The Red and the Black (29 page)

“That man argues, he does not talk,” said someone behind Julien. He turned round and reddened with pleasure when he heard the name of the Comte Chalvet. He was the subtlest man of the century. Julien had often found his name in the Memorial of St. Helena and in the portions of history dictated by Napoleon. The diction of Comte Chalvet was laconic, his phrases were flashes of lightning—just, vivid, deep. If he talked about any matter, the conversation immediately made a step forward; he imported facts into it; it was a pleasure to hear him. In politics, however, he was a brazen cynic.

“I am independent, I am,” he was saying to a gentleman with three stars, of whom apparently he was making fun. “Why insist on my having to-day the same opinion I had six weeks ago? In that case my opinion would be my master.”

Four grave young men who were standing round scowled; these gentlemen did not like flippancy. The comte saw that he had gone too far. Luckily he perceived the honest M. Balland, a veritable hypocrite of honesty. The count began to talk to him; people closed up, for they realised that poor Balland was going to be the next victim.

M. Balland, although he was horribly ugly and his first steps in the world were almost unmentionable, had by dint of his morals and his morality married a very rich wife who had died; he subsequently married a second very rich one who was never seen in society. He enjoyed, in all humility, an income of sixty thousand francs, and had his own flatterers. Comte Chalvet talked to him pitilessly about all this. There was soon a circle of thirty persons around them. Everybody was smiling, including the solemn young men who were the hope of the century.

“Why does he come to M. de la Mole where he is obviously only a laughing stock?” thought Julien. He approached the Abbé Pirard to ask him.

M. Balland made his escape.

“Good,” said Norbert, “there is one of the spies of my father gone; there is only the little limping Napier left.”

“Can that be the key of the riddle?” thought Julien, “but if so, why does the marquis receive M. Balland?”

The stern Abbé Pirard was scowling in a corner of the salon listening to the lackeys announcing the names.

“This is nothing more than a den,” he was saying like another Basil, “I see none but shady people come in.”

As a matter of fact the severe Abbé did not know what constitutes high society. But his friends the Jansenites, had given him some very precise notions about those men who only get into society by reason of their extreme subtlety in the service of all parties, or of their monstrous wealth. For some minutes that evening he answered Julien's eager questions fully and freely, and then suddenly stopped short, grieved at having always to say ill of everyone, and thinking he was guilty of a sin. Bilious Jansenist as he was, and believing as he did in the duty of Christian charity, his life was a perpetual conflict.

“How strange that Abbé Pirard looks,” said Mademoiselle de la Mole, as Julien came near the sofa.

Julien felt irritated, but she was right all the same. M. Pirard was unquestionably the most honest man in the salon, but his pimply face, which was suffering from the stings of conscience, made him look hideous at this particular moment. “Trust physiognomy after this,” thought Julien, “it is only when the delicate conscience of the Abbé Pirard is reproaching him for some trifling lapse that he looks so awful; while the expression of that notorious spy Napier shows a pure and tranquil happiness.” The Abbé Pirard, however, had made great concessions to his party. He had taken a servant, and was very well dressed.

Julien noticed something strange in the salon; it was that all eyes were being turned towards the door, and there was a semi-silence. The flunkey was announcing the famous Baron Tolly, who had just become publicly conspicuous by reason of the elections. Julien came forward and had a very good view of him. The baron had been the president of an electoral college; he had the brilliant idea of spiriting away the little squares of paper which contained the votes of one of the parties. But to make up for it he replaced them by an equal number of other little pieces of paper containing a name agreeable to himself. This drastic manœuvre had been noticed by some of the voters, who had made an immediate point of congratulating the Baron de Tolly. The good fellow was still pale from this great business. Malicious persons had pronounced the word galleys. M. de la Mole received him coldly. The poor Baron made his escape.

“If he leaves us so quickly it's to go to M. Comté's,”
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said Comte Chalvet and everyone laughed.

Little Tanbeau was trying to win his spurs by talking to some silent noblemen and some intriguers who, though shady, were all men of wit, and were on this particular night in great force in M. de la Mole's salon (for he was mentioned for a place in the ministry). If he had not yet any subtlety of perception he made up for it, as one will see, by the energy of his words.

“Why not sentence that man to ten years' imprisonment?” he was saying at the moment when Julien approached his knot. “Those reptiles should be confined in the bottom of a dungeon; they ought to languish to death in gaol, otherwise their venom will grow and become more dangerous. What is the good of sentencing him to a fine of a thousand crowns? He is poor, so be it, all the better, but his party will pay for him. What the case required was a five hundred francs fine and ten years in a dungeon.”

