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The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830

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Title: The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830

Author: Stendhal

Translator: Horace Barnett Samuel


        
Release date: January 24, 2014 [eBook #44747]
                Most recently updated: April 13, 2026

Language: English

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Credits: Maria Notarangelo and Marc D’Hooghe


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED AND THE BLACK: A CHRONICLE OF 1830 ***

THE RED AND THE BLACK

A Chronicle of 1830

BY

STENDHAL


TRANSLATED BY HORACE B. SAMUEL, M.A.,

Late Scholar Corpus Christi College, Oxford


LONDON

KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & Co., LTD

NEW YORK: E.P. DUTTON AND CO.

1916




INTRODUCTION


Some slight sketch of the life and character of Stendhal is
particularly necessary to an understanding of _Le Rouge et Le Noir_
(_The Red and the Black_) not so much as being the formal stuffing of
which introductions are made, but because the book as a book stands
in the most intimate relation to the author's life and character. The
hero, Julien, is no doubt, viewed superficially, a cad, a scoundrel,
an assassin, albeit a person who will alternate the moist eye of the
sentimentalist with the ferocious grin of the beast of prey. But
Stendhal so far from putting forward any excuses makes a specific point
of wallowing defiantly in his own alleged wickedness. "Even assuming
that Julien is a villain and that it is my portrait," he wrote shortly
after the publication of the book, "why quarrel with me. In the time of
the Emperor, Julien would have passed for a very honest man. I lived in
the time of the Emperor. So--but what does it matter?"

Henri Beyle was born in 1783 in Grenoble in Dauphiny, the son of a
royalist lawyer, situated on the borderland between the gentry and
that bourgeoisie which our author was subsequently to chastise with
that malice peculiar to those who spring themselves from the class
which they despise. The boy's character was a compound of sensibility
and hard rebelliousness, virility and introspection. Orphaned of his
mother at the age of seven, hated by his father and unpopular with his
schoolmates, he spent the orthodox unhappy childhood of the artistic
temperament. Winning a scholarship at the Ecole Polytechnique at
the age of sixteen he proceeded to Paris, where with characteristic
independence he refused to attend the college classes and set himself
to study privately in his solitary rooms.

In 1800 the influence of his relative M. Daru procured him a commission
in the French Army, and the Marengo campaign gave him an opportunity
of practising that Napoleonic worship to which throughout his life he
remained consistently faithful, for the operation of the philosophical
materialism of the French sceptics on an essentially logical and
mathematical mind soon swept away all competing claimants for his
religious adoration. Almost from his childhood, moreover, he had
abominated the Jesuits, and "Papism is the source of all crimes," was
throughout his life one of his favourite maxims.

After the army's triumphant entry into Milan, Beyle returned to
Grenoble on furlough, whence he dashed off to Paris in pursuit of
a young woman to whom he was paying some attention, resigned his
commission in the army and set himself to study "with the view of
becoming a great man." It is in this period that we find the most
marked development in Beyle's enthusiasm of psychology. This tendency
sprang primarily no doubt from his own introspection. For throughout
his life Beyle enjoyed the indisputable and at times dubious luxury
of a double consciousness. He invariably carried inside his brain
a psychological mirror which reflected every phrase of his emotion
with scientific accuracy. And simultaneously, the critical spirit,
half-genie, half-demon inside his brain, would survey in the
semi-detached mood of a keenly interested spectator, the actual emotion
itself, applaud or condemn it as the case might be, and ticket the
verdict with ample commentations in the psychological register of its
own analysis.

But this trend to psychology, while as we have seen, to some extent,
the natural development of mere self-analysis was also tinged with the
spirit of self-preservation. With a mind, which in spite of its natural
physical courage was morbidly susceptible to ridicule and was only too
frequently the dupe of the fear of being duped, Stendhal would scent
an enemy in every friend, and as a mere matter of self-protection set
himself to penetrate the secret of every character with which he came
into contact. One is also justified in taking into account an honest
intellectual enthusiasm which found its vent in deciphering the rarer
and more precious manuscripts of the "human document."

With the exception of a stay in Marseilles, with his first mistress
Mélanie Guilhert ("a charming actress who had the most refined
sentiments and to whom I never gave a sou,") and a subsequent sojourn
in Grenoble, Stendhal remained in Paris till 1806, living so far as was
permitted by the modest allowance of his niggard father the full life
of the literary temperament. The essence, however, of his character was
that he was at the same time a man of imagination and a man of action.
We consequently find him serving in the Napoleonic campaigns of 1806,
1809 and 1812. He was present at the Battle of Jena, came several
times into personal contact with Napoleon, discharged with singular
efficiency the administration of the State of Brunswick, and retained
his sangfroid and his bravery during the whole of the panic-stricken
retreat of the Moscow campaign.

It is, moreover, to this period that we date Stendhal's liaison with
Mme. Daru the wife of his aged relative, M. Daru. This particular
intrigue has, moreover, a certain psychological importance in that
Mme. Daru constituted the model on whom Mathilde de la Mole was drawn
in _The Red and the Black_. The student and historian consequently who
is anxious to check how far the novelist is drawing on his experience
and how far on his imagination can compare with profit the description
of the Mathilde episode in _The Red and the Black_ with those sections
in Stendhal's Journal entitled the _Life and Sentiments of Silencious
Harry_, _Memoirs of my Life during my Amour with Countess Palfy_,
and also with the posthumous fragment, _Le Consultation de Banti_, a
piece of methodical deliberation on the pressing question. "Dois-je ou
ne dois-je pas avoir la duchesse?" written with all the documentary
coldness of a Government report. It is characteristic that both Bansi
and Julien decide in the affirmative as a matter of abstract principle.
For they both feel that they must necessarily reproach themselves in
after life if they miss so signal an opportunity.

Disgusted by the Restoration, Stendhal migrated in 1814 to Milan, his
favourite town in Europe, whose rich and varied life he savoured to
the full from the celebrated ices in the entreates of the opera, to
the reciprocated interest of Mme. Angelina Pietragrua (the Duchesse
de Sansererina of the Chartreuse of Parma), "a sublime wanton à la
Lucrezia Borgia" who would appear to have deceived him systematically.
It was in Milan that Stendhal first began to write for publication,
producing in 1814 _The Lives of Haydn and Mozart_, and in 1817 a series
of travel sketches, _Rome, Naples, Florence_, which was published in
London.

It was in Milan also than Stendhal first nursed the abstract thrills
of his grand passion for Métilde Countess Dunbowska, whose angelic
sweetness would seem to have served at any rate to some extent as a
prototype to the character of Mme. de Rênal. In 1821 the novelist was
expelled from Milan on the apparently unfounded accusation of being
a French spy. It is typical of that mixture of brutal sensuality and
rarefied sentimentalism which is one of the most fascinating features
of Stendhal's character, that even though he had never loved more than
the lady's heart, he should have remained for three years faithful to
this mistress of his ideal.

In 1822 Stendhal published his treatise, _De l'Amour_, a practical
scientific treatise on the erotic emotion by an author who possessed
the unusual advantage of being at the same time an acute psychologist
and a brilliant man of the world, who could test abstract theories by
concrete practice and could co-ordinate what he had felt in himself and
observe in others into broad general principles.

In 1825 Stendhal plunging vigorously into the controversy between the
Classicists and the Romanticists, published his celebrated pamphlet,
_Racine and Shakespeare_, in which he vindicated with successful
crispness the claims of live verse against stereotyped couplets and
of modern analysis against historical tradition. His next work was
the _Life of Rossini_, whom he had known personally in Milan, while
in 1827 he published his first novel _Armance_, which, while not
equal to the author's greatest work, give none the less good promise
of that analytical dash which he was subsequently to manifest. After
_Armance_ come the well-known _Promenades Rome_, while the Stendhalian
masterpiece _Le Rouge et Le Noir_ was presented in 1830 to an
unappreciative public.

Enthusiasm for this book is the infallible test of your true
Stendhalian. Some critics may prefer, possibly, the more Jamesian
delicacy of _Armance_, and others fortified by the example of Goethe
may avow their predilection for _The Chartreuse de Parme_ with all the
_jeune premier_ charm of its amiable hero. But in our view no book by
Stendhal is capable of giving the reader such intellectual thrills as
that work which has been adjudged to be his greatest by Balzac, by
Taine, by Bourget. Certainly no other book by Stendhal than that which
has conjured up _Rougistes_ in all countries in Europe has been the
object of a cult in itself. We doubt, moreover, if there is any other
modern book whether by Stendhal or any one else, which has actually
been learnt by heart by its devotees, who, if we may borrow the story
told by M. Paul Bourget, are accustomed to challenge the authenticity
of each other's knowledge by starting off with some random passage only
to find it immediately taken up, as though the book had been the very
Bible itself.

The more personal appeal of what is perhaps the greatest romance
of the intellect ever written lies in the character of Julien, its
villain-hero. In view of the identification of Julien with Stendhal
himself to which we have already alluded, it is only fair to state
that Stendhal does not appear to have ever been a tutor in a bourgeois
family, nor does history relate his ever having made any attempt at the
homicide of a woman. So far, in fact, as what we may call the external
physical basis of the story is concerned, the material is supplied
not by the life of the author, but by the life of a young student of
Besançon, of the name of Berthet, who duly expiated on the threshold
that crime which supplied the plot of this immortal novel. But the
soul, the brain of Julien is not Berthet but Beyle. And what indeed is
the whole book if not a vindication of _beylisme_, if we may use the
word, coined by the man himself for his own outlook on life? For the
procedure of Stendhal would seem to have placed his own self in his
hero's shoes, to have lived in imagination his whole life, and to have
recorded his experience with a wealth of analytic detail, which in
spite of some arrogance, is yet both honest and scientific.

And the life of this scoundrel, this ingrate, this assassin, certainly
seems to have been eminently worth living. In its line, indeed, it
constitutes a veritable triumph of idealism, a positive monument of
"self-help." For judged by the code of the Revolution, when the career
was open to talents, the goodness or badness of a man was determined by
the use he made of his opportunities. Efficiency was the supreme test
of virtue, as was failure the one brand of unworthiness. And measured
by these values Julien ranks high as an ethical saint. For does he
not sacrifice everything to the forgiving of his character and the
hammering out of his career? He is by nature nervous, he forces himself
to be courageous, fighting a duel or capturing a woman, less out of
thirst for blood or hunger for flesh, than because he thinks it due
to his own _parvenu_ self-respect to give himself some concrete proof
on his own moral force. "Pose and affection" will sneer those enemies
whom he will have to-day as assuredly as he had them in his lifetime,
the smug bourgeois and Valenods of our present age. But the spirit
of Julien will retort, "I made myself master of my affectation and I
succeeded in my pose." And will he not have logic on his side? For what
after all is pose but the pursuit of a subjective ideal, grotesque no
doubt in failure, but dignified by its success. And as M. Gaultier has
shown in his book on _Bovarysme_, is not all human progress simply the
deliberate change from what one is, into what one is not yet, but what
nevertheless one has a tendency to be? Viewed from this standpoint
Julien's character is what one feels justified in calling a _bonâ fide_
pose. For speaking broadly his character is two-fold, half-sensitive
tenderness, half ferocious ambition, and his pose simply consists
in the subordination of his softer qualities for the more effective
realization of his harder. Considered on these lines _Le Rouge et Le
Noir_ stands pre-eminent in European literature as the tragedy of
energy and ambition, the epic of the struggle for existence, the modern
Bible of Nietzschean self-discipline. And from the sheer romantic
aspect also the book has its own peculiar charm. How truly poetic, for
instance, are the passages where Julien takes his own mind alone into
the mountains, plots out his own fate, and symbolizes his own solitary
life in the lonely circlings of a predatory hawk.

Julien's enemies will no doubt taunt him with his introspection, while
they point to a character distorted, so they say, by the eternal mirror
of its own consciousness. Yet it should be remembered that Julien lived
in an age when introspection had, so to speak, been only recently
invented, and Byronism and Wertherism were the stock food of artistic
temperaments. In the case of Julien, moreover, even though his own
criticisms on his own acts were to some extent as important to him as
the actual acts themselves, his introspection was more a strength than
a weakness and never blunted the edge of his drastic action. Compare,
for instance, the character of Julien with the character of Robert
Greslou, the hero of Bourget's _Le Disciple_, and the nearest analogue
to Julien in _fin de siècle_ literature, and one will appreciate at
once the difference between health and decadence, virility and hysteria.

One of the most essential features of the book, however, is the swing
of the pendulum between Julien's ambition and Julien's tenderness. For
our hunter is quite frequently caught in his own traps, so that he
falls genuinely in love with the woman whom, as a matter of abstract
principle, he had specifically set himself to conquer. The book
consequently as a romance of love, ranks almost as high as it does as a
romance of ambition. The final idyll in prison with Mme. de Rênal, in
particular, is one of the sweetest and purest in literature, painted
in colours too true ever to be florid, steeped in a sentiment too deep
ever to be mawkish. As moreover, orthodox and suburban minds tend to
regard all French novels as specifically devoted to obscene wallowings,
it seems only relevant to mention that Stendhal at any rate never finds
in sensualism any inspiration for ecstatic rhapsodies, and that he
narrates the most specific episodes in the chastest style imaginable.

Though too the sinister figure of the carpenter's son looms large
over the book, the characterization of all the other personages is
portrayed with consummate brilliancy. For Stendhal standing first
outside his characters with all the sceptical scrutiny of a detached
observer, then goes deep inside them so that he describes not merely
what they do, but why they do it, not merely what they think, but
why they think it, while he assigns their respective share to innate
disposition, accident, and environment, and criticizes his creations
with an irony that is only occasionally benevolent. For it must be
confessed that Stendhal approves of extremely few people. True scion
of the middle-classes he hates the bourgeois because he is bourgeois,
and the aristocrat because he is aristocrat. Nevertheless, as a gallery
of the most varied characters, patricians and plebeians, prudes and
profligates, Jesuits and Jansenists, Kings and coachmen, bishops and
bourgeois, whose mutual difference acts as a most effective foil to
each other's reality, _Le Rouge et Le Noir_ will beat any novel outside
Balzac.

We would mention in particular those two contrasted figures, Mme. de
Rênal the _bourgeoise passionée_, and Matilde de la Mole the noble
damozel who enters into her intrigue out of a deliberate wish to
emulate the exploits of a romantic ancestress. But after all these
individuals stand out not so much because their characterization is
better than that of their fellow-personages, but because it is more
elaborate. Even such minor characters, for instance, as de Frilair, the
lascivious Jesuit, Noiraud, the avaricious gaoler, Mme. de Fervaques,
the amoristic prude, are all in their respective ways real, vivid,
convincing, no mere padded figures of the imagination, but observed
actualities swung from the lived life on the written page.

The style of Stendhal is noticeable from its simplicity, clear and
cold, devoid of all literary artifice, characteristic of his analytic
purpose. He is strenuous in his avoidance of affection. Though,
however, he never holds out his style as an aesthetic delight in
itself, he reaches occasionally passages of a rare and simple beauty.
We would refer in particular to the description of Julien in the
mountains, which we have already mentioned, and to the short but
impressive death scene. His habit, however, of using language as a
means and never as an end, occasionally revenges itself upon him in
places where the style, though intelligible, is none the less slovenly,
anacoluthic, almost Thucydidean.

After the publication of _Le Rouge et Le Noir_ Stendhal was forced
by his financial embarrassment to leave Paris and take up the post
of consul at Trieste. Driven from this position by the intrigues of
a vindictive Church he was transferred to Civita Vecchia where he
remained till 1835, solacing his ennui by the compilation of his
autobiography and thinking seriously of marriage with the rich and
highly respectable daughter of his laundress. He then returned to Paris
where he remained till 1842, where he died suddenly at the age of
fifty-nine in the full swing of all his mental and physical activities.

His later works included, _La Chartreuse de Parme_, _Lucien, Leuwen_
and _Lamiel_, of which the _Chartreuse_ is the most celebrated, but
_Lamiel_ certainly the most sprightly. But it is on _Le Rouge et Le
Noir_ that his fame as a novelist is the most firmly based. It is
with this most personal document, this record of his experiences
and emotions that he lives identified, just as D'Annunzio will live
identified with _Il Fuoco_ or Mr. Wells with the _New Machiavelli_.
_Le Rouge et Le Noir_ is the greatest novel of its age and one of the
greatest novels of the whole nineteenth century. It is full to the brim
of intellect and adventure, introspection and action, youth, romance,
tenderness, cynicism and rebellion. It is in a word the intellectual
quintessence of the Napoleonic era.

HORACE B. SAMUEL, TEMPLE, Oct., 1913.




THE RED AND THE BLACK

A CHRONICLE OF 1830




CHAPTER I

A SMALL TOWN


    Put thousands together less bad,
    But the cage less gay.--_Hobbes_.


The little town of Verrières can pass for one of the prettiest in
Franche-Comté. Its white houses with their pointed red-tiled roofs
stretch along the slope of a hill, whose slightest undulations are
marked by groups of vigorous chestnuts. The Doubs flows to within some
hundred feet above its fortifications, which were built long ago by the
Spaniards, and are now in ruins.

Verrières is sheltered on the north by a high mountain which is one of
the branches of the Jura. The jagged peaks of the Verra are covered
with snow from the beginning of the October frosts. A torrent which
rushes down from the mountains traverses Verrières before throwing
itself into the Doubs, and supplies the motive power for a great number
of saw mills. The industry is very simple, and secures a certain
prosperity to the majority of the inhabitants who are more peasant than
bourgeois. It is not, however, the wood saws which have enriched this
little town. It is the manufacture of painted tiles, called Mulhouse
tiles, that is responsible for that general affluence which has caused
the façades of nearly all the houses in Verrières to be rebuilt since
the fall of Napoleon.

One has scarcely entered the town, before one is stunned by the din of
a strident machine of terrifying aspect. Twenty heavy hammers which
fall with a noise that makes the paved floor tremble, are lifted
up by a wheel set in motion by the torrent. Each of these hammers
manufactures every day I don't know how many thousands of nails. The
little pieces of iron which are rapidly transformed into nails by these
enormous hammers, are put in position by fresh pretty young girls. This
labour so rough at first sight is one of the industries which most
surprises the traveller who penetrates for the first time the mountains
which separate France and Helvetia. If when he enters Verrières, the
traveller asks who owns this fine nail factory which deafens everybody
who goes up the Grande-Rue, he is answered in a drawling tone "Eh!
it belongs to M. the Mayor."

And if the traveller stops a few minutes in that Grande-Rue of
Verrières which goes on an upward incline from the bank of the Doubs to
nearly as far as the summit of the hill, it is a hundred to one that he
will see a big man with a busy and important air.

When he comes in sight all hats are quickly taken off. His hair is
grizzled and he is dressed in grey. He is a Knight of several Orders,
has a large forehead and an aquiline nose, and if you take him all
round, his features are not devoid of certain regularity. One might
even think on the first inspection that it combines with the dignity
of the village mayor that particular kind of comfortableness which is
appropriate to the age of forty-eight or fifty. But soon the traveller
from Paris will be shocked by a certain air of self-satisfaction and
self-complacency mingled with an almost indefinable narrowness and lack
of inspiration. One realises at last that this man's talent is limited
to seeing that he is paid exactly what he is owed, and in paying his
own debts at the latest possible moment.

Such is M. de Rênal, the mayor of Verrières. After having crossed the
road with a solemn step, he enters the mayoral residence and disappears
from the eye of the traveller. But if the latter continues to walk
a hundred steps further up, he will perceive a house with a fairly
fine appearance, with some magnificent gardens behind an iron grill
belonging to the house. Beyond that is an horizon line formed by the
hills of Burgundy, which seem ideally made to delight the eyes. This
view causes the traveller to forget that pestilential atmosphere of
petty money-grubbing by which he is beginning to be suffocated.

He is told that this house belongs to M. de Rênal. It is to the
profits which he has made out of his big nail factory that the mayor
of Verrières owes this fine residence of hewn stone which he is just
finishing. His family is said to be Spanish and ancient, and is alleged
to have been established in the country well before the conquest of
Louis XIV.

