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Title:      The Red and The Black
Author:     Stendahl [Henri Beyle, 1783-1842]
            translation by C. K. Scott Moncrieff [1889-1930]
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Language:   English
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Date first posted:          March 2003
Date most recently updated: March 2003

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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      The Red and The Black
Author:     Stendahl [Henri Beyle, 1783-1842]
            translation by C. K. Scott Moncrieff [1889-1930]





THE RED AND THE BLACK

A CHRONICLE OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY

[1831]

By Stendhal
[Henri Beyle, 1783-1842]

translation by C. K. Scott Moncrieff
[1889-1930]

[1925]



To O. H. H.

who had every word of both volumes read to her when she was powerless to
resist.

C. K. S. M.

Leghorn and Pisa July-December 1925



PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This work was on the point of publication when the great events of July
took place and turned every mind in a direction which does not encourage
the play of the imagination. We have reason to believe that the following
pages were written in 1827.

[Stendhal's note in first French edition]




BOOK ONE

  The truth, the harsh truth
    DANTON



CONTENTS

BOOK ONE

Chapter 1 A Small Town

Chapter 2 A Mayor

Chapter 3 The Bread of the Poor

Chapter 4 Father and Son

Chapter 5 Driving a Bargain

Chapter 6 Dullness

Chapter 7 Elective Affinities

Chapter 8 Minor Events

Chapter 9 An Evening in the Country

Chapter 10 A Large Heart and a Small Fortune

Chapter 11 Night Thoughts

Chapter 12 A Journey

Chapter 13 Open-work Stockings

Chapter 14 The English Scissors

Chapter 15 Cock-crow

Chapter 16 The Day After

Chapter 17 The Principal Deputy

Chapter 18 A King at Verrieres

Chapter 19 To Think Is To Be Full of Sorrow

Chapter 20 The Anonymous Letters

Chapter 21 Conversation with a Lord and Master

Chapter 22 Manners and Customs in 1830

Chapter 23 The Sorrows of a High Office

Chapter 24 A Capital

Chapter 25 The Seminary

Chapter 26 The World, or What the Rich Lack

Chapter 27 First Experience of Life

Chapter 28 A Procession

Chapter 29 The First Step

Chapter 30 Ambition




CHAPTER 1
A Small Town


  Put thousands together
  Less bad,
  But the cage less gay.
    HOBBES

The small town of Verrieres may be regarded as one of the most
attractive in the Franche-Comte. Its white houses with their high
pitched roofs of red tiles are spread over the slope of a hill, the
slightest contours of which are indicated by clumps of sturdy
chestnuts. The Doubs runs some hundreds of feet below its
fortifications, built in times past by the Spaniards, and now in
ruins.

Verrieres is sheltered on the north by a high mountain, a spur of the
Jura.  The jagged peaks of the Verra put on a mantle of snow in the
first cold days of October. A torrent which comes tearing down from
the mountain passes through Verrieres before emptying its waters into
the Doubs, and supplies power to a great number of sawmills; this is
an extremely simple industry, and procures a certain degree of comfort
for the majority of the inhabitants, who are of the peasant rather
than of the burgess class. It is not, however, the sawmills that have
made this little town rich. It is to the manufacture of printed
calicoes, known as Mulhouse stuffs, that it owes the general
prosperity which, since the fall of Napoleon, has led to the refacing
of almost all the houses in Verrieres.

No sooner has one entered the town than one is startled by the din of
a noisy machine of terrifying aspect. A score of weighty hammers,
falling with a clang which makes the pavement tremble, are raised
aloft by a wheel which the water of the torrent sets in motion. Each
of these hammers turns out, daily, I cannot say how many thousands of
nails. A bevy of fresh, pretty girls subject to the blows of these
enormous hammers, the little scraps of iron which are rapidly
transformed into nails. This work, so rough to the outward eye, is one
of the industries that most astonish the traveller who ventures for
the first time among the mountains that divide France from
Switzerland. If, on entering Verrieres, the traveller inquires to whom
belongs that fine nail factory which deafens everybody who passes up
the main street, he will be told in a drawling accent: 'Eh! It belongs
to the Mayor.'

