While the marquis de Croisenois was struggling to get through the crowd, and smiling at Mathilde she fixed her big divinely blue eyes on him and his neighbours. “Could anything be flatter,” she said to herself. “There is Croisenois who wants to marry me, he is gentle and polite, he has perfect manners like M. de Rouvray. If they did not bore, those gentlemen would be quite charming. He too, would accompany me to the ball with that smug limited expression. One year after the marriage I shall have my carriage, my horses, my dresses, my château twenty leagues from Paris. All this would be as nice as possible, and enough to make a Countess de Roiville, for example, die of envy and afterwards—”
Mathilde bored herself in anticipation. The marquis de Croisenois managed to approach her and spoke to her, but she was dreaming and did not listen to him. The noise of his words began to get mixed with the buzz of the ball. Her eye mechanically followed Julien who had gone away, with an air which, though respectful, was yet proud and discontented. She noticed in a corner far from the moving crowd, the comte Altamira who had been condemned to death in his own country and whom the reader knows already. One of his relatives had married a Prince de Conti in the reign of Louis XIV. This torical fact was some protection against the police of the congregation.
“I think being condemned to death is the only real distinction,” said Mathilde. “It is the only thing which cannot be bought.”
“Why, that’s an epigram, I just said, what a pity it did not come at a moment when I could have reaped all the credit for it.” Mathilde had too much taste to work into the conversation a prepared epigram but at the same time she was too vain not to be extremely pleased with herself. A happy expression succeeded the palpable boredom of her face. The marquis de Croisenois, who had never left off talking, saw a chance of success and waxed twice as eloquent.
“What objection could a caviller find with my epigram,” said Mathilde to herself. “I would answer my critic in this way: The title of baron or vicomte is to be bought; a cross, why it is a gift. My brother has just got one. What has he done? A promotion, why that can be obtained by being ten years in a garrison or have the minister of war for a relative, and you’ll be a chief of a squadron like Norbert. A great fortune! That’s rather more difficult, and consequently more meritorious. It is really quite funny. It’s the opposite of what the books say. Well, to win a fortune why you marry M. Rothschild’s daughter. Really my epigram is quite deep. Being condemned to death is still the one privilege which one has never thought of canvassing.”
“Do you know the comte Altamira,” she said to M. de Croisenois.
Her thoughts seemed to have been so far away, and this question had so little connection with all that the poor marquis had been saying for the last five minutes, that his good temper was ruffled. He was nevertheless a man of wit and celebrated for being so.
“Mathilde is eccentric,” he thought, “that’s a nuisance, but she will give her husband such a fine social position. I don’t know how the marquis de la Mole manages. He is connected with all that is best in all parties. He is a man who is bound to come out on top. And, besides, this eccentricity of Mathilde’s may pass for genius. Genius when allied with good birth and a large fortune, so far from being ridiculous, is highly distinguished. She has wit, moreover, when she wants to, that mixture in fact of brains, character, and ready wit which constitute perfection.”
As it is difficult to do two things at the same time, the marquis answered Mathilde with a vacant expression as though he were reciting a lesson.
“Who does not know that poor Altamira?” and he told her the history of his conspiracy, abortive, ridiculous and absurd.