Since 1815, he blushes at being a manufacturer: 1815 made him mayor
of Verrières. The terraced walls of this magnificent garden which
descends to the Doubs, plateau by plateau, also represent the reward
of M. de Rênal's proficiency in the iron-trade. Do not expect to find
in France those picturesque gardens which surround the manufacturing
towns of Germany, like Leipsic, Frankfurt and Nurenburgh, etc. The
more walls you build in Franche-Comté and the more you fortify your
estate with piles of stone, the more claim you will acquire on the
respect of your neighbours. Another reason for the admiration due to
M. de Rênal's gardens and their numerous walls, is the fact that he
has purchased, through sheer power of the purse, certain small parcels
of the ground on which they stand. That saw-mill, for instance, whose
singular position on the banks of the Doubs struck you when you entered
Verrières, and where you notice the name of SOREL written in gigantic
characters on the chief beam of the roof, used to occupy six years
ago that precise space on which is now reared the wall of the fourth
terrace in M. de Rênal's gardens.

Proud man that he was, the mayor had none the less to negotiate with
that tough, stubborn peasant, old Sorel. He had to pay him in good
solid golden louis before he could induce him to transfer his workshop
elsewhere. As to the _public_ stream which supplied the motive power
for the saw-mill, M. de Rênal obtained its diversion, thanks to the
influence which he enjoyed at Paris. This favour was accorded him after
the election of 182-.

He gave Sorel four acres for every one he had previously held, five
hundred yards lower down on the banks of the Doubs. Although this
position was much more advantageous for his pine-plank trade, father
Sorel (as he is called since he has become rich) knew how to exploit
the impatience and _mania for landed ownership_ which animated his
neighbour to the tune of six thousand francs.

It is true that this arrangement was criticised by the wiseacres of the
locality. One day, it was on a Sunday four years later, as M. de Rênal
was coming back from church in his mayor's uniform, he saw old Sorel
smiling at him, as he stared at him some distance away surrounded by
his three sons. That smile threw a fatal flood of light into the soul
of the mayor. From that time on, he is of opinion that he could have
obtained the exchange at a cheaper rate.

In order to win the public esteem of Verrières it is essential that,
though you should build as many walls as you can, you should not adopt
some plan imported from Italy by those masons who cross the passes
of the Jura in the spring on their way to Paris. Such an innovation
would bring down upon the head of the imprudent builder an eternal
reputation for _wrongheadedness_, and he will be lost for ever in the
sight of those wise, well-balanced people who dispense public esteem in
Franche-Comté.

As a matter of fact, these prudent people exercise in the place the
most offensive despotism. It is by reason of this awful word, that
anyone who has lived in that great republic which is called Paris,
finds living in little towns quite intolerable. The tyranny of public
opinion (and what public opinion!) is as _stupid_ in the little towns
of France as in the United States of America.




CHAPTER II

A MAYOR


        Importance! What is it, sir after all? The respect of
        fools, the wonder of children, the envy of the rich, the
        contempt of the wise man.--_Barnave_


Happily for the reputation of M. de Rênal as an administrator an
immense wall of support was necessary for the public promenade which
goes along the hill, a hundred steps above the course of the Doubs.
This admirable position secures for the promenade one of the most
picturesque views in the whole of France. But the rain water used to
make furrows in the walk every spring, caused ditches to appear, and
rendered it generally impracticable. This nuisance, which was felt
by the whole town, put M. de Rênal in the happy position of being
compelled to immortalise his administration by building a wall twenty
feet high and thirty to forty yards long.

The parapet of this wall, which occasioned M. de Rênal three journeys
to Paris (for the last Minister of the Interior but one had declared
himself the mortal enemy of the promenade of Verrières), is now raised
to a height of four feet above the ground, and as though to defy all
ministers whether past or present, it is at present adorned with tiles
of hewn stone.

How many times have my looks plunged into the valley of the Doubs, as I
thought of the Paris balls which I had abandoned on the previous night,
and leant my breast against the great blocks of stone, whose beautiful
grey almost verged on blue. Beyond the left bank, there wind five
or six valleys, at the bottom of which I could see quite distinctly
several small streams. There is a view of them falling into the Doubs,
after a series of cascades. The sun is very warm in these mountains.
When it beats straight down, the pensive traveller on the terrace
finds shelter under some magnificent plane trees. They owe their rapid
growth and their fine verdure with its almost bluish shade to the new
soil, which M. the mayor has had placed behind his immense wall of
support for (in spite of the opposition of the Municipal Council) he
has enlarged the promenade by more than six feet (and although he is an
Ultra and I am a Liberal, I praise him for it), and that is why both in
his opinion and in that of M. Valenod, the fortunate Director of the
workhouse of Verrières, this terrace can brook comparison with that of
Saint-Germain en Laye.

I find personally only one thing at which to cavil in the COURS DE LA
FIDELITE, (this official name is to be read in fifteen to twenty places
on those immortal tiles which earned M. de Rênal an extra cross.) The
grievance I find in the Cours de la Fidélité is the barbarous manner in
which the authorities have cut these vigorous plane trees and clipped
them to the quick. In fact they really resemble with their dwarfed,
rounded and flattened heads the most vulgar plants of the vegetable
garden, while they are really capable of attaining the magnificent
development of the English plane trees. But the wish of M. the mayor
is despotic, and all the trees belonging to the municipality are
ruthlessly pruned twice a year. The local Liberals suggest, but they
are probably exaggerating, that the hand of the official gardener
has become much more severe, since M. the Vicar Maslon started
appropriating the clippings. This young ecclesiastic was sent to
Besançon some years ago to keep watch on the abbé Chélan and some cures
in the neighbouring districts. An old Surgeon-Major of Napoleon's
Italian Army, who was living in retirement at Verrières, and who had
been in his time described by M. the mayor as both a Jacobin and a
Bonapartiste, dared to complain to the mayor one day of the periodical
mutilation of these fine trees.

"I like the shade," answered M. de Rênal, with just a tinge of that
hauteur which becomes a mayor when he is talking to a surgeon, who is
a member of the Legion of Honour. "I like the shade, I have _my_ trees
clipped in order to give shade, and I cannot conceive that a tree can
have any other purpose, provided of course _it is not bringing in any
profit_, like the useful walnut tree."

This is the great word which is all decisive at Verrières. "BRINGING IN
PROFIT," this word alone sums up the habitual trend of thought of more
than three-quarters of the inhabitants.

_Bringing in profit_ is the consideration which decides everything in
this little town which you thought so pretty. The stranger who arrives
in the town is fascinated by the beauty of the fresh deep valleys which
surround it, and he imagines at first that the inhabitants have an
appreciation of the beautiful. They talk only too frequently of the
beauty of their country, and it cannot be denied that they lay great
stress on it, but the reason is that it attracts a number of strangers,
whose money enriches the inn-keepers, a process which _brings in
profit_ to the town, owing to the machinery of the octroi.

It was on a fine, autumn day that M. de Rênal was taking a promenade
on the Cours de la Fidélité with his wife on his arm. While listening
to her husband (who was talking in a somewhat solemn manner) Madame de
Rênal followed anxiously with her eyes the movements of three little
boys. The eldest, who might have been eleven years old, went too
frequently near the parapet and looked as though he was going to climb
up it. A sweet voice then pronounced the name of Adolphe and the child
gave up his ambitious project. Madame de Rênal seemed a woman of thirty
years of age but still fairly pretty.

"He may be sorry for it, may this fine gentleman from Paris," said
M. de Rênal, with an offended air and a face even paler than usual.
"I am not without a few friends at court!" But though I want to
talk to you about the provinces for two hundred pages, I lack the
requisite barbarity to make you undergo all the long-windedness and
circumlocutions of a provincial dialogue.

This fine gentleman from Paris, who was so odious to the mayor of
Verrières, was no other than the M. Appert, who had two days previously
managed to find his way not only into the prison and workhouse of
Verrières, but also into the hospital, which was gratuitously conducted
by the mayor and the principal proprietors of the district.

"But," said Madame de Rênal timidly, "what harm can this Paris
gentleman do you, since you administer the poor fund with the utmost
scrupulous honesty?"

"He only comes to _throw_ blame and afterwards he will get some
articles into the Liberal press."

"You never read them, my dear."

"But they always talk to us about those Jacobin articles, all that
distracts us and prevents us from doing good.[1] Personally, I shall
never forgive the curé."

[1] Historically true.




CHAPTER III

THE POOR FUND


        A virtuous curé who does not intrigue is a providence
        for the village.--_Fleury_


It should be mentioned that the curé of Verrières, an old man of
ninety, who owed to the bracing mountain air an iron constitution and
an iron character, had the right to visit the prison, the hospital and
the workhouse at any hour. It had been at precisely six o'clock in the
morning that M. Appert, who had a Paris recommendation to the curé,
had been shrewd enough to arrive at a little inquisitive town. He had
immediately gone on to the curé's house.

The curé Chélan became pensive as he read the letter written to him by
the M. le Marquis de La Mole, Peer of France, and the richest landed
proprietor of the province.

"I am old and beloved here," he said to himself in a whisper, "they
would not dare!" Then he suddenly turned to the gentleman from Paris,
with eyes, which in spite of his great age, shone with that sacred fire
which betokens the delight of doing a fine but slightly dangerous act.

"Come with me, sir," he said, "but please do not express any opinion of
the things which we shall see, in the presence of the jailer, and above
all not in the presence of the superintendents of the workhouse."

M. Appert realised that he had to do with a man of spirit. He followed
the venerable curé, visited the hospital and workhouse, put a lot of
questions, but in spite of somewhat extraordinary answers, did not
indulge in the slightest expression of censure.

This visit lasted several hours; the curé invited M. Appert to dine,
but the latter made the excuse of having some letters to write; as a
matter of fact, he did not wish to compromise his generous companion to
any further extent. About three o'clock these gentlemen went to finish
their inspection of the workhouse and then returned to the prison.
There they found the jailer by the gate, a kind of giant, six feet
high, with bow legs. His ignoble face had become hideous by reason of
his terror.

"Ah, monsieur," he said to the curé as soon as he saw him, "is not the
gentleman whom I see there, M. Appert?"

"What does that matter?" said the curé.

"The reason is that I received yesterday the most specific orders, and
M. the Prefect sent a message by a gendarme who must have galloped
during the whole of the night, that M. Appert was not to be allowed in
the prisons."

"I can tell you, M. Noiroud," said the curé, "that the traveller who is
with me is M. Appert, but do you or do you not admit that I have the
right to enter the prison at any hour of the day or night accompanied
by anybody I choose?"

"Yes, M. the curé," said the jailer in a low voice, lowering his head
like a bull-dog, induced to a grudging obedience by fear of the stick,
"only, M. the curé, I have a wife and children, and shall be turned out
if they inform against me. I only have my place to live on."

"I, too, should be sorry enough to lose mine," answered the good curé,
with increasing emotion in his voice.

"What a difference!" answered the jailer keenly. "As for you, M. le
curé, we all know that you have eight hundred francs a year, good solid
money."

Such were the facts which, commented upon and exaggerated in twenty
different ways, had been agitating for the last two days all the odious
passions of the little town of Verrières.

At the present time they served as the text for the little discussion
which M. de Rênal was having with his wife. He had visited the curé
earlier in the morning accompanied by M. Valenod, the director of the
workhouse, in order to convey their most emphatic displeasure. M.
Chélan had no protector, and felt all the weight of their words.

"Well, gentlemen, I shall be the third curé of eighty years of age who
has been turned out in this district. I have been here for fifty-six
years. I have baptized nearly all the inhabitants of the town, which
was only a hamlet when I came to it. Every day I marry young people
whose grandparents I have married in days gone by. Verrières is my
family, but I said to myself when I saw the stranger, 'This man from
Paris may as a matter of fact be a Liberal, there are only too many of
them about, but what harm can he do to our poor and to our prisoners?'"

The reproaches of M. de Rênal, and above all, those of M. Valenod, the
director of the workhouse, became more and more animated.

"Well, gentlemen, turn me out then," the old curé exclaimed in a
trembling voice; "I shall still continue to live in the district. As
you know, I inherited forty-eight years ago a piece of land that brings
in eight hundred francs a year; I shall live on that income. I do not
save anything out of my living, gentlemen; and that is perhaps why,
when you talk to me about it, I am not particularly frightened."

M. de Rênal always got on very well with his wife, but he did not know
what to answer when she timidly repeated the phrase of M. le curé,
"What harm can this Paris gentleman do the prisoners?" He was on the
point of quite losing his temper when she gave a cry. Her second son
had mounted the parapet of the terrace wall and was running along it,
although the wall was raised to a height of more than twenty feet above
the vineyard on the other side. The fear of frightening her son and
making him fall prevented Madame de Rênal speaking to him. But at last
the child, who was smiling at his own pluck, looked at his mother, saw
her pallor, jumped down on to the walk and ran to her. He was well
scolded.

This little event changed the course of the conversation.

"I really mean to take Sorel, the son of the sawyer, into the house,"
said M. de Rênal; "he will look after the children, who are getting too
naughty for us to manage. He is a young priest, or as good as one, a
good Latin scholar, and will make the children get on. According to the
curé, he has a steady character. I will give him three hundred francs a
year and his board. I have some doubts as to his morality, for he used
to be the favourite of that old Surgeon-Major, Member of the Legion of
Honour, who went to board with the Sorels, on the pretext that he was
their cousin. It is quite possible that that man was really simply a
secret agent of the Liberals. He said that the mountain air did his
asthma good, but that is something which has never been proved. He
has gone through all _Buonaparte's_ campaigns in Italy, and had even,
it was said, voted against the Empire in the plebiscite. This Liberal
taught the Sorel boy Latin, and left him a number of books which he had
brought with him. Of course, in the ordinary way, I should have never
thought of allowing a carpenter's son to come into contact with our
children, but the curé told me, the very day before the scene which
has just estranged us for ever, that Sorel has been studying theology
for three years with the intention of entering a seminary. He is,
consequently, not a Liberal, and he certainly is a good Latin scholar.

"This arrangement will be convenient in more than one way," continued
M. de Rênal, looking at his wife with a diplomatic air. "That Valenod
is proud enough of his two fine Norman horses which he has just bought
for his carriage, but he hasn't a tutor for his children."

"He might take this one away from us."

"You approve of my plan, then?" said M. de Rênal, thanking his wife
with a smile for the excellent idea which she had just had. "Well,
that's settled."

"Good gracious, my dear, how quickly you make up your mind!"

"It is because I'm a man of character, as the curé found out right
enough. Don't let us deceive ourselves; we are surrounded by Liberals
in this place. All those cloth merchants are jealous of me, I am
certain of it; two or three are becoming rich men. Well, I should
rather fancy it for them to see M. de Rênal's children pass along the
street as they go out for their walk, escorted by _their tutor_. It
will impress people. My grandfather often used to tell us that he had
a tutor when he was young. It may run me into a hundred crowns, but
that ought to be looked upon as an expense necessary for keeping up our
position."

This sudden resolution left Madame de Rênal quite pensive. She was
a big, well-made woman, who had been the beauty of the country, to
use the local expression. She had a certain air of simplicity and
youthfulness in her deportment. This naïve grace, with its innocence
and its vivacity, might even have recalled to a Parisian some
suggestion of the sweets he had left behind him. If she had realised
this particular phase of her success, Madame de Rênal would have been
quite ashamed of it. All coquetry, all affectation, were absolutely
alien to her temperament. M. Valenod, the rich director of the
workhouse, had the reputation of having paid her court, a fact which
had cast a singular glamour over her virtue; for this M. Valenod, a
big young man with a square, sturdy frame, florid face, and big, black
whiskers, was one of those coarse, blustering, and noisy people who
pass in the provinces for a "fine man."

Madame de Rênal, who had a very shy, and apparently a very uneven
temperament, was particularly shocked by M. Valenod's lack of repose,
and by his boisterous loudness. Her aloofness from what, in the
Verrières' jargon, was called "having a good time," had earned her the
reputation of being very proud of her birth. In fact, she never thought
about it, but she had been extremely glad to find the inhabitants of
the town visit her less frequently. We shall not deny that she passed
for a fool in the eyes of _their_ good ladies because she did not
wheedle her husband, and allowed herself to miss the most splendid
opportunities of getting fine hats from Paris or Besançon. Provided she
was allowed to wander in her beautiful garden, she never complained.
She was a naïve soul, who had never educated herself up to the point
of judging her husband and confessing to herself that he bored her.
She supposed, without actually formulating the thought, that there was
no greater sweetness in the relationship between husband and wife than
she herself had experienced. She loved M. de Rênal most when he talked
about his projects for their children. The elder he had destined for
the army, the second for the law, and the third for the Church. To sum
up, she found M. de Rênal much less boring than all the other men of
her acquaintance.

This conjugal opinion was quite sound. The Mayor of Verrières had a
reputation for wit, and above all, a reputation for good form, on
the strength of half-a-dozen "chestnuts" which he had inherited from
an uncle. Old Captain de Rênal had served, before the Revolution, in
the infantry regiment of M. the Duke of Orleans, and was admitted
to the Prince's salons when he went to Paris. He had seen Madame de
Montesson, the famous Madame de Genlis, M. Ducret, the inventor, of the
Palais-Royal. These personages would crop up only too frequently in M.
de Rênal's anecdotes. He found it, however, more and more of a strain
to remember stories which required such delicacy in the telling, and
for some time past it had only been on great occasions that he would
trot out his anecdotes concerning the House of Orleans. As, moreover,
he was extremely polite, except on money matters, he passed, and justly
so, for the most aristocratic personage in Verrières.




CHAPTER IV

A FATHER AND A SON


    E sara mia colpa
    Se cosi è?
                  --_Machiavelli_.


"My wife really has a head on her shoulders," said the mayor of
Verrières at six o'clock the following morning, as he went down to the
saw-mill of Father Sorel. "It had never occurred to me that if I do not
take little Abbé Sorel, who, they say, knows Latin like an angel, that
restless spirit, the director of the workhouse, might have the same
idea and snatch him away from me, though of course I told her that it
had, in order to preserve my proper superiority. And how smugly, to be
sure, would he talk about his children's tutor!... The question is,
once the tutor's mine, shall he wear the cassock?"

M. de Rênal was absorbed in this problem when he saw a peasant in the
distance, a man nearly six feet tall, who since dawn had apparently
been occupied in measuring some pieces of wood which had been put
down alongside the Doubs on the towing-path. The peasant did not look
particularly pleased when he saw M. the Mayor approach, as these pieces
of wood obstructed the road, and had been placed there in breach of the
rules.

Father Sorel (for it was he) was very surprised, and even more pleased
at the singular offer which M. de Rênal made him for his son Julien.
None the less, he listened to it with that air of sulky discontent and
apathy which the subtle inhabitants of these mountains know so well
how to assume. Slaves as they have been since the time of the Spanish
Conquest, they still preserve this feature, which is also found in the
character of the Egyptian fellah.

Sorel's answer was at first simply a long-winded recitation of
all the formulas of respect which he knew by heart. While he was
repeating these empty words with an uneasy smile, which accentuated
all the natural disingenuousness, if not, indeed, knavishness of his
physiognomy, the active mind of the old peasant tried to discover what
reason could induce so important a man to take into his house his
good-for-nothing of a son. He was very dissatisfied with Julien, and
it was for Julien that M. de Rênal offered the undreamt-of salary of
300 fcs. a year, with board and even clothing. This latter claim, which
Father Sorel had had the genius to spring upon the mayor, had been
granted with equal suddenness by M. de Rênal.

This demand made an impression on the mayor. It is clear, he said to
himself, that since Sorel is not beside himself with delight over my
proposal, as in the ordinary way he ought to be, he must have had
offers made to him elsewhere, and whom could they have come from, if
not from Valenod. It was in vain that M. de Rênal pressed Sorel to
clinch the matter then and there. The old peasant, astute man that
he was, stubbornly refused to do so. He wanted, he said, to consult
his son, as if in the provinces, forsooth, a rich father consulted a
penniless son for any other reason than as a mere matter of form.

A water saw-mill consists of a shed by the side of a stream. The roof
is supported by a framework resting on four large timber pillars. A
saw can be seen going up and down at a height of eight to ten feet in
the middle of the shed, while a piece of wood is propelled against
this saw by a very simple mechanism. It is a wheel whose motive-power
is supplied by the stream, which sets in motion this double piece of
mechanism, the mechanism of the saw which goes up and down, and the
mechanism which gently pushes the piece of wood towards the saw, which
cuts it up into planks.

