CHAPTER LXIX
THE INTRIGUE
Castres 1676—A brother has just murdered his sister in the house next to mine. This gentleman had already been guilty of one murder. His father saved his life by causing five-hundred crowns to be distributed among the councillors.—Locke: Journey in France.
When she left the bishop's palace, Mathilde did not hesitate to despatch a courier to madame de Fervaques. The fear of compromising herself did not stop her for a moment. She entreated her rival to obtain for M. de Frilair an autograph letter from the bishop of . She went as far as to entreat her to come herself to Besançon with all speed. This was an heroic act on the part of a proud and jealous soul.
Acting on Fouqué's advice, she had had the discretion to refrain from mentioning the steps she had taken for Julien. Her presence troubled him enough without that. A better man when face to face with death than he had ever been during his life, he had remorse not only towards M. de la Mole, but also towards Mathilde.
"Come," he said to himself, "there are times when I feel absent-minded and even bored by her society. She is ruining herself on my account, and this is how I reward her. Am I really a scoundrel?" This question would have bothered him but little in the days when he was ambitious. In those days he looked upon failure as the only disgrace.
His moral discomfort when with Mathilde was proportionately emphasized by the fact that he inspired her at this time with the maddest and most extraordinary passion. She talked of nothing but the strange sacrifices that she was ready to make in order to save him.
Exalted as she was by a sentiment on which she plumed herself, to the complete subordination of her pride, she would have liked not to have let a single minute of her life go by without filling it with some extraordinary act. The strangest projects, and ones involving her in the utmost danger, supplied the topics of her long interviews with Julien. The well-paid gaolers allowed her to reign over the prison. Mathilde's ideas were not limited by the sacrifice of her reputation. She would have thought nothing of making her condition known to society at large. Throwing herself on her knees before the king's carriage as it galloped along, in order to ask for Julien's pardon, and thus attracting the attention of the prince, at the risk of being crushed a thousand times over, was one of the least fantastic dreams in which this exalted and courageous imagination chose to indulge. She was certain of being admitted into the reserved portion of the park of St. Cloud, through those friends of hers who were employed at the king's court.
Julien thought himself somewhat unworthy of so much devotion. As a matter of fact, he was tired of heroism. A simple, naïve, and almost timid tenderness was what would have appealed to him, while Mathilde's haughty soul, on the other hand, always required the idea of a public and an audience.
In the midst of all her anguish and all her fears for the life of that lover whom she was unwilling to survive, she felt a secret need of astonishing the public by the extravagance of her love and the sublimity of her actions.
Julien felt irritated at not finding himself touched by all this heroism. What would he have felt if he had known of all the mad ideas with which Mathilde overwhelmed the devoted but eminently logical and limited spirit of the good Fouqué?
He did not know what to find fault with in Mathilde's devotion. For he, too, would have sacrificed all his fortune, and have exposed his life to the greatest risks in order to save Julien. He was dumbfounded by the quantity of gold which Mathilde flung away. During the first days Fouqué, who had all the provincial's respect for money, was much impressed by the sums she spent in this way.
He at last discovered that mademoiselle de la Mole's projects frequently varied, and he was greatly relieved at finding a word with which to express his blame for a character whom he found so exhausting. She was changeable. There is only a step from this epithet to that of wrong-headed, the greatest term of opprobrium known to the provinces.
"It is singular," said Julien to himself, as Mathilde was going out of his prison one day, "that I should be so insensible at being the object of so keen a passion! And two months ago I adored her! I have, of course, read that the approach of death makes one lose interest in everything, but it is awful to feel oneself ungrateful, and not to be able to change. Am I an egoist, then?" He addressed the most humiliating reproaches to himself on this score.
Ambition was dead in his heart; another passion had arisen from its ashes. He called it remorse at having assassinated madame de Rênal.
