty to linger over matters that are, or which seem to me to be, coarse. I tried unsuccessfully, as you wished, to please you and contemplate Monsieur de Croisenois. Why did you set true merit right under my eyes? You yourself said to me, when I returned from Hyères: "This young Sorel is the only person I find entertaining." The poor fellow is every bit as distressed as I am, if that is possible, at the pain this letter will cause you. I cannot keep you from being angry, as a father, but love me, always love me, as a dear friend. Julien always respected me. If he sometimes spoke to me, that was only due to his profound gratitude toward you, because natural pride allowed him only to respond in formal terms to everything he knew was beyond him. He is keenly, inherently aware of the difference in our social positions. It was I—I confess this to my best friend, blushing, nor is this a confession I will ever make to anyone else—it was I who, in the garden one day, took his arm. Twenty-four hours from now, why should you be angry with him? My offense is irreparable. If you so require, I will be the one to transmit to you his assurances of the most profound respect, and his despair at having displeased you. You need not see him, but I will join him, once again, wherever he may go. That is his right, and it is my duty: he is my child's father. If in your kindness you wish to give us six thousand francs to live on, I would be grateful. Otherwise, Julien plans to reside in Besançon, where he will become a teacher of Latin and of literature. No matter how low his beginning may be, I am positive he will rise. I am not worried about obscurity, living with him. If there is a revolution, I am confident he will play a leading role. Could you possibly say such a thing of any of the others who have sought my hand? They possess fine lands and estates! That alone does not seem to me reason to admire them. Even under the regime now in power, my Julien will rise to high position, if he had a million and my father's support... Knowing her father to be a man who regularly acted, and at once, on the first thought that came to him, Mathilde had written him a full eight pages. "What can I do?" Julien was asking himself, while Monsieur de La Mole read this letter. "What, first of all, is my duty? And second, what would be best for me? My debt to him is immense. Without him, I might have been a worthless rogue, and not enough of a rogue to prevent my being hated and persecuted. He made me a man of the world, on which account my necessary rascalities will be, first, less frequent, and second, less unworthy. That's a good deal more than if he'd given me a million. I owe him this medal, and some show of diplomatic activity, which set me on equal terms with the world. "If he were, right now, to write out rules for my behavior, what would he write...?" Julien was cut short by Monsieur de La Mole's old manservant. "The marquis wants you, right now, dressed or not." As he walked at Julien's side, the valet added, his voice low: "He's beside himself. Watch out." Cutting this diamond, a clumsy jeweler took away some of its greatest brilliance. In the Middle Ages—no, even under Richelieu—a Frenchman had willpower . —Mirabeau
The Red and the Black
The marquis was furious. For the first time in his life, perhaps, this noble lord acted unacceptably: he showered Julien with every insult he could think of. Our hero was astonished, irritated, but his gratitude was in no way shaken. What wonderful plans, long cherished deep in the poor man's heart, came crashing down in a tumbled heap! "But I ought to answer him: my silence will make him angrier." His response was provided by Molière's Tartuffe. "I'm not an angel...I've served you well, and you've paid me generously...I was grateful, but I'm twenty-two years old...In this house, you were the only one who understood my thoughts, and that lovable lady—" "Monster!" cried the marquis. "Lovable! Lovable! The day you found her lovable, you should have fled." "And I tried to. I asked you, at the time, to let me go to Languedoc." Weary of pacing angrily up and down, subdued by sorrow, the marquis threw himself into an armchair. Julien heard him mutter: "That does show he's not malicious." "No, that's not what I've been to you," exclaimed Julien, falling to his knees. But that made him feel deeply shamed, and he rose at once. The marquis was truly unhinged. Seeing Julien on his knees, he began to heap insults on him, horrible and quite worthy of a taxi driver. Hearing such unheard-of things from his own lips may have offered a degree of distraction. "What! My daughter to be known as Madame Sorel! What! My daughter is not to be a duchess!" Every time these two ideas plainly presented themselves, Monsieur de La Mole's soul was racked; his mind was no longer under control. Julien feared the marquis might beat him. In lucid intervals, and when he began to grow more habituated to his misery, the marquis spoke quite reasonably of Julien's behavior: "You had to flee, sir," he said..."Your duty was to flee.. .. You're the lowest of men..." Julien went to a desk and wrote: "My life has long been unbearable: I here end it. I beg Marquis de La Mole to accept, along with an expression of boundless gratitude, my regret for the embarrassment which my death, under his roof, may cause him." "If monsieur will trouble himself to read this...Kill me," said Julien, "or have your valet kill me. It's now one in the morning. I'm going to walk in the garden, near the far wall." "Go to the devil," cried the marquis as he left. "I quite understand," Julien thought. "He wouldn't regret it, if I spared his valet the trouble of killing me...All right, let him kill me himself: I offer him that reparation...But, damn it, I love life...I owe myself to my son." This idea, for the first time clearly presenting itself to his mind, took over his thoughts, after the first few minutes of his walk, which had been filled with the sense of danger. This brand-new concern made him a prudent man. "I need to get advice, to deal with this wildly insane man...He's lost his mind; he's capable of anything. Fouqué is too far off. Besides, he has no sense for what the heart of someone like the marquis would be feeling. "Count Altamira...Can I be sure of eternal silence? The advice I seek must not involve performance of an action: that would complicate my position. Alas: the only one I can turn to is somber Father Pirard...His spirit has been shrunken by Jansenism...Some rascally Jesuit would understand the world, and would suit me better...Father Pirard is capable of beating me, the instant he hears what I've done." Tartuffe's genius came to Julien's aid: "Yes, I'll go and make my confession to him." After walking in the garden for two whole hours, that was the last decision he came to. He no longer expected to be surprised by a gunshot. Sleep prevailed.
