Chapter 10
Queen MargueriteLove! In what folly do you not contrive to make us find pleasure?
Letters of a Portuguese NunJulien read over his letters. When the dinner bell sounded: 'How ridiculous I must have appeared in the eyes of that Parisian doll!' he saidto himself; 'what madness to tell her what was really in my thoughts!
And yet perhaps not so very mad. The truth on this occasion was worthyof me.
'Why, too, come and cross-examine me on private matters? Her question was indiscreet. She forgot herself. My thoughts on Danton form nopart of the sacrifice for which her father pays me.'
On reaching the dining-room, Julien was distracted from his ill humour by Mademoiselle de La Mole's deep mourning, which was all themore striking since none of the rest of the family was in black.
After dinner, he found himself entirely recovered from the fit of enthusiasm which had possessed him all day. Fortunately, the Academicianwho knew Latin was present at dinner. There is the man who will beleast contemptuous of me, if, as I suppose, my question about Mademoiselle de La Mole's mourning should prove a blunder.'
Mathilde was looking at him with a singular expression. 'There wehave an instance of the coquetry of the women of these parts, just as Madame de Renal described it to me,' Julien told himself. 'I was not agreeable to her this morning, I did not yield to her impulse for conversation.
My value has increased in her eyes. No doubt the devil loses no opportunity there. Later on, her proud scorn will find out a way of avenging itself. Let her do her worst. How different from the woman I have lost!
What natural charm! What simplicity! I knew what was in her mind before she did; I could see her thoughts take shape; I had no competitor, inher heart, but the fear of losing her children; it was a reasonable and natural affection, indeed it was pleasant for me who felt the same fear. Iwas a fool. The ideas that I had I formed of Paris prevented me from appreciating that sublime woman.
'What a difference, great God! And what do I find here? A sere andhaughty vanity, all the refinements of self-esteem and nothing more.'
The party left the table. 'I must not let my Academician be intercepted,'
said Julien. He went up to him as they were moving into the garden, assumed a meek, submissive air, and sympathised with his rage at the success of Hernani.
'If only we lived in the days of lettres de cachet!' he said.
'Ah, then he would never have dared,' cried the Academician, with agesture worthy of Talma.
In speaking of a flower, Julien quoted a line or two from Virgil's Georgics, and decided that nothing came up to the poetry of the abbe Delille.
In short, he flattered the Academician in every possible way. Afterwhich, with an air of the utmost indifference: 'I suppose,' he said to him,'that Mademoiselle de La Mole has received a legacy from some uncle forwhom she is in mourning.'
'What! You live in the house,' said the Academician, coming to astandstill, 'and you don't know her mania? Indeed, it is strange that hermother allows such things; but, between you and me, it is not exactly bystrength of character that they shine in this family. Mademoiselle Mathilde has enough for them all, and leads them by the nose. Today is the3Oth of April!' and the Academician broke off, looking at Julien, with anair of connivance. Julien smiled as intelligently as he was able.
'What connection can there be between leading a whole household bythe nose, wearing black and the 30th of April?' he asked himself. 'I mustbe even stupider than I thought.
'I must confess to you,' he said to the Academician, and his eye continued the question.
'Let us take a turn in the garden,' said the Academician, delighted tosee this chance of delivering a long and formal speech. 'What! Is it reallypossible that you do not know what happened on the 30th of April,1574?'
'Where?' asked Julien, in surprise.
'On the Place de Greve.'
Julien was so surprised that this name did not enlighten him. His curiosity, the prospect of a tragic interest, so attuned to his nature, gave himthose sparkling eyes which a story-teller so loves to see in his audience.
