The Red and the Black (28 page)

Julien answered and thought out new ideas. He lost sufficient of his nervousness, not indeed to exhibit any wit, for that is impossible for any one ignorant of the special language which is used in Paris, but to show himself possessed of ideas which, though presented out of place and ungracefully, were yet original. They saw that he knew Latin perfectly.

Julien's adversary was a member of the Academy Inscriptions who chanced to know Latin. He found Julien a very good humanist, was not frightened of making him feel uncomfortable, and really tried to embarrass him. In the heat of the controversy Julien eventually forgot the magnificent furniture of the dining-room. He managed to expound theories concerning the Latin poets which his questioner had never read of anywhere. Like an honest man, he gave the young secretary all due credit for them. As luck would have it, they started a discussion on the question of whether Horace was poor or rich, a good humoured and careless voluptuary who made verses to amuse himself, like Chapelle the friend of Molière and de la Fontaine, or a poor devil of a poet laureate who wrote odes for the King's birthday like Southey, the accuser of Lord Byron. They talked about the state of society under Augustus and under George IV. At both periods the aristocracy was all-powerful, but, while at Rome it was despoiled of its power by Maecenas who was only a simple knight. It had in England reduced George IV practically to the position of a Venetian doge. This discussion seemed to lift the marquis out of that state of bored torpor in which he had been plunged at the beginning of the dinner.

Julien found meaningless such modern names as Southey, Lord Byron, and George IV, which he now heard pronounced for the first time. But every one noticed that whenever the conversation dealt with events that had taken place in Rome and about which knowledge could be obtained by a perusal of the works of Horace, Martial or Tacitus, etc., he showed an indisputable superiority. Julien coolly appropriated several ideas which he had learnt from the bishop of Besançon in the historic conversation which he had had with that prelate. These ideas were not the least appreciated.

When every one was tired of talking about poets, the marquise, who always made it a rule to admire whatever amused her husband, deigned to look at Julien. “Perhaps an educated man lies hid beneath the clumsy manners of this young Abbé,” said the academician who happened to be near the marquise. Julien caught a few words of what he said. Ready-made phrases suited the intellect of the mistress of the house quite well. She adopted this one about Julien, and was very pleased with herself for having invited the academician to dinner. “He has amused M. de la Mole,” she thought.

Julien was copying letters in the library very early the next day when Mademoiselle Mathilde came in by a little dummy door very well masked by the backs of the books. While Julien was admiring the device, Mademoiselle Mathilde seemed astonished and somewhat annoyed at finding him there: Julien saw that she was in curl papers and had a hard, haughty, and masculine expression. Mademoiselle de la Mole had the habit of surreptitiously stealing books from her father's library. Julien's presence rendered this morning's journey abortive, a fact which annoyed her all the more as she had come to fetch the second volume of Voltaire's Princess of Babylon, a worthy climax to one of the most eminently monarchical and religious educations which the convent of the Sacred Heart had ever provided. This poor girl of nineteen already required some element of spiciness in order to get up an interest in a novel.

Count Norbert put in an appearance in the library about three o'clock. He had come to study a paper so as to be able to talk politics in the evening, and was very glad to meet Julien, whose existence he had forgotten. He was charming, and offered him a ride on horseback.

“My father will excuse us until dinner.”

Julien appreciated the “us” and thought it charming.

“Great heavens! M. le Comte,” said Julien, “if it were a question of felling an eighty-foot tree or hewing it out and making it into planks I would acquit myself all right, I daresay, but as for riding a horse, I haven't done such a thing six times in my life.”

“Well, this will be the seventh,” said Norbert.

As a matter of fact, Julien remembered the King of——'s entry into Verrières, and thought he rode extremely well. But as they were returning from the Bois de Boulogne he fell right in the middle of the Rue du Bac, as he suddenly tried to get out of the way of a cabriolet, and was spattered all over with mud. It was lucky that he had two suits. The marquis, wishing to favour him with a few words at dinner, asked him for news of his excursion. Norbert began immediately to answer him in general terms.