Approaching his workshop, Father Sorel called Julien in his stentorian
voice; nobody answered. He only saw his giant elder sons, who, armed
with heavy axes, were cutting up the pine planks which they had to
carry to the saw. They were engrossed in following exactly the black
mark traced on each piece of wood, from which every blow of their axes
threw off enormous shavings. They did not hear their father's voice.
The latter made his way towards the shed. He entered it and looked in
vain for Julien in the place where he ought to have been by the side of
the saw. He saw him five or six feet higher up, sitting astride one of
the rafters of the roof. Instead of watching attentively the action of
the machinery, Julien was reading. Nothing was more anti-pathetic to
old Sorel. He might possibly have forgiven Julien his puny physique,
ill adapted as it was to manual labour, and different as it was from
that of his elder brothers; but he hated this reading mania. He could
not read himself.

It was in vain that he called Julien two or three times. It was the
young man's concentration on his book, rather than the din made by the
saw, which prevented him from hearing his father's terrible voice. At
last the latter, in spite of his age, jumped nimbly on to the tree
that was undergoing the action of the saw, and from there on to the
cross-bar that supported the roof. A violent blow made the book which
Julien held, go flying into the stream; a second blow on the head,
equally violent, which took the form of a box on the ears, made him
lose his balance. He was on the point of falling twelve or fifteen feet
lower down into the middle of the levers of the running machinery which
would have cut him to pieces, but his father caught him as he fell, in
his left hand.

"So that's it, is it, lazy bones! always going to read your damned
books are you, when you're keeping watch on the saw? You read them in
the evening if you want to, when you go to play the fool at the curé's,
that's the proper time."

Although stunned by the force of the blow and bleeding profusely,
Julien went back to his official post by the side of the saw. He had
tears in his eyes, less by reason of the physical pain than on account
of the loss of his beloved book.

"Get down, you beast, when I am talking to you," the noise of the
machinery prevented Julien from hearing this order. His father, who had
gone down did not wish to give himself the trouble of climbing up on to
the machinery again, and went to fetch a long fork used for bringing
down nuts, with which he struck him on the shoulder. Julien had
scarcely reached the ground, when old Sorel chased him roughly in front
of him and pushed him roughly towards the house. "God knows what he is
going to do with me," said the young man to himself. As he passed, he
looked sorrowfully into the stream into which his book had fallen, it
was the one that he held dearest of all, the _Memorial of St. Helena_.

He had purple cheeks and downcast eyes. He was a young man of eighteen
to nineteen years old, and of puny appearance, with irregular but
delicate features, and an aquiline nose. The big black eyes which
betokened in their tranquil moments a temperament at once fiery and
reflective were at the present moment animated by an expression of
the most ferocious hate. Dark chestnut hair, which came low down over
his brow, made his forehead appear small and gave him a sinister look
during his angry moods. It is doubtful if any face out of all the
innumerable varieties of the human physiognomy was ever distinguished
by a more arresting individuality.

A supple well-knit figure, indicated agility rather than strength. His
air of extreme pensiveness and his great pallor had given his father
the idea that he would not live, or that if he did, it would only be to
be a burden to his family. The butt of the whole house, he hated his
brothers and his father. He was regularly beaten in the Sunday sports
in the public square.

A little less than a year ago his pretty face had begun to win him some
sympathy among the young girls. Universally despised as a weakling,
Julien had adored that old Surgeon-Major, who had one day dared to talk
to the mayor on the subject of the plane trees.

This Surgeon had sometimes paid Father Sorel for taking his son for
a day, and had taught him Latin and History, that is to say the 1796
Campaign in Italy which was all the history he knew. When he died, he
had bequeathed his Cross of the Legion of Honour, his arrears of half
pay, and thirty or forty volumes, of which the most precious had just
fallen into the public stream, which had been diverted owing to the
influence of M. the Mayor.

Scarcely had he entered the house, when Julien felt his shoulder
gripped by his father's powerful hand; he trembled, expecting some
blows.

"Answer me without lying," cried the harsh voice of the old peasant in
his ears, while his hand turned him round and round, like a child's
hand turns round a lead soldier. The big black eyes of Julien filled
with tears, and were confronted by the small grey eyes of the old
carpenter, who looked as if he meant to read to the very bottom of his
soul.




CHAPTER V

A NEGOTIATION


    Cunctando restituit rem.--_Ennius_.


"Answer me without lies, if you can, you damned dog, how did you get to
know Madame de Rênal? When did you speak to her?"

"I have never spoken to her," answered Julien, "I have only seen that
lady in church."

"You must have looked at her, you impudent rascal."

"Not once! you know, I only see God in church," answered Julien, with
a little hypocritical air, well suited, so he thought, to keep off the
parental claws.

"None the less there's something that does not meet the eye," answered
the cunning peasant. He was then silent for a moment. "But I shall
never get anything out of you, you damned hypocrite," he went on. "As a
matter of fact, I am going to get rid of you, and my saw-mill will go
all the better for it. You have nobbled the curate, or somebody else,
who has got you a good place. Run along and pack your traps, and I
will take you to M. de Rênal's, where you are going to be tutor to his
children."

"What shall I get for that?"

"Board, clothing, and three hundred francs salary."

"I do not want to be a servant."

"Who's talking of being a servant, you brute, do you think I want my
son to be a servant?"

"But with whom shall I have my meals?"

This question discomforted old Sorel, who felt he might possibly commit
some imprudence if he went on talking. He burst out against Julien,
flung insult after insult at him, accused him of gluttony, and left him
to go and consult his other sons.

Julien saw them afterwards, each one leaning on his axe and holding
counsel. Having looked at them for a long time, Julien saw that he
could find out nothing, and went and stationed himself on the other
side of the saw in order to avoid being surprised. He wanted to think
over this unexpected piece of news, which changed his whole life,
but he felt himself unable to consider the matter prudently, his
imagination being concentrated in wondering what he would see in M. de
Rênal's fine mansion.

"I must give all that up," he said to himself, "rather than let myself
be reduced to eating with the servants. My father would like to force
me to it. I would rather die. I have fifteen francs and eight sous of
savings. I will run away to-night; I will go across country by paths
where there are no gendarmes to be feared, and in two days I shall be
at Besançon. I will enlist as a soldier there, and, if necessary, I
will cross into Switzerland. But in that case, no more advancement, it
will be all up with my being a priest, that fine career which may lead
to anything."

This abhorrence of eating with the servants was not really natural to
Julien; he would have done things quite, if not more, disagreeable in
order to get on. He derived this repugnance from the _Confessions_
of Rousseau. It was the only book by whose help his imagination
endeavoured to construct the world. The collection of the Bulletins of
the Grand Army, and the _Memorial of St. Helena_ completed his Koran.
He would have died for these three works. He never believed in any
other. To use a phrase of the old Surgeon-Major, he regarded all the
other books in the world as packs of lies, written by rogues in order
to get on.

Julien possessed both a fiery soul and one of those astonishing
memories which are so often combined with stupidity.

In order to win over the old curé Chélan, on whose good grace he
realized that his future prospects depended, he had learnt by heart the
New Testament in Latin. He also knew M. de Maistre's book on The Pope,
and believed in one as little as he did in the other.

Sorel and his son avoided talking to each other to-day as though by
mutual consent. In the evening Julien went to take his theology lesson
at the curé's, but he did not consider that it was prudent to say
anything to him about the strange proposal which had been made to his
father. "It is possibly a trap," he said to himself, "I must pretend
that I have forgotten all about it."

Early next morning, M. de Rênal had old Sorel summoned to him.
He eventually arrived, after keeping M. de Rênal waiting for an
hour-and-a-half, and made, as he entered the room, a hundred apologies
interspersed with as many bows. After having run the gauntlet of all
kinds of objections, Sorel was given to understand that his son would
have his meals with the master and mistress of the house, and that
he would eat alone in a room with the children on the days when they
had company. The more clearly Sorel realized the genuine eagerness of
M. the Mayor, the more difficulties he felt inclined to raise. Being
moreover full of mistrust and astonishment, he asked to see the room
where his son would sleep. It was a big room, quite decently furnished,
into which the servants were already engaged in carrying the beds of
the three children.

This circumstance explained a lot to the old peasant. He asked
immediately, with quite an air of assurance, to see the suit which
would be given to his son. M. de Rênal opened his desk and took out one
hundred francs.

"Your son will go to M. Durand, the draper, with this money and will
get a complete black suit."

"And even supposing I take him away from you," said the peasant, who
had suddenly forgotten all his respectful formalities, "will he still
keep this black suit?"

"Certainly!"

"Well," said Sorel, in a drawling voice, "all that remains to do is to
agree on just one thing, the money which you will give him."

"What!" exclaimed M. de Rênal, indignantly, "we agreed on that
yesterday. I shall give him three hundred francs, I think that is a
lot, and probably too much."

"That is your offer and I do not deny it," said old Sorel, speaking
still very slowly; and by a stroke of genius which will only astonish
those who do not know the Franche-Comté peasants, he fixed his eyes on
M. de Rênal and added, "We shall get better terms elsewhere."

The Mayor's face exhibited the utmost consternation at these words. He
pulled himself together however and after a cunning conversation of
two hours' length, where every single word on both sides was carefully
weighed, the subtlety of the peasant scored a victory over the subtlety
of the rich man, whose livelihood was not so dependent on his faculty
of cunning. All the numerous stipulations which were to regulate
Julien's new existence were duly formulated. Not only was his salary
fixed at four hundred francs, but they were to be paid in advance on
the first of each month.

"Very well, I will give him thirty-five francs," said M. de Rênal.

"I am quite sure," said the peasant, in a fawning voice, "that a rich,
generous man like the M. mayor would go as far as thirty-six francs, to
make up a good round sum."

"Agreed!" said M. de Rênal, "but let this be final." For the moment his
temper gave him a tone of genuine firmness. The peasant saw that it
would not do to go any further.

Then, on his side, M. de Rênal managed to score. He absolutely refused
to give old Sorel, who was very anxious to receive it on behalf of his
son, the thirty-six francs for the first month. It had occurred to M.
de Rênal that he would have to tell his wife the figure which he had
cut throughout these negotiations.

"Hand me back the hundred francs which I gave you," he said sharply.
"M. Durand owes me something, I will go with your son to see about a
black cloth suit."

After this manifestation of firmness, Sorel had the prudence to return
to his respectful formulas; they took a good quarter of an hour.
Finally, seeing that there was nothing more to be gained, he took his
leave. He finished his last bow with these words:

"I will send my son to the Château." The Mayor's officials called his
house by this designation when they wanted to humour him.

When he got back to his workshop, it was in vain that Sorel sought his
son. Suspicious of what might happen, Julien had gone out in the middle
of the night. He wished to place his Cross of the Legion of Honour and
his books in a place of safety. He had taken everything to a young
wood-merchant named Fouqué, who was a friend of his, and who lived in
the high mountain which commands Verrières.

"God knows, you damned lazy bones," said his father to him when he
re-appeared, "if you will ever be sufficiently honourable to pay me
back the price of your board which I have been advancing to you for so
many years. Take your rags and clear out to M. the Mayor's."

Julien was astonished at not being beaten and hastened to leave. He
had scarcely got out of sight of his terrible father when he slackened
his pace. He considered that it would assist the rôle played by his
hypocrisy to go and say a prayer in the church.

The word hypocrisy surprises you? The soul of the peasant had had to go
through a great deal before arriving at this horrible word.

Julien had seen in the days of his early childhood certain Dragoons
of the 6th[1] with long white cloaks and hats covered with long black
plumed helmets who were returning from Italy, and tied up their horses
to the grilled window of his father's house. The sight had made him mad
on the military profession. Later on he had listened with ecstasy to
the narrations of the battles of Lodi, Arcola and Rivoli with which the
old surgeon-major had regaled him. He observed the ardent gaze which
the old man used to direct towards his cross.

But when Julien was fourteen years of age they commenced to build a
church at Verrières which, in view of the smallness of the town, has
some claim to be called magnificent. There were four marble columns in
particular, the sight of which impressed Julien. They became celebrated
in the district owing to the mortal hate which they raised between
the Justice of the Peace and the young vicar who had been sent from
Besançon and who passed for a spy of the congregation. The Justice of
the Peace was on the point of losing his place, so said the public
opinion at any rate. Had he not dared to have a difference with the
priest who went every fortnight to Besançon; where he saw, so they
said, my Lord the Bishop.

In the meanwhile the Justice of the Peace, who was the father of a
numerous family, gave several sentences which seemed unjust: all these
sentences were inflicted on those of the inhabitants who read the
"_Constitutionnel_." The right party triumphed. It is true it was only a
question of sums of three or five francs, but one of these little fines
had to be paid by a nail-maker, who was god-father to Julien. This man
exclaimed in his anger "What a change! and to think that for more than
twenty years the Justice of the Peace has passed for an honest man."

The Surgeon-Major, Julien's friend, died. Suddenly Julien left off
talking about Napoleon. He announced his intention of becoming a
priest, and was always to be seen in his father's workshop occupied
in learning by heart the Latin Bible which the curé had lent him. The
good old man was astonished at his progress, and passed whole evenings
in teaching him theology. In his society Julien did not manifest other
than pious sentiments. Who could not possibly guess that beneath this
girlish face, so pale and so sweet, lurked the unbreakable resolution
to risk a thousand deaths rather than fail to make his fortune. Making
his fortune primarily meant to Julien getting out of Verrières: he
abhorred his native country; everything that he saw there froze his
imagination.

He had had moments of exultation since his earliest childhood. He would
then dream with gusto of being presented one day to the pretty women
of Paris. He would manage to attract their attention by some dazzling
feat: why should he not be loved by one of them just as Buonaparte,
when still poor, had been loved by the brilliant Madame de Beauharnais.
For many years past Julien had scarcely passed a single year of his
life without reminding himself that Buonaparte, the obscure and
penniless lieutenant, had made himself master of the whole world by the
power of his sword. This idea consoled him for his misfortune, which
he considered to be great, and rendered such joyful moments as he had
doubly intense.

The building of the church and the sentences pronounced by the Justice
of the Peace suddenly enlightened him. An idea came to him which made
him almost mad for some weeks, and finally took complete possession of
him with all the magic that a first idea possesses for a passionate
soul which believes that it is original.

"At the time when Buonaparte got himself talked about, France was
frightened of being invaded; military distinction was necessary and
fashionable. Nowadays, one sees priests of forty with salaries of
100,000 francs, that is to say, three times as much as Napoleon's
famous generals of a division. They need persons to assist them. Look
at that Justice of the Peace, such a good sort and such an honest man
up to the present and so old too; he sacrifices his honour through the
fear of incurring the displeasure of a young vicar of thirty. I must be
a priest."

On one occasion, in the middle of his new-found piety (he had already
been studying theology for two years), he was betrayed by a sudden
burst of fire which consumed his soul. It was at M. Chélan's. The
good curé had invited him to a dinner of priests, and he actually let
himself praise Napoleon with enthusiasm. He bound his right arm over
his breast, pretending that he had dislocated it in moving a trunk of a
pine-tree and carried it for two months in that painful position. After
this painful penance, he forgave himself. This is the young man of
eighteen with a puny physique, and scarcely looking more than seventeen
at the outside, who entered the magnificent church of Verrières
carrying a little parcel under his arm.

He found it gloomy and deserted. All the transepts in the building had
been covered with crimson cloth in celebration of a feast. The result
was that the sun's rays produced an effect of dazzling light of the
most impressive and religious character. Julien shuddered. Finding
himself alone in the church, he established himself in the pew which
had the most magnificent appearance. It bore the arms of M. de Rênal.

Julien noticed a piece of printed paper spread out on the stool, which
was apparently intended to be read, he cast his eyes over it and
saw:--"_Details of the execution and the last moments of Louis Jenrel,
executed at Besançon the...._" The paper was torn. The two first words
of a line were legible on the back, they were, "_The First Step_."

"Who could have put this paper there?" said Julien. "Poor fellow!" he
added with a sigh, "the last syllable of his name is the same as mine,"
and he crumpled up the paper. As he left, Julien thought he saw blood
near the Host, it was holy water which the priests had been sprinkling
on it, the reflection of the red curtains which covered the windows
made it look like blood.

Finally, Julien felt ashamed of his secret terror. "Am I going to play
the coward," he said to himself: "_To Arms!_" This phrase, repeated so
often in the old Surgeon-Major's battle stories, symbolized heroism to
Julien. He got up rapidly and walked to M. de Rênal's house. As soon
as he saw it twenty yards in front of him he was seized, in spite of
his fine resolution, with an overwhelming timidity. The iron grill was
open. He thought it was magnificent. He had to go inside.

Julien was not the only person whose heart was troubled by his arrival
in the house. The extreme timidity of Madame de Rênal was fluttered
when she thought of this stranger whose functions would necessitate
his coming between her and her children. She was accustomed to seeing
her sons sleep in her own room. She had shed many tears that morning,
when she had seen their beds carried into the apartment intended for
the tutor. It was in vain that she asked her husband to have the bed of
Stanislas-Xavier, the youngest, carried back into her room.

Womanly delicacy was carried in Madame de Rênal to the point of excess.
She conjured up in her imagination the most disagreeable personage, who
was coarse, badly groomed and encharged with the duty of scolding her
children simply because he happened to know Latin, and only too ready
to flog her sons for their ignorance of that barbarous language.


[1] The author was sub-lieutenant in the 6th Dragoons in 1800.




CHAPTER VI

ENNUI


    Non so piú cosa son
    Cosa facio.
                     MOZART (_Figaro_).


Madame de Rênal was going out of the salon by the folding window which
opened on to the garden with that vivacity and grace which was natural
to her when she was free from human observation, when she noticed a
young peasant near the entrance gate. He was still almost a child,
extremely pale, and looked as though he had been crying. He was in a
white shirt and had under his arm a perfectly new suit of violet frieze.

The little peasant's complexion was so white and his eyes were so soft,
that Madame de Rênal's somewhat romantic spirit thought at first that
it might be a young girl in disguise, who had come to ask some favour
of the M. the Mayor. She took pity on this poor creature, who had
stopped at the entrance of the door, and who apparently did not dare
to raise its hand to the bell. Madame de Rênal approached, forgetting
for the moment the bitter chagrin occasioned by the tutor's arrival.
Julien, who was turned towards the gate, did not see her advance. He
trembled when a soft voice said quite close to his ear:

"What do you want here, my child."

Julien turned round sharply and was so struck by Madame de Rênal's
look, full of graciousness as it was, that up to a certain point he
forgot to be nervous. Overcome by her beauty he soon forgot everything,
even what he had come for. Madame de Rênal repeated her question.

"I have come here to be tutor, Madame," he said at last, quite ashamed
of his tears which he was drying as best as he could.

Madame de Rênal remained silent. They had a view of each other at close
range. Julien had never seen a human being so well-dressed, and above
all he had never seen a woman with so dazzling a complexion speak to
him at all softly. Madame de Rênal observed the big tears which had
lingered on the cheeks of the young peasant, those cheeks which had
been so pale and were now so pink. Soon she began to laugh with all the
mad gaiety of a young girl, she made fun of herself, and was unable to
realise the extent of her happiness. So this was that tutor whom she
had imagined a dirty, badly dressed priest, who was coming to scold and
flog her children.

"What! Monsieur," she said to him at last, "you know Latin?"

The word "Monsieur" astonished Julien so much that he reflected for a
moment.

"Yes, Madame," he said timidly.

Madame de Rênal was so happy that she plucked up the courage to say to
Julien, "You will not scold the poor children too much?"

"I scold them!" said Julien in astonishment; "why should I?"

"You won't, will you, Monsieur," she added after a little silence, in
a soft voice whose emotion became more and more intense. "You will be
nice to them, you promise me?"

To hear himself called "Monsieur" again in all seriousness by so well
dressed a lady was beyond all Julien's expectations. He had always said
to himself in all the castles of Spain that he had built in his youth,
that no real lady would ever condescend to talk to him except when he
had a fine uniform. Madame de Rênal, on her side, was completely taken
in by Julien's beautiful complexion, his big black eyes, and his pretty
hair, which was more than usually curly, because he had just plunged
his head into the basin of the public fountain in order to refresh
himself. She was over-joyed to find that this sinister tutor, whom
she had feared to find so harsh and severe to her children, had, as a
matter of fact, the timid manner of a girl. The contrast between her
fears and what she now saw, proved a great event for Madame de Rênal's
peaceful temperament. Finally, she recovered from her surprise. She
was astonished to find herself at the gate of her own house talking in
this way and at such close quarters to this young and somewhat scantily
dressed man.

