StrasbourgFascination! Thou sharest with love all its energy, all its capacityfor suffering. Its enchanting pleasures, its sweet delights are alonebeyond thy sphere. I could not say, as I saw her asleep: She is allmine with her angelic beauty and her sweet frailties! Behold herdelivered into my power, as heaven made her in its compassionto enchant a man's heart.
Ode by SCHILLERObliged to spend a week in Strasbourg, Julien sought to distract himself with thoughts of martial glory and of devotion to his country. Washe in love, then? He could not say, only he found in his bruised heartMathilde the absolute mistress of his happiness as of his imagination. Herequired all his natural energy to keep himself from sinking into despair.
To think of anything that bore no relation to Mademoiselle de La Molewas beyond his power. Ambition, the mere triumphs of vanity, had I distracted him in the past from the sentiments that Madame de Renal inspired in him. Mathilde had absorbed all; he found her everywhere inhis future.
On every hand, in this future, Julien foresaw failure. This creaturewhom we saw at Verrieres so filled with presumption, so arrogant, hadfallen into an absurd extreme of modesty.
Three days earlier he would have killed the abbe Castanede withpleasure, and at Strasbourg, had a boy picked a quarrel with him, hewould have offered the boy an apology. In thinking over the adversaries,the enemies whom he had encountered in the course of his life, he foundthat invariably he, Julien, had been in the wrong.
The fact was that he had now an implacable enemy in that powerfulimagination, which before had been constantly employed in paintingsuch brilliant successes for him in the future.
The absolute solitude of a traveller's existence strengthened the powerof this dark imagination. What a treasure would a friend have been!
'But,' Julien asked himself, 'is there a heart in the world that beats for me?
And if I had a friend, does not honour impose on me an eternal silence?'
He took a horse and rode sadly about the neighbourhood of Kehl; it isa village on the bank of the Rhine, immortalised by Desaix and GouvionSaint-Cyr. A German peasant pointed out to him the little streams, theroads, the islands in the Rhine which the valour of those great Generalshas made famous. Julien, holding the reins in his left hand, was carryingspread out in his right the superb map which illustrates the Memoirs ofMarshal Saint-Cyr. A joyful exclamation made him raise his head.
It was Prince Korasoff, his London friend, who had expounded to himsome months earlier the first principles of high fatuity. Faithful to thisgreat art, Korasoff, who had arrived in Strasbourg the day before, hadbeen an hour at Kehl, and had never in his life read a line about the siegeof 1796, began to explain it all to Julien. The German peasant gazed athim in astonishment; for he knew enough French to make out the enormous blunders into which the Prince fell. Julien's thoughts were a thousand leagues away from the peasant's, he was looking with amazementat this handsome young man, and admiring his grace in the saddle.
'A happy nature!' he said to himself. 'How well his breeches fit him,how elegantly his hair is cut! Alas, if I had been like that, perhaps afterloving me for three days she would not have taken a dislike to me.'
When the Prince had come to an end of his version of the siege ofKehl: 'You look like a Trappist,' he said to Julien, 'you are infringing theprinciple of gravity I taught you in London. A melancholy air can neverbe the right thing; what you want is a bored air. If you are melancholy, itmust be because you want something, there is something in which youhave not succeeded.
'It is shewing your inferiority. If you are bored, on the other hand, it isthe person who has tried in vain to please you who is inferior. Realise,my dear fellow, what a grave mistake you are making.'
Julien flung a crown to the peasant who stood listening to them, open-mouthed.
'Good,' said the Prince, 'that is graceful, a noble disdain! Very good!'
And he put his horse into a gallop. Julien followed him, filled with a stupefied admiration.
'Ah! If I had been like that, she would not have preferred Croisenois tome!' The more his reason was shocked by the absurdities of the Prince,the more he despised himself for not admiring them, and deemed himself unfortunate in not sharing them. Self-contempt can be carried nofarther.
The Prince found him decidedly melancholy: 'Ah, my dear fellow,' hesaid to him, as they rode into Strasbourg, 'have you lost all your money,or can you be in love with some little actress?'
The Russians imitate French ways, but always at a distance of fiftyyears. They have now reached the days of Louis XV.
These jests, at the expense of love, filled Julien's eyes with tears: 'Whyshould not I consult so friendly a man?' he asked himself suddenly.
'Well, yes, my friend,' he said to the Prince, 'you find me in Strasbourg,madly in love, indeed crossed in love. A charming woman, who lives ina neighbouring town, has abandoned me after three days of passion, andthe change is killing me.'
He described to the Prince, under an assumed name, the actions andcharacter of Mathilde.
'Do not go on,' said Korasoff: 'to give you confidence in your physician, I am going to cut short your confidences. This young woman's husband possesses an enormous fortune, or, what is more likely, she herselfbelongs to the highest nobility of the place. She must be proud ofsomething.'
Julien nodded his head, he had no longer the heart to speak.
'Very good,' said the Prince, 'here are three medicines, all rather bitter,which you are going to take without delay:
'First: You must every day see Madame —— what do you call her?'
'Madame de Dubois.'
'What a name!' said the Prince, with a shout of laughter; 'but forgiveme, to you it is sublime. It is essential that you see Madame de Duboisevery day; above all do not appear to her cold and cross; remember thegreat principle of your age: be the opposite to what people expect of you.
Show yourself precisely as you were a week before you were honouredwith her favours.'