Provided the traveller halts for a few moments in this main street of
Verrieres, which runs from the bank of the Doubs nearly to the summit
of the hill, it is a hundred to one that he will see a tall man
appear, with a busy, important air.

At the sight of him every hat is quickly raised. His hair is turning
grey, and he is dressed in grey. He is a Companion of several Orders,
has a high forehead, an aquiline nose, and on the whole his face is
not wanting in a certain regularity: indeed, the first impression
formed of it may be that it combines with the dignity of a village
mayor that sort of charm which may still be found in a man of
forty-eight or fifty. But soon the visitor from Paris is annoyed by a
certain air of self-satisfaction and self-sufficiency mingled with a
suggestion of limitations and want of originality. One feels, finally,
that this man's talent is confined to securing the exact payment of
whatever is owed to him and to postponing payment till the last
possible moment when he is the debtor.

Such is the Mayor of Verrieres, M. de Renal. Crossing the street with
a solemn step, he enters the town hall and passes from the visitor's
sight.  But, a hundred yards higher up, if the visitor continues his
stroll, he will notice a house of quite imposing appearance, and,
through the gaps in an iron railing belonging to the house, some
splendid gardens. Beyond, there is a line of horizon formed by the
hills of Burgundy, which seem to have been created on purpose to
delight the eye. This view makes the visitor forget the pestilential
atmosphere of small financial interests which was beginning to stifle
him.

He is told that this house belongs to M. de Renal. It is to the
profits that he has made from his great nail factory that the Mayor of
Verrieres is indebted for this fine freestone house which he has just
finished building.  His family, they say, is Spanish, old, and was or
claims to have been established in the country long before Louis XIV
conquered it.

Since 1815 he has blushed at his connection with industry: 1815 made
him Mayor of Verrieres. The retaining walls that support the various
sections of this splendid garden, which, in a succession of terraces,
runs down to the Doubs, are also a reward of M. de Renal's ability as
a dealer in iron.

You must not for a moment expect to find in France those picturesque
gardens which enclose the manufacturing towns of Germany; Leipsic,
Frankfurt, Nuremberg, and the rest. In the Franche-Comte, the more
walls a man builds, the more he makes his property bristle with stones
piled one above another, the greater title he acquires to the respect
of his neighbours. M. de Renal's gardens, honeycombed with walls, are
still further admired because he bought, for their weight in gold,
certain minute scraps of ground which they cover. For instance that
sawmill whose curious position on the bank of the Doubs struck you as
you entered Verrieres, and on which you noticed the name _Sorel_,
inscribed in huge letters on a board which overtops the roof,
occupied, six years ago, the ground on which at this moment they are
building the wall of the fourth terrace of M. de Renal's gardens.

For all his pride, the Mayor was obliged to make many overtures to old
Sorel, a dour and obstinate peasant; he was obliged to pay him in fine
golden louis before he would consent to remove his mill elsewhere. As
for the _public_ lade which supplied power to the saw, M. de Renal,
thanks to the influence he wielded in Paris, obtained leave to divert
it. This favour was conferred upon him after the 182- elections.

He gave Sorel four acres in exchange for one, five hundred yards lower
down by the bank of the Doubs. And, albeit this site was a great deal
more advantageous for his trade in planks of firwood, Pere Sorel, as
they have begun to call him now that he is rich, contrived to screw
out of the impatience and _landowning mania_ which animated his
neighbour a sum of 6,000 francs.

It is true that this arrangement was adversely criticised by the local
wiseacres. On one occasion, it was a Sunday, four years later, M. de
Renal, as he walked home from church in his mayoral attire, saw at a
distance old Sorel, supported by his three sons, watching him with a
smile. That smile cast a destroying ray of light into the Mayor's
soul; ever since then he has been thinking that he might have brought
about the exchange at less cost to himself.

To win popular esteem at Verrieres, the essential thing is not to
adopt (while still building plenty of walls) any plan of construction
brought from Italy by those masons who in spring pass through the
gorges of the Jura on their way to Paris. Such an innovation would
earn the rash builder an undying reputation fot wrong-headedness, and
he would be lost forever among the sober and moderate folk who create
reputations in the Franche-Comte.