"Let us go in, Monsieur," she said to him with a certain air of
embarrassment.

During Madame de Rênal's whole life she had never been so deeply moved
by such a sense of pure pleasure. Never had so gracious a vision
followed in the wake of her disconcerting fears. So these pretty
children of whom she took such care were not after all to fall into
the hands of a dirty grumbling priest. She had scarcely entered the
vestibule when she turned round towards Julien, who was following her
trembling. His astonishment at the sight of so fine a house proved but
an additional charm in Madame de Rênal's eyes. She could not believe
her own eyes. It seemed to her, above all, that the tutor ought to have
a black suit.

"But is it true, Monsieur," she said to him, stopping once again, and
in mortal fear that she had made a mistake, so happy had her discovery
made her. "Is it true that you know Latin?" These words offended
Julien's pride, and dissipated the charming atmosphere which he had
been enjoying for the last quarter of an hour.

"Yes, Madame," he said, trying to assume an air of coldness, "I know
Latin as well as the curé, who has been good enough to say sometimes
that I know it even better."

Madame de Rênal thought that Julien looked extremely wicked. He had
stopped two paces from her. She approached and said to him in a whisper:

"You won't beat my children the first few days, will you, even if they
do not know their lessons?"

The softness and almost supplication of so beautiful a lady made Julien
suddenly forget what he owed to his reputation as a Latinist. Madame de
Rênal's face was close to his own. He smelt the perfume of a woman's
summer clothing, a quite astonishing experience for a poor peasant.
Julien blushed extremely, and said with a sigh in a faltering voice:

"Fear nothing, Madame, I will obey you in everything."

It was only now, when her anxiety about her children had been relieved
once and for all, that Madame de Rênal was struck by Julien's extreme
beauty. The comparative effeminancy of his features and his air of
extreme embarrassment did not seem in any way ridiculous to a woman who
was herself extremely timid. The male air, which is usually considered
essential to a man's beauty, would have terrified her.

"How old are you, sir," she said to Julien.

"Nearly nineteen."

"My elder son is eleven," went on Madame de Rênal, who had completely
recovered her confidence. "He will be almost a chum for you. You will
talk sensibly to him. His father started beating him once. The child
was ill for a whole week, and yet it was only a little tap."

What a difference between him and me, thought Julien. Why, it was only
yesterday that my father beat me. How happy these rich people are.
Madame de Rênal, who had already begun to observe the fine nuances of
the workings in the tutor's mind, took this fit of sadness for timidity
and tried to encourage him.

"What is your name, Monsieur?" she said to him, with an accent and
a graciousness whose charm Julien appreciated without being able to
explain.

"I am called Julien Sorel, Madame. I feel nervous of entering a strange
house for the first time in my life. I have need of your protection
and I want you to make many allowances for me during the first few
days. I have never been to the college, I was too poor. I have never
spoken to anyone else except my cousin who was Surgeon-Major, Member
of the Legion of Honour, and M. the curé Chélan. He will give you a
good account of me. My brothers always used to beat me, and you must
not believe them if they speak badly of me to you. You must forgive my
faults, Madame. I shall always mean everything for the best."

Julien had regained his confidence during this long speech. He was
examining Madame de Rênal. Perfect grace works wonders when it is
natural to the character, and above all, when the person whom it
adorns never thinks of trying to affect it. Julien, who was quite a
connoisseur in feminine beauty, would have sworn at this particular
moment that she was not more than twenty. The rash idea of kissing her
hand immediately occurred to him. He soon became frightened of his
idea. A minute later he said to himself, it will be an act of cowardice
if I do not carry out an action which may be useful to me, and lessen
the contempt which this fine lady probably has for a poor workman just
taken away from the saw-mill. Possibly Julien was a little encouraged
through having heard some young girls repeat on Sundays during the last
six months the words "pretty boy."

During this internal debate, Madame de Rênal was giving him two or
three hints on the way to commence handling the children. The strain
Julien was putting on himself made him once more very pale. He said
with an air of constraint.

"I will never beat your children, Madame. I swear it before God." In
saying this, he dared to take Madame de Rênal's hand and carry it
to his lips. She was astonished at this act, and after reflecting,
became shocked. As the weather was very warm, her arm was quite bare
underneath the shawl, and Julien's movement in carrying her hand to his
lips entirely uncovered it. After a few moments she scolded herself. It
seemed to her that her anger had not been quick enough.

M. de Rênal, who had heard voices, came out of his study, and assuming
the same air of paternal majesty with which he celebrated marriages at
the mayoral office, said to Julien:

"It is essential for me to have a few words with you before my children
see you." He made Julien enter a room and insisted on his wife being
present, although she wished to leave them alone. Having closed the
door M. Rênal sat down.

"M. the curé has told me that you are a worthy person, and everybody
here will treat you with respect. If I am satisfied with you I will
later on help you in having a little establishment of your own. I do
not wish you to see either anything more of your relatives or your
friends. Their tone is bound to be prejudicial to my children. Here are
thirty-six francs for the first month, but I insist on your word not to
give a sou of this money to your father."

M. de Rênal was piqued against the old man for having proved the
shrewder bargainer.

"Now, Monsieur, for I have given orders for everybody here to call you
Monsieur, and you will appreciate the advantage of having entered the
house of real gentle folk, now, Monsieur, it is not becoming for the
children to see you in a jacket." "Have the servants seen him?" said M.
de Rênal to his wife.

"No, my dear," she answered, with an air of deep pensiveness.

"All the better. Put this on," he said to the surprised young man,
giving him a frock-coat of his own. "Let us now go to M. Durand's the
draper."

When M. de Rênal came back with the new tutor in his black suit more
than an hour later, he found his wife still seated in the same place.
She felt calmed by Julien's presence. When she examined him she forgot
to be frightened of him. Julien was not thinking about her at all. In
spite of all his distrust of destiny and mankind, his soul at this
moment was as simple as that of a child. It seemed as though he had
lived through years since the moment, three hours ago, when he had been
all atremble in the church. He noticed Madame de Rênal's frigid manner
and realised that she was very angry, because he had dared to kiss her
hand. But the proud consciousness which was given to him by the feel
of clothes so different from those which he usually wore, transported
him so violently and he had so great a desire to conceal his
exultation, that all his movements were marked by a certain spasmodic
irresponsibility. Madame de Rênal looked at him with astonishment.

"Monsieur," said M. de Rênal to him, "dignity above all is necessary if
you wish to be respected by my children."

"Sir," answered Julien, "I feel awkward in my new clothes. I am a poor
peasant and have never wore anything but jackets. If you allow it, I
will retire to my room."

"What do you think of this 'acquisition?'" said M. de Rênal to his wife.

Madame de Rênal concealed the truth from her husband, obeying an almost
instinctive impulse which she certainly did not own to herself.

"I am not as fascinated as you are by this little peasant. Your favours
will result in his not being able to keep his place, and you will have
to send him back before the month is out."

"Oh, well! we'll send him back then, he cannot run me into more than
a hundred francs, and Verrières will have got used to seeing M. de
Rênal's children with a tutor. That result would not have been achieved
if I had allowed Julien to wear a workman's clothes. If I do send him
back, I shall of course keep the complete black suit which I have just
ordered at the draper's. All he will keep is the ready-made suit which
I have just put him into at the the tailor's."

The hour that Julien spent in his room seemed only a minute to Madame
de Rênal. The children who had been told about their new tutor began
to overwhelm their mother with questions. Eventually Julien appeared.
He was quite another man. It would be incorrect to say that he was
grave--he was the very incarnation of gravity. He was introduced to
the children and spoke to them in a manner that astonished M. de Rênal
himself.

"I am here, gentlemen, he said, as he finished his speech, to teach
you Latin. You know what it means to recite a lesson. Here is the Holy
Bible, he said, showing them a small volume in thirty-two mo., bound in
black. It deals especially with the history of our Lord Jesus Christ
and is the part which is called the New Testament. I shall often make
you recite your lesson, but do you make me now recite mine."

Adolphe, the eldest of the children, had taken up the book. "Open it
anywhere you like," went on Julien and tell me the first word of any
verse, "I will then recite by heart that sacred book which governs our
conduct towards the whole world, until you stop me."

Adolphe opened the book and read a word, and Julien recited the whole
of the page as easily as though he had been talking French. M. de Rênal
looked at his wife with an air of triumph The children, seeing the
astonishment of their parents, opened their eyes wide. A servant came
to the door of the drawing-room; Julien went on talking Latin. The
servant first remained motionless, and then disappeared. Soon Madame's
house-maid, together with the cook, arrived at the door. Adolphe had
already opened the book at eight different places, while Julien went
on reciting all the time with the same facility. "Great heavens!" said
the cook, a good and devout girl, quite aloud, "what a pretty little
priest!" M. de Rênal's self-esteem became uneasy. Instead of thinking
of examining the tutor, his mind was concentrated in racking his memory
for some other Latin words. Eventually he managed to spout a phrase of
Horace. Julien knew no other Latin except his Bible. He answered with a
frown. "The holy ministry to which I destine myself has forbidden me to
read so profane a poet."

M. de Rênal quoted quite a large number of alleged verses from Horace.
He explained to his children who Horace was, but the admiring children,
scarcely attended to what he was saying: they were looking at Julien.

The servants were still at the door. Julien thought that he ought to
prolong the test--"M. Stanislas-Xavier also," he said to the youngest
of the children, "must give me a passage from the holy book."

Little Stanislas, who was quite flattered, read indifferently the first
word of a verse, and Julien said the whole page.

To put the finishing touch on M. de Rênal's triumph, M. Valenod, the
owner of the fine Norman horses, and M. Charcot de Maugiron, the
sub-prefect of the district came in when Julien was reciting. This
scene earned for Julien the title of Monsieur; even the servants did
not dare to refuse it to him.

That evening all Verrières flocked to M. de Rênal's to see the prodigy.
Julien answered everybody in a gloomy manner and kept his own distance.
His fame spread so rapidly in the town that a few hours afterwards
M. de Rênal, fearing that he would be taken away by somebody else,
proposed to that he should sign an engagement for two years.

"No, Monsieur," Julien answered coldly, "if you wished to dismiss me, I
should have to go. An engagement which binds me without involving you
in any obligation is not an equal one and I refuse it."

Julien played his cards so well, that in less than a month of his
arrival at the house, M. de Rênal himself respected him. As the curé
had quarrelled with both M. de Rênal and M. Valenod, there was no one
who could betray Julien's old passion for Napoleon. He always spoke of
Napoleon with abhorrence.




CHAPTER VII

THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES


        They only manage to touch the heart by wounding it.--_A
        Modern_.


The children adored him, but he did not like them in the least. His
thoughts were elsewhere. But nothing which the little brats ever did
made him lose his patience. Cold, just and impassive, and none the less
liked, inasmuch his arrival had more or less driven ennui out of the
house, he was a good tutor. As for himself, he felt nothing but hate
and abhorrence for that good society into which he had been admitted;
admitted, it is true at the bottom of the table, a circumstance which
perhaps explained his hate and his abhorrence. There were certain
'full-dress' dinners at which he was scarcely able to control his
hate for everything that surrounded him. One St. Louis feast day in
particular, when M. Valenod was monopolizing the conversation of M.
de Rênal, Julien was on the point of betraying himself. He escaped
into the garden on the pretext of finding the children. "What praise
of honesty," he exclaimed. "One would say that was the only virtue,
and yet think how they respect and grovel before a man who has almost
doubled and trebled his fortune since he has administered the poor
fund. I would bet anything that he makes a profit even out of the
monies which are intended for the foundlings of these poor creatures
whose misery is even more sacred than that of others. Oh, Monsters!
Monsters! And I too, am a kind of foundling, hated as I am by my
father, my brothers, and all my family."

Some days before the feast of St. Louis, when Julien was taking a
solitary walk and reciting his breviary in the little wood called
the Belvedere, which dominates the _Cours de la Fidélité_, he had
endeavoured in vain to avoid his two brothers whom he saw coming along
in the distance by a lonely path. The jealousy of these coarse workmen
had been provoked to such a pitch by their brother's fine black suit,
by his air of extreme respectability, and by the sincere contempt which
he had for them, that they had beaten him until he had fainted and was
bleeding all over.

Madame de Rênal, who was taking a walk with M. de Rênal and the
sub-prefect, happened to arrive in the little wood. She saw Julien
lying on the ground and thought that he was dead. She was so overcome
that she made M. Valenod jealous.

His alarm was premature. Julien found Madame de Rênal very pretty, but
he hated her on account of her beauty, for that had been the first
danger which had almost stopped his career.

He talked to her as little as possible, in order to make her forget the
transport which had induced him to kiss her hand on the first day.

Madame de Rênal's housemaid, Elisa, had lost no time in falling
in love with the young tutor. She often talked about him to her
mistress. Elisa's love had earned for Julien the hatred of one of the
men-servants. One day he heard the man saying to Elisa, "You haven't
a word for me now that this dirty tutor has entered the household."
The insult was undeserved, but Julien with the instinctive vanity of a
pretty boy redoubled his care of his personal appearance. M. Valenod's
hate also increased. He said publicly, that it was not becoming for a
young abbé to be such a fop.

Madame de Rênal observed that Julien talked more frequently than usual
to Mademoiselle Elisa. She learnt that the reason of these interviews
was the poverty of Julien's extremely small wardrobe. He had so little
linen that he was obliged to have it very frequently washed outside the
house, and it was in these little matters that Elisa was useful to him.
Madame de Rênal was touched by this extreme poverty which she had never
suspected before. She was anxious to make him presents, but she did not
dare to do so. This inner conflict was the first painful emotion that
Julien had caused her. Till then Julien's name had been synonymous with
a pure and quite intellectual joy. Tormented by the idea of Julien's
poverty, Madame de Rênal spoke to her husband about giving him some
linen for a present.

"What nonsense," he answered, "the very idea of giving presents to a
man with whom we are perfectly satisfied and who is a good servant. It
will only be if he is remiss that we shall have to stimulate his zeal."

Madame de Rênal felt humiliated by this way of looking at things,
though she would never have noticed it in the days before Julien's
arrival. She never looked at the young abbé's attire, with its
combination of simplicity and absolute cleanliness, without saying to
herself, "The poor boy, how can he manage?"

Little by little, instead of being shocked by all Julien's
deficiencies, she pitied him for them.

Madame de Rênal was one of those provincial women whom one is apt
to take for fools during the first fortnight of acquaintanceship.
She had no experience of the world and never bothered to keep up the
conversation. Nature had given her a refined and fastidious soul,
while that instinct for happiness which is innate in all human beings
caused her, as a rule, to pay no attention to the acts of the coarse
persons in whose midst chance had thrown her. If she had received the
slightest education, she would have been noticeable for the spontaneity
and vivacity of her mind, but being an heiress, she had been brought
up in a Convent of Nuns, who were passionate devotees of the _Sacred
Heart of Jesus_ and animated by a violent hate for the French as being
the enemies of the Jesuits. Madame de Rênal had had enough sense to
forget quickly all the nonsense which she had learned at the convent,
but had substituted nothing for it, and in the long run knew nothing.
The flatteries which had been lavished on her when still a child, by
reason of the great fortune of which she was the heiress, and a decided
tendency to passionate devotion, had given her quite an inner life of
her own. In spite of her pose of perfect affability and her elimination
of her individual will which was cited as a model example by all the
husbands in Verrières and which made M. de Rênal feel very proud, the
moods of her mind were usually dictated by a spirit of the most haughty
discontent.

Many a princess who has become a bye-word for pride has given
infinitely more attention to what her courtiers have been doing around
her than did this apparently gentle and demure woman to anything which
her husband either said or did. Up to the time of Julien's arrival she
had never really troubled about anything except her children. Their
little maladies, their troubles, their little joys, occupied all the
sensibility of that soul, who, during her whole life, had adored no one
but God, when she had been at the Sacred Heart of Besançon.

A feverish attack of one of her sons would affect her almost as deeply
as if the child had died, though she would not deign to confide
in anyone. A burst of coarse laughter, a shrug of the shoulders,
accompanied by some platitude on the folly of women, had been the only
welcome her husband had vouchsafed to those confidences about her
troubles, which the need of unburdening herself had induced her to make
during the first years of their marriage. Jokes of this kind, and above
all, when they were directed at her children's ailments, were exquisite
torture to Madame de Rênal. And these jokes were all she found to take
the place of those exaggerated sugary flatteries with which she had
been regaled at the Jesuit Convent where she had passed her youth. Her
education had been given her by suffering. Too proud even to talk to
her friend, Madame Derville, about troubles of this kind, she imagined
that all men were like her husband, M. Valenod, and the sub-prefect,
M. Charcot de Maugiron. Coarseness, and the most brutal callousness to
everything except financial gain, precedence, or orders, together with
blind hate of every argument to which they objected, seemed to her as
natural to the male sex as wearing boots and felt hats.

After many years, Madame de Rênal had still failed to acclimatize
herself to those monied people in whose society she had to live.

Hence the success of the little peasant Julien. She found in the
sympathy of this proud and noble soul a sweet enjoyment which had all
the glamour and fascination of novelty.

Madame de Rênal soon forgave him that extreme ignorance, which
constituted but an additional charm, and the roughness of his manner
which she succeeded in correcting. She thought that he was worth
listening to, even when the conversation turned on the most ordinary
events, even in fact when it was only a question of a poor dog which
had been crushed as he crossed the street by a peasant's cart going
at a trot. The sight of the dog's pain made her husband indulge in
his coarse laugh, while she noticed Julien frown, with his fine black
eyebrows which were so beautifully arched.

Little by little, it seemed to her that generosity, nobility of soul
and humanity were to be found in nobody else except this young abbé.
She felt for him all the sympathy and even all the admiration which
those virtues excite in well-born souls.

If the scene had been Paris, Julien's position towards Madame de Rênal
would have been soon simplified. But at Paris, love is a creature of
novels. The young tutor and his timid mistress would soon have found
the elucidation of their position in three or four novels, and even
in the couplets of the Gymnase Theatre. The novels which have traced
out for them the part they would play, and showed them the model which
they were to imitate, and Julien would sooner or later have been forced
by his vanity to follow that model, even though it had given him no
pleasure and had perhaps actually gone against the grain.

If the scene had been laid in a small town in Aveyron or the Pyrenees,
the slightest episode would have been rendered crucial by the fiery
condition of the atmosphere. But under our more gloomy skies, a poor
young man who is only ambitious because his natural refinement makes
him feel the necessity of some of those joys which only money can give,
can see every day a woman of thirty who is sincerely virtuous, is
absorbed in her children, and never goes to novels for her examples of
conduct. Everything goes slowly, everything happens gradually, in the
provinces where there is far more naturalness.

Madame de Rênal was often overcome to the point of tears when she
thought of the young tutor's poverty. Julien surprised her one day
actually crying.

"Oh Madame! has any misfortune happened to you?"

"No, my friend," she answered, "call the children, let us go for a
walk."

She took his arm and leant on it in a manner that struck Julien as
singular. It was the first time she had called Julien "My friend."

Towards the end of the walk, Julien noticed that she was blushing
violently. She slackened her pace.

"You have no doubt heard," she said, without looking at him, "that I
am the only heiress of a very rich aunt who lives at Besançon. She
loads me with presents.... My sons are getting on so wonderfully that
I should like to ask you to accept a small present as a token of my
gratitude. It is only a matter of a few louis to enable you to get
some linen. But--" she added, blushing still more, and she left off
speaking--

"But what, Madame?" said Julien.

"It is unnecessary," she went on lowering her head, "to mention this to
my husband."

"I may not be big, Madame, but I am not mean," answered Julien,
stopping, and drawing himself up to his full height, with his
eyes shining with rage, "and this is what you have not realised
sufficiently. I should be lower than a menial if I were to put myself
in the position of concealing from M de. Rênal anything at all having
to do with my money."

Madame de Rênal was thunderstruck.

"The Mayor," went on Julien, "has given me on five occasions sums of
thirty-six francs since I have been living in his house. I am ready
to show any account-book to M. de Rênal and anyone else, even to M.
Valenod who hates me."

As the result of this outburst, Madame de Rênal remained pale and
nervous, and the walk ended without either one or the other finding any
pretext for renewing the conversation. Julien's proud heart had found
it more and more impossible to love Madame de Rênal.

