Chương Chương 39 · THE BALL

with my brother," she added, very dryly. Julien bowed

respectfully.

"So I owe my due to the members of the family, even in the middle of a

ball. Am I not paid to be their business man?" His bad temper added,

"God knows, moreover, if what I tell the daughter will not put out the

plans of the father, brother, and mother. It is just like the court of

a sovereign prince. You have to be absolutely negative, and yet give no

one any right to complain."

"How that big girl displeases me!" he thought, as he watched the walk

of Mademoiselle de la Mole, whom her mother had called to present to

several women friends of hers. She exaggerates all the fashions. Her

dress almost falls down to her shoulders, she is even paler than before

she went away. How nondescript her hair has grown as the result of

being blonde! You would say that the light passed through it.

What a haughty way of bowing and of looking at you! What queenly

gestures! Mademoiselle de la Mole had just called her brother at the

moment when he was leaving the salon.

The comte de Norbert approached Julien.

"My dear Sorel," he said to him. "Where would you like me to pick you

up to-night for Monsieur's ball. He expressly asked me to bring you."

"I know well whom I have to thank for so much kindness," answered

Julien bowing to the ground.

His bad temper, being unable to find anything to lay hold of in the

polite and almost sympathetic tone in which Norbert had spoken to

him, set itself to work on the answer he had made to that courteous

invitation. He detected in it a trace of subservience.

When he arrived at the ball in the evening, he was struck with the

magnificence of the Hôtel de Retz. The courtyard at the entrance was

covered with an immense tent of crimson with golden stars. Nothing

could have been more elegant. Beyond the tent, the court had been

transformed into a wood of orange trees and of pink laurels in full

flower. As they had been careful to bury the vases sufficiently deep,

the laurel trees and the orange trees appeared to come straight out of

the ground. The road which the carriages traversed was sanded.

All this seemed extraordinary to our provincial. He had never had any

idea of such magnificence. In a single instant his thrilled imagination

had left his bad temper a thousand leagues behind. In the carriage on

their way to the ball Norbert had been happy, while he saw everything

in black colours. They had scarcely entered the courtyard before the

rôles changed.

Norbert was only struck by a few details which, in the midst of all

that magnificence, had not been able to be attended to. He calculated

the expense of each item, and Julien remarked that the nearer he got

to a sum total, the more jealous and bad-tempered he appeared.

As for himself, he was fascinated and full of admiration when he

reached the first of the salons where they were dancing. His emotion

was so great that it almost made him nervous. There was a crush at the

door of the second salon, and the crowd was so great that he found it

impossible to advance. The decorations of the second salon presented

the Alhambra of Grenada.

"That's the queen of the ball one must admit," said a young man with a

moustache whose shoulder stuck into Julien's chest.

"Mademoiselle Formant who has been the prettiest all the winter,

realises that she will have to go down to the second place. See how

strange she looks."

"In truth she is straining every nerve to please. Just look at that

gracious smile now that she is doing the figure in that quadrille all

alone. On my honour it is unique."

"Mademoiselle de la Mole looks as if she controlled the pleasure which

she derives from her triumph, of which she is perfectly conscious. One

might say that she fears to please anyone who talks to her."

"Very good. That is the art of alluring."

Julien vainly endeavoured to catch sight of the alluring woman. Seven

or eight men who were taller than he prevented him from seeing her.

"There is quite a lot of coquetry in that noble reserve," said the

young man with a moustache.

"And in those big blue eyes, which are lowered so slowly when one would

think they were on the point of betraying themselves," answered his

neighbour. "On my faith, nothing could be cleverer."

"See the pretty Formant looking quite common next to her," said the

first.

"That air of reserve means how much sweetness would I spend on you if

you were the man who was worthy of me."

"And who could be worthy of the sublime Mathilde," said the first man.

"Some sovereign prince, handsome, witty, well-made, a hero in war, and

twenty years old at the most."

"The natural son of the Emperor of Russia ... who would be made a

sovereign in honour of his marriage, or quite simply the comte de

Thaler, who looks like a dressed-up peasant."

The door was free, and Julien could go in.

"Since these puppets consider her so remarkable, it is worth while

for me to study her," he thought. "I shall then understand what these

people regard as perfection."

As his eyes were trying to find her, Mathilde looked at him. "My duty

calls me," said Julien to himself. But it was only his expression which

was bad-humoured.

