Chương Chương 50 · THE JAPANESE VASE

. THE JAPANESE VASE

His heart does not first realise the full extremity of

his unhappiness: he is more troubled than moved. But as

reason returns he feels the depth of his misfortune. All

the pleasures of life seem to have been destroyed, he

can only feel the sharp barbs of a lacerating despair.

But what is the use of talking of physical pain? What

pain which is only felt by the body can be compared to

this pain?--_Jean Paul_.

The dinner bell rang, Julien had barely time to dress: he found

Mathilde in the salon. She was pressing her brother and M. de

Croisenois to promise her that they would not go and spend the evening

at Suresnes with madame the maréchale de Fervaques.

It would have been difficult to have shown herself more amiable or

fascinating to them. M. de Luz, de Caylus and several of their friends

came in after dinner. One would have said that mademoiselle de la Mole

had commenced again to cultivate the most scrupulous conventionality

at the same time as her sisterly affection. Although the weather was

delightful this evening, she refused to go out into the garden, and

insisted on their all staying near the arm-chair where madame de la

Mole was sitting. The blue sofa was the centre of the group as it had

been in the winter.

Mathilde was out of temper with the garden, or at any rate she found it

absolutely boring: it was bound up with the memory of Julien.

Unhappiness blunts the edge of the intellect. Our hero had the bad

taste to stop by that little straw chair which had formerly witnessed

his most brilliant triumphs. To-day none spoke to him, his presence

seemed to be unnoticed, and worse than that. Those of mademoiselle de

la Mole's friends who were sitting near him at the end of the sofa,

made a point of somehow or other turning their back on him, at any rate

he thought so.

"It is a court disgrace," he thought. He tried to study for a moment

the people who were endeavouring to overwhelm him with their contempt.

M. de Luz had an important post in the King's suite, the result of

which was that the handsome officer began every conversation with

every listener who came along by telling him this special piece of

information. His uncle had started at seven o'clock for St. Cloud

and reckoned on spending the night there. This detail was introduced

with all the appearance of good nature but it never failed to be

worked in. As Julien scrutinized M. de Croisenois with a stern gaze of

unhappiness, he observed that this good amiable young man attributed

a great influence to occult causes. He even went so far as to become

melancholy and out of temper if he saw an event of the slightest

importance ascribed to a simple and perfectly natural cause.

"There is an element of madness in this," Julien said to himself.

This man's character has a striking analogy with that of the Emperor

Alexander, such as the Prince Korasoff described it to me. During the

first year of his stay in Paris poor Julien, fresh from the seminary

and dazzled by the graces of all these amiable young people, whom he

found so novel, had felt bound to admire them. Their true character was

only beginning to become outlined in his eyes.

"I am playing an undignified rôle here," he suddenly thought. The

question was, how he could leave the little straw chair without undue

awkwardness. He wanted to invent something, and tried to extract some

novel excuse from an imagination which was otherwise engrossed. He was

compelled to fall back on his memory, which was, it must be owned,

somewhat poor in resources of this kind.

The poor boy was still very much out of his element, and could not have

exhibited a more complete and noticeable awkwardness when he got up to

leave the salon. His misery was only too palpable in his whole manner.

He had been playing, for the last three quarters of an hour, the rôle

of an officious inferior from whom one does not take the trouble to

hide what one really thinks.

The critical observations he had just made on his rivals prevented

him, however, from taking his own unhappiness too tragically. His pride

could take support in what had taken place the previous day. "Whatever

may be their advantages over me," he thought, as he went into the

garden alone, "Mathilde has never been to a single one of them what,

twice in my life, she has deigned to be to me!" His penetration did not

go further. He absolutely failed to appreciate the character of the

extraordinary person whom chance had just made the supreme mistress of

all his happiness.

He tried, on the following day, to make himself and his horse dead

tired with fatigue. He made no attempt in the evening to go near the

blue sofa to which Mathilde remained constant. He noticed that comte

Norbert did not even deign to look at him when he met him about the

house. "He must be doing something very much against the grain," he

thought; "he is naturally so polite."

Sleep would have been a happiness to Julien. In spite of his physical

fatigue, memories which were only too seductive commenced to invade his

imagination. He had not the genius to see that, inasmuch as his long

rides on horseback over forests on the outskirts of Paris only affected

him, and had no affect at all on Mathilde's heart or mind, he was

consequently leaving his eventual destiny to the caprice of chance. He

thought that one thing would give his pain an infinite relief: it would

be to speak to Mathilde. Yet what would he venture to say to her?

He was dreaming deeply about this at seven o'clock one morning when he

suddenly saw her enter the library.

"I know, monsieur, that you are anxious to speak to me."

"Great heavens! who told you?"

"I know, anyway; that is enough. If you are dishonourable, you can

ruin me, or at least try to. But this danger, which I do not believe

to be real, will certainly not prevent me from being sincere. I do

not love you any more, monsieur, I have been led astray by my foolish

imagination."

Distracted by love and unhappiness, as a result of this terrible blow,

Julien tried to justify himself. Nothing could have been more absurd.

Does one make any excuses for failure to please? But reason had no

longer any control over his actions. A blind instinct urged him to get

the determination of his fate postponed. He thought that, so long as

he kept on speaking, all could not be over. Mathilde had not listened

to his words; their sound irritated her. She could not conceive how he

could have the audacity to interrupt her.

