It shocked her profoundly; but it no longer lay in her power to forget Julien; she moved indifferently away, taking her brother with her.
‘I must take some punch, and dance a great deal,’ she said to herself, ‘I intend to take the best that is going, and to create an effect at all costs. Good, here comes that master of impertinence, the Comte de Fervaques.’ She accepted his invitation; they danced. ‘It remains to be seen,’ she thought, ‘which of us will be the more impertinent, but, to get the full enjoyment out of him, I must make him talk.’ Presently all the rest of the country dance became a pure formality. No one was willing to miss any of Mathilde’s piquant repartees. M. de Fervaques grew troubled, and, being able to think of nothing but elegant phrases, in place of ideas, began to smirk; Mathilde, who was out of temper, treated him cruelly, and made an enemy of him. She danced until daybreak, and finally went home horribly tired. But, in the carriage, the little strength that remained to her was still employed in making her melancholy and wretched. She had been scorned by Julien, and was unable to scorn him.
Julien was on a pinnacle of happiness. Carried away unconsciously by the music, the flowers, the beautiful women, the general elegance, and, most of all, by his own imagination, which dreamed of distinctions for himself and of liberty for mankind:
‘What a fine ball!’ he said to the Conte, ‘nothing is lacking.’
‘Thought is lacking,’ replied Altamira.
And his features betrayed that contempt which is all the more striking because one sees that politeness makes it a duty to conceal it.
‘You are here, Monsieur le Comte. Is not that thought, and actively conspiring, too?’
‘I am here because of my name. But they hate thought in your drawing-rooms. It must never rise above the level of a comic song: then it is rewarded. But the man who thinks, if he shows energy and novelty in his sallies, you call a cynic. Is not that the name that one of your judges bestowed upon Courier? You put him in prison, and Beranger also. Everything that is of any value among you, intellectually, the Congregation flings to the criminal police; and society applauds.
‘The truth is that your antiquated society values conventionality above everything .. . You will never rise higher than martial gallantry; you will have Murats, but never a Washington. I can see nothing in France but vanity. A man who thinks of things as he speaks may easily say something rash, and his host then imagines himself insulted.’
At this point, the Conte’s carriage, which was taking Julien home, stopped at the Hotel de La Mole. Julien was in love with his conspirator. Altamira had paid him a handsome compliment, evidently springing from a profound conviction: ‘You have not the French frivolity, and you understand the principle of utility.’ It so happened that, only two evenings before, Julien had seen Marino Faliero, a tragedy by M. Casimir Delavigne.
‘Has not Israel Bertuccio more character than all those Venetian nobles?’ our rebellious plebeian asked himself; ‘and yet they are men whose noble descent can be proved as far back as the year 700, a century before Charlemagne; whereas the bluest blood at M. de Retz’s ball tonight does not go farther back, and that only by a hop, skip and jump, than the thirteenth century. Very well! Among those Venetian nobles, so great by birth, it is Israel Bertuccio that one remembers.
‘A conspiracy wipes out all the titles conferred by social caprice. In those conditions, a man springs at once to the rank which his manner of facing death assigns to him. The mind itself loses some of its authority . . .
‘What would Danton be today, in this age of Valenods and Renais? Not even a Deputy Crown Prosecutor .. .
‘What am I saying? He would have sold himself to the Congregation; he would be a Minister, for after all the great Danton did steal. Mirabeau, too, sold himself. Napoleon stole millions in Italy, otherwise he would have been brought to a standstill by poverty, like Pichegru. Only La Fayette never stole. Must one steal, must one sell oneself?’ Julien wondered. The question arrested the flow of his imagination. He spent the rest of the night reading the history of the Revolution.
Next day, as he copied his letters in the library, he could still think of nothing but Conte Altamira’s conversation.
‘It is quite true,’ he said to himself, after a long spell of absorption; ‘if those Spanish Liberals had compromised the people by a few crimes, they would not have been swept away so easily. They were conceited, chattering boys . . . like myself!’ Julien suddenly cried, as though awaking with a bound.
‘What difficult thing have I ever done that gives me the right to judge poor devils who, after all, once in their lives, have dared, have begun to act? I am like a man who, on rising from table, exclaims: “Tomorrow I shall not dine; that will not prevent me from feeling strong and brisk as I do today.” How can I tell what people feel in the middle of a great action? .. .’ These lofty thoughts were interrupted by the sudden arrival of Mademoiselle de La Mole, who at this moment entered the library. He was so excited by his admiration for the great qualities of Danton, Mirabeau, Carnot, who had contrived not to be crushed, that his eyes rested upon Mademoiselle de La Mole, but without his thinking of her, without his greeting her, almost without his seeing her. When at length his great staring eyes became aware of her presence, the light died out in them. Mademoiselle de La Mole remarked this with a feeling of bitterness.
In vain did she ask him for a volume of Vely’s Histoire de Francewhich stood on the highest shelf, so that Julien was obliged to fetch the longer of the two ladders. He brought the ladder; he found the volume, he handed it to her, still without being able to think of her. As he carried back the ladder, in his preoccupation, his elbow struck one of the glass panes protecting the shelves; the sound of the splinters falling on the floor at length aroused him. He hastened to make his apology to Mademoiselle de La Mole; he tried to be polite, but he was nothing more. Mathilde saw quite plainly that she had disturbed him, that he would have preferred to dream of what had been occupying his mind before her entry, rather than to talk to her. After a long glance at him, she slowly left the room. Julien watched her as she went. He enjoyed the contrast between the simplicity of the attire she was now wearing and her sumptuous magnificence overnight. The difference in her physiognomy was hardly less striking. This girl, so haughty at the Duc de Retz’s ball, had at this moment almost a suppliant look. ‘Really,’ Julien told himself, ‘that black gown shows off the beauty of her figure better than anything; but why is she in mourning?
‘If I ask anyone the reason of this mourning, I shall only make myself appear a fool as usual.’ Julien had quite come to earth from the soaring flight of his enthusiasm. ‘I must read over all the letters I have written today; Heaven knows how many missing words and blunders I shall find.’ As he was reading with forced attention the first of these letters, he heard close beside him the rustle of a silken gown; he turned sharply round; Mademoiselle de La Mole was standing by his table, and smiling. This second interruption made Julien lose his temper.
As for Mathilde, she had just become vividly aware that she meant nothing to this young man; her smile was intended to cover her embarrassment, and proved successful.
‘Evidently, you are thinking about something that is extremely interesting, Monsieur Sorel. Is it by any chance some curious anecdote of the conspiracy that has sent the Conte Altamira here to Paris? Tell me what it is? I am burning to know; I shall be discreet, I swear to you!’ This last sentence astonished her as she uttered it. What, she was pleading with a subordinate! Her embarrassment grew, she adopted a light manner:
‘What can suddenly have turned you, who are ordinarily so cold, into an inspired creature, a sort of Michelangelo prophet?’
This bold and indiscreet question, cutting Julien to the quick, revived all his passion.
‘Was Danton justified in stealing?’ he said to her sharply, and with an air that grew more and more savage. ‘The Revolutionaries of Piedmont, of Spain, ought they to have compromised the people by crimes? To have given away, even to men without merit, all the commands in the army, all the Crosses? Would not the men