Leo Tolstoy - 3 books to know Napoleonic Wars

‘How I dislike that great girl!’ he thought, as he watched Mademoiselle de La Mole cross the room, her mother having called her to introduce her to a number of women visitors. ‘She overdoes all the fashions, her gown is falling off her shoulders . . . she is even paler than when she went away . . . What colourless hair, if that is what they call golden! You would say the light shone through it. How arrogant her way of bowing, of looking at people! What regal gestures!’

Mademoiselle de La Mole had called her brother back, as he was leaving the room.

Comte Norbert came up to Julien:

‘My dear Sorel,’ he began, ‘where would you like me to call for you at midnight for M. de Retz’s ball? He told me particularly to bring you.’

‘I know to whom I am indebted for such kindness,’ replied Julien, bowing to the ground.

His ill humour, having no fault to find with the tone of politeness, indeed of personal interest, in which Norbert had addressed him, vented itself upon the reply which he himself had made to this friendly speech. He detected a trace of servility in it.

That night, on arriving at the ball, he was struck by the magnificence of the Hotel de Retz. The courtyard was covered with an immense crimson awning patterned with golden stars: nothing could have been more elegant. Beneath this awning, the court was transformed into a grove of orange trees and oleanders in blossom. As their tubs had been carefully buried at a sufficient depth, these oleanders and orange trees seemed to be springing from the ground. The carriage drive had been sprinkled with sand.

The general effect seemed extraordinary to our provincial. He had no idea that such magnificence could exist; in an instant his imagination had taken wings and flown a thousand leagues away from ill humour. In the carriage, on their way to the ball, Norbert had been happy, and he had seen everything in dark colours; as soon as they entered the courtyard their moods were reversed.

Norbert was conscious only of certain details, which, in the midst of all this magnificence, had been overlooked. He reckoned up the cost of everything, and as he arrived at a high total, Julien remarked that he appeared almost jealous of the outlay and began to sulk.

As for Julien, he arrived spell-bound with admiration, and almost timid with excess of emotion in the first of the saloons in which the company were dancing. Everyone was making for the door of the second room, and the throng was so great that he found it impossible to move. This great saloon was decorated to represent the Alhambra of Granada.

‘She is the belle of the ball, no doubt about it,’ said a young man with moustaches, whose shoulder dug into Julien’s chest.

‘Mademoiselle Fourmont, who has been the reigning beauty all winter,’ his companion rejoined, ‘sees that she must now take the second place: look how strangely she is frowning.’

‘Indeed she is hoisting all her canvas to attract. Look, look at that gracious smile as soon as she steps into the middle in that country dance. It is inimitable, upon my honour.’

‘Mademoiselle de La Mole has the air of being in full control of the pleasure she derives from her triumph, of which she is very well aware. One would say that she was afraid of attracting whoever speaks to her.’

‘Precisely! That is the art of seduction.’

Julien was making vain efforts to catch a glimpse of this seductive woman; seven or eight men taller than himself prevented him from seeing her.

‘There is a good deal of coquetry in that noble reserve,’ went on the young man with the moustaches.

‘And those big blue eyes which droop so slowly just at the moment when one would say they were going to give her away,’ his companion added. ‘Faith, she’s a past master.’

‘Look how common the fair Fourmont appears beside her,’ said a third.

‘That air of reserve is as much as to say: “How charming I should make myself to you, if you were the man that was worthy of me.”’

‘And who could be worthy of the sublime Mathilde?’ said the first: ‘Some reigning Prince, handsome, clever, well made, a hero in battle, and aged twenty at the most.’

‘The natural son of the Emperor of Russia, for whom, on the occasion of such a marriage, a Kingdom would be created; or simply the Comte de Thaler, with his air of a peasant in his Sunday clothes . . .’

The passage was now cleared, Julien was free to enter.

‘Since she appears so remarkable in the eyes of these puppets, it is worth my while to study her,’ he thought. ‘I shall understand what perfection means to these people.’

As he was trying to catch her eye, Mathilde looked at him. ‘Duty calls me,’ Julien said to himself, but his resentment was now confined to his expression. Curiosity made him step forward with a pleasure which the low cut of the gown on Mathilda’s shoulders rapidly enhanced, in a manner, it must be admitted, by no means flattering to his self-esteem. ‘Her beauty has the charm of youth,’ he thought. Five or six young men, among whom Julien recognised those whom he had heard talking in the doorway, stood between her and him.

‘You can tell me, Sir, as you have been here all the winter,’ she said to him, ‘is it not true that this is the prettiest ball of the season?’ He made no answer.

‘This Coulon quadrille seems to me admirable; and the ladies are dancing it quite perfectly.’ The young men turned round to see who the fortunate person was who was being thus pressed for an answer. It was not encouraging.

‘I should hardly be a good judge, Mademoiselle; I spend my time writing: this is the first ball on such a scale that I have seen.’

The moustached young men were shocked.

‘You are a sage, Monsieur Sorel,’ she went on with a more marked interest; ‘you look upon all these balls, all these parties, like a philosopher, like a Jean–Jacques Rousseau. These follies surprise you without tempting you.’

A chance word had stifled Julien’s imagination and banished every illusion from his heart. His lips assumed an expression of disdain that was perhaps slightly exaggerated.

‘Jean–Jacques Rousseau,’ he replied, ‘is nothing but a fool in my eyes when he takes it upon himself to criticise society; he did not understand it, and approached it with the heart of an upstart flunkey.’

‘He wrote the Contrat Social,’ said Mathilde in a tone of veneration.

‘For all his preaching a Republic and the overthrow of monarchical titles, the upstart is mad with joy if a Duke alters the course of his after-dinner stroll to accompany one of his friends.’

‘Ah, yes! The Due de Luxembourg at Montmorency accompanies a M. Coindet on the road to Paris,’ replied Mademoiselle de La Mole with the impetuous delight of a first enjoyment of pedantry. She was overjoyed at her own learning, almost like the Academician who discovered the existence of King Feretrius. Julien’s eye remained penetrating and stern. Mathilde had felt a momentary enthusiasm; her partner’s coldness disconcerted her profoundly. She was all the more astonished inasmuch as it was she who was in the habit of producing this effect upon other people.

At that moment, the Marquis de Croisenois advanced eagerly towards Mademoiselle de La Mole. He stopped for a moment within a few feet of her, unable to approach her on account of the crowd. He looked at her, with a smile at the obstacle. The young Marquise de Rouvray was close beside him; she was a cousin of Mathilde. She gave her arm to her husband, who had been married for only a fortnight. The Marquis de Rouvray, who was quite young also, showed all that fatuous love which seizes a man, who having made a ‘suitable’ marriage entirely arranged by the family lawyers, finds that he has a perfectly charming spouse. M. de Rouvray would be a Duke on the death of an uncle of advanced years.