The Red and the Black (42 page)

“‘Form your battalions,' I would say to you in the words of the Jacobin songs. Some noble Gustavus Adolphus will then be found who, touched by the imminent peril of the monarchical principle, will make a dash three hundred leagues from his own country, and will do for you what Gustavus did for the Protestant princes. Do you want to go on talking without acting? In fifty years' time there will be only presidents or republics in Europe and not one king, and with those three letters R. O. I. you will see the last of the priests and the gentlemen. I can see nothing but candidates paying court to squalid majorities.

“It is no use your saying that at the present time France has not a single accredited general who is universally known and loved, that the army is only known and organised in the interests of the throne and the church, and that it has been deprived of all its old troopers, while each of the Prussian and Austrian regiments count fifty non-commissioned officers who have seen fire.

“Two hundred thousand young men of the middle classes are spoiling for war—”

“A truce to disagreeable truths,” said a grave personage in a pompous tone. He was apparently a very high ecclesiastical dignitary, for M. de la Mole smiled pleasantly, instead of getting angry, a circumstance which greatly impressed Julien.

“A truce to unpleasant truths; let us resume, gentlemen. The man who needs to have a gangrened leg cut off would be ill advised to say to his surgeon, ‘this disease is very healthy.' If I may use the metaphor, gentlemen, the noble Duke of——is our surgeon.”

“So the great words have at last been uttered,” thought Julien. “It is towards the——that I shall gallop to-night.”

The great personage continued. One could see that he knew his subject. He proceeded to expound the following great truths with a soft and tempered eloquence with which Julien was inordinately delighted:—

“1. England has not a guinea to help us with; economy and Hume are the fashion there. Even the saints will not give us any money, and M. Brougham will make fun of us.

“2. The impossibility of getting the kings of Europe to embark on more than two campaigns without English gold; two campaigns will not be enough to dispose of the middle classes.

“3. The necessity of forming an armed party in France. Without this, the monarchical principle in Europe will not risk even two campaigns.

“The fourth point which I venture to suggest to you, as self-evident, is this:

“The impossibility of forming an armed party in France without the clergy. I am bold enough to tell you this because I will prove it to you, gentlemen. You must make every sacrifice for the clergy.

“First, because as it is occupied with its mission by day and by night, and guided by highly capable men established far from these storms at three hundred leagues from your frontiers——”

“Ah, Rome, Rome!” exclaimed the master of the house.

“Yes, Monsieur, Rome,” replied the cardinal haughtily. “Whatever more or less ingenious jokes may have been the fashion when you were young, I have no hesitation in saying that in 1830 it is only the clergy, under the guidance of Rome, who has the ear of the lower classes.

“Fifty thousand priests repeat the same words on the day appointed by their chiefs, and the people—who after all provide soldiers—will be more touched by the voices of its priests than by all the versifying in the whole world.” (This personality provoked some murmurs.)

“The clergy has a genius superior to yours,” went on the cardinal raising his voice. “All the progress that has been made towards this essential point of having an armed party in France has been made by us.” At this juncture facts were introduced. “Who used eighty thousand rifles in Vendée?” etc., etc.

“So long as the clergy is without its forests it is helpless. At the first war the minister of finance will write to his agents that there is no money to be had except for the curé. At bottom France does not believe, and she loves war. Whoever gives her war will be doubly popular, for making war is, to use a vulgar phrase, the same as starving the Jesuits; making war means delivering those monsters of pride—the men of France—from the menace of foreign intervention.”

The cardinal had a favourable hearing. “M. de Nerval,” he said, “will have to leave the ministry, his name irritates and to no purpose.”

At these words everybody got up and talked at the same time. “I will be sent away again,” thought Julien, but the sapient president himself had forgotten both the presence and existence of Julien.

All eyes were turned upon a man whom Julien recognised. It was M. de Nerval, the prime minister, whom he had seen at M. the Duc de Retz's ball.

The disorder was at its height, as the papers say when they talk of the Chamber. At the end of a long quarter of an hour a little quiet was established.

Then M. de Nerval got up and said in an apostolic tone and a singular voice:

“I will not go so far as to say that I do not set great store on being a minister.