The next day, very early in the morning, Julien was miles from Paris, knocking at the harsh Jansenist's door. He discovered, to his immense astonishment, that Father Pirard was not particularly surprised by what he heard. "I ought perhaps to reproach myself," he said, more worried than annoyed. "I should have been able to predict this love affair. My affection for you, my miserable little one, kept me from warning the father..." "What's he going to do?" Julien asked anxiously. (At this moment, he loved the priest, and any kind of quarrel would have been, for him, extremely painful.) "I myself envisage three choices," Julien went on. "First, Monsieur de La Mole can sentence me to death." He described the suicide letter he had left with the marquis. "Second, he can have me shot at point-blank range by Count Norbert, who would challenge me to a duel." "You'd accept?" said the priest, furious, and he rose from his chair. "You're not letting me finish. Most assuredly, I could never fire at my benefactor's son. "Third, he might send me away. If he says: 'Go to Edinburgh, to New York,' I'd obey him. Then they might be able to hide Mademoiselle de La Mole's condition. But I would not permit them to do away with my son." "And that will be—have no doubt—," said Father Pirard, "—this corrupt man's first idea..." At Paris, Mathilde was in despair. At seven o'clock, she had seen her father. He had shown her Julien's letter: she shivered, thinking he might have considered that putting an end to his life would be a noble deed. "And without my permission," she said to herself, with a sadness that was also anger. "If he is dead," she told her father. "I will die. And you'll be the cause of his death...It might make you happy...But I swear by his departed ghost, I'd first put on mourning, and in every public place I will be known as the widowed Madame Sorel, and I'll send out death notices: you can count on it. You'll find me neither timid nor cowardly." Love drove her almost mad. For his part, Monsieur de La Mole was stunned. He began to see what had happened with some degree of rationality. Mathilde did not come to lunch. The marquis felt himself freed of an enormous weight, and above all flattered, when he realized she'd said nothing to her mother. Julien dismounted. Mathilde had him called, and threw herself into his arms, almost in sight of her chambermaid. Julien was not terribly gratified by this demonstration, having left his long conference with Father Pirard in an intensely diplomatic and calculating state of mind. Turning all the possibilities over and over in his mind, his imagination had worn itself down. Mathilde, tears in her eyes, told him she'd seen his suicide letter. "My father might change his mind. Please, for my sake, leave this very instant for Villequier. Get back on your horse and leave, before they rise from the table." Julien still seemed amazed, and cold; she shed enormous quantities of tears. "Let me manage our business," she exclaimed ecstatically, holding him tightly in her arms. "You know very well I'm not separating us of my own choice. Write to me, using my chambermaid's name, and have the address written by someone else. Me, I'll write you volumes. Farewell! Flee!" This last word offended Julien, but he obeyed. "It's nothing less than fated," he thought, "that, even in their best moments, these people know how to hurt me." Mathilde was completely firm, resisting every one of her father's prudent plans. She refused to negotiate on any other bases than these: she would be Madame Sorel and live in
The Red and the Black
poverty, with her husband, in Switzerland, or else at her father's great house in Paris. The proposal that her delivery be a clandestine one was totally out of the question: "That would open the door for possible slander and dishonor. Two months after my marriage, I'll go traveling with my husband, and then, to suggest that my son was born at the proper time will be extremely simple." Greeted, at first, by fits of anger, her steadiness ended by shaking the marquis. Once, in a tender moment: "Look here," he told his daughter. "This is a registered certificate, good for a yearly income of ten thousand francs. Send it to your Julien, and let him hide it somewhere so I can't take it back." In order to obey Mathilde, whose passion for giving orders he knew only too well, Julien had made a useless hundred-and-twenty-mile journey. He had been staying in Villequier, putting the farmers' accounts in order; the marquis's gift brought him back. He went to seek asylum with Father Pirard, who in his absence had become Mathilde's most useful ally. Every time the marquis sought his advice, Father Pirard demonstrated that any choice, other than a public marriage, would be a sin in the eyes of God. "And luckily," the priest would continue, "the world's wisdom is, in this matter, completely in accord with that of the Church. Could one rely for a single moment, given Mademoiselle de La Mole's fiery character, on the sanctity of a secret she would not impose on herself? If you do not take the frank step of a public marriage, society will be busy, for a long time to come, with