Chapter 41 Chapter Ten—The Power of Girls

If Julien hadn't spent his time exaggerating Mathilde's beauty and fiercely rebelling against the arrogance inherent in her family, but she had forgotten for him, but had spent time studying what happened in the living room, he would have Will understand why she can dominate everything around her.When someone displeases her, she punishes him with a joke. Her jokes are so measured, well chosen, superficially appropriate, and timed. The more you think about it, the more you feel that the wound is widening every moment. .Gradually, it can become brutal to a wounded pride.She despised many things that the rest of the family genuinely desired, and so she was always seen by them as cruel and unfeeling.A nobleman's drawing-room, after leaving, is pleasant, but that's all; politeness itself is only a thing for the first few days.Julien had experience. After the initial intoxication, followed by the initial surprise. "Politeness," thought Julien, "is nothing but the temporary absence of anger caused by indecent manners. Mathilde was often bored, perhaps because she was bored everywhere. So she sharpened a sarcasm. It became a pastime for her, a real pleasure."

Perhaps in order to obtain a slightly more interesting victim than her elders, academicians, and five or six subordinates who courted her, she gave hope to the Marquis de Croixenoy, the Count of Caylus, and two others. Three noblest young men.To her, they were just new objects of sarcasm. Because we love Mathilde, we painfully admit that she had letters from several of them, and on several occasions she wrote in reply.We hasten to add that this character was an exception to the fashion of the time.In general, one cannot accuse the students of the noble Convent of the Sacred Heart of being imprudent.

One day, the Marquis de Croixenois handed back to Mathilde a letter that was likely to be discreditable, which she had written to him the previous day.He believed that this display of great deliberation would lead his affairs well.Yet it is precisely indiscretion that Mathilde likes in her correspondence.Her pleasure is to gamble with her own fate.She ignored him for six weeks. She whiled away the hours with the letters of these young men, but as far as she could see they were all in one tone, always of the deepest and most melancholy passion. “They were all perfect, like one person, ready to go to Palestine,” she told a cousin. "Do you know anything more dull than that? These are the letters I've been receiving all my life. The letters change about every twenty years, according to the prevailing activities at the time. They must have been different in the days of the Empire." It was colorless. The young men of society saw or did some really great things in those days. My uncle, the Duke de N., was in Wagram."

"What kind of intelligence does it take to wield a sword? Once they have done it, they keep talking!" said Mademoiselle de Saint-Heredit, Mathilde's cousin. "Yeah! I love the stories. To be in a real battle, Napoleon's, and ten thousand soldiers die, that's a testament to a man's bravery. Being in danger lifts the soul and lifts it from ennui Well, my admirers seem to be getting bored, and this boredom is contagious. Has any of them ever thought of doing something extraordinary? They all want to marry me, so beautiful! I'm rich, my father Will promote his son-in-law again. Ah! If only my father could find a slightly more interesting one!"

The way Mathildes see things is sharp, sharp, and vivid, which inevitably corrupts her discourse, as one sees it.A word of hers was often a blemish in the eyes of her so polite friends.If she hadn't been so popular, they would almost all have admitted that her speech was a little too colorful and lacking in feminine delicacy. She, too, was unfair to the handsome knights who filled the Bois de Boulogne.She looked to the future not with terror, which is a strong emotion, but with revulsion, which was rare at her age. What can she expect?Wealth, noble birth, wit, beauty, she was told by others, and she believed that fate had gathered them all in her.

Such were the thoughts of the most admired heiress of the Faubourg Saint-Germain when she began to feel the pleasure of walking with Julien.She was amazed at his pride, and she admired the dexterity of the little commoner. "He'll be a bishop like Father Morrie," she said to herself. She is soon captivated by our hero's genuine, not feigned resistance to many of Ca's ideas; Can't tell the whole story either. Suddenly, it dawned on her: "I have found the bliss of love," she said to herself one day, thrilled by incredible joy. "I'm in love, I'm in love, that's clear! At my age, a girl, beautiful, intelligent, where can I find strong feelings if not in love? I can't help it, I'll never No love for Croixenois, Kailus, and all these people. They're perfect, maybe too perfect, but they tire me anyway."

She went over in her mind all the descriptions of passion she had read in Manba Lesgo, New Herodice, Letters of the Portuguese Nuns, and so on.Of course, it was all great passion, frivolous love that was not worthy of a girl of her age and her birth.Love was the name she gave only to such a heroic emotion as could be encountered in France in the days of Henri III and Bassompierre.It is a love that never flinches basely before obstacles, or even more than such, and enables one to accomplish great things. "How unfortunate I am that there is no real court like Catherine de' Medici and Louis XIII. I think I can do the boldest and greatest things. If there was a heroic king, such as Louis XIII Then, bow down at my feet, what feat should I not make him do! I'll bring him to Vendée, where, as the Baron de Tolly used to say, he'll regain his kingdom; then There would be no charter... And Julien would assist me. What does he want? Title and property. He can win a title for himself, he can get riches.

"Croixenois lacked everything, but he was a duke half-royal, half-liberal all his life, an indecisive always far from extremes, and therefore a second place everywhere. "Where is any great action which is not carried to an extreme when it is begun? It is only when it is completed that it is generally considered possible. Yes, it is love and the things it produces that reign in my heart. All miracles; I feel it in the flame that animates me. Heaven owes me this boon. It will not in vain concentrate all the good in one person. My happiness will be worthy of me. My Every day will not be coldly similar to the past. There is something great and brave in daring to love someone who is so far away from me in social status. Let's see, can he continue to be worthy of me? I just want To abandon him at the first sight of a weakness in him: a girl of my birth, with a decidedly chivalrous character (that was her father's word), should not act like a fool.

"If I loved the Marquis de Croixenoy, wouldn't that be the part I would play? What I would have would be a new version of the happiness of my cousins, which I so thoroughly despise. Knowing what the poor Marquis will say to me, how will I answer him. What is a love that makes people yawn? Better to be a nun. I will also sign a marriage contract like the youngest cousin, elders Very touched, unless they are upset because the other party's notary added one last condition to the marriage contract the day before."