LITMIR.BIZ

      JULIEN READ OVER HIS letters. When the dinner bell sounded: ‘How ridiculous I must have appeared in the eyes of that Parisian doll!’ he said to himself; ‘what madness to tell her what was really in my thoughts! And yet perhaps not so very mad. The truth on this occasion was worthy of me.

      ‘Why, too, come and cross-examine me on private matters? Her question was indiscreet. She forgot herself. My thoughts on Danton form no part of the sacrifice for which her father pays me.’

      On reaching the dining-room, Julien was distracted from his ill humour by Mademoiselle de La Mole’s deep mourning, which was all the more striking since none of the rest of the family was in black.

      After dinner, he found himself entirely recovered from the fit of enthusiasm which had possessed him all day. Fortunately, the Academician who knew Latin was present at dinner. There is the man who will be least contemptuous of me, if, as I suppose, my question about Mademoiselle de La Mole’s mourning should prove a blunder.’

      Mathilde was looking at him with a singular expression. ‘There we have an instance of the coquetry of the women of these parts, just as Madame de Renal described it to me,’ Julien told himself. ‘I was not agreeable to her this morning, I did not yield to her impulse for conversation. My value has increased in her eyes. No doubt the devil loses no opportunity there. Later on, her proud scorn will find out a way of avenging itself. Let her do her worst. How different from the woman I have lost! What natural charm! What simplicity! I knew what was in her mind before she did; I could see her thoughts take shape; I had no competitor, in her heart, but the fear of losing her children; it was a reasonable and natural affection, indeed it was pleasant for me who felt the same fear. I was a fool. The ideas that I had I formed of Paris prevented me from appreciating that sublime woman.

      ‘What a difference, great God! And what do I find here? A sere and haughty vanity, all the refinements of self-esteem and nothing more.’

      The party left the table. ‘I must not let my Academician be intercepted,’ said Julien. He went up to him as they were moving into the garden, assumed a meek, submissive air, and sympathised with his rage at the success of Hernani.

      ‘If only we lived in the days of lettres de cachet!’ he said.

      ‘Ah, then he would never have dared,’ cried the Academician, with a gesture worthy of Talma.

      In speaking of a flower, Julien quoted a line or two from Virgil’s Georgics, and decided that nothing came up to the poetry of the abbe Delille. In short, he flattered the Academician in every possible way. After which, with an air of the utmost indifference: ‘I suppose,’ he said to him, ‘that Mademoiselle de La Mole has received a legacy from some uncle for whom she is in mourning.’

      ‘What! You live in the house,’ said the Academician, coming to a standstill, ‘and you don’t know her mania? Indeed, it is strange that her mother allows such things; but, between you and me, it is not exactly by strength of character that they shine in this family. Mademoiselle Mathilde has enough for them all, and leads them by the nose. Today is the 3Oth of April!’ and the Academician broke off, looking at Julien, with an air of connivance. Julien smiled as intelligently as he was able.

      ‘What connection can there be between leading a whole household by the nose, wearing black and the 30th of April?’ he asked himself. ‘I must be even stupider than I thought.

      ‘I must confess to you,’ he said to the Academician, and his eye continued the question.

      ‘Let us take a turn in the garden,’ said the Academician, delighted to see this chance of delivering a long and formal speech. ‘What! Is it really possible that you do not know what happened on the 30th of April, 1574?’

      ‘Where?’ asked Julien, in surprise.

      ‘On the Place de Greve.’

      Julien was so surprised that this name did not enlighten him. His curiosity, the prospect of a tragic interest, so attuned to his nature, gave him those sparkling eyes which a story-teller so loves to see in his audience. The Academician, delighted to find a virgin ear, related at full length to Julien how, on the 30th of April, 1574, the handsomest young man of his age, Boniface de La Mole, and Annibal de Coconasso, a Piedmontese gentleman, his friend, had been beheaded on the Place de Greve. ‘La Mole was the adored lover of Queen Marguerite of Navarre; and observe,’ the Academician added, ‘that Mademoiselle de La Mole is named Mathilde–Marguerite. La Mole was at the same time the favourite of the Duc d’Alencon and an intimate friend of the King of Navarre, afterwards Henri IV, the husband of his mistress. On Shrove Tuesday in this year, 1574, the Court happened to be at Saint–Germain, with the unfortunate King Charles IX, who was on his deathbed. La Mole wished to carry off the Princes, his friends, whom Queen Catherine de’ Medici was keeping as prisoners with the Court. He brought up two hundred horsemen under the walls of Saint–Germain, the Due d’Alencon took fright, and La Mole was sent to the scaffold.

      ‘But what appeals to Mademoiselle Mathilde, as she told me herself, seven or eight years ago, when she was only twelve, for she has a head, such a head! .. .’ and the Academician raised his eyes to heaven. ‘What impresses her in this political catastrophe is that Queen Marguerite of Navarre, who had waited concealed in a house on the Place de Greve, made bold to ask the executioner for her lover’s head. And the following night, at midnight, she took the head in her carriage, and went to bury it with her own hands in a chapel which stood at the foot of the hill of Montmartre.’

      ‘Is it possible?’ exclaimed Julien, deeply touched.

      ‘Mademoiselle Mathilde despises her brother because, as you see, he thinks nothing of all this ancient history, and never goes into mourning on the 30th of April. It is since this famous execution, and to recall the intimate friendship between La Mole and Coconasso, which Coconasso, being as he was an Italian, was named Annibal, that all the men of this family have borne that name. And,’ the Academician went on, lowering his voice, ‘this Coconasso was, on the authority of Charles IX, himself, one of the bloodiest assassins on the 24th of August, 1572.. But how is it possible, my dear Sorel, that you are ignorant of these matters, you, who are an inmate of the house?’

      ‘Then that is why twice, during the dinner, Mademoiselle de La Mole addressed her brother as Annibal. I thought I had not heard aright.’

      ‘It was a reproach. It is strange that the Marquise permits such folly . . . That great girl’s husband will see some fine doings!’

      This expression was followed by five or six satirical phrases. The joy at thus revealing an intimate secret that shone in the Academician’s eyes shocked Julien. ‘What are we but a pair of servants engaged in slandering our employers?’ he thought. ‘But nothing ought to surprise me that is done by this academic gentleman.’

      One day Julien had caught him on his knees before the Marquise de La Mole; he was begging her for a tobacco licence for a nephew in the country. That night, he gathered from a little maid of Mademoiselle de La Mole, who was making love to him, as Elisa had done in the past, that her mistress’s mourning was by no means put on to

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