“Well to be sure, who is the monster they are speaking about?” thought Julien who was viewing with amazement the vehement tone and hysterical gestures of his colleague. At this moment the thin, drawn, little face of the academician's nephew was hideous. Julien soon learnt that they were talking of the greatest poet of the century.

“You monster,” Julien exclaimed half aloud, while tears of generosity moistened his eyes. “You little rascal,” he thought, “I will pay you out for this.”

“Yet,” he thought, “those are the unborn hopes of the party of which the marquis is one of the chiefs. How many crosses and how many sinecures would that celebrated man whom he is now defaming have accumulated if he had sold himself—I won't say to the mediocre min-istry of M. de Nerval—but to one of those reasonably honest ministries which we have seen follow each other in succession.”

The Abbé Pirard motioned to Julien from some distance off; M. de la Mole had just said something to him. But when Julien, who was listening at the moment with downcast eyes to the lamentations of the bishop, had at length got free and was able to get near his friend, he found him monopolised by the abominable little Tanbeau. The little beast hated him as the cause of Julien's favour with the marquis, and was now making up to him.

“When will death deliver us from that aged rottenness,” it was in these words of a biblical energy that the little man of letters was now talking of the venerable Lord Holland. His merit consisted in an excellent knowledge of the biography of living men, and he had just made a rapid review of all the men who could aspire to some influence under the reign of the new King of England.

The Abbé Pirard passed in to an adjacent salon. Julien followed him.

“I warn you the marquis does not like scribblers, it is his only prejudice. Know Latin and Greek if you can manage it, the history of the Egyptians, Persians, etc., he will honour and protect you as a learned man. But don't write a page of French, especially on serious matters which are above your position in society, or he will call you a scribbler and take you for a scoundrel. How is it that living as you do in the hôtel of a great lord you don't know the Duke de Castries' epigram on Alembert and Rousseau: ‘the fellow wants to reason about everything and hasn't got an income of a thousand crowns!'”

“Everything leaks out here,” thought Julien, “just like the seminary.” He had written eight or six fairly drastic pages. It was a kind of historical eulogy of the old surgeon-major who had, he said, made a man of him. “The little note book,” said Julien to himself, “has always been locked.” He went up to his room, burnt his manuscript and returned to the salon. The brilliant scoundrels had left it, only the men with the stars were left.

Seven or eight very aristocratic ladies, very devout, very affected, and of from thirty to thirty-five years of age, were grouped round the table that the servants had just brought in ready served. The brilliant Maréchale de Fervaques came in apologising for the lateness of the hour. It was more than midnight: she went and sat down near the marquise. Julien was deeply touched, she had the eyes and the expression of Madame de Rênal.

Mademoiselle de la Mole's circle was still full of people. She was engaged with her friends in making fun of the unfortunate Comte de Thaler. He was the only son of that celebrated Jew who was famous for the riches that he had won by lending money to kings to make war on the peoples.

The Jew had just died, leaving his son an income of one hundred thousand crowns a month, and a name that was only too well known. This strange position required either a simple character or force of willpower.

Unfortunately the comte was simply a fellow who was inflated by all kinds of pretensions which had been suggested to him by all his toadies.

M. de Caylus asserted that they had induced him to make up his mind to ask for the hand of Mademoiselle de la Mole, to whom the Marquis de Croisenois, who would be a duke with a hundred thousand francs a year, was paying his attentions.

“Oh, do not accuse him of having a mind,” said Norbert pitifully. Will power was what the poor Comte de Thaler lacked most of all. So far as this side of his character went he was worthy of being a king. He would take counsel from everybody, but he never had the courage to follow any advice to the bitter end.

“His physiognomy would be sufficient in itself,” Mademoiselle de la Mole was fond of saying, “to have inspired her with a holy joy.” It was a singular mixture of anxiety and disappointment, but from time to time one could distinguish gusts of self-importance, and above all that trenchant tone suited to the richest man in France, especially when he had nothing to be ashamed of in his personal appearance and was not yet thirty-six. “He is timidly insolent,” M. de Croisenois would say. The Comte de Caylus, Norbert, and two or three moustachioed young people made fun of him to their heart's content without him suspecting it, and finally packed him off as one o'clock struck.

“Are those your famous Arab horses waiting for you at the door in this awful weather?” said Norbert to him.

“No, it is a new pair which are much cheaper,” said M. de Thaler. “The horse on the left cost me five thousand francs, while the one on the right is only worth one hundred louis, but I would ask you to believe me when I say that I only have him out at night. His trot you see is exactly like the other ones.”