“M. le Comte is extremely kind to me,” answered Julien. “I thank him for it, and I fully appreciate it. He was good enough to have the quietest and prettiest horse given to me, but after all he could not tie me on to it, and owing to the lack of that precaution, I had a fall right in the middle of that long street near the bridge.” Madame Mathilde made a futile effort to hide a burst of laughter, and subsequently was indiscreet enough to ask for details. Julien acquitted himself with much simplicity. He had grace without knowing it.

“I prophesy favourably about that little priest,” said the marquis to the academician. “Think of a provincial being simple over a matter like that. Such a thing has never been witnessed before, and will never be witnessed again; and what is more, he describes his misfortune before ladies.”

Julien put his listeners so thoroughly at their ease over his misfortune that at the end of the dinner, when the general conversation had gone off on to another subject, Mademoiselle Mathilde asked her brother some questions over the details of the unfortunate occurrence. As she put numerous questions, and as Julien met her eyes several times, he ventured to answer himself, although the questions had not been addressed to him, and all three of them finished up by laughing just as though they had all been inhabitants of some village in the depths of a forest.

On the following day Julien attended two theology lectures, and then came back to copy out about twenty letters. He found a young man, who though very carefully dressed, had a mean appearance and an envious expression, established near him in the library.

The marquis entered, “What are you doing here, M. Tanbeau?” he said severely to the new-comer.

“I thought—” answered the young man, with a base smile.

“No, monsieur, you thought nothing of the kind. This is a try-on, but it is an unfortunate one.”

Young Tanbeau got up in a rage and disappeared. He was a nephew of the academician who was a friend of Madame de la Mole, and intended to take up the profession of letters. The academician had induced the marquis to take him as a secretary. Tanbeau used to work in a separate room, but having heard of the favour that was vouchsafed to Julien he wished to share it, and he had gone this morning and established his desk in the library.

At four o'clock Julien ventured, after a little hesitation, to present himself to Count Norbert. The latter was on the point of going riding, and being a man of perfect politeness, felt embarrassed.

“I think,” he said to Julien, “that you had better go to the riding school, and after a few weeks, I shall be charmed to ride with you.”

“I should like to have the honour of thanking you for the kindness which you have shewn me. Believe me, monsieur,” added Julien very seriously, “that I appreciate all I owe you. If your horse has not been hurt by the reason of my clumsiness of yesterday, and if it is free I should like to ride it this afternoon.”

“Well, upon my word, my dear Sorel, you do so at your own risk and peril; kindly assume that I have put forth all the objections required by prudence. As a matter of fact it is four o'clock, we have no time to lose.”

As soon as Julien was on horseback, he said to the young count, “What must one do not to fall off?”

“Lots of things,” answered Norbert, bursting into laughter. “Keep your body back for instance.”

Julien put his horse to the trot. They were at the Place Louis XVI.

“Oh, you foolhardy youngster,” said Norbert, “there are too many carriages here, and they are driven by careless drivers into the bargain. Once you are on the ground their tilburies will run over your body, they will not risk spoiling their horses' mouths by pulling up short.”

Norbert saw Julien twenty times on the point of tumbling, but in the end the excursion finished without misadventure. As they came back the young count said to his sister,

“Allow me to introduce a dashing dare-devil.”

When he talked to his father over the dinner from one end of the table to the other, he did justice to Julien's courage. It was the only thing one could possibly praise about his style of riding. The young count had heard in the morning the men who groomed the horses in the courtyard making Julien's fall an opportunity for the most outrageous jokes at his expense.

In spite of so much kindness Julien soon felt himself completely isolated in this family. All their customs seemed strange to him, and he was cognizant of none of them. His blunders were the delight of the valets.

