ENNUI
Sacrificing one's self to one's passions, let it pass;
but sacrificing one's self to passions which one has not
got! Oh! melancholy nineteenth century!
_Girodet_.
Madame de Fervaques had begun reading Julien's long letters without any
pleasure, but she now began to think about them; one thing, however,
grieved her. "What a pity that M. Sorel was not a real priest! He could
then be admitted to a kind of intimacy; but in view of that cross,
and that almost lay dress, one is exposed to cruel questions and what
is one to answer?" She did not finish the train of thought, "Some
malicious woman friend may think, and even spread it about that he is
some lower middle-class cousin or other, a relative of my father, some
tradesman who has been decorated by the National Guard." Up to the
time which she had seen Julien, madame de Fervaque's greatest pleasure
had been writing the word maréchale after her name. Consequently a
morbid parvenu vanity, which was ready to take umbrage at everything,
combatted the awakening of her interest in him. "It would be so easy
for me," said the maréchale, "to make him a grand vicar in some diocese
near Paris! but plain M. Sorel, and what is more, a man who is the
secretary of M. de la Mole! It is heart-breaking."
For the first time in her life this soul, which was afraid of
everything, was moved by an interest which was alien to its own
pretensions to rank and superiority. Her old porter noticed that
whenever he brought a letter from this handsome young man, who always
looked so sad, he was certain to see that absent, discontented
expression, which the maréchale always made a point of assuming on the
entry of any of her servants, immediately disappear. The boredom of a
mode of life whose ambitions were concentrated on impressing the public
without her having at heart any real faculty of enjoyment for that kind
of success, had become so intolerable since she had begun to think of
Julien that, all that was necessary to prevent her chambermaids being
bullied for a whole day, was that their mistress should have passed
an hour in the society of this strange young man on the evening of
the preceding day. His budding credit was proof against very cleverly
written anonymous letters. It was in vain that Tanbeau supplied M. de
Luz, de Croisenois, de Caylus, with two or three very clever calumnies
which these gentlemen were only too glad to spread, without making
too many enquiries of the actual truth of the charges. The maréchale,
whose temperament was not calculated to be proof against these vulgar
expedients related her doubts to Mathilde, and was always consoled by
her.
One day, madame de Fervaques, after having asked three times if there
were any letters for her, suddenly decided to answer Julien. It was a
case of the triumph of ennui. On reaching the second letter in his name
the maréchale almost felt herself pulled up sharp by the unbecomingness
of writing with her own hand so vulgar an address as to M. Sorel, care
of M. le Marquis de la Mole.
"You must bring me envelopes with your address on," she said very drily
to Julien in the evening. "Here I am appointed lover and valet in one,"
thought Julien, and he bowed, amused himself by wrinkling his face up
like Arsène, the old valet of the marquis.
He brought the envelopes that very evening, and he received the third
letter very early on the following day: he read five or six lines at
the beginning, and two or three towards the end. There were four pages
of a small and very close writing. The lady gradually developed the
sweet habit of writing nearly every day. Julien answered by faithful
copies of the Russian letters; and such is the advantage of the
bombastic style that madame de Fervaques was not a bit astonished by
the lack of connection between his answers and her letters. How gravely
irritated would her pride have been if the little Tanbeau who had
constituted himself a voluntary spy on all Julien's movements had been
able to have informed her that all these letters were left unsealed and
thrown haphazard into Julien's drawer.
One morning the porter was bringing into the library a letter to him
from the maréchale. Mathilde met the man, saw the letter together with
the address in Julien's handwriting. She entered the library as the
porter was leaving it, the letter was still on the edge of the table.
Julien was very busy with his work and had not yet put it in his drawer.
"I cannot endure this," exclaimed Mathilde, as she took possession
of the letter, "you are completely forgetting me, me your wife, your
conduct is awful, monsieur."
At these words her pride, shocked by the awful unseemliness of her
proceeding, prevented her from speaking. She burst into tears, and soon
seemed to Julien scarcely able to breathe.
Julien was so surprised and embarrassed that he did not fully
appreciate how ideally fortunate this scene was for himself. He helped
Mathilde to sit down; she almost abandoned herself in his arms.
The first minute in which he noticed this movement, he felt an extreme
joy. Immediately afterwards, he thought of Korasoff: "I may lose
everything by a single word."
The strain of carrying out his tactics was so great that his arms
stiffened. "I dare not even allow myself to press this supple, charming
frame to my heart, or she will despise me or treat me badly. What an
awful character!" And while he cursed Mathilde's character, he loved
her a hundred times more. He thought he had a queen in his arms.
Julien's impassive coldness intensified the anguished pride which was
lacerating the soul of mademoiselle de la Mole. She was far from having
the necessary self-possession to try and read in his eyes what he felt
for her at that particular moment. She could not make up her mind to
look at him. She trembled lest she might encounter a contemptuous
expression.
Seated motionless on the library divan, with her head turned in the
opposite direction to Julien, she was a prey to the most poignant
anguish that pride and love can inflict upon a human soul. What an
awful step had she just slipped into taking! "It has been reserved
for me, unhappy woman that I am, to see my most unbecoming advances
rebuffed! and rebuffed by whom?" added her maddened and wounded pride;
"rebuffed by a servant of my father's! That's more than I will put up
with," she said aloud, and rising in a fury, she opened the drawer of
Julien's table, which was two yards in front of her.
She stood petrified with horror when she saw eight or ten unopened
letters, completely like the one the porter had just brought up. She
recognised Julien's handwriting, though more or less disguised, on all
the addresses.
"So," she cried, quite beside herself, "you are not only on good terms
with her, but you actually despise her. You, a nobody, despise madame
la maréchale de Fervaques!"
"Oh, forgive me, my dear," she added, throwing herself on her knees;
"despise me if you wish, but love me. I cannot live without your love."
And she fell down in a dead faint.
"So our proud lady is lying at my feet," said Julien to himself.