As a matter of fact, these sober folk wield there the most irritating
form of _despotism_; it is owing to that vile word that residence in
small towns is intolerable to anyone who has lived in that great
republic which we call Paris. The tyranny of public opinion (and what
an opinion!) is as fatuous in the small towns of France as it is in
the United States of America.




CHAPTER 2
A Mayor


  Prestige! Sir, is it nothing? To be revered by fools, gaped at by
  children, envied by the rich and scorned by the wise.
    BARNAVE

Fortunately for M. de Renal's reputation as an administrator, a huge
retaining wall was required for the public avenue which skirts the
hillside a hundred feet above the bed of the Doubs. To this admirable
position it is indebted for one of the most picturesque views in
France. But, every spring, torrents of rainwater made channels across
the avenue, carved deep gullies in it and left it impassable. This
nuisance, which affected everybody alike, placed M. de Renal under the
fortunate obligation to immortalise his administration by a wall
twenty feet in height and seventy or eighty yards long.

The parapet of this wall, to secure which M. de Renal was obliged to
make three journeys to Paris, for the Minister of the Interior before
last had sworn a deadly enmity to the Verrieres avenue; the parapet of
this wall now rises four feet above the ground. And, as though to defy
all Ministers past and present, it is being finished off at this
moment with slabs of dressed stone.

How often, my thoughts straying back to the ball-rooms of Paris, which
I had forsaken overnight, my elbows leaning upon those great blocks of
stone of a fine grey with a shade of blue in it, have I swept with my
gaze the vale of the Doubs! Over there, on the left bank, are five or
six winding valleys, along the folds of which the eye can make out
quite plainly a number of little streams. After leaping from rock to
rock, they may be seen falling into the Doubs.  The sun is extremely
hot in these mountains; when it is directly overhead, the traveller's
rest is sheltered on this terrace by a row of magnificent planes.
Their rapid growth, and handsome foliage of a bluish tint are due to
the artificial soil with which the Mayor has filled in the space
behind his immense retaining wall, for, despite the opposition of the
town council, he has widened the avenue by more than six feet
(although he is an Ultra and I myself a Liberal, I give him credit for
it), that is why, in his opinion and in that of M. Valenod, the
fortunate governor of the Verrieres poorhouse, this terrace is worthy
to be compared with that of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

For my part, I have only one fault to find with the _Cours de la
Fidelite_; one reads this, its official title, in fifteen or twenty
places, on marble slabs which have won M. de Renal yet another Cross;
what I should be inclined to condemn in the Cours de la Fidelite is
the barbarous manner in which the authorities keep these sturdy plane
trees trimmed and pollarded.  Instead of suggesting, with their low,
rounded, flattened heads, the commonest of kitchen garden vegetables,
they would like nothing better than to assume those magnificent forms
which one sees them wear in England. But the Mayor's will is despotic,
and twice a year every tree belonging to the commune is pitilessly
lopped. The Liberals of the place maintain, but they exaggerate, that
the hand of the official gardener has grown much more severe since the
Reverend Vicar Maslon formed the habit of appropriating the clippings.

This young cleric was sent from Besancon, some years ago, to keep an
eye upon the abbe Chelan and certain parish priests of the district.
An old Surgeon-Major of the Army of Italy, in retirement at Verrieres,
who in his time had been simultaneously, according to the Mayor, a
Jacobin and a Bonapartist, actually ventured one day to complain to
him of the periodical mutilation of these fine trees.

'I like shade,' replied M. de Renal with the touch of arrogance
appropriate when one is addressing a surgeon, a Member of the Legion
of Honour; 'I like shade, I have my trees cut so as to give shade, and
I do not consider that a tree is made for any other purpose, unless,
like the useful walnut, it _yields a return_.'

There you have the great phrase that decides everything at Verrieres:
YIELD A RETURN; it by itself represents the habitual thought of more
than three fourths of the inhabitants.