She was rendered equally unhappy this morning by remorseful virtue and

remorseful pride. She felt to some extent pulverised by the idea of

having given a little abbé, who was the son of a peasant, rights over

her. "It is almost," she said to herself, in those moments when she

exaggerated her own misfortune, "as though I had a weakness for one of

my footmen to reproach myself with." In bold, proud natures there is

only one step from anger against themselves to wrath against others. In

these cases the very transports of fury constitute a vivid pleasure.

In a single minute mademoiselle de la Mole reached the point of loading

Julien with the signs of the most extreme contempt. She had infinite

wit, and this wit was always triumphant in the art of torturing vanity

and wounding it cruelly.

For the first time in his life Julien found himself subjected to

the energy of a superior intellect, which was animated against him

by the most violent hate. Far from having at present the slightest

thought of defending himself, he came to despise himself. Hearing

himself overwhelmed with such marks of contempt which were so cleverly

calculated to destroy any good opinion that he might have of himself,

he thought that Mathilde was right, and that she did not say enough.

As for her, she found it deliciously gratifying to her pride to punish

in this way both herself and him for the adoration that she had felt

some days previously.

She did not have to invent and improvise the cruel remarks which she

addressed to him with so much gusto.

All she had to do was to repeat what the advocate of the other side had

been saying against her love in her own heart for the last eight days.

Each word intensified a hundredfold Julien's awful unhappiness. He

wanted to run away, but mademoiselle de la Mole took hold of his arm

authoritatively.

"Be good enough to remark," he said to her, "that you are talking very

loud. You will be heard in the next room."

"What does it matter?" mademoiselle de la Mole answered haughtily. "Who

will dare to say they have heard me? I want to cure your miserable

vanity once and for all of any ideas you may have indulged in on my

account."

When Julien was allowed to leave the library he was so astonished

that he was less sensitive to his unhappiness. "She does not love me

any more," he repeated to himself, speaking aloud as though to teach

himself how he stood. "It seems that she has loved me eight or ten

days, but I shall love her all my life."

"Is it really possible she was nothing to me, nothing to my heart so

few days back?"

Mathilde's heart was inundated by the joy of satisfied pride. So she

had been able to break with him for ever! So complete a triumph over so

strong an inclination rendered her completely happy. "So this little

gentleman will understand, once and for all, that he has not, and will

never have, any dominion over me." She was so happy that in reality she

ceased to love at this particular moment.

In a less passionate being than Julien love would have become

impossible after a scene of such awful humiliation. Without deviating

for a single minute from the requirements of her own self-respect,

mademoiselle de la Mole had addressed to him some of those unpleasant

remarks which are so well thought out that they may seem true, even

when remembered in cold blood.

The conclusion which Julien drew in the first moment of so surprising a

scene, was that Mathilde was infinitely proud. He firmly believed that

all was over between them for ever, and none the less, he was awkward

and nervous towards her at breakfast on the following day. This was a

fault from which up to now he had been exempt.

Both in small things as in big it was his habit to know what he ought

and wanted to do, and he used to act accordingly.

The same day after breakfast madame de la Mole asked him for a fairly

rare, seditious pamphlet which her curé had surreptitiously brought her

in the morning, and Julien, as he took it from a bracket, knocked over

a blue porcelain vase which was as ugly as it could possibly be.

Madame de la Mole got up, uttering a cry of distress, and proceeded to

contemplate at close quarters the ruins of her beloved vase. "It was

old Japanese," she said. "It came to me from my great aunt, the abbess

of Chelles. It was a present from the Dutch to the Regent, the Duke of

Orleans, who had given it to his daughter...."

Mathilde had followed her mother's movements, and felt delighted at

seeing that the blue vase, that she had thought horribly ugly, was

broken. Julien was taciturn, and not unduly upset. He saw mademoiselle

de la Mole quite near him.

"This vase," he said to her, "has been destroyed for ever. The same is

the case with the sentiment which was once master of my heart. I would

ask you to accept my apologies for all the pieces of madness which it

has made me commit." And he went out.

"One would really say," said madame de la Mole, as he went out of the

room, "that this M. Sorel is quite proud of what he has just done."

These words went right home to Mathilde's heart. "It is true," she

said to herself; "my mother has guessed right. That is the sentiment

which animates him." It was only then that she ceased rejoicing over

yesterday's scene. "Well, it is all over," she said to herself, with

an apparent calm. "It is a great lesson, anyway. It is an awful and

humiliating mistake! It is enough to make me prudent all the rest of my

life."

"Why didn't I speak the truth?" thought Julien. "Why am I still

tortured by the love which I once had for that mad woman?"

Far, however, from being extinguished as he had hoped it would be, his

love grew more and more rapidly. "She is mad, it is true," he said

to himself. "Is she any the less adorable for that? Is it possible

for anyone to be prettier? Is not mademoiselle de la Mole the ideal

quintessence of all the most vivid pleasures of the most elegant

civilisation?" These memories of a bygone happiness seized hold of

Julien's mind, and quickly proceeded to destroy all the work of his

reason.

It is in vain that reason wrestles with memories of this character. Its

stern struggles only increase the fascination.

Twenty-four hours after the breaking of the Japanese vase, Julien was

unquestionably one of the most unhappy men in the world.