As a matter of fact, he loved her to the point of distraction. He experienced a singular happiness on these occasions when, being left absolutely alone, and without being afraid of being interrupted, he could surrender himself completely to the memory of the happy days which he had once passed at Verrières, or at Vergy. The slightest incidents of these days, which had fleeted away only too rapidly, possessed an irresistible freshness and charm. He never gave a thought to his Paris successes; they bored him.
These moods, which became intensified with every succeeding day, were partly guessed by the jealous Mathilde. She realised very clearly that she had to struggle against his love of solitude. Sometimes, with terror in her heart, she uttered madame de Rênal's name.
She saw Julien quiver. Henceforth her passion had neither bounds nor limit.
"If he dies, I will die after him," she said to herself in all good faith. "What will the Paris salons say when they see a girl of my own rank carry her adoration for a lover who is condemned to death to such a pitch as this? For sentiments like these you must go back to the age of the heroes. It was loves of this kind which thrilled the hearts of the century of Charles IX. and Henri III."
In the midst of her keenest transports, when she was clasping Julien's head against her heart, she would say to herself with horror, "What! is this charming head doomed to fall? Well," she added, inflamed by a not unhappy heroism, "these lips of mine, which are now pressing against this pretty hair, will be icy cold less than twenty-four hours afterwards."
Thoughts of the awful voluptuousness of such heroic moments gripped her in a compelling embrace. The idea of suicide, absorbing enough in itself, entered that haughty soul (to which, up to the present it had been so utterly alien), and soon reigned over it with an absolute dominion.
"No, the blood of my ancestors has not grown tepid in descending to me," said Mathilde proudly to herself.
"I have a favour to ask of you," said her lover to her one day. "Put your child out to nurse at Verrières. Madame de Rênal will look after the nurse."
"Those words of yours are very harsh." And Mathilde paled.
"It is true, and I ask your pardon a thousand times," exclaimed Julien, emerging from his reverie, and clasping her in his arms.
After having dried his tears, he reverted to his original idea, but with greater tact. He had given a twist of melancholy philosophy to the conversation. He talked of that future of his which was so soon going to close. "One must admit, dear one, that passions are an accident in life, but such accidents only occur in superior souls.… My son's death would be in reality a happiness for your own proud family, and all the servants will realize as much. Neglect will be the lot of that child of shame and unhappiness. I hope that, at a time which I do not wish to fix, but which nevertheless I am courageous enough to imagine, you will obey my last advice: you will marry the marquis de Croisenois."
"What? Dishonoured?"
"Dishonour cannot attach to a name such as yours. You will be a widow, and the widow of a madman—that is all. I will go further—my crime will confer no dishonour, since it had no money motive. Perhaps when the time comes for your marriage, some philosophic legislator will have so far prevailed on the prejudice of his contemporaries as to have secured the suppression of the death penalty. Then some friendly voice will say, by way of giving an instance: 'Why, madame de la Mole's first husband was a madman, but not a wicked man or a criminal. It was absurd to have his head cut off.' So my memory will not be infamous in any way—at least, after a certain time.… Your position in society, your fortune, and, if you will allow me to say so, your genius, will make M. de Croisenois, once he is your husband, play a part which he would have never managed to secure unaided. He only possesses birth and bravery, and those qualities alone, though they constituted an accomplished man in 1729, are an anachronism a century later on, and only give rise to unwarranted pretensions. You need other things if you are to place yourself at the head of the youth of France."
"You will take all the help of your firm and enterprising character to the political party which you will make your husband join. You may be able to be a successor to the Chevreuses and the Longuevilles of the Fronde—but then, dear one, the divine fire which animates you at present will have grown a little tepid. Allow me to tell you," he added, "after many other preparatory phrases, that in fifteen years' time you will look upon the love you once had for me as a madness, which though excusable, was a piece of madness all the same."
He stopped suddenly and became meditative. He found himself again confronted with the idea which shocked Mathilde so much: "In fifteen years, madame de Rênal will adore my son and you will have forgotten him."