His curiosity made him advance with a pleasure which the extremely low

cut dress on Mathilde's shoulder very quickly accentuated, in a manner

which was scarcely flattering for his own self-respect. "Her beauty has

youth," he thought. Five or six people, whom Julien recognised as those

who had been speaking at the door were between her and him.

"Now, Monsieur, you have been here all the winter," she said to him.

"Is it not true that this is the finest ball of the season."

He did not answer.

"This quadrille of Coulon's strikes me as admirable, and those ladies

dance it perfectly." The young men turned round to see who was the

happy man, an answer from whom was positively insisted on. The answer

was not encouraging.

"I shall not be able to be a good judge, mademoiselle, I pass my life

in writing. This is the first ball of this magnificence which I have

ever seen."

The young men with moustaches were scandalised.

"You are a wise man, Monsieur Sorel," came the answer with a more

marked interest. "You look upon all these balls, all these festivities,

like a philosopher, like J. J. Rousseau. All these follies astonish

without alluring you."

Julien's imagination had just hit upon an epigram which banished all

illusions from his mind. His mouth assumed the expression of a perhaps

slightly exaggerated disdain.

"J. J. Rousseau," he answered, "is in my view only a fool when he takes

it upon himself to criticise society. He did not understand it, and

he went into it with the spirit of a lackey who has risen above his

station."

"He wrote the _Contrat Social_," answered Mathilde reverently.

"While he preaches the Republic, and the overthrow of monarchical

dignities, the parvenu was intoxicated with happiness if a duke would

go out of his way after dinner to one of his friends."

"Oh yes, the Duke of Luxembourg at Montmorency, used to accompany a

Coindet from the neighbourhood of Paris," went on Mademoiselle de

la Mole, with all the pleasure and enthusiasm of her first flush of

pedantry. She was intoxicated with her knowledge, almost like the

academician who discovered the existence of King Feretrius.

Julien's look was still penetrating and severe. Mathilde had had

a moment's enthusiasm. Her partner's coldness disconcerted her

profoundly. She was all the more astonished, as it was she who was

accustomed to produce that particular effect on others.

At this moment the marquis de Croisenois was advancing eagerly towards

mademoiselle de la Mole. He was for a moment three yards away from her.

He was unable to get closer because of the crowd. He smiled at the

obstacle. The young marquise de Rouvray was near her. She was a cousin

of Mathilde. She was giving her arm to her husband who had only married

her a fortnight ago. The marquis de Rouvray, who was also very young,

had all the love which seizes a man who, having contracted a marriage

of convenience exclusively arranged by the notaries, finds a person who

is ideally pretty. M. de Rouvray would be a duke on the death of a very

old uncle.

While the marquis de Croisenois was struggling to get through the

crowd, and smiling at Mathilde she fixed her big divinely blue eyes

on him and his neighbours. "Could anything be flatter," she said to

herself. "There is Croisenois who wants to marry me, he is gentle and

polite, he has perfect manners like M. de Rouvray. If they did not

bore, those gentlemen would be quite charming. He too, would accompany

me to the ball with that smug limited expression. One year after the

marriage I shall have my carriage, my horses, my dresses, my château

twenty leagues from Paris. All this would be as nice as possible, and

enough to make a Countess de Roiville, for example, die of envy and

afterwards--"

Mathilde bored herself in anticipation. The marquis de Croisenois

managed to approach her and spoke to her, but she was dreaming and

did not listen to him. The noise of his words began to get mixed

with the buzz of the ball. Her eye mechanically followed Julien who

had gone away, with an air which, though respectful, was yet proud

and discontented. She noticed in a corner far from the moving crowd,

the comte Altamira who had been condemned to death in his own country

and whom the reader knows already. One of his relatives had married a

Prince de Conti in the reign of Louis XIV. This historical fact was

some protection against the police of the congregation.

"I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction," said

Mathilde. "It is the only thing which cannot be bought."

"Why, that's an epigram, I just said, what a pity it did not come at a

moment when I could have reaped all the credit for it." Mathilde had

too much taste to work into the conversation a prepared epigram but

at the same time she was too vain not to be extremely pleased with

herself. A happy expression succeeded the palpable boredom of her face.

The marquis de Croisenois, who had never left off talking, saw a chance

of success and waxed twice as eloquent.