this strange mismatch. Everything must be said and done at the same time, without any display, or any reality, of the mysterious and unknown." "That's true," the marquis acknowledged somberly. "That way, talk about the marriage, after three days, would become the boring gossip of empty-headed people. We will have to take advantage of some great anti-Jacobin proposals from the government, and slide along, unseen, right behind that." Two or three of Monsieur de La Mole's friends agreed with Father Pirard. To their minds, the great obstacle was Mathilde's notorious willfulness. Yet for all these finely tuned arguments, the marquis's soul found it hard to abandon hope of a duchess's title for his daughter. His memory, and his mind, were equally well stocked with tricks and pretenses of every kind, for in his earlier days they had all been possible. To give in to necessity, to be afraid of the law of the land, seemed absurd and dishonorable for a man of his rank. He was paying dearly, now, for those enchanting daydreams about his daughter's future in which, for ten long years, he had indulged himself. "Who could have foreseen it?" he told himself. "A girl of such a haughty nature, of so fine a mind, prouder even than I am of the name she bears! whose hand had been sought of all of the most illustrious men in France! "All prudence must be renounced! This century was born to overwhelm everything! We are marching into chaos." Chapter Thirty-Four: a Man of Spirit The governor was riding along on his horse, saying to himself: "Why can't I be a government minister? President of the Privy Council? A duke? Here's how I'd wage war...And this is how I'd lock away all innovators, chain them up..."
Chapter Thirty-Four: a Man of Spirit
—The Globe12 Ten years of dreaming take such complete control of a man's mind that no argument can destroy them. The marquis did not think it reasonable to be angry, but neither could he make up his mind to forgive. Sometimes he said to himself: "If this Julien could have a fatal accident..." This was how his gloomy mind found a bit of solace, pursuing the most absurd fantasies. His wild fancies numbed the effect of Father Pirard's wise reasoning. And so an entire month went by, and negotiations did not advance a single step. In this family business, as in politics, the marquis formulated brilliant insights, his enthusiasm for which lasted three days. No plan pleased him, merely on the basis that it was supported by excellent arguments: he approved only of those arguments which favored whatever, at that moment, his favorite plan happened to be. For three days, he labored with a poet's ardor and enthusiasm, bringing everything to a certain posture. The next day, he wouldn't hear of it any longer. Julien was initially disconcerted by all the marquis's delaying actions. After several weeks, however, he began to understand that, in this business, Monsieur de La Mole had no fixed approach whatever. Madame de La Mole, like everyone else in the house, believed that Julien had gone to the provinces to supervise family properties. He was in fact staying, secretly, with Father Pirard, and saw Mathilde almost every day. Every morning, she spent an hour with her father, but sometimes they went for weeks without mentioning the business that remained central in their minds. "I don't want to know where that man is," the marquis told her, one day. "Just send him this letter." Mathilde read it: My Languedoc properties bring in 20,600 francs. I give 10,600 francs to my daughter, and 10,000 francs to Monsieur Julien Sorel. This means, of course, that I hereby give the property as well as the income therefrom. Tell the lawyer to draw up two separate deeds of gift, and have them brought to me tomorrow. From then on, there will be no relationship between us. Ah! Sir, should I have expected all this? Marquis De La Mole "I thank you very much," said Mathilde gaily. "We'll be staying at Château d'Aiguillon, between Agen and Marmande. I'm told it's every bit as beautiful as Italy." The gift was an immense surprise to Julien. This was not the cold, severe marquis he had known. Julien's own thoughts were taken up, well in advance, with his son's future. This unexpected and, for a man as poor as himself, rather considerable fortune made him ambitious for his child. He anticipated, either on his wife's account or his own, an income of thirty-six thousand francs. All Mathilde's emotions were absorbed in adoration of her husband—as pride always caused her to refer to Julien. Her great, her sole ambition was to have her marriage made known. She spent her days in exaggerating to herself the high wisdom she had shown, linking her destiny to that of so superior a man. Personal merit had become her preoccupation. Almost continuous separation, the great number of business matters to be dealt with, the shortage of time for talking of love, completed the healthy effect of wise diplomacy, conceived originally by Julien. Mathilde finally became impatient at seeing so little of the man she had, in fact, truly learned to love. In a fit of bad humor, she wrote to her father, beginning her letter like Othello:13