“It has been demonstrated to me, gentlemen, that my name will double the forces of the Jacobins by making many moderates divide against us. I should therefore be willing to retire; but the ways of the Lord are only visible to a small number; but,” he added, looking fixedly at the cardinal, “I have a mission. Heaven has said: ‘You will either lose your head on the scaffold or you will re-establish the monarchy of France and reduce the Chambers to the condition of the parliament of Louis XV.,' and that, gentlemen, I shall do.”

He finished his speech, sat down, and there was a long silence.

“What a good actor,” thought Julien. He made his usual mistake of ascribing too much intelligence to the people. Excited by the debates of so lively an evening, and above all by the sincerity of the discussion, M. de Nerval did at this moment believe in his mission. This man had great courage, but at the same time no sense.

During the silence that followed the impressive words, “I shall do it,” midnight struck. Julien thought that the striking of the clock had in it a certain element of funereal majesty. He felt moved.

The discussion was soon resumed with increasing energy, and above all with an incredible naïveté. “These people will have me poisoned,” thought Julien at times. “How can they say such things before a plebeian?”

They were still talking when two o'clock struck. The master of the house had been sleeping for some time. M. de la Mole was obliged to ring for new candles. M. de Nerval, the minister, had left at the quarter to two, but not without having repeatedly studied Julien's face in a mirror which was at the minister's side. His departure had seemed to put everybody at their ease.

While they were bringing new candles, the man in the waistcoats whispered to his neighbour: “God knows what that man will say to the King. He may throw ridicule upon us and spoil our future.”

“One must own that he must possess an unusual self-assurance, not to say impudence, to put in an appearance here. There were signs of it before he became a minister; but a portfolio changes everything and swamps all a man's interests; he must have felts its effect.”

The minister had scarcely left before the general of Buonaparte closed his eyes. He now talked of his health and his wounds, consulted his watch, and went away.

“I will wager,” said the man in the waistcoats, “that the general is running after the minister; he will apologise for having been here and pretend that he is our leader.”

“Let us now deliberate, gentlemen,” said the president, after the sleepy servants had finished bringing and lighting new candles. “Let us leave off trying to persuade each other. Let us think of the contents of the note which will be read by our friends outside in forty-eight hours from now. We have heard ministers spoken of. Now that M. de Nerval has left us, we are at liberty to say ‘what we do care for ministers.'”

The cardinal gave a subtle smile of approval.

“Nothing is easier, it seems to me, than summing up our position,” said the young bishop of Agde, with the restrained concentrated fire of the most exalted fanaticism. He had kept silent up to this time; his eye, which Julien had noticed as being soft and calm at the beginning, had become fiery during the first hour of the discussion. His soul was now bubbling over like lava from Vesuvius.

“England only made one mistake from 1806 to 1814,” he said, “and that was in not taking direct and personal measures against Napoleon. As soon as that man had made dukes and chamberlains, as soon as he had re-established the throne, the mission that God had entrusted to him was finished. The only thing to do with him was to sacrifice him. The scriptures teach us in more than one place how to make an end of tyrants” (at this point there were several Latin quotations).

“To-day, gentlemen, it is not a man who has to be sacrificed, it is Paris. What is the use of arming your five hundred men in each department, a hazardous and interminable enterprise? What is the good of involving France in a matter which is personal to Paris? Paris alone has done the evil, with its journals and its salons. Let the new Babylon perish.

“We must bring to an end the conflict between the church and Paris. Such a catastrophe would even be in the worldly interests of the throne. Why did not Paris dare to whisper a word under Buonaparte? Ask the cannon of Saint-Roch?”

Julien did not leave with M. de la Mole before three o'clock in the morning.

The marquis seemed tired and ashamed. For the first time in his life in conversation with Julien, his tone was plaintive. He asked him for his word never to reveal the excesses of zeal—that was his expression—of which chance had just made him a witness. “Only mention it to our foreign friend, if he seriously insists on knowing what our young madmen are like. What does it matter to them if a state is overthrown, they will become cardinals and will take refuge in Rome. As for us, we shall be massacred by the peasants in our châteaus.”

The secret note into which the marquis condensed Julien's full report of twenty-six pages was not ready before a quarter to five.

“I am dead tired,” said the marquis, “as is quite obvious from the lack of clearness at the end of this note; I am more dissatisfied with it than with anything I ever did in my whole life. Look here, my friend,” he added, “go and rest for some hours, and as I am frightened you might be kidnapped, I shall lock you up in your room.”