The Academician, delighted to find a virgin ear, related at full length toJulien how, on the 30th of April, 1574, the handsomest young man of hisage, Boniface de La Mole, and Annibal de Coconasso, a Piedmontesegentleman, his friend, had been beheaded on the Place de Greve. 'LaMole was the adored lover of Queen Marguerite of Navarre; and observe,' the Academician added, 'that Mademoiselle de La Mole is namedMathilde-Marguerite. La Mole was at the same time the favourite of theDuc d'Alencon and an intimate friend of the King of Navarre, afterwardsHenri IV, the husband of his mistress. On Shrove Tuesday in this year,1574, the Court happened to be at Saint-Germain, with the unfortunateKing Charles IX, who was on his deathbed. La Mole wished to carry offthe Princes, his friends, whom Queen Catherine de' Medici was keepingas prisoners with the Court. He brought up two hundred horsemen under the walls of Saint-Germain, the Due d'Alencon took fright, and LaMole was sent to the scaffold.
'But what appeals to Mademoiselle Mathilde, as she told me herself,seven or eight years ago, when she was only twelve, for she has a head,such a head! … ' and the Academician raised his eyes to heaven. 'Whatimpresses her in this political catastrophe is that Queen Marguerite ofNavarre, who had waited concealed in a house on the Place de Greve,made bold to ask the executioner for her lover's head. And the followingnight, at midnight, she took the head in her carriage, and went to bury itwith her own hands in a chapel which stood at the foot of the hill ofMontmartre.'
'Is it possible?' exclaimed Julien, deeply touched.
'Mademoiselle Mathilde despises her brother because, as you see, hethinks nothing of all this ancient history, and never goes into mourningon the 30th of April. It is since this famous execution, and to recall the intimate friendship between La Mole and Coconasso, which Coconasso,being as he was an Italian, was named Annibal, that all the men of thisfamily have borne that name. And,' the Academician went on, loweringhis voice, 'this Coconasso was, on the authority of Charles IX, himself,one of the bloodiest assassins on the 24th of August, 1572.. But how is itpossible, my dear Sorel, that you are ignorant of these matters, you, whoare an inmate of the house?'
'Then that is why twice, during the dinner, Mademoiselle de La Moleaddressed her brother as Annibal. I thought I had not heard aright.'
'It was a reproach. It is strange that the Marquise permits such folly …That great girl's husband will see some fine doings!'
This expression was followed by five or six satirical phrases. The joy atthus revealing an intimate secret that shone in the Academician's eyesshocked Julien. 'What are we but a pair of servants engaged in slandering our employers?' he thought. 'But nothing ought to surprise me that isdone by this academic gentleman.'
One day Julien had caught him on his knees before the Marquise de LaMole; he was begging her for a tobacco licence for a nephew in the country. That night, he gathered from a little maid of Mademoiselle de LaMole, who was making love to him, as Elisa had done in the past, thather mistress's mourning was by no means put on to attract attention.
This eccentricity was an intimate part of her nature. She really loved thisLa Mole, the favoured lover of the most brilliant Queen of her age, whohad died for having sought to set his friends at liberty. And whatfriends! The First Prince of the Blood and Henri IV.
Accustomed to the perfect naturalness that shone through the whole ofMadame de Renal's conduct, Julien saw nothing but affectation in all thewomen of Paris, and even without feeling disposed to melancholy, couldthink of nothing to say to them. Mademoiselle de La Mole was theexception.
He began no longer to mistake for hardness of heart the kind of beautythat 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 toldhim one day that she was reading d'Aubigne's History, and Brantome. 'Astrange choice,' thought Julien, 'and the Marquise does not allow her toread the novels of Walter Scott!'
One day she related to him, with that glow of pleasure in her eyeswhich proves the sincerity of the speaker's admiration, the feat of ayoung woman in the reign of Henri in, which she had just discovered inthe Memoires by l'Etoile: finding that her husband was unfaithful, shehad stabbed him.
Julien's self-esteem was flattered. A person surrounded by such deference, one who, according to the Academician, was the leader of thehousehold, 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 anecdoteswhich Mademoiselle de La Mole cites to me. I must emerge from thispart of a passive listener.'
In course of time his conversations with this girl, whose manner was atonce so imposing and so easy, became more interesting. He forgot hismelancholy role as a plebeian in revolt. He found her learned and indeedrational. Her opinions in the garden differed widely from those whichshe maintained in the drawing-room. At times she displayed with himan enthusiasm and a frankness which formed a perfect contrast with hernormal manner, so haughty and cold.