_Yielding a return_ is the consideration that settles everything in this
little town which seemed to you, just now, so attractive. The stranger
arriving there, beguiled by the beauty of the cool, deep valleys on
every side, imagines at first that the inhabitants are influenced by
the idea of beauty; they are always talking about the beauty of their
scenery: no one can deny that they make a great to-do about it; but
this is because it attracts a certain number of visitors whose money
goes to enrich the innkeepers, and thus, through the channel of the
rate-collector, _yields a return_ to the town.

It was a fine day in autumn and M. de Renal was strolling along the
Cours de la Fidelite, his lady on his arm. While she listened to her
husband, who was speaking with an air of gravity, Madame de Renal's
eye was anxiously following the movements of three little boys. The
eldest, who might be about eleven, was continually running to the
parapet as though about to climb on top. A gentle voice then uttered
the name Adolphe, and the child abandoned his ambitious project.
Madame de Renal looked like a woman of thirty, but was still extremely
pretty.

'He may live to rue the day, that fine gentleman from Paris,' M. de
Renal was saying in a tone of annoyance, his cheek paler even than was
its wont.  'I myself am not entirely without friends at Court....'

But albeit I mean to speak to you of provincial life for two hundred
pages, I shall not be so barbarous as to inflict upon you the tedium
and all the clever turns of a provincial dialogue.

This fine gentleman from Paris, so odious to the Mayor of Verrieres,
was none other than M. Appert, [Footnote: A contemporary
philanthropist and prison visitor.] who, a couple of days earlier, had
contrived to make his way not only into the prison and the poorhouse
of Verrieres, but also into the hospital, administered gratuitously by
the Mayor and the principal landowners of the neighbourhood.

'But,' Madame de Renal put in timidly, 'what harm can this gentleman
from Paris do you, since you provide for the welfare of the poor with
the most scrupulous honesty?'

'He has only come to cast blame, and then he'll go back and have
articles put in the Liberal papers.'

'You never read them, my dear.'

'But people tell us about those Jacobin articles; all that distracts
us, and hinders us from doing good. [Author's footnote: authentic] As
for me, I shall never forgive the cure.'




CHAPTER 3
The Bread of the Poor


  A virtuous priest who does not involve himself in intrigue is a
  blessing for the village.
    FLEURY

It should be explained that the cure of Verrieres, an old man of
eighty, but blessed by the keen air of his mountains with an iron
character and strength, had the right to visit at any hour of the day
the prison, the hospital, and even the poorhouse. It was at six
o'clock in the morning precisely that M. Appert, who was armed with an
introduction to the cure from Paris, had had the good sense to arrive
in an inquisitive little town.  He had gone at once to the presbytery.

As he read the letter addressed to him by M. le Marquis de La Mole, a
Peer of France, and the wealthiest landowner in the province, the cure
Chelan sat lost in thought.

'I am old and liked here,' he murmured to himself at length, 'they
would never dare!' Turning at once to the gentleman from Paris, with
eyes in which, despite his great age, there burned that sacred fire
which betokens the pleasure of performing a fine action which is
slightly dangerous:

'Come with me, Sir, and, in the presence of the gaoler and especially
of the superintendents of the poorhouse, be so good as not to express
any opinion of the things we shall see.' M. Appert realised that he
had to deal with a man of feeling; he accompanied the venerable cure,
visited the prison, the hospital, the poorhouse, asked many questions
and, notwithstanding strange answers, did not allow himself to utter
the least word of reproach.

This visit lasted for some hours. The cure invited M. Appert to dine
with him, but was told that his guest had some letters to write: he
did not wish to compromise his kind friend any further. About three
o'clock, the gentlemen went back to complete their inspection of the
poorhouse, after which they returned to the prison. There they found
the gaoler standing in the doorway; a giant six feet tall, with bandy
legs; terror had made his mean face hideous.

'Ah, Sir,' he said to the cure, on catching sight of him, 'is not this
gentleman, that I see with you, M. Appert?'

'What if he is?' said the cure.

'Because yesterday I received the most definite instructions, which
the Prefect sent down by a gendarme who had to gallop all night long,
not to allow M. Appert into the prison.'