Norbert's remark made the comte think it was good form for a man like him to make a hobby of his horses, and that he must not let them get wet. He went away, and the other gentleman left a minute afterwards making fun of him all the time. “So,” thought Julien as he heard them laugh on the staircase, “I have the privilege of seeing the exact opposite of my own situation. I have not got twenty louis a year and I found myself side by side with a man who has twenty louis an hour and they made fun of him. Seeing a sight like that cures one of envy.”

This was the stage Julien had reached, when after several months of probation the steward of the household handed him the third quarter of his wages. M. de la Mole had entrusted him with the administration of his estates in Brittany and Normandy. Julien made frequent journeys there. He had chief control of the correspondence relating to the famous law-suit with the Abbé de Frilair. M. Pirard had instructed him.

On the data of the short notes which the marquis would scribble on the margin of all the various papers which were addressed to him, Julien would compose answers which were nearly all signed.

At the Theology School his professors complained of his lack of industry, but they did not fail to regard him as one of their most distinguished pupils. This varied work, tackled as it was with all the ardour of suffering ambition, soon robbed Julien of that fresh complexion which he had brought from the provinces. His pallor constituted one of his merits in the eyes of his comrades, the young seminarists; he found them much less malicious, much less ready to bow down to a silver crown than those of Besançon; they thought he was consumptive. The marquis had given him a horse.

Julien, fearing that he might meet people during his rides on horseback, had given out that this exercise had been prescribed by the doctors. The Abbé Pirard had taken him into several Jansenist societies. Julien was astonished; the idea of religion was indissolubly connected in his mind with the ideas of hypocrisy and covetousness. He admired those austere pious men who never gave a thought to their income. Several Jansenists became friendly with him and would give him advice. A new world opened before him. At the Jansenists' he got to know a Comte Altamira, who was nearly six feet high, was a Liberal, a believer, and had been condemned to death in his own country. He was struck by the strange contrast of devoutness and love of liberty.

Julien's relations with the young comte had become cool. Norbert had thought that he answered the jokes of his friends with too much sharpness. Julien had committed one or two breaches of social etiquette and vowed to himself that he would never speak to Mademoiselle Mathilde. They were always perfectly polite to him in the Hôtel de la Mole but he felt himself quite lost. His provincial common sense explained this result by the vulgar proverb Tout beau tout nouveau.

He gradually came to have a little more penetration than during his first days, or it may have been that the first glamour of Parisian urbanity had passed off. As soon as he left off working, he fell a prey to a mortal boredom. He was experiencing the withering effects of that admirable politeness so typical of good society, which is so perfectly modulated to every degree of the social hierarchy.

No doubt the provinces can be reproached with a commonness and lack of polish in their tone; but they show a certain amount of passion, when they answer you. Julien's self-respect was never wounded at the Hôtel de la Mole, but he often felt at the end of the day as though he would like to cry. A café-waiter in the provinces will take an interest in you if you happen to have some accident as you enter his café, but if this accident has everything about it which is disagreeable to your vanity, he will repeat ten times in succession the very word which tortures you, as he tells you how sorry he is. At Paris they make a point of laughing in secret, but you always remain a stranger.

We pass in silence over a number of little episodes which would have made Julien ridiculous, if he had not been to some extent above ridicule. A foolish sensibility resulted in his committing innumerable acts of bad taste. All his pleasures were precautions; he practiced pistol shooting every day, he was one of the promising pupils of the most famous maîtres d'armes. As soon as he had an instant to himself, instead of employing it in reading as he did before, he would rush off to the riding school and ask for the most vicious horses. When he went out with the master of the riding school he was almost invariably thrown.

The marquis found him convenient by reason of his persistent industry, his silence and his intelligence, and gradually took him into his confidence with regard to all his affairs, which were in any way difficult to unravel. The marquis was a sagacious business man on all those occasions when his lofty ambition gave him some respite; having special information within his reach, he would speculate successfully on the Exchange. He would buy mansions and forests; but he would easily lose his temper. He would give away hundreds of louis, and would go to law for a few hundred francs. Rich men with a lofty spirit have recourse to business not so much for results as for distraction. The marquis needed a chief of staff who would put all his money affairs into clear and lucid order. Madame de la Mole, although of so even a character, sometimes made fun of Julien. Great ladies have a horror of those unexpected incidents which are produced by a sensitive character; they constitute the opposite pole of etiquette. On two or three occasions the marquis took his part. “If he is ridiculous in your salon, he triumphs in his office.” Julien on his side thought he had caught the marquise's secret. She deigned to manifest an interest in everything the minute the Baron de la Joumate was announced. He was a cold individual with an expressionless physiognomy. He was tall, thin, ugly, very well dressed, passed his life in his château, and generally speaking said nothing about anything. Such was his outlook on life. Madame de la Mole would have been happy for the first time in her life if she could have made him her daughter's husband.