As for her, she respected him, she admired him, and she had been
scolded by him. Under the pretext of making up for the involuntary
humiliation which she had caused him, she indulged in acts of the most
tender solicitude. The novelty of these attentions made Madame de
Rênal happy for eight days. Their effect was to appease to some extent
Julien's anger. He was far from seeing anything in them in the nature
of a fancy for himself personally.

"That is just what rich people are," he said to himself--"they snub you
and then they think they can make up for everything by a few monkey
tricks."

Madame de Rênal's heart was too full, and at the same time too
innocent, for her not too tell her husband, in spite of her resolutions
not to do so, about the offer she had made to Julien, and the manner in
which she had been rebuffed.

"How on earth," answered M. de Rênal, keenly piqued, "could you put
up with a refusal on the part of a servant,"--and, when Madame de
Rênal protested against the word "Servant," "I am using, madam, the
words of the late Prince of Condé, when he presented his Chamberlains
to his new wife. 'All these people' he said 'are servants.' I have
also read you this passage from the Memoirs of Besenval, a book which
is indispensable on all questions of etiquette. 'Every person, not
a gentleman, who lives in your house and receives a salary is your
servant.' I'll go and say a few words to M. Julien and give him a
hundred francs."

"Oh, my dear," said Madame De Rênal trembling, "I hope you won't do it
before the servants!"

"Yes, they might be jealous and rightly so," said her husband as he
took his leave, thinking of the greatness of the sum.

Madame de Rênal fell on a chair almost fainting in her anguish. He is
going to humiliate Julien, and it is my fault! She felt an abhorrence
for her husband and hid her face in her hands. She resolved that
henceforth she would never make any more confidences.

When she saw Julien again she was trembling all over. Her chest was so
cramped that she could not succeed in pronouncing a single word. In her
embarrassment she took his hands and pressed them.

"Well, my friend," she said to him at last, "are you satisfied with my
husband?"

"How could I be otherwise," answered Julien, with a bitter smile, "he
has given me a hundred francs."

Madame de Rênal looked at him doubtfully.

"Give me your arm," she said at last, with a courageous intonation that
Julien had not heard before.

She dared to go as far as the shop of the bookseller of Verrières, in
spite of his awful reputation for Liberalism. In the shop she chose
ten louis worth of books for a present for her sons. But these books
were those which she knew Julien was wanting. She insisted on each
child writing his name then and there in the bookseller's shop in
those books which fell to his lot. While Madame de Rênal was rejoicing
over the kind reparation which she had had the courage to make to
Julien, the latter was overwhelmed with astonishment at the quantity
of books which he saw at the bookseller's. He had never dared to enter
so profane a place. His heart was palpitating. Instead of trying to
guess what was passing in Madame de Rênal's heart he pondered deeply
over the means by which a young theological student could procure
some of those books. Eventually it occurred to him that it would be
possible, with tact, to persuade M. de Rênal that one of the proper
subjects of his sons' curriculum would be the history of the celebrated
gentlemen who had been born in the province. After a month of careful
preparation Julien witnessed the success of this idea. The success was
so great that he actually dared to risk mentioning to M. de Rênal in
conversation, a matter which the noble mayor found disagreeable from
quite another point of view. The suggestion was to contribute to the
fortune of a Liberal by taking a subscription at the bookseller's. M.
de Rênal agreed that it would be wise to give his elder son a first
hand acquaintance with many works which he would hear mentioned in
conversation when he went to the Military School.

But Julien saw that the mayor had determined to go no further. He
suspected some secret reason but could not guess it.

"I was thinking, sir," he said to him one day, "that it would be highly
undesirable for the name of so good a gentleman as a Rênal to appear on
a bookseller's dirty ledger." M. de Rênal's face cleared.

"It would also be a black mark," continued Julien in a more humble
tone, "against a poor theology student if it ever leaked out that his
name had been on the ledger of a bookseller who let out books. The
Liberals might go so far as to accuse me of having asked for the most
infamous books. Who knows if they will not even go so far as to write
the titles of those perverse volumes after my name?" But Julien was
getting off the track. He noticed that the Mayor's physiognomy was
re-assuming its expression of embarrassment and displeasure. Julien was
silent. "I have caught my man," he said to himself.

It so happened that a few days afterwards the elder of the children
asked Julien, in M. de Rênal's presence, about a book which had been
advertised in the _Quotidienne_.

"In order to prevent the Jacobin Party having the slightest pretext for
a score," said the young tutor, "and yet give me the means of answering
M. de Adolphe's question, you can make your most menial servant take
out a subscription at the booksellers."

"That's not a bad idea," said M. de Rênal, who was obviously very
delighted.

"You will have to stipulate all the same," said Julien in that solemn
and almost melancholy manner which suits some people so well when they
see the realization of matters which they have desired for a long time
past, "you will have to stipulate that the servant should not take out
any novels. Those dangerous books, once they got into the house, might
corrupt Madame de Rênal's maids, and even the servant himself."

"You are forgetting the political pamphlets," went on M. de Rênal with
an important air. He was anxious to conceal the admiration with which
the cunning "middle course" devised by his children's tutor had filled
him.

In this way Julien's life was made up of a series of little acts of
diplomacy, and their success gave him far more food for thought than
the marked manifestation of favouritism which he could have read at any
time in Madame de Rênal's heart, had he so wished.

The psychological position in which he had found himself all his
life was renewed again in the mayor of Verrières' house. Here in the
same way as at his father's saw-mill, he deeply despised the people
with whom he lived, and was hated by them. He saw every day in the
conversation of the sub-perfect, M. Valenod and the other friends of
the family, about things which had just taken place under their very
eyes, how little ideas corresponded to reality. If an action seemed to
Julien worthy of admiration, it was precisely that very action which
would bring down upon itself the censure of the people with whom he
lived. His inner mental reply always was, "What beasts or what fools!"
The joke was that, in spite of all his pride, he often understood
absolutely nothing what they were talking about.

Throughout his whole life he had only spoken sincerely to the old
Surgeon-Major.

The few ideas he had were about Buonaparte's Italian Campaigns or else
surgery. His youthful courage revelled in the circumstantial details of
the most terrible operations. He said to himself.

"I should not have flinched."

The first time that Madame de Rênal tried to enter into conversation
independently of the children's education, he began to talk of surgical
operations. She grew pale and asked him to leave off. Julien knew
nothing beyond that.

So it came about that, though he passed his life in Madame de Rênal's
company, the most singular silence would reign between them as soon as
they were alone.

When he was in the salon, she noticed in his eyes, in spite of all the
humbleness of his demeanour, an air of intellectual superiority towards
everyone who came to visit her. If she found herself alone with him for
a single moment, she saw that he was palpably embarrassed. This made
her feel uneasy, for her woman's instinct caused her to realise that
this embarrassment was not inspired by any tenderness.

Owing to some mysterious idea, derived from some tale of good society,
such as the old Surgeon-Major had seen it, Julien felt humiliated
whenever the conversation languished on any occasion when he found
himself in a woman's society, as though the particular pause were his
own special fault. This sensation was a hundred times more painful in
_tête-à-tête_. His imagination, full as it was of the most extravagant
and most Spanish ideas of what a man ought to say when he is alone
with a woman, only suggested to the troubled youth things which were
absolutely impossible. His soul was in the clouds. Nevertheless he was
unable to emerge from this most humiliating silence. Consequently,
during his long walks with Madame de Rênal and the children, the
severity of his manner was accentuated by the poignancy of his
sufferings. He despised himself terribly. If, by any luck, he made
himself speak, he came out with the most absurd things. To put the
finishing touch on his misery, he saw his own absurdity and exaggerated
its extent, but what he did not see was the expression in his eyes,
which were so beautiful and betokened so ardent a soul, that like good
actors, they sometimes gave charm to something which is really devoid
of it.

Madame de Rênal noticed that when he was alone with her he never
chanced to say a good thing except when he was taken out of himself
by some unexpected event, and consequently forgot to try and turn a
compliment. As the friends of the house did not spoil her by regaling
her with new and brilliant ideas, she enjoyed with delight all the
flashes of Julien's intellect.

After the fall of Napoleon, every appearance of gallantry has been
severely exiled from provincial etiquette. People are frightened of
losing their jobs. All rascals look to the religious order for support,
and hypocrisy has made firm progress even among the Liberal classes.
One's ennui is doubled. The only pleasures left are reading and
agriculture.

Madame de Rênal, the rich heiress of a devout aunt, and married at
sixteen to a respectable gentleman, had never felt or seen in her whole
life anything that had the slightest resemblance in the whole world
to love. Her confessor, the good curé Chélan, had once mentioned love
to her, in discussing the advances of M. de Valenod, and had drawn so
loathsome a picture of the passion that the word now stood to her for
nothing but the most abject debauchery. She had regarded love, such
as she had come across it, in the very small number of novels with
which chance had made her acquainted, as an exception if not indeed as
something absolutely abnormal. It was, thanks to this ignorance, that
Madame de Rênal, although incessantly absorbed in Julien, was perfectly
happy, and never thought of reproaching herself in the slightest.




CHAPTER VIII

LITTLE EPISODES


    "Then there were sighs, the deeper for suppression,
    And stolen glances sweeter for the theft,
    And burning blushes, though for no transgression."
                                 _Don Juan_, c. I, st. 74.


It was only when Madame de Rênal began to think of her maid Elisa
that there was some slight change in that angelic sweetness which she
owed both to her natural character and her actual happiness. The girl
had come into a fortune, went to confess herself to the curé Chélan
and confessed to him her plan of marrying Julien. The curé was truly
rejoiced at his friend's good fortune, but he was extremely surprised
when Julien resolutely informed him that Mademoiselle Elisa's offer
could not suit him.

"Beware, my friend, of what is passing within your heart," said the
curé with a frown, "I congratulate you on your mission, if that is the
only reason why you despise a more than ample fortune. It is fifty-six
years since I was first curé of Verrières, and yet I shall be turned
out, according to all appearances. I am distressed by it, and yet my
income amounts to eight hundred francs. I inform you of this detail so
that you may not be under any illusions as to what awaits you in your
career as a priest. If you think of paying court to the men who enjoy
power, your eternal damnation is assured. You may make your fortune,
but you will have to do harm to the poor, flatter the sub-prefect,
the mayor, the man who enjoys prestige, and pander to his passion;
this conduct, which in the world is called knowledge of life, is not
absolutely incompatible with salvation so far as a layman is concerned;
but in our career we have to make a choice; it is a question of making
one's fortune either in this world or the next; there is no middle
course. Come, my dear friend, reflect, and come back in three days with
a definite answer. I am pained to detect that there is at the bottom
of your character a sombre passion which is far from indicating to me
that moderation and that perfect renunciation of earthly advantages so
necessary for a priest; I augur well of your intellect, but allow me to
tell you," added the good curé with tears in his eyes, "I tremble for
your salvation in your career as a priest."

Julien was ashamed of his emotion; he found himself loved for the first
time in his life; he wept with delight; and went to hide his tears in
the great woods behind Verrières.

"Why am I in this position?" he said to himself at last, "I feel that
I would give my life a hundred times over for this good curé Chélan,
and he has just proved to me that I am nothing more than a fool. It
is especially necessary for me to deceive him, and he manages to find
me out. The secret ardour which he refers to is my plan of making my
fortune. He thinks I am unworthy of being a priest, that too, just when
I was imagining that my sacrifice of fifty louis would give him the
very highest idea of my piety and devotion to my mission."

"In future," continued Julien, "I will only reckon on those elements in
my character which I have tested. Who could have told me that I should
find any pleasure in shedding tears? How I should like some one to
convince me that I am simply a fool!"

Three days later, Julien found the excuse with which he ought to have
been prepared on the first day; the excuse was a piece of calumny, but
what did it matter? He confessed to the curé, with a great deal of
hesitation, that he had been persuaded from the suggested union by a
reason he could not explain, inasmuch as it tended to damage a third
party. This was equivalent to impeaching Elisa's conduct. M. Chélan
found that his manner betrayed a certain worldly fire which was very
different from that which ought to have animated a young acolyte.

"My friend," he said to him again, "be a good country citizen,
respected and educated, rather than a priest without a true mission."

So far as words were concerned, Julien answered these new remonstrances
very well. He managed to find the words which a young and ardent
seminarist would have employed, but the tone in which he pronounced
them, together with the thinly concealed fire which blazed in his eye,
alarmed M. Chélan.

You must not have too bad an opinion of Julien's prospects. He
invented with correctness all the words suitable to a prudent and
cunning hypocrisy. It was not bad for his age. As for his tone and his
gestures, he had spent his life with country people; he had never been
given an opportunity of seeing great models. Consequently, as soon as
he was given a chance of getting near such gentlemen, his gestures
became as admirable as his words.

Madame de Rênal was astonished that her maid's new fortune did not
make her more happy. She saw her repeatedly going to the curé and
coming back with tears in her eyes. At last Elisa talked to her of her
marriage.

Madame de Rênal thought she was ill. A kind of fever prevented her from
sleeping. She only lived when either her maid or Julien were in sight.
She was unable to think of anything except them and the happiness
which they would find in their home. Her imagination depicted in the
most fascinating colours the poverty of the little house, where they
were to live on their income of fifty louis a year. Julien could quite
well become an advocate at Bray, the sub-prefecture, two leagues from
Verrières. In that case she would see him sometimes. Madame de Rênal
sincerely believed she would go mad. She said so to her husband and
finally fell ill. That very evening when her maid was attending her,
she noticed that the girl was crying. She abhorred Elisa at that
moment, and started to scold her; she then begged her pardon. Elisa's
tears redoubled. She said if her mistress would allow her, she would
tell her all her unhappiness.

"Tell me," answered Madame de Rênal.

"Well, Madame, he refuses me, some wicked people must have spoken badly
about me. He believes them."

"Who refuses you?" said Madame de Rênal, scarcely breathing.

"Who else, Madame, but M. Julien," answered the maid sobbing. "M. the
curé had been unable to overcome his resistance, for M. the curé thinks
that he ought not to refuse an honest girl on the pretext that she
has been a maid. After all, M. Julien's father is nothing more than
a carpenter, and how did he himself earn his living before he was at
Madame's?"

Madame de Rênal stopped listening; her excessive happiness had almost
deprived her of her reason. She made the girl repeat several times
the assurance that Julien had refused her, with a positiveness which
shut the door on the possibility of his coming round to a more prudent
decision.

"I will make a last attempt," she said to her maid. "I will speak to M.
Julien."

The following day, after breakfast, Madame de Rênal indulged in the
delightful luxury of pleading her rival's cause, and of seeing Elisa's
hand and fortune stubbornly refused for a whole hour.

Julien gradually emerged from his cautiously worded answers, and
finished by answering with spirit Madame de Rênal's good advice. She
could not help being overcome by the torrent of happiness which, after
so many days of despair, now inundated her soul. She felt quite ill.
When she had recovered and was comfortably in her own room she sent
everyone away. She was profoundly astonished.

"Can I be in love with Julien?" she finally said to herself. This
discovery, which at any other time would have plunged her into remorse
and the deepest agitation, now only produced the effect of a singular,
but as it were, indifferent spectacle. Her soul was exhausted by all
that she had just gone through, and had no more sensibility to passion
left.

Madame de Rênal tried to work, and fell into a deep sleep; when she
woke up she did not frighten herself so much as she ought to have. She
was too happy to be able to see anything wrong in anything. Naïve and
innocent as she was, this worthy provincial woman had never tortured
her soul in her endeavours to extract from it a little sensibility to
some new shade of sentiment or unhappiness. Entirely absorbed as she
had been before Julien's arrival with that mass of work which falls
to the lot of a good mistress of a household away from Paris, Madame
de Rênal thought of passion in the same way in which we think of a
lottery: a certain deception, a happiness sought after by fools.

The dinner bell rang. Madame de Rênal blushed violently. She heard the
voice of Julien who was bringing in the children. Having grown somewhat
adroit since her falling in love, she complained of an awful headache
in order to explain her redness.

"That's just like what all women are," answered M. de Rênal with a
coarse laugh. "Those machines have always got something or other to be
put right."

Although she was accustomed to this type of wit, Madame de Rênal was
shocked by the tone of voice. In order to distract herself, she looked
at Julien's physiognomy; he would have pleased her at this particular
moment, even if he had been the ugliest man imaginable.

M. de Rênal, who always made a point of copying the habits of the
gentry of the court, established himself at Vergy in the first fine
days of the spring; this is the village rendered celebrated by the
tragic adventure of Gabrielle. A hundred paces from the picturesque
ruin of the old Gothic church, M. de Rênal owns an old château with its
four towers and a garden designed like the one in the Tuileries with
a great many edging verges of box and avenues of chestnut trees which
are cut twice in the year. An adjacent field, crowded with apple trees,
served for a promenade. Eight or ten magnificent walnut trees were at
the end of the orchard. Their immense foliage went as high as perhaps
eighty feet.

"Each of these cursed walnut trees," M. de Rênal was in the habit of
saying, whenever his wife admired them, "costs me the harvest of at
least half an acre; corn cannot grow under their shade."

Madame de Rênal found the sight of the country novel: her admiration
reached the point of enthusiasm. The sentiment by which she was
animated gave her both ideas and resolution. M. de Rênal had returned
to the town, for mayoral business, two days after their arrival in
Vergy. But Madame de Rênal engaged workmen at her own expense. Julien
had given her the idea of a little sanded path which was to go round
the orchard and under the big walnut trees, and render it possible
for the children to take their walk in the very earliest hours of the
morning without getting their feet wet from the dew. This idea was put
into execution within twenty-four hours of its being conceived. Madame
de Rênal gaily spent the whole day with Julien in supervising the
workmen.

When the Mayor of Verrières came back from the town he was very
surprised to find the avenue completed. His arrival surprised Madame
de Rênal as well. She had forgotten his existence. For two months
he talked with irritation about the boldness involved in making so
important a repair without consulting him, but Madame de Rênal had had
it executed at her own expense, a fact which somewhat consoled him.

She spent her days in running about the orchard with her children,
and in catching butterflies. They had made big hoods of clear gauze
with which they caught the poor _lepidoptera_. This is the barbarous
name which Julien taught Madame de Rênal. For she had had M. Godart's
fine work ordered from Besançon, and Julien used to tell her about the
strange habits of the creatures.

They ruthlessly transfixed them by means of pins in a great cardboard
box which Julien had prepared.

Madame de Rênal and Julien had at last a topic of conversation; he was
no longer exposed to the awful torture that had been occasioned by
their moments of silence.

They talked incessantly and with extreme interest, though always about
very innocent matters. This gay, full, active life, pleased the fancy
of everyone, except Mademoiselle Elisa who found herself overworked.
Madame had never taken so much trouble with her dress, even at carnival
time, when there is a ball at Verrières, she would say; she changes her
gowns two or three times a day.

As it is not our intention to flatter anyone, we do not propose to
deny that Madame de Rênal, who had a superb skin, arranged her gowns
in such a way as to leave her arms and her bosom very exposed. She was
extremely well made, and this style of dress suited her delightfully.

"You have never been _so young_, Madame," her Verrières friends would
say to her, when they came to dinner at Vergy (this is one of the local
expressions).

It is a singular thing, and one which few amongst us will believe, but
Madame de Rênal had no specific object in taking so much trouble. She
found pleasure in it and spent all the time which she did not pass in
hunting butterflies with the children and Julien, in working with Elisa
at making gowns, without giving the matter a further thought. Her only
expedition to Verrières was caused by her desire to buy some new summer
gowns which had just come from Mulhouse.

She brought back to Vergy a young woman who was a relative of hers.
Since her marriage, Madame de Rênal had gradually become attached to
Madame Derville, who had once been her school mate at the _Sacré Cœur_.

Madame Derville laughed a great deal at what she called her cousin's
mad ideas: "I would never have thought of them alone," she said. When
Madame de Rênal was with her husband, she was ashamed of those sudden
ideas, which, are called sallies in Paris, and thought them quite
silly: but Madame Derville's presence gave her courage. She would start
to telling her her thoughts in a timid voice, but after the ladies
had been alone for a long time, Madame de Rênal's brain became more
animated, and a long morning spent together by the two friends passed
like a second, and left them in the best of spirits. On this particular
journey, however, the acute Madame Derville thought her cousin much
less merry, but much more happy than usual.