'I declare to you, M. Noiroud,' said the cure, 'that this visitor, who
is in my company, is M. Appert. Do you admit that I have the right to
enter the prison at any hour of the day or night, bringing with me
whom I please?'

'Yes, M. le cure,' the gaoler murmured in a subdued tone, lowering his
head like a bulldog brought reluctantly to obedience by fear of the
stick.  'Only, M. le cure, I have a wife and children, if I am
reported I shall be dismissed; I have only my place here to live on.'

'I too should be very sorry to lose mine,' replied the worthy cure, in
a voice swayed by ever increasing emotion.

'What a difference!' the gaoler answered promptly; 'why you, M. le
cure, we know that you have an income of 800 livres, a fine place in
the sun ...'

Such are the events which, commented upon, exaggerated in twenty
different ways, had been arousing for the last two days all the evil
passions of the little town of Verrieres. At that moment they were
serving as text for the little discussion which M. de Renal was having
with his wife. That morning, accompanied by M. Valenod, the governor
of the poorhouse, he had gone to the cure's house, to inform him of
their extreme displeasure. M. Chelan was under no one's protection; he
felt the full force of their words.

'Well, gentlemen, I shall be the third parish priest, eighty years of
age, to be deprived of his living in this district. I have been
here for six and fifty years; I have christened almost all the
inhabitants of the town, which was no more than a village when I came.
Every day I marry young couples whose grandparents I married long ago.
Verrieres is my family; but I said to myself, when I saw the stranger:
"This man, who has come from Paris, may indeed be a Liberal, there are
far too many of them; but what harm can he do to our poor people and
our prisoners?"'

The reproaches of M. de Renal, and above all those of M. Valenod, the
governor of the poorhouse, becoming more and more bitter:

'Very well, gentlemen, have me deprived,' the old cure had cried, in a
quavering voice. 'I shall live in the town all the same. You all know
that forty-eight years ago I inherited a piece of land which brings me
800 livres; I shall live on that income. I save nothing out of my
stipend, gentlemen, and that may be why I am less alarmed when people
speak of taking it from me.'

M. de Renal lived on excellent terms with his wife; but not knowing
what answer to make to the question, which she timidly repeated: 'What
harm can this gentleman from Paris do to the prisoners?' he was just
about to lose his temper altogether when she uttered a cry. Her second
son had climbed upon the parapet of the wall of the terrace, and was
running along it, though this wall rose more than twenty feet from the
vineyard beneath. The fear of alarming her son and so making him fall
restrained Madame de Renal from calling him. Finally the child, who
was laughing at his own prowess, turned to look at his mother, noticed
how pale she was, sprang down upon the avenue and ran to join her. He
was well scolded.

This little incident changed the course of the conversation.

'I am quite determined to engage young Sorel, the sawyer's son,' said
M. de Renal; 'he will look after the children, who are beginning to be
too much of a handful for us. He is a young priest or thereabouts, a
good Latin scholar, and will bring the children on; for he has a
strong character, the cure says. I shall give him 300 francs and his
board. I had some doubts as to his morals; for he was the Benjamin of
that old surgeon, the Member of the Legion of Honour who on pretence
of being their cousin came to live with the Sorels. He might quite
well have been nothing better than a secret agent of the Liberals; he
said that our mountain air was good for his asthma; but that has never
been proved. He had served in all _Buonaparte's_ campaigns in Italy,
and they even say that he voted against the Empire in his day. This
Liberal taught young Sorel Latin, and left him all the pile of books
he brought here with him. Not that I should ever have dreamed of
having the carpenter's son with my children; but the cure, only the
day before the scene which has made a permanent breach between us,
told me that this Sorel has been studying theology for the last three
years, with the idea of entering the Seminary; so he is not a Liberal,
and he is a Latin scholar.

'This arrangement suits me in more ways than one,' M. de Renal went
on, looking at his wife with an air of diplomacy; 'Valenod is
tremendously proud of the two fine Norman horses he has just bought
for his calash. But he has not got a tutor for his children.'

'He is quite capable of taking this one from us.'

