3 books to know Napoleonic Wars. Leo Tolstoy

next to her mother’s apartment, but there was a spacious mezzanine beneath.

      This first floor stood so high, that, as he advanced beneath the lime-alley, letter in hand, Julien could not be seen from Mademoiselle de La Mole’s window. The vault formed by the limes, which were admirably pleached, intercepted the view.

      ‘But what is this!’ Julien said to himself, angrily, ‘another imprudence! If they have decided to make a fool of me, to let myself be seen with a letter in my hand, is to play the enemy’s game.’

      Norbert’s room was immediately above his sister’s, and if Julien emerged from the alley formed by the pleached branches of the limes, the Count and his friends would be able to follow his every movement.

      Mademoiselle de La Mole appeared behind her closed window; he half showed her his letter; she bowed her head. At once Julien ran up to his own room, and happened to meet, on the main staircase, the fair Mathilde, who snatched the letter with perfect composure and laughing eyes.

      ‘What passion there was in the eyes of that poor Madame de Renal,’ Julien said to himself, ‘when, even after six months of intimate relations, she ventured to receive a letter from me! Never once, I am sure, did she look at me with a laugh in her eyes.’

      He did not express to himself so clearly the rest of his comment; was he ashamed of the futility of his motives? ‘But also what a difference,’ his thoughts added, ‘in the elegance of her morning gown, in the elegance of her whole appearance! On catching sight of Mademoiselle de La Mole thirty yards off, a man of taste could tell the rank that she occupies in society. That is what one may call an explicit merit.’

      Still playing with his theme, Julien did not yet confess to himself the whole of his thoughts; Madame de Renal had had no Marquis de Croisenois to sacrifice to him. He had had as a rival only that ignoble Sub–Prefect M. Charcot, who had assumed the name of Maugiron, because the Maugirons were extinct.

      At five o’clock, Julien received a third letter; it was flung at him from the library door. Mademoiselle de La Mole again fled. ‘What a mania for writing,’ he said to himself with a laugh, ‘when it is so easy for us to talk! The enemy wishes to have my letters, that is clear, and plenty of them!’ He was in no haste to open this last. ‘More elegant phrases,’ he thought; but he turned pale as he read it. It consisted of eight lines only.

      ‘I have to speak to you: I must speak to you, tonight; when one o’clock strikes, be in the garden. Take the gardener’s long ladder from beside the well; place it against my window and come up to my room. There is a moon: no matter.’

      Chapter 15

      IS IT A PLOT?

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      Ah! How cruel is the interval between the conception of a great project and its execution! What vain terrors! What irresolutions! Life is at stake. Far more than life — honour!

      SCHILLER

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      ‘THIS IS BECOMING SERIOUS,’ thought Julien . . . ‘and a little too obvious,’ he added, after a moment’s reflection. ‘Why! This pretty young beauty can speak to me in the library with a freedom which, thank heaven, is unrestricted; the Marquis, for fear of my bothering him with accounts, never comes there. Why! M. de La Mole and Comte Norbert, the only people who ever show their faces here, are absent almost all day; it is easy to watch for the moment of their return to the house, and the sublime Mathilde, for whose hand a Sovereign Prince would not be too noble, wishes me to commit an act of abominable imprudence!

      ‘It is clear, they wish to ruin me, or to make a fool of me, at least. First of all, they sought to ruin me by my letters; these proved cautious; very well, now they require an action that shall be as clear as daylight. These pretty little gentlemen think me too simple or too conceited. The devil! With the brightest moon you ever saw, to climb up by a ladder to a first floor, five and twenty feet from the ground! They will have plenty of time to see me, even from the neighbouring houses. I shall be a fine sight on my ladder!’ Julien went up to his room and began to pack his trunk, whistling as he did so. He had made up his mind to go, and not even to answer the letter.

      But this sage resolution gave him no peace of heart. ‘If, by any chance,’ he said to himself, suddenly, his trunk packed and shut, ‘Mathilde were sincere! Then I shall be cutting in her eyes the most perfect figure of a coward. I have no birth, so I require great qualities, ready on demand, with no flattering suppositions, qualities proved by eloquent deeds . . . ’

      He spent a quarter of an hour pacing the floor of his room. ‘What use in denying it?’ he asked himself, at length; ‘I shall be a coward in her eyes. I lose not only the most brilliant young person in high society, as everyone was saying at M. le Duc de Retz’s ball, but, furthermore, the heavenly pleasure of seeing her throw over for me the Marquis de Croisenois, the son of a Duke, and a future Duke himself. A charming young man who has all the qualities that I lack: a ready wit, birth, fortune . . .

      ‘This remorse will pursue me all my life, not for her, there are heaps of mistresses, “but only one honour”, as old Don Diego says, and here I am clearly and plainly recoiling from the first peril that comes my way; for that duel with M. de Beauvoisis was a mere joke. This is quite different. I may be shot point-blank by a servant, but that is the least danger; I may forfeit my honour.

      ‘This is becoming serious, my boy,’ he went on, with a Gascon gaiety and accent. ‘Honur is at stake. A poor devil kept down by fate in my lowly station will never find such an opportunity again; I shall have adventures, but tawdry ones . . . ’

      He reflected at length, he paced the room with a hurried step, stopping short now and again. There stood in his room a magnificent bust in marble of Cardinal Richelieu, which persistently caught his eye. This bust appeared to be gazing at him sternly, as though reproaching him for the want of that audacity which ought to be so natural to the French character. ‘In thy time, great man, should I have hesitated?

      ‘At the worst,’ Julien told himself finally, ‘let us suppose that all this is a plot, it is a very dark one, and highly compromising for a young girl. They know that I am not the man to keep silent. They will therefore have to kill me. That was all very well in 1574, in the days of Boniface de La Mole, but the La Mole of today would never dare. These people are not the same now. Mademoiselle de La Mole is so envied! Four hundred drawing-rooms would echo with her disgrace next day, and with what rejoicing!

      ‘The servants chatter among themselves of the marked preference that is shown me; I know it, I have heard them . . .

      ‘On the other hand, her letters! .. . They may suppose that I have them on me. They surprise me in her room, and take them from me. I shall have two, three, four, any number of men to deal with. But these men, where will they collect them? Where is one to find discreet agents in Paris? They are afraid of the law . . . Gad! It will be the Caylus and Croisenois and de Luz themselves. The thought of that moment, and the foolish figure I shall cut there among them will be what has tempted them. Beware the fate of Abelard, Master Secretary!

      ‘Begad, then, gentlemen, you shall bear the mark of my fists, I shall strike at your faces, like Caesar’s soldiers at Pharsalia .. . As for the letters, I can put them in a safe place.’

      Julien made copies of the two last, concealed them in a volume of the fine Voltaire from the library, and went himself with the originals to the post.

      When he returned: ‘Into what madness am I rushing!’ he said to himself with surprise and terror. He had been a quarter of an hour without considering his action of the coming night in all its aspects.

      ‘But, if I refuse, I must despise myself ever afterwards. All my life long, that action will be a matter