And he reminded himself of several disdainful glances aimed at him by Madame de La Mole, and especially by the ladies, her friends.
The pleasure of triumphing over the Marquis de Croisenois completed the rout of this lingering trace of virtue.
‘How I should love to make him angry!’ said Julien; ‘with what assurance would I now thrust at him with my sword.’ And he struck a sweeping blow at the air. ‘Until now, I was a smug, basely profiting by a trace of courage. After this letter, I am his equal.
‘Yes,’ he said to himself with an infinite delight, dwelling on the words, ‘our merits, the Marquis’s and mine, have been weighed, and the poor carpenter from the Jura wins the day.
‘Good!’ he cried, ‘here is the signature to my reply ready found. Do not go and imagine, Mademoiselle de La Mole, that I am forgetting my station. I shall make you realise and feel that it is for the son of a carpenter that you are betraying a descendant of the famous Guy de Croisenois, who followed Saint Louis on his Crusade.’
Julien was unable to contain his joy. He was obliged to go down to the garden. His room, in which he had locked himself up, seemed too confined a space for him to breathe in.
‘I, a poor peasant from the Jura,’ he kept on repeating, ‘I, I condemned always to wear this dismal black coat! Alas, twenty years ago, I should have worn uniform like them! In those days a man of my sort was either killed, or a General at six and thirty.’ The letter, which he kept tightly clasped in his hand, gave him the bearing and pose of a hero. ‘Nowadays, it is true, with the said black coat, at the age of forty, a man has emoluments of one hundred thousand francs and the Blue Riband, like the Bishop of Beauvais.
‘Oh, well!’ he said to himself, laughing like Mephistopheles, ‘I have more sense than they; I know how to choose the uniform of my generation.’ And he felt an intensification of his ambition and of his attachment to the clerical habit. ‘How many Cardinals have there been of humbler birth than mine, who have risen to positions of government! My fellow-countryman Granvelle, for instance.’[10]
Gradually Julien’s agitation subsided; prudence rose to the surface. He said to himself, like his master Tartuffe, whose part he knew by heart:
‘I might suppose these words an honest artifice . . . Nay, I shall not believe so flattering a speech Unless some favour shown by her for whom I sigh Assure me that they mean all that they might imply.’
(Tartuffe, Act IV, Scene V)
‘Tartuffe also was ruined by a woman, and he was as good a man as most . . . My answer may be shewn . . . a mishap for which we find this remedy,’ he went on, pronouncing each word slowly, and in accents of restrained ferocity, ‘we begin it by quoting the strongest expressions from the letter of the sublime Mathilde.
‘Yes, but then four of M. de Croisenois’s flunkeys will spring upon me, and tear the original from me.
‘No, for I am well armed, and am accustomed, as they know, to firing on flunkeys.
‘Very well! Say, one of them has some courage; he springs upon me. He has been promised a hundred napoleons. I kill or injure him, all the better, that is what they want. I am flung into prison with all the forms of law; I appear in the police court, and they send me, with all justice and equity on the judges’ part, to keep MM. Fontan and Magalon company at Poissy. There, I lie upon straw with four hundred poor wretches, pell-mell . . . And I am to feel some pity for these people,’ he cried, springing impetuously to his feet. ‘What pity do they show for the Third Estate when they have us in their power?’ These words were the dying breath of his gratitude to M. de La Mole which, in spite of himself, had tormented him until then.
‘Not so fast, my fine gentlemen, I understand this little stroke of Machiavellianism; the abbe Maslon or M. Castanede of the Seminary could not have been more clever. You rob me of my incitement, the letter, and I become the second volume of Colonel Caron at Colmar.
‘One moment, gentlemen, I am going to send the fatal letter in a carefully sealed packet to the custody of M. l’abbe Pirard. He is an honest man, a Jansenist, and as such out of reach of the temptations of the Budget. Yes, but he opens letters . . . it is to Fouque that I must send this one.’
It must be admitted the glare in Julien’s eyes was ghastly, his expression hideous; it was eloquent of unmitigated crime. He was an unhappy man at war with the whole of society.
‘To arms!’ cried Julien. And he sprang with one bound down the steps that led from the house. He entered the letter-writer’s booth at the street corner; the man was alarmed. ‘Copy this,’ said Julien, giving him Mademoiselle de La Mole’s letter.
While the writer was thus engaged, he himself wrote to Fouque; he begged him to keep for him a precious article. ‘But,’ he said to himself, laying down his pen, ‘the secret room in the post office will open my letter, and give you back the one you seek; no, gentlemen.’ He went and bought an enormous Bible from a Protestant bookseller, skilfully concealed Mathilde’s letter in the boards, had it packed up with his own letter, and his parcel went off by the mail, addressed to one of Fouque’s workmen, whose name was unknown to anybody in Paris.
This done, he returned joyful and brisk to the Hotel de La Mole. ‘It is our turn, now,’ he exclaimed, as he locked himself into his room, and flung off his coat:
‘What, Mademoiselle,’ he wrote to Mathilde, ‘it is Mademoiselle de La Mole who, by the hand of Arsene, her father’s servant, transmits a letter couched in too seductive terms to a poor carpenter from the Jura, doubtless to play a trick upon his simplicity . . . ’ And he transcribed the most unequivocal sentences from the letter he had received.
His own would have done credit to the diplomatic prudence of M. le Chevalier de Beauvoisis. It was still only ten o’clock; Julien, intoxicated with happiness and with the sense of his own power, so novel to a poor devil like himself, went off to the Italian opera. He heard his friend Geronimo sing. Never had music raised him to so high a pitch. He was a god.[11]
Chapter 14
A GIRL’S THOUGHTS
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So much perplexity? So many sleepless nights! Good God! Am I making myself despicable? He will despise me himself. But he’s leaving, he’s going.
ALFRED DE MUSSET
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IT WAS NOT WITHOUT an inward struggle that Mathilde had brought herself to write. Whatever might have been the beginning of her interest in Julien, it soon overcame the pride which, ever since she had been aware of herself, had reigned alone in her heart. That cold and haughty spirit was carried away for the first time by a passionate sentiment. But if this overcame her pride, it was still faithful to the habits bred of pride. Two months of struggle and of novel sensations had so to speak altered her whole moral nature.
Mathilde thought she had happiness in sight. This prospect, irresistible to a courageous spirit combined with a superior intellect, had to make a long fight against dignity and every