'Then you approve of my plan?' said M. de Renal, thanking his wife,
with a smile, for the excellent idea that had just occurred to her.
'There, that's settled.'

'Oh, good gracious, my dear, how quickly you make up your mind!'

'That is because I have a strong character, as the cure has had
occasion to see. Let us make no pretence about it, we are surrounded
by Liberals here.  All these cloth merchants are jealous of me, I am
certain of it; two or three of them are growing rich; very well, I
wish them to see M. de Renal's children go by, out walking in the care
of their tutor. It will make an impression. My grandfather used often
to tell us that in his young days he had had a tutor. It's a hundred
crowns he's going to cost me, but that will have to be reckoned as a
necessary expense to keep up our position.'

This sudden decision plunged Madame de Renal deep in thought. She was
a tall, well-made woman, who had been the beauty of the place, as the
saying is in this mountain district. She had a certain air of
simplicity and bore herself like a girl; in the eyes of a Parisian,
that artless grace, full of innocence and vivacity, might even have
suggested ideas of a mildly passionate nature. Had she had wind of
this kind of success, Madame de Renal would have been thoroughly
ashamed of it. No trace either of coquetry or of affectation had ever
appeared in her nature. M. Valenod, the wealthy governor of the
poorhouse, was supposed to have paid his court to her, but without
success, a failure which had given a marked distinction to her virtue;
for this M. Valenod, a tall young man, strongly built, with a vivid
complexion and bushy black whiskers, was one of those coarse, brazen,
noisy creatures who in the provinces are called fine men.

Madame de Renal, being extremely shy and liable to be swayed by her
moods, was offended chiefly by the restless movements and loud voice
of M. Valenod. The distaste that she felt for what at Verrieres goes
by the name of gaiety had won her the reputation of being extremely
proud of her birth.  She never gave it a thought, but had been greatly
pleased to see the inhabitants of Verrieres come less frequently to
her house. We shall not attempt to conceal the fact that she was
reckoned a fool in the eyes of their ladies, because, without any
regard for her husband's interests, she let slip the most promising
opportunities of procuring fine hats from Paris or Besancon. Provided
that she was left alone to stroll in her fine garden, she never made
any complaint.

She was a simple soul, who had never risen even to the point of
criticising her husband, and admitting that he bored her. She
supposed, without telling herself so, that between husband and wife
there could be no more tender relations. She was especially fond of M.
de Renal when he spoke to her of his plans for their children, one of
whom he intended to place in the army, the second on the bench, and
the third in the church. In short, she found M. de Renal a great deal
less boring than any of the other men of her acquaintance.

This wifely opinion was justified. The Mayor of Verrieres owed his
reputation for wit, and better still for good tone, to half a dozen
pleasantries which he had inherited from an uncle. This old Captain de
Renal had served before the Revolution in the Duke of Orleans's
regiment of infantry, and, when he went to Paris, had had the right of
entry into that Prince's drawing-rooms. He had there seen Madame de
Montesson, the famous Madame de Genlis, M. Ducrest, the 'inventor'
of the Palais-Royal.  These personages figured all too frequently in
M. de Renal's stories. But by degrees these memories of things that it
required so much delicacy to relate had become a burden to him, and
for some time now it was only on solemn occasions that he would repeat
his anecdotes of the House of Orleans. As he was in other respects
most refined, except when the talk ran on money, he was regarded, and
rightly, as the most aristocratic personage in Verrieres.




CHAPTER 4
Father and Son


  E sara mia colpa,
  Se cosi e?
    MACHIAVELLI

'My wife certainly has a head on her shoulders!' the Mayor of
Verrieres remarked to himself the following morning at six o'clock, as
he made his way down to Pere Sorel's sawmill. 'Although I said so to
her, to maintain my own superiority, it had never occurred to me that
if I do not take this little priest Sorel, who, they tell me, knows
his Latin like an angel, the governor of the poorhouse, that restless
spirit, might very well have the same idea, and snatch him from me, I
can hear the tone of conceit with which he would speak of his
children's tutor! ... This tutor, once I've secured him, will he wear
a cassock?'