"What objection could a caviller find with my epigram," said Mathilde

to herself. "I would answer my critic in this way: The title of baron

or vicomte is to be bought; a cross, why it is a gift. My brother

has just got one. What has he done? A promotion, why that can be

obtained by being ten years in a garrison or have the minister of war

for a relative, and you'll be a chief of a squadron like Norbert. A

great fortune! That's rather more difficult, and consequently more

meritorious. It is really quite funny. It's the opposite of what

the books say. Well, to win a fortune why you marry M. Rothschild's

daughter. Really my epigram is quite deep. Being condemned to death is

still the one privilege which one has never thought of canvassing."

"Do you know the comte Altamira," she said to M. de Croisenois.

Her thoughts seemed to have been so far away, and this question had

so little connection with all that the poor marquis had been saying

for the last five minutes, that his good temper was ruffled. He was

nevertheless a man of wit and celebrated for being so.

"Mathilde is eccentric," he thought, "that's a nuisance, but she will

give her husband such a fine social position. I don't know how the

marquis de la Mole manages. He is connected with all that is best in

all parties. He is a man who is bound to come out on top. And, besides,

this eccentricity of Mathilde's may pass for genius. Genius when allied

with good birth and a large fortune, so far from being ridiculous, is

highly distinguished. She has wit, moreover, when she wants to, that

mixture in fact of brains, character, and ready wit which constitute

perfection."

As it is difficult to do two things at the same time, the marquis

answered Mathilde with a vacant expression as though he were reciting a

lesson.

"Who does not know that poor Altamira?" and he told her the history of

his conspiracy, abortive, ridiculous and absurd.

"Very absurd," said Mathilde as if she were talking to herself, "but he

has done something. I want to see a man; bring him to me," she said to

the scandalized marquis.

Comte Altamira was one of the most avowed admirers of mademoiselle de

la Mole's haughty and impertinent manner. In his opinion she was one of

the most beautiful persons in Paris.

"How fine she would be on a throne," he said to M. de Croisenois; and

made no demur at being taken up to Mathilde.

There are a good number of people in society who would like to

establish the fact that nothing is in such bad form as a conspiracy, in

the nineteenth century; it smacks of Jacobinism. And what could be more

sordid than unsuccessful Jacobinism.

Mathilde's expression made fun a little of Altamira and M. de

Croisenois, but she listened to him with pleasure.

"A conspirator at a ball, what a pretty contrast," she thought. She

thought that this man with his black moustache looked like a lion at

rest, but she soon perceived that his mind had only one point of view:

_utility, admiration for utility_.

The young comte thought nothing worthy his attention except what tended

to give his country two chamber government. He left Mathilde, who was

the prettiest person at the ball, with alacrity, because he saw a

Peruvian general come in. Desparing of Europe such as M. de Metternich

had arranged it, poor Altamira had been reduced to thinking that when

the States of South America had become strong and powerful they could

restore to Europe the liberty which Mirabeau has given it.

A crowd of moustachised young men had approached Mathilde. She realized

that Altamira had not felt allured, and was piqued by his departure.

She saw his black eye gleam as he talked to the Peruvian general.

Mademoiselle de la Mole looked at the young Frenchmen with that

profound seriousness which none of her rivals could imitate, "which

of them," she thought, "could get himself condemned to death, even

supposing he had a favourable opportunity?"

This singular look flattered those who were not very intelligent, but

disconcerted the others. They feared the discharge of some stinging

epigram that would be difficult to answer.

"Good birth vouchsafes a hundred qualities whose absence would offend

me. I see as much in the case of Julien," thought Mathilde, "but it

withers up those qualities of soul which make a man get condemned to

death."

At that moment some one was saying near her: "Comte Altamira is the

second son of the Prince of San Nazaro-Pimentel; it was a Pimentel who

tried to save Conradin, was beheaded in 1268. It is one of the noblest

families in Naples."

"So," said Mathilde to herself, "what a pretty proof this is of my

maxim, that good birth deprives a man of that force of character

in default of which a man does not get condemned to death. I seem

doomed to reason falsely to-night. Since I am only a woman like any

other, well I must dance." She yielded to the solicitations of M. de

Croisenois who had been asking for a gallop for the last hour. To

distract herself from her failure in philosophy, Mathilde made a point

of being perfectly fascinating. M. de Croisenois was enchanted. But

neither the dance nor her wish to please one of the handsomest men at

court, nor anything at all, succeeded in distracting Mathilde. She

could not possibly have been more of a success. She was the queen of

the ball. She coldly appreciated the fact.

