# The Red and the Black/Chapter 42

CHAPTER XLII
IS HE A DANTON?
The need of anxiety. These words summed up the character of my aunt, the beautiful Marguerite de Valois, who was soon to marry the King of Navarre whom we see reigning at present in France under the name of Henry IV. The need of staking something was the key to the character of this charming princess; hence her quarrels and reconciliations with her brothers from the time when she was sixteen. Now, what can a young girl stake? The most precious thing she has: her reputation, the esteem of a lifetime.
Memoirs of the Duke d'Angoulème, the natural son of Charles IX.
"There is no contract to sign for Julien and me, there is no notary; everything is on the heroic plane, everything is the child of chance. Apart from the noble birth which he lacks, it is the love of Marguerite de Valois for the young La Mole, the most distinguished man of the time, over again. Is it my fault that the young men of the court are such great advocates of the conventional, and turn pale at the mere idea of the slightest adventure which is a little out of the ordinary? A little journey in Greece or Africa represents the highest pitch of their audacity, and moreover they can only march in troops. As soon as they find themselves alone they are frightened, not of the Bedouin's lance, but of ridicule and that fear makes them mad.
"My little Julien on the other hand only likes to act alone. This unique person never thinks for a minute of seeking help or support in others! He despises others, and that is why I do not despise him.
"If Julien were noble as well as poor, my love would simply be a vulgar piece of stupidity, a sheer mésalliance; I would have nothing to do with it; it would be absolutely devoid of the characteristic traits of grand passion—the immensity ​of the difficulty to be overcome and the black uncertainty of the result."
Mademoiselle de la Mole was so engrossed in these pretty arguments that without realising what she was doing, she praised Julien to the marquis de Croisenois and her brother on the following day. Her eloquence went so far that it provoked them.
"You be careful of this young man who has so much energy," exclaimed her brother; "if we have another revolution he will have us all guillotined."
She was careful not to answer, but hastened to rally her brother and the marquis de Croisenois on the apprehension which energy caused them. "It is at bottom simply the fear of meeting the unexpected, the fear of being non-plussed in the presence of the unexpected—"
"Always, always, gentlemen, the fear of ridicule, a monster which had the misfortune to die in 1816."
"Ridicule has ceased to exist in a country where there are two parties," M. de la Mole was fond of saying,
His daughter had understood the idea.
"So, gentlemen," she would say to Julien's enemies, "you will be frightened all your life and you will be told afterwards, {{c|Ce n'était pas un loup, ce n'en était que l'ombre."
Matilde soon left them. Her brother's words horrified her; they occasioned her much anxiety, but the day afterwards she regarded them as tantamount to the highest praise.
"His energy frightens them in this age where all energy is dead. I will tell him my brother's phrase. I want to see what answer he will make. But I will choose one of the moments when his eyes are shining. Then he will not be able to lie to me.
"He must be a Danton! she added after a long and vague reverie. Well, suppose the revolution begins again, what figures will Croisenois and my brother cut then? It is settled in advance: Sublime resignation. They will be heroic sheep who will allow their throats to be cut without saying a word. Their one fear when they die will still be the fear of being bad form. If a Jacobin came to arrest my little Julien he would blow his brains out, however small a chance he had of escaping. He is not frightened of doing anything in bad form."
​These last words made her pensive; they recalled painful memories and deprived her of all her boldness. These words reminded her of the jests of MM. de Caylus, Croisenois, de Luz and her brother; these gentlemen joined in censuring Julien for his priestly demeanour, which they said was humble and hypocritical.
"But," she went on suddenly with her eyes gleaming with joy, "the very bitterness and the very frequency of their jests prove in spite of themselves that he is the most distinguished man whom we have seen this winter. What matter his defects and the things which they make fun of? He has the element of greatness and they are shocked by it. Yes, they, the very men who are so good and so charitable in other matters. It is a fact that he is poor and that he has studied in order to be a priest; they are the heads of a squadron and never had any need of studying; they found it less trouble.
"In spite of all the handicap of his everlasting black suit and of that priestly expression which he must wear, poor boy, if he isn't to die of hunger, his merit frightens them, nothing could be clearer. And as for that priest-like expression, why he no longer has it after we have been alone for some moments, and after those gentlemen have evolved what they imagine to be a subtle and impromptu epigram, is not their first look towards Julien? I have often noticed it. And yet they know well that he never speaks to them unless he is questioned. I am the only one whom he speaks to. He thinks I have a lofty soul. He only answers the points they raise sufficiently to be polite. He immediately reverts into respectfulness. But with me he will discuss things for whole hours, he is not certain of his ideas so long as I find the slightest objection to them. There has not been a single rifle-shot fired all this winter; words have been the only means of attracting attention. Well, my father, who is a superior man and will carry the fortunes of our house very far, respects Julien. Every one else hates him, no one despises him except my mother's devout friends."
The Comte de Caylus had or pretended to have a great passion for horses; he passed his life in his stables and often breakfasted there. This great passion, together with his habit of never laughing, won for him much respect among his friends: he was the eagle of the little circle.