M. de Renal was absorbed in this question when he saw in the distance
a peasant, a man of nearly six feet in height, who, by the first
dawning light, seemed to be busily occupied in measuring pieces of
timber lying by the side of the Doubs, upon the towpath. The peasant
did not appear any too well pleased to see the Mayor coming towards
him; for his pieces of wood were blocking the path, and had been laid
there in contravention of the law.

Pere Sorel, for it was he, was greatly surprised and even more pleased
by the singular offer which M. de Renal made him with regard to his
son Julien. He listened to it nevertheless with that air of
grudging-melancholy and lack of interest which the shrewd inhabitants
of those mountains know so well how to assume. Slaves in the days of
Spanish rule, they still retain this facial characteristic of the
Egyptian fellahin.

Sorel's reply was at first nothing more than a long-winded recital of
all the formal terms of respect which he knew by heart. While he was
repeating these vain words, with an awkward smile which enhanced the
air of falsehood and almost of rascality natural to his countenance,
the old peasant's active mind was seeking to discover what reason
could be inducing so important a personage to take his scapegrace of a
son into his establishment. He was thoroughly dissatisfied with
Julien, and it was for Julien that M. de Renal was offering him the
astounding wage of 300 francs annually, in addition to his food and
even his clothing. This last condition, which Pere Sorel had had the
intelligence to advance on the spur of the moment, had been granted
with equal readiness by M. de Renal.

This demand impressed the Mayor. 'Since Sorel is not delighted and
overwhelmed by my proposal, as he ought naturally to be, it is clear,'
he said to himself, 'that overtures have been made to him from another
quarter; and from whom can they have come, except from Valenod?' It
was in vain that M. de Renal urged Sorel to conclude the bargain there
and then: the astute old peasant met him with an obstinate refusal; he
wished, he said, to consult his son, as though, in the country, a rich
father ever consulted a penniless son, except for form's sake.

A sawmill consists of a shed by the side of a stream. The roof is held
up by rafters supported on four stout wooden pillars. Nine or ten feet
from the ground, in the middle of the shed, one sees a saw which moves
up and down, while an extremely simple mechanism thrusts forward
against this saw a piece of wood. This is a wheel set in motion by the
mill lade which drives both parts of the machine; that of the saw
which moves up and down, and the other which pushes the piece of wood
gently towards the saw, which slices it into planks.

As he approached his mill, Pere Sorel called Julien in his stentorian
voice; there was no answer. He saw only his two elder sons, young
giants who, armed with heavy axes, were squaring the trunks of fir
which they would afterwards carry to the saw. They were completely
engrossed in keeping exactly to the black line traced on the piece of
wood, from which each blow of the axe sent huge chips flying. They did
not hear their father's voice. He made his way to the shed; as he
entered it, he looked in vain for Julien in the place where he ought
to have been standing, beside the saw. He caught sight of him five or
six feet higher up, sitting astride upon one of the beams of the roof.
Instead of paying careful attention to the action of the machinery,
Julien was reading a book. Nothing could have been less to old Sorel's
liking; he might perhaps have forgiven Julien his slender build,
little adapted to hard work, and so different from that of his elder
brothers; but this passion for reading he detested: he himself was
unable to read.

It was in vain that he called Julien two or three times. The attention
the young man was paying to his book, far more than the noise of the
saw, prevented him from hearing his father's terrifying voice.
Finally, despite his years, the father sprang nimbly upon the trunk
that was being cut by the saw, and from there on to the cross beam
that held up the roof. A violent blow sent flying into the mill lade
the book that Julien was holding; a second blow no less violent, aimed
at his head, in the form of a box on the ear, made him lose his
balance. He was about to fall from a height of twelve or fifteen feet,
among the moving machinery, which would have crushed him, but his
father caught him with his left hand as he fell.

'Well, idler! So you keep on reading your cursed books, when you ought
to be watching the saw? Read them in the evening, when you go and
waste your time with the cure.'

Julien, although stunned by the force of the blow, and bleeding
profusely, went to take up his proper station beside the saw. There
were tears in his eyes, due not so much to his bodily pain as to the
loss of his book, which he adored.