"What a blank life I shall pass with a person like Croisenois," she

said to herself as he took her back to her place an hour afterwards.

"What pleasure do I get," she added sadly, "if after an absence of

six months I find myself at a ball which all the women of Paris were

mad with jealousy to go to? And what is more I am surrounded by the

homage of an ideally constituted circle of society. The only bourgeois

are some peers and perhaps one or two Juliens. And yet," she added

with increasing sadness, "what advantages has not fate bestowed upon

me! Distinction, fortune, youth, everything except happiness. My most

dubious advantages are the very ones they have been speaking to me

about all the evening. Wit, I believe I have it, because I obviously

frighten everyone. If they venture to tackle a serious subject, they

will arrive after five minutes of conversation and as though they had

made a great discovery at a conclusion which we have been repeating to

them for the last hour. I am beautiful, I have that advantage for which

madame de Stael would have sacrificed everything, and yet I'm dying of

boredom. Shall I have reason to be less bored when I have changed my

name for that of the marquis de Croisenois?

"My God though," she added, while she almost felt as if she would like

to cry, "isn't he really quite perfect? He's a paragon of the education

of the age; you can't look at him without his finding something

charming and even witty to say to you; he is brave. But that Sorel is

strange," she said to herself, and the expression of her eyes changed

from melancholy to anger. "I told him that I had something to say to

him and he hasn't deigned to reappear."

Chapter 39. THE BALL

The luxurious dresses, the glitter of the candles; all

those pretty arms and fine shoulders; the bouquets,

the intoxicating strains of Rossini, the paintings of

Ciceri. I am beside myself.--_Journeys of Useri_.

"You are in a bad temper," said the marquise de la Mole to her; "let me

caution you, it is ungracious at a ball."

"I only have a headache," answered Mathilde disdainfully, "it is too

hot here."

At this moment the old Baron Tolly became ill and fell down, as though

to justify mademoiselle de la Mole's remark. They were obliged to carry

him away. They talked about apoplexy. It was a disagreeable incident.

Mathilde did not bother much about it.

She made a point of never looking at old men, or at anyone who had the

reputation of being bad company.

She danced in order to escape the conversation about the apoplexy,

which was not apoplexy inasmuch as the baron put in an appearance the

following day.

"But Sorel does not come," she said to herself after she had danced.

She was almost looking round for him when she found him in another

salon. Astonishing, but he seemed to have lost that impassive coldness

that was so natural to him; he no longer looked English.

"He is talking to comte Altamira who was sentenced to death," said

Mathilde to herself. "His eye is full of a sombre fire; he looks like a

prince in disguise; his haughtiness has become twice as pronounced."

Julien came back to where she was, still talking to Altamira. She

looked at Altamira fixedly, studying his features in order to trace

those lofty qualities which can earn a man the honour of being

condemned to death.

"Yes," he was saying to comte Altamira as he passed by her, "Danton was

a real man."

"Heavens can he be a Danton?" said Mathilde to herself, "but he has

so noble a face, and that Danton was so horribly ugly, a butcher I

believe." Julien was still fairly near her. She did not hesitate to

call him; she had the consciousness and the pride of putting a question

that was unusual for a young girl.

"Was not Danton a butcher?" she said to him.

"Yes, in the eyes of certain persons," Julien answered her with the

most thinly disguised expression of contempt. His eyes were still

ardent from his conversation with Altamira, "but unfortunately for

the people of good birth he was an advocate at Méry-sur-Seine, that

is to say, mademoiselle," he added maliciously, "he began like many

peers whom I see here. It was true that Danton laboured under a great

disadvantage in the eyes of beauty; he was ugly."

These last few words were spoken rapidly in an extraordinary and indeed

very discourteous manner.

Julien waited for a moment, leaning slightly forward and with an air of

proud humility. He seemed to be saying, "I am paid to answer you and I

live on my pay." He did not deign to look up at Mathilde. She looked

like his slave with her fine eyes open abnormally wide and fixed on

him. Finally as the silence continued he looked at her, like a valet

looking at his master to receive orders. Although his eyes met the full

gaze of Mathilde which were fixed on him all the time with a strange

expression, he went away with a marked eagerness.

"To think of a man who is as handsome as he is," said Mathilde to

herself as she emerged from her reverie, "praising ugliness in such a

way, he is not like Caylus or Croisenois. This Sorel has something like

my father's look when he goes to a fancy dress ball as Napoleon." She

had completely forgotten Danton. "Yes, I am decidedly bored to-night."