The Abbé Pirard had left for his living. “If Julien is a weak reed, let him perish. If he is a man of spirit, let him get out of his difficulties all alone,” he thought.

If everything in the aristocratic salon of the Hotel de la Mole seemed strange to Julien, that pale young man in his black suit seemed in his turn very strange to those persons who deigned to notice him. Madame de la Mole suggested to her husband that he should send him off on some business on those days when they had certain persons to dinner.

“I wish to carry the experiment to its logical conclusion,” answered the marquis. “The Abbé Pirard contends that we are wrong in crushing the self-respect of the people whom we allow around us. One can only lean on what resists. The only thing against this man is his unknown face, apart from that he is a deaf mute.”

“If I am to know my way about,” said Julien to himself, “I must write down the names of the persons whom I see come to the salon together with a few words on their character.”

He put at the head of the list five or six friends of the house who took every opportunity of paying court to him, believing that he was protected by a whim of the marquis. They were poor dull devils. But it must be said in praise of this class of men, such as they are found today in the salons of the aristocracy, that everyone did not find them equally tame. One of them was now allowing himself to be bullied by the marquis, who was venting his irritation at a harsh remark which had been addressed to him by the marquise.

The masters of the house were too proud or too prone to boredom; they were too much used to finding their only distraction in the addressing of insults, to enable them to expect true friends. But, except on rainy days and in rare moments of savage boredom, they always showed themselves perfectly polite.

If the five or six toadies who manifested so paternal an affection towards Julien had deserted the Hotel de la Mole, the marquise would have been exposed to long spells of solitude, and in the eyes of women of that class, solitude is awful, it is the symbol of disgrace.

The marquis was charming to his wife. He saw that her salon was sufficiently furnished, though not with peers, for he did not think his new colleagues were sufficiently noble to come to his house as friends, or sufficiently amusing to be admitted as inferiors.

It was only later that Julien fathomed these secrets. The governing policy of a household, though it forms the staple of conversation in bourgeois families, is only alluded to in families of the class of that of the marquis in moments of distress. So paramount even in this bored century is the necessity of amusing one's self, that even on the days of dinner-parties the marquis had scarcely left the salon before all the guests ran away. Provided that one did not make any jests about either God or the priests or the King or the persons in office, or the artists who enjoyed the favour of the court, or of anything that was established, provided that one did not praise either Béranger or the opposition papers, or Voltaire or Rousseau or anything which involved any element of free speech, provided above all that one never talked politics, one could discuss everything with freedom.

There is no income of a hundred thousand crowns a year and no blue ribbon which could sustain a contest against such a code of salon etiquette.

The slightest live idea appeared a crudity. In spite of the prevailing good form, perfect politeness, and desire to please, ennui was visible in every face. The young people who came to pay their calls were frightened of speaking of anything which might make them suspected of thinking or of betraying that they had read something prohibited, and relapsed into silence after a few elegant phrases about Rossini and the weather.

Julien noticed that the conversation was usually kept alive by two viscounts and five barons whom M. de la Mole had known at the time of the emigration. These gentlemen enjoyed an income of from six to eight hundred thousand francs. Four swore by the Quotidienne and three by the Gazette de France. One of them had every day some anecdote to tell about the Château, in which he made lavish use of the word admirable. Julien noticed that he had five crosses, the others as a rule only had three.

By way of compensation six footmen in livery were to be seen in the ante-room, and during the whole evening ices or tea were served every quarter-of-an-hour, while about midnight there was a kind of supper with champagne.

This was the reason that sometimes induced Julien to stay till the end. Apart from this he could scarcely understand why any one could bring himself to take seriously the ordinary conversation in this magnificently gilded salon. Sometimes he would look at the talkers to see if they themselves were not making fun of what they were saying. “My M. de Maistre, whom I know by heart,” he thought, “has put it a hundred times better, and all the same he is pretty boring.”

