‘She is the belle of the ball, no doubt about it,’ said a young man with moustaches, whose shoulder dug into Julien’s chest.
‘Mademoiselle Fourmont, who has been the reigning beauty all winter,’ his companion rejoined, ‘sees that she must now take the second place: look how strangely she is frowning.’
‘Indeed she is hoisting all her canvas to attract. Look, look at that gracious smile as soon as she steps into the middle in that country dance. It is inimitable, upon my honour.’
‘Mademoiselle de La Mole has the air of being in full control of the pleasure she derives from her triumph, of which she is very well aware. One would say that she was afraid of attracting whoever speaks to her.’
‘Precisely! That is the art of seduction.’
Julien was making vain efforts to catch a glimpse of this seductive woman; seven or eight men taller than himself prevented him from seeing her.
‘There is a good deal of coquetry in that noble reserve,’ went on the young man with the moustaches.
‘And those big blue eyes which droop so slowly just at the moment when one would say they were going to give her away,’ his companion added. ‘Faith, she’s a past master.’
‘Look how common the fair Fourmont appears beside her,’ said a third.
‘That air of reserve is as much as to say: “How charming I should make myself to you, if you were the man that was worthy of me.”’
‘And who could be worthy of the sublime Mathilde?’ said the first: ‘Some reigning Prince, handsome, clever, well made, a hero in battle, and aged twenty at the most.’
‘The natural son of the Emperor of Russia, for whom, on the occasion of such a marriage, a Kingdom would be created; or simply the Comte de Thaler, with his air of a peasant in his Sunday clothes . . .’
The passage was now cleared, Julien was free to enter.
‘Since she appears so remarkable in the eyes of these puppets, it is worth my while to study her,’ he thought. ‘I shall understand what perfection means to these people.’
As he was trying to catch her eye, Mathilde looked at him. ‘Duty calls me,’ Julien said to himself, but his resentment was now confined to his expression. Curiosity made him step forward with a pleasure which the low cut of the gown on Mathilda’s shoulders rapidly enhanced, in a manner, it must be admitted, by no means flattering to his self-esteem. ‘Her beauty has the charm of youth,’ he thought. Five or six young men, among whom Julien recognised those whom he had heard talking in the doorway, stood between her and him.
‘You can tell me, Sir, as you have been here all the winter,’ she said to him, ‘is it not true that this is the prettiest ball of the season?’ He made no answer.
‘This Coulon quadrille seems to me admirable; and the ladies are dancing it quite perfectly.’ The young men turned round to see who the fortunate person was who was being thus pressed for an answer. It was not encouraging.
‘I should hardly be a good judge, Mademoiselle; I spend my time writing: this is the first ball on such a scale that I have seen.’
The moustached young men were shocked.
‘You are a sage, Monsieur Sorel,’ she went on with a more marked interest; ‘you look upon all these balls, all these parties, like a philosopher, like a Jean–Jacques Rousseau. These follies surprise you without tempting you.’
A chance word had stifled Julien’s imagination and banished every illusion from his heart. His lips assumed an expression of disdain that was perhaps slightly exaggerated.
‘Jean–Jacques Rousseau,’ he replied, ‘is nothing but a fool in my eyes when he takes it upon himself to criticise society; he did not understand it, and approached it with the heart of an upstart flunkey.’
‘He wrote the Contrat Social,’ said Mathilde in a tone of veneration.
‘For all his preaching a Republic and the overthrow of monarchical titles, the upstart is mad with joy if a Duke alters the course of his after-dinner stroll to accompany one of his friends.’
‘Ah, yes! The Due de Luxembourg at Montmorency accompanies a M. Coindet on the road to Paris,’ replied Mademoiselle de La Mole with the impetuous delight of a first enjoyment of pedantry. She was overjoyed at her own learning, almost like the Academician who discovered the existence of King Feretrius. Julien’s eye remained penetrating and stern. Mathilde had felt a momentary enthusiasm; her partner’s coldness disconcerted her profoundly. She was all the more astonished inasmuch as it was she who was in the habit of producing this effect upon other people.
At that moment, the Marquis de Croisenois advanced eagerly towards Mademoiselle de La Mole. He stopped for a moment within a few feet of her, unable to approach her on account of the crowd. He looked at her, with a smile at the obstacle. The young Marquise de Rouvray was close beside him; she was a cousin of Mathilde. She gave her arm to her husband, who had been married for only a fortnight. The Marquis de Rouvray, who was quite young also, showed all that fatuous love which seizes a man, who having made a ‘suitable’ marriage entirely arranged by the family lawyers, finds that he has a perfectly charming spouse. M. de Rouvray would be a Duke on the death of an uncle of advanced years.
While the Marquis de Croisenois, unable to penetrate the throng, stood gazing at Mathilde with a smiling air, she allowed her large, sky-blue eyes to rest upon him and his neighbours. ‘What could be duller,’ she said to herself, ‘than all that group! Look at Croisenois who hopes to marry me; he is nice and polite, he has perfect manners like M. de Rouvray. If they did not bore me, these gentlemen would be quite charming. He, too, will come to balls with me with that smug, satisfied air. A year after we are married, my carriage, my horses, my gowns, my country house twenty leagues from Paris, everything will be as perfect as possible, just what is needed to make an upstart burst with envy, a Comtesse de Roiville for instance; and after that?
Mathilde let her mind drift into the future. The Marquis de Croisenois succeeded in reaching her, and spoke to her, but she dreamed on without listening. The sound of his voice was lost in the hubbub of the ball. Her eye mechanically followed Julien, who had moved away with a respectful, but proud and discontented air. She saw in a corner, aloof from the moving crowd, Conte Altamira, who was under sentence of death in his own country, as the reader already knows. Under Louis XIV, a lady of his family had married a Prince de Conti; this antecedent protected him to some extent from the police of the Congregation.
‘I can see nothing but a sentence of death that distinguishes a man,’ thought Mathilde: ‘it is the only thing that is not to be bought.
‘Ah! There is a witty saying that I have wasted on myself! What a pity that it did not occur to me when I could have made the most of it!’ Mathilde had too much taste to lead up in conversation to a witticism prepared beforehand; but she had also too much vanity not to be delighted with her own wit. An air of happiness succeeded the appearance of boredom in her face. The Marquis de Croisenois, who was still addressing her, thought he saw a chance of success, and doubled his loquacity.
‘What fault would anyone have to find with my remark?’ Mathilde asked herself. ‘I should answer my critic: “A title of Baron, or Viscount, that can be bought; a Cross, that is given; my brother has just had one, what has he ever done? A step in promotion, that is obtained. Ten years of garrison duty, or a relative as Minister for War, and one becomes a squadron-commander, like Norbert. A great fortune! That is still the most difficult thing to secure, and therefore the most meritorious. Now is not that odd? It is just the opposite to what all the books say . .. Well, to secure a fortune, one marries M. Rothschild’s daughter.”
‘My remark is really subtle. A death sentence is still the only thing for which no one has ever