She took her brother's arm and to his great disgust made him take

her round the ball-room. The idea occurred to her of following the

conversation between Julien and the man who had been condemned to

death.

The crowd was enormous. She managed to find them, however, at the

moment when two yards in front of her Altamira was going near a

dumb-waiter to take an ice. He was talking to Julien with his body half

turned round. He saw an arm in an embroidered coat which was taking an

ice close by. The embroidery seemed to attract his attention. He turned

round to look at the person to whom the arm belonged. His noble and yet

simple eyes immediately assumed a slightly disdainful expression.

"You see that man," he said to Julien in a low voice; "that is the

Prince of Araceli Ambassador of ----. He asked M. de Nerval, your

Minister for Foreign Affairs, for my extradition this morning. See,

there he is over there playing whist. Monsieur de Nerval is willing

enough to give me up, for we gave up two or three conspirators to you

in 1816. If I am given up to my king I shall be hanged in twenty-four

hours. It will be one of those handsome moustachioed gentlemen who will

arrest me."

"The wretches!" exclaimed Julien half aloud.

Mathilde did not lose a syllable of their conversation. Her ennui had

vanished.

"They are not scoundrels," replied Count Altamira. "I talk to you about

myself in order to give you a vivid impression. Look at the Prince of

Araceli. He casts his eyes on his golden fleece every five minutes; he

cannot get over the pleasure of seeing that decoration on his breast.

In reality the poor man is really an anachronism. The fleece was a

signal honour a hundred years ago, but he would have been nowhere

near it in those days. But nowadays, so far as people of birth are

concerned, you have to be an Araceli to be delighted with it. He had a

whole town hanged in order to get it."

"Is that the price he had to pay?" said Julien anxiously.

"Not exactly," answered Altamira coldly, "he probably had about thirty

rich landed proprietors in his district who had the reputation of being

Liberals thrown into the river."

"What a monster!" pursued Julien.

Mademoiselle de la Mole who was leaning her head forward with keenest

interest was so near him that her beautiful hair almost touched his

shoulder.

"You are very young," answered Altamira. "I was telling you that I had

a married sister in Provence. She is still pretty, good and gentle; she

is an excellent mother, performs all her duties faithfully, is pious

but not a bigot."

"What is he driving at?" thought mademoiselle de la Mole.

"She is happy," continued the comte Altamira; "she was so in 1815. I

was then in hiding at her house on her estate near the Antibes. Well

the moment she learnt of marshall Ney's execution she began to dance."

"Is it possible?" said Julien, thunderstruck.

"It's party spirit," replied Altamira. "There are no longer any real

passions in the nineteenth century: that's why one is so bored in

France. People commit acts of the greatest cruelty, but without any

feeling of cruelty."

"So much the worse," said Julien, "when one does commit a crime one

ought at least to take pleasure in committing it; that's the only good

thing they have about them and that's the only way in which they have

the slightest justification."

Mademoiselle de la Mole had entirely forgotten what she owed to herself

and placed herself completely between Altamira and Julien. Her brother,

who was giving her his arm, and was accustomed to obey her, was

looking at another part of the room, and in order to keep himself in

countenance was pretending to be stopped by the crowd.

"You are right," Altamira went on, "one takes pleasure in nothing one

does, and one does not remember it: this applies even to crimes. I can

show you perhaps ten men in this ballroom who have been convicted of

murder. They have forgotten all about it and everybody else as well."

"Many are moved to the point of tears if their dog breaks a paw.

When you throw flowers on their grave at Père-la-Chaise, as you say

so humorously in Paris, we learn they united all the virtues of the

knights of chivalry, and we speak about the noble feats of their

great-grandfather who lived in the reign of Henri IV. If, in spite of

the good offices of the Prince de Araceli, I escape hanging and I ever

manage to enjoy the use of my money in Paris, I will get you to dine

with eight or ten of these respected and callous murderers.

"At that dinner you and I will be the only ones whose blood is pure,

but I shall be despised and almost hated as a monster, while you will

be simply despised as a man of the people who has pushed his way into

good society."

"Nothing could be truer," said mademoiselle de la Mole.

Altamira looked at her in astonishment; but Julien did not deign to

look at her.