Julien, on his side, had since coming to the country lived like an
absolute child, and been as happy as his pupils in running after
the butterflies. After so long a period of constraint and wary
diplomacy, he was at last alone and far from human observation; he
was instinctively free from any apprehension on the score of Madame
de Rênal, and abandoned himself to the sheer pleasure of being alive,
which is so keen at so young an age, especially among the most
beautiful mountains in the world.

Ever since Madame Derville's arrival, Julien thought that she was his
friend; he took the first opportunity of showing her the view from the
end of the new avenue, under the walnut tree; as a matter of fact it is
equal, if not superior, to the most wonderful views that Switzerland
and the Italian lakes can offer. If you ascend the steep slope which
commences some paces from there, you soon arrive at great precipices
fringed by oak forests, which almost jut on to the river. It was to the
peaked summits of these rocks that Julien, who was now happy, free, and
king of the household into the bargain, would take the two friends, and
enjoy their admiration these sublime views.

"To me it's like Mozart's music," Madame Derville would say.

The country around Verrières had been spoilt for Julien by the jealousy
of his brothers and the presence of a tyranous and angry father. He
was free from these bitter memories at Vergy; for the first time in
his life, he failed to see an enemy. When, as frequently happened, M.
de Rênal was in town, he ventured to read; soon, instead of reading at
night time, a procedure, moreover, which involved carefully hiding his
lamp at the bottom of a flower-pot turned upside down, he was able to
indulge in sleep; in the day, however, in the intervals between the
children's lessons, he would come among these rocks with that book
which was the one guide of his conduct and object of his enthusiasm. He
found in it simultaneously happiness, ecstasy and consolation for his
moments of discouragement.

Certain remarks of Napoleon about women, several discussions about the
merits of the novels which were fashionable in his reign, furnished him
now for the first time with some ideas which any other young man of his
age would have had for a long time.

The dog days arrived. They started the habit of spending the evenings
under an immense pine tree some yards from the house. The darkness was
profound. One evening, Julien was speaking and gesticulating, enjoying
to the full the pleasure of being at his best when talking to young
women; in one of his gestures, he touched the hand of Madame de Rênal
which was leaning on the back of one of those chairs of painted wood,
which are so frequently to be seen in gardens.

The hand was quickly removed, but Julien thought it a point of duty
to secure that that hand should not be removed when he touched it.
The idea of a duty to be performed and the consciousness of his
stultification, or rather of his social inferiority, if he should fail
in achieving it, immediately banished all pleasure from his heart.




CHAPTER IX

AN EVENING IN THE COUNTRY


        M. Guérin's Dido, a charming sketch!--_Strombeck_.


His expression was singular when he saw Madame de Rênal the next
day; he watched her like an enemy with whom he would have to fight a
duel. These looks, which were so different from those of the previous
evening, made Madame de Rênal lose her head; she had been kind to him
and he appeared angry. She could not take her eyes off his.

Madame Derville's presence allowed Julien to devote less time to
conversation, and more time to thinking about what he had in his mind.
His one object all this day was to fortify himself by reading the
inspired book that gave strength to his soul.

He considerably curtailed the children's lessons, and when Madame de
Rênal's presence had effectually brought him back to the pursuit of his
ambition, he decided that she absolutely must allow her hand to rest in
his that evening.

The setting of the sun which brought the crucial moment nearer and
nearer made Julien's heart beat in a strange way. Night came. He
noticed with a joy, which took an immense weight off his heart, that
it was going to be very dark. The sky, which was laden with big clouds
that had been brought along by a sultry wind, seemed to herald a storm.
The two friends went for their walk very late. All they did that night
struck Julien as strange. They were enjoying that hour which seems to
give certain refined souls an increased pleasure in loving.

At last they sat down, Madame de Rênal beside Julien, and Madame
Derville near her friend. Engrossed as he was by the attempt which
he was going to make, Julien could think of nothing to say. The
conversation languished.

"Shall I be as nervous and miserable over my first duel?" said Julien
to himself; for he was too suspicious both of himself and of others,
not to realise his own mental state.

In his mortal anguish, he would have preferred any danger whatsoever.
How many times did he not wish some matter to crop up which would
necessitate Madame de Rênal going into the house and leaving the
garden! The violent strain on Julien's nerves was too great for his
voice not to be considerably changed; soon Madame de Rênal's voice
became nervous as well, but Julien did not notice it. The awful battle
raging between duty and timidity was too painful, for him to be in a
position to observe anything outside himself. A quarter to ten had
just struck on the château clock without his having ventured anything.
Julien was indignant at his own cowardice, and said to himself, "at
the exact moment when ten o'clock strikes, I will perform what I have
resolved to do all through the day, or I will go up to my room and blow
out my brains."

After a final moment of expectation and anxiety, during which Julien
was rendered almost beside himself by his excessive emotion, ten
o'clock struck from the clock over his head. Each stroke of the fatal
clock reverberated in his bosom, and caused an almost physical pang.

Finally, when the last stroke of ten was still reverberating, he
stretched out his hand and took Madame de Rênal's, who immediately
withdrew it. Julien, scarcely knowing what he was doing, seized it
again. In spite of his own excitement, he could not help being struck
by the icy coldness of the hand which he was taking; he pressed it
convulsively; a last effort was made to take it away, but in the end
the hand remained in his.

His soul was inundated with happiness, not that he loved Madame de
Rênal, but an awful torture had just ended. He thought it necessary
to say something, to avoid Madame Derville noticing anything. His
voice was now strong and ringing. Madame de Rênal's, on the contrary,
betrayed so much emotion that her friend thought she was ill, and
suggested her going in. Julien scented danger, "if Madame de Rênal goes
back to the salon, I shall relapse into the awful state in which I have
been all day. I have held the hand far too short a time for it really
to count as the scoring of an actual advantage."

At the moment when Madame Derville was repeating her suggestion to
go back to the salon, Julien squeezed vigorously the hand that was
abandoned to him.

Madame de Rênal, who had started to get up, sat down again and said in
a faint voice,

"I feel a little ill, as a matter of fact, but the open air is doing me
good."

These words confirmed Julien's happiness, which at the present moment
was extreme; he spoke, he forgot to pose, and appeared the most
charming man in the world to the two friends who were listening to him.
Nevertheless, there was a slight lack of courage in all this eloquence
which had suddenly come upon him. He was mortally afraid that Madame
Derville would get tired of the wind before the storm, which was
beginning to rise, and want to go back alone into the salon. He would
then have remained _tête-à-tête_ with Madame de Rênal. He had had,
almost by accident that blind courage which is sufficient for action;
but he felt that it was out of his power to speak the simplest word to
Madame de Rênal. He was certain that, however slight her reproaches
might be, he would nevertheless be worsted, and that the advantage he
had just won would be destroyed.

Luckily for him on this evening, his moving and emphatic speeches found
favour with Madame Derville, who very often found him as clumsy as a
child and not at all amusing. As for Madame de Rênal, with her hand in
Julien's, she did not have a thought; she simply allowed herself to go
on living.

The hours spent under this great pine tree, planted by by Charles the
Bold according to the local tradition, were a real period of happiness.
She listened with delight to the soughing of the wind in the thick
foliage of the pine tree and to the noise of some stray drops which
were beginning to fall upon the leaves which were lowest down. Julien
failed to notice one circumstance which, if he had, would have quickly
reassured him; Madame de Rênal, who had been obliged to take away her
hand, because she had got up to help her cousin to pick up a flower-pot
which the wind had knocked over at her feet, had scarcely sat down
again before she gave him her hand with scarcely any difficulty and as
though it had already been a pre-arranged thing between them.

Midnight had struck a long time ago; it was at last necessary to leave
the garden; they separated. Madame de Rênal swept away as she was, by
the happiness of loving, was so completely ignorant of the world that
she scarcely reproached herself at all. Her happiness deprived her of
her sleep. A leaden sleep overwhelmed Julien who was mortally fatigued
by the battle which timidity and pride had waged in his heart all
through the day.

He was called at five o'clock on the following day and scarcely gave
Madame de Rênal a single thought.

He had accomplished his duty, and a heroic duty too. The consciousness
of this filled him with happiness; he locked himself in his room, and
abandoned himself with quite a new pleasure to reading exploits of his
hero.

When the breakfast bell sounded, the reading of the Bulletins of the
Great Army had made him forget all his advantages of the previous day.
He said to himself flippantly, as he went down to the salon, "I must
tell that woman that I am in love with her." Instead of those looks
brimful of pleasure which he was expecting to meet, he found the stern
visage of M. de Rênal, who had arrived from Verrières two hours ago,
and did not conceal his dissatisfaction at Julien's having passed the
whole morning without attending to the children. Nothing could have
been more sordid than this self-important man when he was in a bad
temper and thought that he could safely show it.

Each harsh word of her husband pierced Madame de Rênal's heart.

As for Julien, he was so plunged in his ecstasy, and still so engrossed
by the great events which had been passing before his eyes for several
hours, that he had some difficulty at first in bringing his attention
sufficiently down to listen to the harsh remarks which M. de Rênal was
addressing to him. He said to him at last, rather abruptly,

"I was ill."

The tone of this answer would have stung a much less sensitive man than
the mayor of Verrières. He half thought of answering Julien by turning
him out of the house straight away. He was only restrained by the
maxim which he had prescribed for himself, of never hurrying unduly in
business matters.

"The young fool," he said to himself shortly afterwards, "has won a
kind of reputation in my house. That man Valenod may take him into his
family, or he may quite well marry Elisa, and in either case, he will
be able to have the laugh of me in his heart."

In spite of the wisdom of these reflections, M. de Rênal's
dissatisfaction did not fail to vent itself any the less by a string
of coarse insults which gradually irritated Julien. Madame de Rênal
was on the point of bursting into tears. Breakfast was scarcely over,
when she asked Julien to give her his arm for a walk. She leaned on him
affectionately. Julien could only answer all that Madame de Rênal said
to him by whispering.

"_That's what rich people are like!_"

M. de Rênal was walking quite close to them; his presence increased
Julien's anger. He suddenly noticed that Madame de Rênal was leaning on
his arm in a manner which was somewhat marked. This horrified him, and
he pushed her violently away and disengaged his arm.

Luckily, M. de Rênal did not see this new piece of impertinence; it was
only noticed by Madame Derville. Her friend burst into tears. M. de
Rênal now started to chase away by a shower of stones a little peasant
girl who had taken a private path crossing a corner of the orchard.
"Monsieur Julien, restrain yourself, I pray you. Remember that we all
have our moments of temper," said madame Derville rapidly.

Julien looked at her coldly with eyes in which the most supreme
contempt was depicted.

This look astonished Madame Derville, and it would have surprised
her even more if she had appreciated its real expression; she would
have read in it something like a vague hope of the most atrocious
vengeance. It is, no doubt, such moments of humiliation which have made
Robespierres.

"Your Julien is very violent; he frightens me," said Madame Derville to
her friend, in a low voice.

"He is right to be angry," she answered. "What does it matter if
he does pass a morning without speaking to the children, after the
astonishing progress which he has made them make. One must admit that
men are very hard."

For the first time in her life Madame de Rênal experienced a kind
of desire for vengeance against her husband. The extreme hatred of
the rich by which Julien was animated was on the point of exploding.
Luckily, M. de Rênal called his gardener, and remained occupied
with him in barring by faggots of thorns the private road through
the orchard. Julien did not vouchsafe any answer to the kindly
consideration of which he was the object during all the rest of the
walk. M. de Rênal had scarcely gone away before the two friends made
the excuse of being fatigued, and each asked him for an arm.

Walking as he did between these two women whose extreme nervousness
filled their cheeks with a blushing embarrassment, the haughty pallor
and sombre, resolute air of Julien formed a strange contrast. He
despised these women and all tender sentiments.

"What!" he said to himself, "not even an income of five hundred francs
to finish my studies! Ah! how I should like to send them packing."

And absorbed as he was by these stern ideas, such few courteous words
of his two friends as he deigned to take the trouble to understand,
displeased him as devoid of sense, silly, feeble, in a word--feminine.

As the result of speaking for the sake of speaking and of endeavouring
to keep the conversation alive, it came about that Madame de Rênal
mentioned that her husband had come from Verrières because he had made
a bargain for the May straw with one of his farmers. (In this district
it is the May straw with which the bed mattresses are filled).

"My husband will not rejoin us," added Madame de Rênal; "he will occupy
himself with finishing the re-stuffing of the house mattresses with
the help of the gardener and his valet. He has put the May straw this
morning in all the beds on the first storey; he is now at the second."

Julien changed colour. He looked at Madame de Rênal in a singular way,
and soon managed somehow to take her on one side, doubling his pace.
Madame Derville allowed them to get ahead.

"Save my life," said Julien to Madame de Rênal; "only you can do it,
for you know that the valet hates me desperately. I must confess to
you, madame, that I have a portrait. I have hidden it in the mattress
of my bed."

At these words Madame de Rênal in her turn became pale.

"Only you, Madame, are able at this moment to go into my room, feel
about without their noticing in the corner of the mattress; it
is nearest the window. You will find a small, round box of black
cardboard, very glossy."

"Does it contain a portrait?" said Madame de Rênal, scarcely able to
hold herself upright.

Julien noticed her air of discouragement, and at once proceeded to
exploit it.

"I have a second favour to ask you, madame. I entreat you not to look
at that portrait; it is my secret."

"It is a secret," repeated Madame de Rênal in a faint voice.

But though she had been brought up among people who are proud of their
fortune and appreciative of nothing except money, love had already
instilled generosity into her soul. Truly wounded as she was, it was
with an air of the most simple devotion that Madame de Rênal asked
Julien the questions necessary to enable her to fulfil her commission.

"So" she said to him as she went away, "it is a little round box of
black cardboard, very glossy."

"Yes, Madame," answered Julien, with that hardness which danger gives
to men.

She ascended the second storey of the château as pale as though she had
been going to her death. Her misery was completed by the sensation that
she was on the verge of falling ill, but the necessity of doing Julien
a service restored her strength.

"I must have that box," she said to herself, as she doubled her pace.

She heard her husband speaking to the valet in Julien's very room.
Happily, they passed into the children's room. She lifted up the
mattress, and plunged her hand into the stuffing so violently that she
bruised her fingers. But, though she was very sensitive to slight pain
of this kind, she was not conscious of it now, for she felt almost
simultaneously the smooth surface of the cardboard box. She seized it
and disappeared.

She had scarcely recovered from the fear of being surprised by her
husband than the horror with which this box inspired her came within an
ace of positively making her feel ill.

"So Julien is in love, and I hold here the portrait of the woman whom
he loves!"

Seated on the chair in the ante-chamber of his apartment, Madame
de Rênal fell a prey to all the horrors of jealousy. Her extreme
ignorance, moreover, was useful to her at this juncture; her
astonishment mitigated her grief. Julien seized the box without
thanking her or saying a single word, and ran into his room, where
he lit a fire and immediately burnt it. He was pale and in a state
of collapse. He exaggerated the extent of the danger which he had
undergone.

"Finding Napoleon's portrait," he said to himself, "in the possession
of a man who professes so great a hate for the usurper! Found, too,
by M. de Rênal, who is so great an _ultra_, and is now in a state of
irritation, and, to complete my imprudence, lines written in my own
handwriting on the white cardboard behind the portrait, lines, too,
which can leave no doubt on the score of my excessive admiration. And
each of these transports of love is dated. There was one the day before
yesterday."

"All my reputation collapsed and shattered in a moment," said Julien
to himself as he watched the box burn, "and my reputation is my only
asset. It is all I have to live by--and what a life to, by heaven!"

An hour afterwards, this fatigue, together with the pity which he felt
for himself made him inclined to be more tender. He met Madame de Rênal
and took her hand, which he kissed with more sincerity than he had
ever done before. She blushed with happiness and almost simultaneously
rebuffed Julien with all the anger of jealousy. Julien's pride which
had been so recently wounded made him act foolishly at this juncture.
He saw in Madame de Rênal nothing but a rich woman, he disdainfully let
her hand fall and went away. He went and walked about meditatively in
the garden. Soon a bitter smile appeared on his lips.

"Here I am walking about as serenely as a man who is master of his own
time. I am not bothering about the children! I am exposing myself to M.
de Rênal's humiliating remarks, and he will be quite right." He ran to
the children's room. The caresses of the youngest child, whom he loved
very much, somewhat calmed his agony.

"He does not despise me yet," thought Julien. But he soon reproached
himself for this alleviation of his agony as though it were a new
weakness. The children caress me just in the same way in which they
would caress the young hunting-hound which was bought yesterday.




CHAPTER X

A GREAT HEART AND A SMALL FORTUNE


    But passion most disembles, yet betrays,
    Even by its darkness, as the blackest sky
    Foretells the heaviest tempest.
                           _Don Juan_, c. 4, st. 75.


M. De Rênal was going through all the rooms in the château, and he came
back into the children's room with the servants who were bringing back
the stuffings of the mattresses. The sudden entry of this man had the
effect on Julien of the drop of water which makes the pot overflow.

Looking paler and more sinister than usual, he rushed towards him. M.
de Rênal stopped and looked at his servants.

"Monsieur," said Julien to him, "Do you think your children would have
made the progress they have made with me with any other tutor? If you
answer 'No,'" continued Julien so quickly that M. de Rênal did not have
time to speak, "how dare you reproach me with neglecting them?"

M. de Rênal, who had scarcely recovered from his fright, concluded from
the strange tone he saw this little peasant assume, that he had some
advantageous offer in his pocket, and that he was going to leave him.

The more he spoke the more Julien's anger increased, "I can live
without you, Monsieur," he added.

"I am really sorry to see you so upset," answered M. de Rênal
shuddering a little. The servants were ten yards off engaged in making
the beds.

"That is not what I mean, Monsieur," replied Julien quite beside
himself. "Think of the infamous words that you have addressed to me,
and before women too."

M. de Rênal understood only too well what Julien was asking, and a
painful conflict tore his soul. It happened that Julien, who was really
mad with rage, cried out,

"I know where to go, Monsieur, when I leave your house."

At these words M. de Rênal saw Julien installed with M. Valenod. "Well,
sir," he said at last with a sigh, just as though he had called in
a surgeon to perform the most painful operation, "I accede to your
request. I will give you fifty francs a month. Starting from the day
after to-morrow which is the first of the month."

Julien wanted to laugh, and stood there dumbfounded. All his anger had
vanished.

"I do not despise the brute enough," he said to himself. "I have no
doubt that that is the greatest apology that so base a soul can make."

The children who had listened to this scene with gaping mouths, ran
into the garden to tell their mother that M. Julien was very angry, but
that he was going to have fifty francs a month.

Julien followed them as a matter of habit without even looking at M. de
Rênal whom he left in a considerable state of irritation.

"That makes one hundred and sixty-eight francs," said the mayor to
himself, "that M. Valenod has cost me. I must absolutely speak a few
strong words to him about his contract to provide for the foundlings."

A minute afterwards Julien found himself opposite M. de Rênal.

"I want to speak to M. Chélan on a matter of conscience. I have the
honour to inform you that I shall be absent some hours."

"Why, my dear Julien," said M. de Rênal smiling with the falsest
expression possible, "take the whole day, and to-morrow too if you
like, my good friend. Take the gardener's horse to go to Verrières."

"He is on the very point," said M. de Rênal to himself, "of giving an
answer to Valenod. He has promised me nothing, but I must let this
hot-headed young man have time to cool down."

Julien quickly went away, and went up into the great forest, through
which one can manage to get from Vergy to Verrières. He did not wish
to arrive at M. Chélan's at once. Far from wishing to cramp himself in
a new pose of hypocrisy he needed to see clear in his own soul, and to
give audience to the crowd of sentiments which were agitating him.

"I have won a battle," he said to himself, as soon as he saw that he
was well in the forest, and far from all human gaze. "So I have won a
battle."

This expression shed a rosy light on his situation, and restored him to
some serenity.

"Here I am with a salary of fifty francs a month, M. de Rênal must be
precious afraid, but what of?"

This meditation about what could have put fear into the heart of that
happy, powerful man against whom he had been boiling with rage only
an hour back, completed the restoration to serenity of Julien's soul.
He was almost able to enjoy for a moment the delightful beauty of the
woods amidst which he was walking. Enormous blocks of bare rocks had
fallen down long ago in the middle of the forest by the mountain side.
Great cedars towered almost as high as these rocks whose shade caused a
delicious freshness within three yards of places where the heat of the
sun's rays would have made it impossible to rest.

