CHAPTER LVI
MORAL LOVE
That calm patrician polish in the address,
Which ne'er can pass the equinoctial line
Of anything which Nature would express;
Just as a Mandarin finds nothing fine.
At least his manner suffers not to guess
That anything he views can greatly please.
"There is an element of madness in all this family's way of looking at things," thought the maréchale; "they are infatuated with their young abbé, whose only accomplishment is to be a good listener, though his eyes are fine enough, it is true."
Julien, on his side, found in the maréchale's manners an almost perfect instance of that patrician calm which exhales a scrupulous politeness; and, what is more, announces at the same time the impossibility of any violent emotion. Madame de Fervaques would have been as much scandalised by any unexpected movement or any lack of self-control, as by a lack of dignity towards one's inferiors. She would have regarded the slightest symptom of sensibility as a kind of moral drunkenness which puts one to the blush and was extremely prejudicial to what a person of high rank owed to herself. Her great happiness was to talk of the king's last hunt; her favourite book, was the Memoirs of the Duke de Saint Simon, especially the genealogical part.
Julien knew the place where the arrangement of the light suited madame de Fervaques' particular style of beauty. He got there in advance, but was careful to turn his chair in such a way as not to see Mathilde.
Astonished one day at this consistent policy of hiding him self from her, she left the blue sofa and came to work by the little table near the maréchale's armchair. Julien had a fairly close view of her over madame de Fervaques' hat.
Those eyes, which were the arbiters of his fate, frightened him, and then hurled him violently out of his habitual apathy. He talked, and talked very well.
He was speaking to the maréchale, but his one aim was to produce an impression upon Mathilde's soul. He became so animated that eventually madame de Fervaques did not manage to understand a word he said.
This was a prime merit. If it had occurred to Julien to follow it up by some phrases of German mysticism, lofty religion, and Jesuitism, the maréchale would have immediately given him a rank among the superior men whose mission it was to regenerate the age.
"Since he has bad enough taste," said mademoiselle de la Mole, "to talk so long and so ardently to madame de Fervaques, I shall not listen to him any more." She kept her resolution during the whole latter part of the evening, although she had difficulty in doing so.
At midnight, when she took her mother's candle to accompany her to her room, madame de la Mole stopped on the staircase to enter into an exhaustive eulogy of Julien. Mathilde ended by losing her temper. She could not get to sleep. She felt calmed by this thought: "the very things which I despise in a man may none the less constitute a great merit in the eyes of the maréchale."
As for Julien, he had done something, he was less unhappy; his eyes chanced to fall on the Russian leather poitfolio in which prince Korasoff had placed the fifty-three love letters which he had presented to him. Julien saw a note at the bottom of the first letter: No. 1 is sent eight days after the first meeting.
"I am behind hand," exclaimed Julien. "It is quite a long time since I met madame de Fervaques." He immediately began to copy out this first love letter. It was a homily packed with moral platitudes and deadly dull. Julien was fortunate enough to fall asleep at the second page.
Some hours afterwards he was surprised to see the broad daylight as he lent on his desk. The most painful moments in his life were those when he woke up every morning to realise his unhappiness. On this particular day he finished copying out his letter in a state verging on laughter. "Is it possible," he said to himself, "that there ever lived a young man who actually wrote like that." He counted several sentences of nine lines each. At the bottom of the original he noticed a pencilled note. "These letters are delivered personally, on horseback, black cravat, blue tail-coat. You give the letter to the porter with a contrite air; expression of profound melancholy. If you notice any chambermaid, dry your eyes furtively and speak to her."
All this was duly carried out.
"I am taking a very bold course!" thought Julien as he came out of the hotel de Fervaques, "but all the worse for Korasoff. To think of daring to write to so virtuous a celebrity. I shall be treated with the utmost contempt, and nothing will amuse me more. It is really the only comedy that I can in any way appreciate. Yes, it will amuse me to load with ridicule that odious creature whom I call myself. If I believed in myself, I would commit some crime to distract myself."
The moment when Julien brought his horse back to the stable was the happiest he had experienced for a whole month. Korasoff had expressly forbidden him to look at the mistress who had left him, on any pretext whatsoever. But the step of that horse, which she knew so well, and Julien's way of knocking on the stable door with his riding-whip to call a man, sometimes attracted Mathilde to behind the window-curtain. The muslin was so light that Julien could see through it. By looking under the brim of his hat in a certain way, he could get a view of Mathilde's figure without seeing her eyes. "Consequently," he said to himself, "she cannot see mine, and that is not really looking at her."
In the evening madame de Fervaques behaved towards him, exactly as though she had never received the philosophic mystical and religious dissertation which he had given to her porter in the morning with so melancholy an air. Chance had shown Julien on the preceding day how to be eloquent; he placed himself in such a position that he could see Mathilde's eyes. She, on her side, left the blue sofa a minute after the maréchale's arrival; this involved abandoning her usual associates. M. de Croisenois seemed overwhelmed by this new caprice: his palpable grief alleviated the awfulness of Julien's agony.
This unexpected turn in his life made him talk like an angel, and inasmuch as a certain element of self-appreciation will insinuate itself even into those hearts which serve as a temple for the most august virtue, the marechale said to herself as she got into her carriage, "Madame de la Mole is right, this young priest has distinction. My presence must have overawed him at first. As a matter of fact, the whole tone of this house is very frivolous; I can see nothing but instances of virtue helped by oldness, and standing in great need of the chills of age. This young man must have managed to appreciate the difference; he writes well, but I fear very much that this request of his in his letter for me to enlighten him with my advice, is really nothing less than an, as yet, unconscious sentiment.
"Nevertheless how many conversions have begun like that! What makes me consider this a good omen is the difference between his style and that of the young people whose letters I have had an opportunity of seeing. One cannot avoid recognising unction, profound seriousness, and much conviction in the prose of this young acolyte; he has no doubt the sweet virtue of a Massillon."