yle a sort of genius and much more than a sort of novelist.

But I am not certain that Mathilde is not even a greater creation,
though again it is, except quite towards the end, equally impossible to
like her. _Femina est_, though sometimes _furens_, oftener still
_furiosa_ (in a still wider sense than that in which Mr. Norris has[138]
ingeniously "feminated" Orlando _Furioso_), and, in part of her conduct
already alluded to, as destitute of any morality as Julien himself.
Although there could hardly be (and no doubt had better not be) many
like her, she is real and true, and there are not a few redeeming
features in her artistically and even personally. She is, as has been
said, both rich and noble, the famous lover of the third Valois
Marguerite being an (I suppose collateral) ancestor of hers.[139] Her
father is not merely a patrician but a Minister at the close of the
French Restoration; she may marry any one she likes; and has, in fact, a
train of admirers whom she alternately cajoles and snubs. Julien is
taken into the household as half private secretary, half librarian; is
especially favoured by her father, and treated by her brother (one of
Beyle's few thoroughly good fellows) almost on equal terms. But his bad
blood and his want of breeding make him stiff and mysterious, and
Mathilde takes a perverse fancy to him, the growth of which is skilfully
drawn. Although she is nothing so little as a Lelia or an Indiana or a
Valentine (_vide_ next chapter), she is idiosyncratically romantic, and
at last it is a case of ladders up to the window, "the irreparable," and
various wild performances on her part and her lover's. But this is all
comparatively banal. Beyle's touch of genius only reappears later. An
extraordinary but (when one comes to think of it) not in the least
unnatural series of "ups and downs" follows. Julien's bad blood and
vulgar nature make him presume on the advantage he has obtained;
Mathilde's _morgue_ and hot-headedness make her feel degraded by what
she has given. She neglects him and he becomes quite frantic about
_her_; he takes sudden dudgeon and she becomes frantically desirous of
_him_. This spiritual or emotional man-and-woman-in-the-weather-house
business continues; but at last, with ambages and minor peripeteias
impossible to abstract, it so comes about that the great and proud
Marquis de La Mole, startlingly but not quite improbably, chooses to
recognise this traitor and seducer as a possibl