Part 2 Chapter 39
IntrigueCastres, 1676.—He that endeavoured to kill his sister in ourhouse, had before killed a man, and it had cost his father fivehundred ecus to get him off; by their secret distribution, gainingthe favour of the counsellors.
LOCKE, Travels in France 17On leaving the Bishop's palace, Mathilde did not hesitate to send amessenger to Madame de Fervaques; the fear of compromising herselfdid not restrain her for a second. She implored her rival to obtain a letterfor M. de Frilair, written throughout in the hand of the Lord Bishop of——. She even went the length of beseeching the other to hasten, herself,to Besancon. This was a heroic measure on the part of a proud and jealous spirit.
On the advice of Fouque, she had taken the precaution of saying nothing about what she was doing to Julien. Her presence was disturbingenough in itself. A more honourable man at the approach of death thanhe had been during his life, he now felt compunction at the thought notonly of M. de La Mole, but also of Mathilde.
'What is this?' he asked himself, 'I experience in her company momentsof abstraction and even of boredom. She is ruining herself for me, and itis thus that I reward her. Can I indeed be wicked?' This question wouldhave troubled him little when he was ambitious; then, not to succeed inlife was the only disgrace in his eyes.
His moral uneasiness, in Mathilde's presence, was all the moremarked, in that he inspired in her at that moment the most extraordinary17.I am indebted to the patience and ingenuity of Mr. Vyvyan Holland, who has tracedthe original text of this motto in The Life of John Locke, with extracts from his Correspondence, Journals and Commonplace Books by Lord King (new edition, 1830) C. K. S. M.
and insensate passion. She could speak of nothing but the strange sacrifices which she was anxious to make to save him.
Carried away by a sentiment of which she was proud and which completely overbore her pride, she would have liked not to allow a momentof her life to pass that was not filled with some extraordinary action. Thestrangest plans, the most perilous to herself, formed the theme of herlong conversations with Julien. His gaolers, well rewarded, allowed herto have her way in the prison. Mathilde's ideas were not confined to thesacrifice of her reputation; it mattered nothing to her though she madeher condition known to the whole of society. To fling herself on herknees to crave pardon for Julien, in front of the King's carriage as it cameby at a gallop, to attract the royal attention, at the risk of a thousanddeaths, was one of the tamest fancies of this exalted and courageous imagination. Through her friends who held posts at court, she could countupon being admitted to the reserved parts of the park of Saint-Cloud.
Julien felt himself to be hardly worthy of such devotion, to tell thetruth he was tired of heroism. It would have required a simple, artless,almost timid affection to appeal to him, whereas on the contrary,Mathilde's proud spirit must always entertain the idea of a public, ofwhat people would say.
In the midst of all her anguish, of all her fears for the life of this lover,whom she was determined not to outlive, she had a secret longing to astonish the public by the intensity of her love and the sublimity of heractions.
He resented the discovery that he was unable to feel at all touched byall this heroism. What would his resentment have been, had he known ofall the follies with which Mathilde overpowered the devoted, but eminently reasonable and limited mind of the good Fouque?
The latter could scarcely find fault with Mathilde's devotion; for he,too, would have sacrificed his whole fortune and exposed his life to thegreatest risks to save Julien. He was stupefied by the quantity of goldwhich Mathilde scattered abroad. At first, the sums thus spent impressedFouque, who had for money all the veneration of a provincial.
Later, he discovered that Mademoiselle de La Mole's plans often varied, and, to his great relief, found a word with which to reproach thischaracter which was so exhausting to him: she was changeable. To thisepithet, that of wrongheaded, the direst anathema in the provinces, is theimmediate sequel.
'It is strange,' Julien said to himself one day as Mathilde was leavinghis prison, 'that so warm a passion, and one of which I am the object,leaves me so unmoved! And I worshipped her two months ago! I haveindeed read that at the approach of death we lose interest in everything;but it is frightful to feel oneself ungrateful and to be unable to change.
Can I be an egoist?' He heaped on himself, in this connection, the mosthumiliating reproaches.
Ambition was dead in his heart, another passion had risen from itsashes; he called it remorse for having murdered Madame de Renal.