"Observe that the revolution, at whose head I found myself," continued

the comte Altamira, "only failed for the one reason that I would not

cut off three heads and distribute among our partisans seven or eight

millions which happened to be in a box of which I happened to have the

key. My king, who is burning to have me hanged to-day, and who called

me by my christian name before the rebellion, would have given me the

great ribbon of his order if I had had those three heads cut off and

had had the money in those boxes distributed; for I should have had at

least a semi-success and my country would have had a charta like ----.

So wags the world; it's a game of chess."

"At that time," answered Julien with a fiery eye, "you did not know the

game; now...."

"You mean I would have the heads cut off, and I would not be a

Girondin, as you said I was the other day? I will give you your

answer," said Altamira sadly, "when you have killed a man in a duel--a

far less ugly matter than having him put to death by an executioner."

"Upon my word," said Julien, "the end justifies the means. If instead

of being an insignificant man I had some power I would have three men

hanged in order to save four men's lives."

His eyes expressed the fire of his own conscience; they met the eyes of

mademoiselle de la Mole who was close by him, and their contempt, so

far from changing into politeness seemed to redouble.

She was deeply shocked; but she found herself unable to forget Julien;

she dragged her brother away and went off in a temper.

"I must take some punch and dance a lot," she said to herself. "I will

pick out the best partner and cut some figure at any price. Good, there

is that celebrated cynic, the comte de Fervaques." She accepted his

invitation; they danced. "The question is," she thought, "which of us

two will be the more impertinent, but in order to make absolute fun

of him, I must get him to talk." Soon all the other members of the

quadrille were dancing as a matter of formality, they did not want to

lose any of Mathilde's cutting reparte. M. de Fervaques felt uneasy and

as he could only find elegant expressions instead of ideas, began to

scowl. Mathilde, who was in a bad temper was cruel, and made an enemy

of him. She danced till daylight and then went home terribly tired.

But when she was in the carriage the little vitality she had left, was

still employed in making her sad and unhappy. She had been despised by

Julien and could not despise him.

Julien was at the zenith of his happiness. He was enchanted without

his knowing it by the music, the flowers, the pretty women, the

general elegance, and above all by his own imagination which dreamt of

distinctions for himself and of liberty for all.

"What a fine ball," he said to the comte. "Nothing is lacking."

"Thought is lacking" answered Altamira, and his face betrayed that

contempt which is only more deadly from the very fact that a manifest

effort is being made to hide it as a matter of politeness.

"You are right, monsieur the comte, there isn't any thought at all, let

alone enough to make a conspiracy."

"I am here because of my name, but thought is hated in your salons.

Thought must not soar above the level of the point of a Vaudeville

couplet: it is then rewarded. But as for your man who thinks, if he

shows energy and originality we call him a cynic. Was not that name

given by one of your judges to Courier. You put him in prison as

well as Béranger. The priestly congregation hands over to the police

everyone who is worth anything amongst you individually; and good

society applauds.

"The fact is your effete society prizes conventionalism above

everything else. You will never get beyond military bravery. You will

have Murats, never Washingtons. I can see nothing in France except

vanity. A man who goes on speaking on the spur of the moment may easily

come to make an imprudent witticism and the master of the house thinks

himself insulted."

As he was saying this, the carriage in which the comte was seeing

Julien home stopped before the Hôtel de la Mole. Julien was in love

with his conspirator. Altamira had paid him this great compliment which

was evidently the expression of a sound conviction. "You have not got

the French flippancy and you understand the principle of _utility_."

It happened that Julien had seen the day before _Marino Faliero_, a

tragedy, by Casmir Delavigne.

"Has not Israel Bertuccio got more character than all those noble

Venetians?" said our rebellious plebeian to himself, "and yet those

are the people whose nobility goes back to the year seven hundred, a

century before Charlemagne, while the cream of the nobility at M. de

Ritz's ball to-night only goes back, and that rather lamely, to the

thirteenth century. Well, in spite of all the noble Venetians whose

birth makes so great, it is Israel Bertuccio whom one remembers.

"A conspiracy annihilates all titles conferred by social caprice.

There, a man takes for his crest the rank that is given him by the way

in which he faces death. The intellect itself loses some of its power.

"What would Danton have been to-day in this age of the Valenods and the

Rênals? Not even a deputy for the Public Prosecutor.

"What am I saying? He would have sold himself to the priests, he

would have been a minister, for after all the great Danton did steal.