'The Wars of the League are the heroic age of France,' she said to himone day, her eyes aflame with intellect and enthusiasm. 'Then everyonefought to secure a definite object which he desired in order to make hisparty triumph, and not merely to win a stupid Cross as in the days ofyour 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. Whatwoman 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 forNapoleon.
'That is the immense advantage which they have over us,' he said tohimself, when left alone in the garden. 'The history of their ancestorsraises them above vulgar sentiments, and they have not always to bethinking of their daily bread! What a wretched state of things!' he addedbitterly. 'I am not worthy to discuss these serious matters. My life isnothing 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 backoutdoors.
Julien was tired of despising himself. In a moment of pride, he told herfrankly what he was thinking. He blushed deeply when speaking of hispoverty 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 andfrankness which he often lacked.
Less than a month later, Julien was strolling pensively in the garden ofthe Hotel de La Mole; but his features no longer showed the harshness,as of a surly philosopher, which the constant sense of his own inferiorityimpressed 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 listensto me so meekly even when I confess to her all the sufferings of mypride! She, who is so haughty with everyone else! They would be greatlysurprised in the drawing-room if they saw her looking like that. There isno doubt about it, she never assumes that meek, friendly air with anyonebut myself.'
Julien tried not to exaggerate this singular friendship. He compared ithimself to an armed neutrality. Day by day, when they met, before resuming the almost intimate tone of the day before, they almost askedthemselves: 'Are we friends today, or enemies?' Julien had realised that,were he once to allow himself to be insulted with impunity by thishaughty girl, all was lost. 'If I must quarrel, is it not to my advantage todo so from the first, in defending the lawful rights of my pride, ratherthan in repelling the marks of contempt that must quickly follow theslightest surrender of what I owe to my personal dignity?'
Several times, on days of mutual discord, Mathilde tried to adopt withhim 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 Molesome order to give to her father's secretary?' he asked her; 'he is obligedto listen to her orders and to carry them out with respect; but apart fromthat, 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 banishedthe boredom which he found regularly in that drawing-room, in which,for all its magnificence, people were afraid of everything, and it was notthought 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 deCroisenois. That young man who is so polished, so gentle, so brave, whocombines in his own person all the advantages of birth and fortune, anyone 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 mademe 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 onthe footing of a confidential servant!
'But no, either I am mad, or she is making love to me; the more I showmyself cold and respectful towards her, the more she seeks me out. Thatmight be deliberate, an affectation; but I see her eyes become animatedwhen I appear unexpectedly. Are the women of Paris capable of pretending to such an extent? What does it matter! I have appearances on myside, let us make the most of them. My God, how handsome she is! HowI admire her great blue eyes, seen at close range, and looking at me asthey often do! What a difference between this spring and the last, when Iwas living in misery, keeping myself alive by my strength of character,surrounded by those three hundred dirty and evil-minded hypocrites! Iwas almost as evil as they.'
In moments of depression: That girl is making a fool of me,' Julienwould think. 'She is plotting with her brother to mystify me. But sheseems so to despise her brother's want of energy! He is brave, and thereis no more to be said, she tells me. He has not an idea which ventures todepart 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 forherself?
'On the other hand, when Mademoiselle de La Mole fastens her greatblue 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 haveheard the Duc de Chaulnes use that term of me.' At this memory angerobliterated every other feeling. 'Is it only the love of old-fashionedspeech in that ducal maniac?
'Anyhow, she is pretty!' Julien went on, with the glare of a tiger. 'I willhave her, I shall then depart and woe to him that impedes me in myflight!'
This plan became Julien's sole occupation; he could no longer give athought to anything else. His days passed like hours. At all hours of theday, when he sought to occupy his mind with some serious business, histhoughts would abandon everything, and he would come to himself aquarter of an hour later, his heart throbbing, his head confused, anddreaming of this one idea: 'Does she love me?'