As a matter of fact, he was hopelessly in love with her. He found astrange happiness when, left absolutely alone and without any fear ofbeing disturbed, he could abandon himself entirely to the memory of thehappy days which he had spent in the past at Verrieres or at Vergy. Themost trifling incidents of that time, too swiftly flown, had for him afreshness and a charm that were irresistible. He never gave a thought tohis Parisian successes; they bored him.
This tendency, which grew rapidly stronger, was not entirely hiddenfrom the jealous Mathilde. She saw quite plainly that she had to contendwith the love of solitude. Now and again, she uttered with terror in herheart the name of Madame de Renal. She saw Julien shudder. From thatmoment, her passion knew no bounds nor measure.
'If he dies, I die after him,' she said to herself with absolute sincerity.
'What would the drawing-rooms of Paris say, to see a girl of my rankcarry to such a point her adoration of a lover condemned to death? Tofind such sentiments, we must go back to the days of the heroes; it waslove of this nature that set hearts throbbing in the age of Charles IX andHenri III.'
Amid the most impassioned transports, when she pressed Julien'shead to her heart: 'What!' she said to herself with horror, 'can this precious head be doomed to fall? Very well!' she added, inflamed by a heroism that was not devoid of happiness, 'my lips, which are now pressedagainst these dear locks, will be frozen within twenty-four hours after.'
Memories of these moments of heroism and fearful ecstasy seized herin an ineluctable grip. The thought of suicide, so absorbing in itself, andhitherto so remote from that proud spirit, penetrated its defences andsoon reigned there with an absolute sway. 'No, the blood of my ancestorshas not grown lukewarm in its descent to me,' Mathilde told herselfproudly.
'I have a favour to ask you,' her lover said to her one day: Put yourchild out to nurse at Verrieres, Madame de Renal will look after thenurse.'
'That is a very harsh saying … ' Mathilde turned pale.
'True, and I ask a thousand pardons,' cried Julien, awakening from hisdream and pressing her to his bosom.
Having dried her tears, he returned to the subject of his thoughts, butwith more subtlety. He had given the conversation a turn of melancholyphilosophy. He spoke of that future which was soon to close for him.
'You must agree, my dear friend, that the passions are an accident in life,but this accident is to be found only in superior beings … The death ofmy son would be in reality a relief to the pride of your family, so muchthe subordinate agents will perceive. Neglect will be the lot of that childof misery and shame … I hope that at a date which I do not wish to specify, which however I have the courage to anticipate, you will obey myfinal behest: You will marry the Marquis de Croisenois.'
'What, dishonoured!'
'Dishonour can have no hold over such a name as yours. You will be awidow, and the widow of a madman, that is all. I shall go farther: mycrime, being free from any pecuniary motive, will be in no way dishonouring. Perhaps by that time some philosophical legislator will have secured, from the prejudices of his contemporaries, the suppression of capital punishment. Then, some friendly voice will cite as an instance: "Why,Mademoiselle de La Mole's first husband was mad, but not a wickedman, he was no criminal. It was absurd to cut his head off … " Then mymemory will cease to be infamous; at least, after a certain time … Yourposition in society, your fortune, and, let me say, your genius will enableM. de Croisenois to play a part, once he is your husband, to which byhimself he could not hope to attain.
He has only his birth and his gallantry, and those qualities by themselves, which made a man accomplished in 1729, are an anachronism ahundred years later, and only give rise to pretensions. A man must haveother things besides if he is to place himself at the head of the youth ofFrance.
'You will bring the support of a firm and adventurous character to thepolitical party in which you will place your husband. You may succeedthe Chevreuses and Longuevilles of the Fronde … But by then, my dearfriend, the heavenly fire which animates you at this moment will havecooled a little.
'Allow me to tell you,' he went on, after many other preliminaryphrases, 'in fifteen years from now you will regard as an act of folly, pardonable but still an act of folly, the love that you have felt for me … '
He broke off abruptly and returned to his dreams. He found himselfonce again confronted by that idea, so shocking to Mathilde: 'In fifteenyears Madame de Renal will adore my son, and you will have forgottenhim.'
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