Mirabeau also sold himself. Napoleon stole millions in Italy, otherwise

he would have been stopped short in his career by poverty like

Pichegru. Only La Fayette refrained from stealing. Ought one to steal,

ought one to sell oneself?" thought Julien. This question pulled him up

short. He passed the rest of the night in reading the history of the

revolution.

When he wrote his letters in the library the following day, his mind

was still concentrated on his conversation with count Altamira.

"As a matter of fact," he said to himself after a long reverie, "If the

Spanish Liberals had not injured their nation by crimes they would not

have been cleared out as easily as they were.

"They were haughty, talkative children--just like I am!" he suddenly

exclaimed as though waking up with a start.

"What difficulty have I surmounted that entitles me to judge such

devils who, once alive, dared to begin to act. I am like a man who

exclaims at the close of a meal, 'I won't dine to-morrow; but that

won't prevent me from feeling as strong and merry like I do to-day.'

Who knows what one feels when one is half-way through a great action?"

These lofty thoughts were disturbed by the unexpected arrival in

the library of mademoiselle de la Mole. He was so animated by his

admiration for the great qualities of such invincibles as Danton,

Mirabeau, and Carnot that, though he fixed his eyes on mademoiselle de

la Mole, he neither gave her a thought nor bowed to her, and scarcely

even saw her. When finally his big, open eyes realized her presence,

their expression vanished. Mademoiselle de la Mole noticed it with

bitterness.

It was in vain that she asked him for Vély's History of France which

was on the highest shelf, and thus necessitated Julien going to fetch

the longer of the two ladders. Julien had brought the ladder and had

fetched the volume and given it to her, but had not yet been able to

give her a single thought. As he was taking the ladder back he hit

in his hurry one of the glass panes in the library with his elbow;

the noise of the glass falling on the floor finally brought him to

himself. He hastened to apologise to mademoiselle de la Mole. He tried

to be polite and was certainly nothing more. Mathilde saw clearly that

she had disturbed him, and that he would have preferred to have gone

on thinking about what he had been engrossed in before her arrival,

to speaking to her. After looking at him for some time she went

slowly away. Julien watched her walk. He enjoyed the contrast of her

present dress with the elegant magnificence of the previous night. The

difference between the two expressions was equally striking. The young

girl who had been so haughty at the Duke de Retz's ball, had, at the

present moment, an almost plaintive expression. "As a matter of fact,"

said Julien to himself, "that black dress makes the beauty of her

figure all the more striking. She has a queenly carriage; but why is

she in mourning?"

"If I ask someone the reason for this mourning, they will think I am

putting my foot in it again." Julien had now quite emerged from the

depth of his enthusiasm. "I must read over again all the letters I have

written this morning. God knows how many missed out words and blunders

I shall find. As he was forcing himself to concentrate his mind on the

first of these letters he heard the rustle of a silk dress near him.

He suddenly turned round, mademoiselle de la Mole was two yards from

his table, she was smiling. This second interruption put Julien into a

bad temper. Mathilde had just fully realized that she meant nothing to

this young man. Her smile was intended to hide her embarrassment; she

succeeded in doing so.

"You are evidently thinking of something very interesting, Monsieur

Sorel. Is it not some curious anecdote about that conspiracy which

is responsible for comte Altamira being in Paris? Tell me what it is

about, I am burning to know. I will be discreet, I swear it." She was

astonished at hearing herself utter these words. What! was she asking a

favour of an inferior! Her embarrassment increased, and she added with

a little touch of flippancy,

"What has managed to turn such a usually cold person as yourself, into

an inspired being, a kind of Michael Angelo prophet?"

This sharp and indiscreet question wounded Julien deeply, and rendered

him madder than ever.

"Was Danton right in stealing?" he said to her brusquely in a manner

that grew more and more surly. "Ought the revolutionaries of Piedmont

and of Spain to have injured the people by crimes? To have given all

the places in the army and all the orders to undeserving persons? Would

not the persons who wore these orders have feared the return of the

king? Ought they to have allowed the treasure of Turin to be looted?

In a word, mademoiselle," he said, coming near her with a terrifying

expression, "ought the man who wishes to chase ignorance and crime from

the world to pass like the whirlwind and do evil indiscriminately?"

Mathilde felt frightened, was unable to stand his look, and retreated a

couples of paces. She looked at him a moment, and then ashamed of her

own fear, left the library with a light step.