Julien was not the only one to appreciate this stifling moral atmosphere. Some consoled themselves by taking a great quantity of ices, others by the pleasure of saying all the rest of the evening, “I have just come from the Hotel de la Mole where I learnt that Russia, etc.”

Julien learnt from one of the toadies that scarcely six months ago Madame de la Mole had rewarded more than twenty years of assiduous attention by promoting the poor baron Le Bourguignon, who had been a sub-prefect since the restoration, to the rank of prefect.

This great event had whetted the zeal of all these gentlemen. Previously there were few things to which they would have objected, now they objected to nothing. There was rarely any overt lack of consideration, but Julien had already caught at meals two or three little short dialogues between the marquis and his wife which were cruel to those who were seated near them. These noble personages did not conceal their sincere contempt for everyone who was not sprung from people who were entitled to ride in the carriages of the King. Julien noticed that the word crusade was the only word which gave their face an expression of deep seriousness akin to respect. Their ordinary respect had always a touch of condescension. In the middle of this magnificence and this boredom Julien was interested in nothing except M. de la Mole. He was delighted to hear him protest one day that he had had nothing to do with the promotion of that poor Le Bourguignon, it was an attention to the marquise. Julien knew the truth from the Abbé Pirard.

The Abbé was working in the marquis's library with Julien one morning at the eternal de Frilair lawsuit.

“Monsieur,” said Julien suddenly, “is dining every day with madame la marquise one of my duties or a special favour that they show to me?”

“It's a special honour,” replied the scandalised Abbé. “M. the academician, who has been cultivating the family for fifteen years, has never been able to obtain so much for his M. Tanbeau.”

“I find it, sir, the most painful part of my employment. I was less bored at the seminary. Some times I see even Mademoiselle de la Mole yawn, and yet she ought to be accustomed to the social charms of the friends of the house. I am frightened of falling asleep. As a favour, obtain permission for me to go and get a forty sous' dinner in some obscure inn.”

The Abbé, who was a true snob, was very appreciative of the honour of dining with a great lord. While he was endeavouring to get Julien to understand this point of view, a slight noise made them turn round. Julien saw Mademoiselle de la Mole listening. He reddened. She had come to fetch a book and had heard everything. She began to entertain some respect for Julien. “He has not been born servile,” she thought, “like that old Abbé. Heavens, how ugly he is.”

At dinner Julien did not venture to look at Mademoiselle de la Mole but she was kind enough to speak to him. They were expecting a lot of visitors that day and she asked him to stay. The young girls of Paris are not at all fond of persons of a certain age, especially when they are slovenly. Julien did not need much penetration to realise that the colleagues of M. le Bourguignon who remained in the salon had the privilege of being the ordinary butt of Mademoiselle de la Mole's jokes. On this particular day, whether or not by reason of some affectation on her part, she proved cruel to bores.

Mademoiselle de la Mole was the centre of a little knot which used to form nearly every evening behind the marquise's immense armchair. There were to be found there the Marquis de Croisenois, the Comte de Caylus, the Vicomte de Luz and two or three other young officers, the friends of Norbert or his sister. These gentlemen used to sit down on a large blue sofa. At the end of the sofa, opposite the part where the brilliant Mathilde was sitting, Julien sat in silence on a little, rather low straw chair. This modest position was envied by all the toadies; Norbert kept his father's young secretary in countenance by speaking to him, or mentioning him by name once or twice in the evening. On this particular occasion Mademoiselle de la Mole asked him what was the height of the mountain on which the citadel of Besançon is planted. Julien had never any idea if this mountain was higher or lower than Montmartre. He often laughed heartily at what was said in this little knot, but he felt himself incapable of inventing anything analogous. It was like a strange language which he understood but could not speak.

On this particular day Mathilde's friends manifested a continuous hostility to the visitors who came into the vast salon. The friends of the house were the favoured victims at first, inasmuch as they were better known. You can form your opinion as to whether Julien paid attention; everything interested him, both the substance of things and the manner of making fun of them.

