3 books to know Napoleonic Wars. Leo Tolstoy

‘as though I had to reproach myself with a weakness for one of the footmen.’

      In bold and proud natures, it is only a step from anger with oneself to fury with other people; one’s transports of rage are in such circumstances a source of keen pleasure.

      In a moment, Mademoiselle de La Mole reached the stage of heaping on Julien the marks of the most intense scorn. She had infinite cleverness, and this cleverness triumphed in the art of torturing the self-esteem of others and inflicting cruel wounds upon them.

      For the first time in his life, Julien found himself subjected to the action of a superior intelligence animated by the most violent hatred of himself. So far from entertaining the slightest idea of defending himself at that moment, he began to despise himself. Hearing her heap upon him such cruel marks of scorn, so cleverly calculated to destroy any good opinion that he might have of himself, he felt that Mathilde was right, and that she was not saying enough.

      As for her, her pride found an exquisite pleasure in thus punishing herself and him for the adoration which she had felt a few days earlier.

      She had no need to invent or to think for the first time of the cruel words which she now uttered with such complacence. She was only repeating what for the last week had been said in her heart by the counsel of the opposite party to love.

      Every word increased Julien’s fearful misery an hundredfold. He tried to escape, Mademoiselle de La Mole held him by the arm with a gesture of authority.

      ‘Please to observe,’ he said to her, ‘that you are speaking extremely loud; they will hear you in the next room.’

      ‘What of that!’ Mademoiselle de La Mole retorted proudly, ‘who will dare to say to me that he has heard me? I wish to rid your petty self-esteem for ever of the ideas which it may have formed of me.’

      When Julien was able to leave the library, he was so astounded that he already felt his misery less keenly. ‘Well! She no longer loves me,’ he repeated to himself, speaking aloud as though to inform himself of his position. ‘It appears that she loved me for a week or ten days, and I shall love her all my life.

      ‘Is it really possible, she meant nothing, nothing at all to my heart, only a few days ago.’

      The delights of satisfied pride flooded Mathilde’s bosom; so she had managed to break with him for ever! The thought of so complete a triumph over so strong an inclination made her perfectly happy. ‘And so this little gentleman will understand, and once for all, that he has not and never will have any power over me.’ She was so happy that really she had ceased to feel any love at that moment.

      After so atrocious, so humiliating a scene, in anyone less passionate than Julien, love would have become impossible. Without departing for a single instant from what she owed to herself, Mademoiselle de La Mole had addressed to him certain of those disagreeable statements, so well calculated that they can appear to be true, even when one remembers them in cold blood.

      The conclusion that Julien drew at the first moment from so astonishing a scene was that Mathilde had an unbounded pride. He believed firmly that everything was at an end for ever between them, and yet, the following day, at luncheon, he was awkward and timid in her presence. This was a fault that could not have been found with him until then. In small matters as in great, he knew clearly what he ought and wished to do, and carried it out.

      That day, after luncheon, when Madame de La Mole asked him for a seditious and at the same time quite rare pamphlet, which her parish priest had brought to her secretly that morning, Julien, in taking it from a side table, knocked over an old vase of blue porcelain, the ugliest thing imaginable.

      Madame de La Mole rose to her feet with a cry of distress and came across the room to examine the fragments of her beloved vase. ‘It was old Japan,’ she said, ‘it came to me from my great-aunt the Abbess of Chelles; it was a present from the Dutch to the Duke of Orleans when he was Regent and he gave it to his daughter . . . ’

      Mathilde had followed her mother, delighted to see the destruction of this blue vase which seemed to her horribly ugly. Julien stood silent and not unduly distressed; he saw Mademoiselle de La Mole standing close beside him.

      ‘This vase,’ he said to her, ‘is destroyed for ever; so is it with a sentiment which was once the master of my heart; I beg you to accept my apologies for all the foolish things it has made me do’; and he left the room.

      ‘Really, one would think,’ said Madame de La Mole as he went, ‘that this M. Sorel is proud and delighted with what he has done.’

      This speech fell like a weight upon Mathilde’s heart. ‘It is true,’ she told herself, ‘my mother has guessed aright, such is the sentiment that is animating him.’ Then and then only ended her joy in the scene that she had made with him the day before. ‘Ah, well, all is at an end,’ she said to herself with apparent calm; ‘I am left with a great example; my mistake has been fearful, degrading! It will make me wise for all the rest of my life.’

      ‘Was I not speaking the truth?’ thought Julien; ‘why does the love that I felt for that madwoman torment me still?’

      This love, so far from dying, as he hoped, was making rapid strides. ‘She is mad, it is true,’ he said to himself, ‘but is she any less adorable? Is it possible for a girl to be more lovely? Everything that the most elegant civilisation can offer in the way of keen pleasures, was it not all combined to one’s heart’s content in Mademoiselle de La Mole?’ These memories of past happiness took possession of Julien, and rapidly undid all the work of reason.

      Reason struggles in vain against memories of this sort; its stern endeavours serve only to enhance their charm.

      Twenty-four hours after the breaking of the old Japanese vase, Julien was decidedly one of the unhappiest of men.

      Chapter 21

      THE SECRET NOTE

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      For I saw everything that I am telling you; and if I may have been deceived when I saw it, I am most certainly not deceiving you in telling you of it.

      From a Letter to the Author

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      THE MARQUIS SENT FOR him; M. de La Mole seemed rejuvenated, there was a gleam in his eye.

      ‘Let us hear a little about your memory,’ he said to Julien. ‘I am told it is prodigious! Could you learn four pages by heart and go and repeat them in London? But without altering a word!’

      The Marquis was feverishly turning the pages of that morning’s Quotidienne, and seeking in vain to dissimulate a highly serious air, which Julien had never seen him display, not even when they were discussing the Frilair case.

      Julien had by this time sufficient experience to feel that he ought to appear thoroughly deceived by the light manner that was being assumed for his benefit.

      ‘This number of the Quotidienne is perhaps not very amusing; but, if M. le Marquis will allow me, tomorrow morning I shall have the honour to recite it to him from beginning to end.’

      ‘What! Even the advertisements?’

      ‘Literally, and without missing a word.’

      ‘Do you give me your word for that?’ went on the Marquis with a sudden gravity.

      ‘Yes, Sir, only the fear of not keeping it might upset my memory.’

      ‘What I mean is that I forgot to ask you this question yesterday; I do not ask you on your oath never to repeat what you are about to hear; I know you too well to insult you in that way. I have answered for you, I am going