The marquis took Julien on the following day to a lonely château at a good distance from Paris. There were strange guests there whom Julien thought were priests. He was given a passport which was made out in a fictitious name, but indicated the real destination of his journey, which he had always pretended not to know. He got into a carriage alone.

The marquis had no anxiety on the score of his memory. Julien had recited the secret note to him several times but he was very apprehensive of his being intercepted.

“Above all, mind you look like a coxcomb who is simply travelling to kill time,” he said affectionately to him when he was leaving the salon. “Perhaps there was more than one treacherous brother in this evening's meeting.”

The journey was quick and very melancholy. Julien had scarcely got out of the marquis's sight before he forgot his secret note and his mission, and only thought about Mathilde's disdain.

At a village some leagues beyond Metz, the postmaster came and told him that there were no horses. It was ten o'clock in the evening. Julien was very annoyed and asked for supper. He walked in front of the door and gradually without being noticed passed into the stable-yard. He did not see any horses there.

“That man looked strange though,” thought Julien to himself. “He was scrutinizing me with his brutal eyes.”

As one sees, he was beginning to be slightly sceptical of all he heard. He thought of escaping after supper, and in order to learn at any rate something about the surrounding country, he left his room to go and warm himself at the kitchen fire. He was overjoyed to find there the celebrated singer, Signor Geronimo.

The Neapolitan was ensconced in an armchair which he had had brought near the fire. He was groaning aloud, and was speaking more to himself than to the twenty dumbfounded German peasants who surrounded him.

“Those people will be my ruin,” he cried to Julien. “I have promised to sing to-morrow at Mayence. Seven sovereign princes have gone there to hear me. Let us go and take the air,” he added, meaningly.

When he had gone a hundred yards down the road, and it was impossible to be overheard, he said to Julien:

“Do you know the real truth? The postmaster is a scoundrel. When I went out for a walk I gave twenty sous to a little ragamuffin who told me everything. There are twelve horses in the stable at the other end of the village. They want to stop some courier.”

“Really,” said Julien innocently.

Discovering the fraud was not enough; the thing was to get away, but Geronimo and his friends could not succeed in doing this.

“Let us wait for daybreak,” said the singer at last, “they are mistrustful of us. It is perhaps you or me whom they suspect. We will order a good breakfast to-morrow morning, we will go for a walk while they are getting it ready, we will then escape, we will hire horses, and gain the next station.”

“And how about your luggage?” said Julien, who thought perhaps Geronimo himself might have been sent to intercept him. They had to have supper and go to bed. Julien was still in his first sleep when he was woken up with a start by the voices of two persons who were speaking in his room with utmost freedom.

He recognised the postmaster armed with a dark lantern. The light was turned on the carriage-seat which Julien had taken up into his room. Beside the postmaster was a man who was calmly searching the open seat. Julien could see nothing except the sleeves of his coat which were black and very tight.

“It's a cassock,” he said to himself and he softly seized the little pistol which he had placed under his pillow.

“Don't be frightened of his waking up, curé,” said the postmaster, “the wine that has been served him was the stuff prepared by yourself.”

“I can't find any trace of papers,” answered the curé. “A lot of linen and essences, pommades, and vanities. It's a young man of the world on pleasure bent. The other one who effects an Italian accent is more likely to be the emissary.”

The men approached Julien to search the pockets of his travelling coat. He felt very tempted to kill them for thieves. Nothing could be safer in its consequences. He was very desirous of doing so . . . “I should only be a fool,” he said to himself, “I should compromise my mission.” “He is not a diplomatist,” said the priest after searching his coat. He went away and did well to do so.

“It will be a bad business for him,” Julien was saying to himself, “if he touches me in my bed. He may have quite well come to stab me, and I won't put up with that.”

The curé turned his head, Julien half opened his eyes. He was inordinately astonished, it was the Abbé Castenède. As a matter of fact, although these two persons had made a point of talking in a fairly low voice, he had thought from the first that he recognised one of the voices. Julien was seized with an inordinate desire to purge the earth of one of its most cowardly villains; “But my mission,” he said to himself.

The curé and his acolyte went out. A quarter of an hour afterwards Julien pretended to have just woken up. He called out and woke up the whole house.