“And there is M. Descoulis,” said Mathilde; “he doesn't wear a wig any more. Does he want to get a prefectship through sheer force of genius? He is displaying that bald forehead which he says is filled with lofty thoughts.”

“He is a man who knows the whole world,” said the Marquis de Croisenois. “He also goes to my uncle the cardinal's. He is capable of cultivating a falsehood with each of his friends for years on end, and he has two or three hundred friends. He knows how to nurse friendship, that is his talent. He will go out, just as you see him, in the worst winter weather, and be at the door of one of his friends by seven o'clock in the morning.

“He quarrels from time to time and he writes seven or eight letters for each quarrel. Then he has a reconciliation and he writes seven or eight letters to express his bursts of friendship. But he shines most brilliantly in the frank and sincere expansiveness of the honest man who keeps nothing up his sleeve. This manœuvre is brought into play when he has some favour to ask. One of my uncle's grand vicars is very good at telling the life of M. Descoulis since the restoration. I will bring him to you.”

“Bah! I don't believe all that, it's professional jealousy among the lower classes,” said the Comte de Caylus.

“M. Descoulis will live in history,” replied the marquis. “He brought about the restoration together with the Abbé de Pradt and messieurs de Talleyrand and Pozzo di Borgo.”

“That man has handled millions,” said Norbert, “and I can't conceive why he should come here to swallow my father's epigrams which are frequently atrocious. ‘How many times have you betrayed your friends, my dear Descoulis?' he shouted at him one day from one end of the table to the other.”

“But is it true that he has played the traitor?” asked Mademoiselle de la Mole. “Who has not played the traitor?”

“Why!” said the Comte de Caylus to Norbert, “do you have that celebrated Liberal, M. Sainclair, in your house? What the devil's he come here for? I must go up to him and speak to him and make him speak. He is said to be so clever.”

“But how will your mother receive him?” said M. de Croisenois. “He has such extravagant, generous and independent ideas.”

“Look,” said Mademoiselle de la Mole, “look at the independent man who bows down to the ground to M. Descoulis while he grabs hold of his hand. I almost thought he was going to put it to his lips.”

“Descoulis must stand better with the powers that be than we thought,” answered M. de Croisenois.

“Sainclair comes here in order to get into the academy,” said Norbert. “See how he bows to the baron L——, Croisenois.”

“It would be less base to kneel down,” replied M. de Luz.

“My dear Sorel,” said Norbert, “you are extremely smart, but you come from the mountains. Mind you never bow like that great poet is doing, even to God the Father.”

“Ah there's a really witty man, M. the Baron Bâton,” said Mademoiselle de la Mole, imitating a little the voice of the flunkey who had just announced him.

“I think that even your servants make fun of him. What a name—Baron Bâton,” said M. de Caylus.

“‘What's in a name?' he said to us the other day,” went on Mathilde. “Imagine the Duke de Bouillon announced for the first time. So far as I am concerned the public only need to get used to me.”

Julien left the vicinity of the sofa.

Still insufficiently appreciative of the charming subtleties of a delicate raillery to laugh at a joke, he considered that a jest ought to have some logical foundation. He saw nothing in these young peoples' conversation except a vein of universal scandal-mongering and was shocked by it. His provincial or English prudery went so far as to detect envy in it, though in this he was certainly mistaken.

“Count Norbert,” he said to himself, “who has had to make three drafts for a twenty-line letter to his colonel, would be only too glad to have written once in his whole life one page as good as M. Sainclair.”

Julien approached successively the several groups and attracted no attention by reason of his lack of importance. He followed the Baron Bâton from a distance and tried to hear him.

This witty man appeared nervous and Julien did not see him recover his equanimity before he had hit upon three or four stinging phrases. Julien thought that this kind of wit had great need of space.

The Baron could not make epigrams. He needed at least four sentences of six lines each, in order to be brilliant.