21 John Locke (1632–1704); his Trip to France is found in Peter King's 1676 The Life of John Locke, with extracts from his Correspondance, Journals, and Commonplace Books.
The Red and the Black
Julien did not consider himself worth this much devotion: to tell the truth, he was tired of heroism. Simple tenderness, unsophisticated and even shy, would have made an impression on him, but Mathilde's proud soul always required a public, the presence of all those other people. In the middle of all her suffering, and all her fears for her lover's life (she did not want to survive him), she had a hidden need to astonish the public with the utter extravagance of her love, and the sublimity of everything she was trying to do. Julien was not happy, finding himself indifferent to all this heroism. How would he have felt had he known all the craziness she piled on that devoted, but thoroughly reasonable—as well as limited—spirit, good Fouqué? Fouqué was bewildered, and could not really criticize Mathilde's devotion, since he too would have sacrificed everything he had, exposing himself to the greatest perils in order to save Julien. He was staggered by the quantities of gold she dispensed. In the beginning, he had been impressed by the vast sums she spent, having a provincial's absolute veneration of money. He finally discovered that Mademoiselle de La Mole's plans were not always fixed, and, to his immense relief, he devised a way of describing this utterly wearying person: she was changeable. To proceed from this label to that of scatterbrained—a provincial's most damning criticism—was no great leap. "How strange," Julien told himself one day as Mathilde was leaving his prison, "that so violent a passion, directed toward me, leaves me so cold! And just two months ago, I adored her! I've read, certainly, that death's approach turns you away from everything. But to feel myself an ingrate and be unable to change! Am I an egotist?" He subjected himself to the most humiliating censure. In his heart, ambition had died, but from its ashes another passion had emerged: he called it remorse for having tried to kill Madame de Rênal. In fact, he was frantically in love with her. He experienced an odd happiness, left absolutely alone and not worried about being interrupted, completely surrendering himself to memories of the happy days he had once passed, at Verrières and at Vergy. The smallest incidents from those times, which had flown past far too rapidly, had a freshness, an irresistible charm for him. He never thought of his successes in Paris: he was weary of them. These tendencies, which grew rapidly, were to some extent perceptible to Mathilde's jealousy. She saw very clearly how she had to struggle against his desire to be alone. Sometimes, in her terror, she spoke Madame de Rênal's name. She could see Julien shiver. After that, her passion was unlimited, unrestrained. "If he dies, then I will die, too," she said to herself, as sincerely as such things can be said. "What will they say, in the drawing rooms of Paris, seeing a girl of my rank so adore a lover about to die? To find such sentiments, you'd have to return to the day of heroes: it was love of this kind that made hearts flutter, in the time of Charles IX and Henry III." In the middle of the most intense ecstasies, when she pressed his head to her heart: "Oh!" she told herself, horrified, "this lovely head is going to be chopped off! All right!" she went on, inflamed by a heroism that contained its own happiness. "My lips, now pressed against his beautiful hair, will be cold as ice, less than twenty-four hours later." Thoughts of these heroic moments, and of a ghastly eroticism, held her in an invincible grip. The idea of suicide, itself so engrossing, and before then so entirely foreign to her haughty soul, made its way into her mind and soon ruled it with iron control. "No," she said to herself proudly, "my ancestors' blood hasn't become lukewarm, as it has come down to me." "I have a favor to ask of you," her lover said to her one day. "Let your child's nurse be someone in Verrières. Madame de Rênal would watch over the nurse."
Chapter Thirty-Nine: Plotting
"That's a very difficult thing to ask of me..." And Mathilde grew pale. "You're right, and I beg your pardon, a thousand times over," exclaimed Julien, shaking off his reverie and clasping her in his arms. Having dried her tears, he came back to his notion, but more skillfully. He colored the conversation with philosophical melancholy. He spoke of the future, which was to close, for him, so very soon. "You surely agree, my dearest, that passions are accidental, in these lives of ours, but they are accidents that happen to superior souls...My son's death, in the end, would be a blessing for your family's pride: that's what underlings would think. Disregard will be the fate of this child of misery and shame...I hope that on a day I have no wish to set, but which I am strong enough to foresee, you will obey my last wishes: you will marry Monsieur de Croisenois." "Once I've been dishonored!" "Dishonor cannot adhere to a name like yours. You'll be a widow, the widow of a lunatic, and that's all. I'll go further: my crime, for which there is absolutely no monetary motive, will not be dishonorable. In those times, perhaps, some philosophical legislator will have secured, despite his contemporaries' prejudices, the abolition of the death penalty. Then some friendly voice will cite an example: 'Consider: Mademoiselle de La Mole's first husband was crazy, yes, but not a wicked man, not a scoundrel. It was absurd to cut off his head...' And then my memory won't be infamous, at least after a certain length of time...Your position in the world, your wealth and, if you'll permit me to say so, your first-rate mind, will allow Monsieur de Croisenois, after he's become your husband, to play a role which, on his own, he'd lack the ability to achieve. All he has is birth and bravery, and these qualities, by themselves, which gave a man the reputation of being accomplished, in 1729, are anachronisms a century later, and only lead to pretentiousness. There must be other qualities, before you can lead our French youth. "You'll bring a firm, adventuresome character to the assistance of whatever political party you choose for your husband. You could be the successor to women like Madame de Chevreuse and the Duchess of Longueville, in the great Fronde wars22 of the seventeenth century...But then, my beloved, the heavenly fire which burns in you, now, will have cooled a little... "Permit me to say to you," he added, after many more preparatory observations, "that in fifteen years you'll perceive as an excusable folly, but nevertheless a folly, the love you now feel for me..." He stopped abruptly, and returned to his daydreams. He faced, as he had earlier, the thought that had so shocked Mathilde: "In fifteen years, Madame de Rênal will adore my son, and you will have forgotten him."