The Japanese VaseHis heart does not at first realise the whole extent of his misery1:
he is more disturbed than moved. But in proportion as his reasonreturns, he feels the depth of his misfortune. All the pleasures inlife are as nothing to him, he can feel only the sharp points of thedespair that is rending2 him. But what is the good of speaking ofphysical pain? What pain felt by the body alone is comparable tothis?
JEAN-PAULThe dinner bell rang, Julien had barely time to dress; he found Mathilde in the drawing-room urging her brother and M. de Croisenois not togo and spend the evening with Madame la Marechale de Fervaques.
She could hardly have been more seductive and charming with them.
After dinner they were joined by M. de Luz, M. de Caylus and several oftheir friends. One would have said that Mademoiselle de La Mole3 hadresumed, together with the observance of sisterly affection, that of thestrictest conventions. Although the weather that evening was charming,she insisted that they should not go out to the garden; she was determined4 not to be lured5 away from the armchair in which Madame de LaMole was enthroned. The blue sofa was the centre of the group, as inwinter.
Mathilde was out of humour with the garden, or at least it seemed toher to be utterly6 boring: it was associated with the memory of Julien.
Misery destroys judgment7. Our hero made the blunder of clinging tothat little cane8 chair which in the past had witnessed such brilliant triumphs. This evening, nobody spoke9 to him; his presence passed asthough unperceived or worse. Those of Mademoiselle de La Mole'sfriends who were seated near him at the end of the sofa made an affectation of turning their backs on him, or so he thought.
'It is a courtier's disgrace,' he concluded. He decided10 to study for a moment the people who were trying to crush him with their disdain11.
M. de Luz's uncle held an important post in the King's Household, theconsequence of which was that this gallant12 officer opened his conversation with each fresh arrival with the following interesting detail: Hisuncle had set off at seven o'clock for Saint-Cloud, and expected to spendthe night there. This piece of news was introduced in the most casualmanner, but it never failed to come out.
Upon observing M. de Croisenois with the severe eye of misery, Julienremarked the enormous influence which this worthy13 and amiable14 youngman attributed to occult causes. So much so that he became moody15 andcross if he heard an event of any importance set down to a simple andquite natural cause. 'There is a trace of madness there,' Julien told himself. 'This character bears a striking resemblance to that of the EmperorAlexander, as Prince Korasoff described him to me.' During the first yearof his stay in Paris, poor Julien, coming fresh from the Seminary, dazzledby the graces, so novel to him, of all these agreeable young men, coulddo nothing but admire them. Their true character was only now beginning to outline itself before his eyes.
'I am playing an undignified part here,' he suddenly decided. The nextthing was how to leave his little cane chair in a fashion that should notbe too awkward. He tried to think of one, he called for something original upon an imagination that was fully16 occupied elsewhere. He was obliged to draw upon his memory, which, it must be confessed, was by nomeans rich in resources of this order; the boy was still a thorough novice,so that his awkwardness was complete and attracted everyone's attention when he rose to leave the drawing-room. Misery was all too evidentin his whole deportment. He had been playing the part for three quartersof an hour of a troublesome inferior from whom people do not take thetrouble to conceal17 what they think of him.
The critical observations which he had been making at the expense ofhis rivals prevented him, however, from taking his misfortune too seriously; he retained, to give support to his pride, the memory of what hadoccurred the night before last. 'Whatever the advantages they may haveover me,' he thought as he went into the garden by himself, 'Mathildehas not been to any of them what, on two occasions in my life, she hasdeigned to be to me.'
His sagacity went no farther. He failed entirely19 to understand the character of the singular person whom chance had now made absolute mistress of his whole happiness.
He devoted20 the next day to killing21 himself and his horse with exhaustion22. He made no further attempt, that evening, to approach the blue sofato which Mathilde was faithful. He remarked that Comte Norbert didnot so much as deign18 to look at him when they met in the house. 'Hemust be making an extraordinary effort,' he thought, 'he who is naturallyso polite.'