Julien took breath for a moment in the shade of these great rocks,
and then he began again to climb. Traversing a narrow path that was
scarcely marked, and was only used by the goat herds, he soon found
himself standing upon an immense rock with the complete certainty of
being far away from all mankind. This physical position made him smile.
It symbolised to him the position he was burning to attain in the moral
sphere. The pure air of these lovely mountains filled his soul with
serenity and even with joy. The mayor of Verrières still continued to
typify in his eyes all the wealth and all the arrogance of the earth;
but Julien felt that the hatred that had just thrilled him had nothing
personal about it in spite of all the violence which he had manifested.
If he had left off seeing M. de Rênal he would in eight days have
forgotten him, his castle, his dogs, his children and all his family.
"I forced him, I don't know how, to make the greatest sacrifice. What?
more than fifty crowns a year, and only a minute before I managed to
extricate myself from the greatest danger; so there are two victories
in one day. The second one is devoid of merit, I must find out the why
and the wherefore. But these laborious researches are for to-morrow."

Standing up on his great rock, Julien looked at the sky which was all
afire with an August sun. The grasshoppers sang in the field about the
rock; when they held their peace there was universal silence around
him. He saw twenty leagues of country at his feet. He noticed from
time to time some hawk, which launching off from the great rocks over
his head was describing in silence its immense circles. Julien's eye
followed the bird of prey mechanically. Its tranquil powerful movements
struck him. He envied that strength, that isolation.

"Would Napoleon's destiny be one day his?"




CHAPTER XI

AN EVENING


    Yet Julia's very coldness still was kind,
    And tremulously gently her small hand
    Withdrew itself from his, but left behind
    A little pressure, thrilling, and so bland,
    And slight, so very slight that to the mind,
    'Twas but a doubt.
                        _Don Juan_, c. I. st, 71.


It was necessary, however, to put in an appearance at Verrières. As
Julien left the curé house he was fortunate enough to meet M. Valenod,
whom he hastened to tell of the increase in his salary.

On returning to Vergy, Julien waited till night had fallen before going
down into the garden. His soul was fatigued by the great number of
violent emotions which had agitated him during the day. "What shall I
say to them?" he reflected anxiously, as he thought about the ladies.
He was far from realising that his soul was just in a mood to discuss
those trivial circumstances which usually monopolise all feminine
interests. Julien was often unintelligible to Madame Derville, and even
to her friend, and he in his turn only half understood all that they
said to him. Such was the effect of the force and, if I may venture to
use such language, the greatness of the transports of passion which
overwhelmed the soul of this ambitious youth. In this singular being it
was storm nearly every day.

As he entered the garden this evening, Julien was inclined to take an
interest in what the pretty cousins were thinking. They were waiting
for him impatiently. He took his accustomed seat next to Madame de
Rênal. The darkness soon became profound. He attempted to take hold of
a white hand which he had seen some time near him, as it leant on the
back of a chair. Some hesitation was shewn, but eventually the hand was
withdrawn in a manner which indicated displeasure. Julien was inclined
to give up the attempt as a bad job, and to continue his conversation
quite gaily, when he heard M. de Rênal approaching.

The coarse words he had uttered in the morning were still ringing in
Julien's ears. "Would not taking possession of his wife's hand in his
very presence," he said to himself, "be a good way of scoring off that
creature who has all that life can give him. Yes! I will do it. I, the
very man for whom he has evidenced so great a contempt."

From that moment the tranquillity which was so alien to Julien's real
character quickly disappeared. He was obsessed by an anxious desire
that Madame de Rênal should abandon her hand to him.

M. de Rênal was talking politics with vehemence; two or three
commercial men in Verrières had been growing distinctly richer than he
was, and were going to annoy him over the elections. Madame Derville
was listening to him. Irritated by these tirades, Julien brought his
chair nearer Madame de Rênal. All his movements were concealed by the
darkness. He dared to put his hand very near to the pretty arm which
was left uncovered by the dress. He was troubled and had lost control
of his mind. He brought his face near to that pretty arm and dared to
put his lips on it.

Madame de Rênal shuddered. Her husband was four paces away. She
hastened to give her hand to Julien, and at the same time to push him
back a little. As M. de Rênal was continuing his insults against those
ne'er-do-wells and Jacobins who were growing so rich, Julien covered
the hand which had been abandoned to him with kisses, which were either
really passionate or at any rate seemed so to Madame de Rênal. But
the poor woman had already had the proofs on that same fatal day that
the man whom she adored, without owning it to herself, loved another!
During the whole time Julien had been absent she had been the prey to
an extreme unhappiness which had made her reflect.

"What," she said to herself, "Am I going to love, am I going to be in
love? Am I, a married woman, going to fall in love? But," she said to
herself, "I have never felt for my husband this dark madness, which
never permits of my keeping Julien out of my thoughts. After all, he
is only a child who is full of respect for me. This madness will be
fleeting. In what way do the sentiments which I may have for this young
man concern my husband? M. de Rênal would be bored by the conversations
which I have with Julien on imaginative subjects. As for him, he simply
thinks of his business. I am not taking anything away from him to give
to Julien."

No hypocrisy had sullied the purity of that naïve soul, now swept away
by a passion such as it had never felt before. She deceived herself,
but without knowing it. But none the less, a certain instinct of virtue
was alarmed. Such were the combats which were agitating her when
Julien appeared in the garden. She heard him speak and almost at the
same moment she saw him sit down by her side. Her soul was as it were
transported by this charming happiness which had for the last fortnight
surprised her even more than it had allured. Everything was novel for
her. None the less, she said to herself after some moments, "the mere
presence of Julien is quite enough to blot out all his wrongs." She was
frightened; it was then that she took away her hand.

His passionate kisses, the like of which she had never received before,
made her forget that perhaps he loved another woman. Soon he was no
longer guilty in her eyes. The cessation of that poignant pain which
suspicion had engendered and the presence of a happiness that she had
never even dreamt of, gave her ecstasies of love and of mad gaiety.
The evening was charming for everyone, except the mayor of Verrières,
who was unable to forget his _parvenu_ manufacturers. Julien left off
thinking about his black ambition, or about those plans of his which
were so difficult to accomplish. For the first time in his life he was
led away by the power of beauty. Lost in a sweetly vague reverie, quite
alien to his character, and softly pressing that hand, which he thought
ideally pretty, he half listened to the rustle of the leaves of the
pine trees, swept by the light night breeze, and to the dogs of the
mill on the Doubs, who barked in the distance.

But this emotion was one of pleasure and not passion. As he entered his
room, he only thought of one happiness, that of taking up again his
favourite book. When one is twenty the idea of the world and the figure
to be cut in it dominate everything.

He soon, however, laid down the book. As the result of thinking of the
victories of Napoleon, he had seen a new element in his own victory.
"Yes," he said to himself, "I have won a battle. I must exploit it. I
must crush the pride of that proud gentleman while he is in retreat.
That would be real Napoleon. I must ask him for three days' holiday to
go and see my friend Fouqué. If he refuses me I will threaten to give
him notice, but he will yield the point."

Madame de Rênal could not sleep a wink. It seemed as though, until this
moment, she had never lived. She was unable to distract her thoughts
from the happiness of feeling Julian cover her hand with his burning
kisses.

Suddenly the awful word adultery came into her mind. All the
loathesomeness with which the vilest debauchery can invest sensual love
presented itself to her imagination. These ideas essayed to pollute the
divinely tender image which she was fashioning of Julien, and of the
happiness of loving him. The future began to be painted in terrible
colours. She began to regard herself as contemptible.

That moment was awful. Her soul was arriving in unknown countries.
During the evening she had tasted a novel happiness. Now she found
herself suddenly plunged in an atrocious unhappiness. She had never
had any idea of such sufferings; they troubled her reason. She thought
for a moment of confessing to her husband that she was apprehensive
of loving Julien. It would be an opportunity of speaking of him.
Fortunately her memory threw up a maxim which her aunt had once given
her on the eve of her marriage. The maxim dealt with the danger of
making confidences to a husband, for a husband is after all a master.
She wrung her hands in the excess of her grief. She was driven this way
and that by clashing and painful ideas. At one moment she feared that
she was not loved. The next the awful idea of crime tortured her, as
much as if she had to be exposed in the pillory on the following day in
the public square of Verrières, with a placard to explain her adultery
to the populace.

Madame de Rênal had no experience of life. Even in the full possession
of her faculties, and when fully exercising her reason, she would never
have appreciated any distinction between being guilty in the eyes of
God, and finding herself publicly overwhelmed with the crudest marks of
universal contempt.

When the awful idea of adultery, and of all the disgrace which in her
view that crime brought in its train, left her some rest, she began to
dream of the sweetness of living innocently with Julien as in the days
that had gone by.

She found herself confronted with the horrible idea that Julien loved
another woman. She still saw his pallor when he had feared to lose
her portrait, or to compromise her by exposing it to view. For the
first time she had caught fear on that tranquil and noble visage. He
had never shewn such emotion to her or her children. This additional
anguish reached the maximum of unhappiness which the human soul is
capable of enduring. Unconsciously, Madame de Rênal uttered cries which
woke up her maid. Suddenly she saw the brightness of a light appear
near her bed, and recognized Elisa. "Is it you he loves?" she exclaimed
in her delirium.

Fortunately, the maid was so astonished by the terrible trouble in
which she found her mistress that she paid no attention to this
singular expression. Madame de Rênal appreciated her imprudence.
"I have the fever," she said to her, "and I think I am a little
delirious." Completely woken up by the necessity of controlling
herself, she became less unhappy. Reason regained that supreme control
which the semi-somnolent state had taken away. To free herself from her
maid's continual stare, she ordered her maid to read the paper, and
it was as she listened to the monotonous voice of this girl, reading
a long article from the _Quotidienne_ that Madame de Rênal made the
virtuous resolution to treat Julien with absolute coldness when she saw
him again.




CHAPTER XII

A JOURNEY


        Elegant people are to be found in Paris. People of
        character may exist in the provinces.--Sièyes


At five o'clock the following day, before Madame de Rênal was visible,
Julien obtained a three days' holiday from her husband. Contrary to his
expectation Julien found himself desirous of seeing her again. He kept
thinking of that pretty hand of hers. He went down into the garden, but
Madame de Rênal kept him waiting for a long time. But if Julien had
loved her, he would have seen her forehead glued to the pane behind the
half-closed blinds on the first floor. She was looking at him. Finally,
in spite of her resolutions, she decided to go into the garden. Her
habitual pallor had been succeeded by more lively hues. This woman,
simple as she was, was manifestly agitated; a sentiment of constraint,
and even of anger, altered that expression of profound serenity which
seemed, as it were, to be above all the vulgar interests of life and
gave so much charm to that divine face.

Julien approached her with eagerness, admiring those beautiful arms
which were just visible through a hastily donned shawl. The freshness
of the morning air seemed to accentuate still more the brilliance of
her complexion which the agitation of the past night rendered all the
more susceptible to all impressions. This demure and pathetic beauty,
which was, at the same time, full of thoughts which are never found in
the inferior classes, seemed to reveal to Julien a faculty in his own
soul which he had never before realised. Engrossed in his admiration of
the charms on which his his greedy gaze was riveted, Julien took for
granted the friendly welcome which he was expecting to receive. He was
all the more astonished at the icy coldness which she endeavoured to
manifest to him, and through which he thought he could even distinguish
the intention of putting him in his place.

The smile of pleasure died away from his lips as he remembered his
rank in society, especially from the point of view of a rich and noble
heiress. In a single moment his face exhibited nothing but haughtiness
and anger against himself. He felt violently disgusted that he could
have put off his departure for more than an hour, simply to receive so
humiliating a welcome.

"It is only a fool," he said to himself, "who is angry with others; a
stone falls because it is heavy. Am I going to be a child all my life?
How on earth is it that I manage to contract the charming habit of
showing my real self to those people simply in return for their money?
If I want to win their respect and that of my own self, I must shew
them that it is simply a business transaction between my poverty and
their wealth, but that my heart is a thousand leagues away from their
insolence, and is situated in too high a sphere to be affected by their
petty marks of favour or disdain."

While these feelings were crowding the soul of the young tutor, his
mobile features assumed an expression of ferocity and injured pride.
Madame de Rênal was extremely troubled. The virtuous coldness that she
had meant to put into her welcome was succeeded by an expression of
interest--an interest animated by all the surprise brought about by
the sudden change which she had just seen. The empty morning platitudes
about their health and the fineness of the day suddenly dried up.
Julien's judgment was disturbed by no passion, and he soon found a
means of manifesting to Madame de Rênal how light was the friendly
relationship that he considered existed between them. He said nothing
to her about the little journey that he was going to make; saluted her,
and went away.

As she watched him go, she was overwhelmed by the sombre haughtiness
which she read in that look which had been so gracious the previous
evening. Her eldest son ran up from the bottom of the garden, and said
as he kissed her,

"We have a holiday, M. Julien is going on a journey."

At these words, Madame de Rênal felt seized by a deadly coldness. She
was unhappy by reason of her virtue, and even more unhappy by reason of
her weakness.

This new event engrossed her imagination, and she was transported far
beyond the good resolutions which she owed to the awful night she had
just passed. It was not now a question of resisting that charming
lover, but of losing him for ever.

It was necessary to appear at breakfast. To complete her anguish, M. de
Rênal and Madame Derville talked of nothing but Julien's departure. The
mayor of Verrières had noticed something unusual in the firm tone in
which he had asked for a holiday.

"That little peasant has no doubt got somebody else's offer up his
sleeve, but that somebody else, even though it's M. Valenod, is bound
to be a little discouraged by the sum of six hundred francs, which the
annual salary now tots up to. He must have asked yesterday at Verrières
for a period of three days to think it over, and our little gentleman
runs off to the mountains this morning so as not to be obliged to give
me an answer. Think of having to reckon with a wretched workman who
puts on airs, but that's what we've come to."

"If my husband, who does not know how deeply he has wounded Julien,
thinks that he will leave us, what can I think myself?" said Madame de
Rênal to herself. "Yes, that is all decided." In order to be able at
any rate to be free to cry, and to avoid answering Madame Derville's
questions, she pleaded an awful headache, and went to bed.

"That's what women are," repeated M. de Rênal, "there is always
something out of order in those complicated machines," and he went off
jeering.

While Madame de Rênal was a prey to all the poignancy of the terrible
passion in which chance had involved her, Julien went merrily on his
way, surrounded by the most beautiful views that mountain scenery
can offer. He had to cross the great chain north of Vergy. The path
which he followed rose gradually among the big beech woods, and ran
into infinite spirals on the slope of the high mountain which forms
the northern boundary of the Doubs valley. Soon the traveller's view,
as he passed over the lower slopes bounding the course of the Doubs
towards the south, extends as far as the fertile plains of Burgundy and
Beaujolais. However insensible was the soul of this ambitious youth to
this kind of beauty, he could not help stopping from time to time to
look at a spectacle at once so vast and so impressive.

Finally, he reached the summit of the great mountain, near which
he had to pass in order to arrive by this cross-country route at
the solitary valley where lived his friend Fouqué, the young wood
merchant. Julien was in no hurry to see him; either him, or any other
human being. Hidden like a bird of prey amid the bare rocks which
crowned the great mountain, he could see a long way off anyone coming
near him. He discovered a little grotto in the middle of the almost
vertical slope of one of the rocks. He found a way to it, and was soon
ensconced in this retreat. "Here," he said, "with eyes brilliant with
joy, men cannot hurt me." It occurred to him to indulge in the pleasure
of writing down those thoughts of his which were so dangerous to him
everywhere else. A square stone served him for a desk; his pen flew. He
saw nothing of what was around him. He noticed at last that the sun was
setting behind the distant mountains of Beaujolais.

"Why shouldn't I pass the night here?" he said to himself. "I have
bread, and I am free." He felt a spiritual exultation at the sound of
that great word. The necessity of playing the hypocrite resulted in his
not being free, even at Fouqué's. Leaning his head on his two hands,
Julien stayed in the grotto, more happy than he had ever been in his
life, thrilled by his dreams, and by the bliss of his freedom. Without
realising it, he saw all the rays of the twilight become successively
extinguished. Surrounded by this immense obscurity, his soul wandered
into the contemplation of what he imagined that he would one day meet
in Paris. First it was a woman, much more beautiful and possessed of a
much more refined temperament than anything he could have found in the
provinces. He loved with passion, and was loved. If he separated from
her for some instants, it was only to cover himself with glory, and to
deserve to be loved still more.

A young man brought up in the environment of the sad truths of Paris
society, would, on reaching this point in his romance, even if we
assume him possessed of Julien's imagination, have been brought back
to himself by the cold irony of the situation. Great deeds would have
disappeared from out his ken together with hope of achieving them and
have been succeeded by the platitude. "If one leave one's mistress
one runs alas! the risk of being deceived two or three times a day."
But the young peasant saw nothing but the lack of opportunity between
himself and the most heroic feats.

But a deep night had succeeded the day, and there were still two
leagues to walk before he could descend to the cabin in which Fouqué
lived. Before leaving the little cave, Julien made a light and
carefully burnt all that he had written. He quite astonished his friend
when he knocked at his door at one o'clock in the morning. He found
Fouqué engaged in making up his accounts. He was a young man of high
stature, rather badly made, with big, hard features, a never-ending
nose, and a large fund of good nature concealed beneath this repulsive
appearance.

"Have you quarelled with M. de Rênal then that you turn up unexpectedly
like this?" Julien told him, but in a suitable way, the events of the
previous day.

"Stay with me," said Fouqué to him. "I see that you know M. de Rênal,
M. Valenod, the sub-prefect Maugron, the curé Chélan. You have
understood the subtleties of the character of those people. So there
you are then, quite qualified to attend auctions. You know arithmetic
better than I do; you will keep my accounts; I make a lot in my
business. The impossibility of doing everything myself, and the fear
of taking a rascal for my partner prevents me daily from undertaking
excellent business. It's scarcely a month since I put Michaud de
Saint-Amand, whom I haven't seen for six years, and whom I ran across
at the sale at Pontarlier in the way of making six thousand francs. Why
shouldn't it have been you who made those six thousand francs, or at
any rate three thousand. For if I had had you with me that day, I would
have raised the bidding for that lot of timber and everybody else would
soon have run away. Be my partner."

This offer upset Julien. It spoilt the train of his mad dreams. Fouqué
showed his accounts to Julien during the whole of the supper--which the
two friends prepared themselves like the Homeric heroes (for Fouqué
lived alone) and proved to him all the advantages offered by his timber
business. Fouqué had the highest opinion of the gifts and character of
Julien.

When, finally, the latter was alone in his little room of pinewood, he
said to himself: "It is true I can make some thousands of francs here
and then take up with advantage the profession of a soldier, or of a
priest, according to the fashion then prevalent in France. The little
hoard that I shall have amassed will remove all petty difficulties. In
the solitude of this mountain I shall have dissipated to some extent my
awful ignorance of so many of the things which make up the life of all
those men of fashion. But Fouqué has given up all thoughts of marriage,
and at the same time keeps telling me that solitude makes him unhappy.
It is clear that if he takes a partner who has no capital to put into
his business, he does so in the hopes of getting a companion who will
never leave him."

"Shall I deceive my friend," exclaimed Julien petulantly. This being
who found hypocrisy and complete callousness his ordinary means of
self-preservation could not, on this occasion, endure the idea of the
slightest lack of delicate feeling towards a man whom he loved.

But suddenly Julien was happy. He had a reason for a refusal. What!
Shall I be coward enough to waste seven or eight years. I shall get to
twenty-eight in that way! But at that age Bonaparte had achieved his
greatest feats. When I shall have made in obscurity a little money by
frequenting timber sales, and earning the good graces of some rascally
under-strappers who will guarantee that I shall still have the sacred
fire with which one makes a name for oneself?

The following morning, Julien with considerable sangfroid, said in
answer to the good Fouqué, who regarded the matter of the partnership
as settled, that his vocation for the holy ministry of the altars would
not permit him to accept it. Fouqué did not return to the subject.

"But just think," he repeated to him, "I'll make you my partner, or if
you prefer it, I'll give you four thousand francs a year, and you want
to return to that M. de Rênal of yours, who despises you like the mud
on his shoes. When you have got two hundred louis in front of you, what
is to prevent you from entering the seminary? I'll go further: I will
undertake to procure for you the best living in the district, for,"
added Fouqué, lowering his voice, I supply firewood to M. le ----, M.
le ----, M. ----. I provide them with first quality oak, but they only
pay me for plain wood, but never was money better invested.

