lover of the most brilliant Queen of her age, who had died for having sought to set his friends at liberty. And what friends! The First Prince of the Blood and Henri IV.
Accustomed to the perfect naturalness that shone through the whole of Madame de Renal’s conduct, Julien saw nothing but affectation in all the women of Paris, and even without feeling disposed to melancholy, could think of nothing to say to them. Mademoiselle de La Mole was the exception.
He began no longer to mistake for hardness of heart the kind of beauty that goes with nobility of bearing. He had long conversations with Mademoiselle de La Mole, who would stroll with him in the garden sometimes after dinner, past the open windows of the drawing-room. She told him one day that she was reading d’Aubigne’s History, and Brantome. ‘A strange choice,’ thought Julien, ‘and the Marquise does not allow her to read the novels of Walter Scott!’
One day she related to him, with that glow of pleasure in her eyes which proves the sincerity of the speaker’s admiration, the feat of a young woman in the reign of Henri in, which she had just discovered in the Memoires by l’Etoile: finding that her husband was unfaithful, she had stabbed him.
Julien’s self-esteem was flattered. A person surrounded by such deference, one who, according to the Academician, was the leader of the household, deigned to address him in a tone which might almost be regarded as friendly. ‘I was mistaken,’ was his next thought; ‘this is not familiarity, I am only the listener to a tragic story, it is the need to speak. I am regarded as learned by this family. I shall go and read Brantome, d’Aubigne, l’Etoile. I shall be able to challenge some of the anecdotes which Mademoiselle de La Mole cites to me. I must emerge from this part of a passive listener.’
In course of time his conversations with this girl, whose manner was at once so imposing and so easy, became more interesting. He forgot his melancholy role as a plebeian in revolt. He found her learned and indeed rational. Her opinions in the garden differed widely from those which she maintained in the drawing-room. At times she displayed with him an enthusiasm and a frankness which formed a perfect contrast with her normal manner, so haughty and cold.
‘The Wars of the League are the heroic age of France,’ she said to him one day, her eyes aflame with intellect and enthusiasm. ‘Then everyone fought to secure a definite object which he desired in order to make his party triumph, and not merely to win a stupid Cross as in the days of your Emperor. You must agree that there was less egoism and pettiness. I love that period.’
‘And Boniface de La Mole was its hero,’ he said to her.
‘At any rate he was loved as it is perhaps pleasant to be loved. What woman alive today would not be horrified to touch the head of her decapitated lover?’
Madame de La Mole called her daughter indoors. Hypocrisy, to be effective, must be concealed; and Julien, as we see, had taken Mademoiselle de La Mole partly into his confidence as to his admiration for Napoleon.
‘That is the immense advantage which they have over us,’ he said to himself, when left alone in the garden. ‘The history of their ancestors raises them above vulgar sentiments, and they have not always to be thinking of their daily bread! What a wretched state of things!’ he added bitterly. ‘I am not worthy to discuss these serious matters. My life is nothing more than a sequence of hypocrisies, because I have not an income of a thousand francs with which to buy my bread.’
‘What are you dreaming of, Sir?’ Mathilde asked him, running back outdoors.
Julien was tired of despising himself. In a moment of pride, he told her frankly what he was thinking. He blushed deeply when speaking of his poverty to a person who was so rich. He sought to make it quite clear by his proud tone that he asked for nothing. Never had he seemed so handsome to Mathilde; she found in him an expression of sensibility and frankness which he often lacked.
Less than a month later, Julien was strolling pensively in the garden of the Hotel de La Mole; but his features no longer showed the harshness, as of a surly philosopher, which the constant sense of his own inferiority impressed on them. He had just come from the door of the drawing-room to which he had escorted Mademoiselle de La Mole, who pretended that she had hurt her foot when running with her brother.
‘She leaned upon my arm in the strangest fashion!’ Julien said to himself. ‘Am I a fool, or can it be true that she has a liking for me? She listens to me so meekly even when I confess to her all the sufferings of my pride! She, who is so haughty with everyone else! They would be greatly surprised in the drawing-room if they saw her looking like that. There is no doubt about it, she never assumes that meek, friendly air with anyone but myself.’
Julien tried not to exaggerate this singular friendship. He compared it himself to an armed neutrality. Day by day, when they met, before resuming the almost intimate tone of the day before, they almost asked themselves: ‘Are we friends today, or enemies?’ Julien had realised that, were he once to allow himself to be insulted with impunity by this haughty girl, all was lost. ‘If I must quarrel, is it not to my advantage to do so from the first, in defending the lawful rights of my pride, rather than in repelling the marks of contempt that must quickly follow the slightest surrender of what I owe to my personal dignity?’
Several times, on days of mutual discord, Mathilde tried to adopt with him the tone of a great lady; she employed a rare skill in these attempts, but Julien repulsed them rudely.
One day he interrupted her suddenly: ‘Has Mademoiselle de La Mole some order to give to her father’s secretary?’ he asked her; ‘he is obliged to listen to her orders and to carry them out with respect; but apart from that, he has not one word to say to her. He certainly is not paid to communicate his thoughts to her.’
This state of affairs, and the singular doubts which Julien felt banished the boredom which he found regularly in that drawing-room, in which, for all its magnificence, people were afraid of everything, and it was not thought proper to treat any subject lightly.
‘It would be amusing if she loved me! Whether she loves me or not,’ Julien went on, ‘I have as my intimate confidant an intelligent girl, before whom I see the whole household tremble, and most of all the Marquis de Croisenois. That young man who is so polished, so gentle, so brave, who combines in his own person all the advantages of birth and fortune, any one of which would set my heart so at ease! He is madly in love with her, he is going to marry her. Think of all the letters M. de La Mole has made me write to the two lawyers arranging the contract! And I who see myself so subordinate, pen in hand, two hours later, here in the garden, I triumph over so attractive a young man: for after all, her preference is striking, direct. Perhaps, too, she hates the idea of him as a future husband. She is proud enough for that. And the favour she shows me, I obtain on the footing of a confidential servant!
‘But no, either I am mad, or she is making love to me; the more I show myself cold and respectful towards her, the more she seeks me out. That might be deliberate, an affectation; but I see her eyes become animated when I appear unexpectedly. Are the women of Paris capable of pretending to such an extent? What does it matter! I have appearances on my side, let us make the most of them. My God, how handsome she is! How I admire her great blue eyes, seen at close range, and looking at me as they often do! What a difference between this spring and the last, when I was living in misery, keeping myself alive by my strength of character, surrounded by those three hundred dirty and evil-minded hypocrites! I was almost as evil as they.’
In moments of depression: That girl is making a fool of me,’ Julien would think. ‘She is plotting with her brother to mystify me. But she seems so to despise her brother’s want of energy! He is brave, and there is no more to be said, she tells me. He has not an idea which ventures to depart from the fashion. It is always I who am obliged to take up her defence. A girl of nineteen! At that age can a girl be faithful at every moment of the day to the code of hypocrisy that she has laid down for herself?
‘On the other hand, when Mademoiselle de La Mole fastens her great blue eyes on me with a certain strange expression, Comte Norbert always moves away. That seems to me suspicious; ought he not to be annoyed at his sister’s singling out a domestic of their household? For I have heard