For Julien, sleep would have meant happiness. Despite his bodily exhaustion, memories of a too seductive kind began to invade his wholeimagination. He had not the intelligence to see that by his long ridesthrough the forests round Paris, acting23 only upon himself and in no wayupon the heart or mind of Mathilde, he was leaving the arrangement ofhis destiny to chance.
It seemed to him that one thing would supply boundless24 comfort tohis grief: namely to speak to Mathilde. And yet what could he venture tosay to her?
This was the question upon which one morning at seven o'clock hewas pondering deeply, when suddenly he saw her enter the library.
'I know, Sir, that you desire to speak to me.'
'Great God! Who told you that?'
'I know it, what more do you want? If you are lacking in honour, youmay ruin me, or at least attempt to do so; but this danger, which I do notregard as real, will certainly not prevent me from being sincere. I nolonger love you, Sir; my wild imagination misled me … '
On receiving this terrible blow, desperate with love and misery, Julientried to excuse himself. Nothing could be more absurd. Does one excuseoneself for failing to please? But reason no longer held any sway over hisactions. A blind instinct urged him to postpone25 the decision of his fate. Itseemed to him that so long as he was still speaking, nothing was definitely settled. Mathilde did not listen to his words, the sound of them irritated her, she could not conceive how he had the audacity26 to interrupther.
The twofold remorse27 of her virtue28 and her pride made her, that morning, equally unhappy. She was more or less crushed by the frightful29 ideaof having given certain rights over herself to a little cleric, the son of apeasant. 'It is almost,' she told herself in moments when she exaggerated her distress30, 'as though I had to reproach myself with a weakness for oneof the footmen.'
In bold and proud natures, it is only a step from anger with oneself tofury with other people; one's transports of rage are in such circumstancesa source of keen pleasure.
In a moment, Mademoiselle de La Mole reached the stage of heapingon Julien the marks of the most intense scorn. She had infinite cleverness,and this cleverness triumphed in the art of torturing the self-esteem ofothers and inflicting31 cruel wounds upon them.
For the first time in his life, Julien found himself subjected to the actionof a superior intelligence animated32 by the most violent hatred33 of himself.
So far from entertaining the slightest idea of defending himself at thatmoment, he began to despise himself. Hearing her heap upon him suchcruel marks of scorn, so cleverly calculated to destroy any good opinionthat he might have of himself, he felt that Mathilde was right, and thatshe was not saying enough.
As for her, her pride found an exquisite34 pleasure in thus punishingherself and him for the adoration35 which she had felt a few days earlier.
She had no need to invent or to think for the first time of the cruelwords which she now uttered with such complacence. She was only repeating what for the last week had been said in her heart by the counselof the opposite party to love.
Every word increased Julien's fearful misery an hundredfold. He triedto escape, Mademoiselle de La Mole held him by the arm with a gestureof authority.
'Please to observe,' he said to her, 'that you are speaking extremelyloud; they will hear you in the next room.'
'What of that!' Mademoiselle de La Mole retorted proudly, 'who willdare to say to me that he has heard me? I wish to rid your petty self-esteem for ever of the ideas which it may have formed of me.'
When Julien was able to leave the library, he was so astounded36 that healready felt his misery less keenly. 'Well! She no longer loves me,' he repeated to himself, speaking aloud as though to inform himself of his position. 'It appears that she loved me for a week or ten days, and I shalllove her all my life.
'Is it really possible, she meant nothing, nothing at all to my heart, onlya few days ago.'
The delights of satisfied pride flooded Mathilde's bosom37; so she hadmanaged to break with him for ever! The thought of so complete a triumph over so strong an inclination38 made her perfectly39 happy. 'And sothis little gentleman will understand, and once for all, that he has notand never will have any power over me.' She was so happy that reallyshe had ceased to feel any love at that moment.
After so atrocious, so humiliating a scene, in anyone less passionatethan Julien, love would have become impossible. Without departing fora single instant from what she owed to herself, Mademoiselle de La Molehad addressed to him certain of those disagreeable statements, so wellcalculated that they can appear to be true, even when one remembersthem in cold blood.
The conclusion that Julien drew at the first moment from so astonishing a scene was that Mathilde had an unbounded pride. He believedfirmly that everything was at an end for ever between them, and yet, thefollowing day, at luncheon40, he was awkward and timid in her presence.