Nothing could conquer Julien's vocation. Fouqué finished by thinking
him a little mad. The third day, in the early morning, Julien left his
friend, and passed the day amongst the rocks of the great mountain. He
found his little cave again, but he had no longer peace of mind. His
friend's offers had robbed him of it. He found himself, not between
vice and virtue, like Hercules, but between mediocrity coupled with
an assured prosperity, and all the heroic dreams of his youth. "So I
have not got real determination after all," he said to himself, and it
was his doubt on this score which pained him the most. "I am not of
the stuff of which great men are made, because I fear that eight years
spent in earning a livelihood will deprive me of that sublime energy
which inspires the accomplishment of extraordinary feats."




CHAPTER XIII

THE OPEN WORK STOCKINGS


        A novel: a mirror which one takes out on one's walk
        along the high road.--_Saint-Réal_.


When Julien perceived the picturesque ruins of the old church at Vergy,
he noticed that he had not given a single thought to Madame de Rênal
since the day before yesterday. The other day, when I took my leave,
that woman made me realise the infinite distance which separated us;
she treated me like a labourer's son. No doubt she wished to signify
her repentance for having allowed me to hold her hand the evening
before.

... It is, however very pretty, is that hand. What a charm, what a
nobility is there in that woman's expression!

The possibility of making a fortune with Fouqué gave a certain facility
to Julien's logic. It was not spoilt quite so frequently by the
irritation and the keen consciousness of his poverty and low estate in
the eyes of the world. Placed as it were on a high promontory, he was
able to exercise his judgment, and had a commanding view, so to speak,
of both extreme poverty and that competence which he still called
wealth. He was far from judging his position really philosophically,
but he had enough penetration to feel different after this little
journey into the mountain.

He was struck with the extreme uneasiness with which Madame de Rênal
listened to the brief account which she had asked for of his journey.
Fouqué had had plans of marriage, and unhappy love affairs, and long
confidences on this subject had formed the staple of the two friends'
conversation. Having found happiness too soon, Fouqué had realised
that he was not the only one who was loved. All these accounts had
astonished Julien. He had learnt many new things. His solitary life of
imagination and suspicion had kept him remote from anything which could
enlighten him.

During his absence, life had been nothing for Madame de Rênal but a
series of tortures, which, though different, were all unbearable. She
was really ill.

"Now mind," said Madame Derville to her when she saw Julien arrive,
"you don't go into the garden this evening in your weak state; the damp
air will make your complaint twice as bad."

Madame Derville was surprised to see that her friend, who was always
scolded by M. de Rênal by reason of the excessive simplicity of her
dress, had just got some open-work stockings and some charming little
shoes which had come from Paris. For three days Madame de Rênal's only
distraction had been to cut out a summer dress of a pretty little
material which was very fashionable, and get it made with express speed
by Elisa. This dress could scarcely have been finished a few moments
before Julien's arrival, but Madame de Rênal put it on immediately. Her
friend had no longer any doubt. "She loves," unhappy woman, said Madame
Derville to herself. She understood all the strange symptoms of the
malady.

She saw her speak to Julien. The most violent blush was succeeded by
pallor. Anxiety was depicted in her eyes, which were riveted on those
of the young tutor. Madame de Rênal expected every minute that he would
give an explanation of his conduct, and announce that he was either
going to leave the house or stay there. Julien carefully avoided that
subject, and did not even think of it. After terrible struggles, Madame
de Rênal eventually dared to say to him in a trembling voice that
mirrored all her passion:

"Are you going to leave your pupils to take another place?"

Julien was struck by Madame de Rênal's hesitating voice and look.
"That woman loves me," he said to himself! "But after this temporary
moment of weakness, for which her pride is no doubt reproaching her,
and as soon as she has ceased fearing that I shall leave, she will be
as haughty as ever." This view of their mutual position passed through
Julien's mind as rapidly as a flash of lightning. He answered with some
hesitation,

"I shall be extremely distressed to leave children who are so nice
and so well-born, but perhaps it will be necessary. One has duties to
oneself as well."

As he pronounced the expression, "well-born" (it was one of those
aristocratic phrases which Julien had recently learnt), he became
animated by a profound feeling of antipathy.

"I am not well-born," he said to himself, "in that woman's eyes."

As Madame de Rênal listened to him, she admired his genius and his
beauty, and the hinted possibility of his departure pierced her
heart. All her friends at Verrières who had come to dine at Vergy
during Julien's absence had complimented her almost jealously on the
astonishing man whom her husband had had the good fortune to unearth.
It was not that they understood anything about the progress of
children. The feat of knowing his Bible by heart, and what is more, of
knowing it in Latin, had struck the inhabitants of Verrières with an
admiration which will last perhaps a century.

Julien, who never spoke to anyone, was ignorant of all this. If Madame
de Rênal had possessed the slightest presence of mind, she would have
complimented him on the reputation which he had won, and Julien's
pride, once satisfied, he would have been sweet and amiable towards
her, especially as he thought her new dress charming. Madame de Rênal
was also pleased with her pretty dress, and with what Julien had
said to her about it, and wanted to walk round the garden. But she
soon confessed that she was incapable of walking. She had taken the
traveller's arm, and the contact of that arm, far from increasing her
strength, deprived her of it completely.

It was night. They had scarcely sat down before Julien, availing
himself of his old privilege, dared to bring his lips near his pretty
neighbour's arm, and to take her hand. He kept thinking of the boldness
which Fouqué had exhibited with his mistresses and not of Madame de
Rênal; the word "well-born" was still heavy on his heart. He felt his
hand pressed, but experienced no pleasure. So far from his being proud,
or even grateful for the sentiment that Madame de Rênal was betraying
that evening by only too evident signs, he was almost insensible to
her beauty, her elegance, and her freshness. Purity of soul, and the
absence of all hateful emotion, doubtless prolong the duration of
youth. It is the face which ages first with the majority of women.

Julien sulked all the evening. Up to the present he had only been angry
with the social order, but from that time that Fouqué had offered him
an ignoble means of obtaining a competency, he was irritated with
himself. Julien was so engrossed in his thoughts, that, although from
time to time he said a few words to the ladies, he eventually let go
Madame de Rênal's hand without noticing it. This action overwhelmed the
soul of the poor woman. She saw in it her whole fate.

If she had been certain of Julien's affection, her virtue would
possibly have found strength to resist him. But trembling lest she
should lose him for ever, she was distracted by her passion to
the point of taking again Julien's hand, which he had left in his
absent-mindedness leaning on the back of the chair. This action woke up
this ambitious youth; he would have liked to have had for witnesses all
those proud nobles who had regarded him at meals, when he was at the
bottom of the table with the children, with so condescending a smile.
"That woman cannot despise me; in that case," he said to himself. "I
ought to shew my appreciation of her beauty. I owe it to myself to be
her lover." That idea would not have occurred to him before the naïve
confidences which his friend had made.

The sudden resolution which he had just made formed an agreeable
distraction. He kept saying to himself, "I must have one of those two
women;" he realised that he would have very much preferred to have
paid court to Madame Derville. It was not that she was more agreeable,
but that she had always seen him as the tutor distinguished by his
knowledge, and not as the journeyman carpenter with his cloth jacket
folded under his arm as he had first appeared to Madame de Rênal.

It was precisely as a young workman, blushing up to the whites of his
eyes, standing by the door of the house and not daring to ring, that he
made the most alluring appeal to Madame de Rênal's imagination.

As he went on reviewing his position, Julien saw that the conquest of
Madame Derville, who had probably noticed the taste which Madame de
Rênal was manifesting for him, was out of the question. He was thus
brought back to the latter lady. "What do I know of the character of
that woman?" said Julien to himself. "Only this: before my journey, I
used to take her hand, and she used to take it away. To-day, I take my
hand away, and she seizes and presses it. A fine opportunity to pay her
back all the contempt she had had for me. God knows how many lovers she
has had, probably she is only deciding in my favour by reason of the
easiness of assignations."

Such, alas, is the misfortune of an excessive civilisation. The soul
of a young man of twenty, possessed of any education, is a thousand
leagues away from that _abandon_ without which love is frequently but
the most tedious of duties.

"I owe it all the more to myself," went on the petty vanity of Julien,
"to succeed with that woman, by reason of the fact that if I ever make
a fortune, and I am reproached by anyone with my menial position as a
tutor, I shall then be able to give out that it was love which got me
the post."

Julien again took his hand away from Madame de Rênal, and then took her
hand again and pressed it. As they went back to the drawing-room about
midnight, Madame de Rênal said to him in a whisper.

"You are leaving us, you are going?"

Julien answered with a sigh.

"I absolutely must leave, for I love you passionately. It is wrong
... how wrong indeed for a young priest?" Madame de Rênal leant upon
his arm, and with so much abandon that her cheek felt the warmth of
Julien's.

The nights of these two persons were quite different. Madame de
Rênal was exalted by the ecstacies of the highest moral pleasure. A
coquettish young girl, who loves early in life, gets habituated to
the trouble of love, and when she reaches the age of real passion,
finds the charm of novelty lacking. As Madame de Rênal had never read
any novels, all the refinements of her happiness were new to her. No
mournful truth came to chill her, not even the spectre of the future.
She imagined herself as happy in ten years' time as she was at the
present moment. Even the idea of virtue and of her sworn fidelity to M.
de Rênal, which had agitated her some days past, now presented itself
in vain, and was sent about its business like an importunate visitor.
"I will never grant anything to Julien," said Madame de Rênal; "we will
live in the future like we have been living for the last month. He
shall be a friend."




CHAPTER XIV

THE ENGLISH SCISSORS


        A young girl of sixteen had a pink complexion, and yet
        used red rouge.--_Polidori_.


Fouqué's offer had, as a matter of fact, taken away all Julien's
happiness; he could not make up his mind to any definite course. "Alas!
perhaps I am lacking in character. I should have been a bad soldier of
Napoleon. At least," he added, "my little intrigue with the mistress of
the house will distract me a little."

Happily for him, even in this little subordinate incident, his inner
emotions quite failed to correspond with his flippant words. He was
frightened of Madame de Rênal because of her pretty dress. In his
eyes, that dress was a vanguard of Paris. His pride refused to leave
anything to chance and the inspiration of the moment. He made himself
a very minute plan of campaign, moulded on the confidences of Fouqué,
and a little that he had read about love in the Bible. As he was very
nervous, though he did not admit it to himself, he wrote down this plan.

Madame de Rênal was alone with him for a moment in the drawing-room on
the following morning.

"Have you no other name except Julien," she said.

Our hero was at a loss to answer so nattering a question. This
circumstance had not been anticipated in his plan. If he had not been
stupid enough to have made a plan, Julien's quick wit would have served
him well, and the surprise would only have intensified the quickness of
his perception.

He was clumsy, and exaggerated his clumsiness, Madame de Rênal quickly
forgave him. She attributed it to a charming frankness. And an air of
frankness was the very thing which in her view was just lacking in this
man who was acknowledged to have so much genius.

"That little tutor of yours inspires me with a great deal of
suspicion," said Madame Derville to her sometimes. "I think he looks as
if he were always thinking, and he never acts without calculation. He
is a sly fox."

Julien remained profoundly humiliated by the misfortune of not having
known what answer to make to Madame de Rênal.

"A man like I am ought to make up for this check!" and seizing the
moment when they were passing from one room to another, he thought it
was his duty to give Madame de Rênal a kiss.

Nothing could have been less tactful, nothing less agreeable, and
nothing more imprudent both for him and for her. They were within
an inch of being noticed. Madame de Rênal thought him mad. She was
frightened, and above all, shocked. This stupidity reminded her of M.
Valenod.

"What would happen to me," she said to herself, "if I were alone with
him?" All her virtue returned, because her love was waning.

She so arranged it that one of her children always remained with her.
Julien found the day very tedious, and passed it entirely in clumsily
putting into operation his plan of seduction. He did not look at Madame
de Rênal on a single occasion without that look having a reason, but
nevertheless he was not sufficiently stupid to fail to see that he was
not succeeding at all in being amiable, and was succeeding even less in
being fascinating.

Madame de Rênal did not recover from her astonishment at finding him
so awkward and at the same time so bold. "It is the timidity of love
in men of intellect," she said to herself with an inexpressible joy.
"Could it be possible that he had never been loved by my rival?"

After breakfast Madame de Rênal went back to the drawing-room to
receive the visit of M. Charcot de Maugiron, the sub-prefect of Bray.
She was working at a little frame of fancy-work some distance from the
ground. Madame Derville was at her side; that was how she was placed
when our hero thought it suitable to advance his boot in the full
light and press the pretty foot of Madame de Rênal, whose open-work
stockings, and pretty Paris shoe were evidently attracting the looks of
the gallant sub-prefect.

Madame de Rênal was very much afraid, and let fall her scissors, her
ball of wool and her needles, so that Julien's movement could be passed
for a clumsy effort, intended to prevent the fall of the scissors,
which presumably he had seen slide. Fortunately, these little scissors
of English steel were broken, and Madame de Rênal did not spare her
regrets that Julien had not succeeded in getting nearer to her. "You
noticed them falling before I did--you could have prevented it,
instead, all your zealousness only succeeding in giving me a very big
kick." All this took in the sub-perfect, but not Madame Derville. "That
pretty boy has very silly manners," she thought. The social code of a
provincial capital never forgives this kind of lapse.

Madame de Rênal found an opportunity of saying to Julien, "Be prudent,
I order you."

Julien appreciated his own clumsiness. He was upset. He deliberated
with himself for a long time, in order to ascertain whether or not he
ought to be angry at the expression "I order you." He was silly enough
to think she might have said "I order you," if it were some question
concerning the children's education, but in answering my love she puts
me on an equality. It is impossible to love without equality ... and
all his mind ran riot in making common-places on equality. He angrily
repeated to himself that verse of Corneille which Madame Derville had
taught him some days before.

                                      "L'amour
        les égalités, et ne les cherche pas."

Julien who had never had a mistress in his whole life, but yet insisted
on playing the rôle of a Don Juan, made a shocking fool of himself all
day. He had only one sensible idea. Bored with himself and Madame de
Rênal, he viewed with apprehension the advance of the evening when he
would have to sit by her side in the darkness of the garden. He told M.
de Rênal that he was going to Verrières to see the curé. He left after
dinner, and only came back in the night.

At Verrières Julien found M. Chélan occupied in moving. He had just
been deprived of his living; the curate Maslon was replacing him.
Julien helped the good curé, and it occurred to him to write to Fouqué
that the irresistible mission which he felt for the holy ministry had
previously prevented him from accepting his kind offer, but that he had
just seen an instance of injustice, and that perhaps it would be safer
not to enter into Holy Orders.

Julien congratulated himself on his subtlety in exploiting the
dismissal of the curé of Verrières so as to leave himself a loop-hole
for returning to commerce in the event of a gloomy prudence routing the
spirit of heroism from his mind.




CHAPTER XV

THE COCK'S SONG

    Amour en latin faict amour;
    Or done provient d'amour la mart,
    Et, par avant, souley qui moreq,
    Deuil, plours, pieges, forfailz, remord.
                                     BLASON D'AMOUR.


If Julien had possessed a little of that adroitness on which he so
gratuitously plumed himself, he could have congratulated himself the
following day on the effect produced by his journey to Verrières. His
absence had caused his clumsiness to be forgotten. But on that day
also he was rather sulky. He had a ludicrous idea in the evening, and
with singular courage he communicated it to Madame de Rênal. They had
scarcely sat down in the garden before Julien brought his mouth near
Madame de Rênal's ear without waiting till it was sufficiently dark and
at the risk of compromising her terribly, said to her,

"Madame, to-night, at two o'clock, I shall go into your room, I must
tell you something."

Julien trembled lest his request should be granted. His rakish pose
weighed him down so terribly that if he could have followed his own
inclination he would have returned to his room for several days and
refrained from seeing the ladies any more. He realised that he had
spoiled by his clever conduct of last evening all the bright prospects
of the day that had just passed, and was at his wits' end what to do.

Madame de Rênal answered the impertinent declaration which Julien had
dared to make to her with indignation which was real and in no way
exaggerated. He thought he could see contempt in her curt reply. The
expression "for shame," had certainly occurred in that whispered answer.

Julien went to the children's room under the pretext of having
something to say to them, and on his return he placed himself beside
Madame Derville and very far from Madame de Rênal. He thus deprived
himself of all possibility of taking her hand. The conversation was
serious, and Julien acquitted himself very well, apart from a few
moments of silence during which he was cudgelling his brains.

"Why can't I invent some pretty manœuvre," he said to himself which
will force Madame de Rênal to vouchsafe to me those unambiguous signs
of tenderness which a few days ago made me think that she was mine.

Julien was extremely disconcerted by the almost desperate plight
to which he had brought his affairs. Nothing, however, would have
embarrassed him more than success.

When they separated at midnight, his pessimism made him think that
he enjoyed Madame Derville's contempt, and that probably he stood no
better with Madame de Rênal.

Feeling in a very bad temper and very humiliated, Julien did not sleep.
He was leagues away from the idea of giving up all intriguing and
planning, and of living from day to day with Madame de Rênal, and of
being contented like a child with the happiness brought by every day.

He racked his brains inventing clever manœuvres, which an instant
afterwards he found absurd, and, to put it shortly, was very unhappy
when two o'clock rang from the castle clock.

The noise woke him up like the cock's crow woke up St. Peter. The most
painful episode was now timed to begin--he had not given a thought to
his impertinent proposition, since the moment when he had made it and
it had been so badly received.

"I have told her that I will go to her at two o'clock," he said to
himself as he got up, "I may be inexperienced and coarse, as the son
of a peasant naturally would be. Madame Derville has given me to
understand as much, but at any rate, I will not be weak."

Julien had reason to congratulate himself on his courage, for he had
never put his self-control to so painful a test. As he opened his door,
he was trembling to such an extent that his knees gave way under him,
and he was forced to lean against the wall.

He was without shoes; he went and listened at M. de Rênal's door, and
could hear his snoring. He was disconsolate, he had no longer any
excuse for not going to her room. But, Great Heaven! What was he to do
there? He had no plan, and even if he had had one, he felt himself so
nervous that he would have been incapable of carrying it out.

Eventually, suffering a thousand times more than if he had been walking
to his death, he entered the little corridor that led to Madame de
Rênal's room. He opened the door with a trembling hand and made a
frightful noise.

There was light; a night light was burning on the mantelpiece. He
had not expected this new misfortune. As she saw him enter, Madame
de Rênal got quickly out of bed. "Wretch," she cried. There was a
little confusion. Julien forgot his useless plans, and turned to his
natural rôle. To fail to please so charming a woman appeared to him the
greatest of misfortunes. His only answer to her reproaches was to throw
himself at her feet while he kissed her knees. As she was speaking to
him with extreme harshness, he burst into tears.

When Julien came out of Madame de Rênal's room some hours afterwards,
one could have said, adopting the conventional language of the novel,
that there was nothing left to be desired. In fact, he owed to the love
he had inspired, and to the unexpected impression which her alluring
charms had produced upon him, a victory to which his own clumsy tactics
would never have led him.

But victim that he was of a distorted pride, he pretended even in
the sweetest moments to play the rôle of a man accustomed to the
subjugation of women: he made incredible but deliberate efforts to
spoil his natural charm. Instead of watching the transports which he
was bringing into existence, and those pangs of remorse which only set
their keenness into fuller relief, the idea of duty was continually
before his eyes. He feared a frightful remorse, and eternal ridicule,
if he departed from the ideal model he proposed to follow. In a word,
the very quality which made Julien into a superior being was precisely
that which prevented him from savouring the happiness which was placed
within his grasp. It's like the case of a young girl of sixteen with a
charming complexion who is mad enough to put on rouge before going to a
ball.

Mortally terrified by the apparition of Julien, Madame de Rênal was
soon a prey to the most cruel alarm. The prayers and despair of Julien
troubled her keenly.

Even when there was nothing left for her to refuse him she pushed
Julien away from her with a genuine indignation, and straightway threw
herself into his arms. There was no plan apparent in all this conduct.
She thought herself eternally damned, and tried to hide from herself
the sight of hell by loading Julien with the wildest caresses. In a
word, nothing would have been lacking in our hero's happiness, not even
an ardent sensibility in the woman whom he had just captured, if he had
on

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