She abhorred lack of character; that was her one objection to the handsome young men who surrounded her. The more they made elegant fun of everything which deviated from the prevailing mode, or which conformed to it but indifferently, the lower they fell in her eyes.
They were brave and that was all. “And after all in what way were they brave?” she said to herself. “In duels, but the duel is nothing more than a formality. The whole thing is mapped out beforehand, even the correct thing to say when you fall. Stretched on the turf, and with your hand on your heart, you must vouchsafe a generous forgiveness to the adversary, and a few words for a fair lady, who is often imaginary, or if she does exist, will go to a ball on the day of your death for fear of arousing suspicion.”
“One braves danger at the head of a squadron brilliant with steel, but how about that danger which is solitary, strange, unforeseen and really ugly.”
“Alas,” said Mathilde to herself, “it was at the court of Henri III. that men who were great both by character and by birth were to be found! Yes! If Julien had served at Jarnac or Moncontour, I should no longer doubt. In those days of strength and vigour Frenchmen were not dolls. The day of the battle was almost the one which presented the fewest problems.”
Their life was not imprisoned, like an Egyptian mummy in a covering which was common to all, and always the same. “Yes,” she added, “there was more real courage in going home alone at eleven o’clock in the evening when one came out of the Hôtel de Soissons where Catherine de’ Medici lived than there is nowadays in running over to Algiers. A man’s life was then a series of hazards. Nowadays civilisation has banished hazard. There are no more surprises. If anything new appears in any idea there are not sufficient epigrams to immortalise it, but if anything new appears in actual life, our panic reaches the lowest depth of cowardice. Whatever folly panic makes us commit is excused. What a degenerate and boring age! What would Boniface de la Mole have said if, lifting his cut-off head out of the tomb, he had seen seventeen of his descendants allow themselves to be caught like sheep in 1793 in order to be guillotined two days afterwards! Death was certain, but it would have been bad form to have defended themselves and to have killed at least one or two Jacobins. Yes! in the heroic days of France, in the age of Boniface de la Mole, Julien would have been the chief of a squadron, while my brother would have been the young priest with decorous manners, with wisdom in his eyes and reason on his lips.” Some months previously Mathilde had given up all hope of meeting any being who was a little different from the common pattern. She had found some happiness in allowing herself to write to some young society men. This rash procedure, which was so unbecoming and so imprudent in a young girl, might have disgraced her in the eyes of M. de Croisenois, the Duke de Chaulnes, his father, and the whole Hôtel de Chaulnes, who on seeing the projected marriage broken off would have wanted to know the reason. At that time Mathilde had been unable to sleep on those days when she had written one of her letters. But those letters were only answers. But now she ventured to declare her own love. She wrote first (what a terrible word!) to a man of the lowest social grade.
This circumstance rendered her eternal disgrace quite inevitable in the event of detection. Who of the women who visited her mother would have dared to take her part? What official excuse could be evolved which could successfully cope with the awful contempt of society.
Besides speaking was awful enough, but writing! “There are some things which are not written!” Napoleon had exclaimed on learning of the capitulation of Baylen. And it was Julien who had told her that epigram, as though giving her a lesson that was to come in useful subsequently.
But all this was comparatively unimportant, Mathilde’s anguish had other causes. Forgetting the terrible effect it would produce on society, and the ineffable blot on her scutcheon that would follow such an outrage on her own caste, Mathilde was going to write to a person of a very different character to the Croisenois’, the de Luz’s, the Caylus’s.
She would have been frightened at the depth and mystery in Julien’s character, even if she had merely entered into a conventional acquaintance with him. And she was going to make him her lover, perhaps her master.
“What will his pretensions not be, if he is ever in a position to do everything with me? Well! I shall say, like Medea: Au milieu de tant de périls il me reste Moi.” She believed that Julien had no respect for nobility of blood. What was more, he probably did not love her.