This was a fault that could not have been found with him until then. Insmall matters as in great, he knew clearly what he ought and wished todo, and carried it out.
That day, after luncheon, when Madame de La Mole asked him for aseditious and at the same time quite rare pamphlet, which her parishpriest had brought to her secretly that morning, Julien, in taking it from aside table, knocked over an old vase of blue porcelain41, the ugliest thingimaginable.
Madame de La Mole rose to her feet with a cry of distress and cameacross the room to examine the fragments of her beloved vase. 'It was oldJapan,' she said, 'it came to me from my great-aunt the Abbess of Chelles;it was a present from the Dutch to the Duke of Orleans when he was Regent and he gave it to his daughter … '
Mathilde had followed her mother, delighted to see the destruction ofthis blue vase which seemed to her horribly ugly. Julien stood silent andnot unduly42 distressed43; he saw Mademoiselle de La Mole standing44 closebeside him.
'This vase,' he said to her, 'is destroyed for ever; so is it with a sentiment which was once the master of my heart; I beg you to accept myapologies for all the foolish things it has made me do'; and he left theroom.
'Really, one would think,' said Madame de La Mole as he went, 'thatthis M. Sorel is proud and delighted with what he has done.'
This speech fell like a weight upon Mathilde's heart. 'It is true,' she toldherself, 'my mother has guessed aright, such is the sentiment that is animating45 him.' Then and then only ended her joy in the scene that she hadmade with him the day before. 'Ah, well, all is at an end,' she said to herself with apparent calm; 'I am left with a great example; my mistake hasbeen fearful, degrading! It will make me wise for all the rest of my life.'
'Was I not speaking the truth?' thought Julien; 'why does the love that Ifelt for that madwoman torment46 me still?'
This love, so far from dying, as he hoped, was making rapid strides.
'She is mad, it is true,' he said to himself, 'but is she any less adorable? Isit possible for a girl to be more lovely? Everything that the most elegantcivilisation can offer in the way of keen pleasures, was it not all combined to one's heart's content in Mademoiselle de La Mole?' Thesememories of past happiness took possession of Julien, and rapidly undidall the work of reason.
Reason struggles in vain against memories of this sort; its stern endeavours serve only to enhance their charm.
Twenty-four hours after the breaking of the old Japanese vase, Julienwas decidedly one of the unhappiest of men.
收听单词发音 |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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rending
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| v.撕碎( rend的现在分词 )；分裂；（因愤怒、痛苦等而）揪扯（衣服或头发等）；（声音等）刺破 | |
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mole
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| n.胎块；痣；克分子 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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lured
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| 吸引，引诱（lure的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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cane
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| n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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gallant
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| adj.英勇的，豪侠的；(向女人)献殷勤的 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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moody
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| adj.心情不稳的，易怒的，喜怒无常的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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deign
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| v. 屈尊, 惠允 ( 做某事) | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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postpone
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| v.延期，推迟 | |
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audacity
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| n.大胆，卤莽，无礼 | |
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remorse
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| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
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virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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frightful
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| adj.可怕的；讨厌的 | |
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distress
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| n.苦恼，痛苦，不舒适；不幸；vt.使悲痛 | |
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31
inflicting
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的现在分词 ) | |
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animated
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| adj.生气勃勃的，活跃的，愉快的 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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adoration
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| n.爱慕，崇拜 | |
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astounded
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| v.使震惊(astound的过去式和过去分词)；愕然；愕；惊讶 | |
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bosom
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| n.胸，胸部；胸怀；内心；adj.亲密的 | |
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38
inclination
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| n.倾斜；点头；弯腰；斜坡；倾度；倾向；爱好 | |
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39
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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40
luncheon
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| n.午宴，午餐，便宴 | |
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41
porcelain
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| n.瓷；adj.瓷的，瓷制的 | |
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42
unduly
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| adv.过度地，不适当地 | |
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distressed
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| 痛苦的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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45
animating
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| v.使有生气( animate的现在分词 )；驱动；使栩栩如生地动作；赋予…以生命 | |
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46
torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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