​As soon as they had reassembled the following day behind madame de la Mole's armchair, M. de Caylus, supported by Croisenois and by Norbert, began in Julien's absence to attack sharply the high opinion which Mathilde entertained for Julien. He did this without any provocation, and almost the very minute that he caught sight of mademeiselle de la Mole. She tumbled to the subtlety immediately and was delighted with it.
"So there they are all leagued together," she said to herself, "against a man of genius who has not ten louis a year to bless himself with and who cannot answer them except in so far as he is questioned. They are frightened of him, black coat and all. But how would things stand if he had epaulettes?"
She had never been more brilliant, hardly had Caylus and his allies opened their attack than she riddled them with sarcastic jests. When the fire of these brilliant officers was at length extinguished she said to M. de Caylus.
"Suppose that some gentleman in the Franche-Comté mountains finds out to-morrow that Julien is his natural son and gives him a name and some thousands of francs, why in six months he will be an officer of hussars like you, gentlemen, in six weeks he will have moustaches like you gentlemen. And then his greatness of character will no longer be an object of ridicule. I shall then see you reduced, monsieur the future duke, to this stale and bad argument, the superiority of the court nobility over the provincial nobility. But where will you be if I choose to push you to extremities and am mischievous enough to make Julien's father a Spanish duke, who was a prisoner of war at Besançon in the time of Napoleon, and who out of conscientious scruples acknowledges him on his death bed?" MM. de Caylus, and de Croisenois found all these assumptions of illegitimacy in rather bad taste. That was all they saw in Mathilde's reasoning.
His sister's words were so clear that Norbert, in spite of his submissiveness, assumed a solemn air, which one must admit did not harmonise very well with his amiable, smiling face. He ventured to say a few words.
"Are you ill? my dear," answered Mathilde with a little air of seriousness. "You must be very bad to answer jests by moralizing."
"Moralizing from you! Are you soliciting a job as prefect?"
​Mathilde soon forgot the irritation of the comte de Caylus, the bad temper of Norbert, and the taciturn despair of M. de Croisenois. She had to decide one way or the other a fatal question which had just seized upon her soul.
"Julien is sincere enough with me," she said to herself, "a man at his age, in a inferior position, and rendered unhappy as he is by an extraordinary ambition, must have need of a woman friend. I am perhaps that friend, but I see no sign of love in him. Taking into account the audacity of his character he would surely have spoken to me about his love."
This uncertainty and this discussion with herself which henceforth monopolised Mathilde's time, and in connection with which she found new arguments each time that Julien spoke to her, completely routed those fits of boredom to which she had been so liable.
Daughter as she was of a man of intellect who might become a minister, mademoiselle de la Mole had been when in the convent of the Sacred Heart, the object of the most excessive flattery. This misfortune can never be compensated for. She had been persuaded that by reason of all her advantages of birth, fortune, etc., she ought to be happier than any one else. This is the cause of the boredom of princes and of all their follies.
Mathilde had not escaped the deadly influence of this idea. However intelligent one may be, one cannot at the age of ten be on one's guard against the flatteries of a whole convent, which are apparently so well founded.
From the moment that she had decided that she loved Julien, she was no longer bored. She congratulated herself every day on having deliberately decided to indulge in a grand passion. "This amusement is very dangerous," she thought. "All the better, all the better, a thousand times. Without a grand passion I should be languishing in boredom during the finest time of my life, the years from sixteen to twenty. I have already wasted my finest years: all my pleasure consisted in being obliged to listen to the silly arguments of my mother's friends who when at Coblentz in 1792 were not quite so strict, so they say, as their words of to-day."
It was while Mathilde was a prey to these great fits of uncertainly that Julien was baffled by those long looks of hers which lingered upon him. He noticed, no doubt, an ​increased frigidity in the manner of comte Norbert, and a fresh touch of haughtiness in the manner of MM. de Caylus, de Luz and de Croisenois. He was accustomed to that. He would sometimes be their victim in this way at the end of an evening when, in view of the position he occupied, he had been unduly brilliant. Had it not been for the especial welcome with which Mathilde would greet him, and the curiosity with which all this society inspired him, he would have avoided following these brilliant moustachioed young men into the garden, when they accompained madamoiselle de La Mole there, in the hour after dinner.
"Yes," Julien would say to himself, "it is impossible for me to deceive myself, mademoiselle de la Mole looks at me in a very singular way. But even when her fine blue open eyes are fixed on me, wide open with the most abandon, I always detect behind them an element of scrutiny, self-possession and malice. Is it possible that this may be love? But how different to madame de Rênal's looks!"
One evening after dinner Julien, who had followed M. de La Mole into his study, was rapidly walking back to the garden. He approached Mathilde's circle without any warning, and caught some words pronounced in a very loud voice. She was teasing her brother. Julien heard his name distinctly pronounced twice. He appeared. There was immediately a profound silence and abortive efforts were made to dissipate it. Mademoiselle de La Mole and her brother were too animated to find another topic of conversation. MM. de Caylus, de Croisenois, de Luz, and one of their friends, manifested an icy coldness to Julien. He went away.