'Come down, animal, till I speak to you.' The noise of the machine
again prevented Julien from hearing this order. His father who had
stepped down not wishing to take the trouble to climb up again on to
the machine, went to find a long pole used for knocking down walnuts,
and struck him on the shoulder with it. No sooner had Julien reached
the ground than old Sorel, thrusting him on brutally from behind,
drove him towards the house. 'Heaven knows what he's going to do to
me!' thought the young man. As he passed it, he looked sadly at the
mill lade into which his book had fallen; it was the one that he
valued most of all, the _Memorial de Sainte-Helene_.

His cheeks were flushed, his eyes downcast. He was a slim youth of
eighteen or nineteen, weak in appearance, with irregular but delicate
features and an aquiline nose. His large dark eyes, which, in moments
of calm, suggested a reflective, fiery spirit, were animated at this
instant with an expression of the most ferocious hatred. Hair of a
dark chestnut, growing very low, gave him a narrow brow, and in
moments of anger a wicked air. Among the innumerable varieties of the
human countenance, there is perhaps none that is more strikingly
characteristic. A slim and shapely figure betokened suppleness rather
than strength. In his childhood, his extremely pensive air and marked
pallor had given his father the idea that he would not live, or would
live only to be a burden upon his family. An object of contempt to the
rest of the household, he hated his brothers and father; in the games
on Sundays, on the public square, he was invariably beaten.

It was only during the last year that his good looks had begun to win
him a few supporters among the girls. Universally despised, as a
feeble creature, Julien had adored that old Surgeon-Major who one day
ventured to speak to the Mayor on the subject of the plane trees.

This surgeon used now and then to pay old Sorel a day's wage for his
son, and taught him Latin and history, that is to say all the history
that he knew, that of the 1796 campaign in Italy. On his death, he had
bequeathed to him his Cross of the Legion of Honour, the arrears of
his pension, and thirty or forty volumes, the most precious of which
had just taken a plunge into the public lade, diverted by the Mayor's
influence.

As soon as he was inside the house, Julien felt his shoulder gripped
by his father's strong hand; he trembled, expecting to receive a
shower of blows.

'Answer me without lying,' the old peasant's harsh voice shouted in
his ear, while the hand spun him round as a child's hand spins a lead
soldier.  Julien's great dark eyes, filled with tears, found
themselves starting into the little grey eyes of the old peasant, who
looked as though he sought to penetrate to the depths of his son's
heart.




CHAPTER 5
Driving a Bargain


  Cunctando restituit rem.
    ENNIUS

'Answer me, without lying, if you can, you miserable bookworm; how do
you come to know Madame de Renal? When have you spoken to her?'

'I have never spoken to her,' replied Julien, 'I have never seen the
lady except in church.'

'But you must have looked at her, you shameless scoundrel?'

'Never! You know that in church I see none but God,' Julien added with
a hypocritical air, calculated, to his mind, to ward off further
blows.

'There is something behind this, all the same,' replied the suspicious
peasant, and was silent for a moment; 'but I shall get nothing out of
you, you damned hypocrite. The fact is, I'm going to be rid of you,
and my saw will run all the better without you. You have made a friend
of the parson or someone, and he's got you a fine post. Go and pack
your traps, and I'll take you to M. de Renal's where you're to be
tutor to the children.'

'What am I to get for that?'

'Board, clothing and three hundred francs in wages.'

'I do not wish to be a servant,'

'Animal, who ever spoke of your being a servant? Would I allow my son
to be a servant?'

'But, with whom shall I have my meals?'

This question left old Sorel at a loss; he felt that if he spoke he
might be guilty of some imprudence; he flew into a rage with Julien,
upon whom he showered abuse, accusing him of greed, and left him to go
and consult his other sons.

Presently Julien saw them, each leaning upon his axe and deliberating
together. After watching them for some time, Julien, seeing that he
could make out nothing of their discussion, went and took his place on
the far side of the saw, so as not to be taken by surprise. He wanted
time to consider this sudden announcement which was altering his
destiny, but felt himself to be incapable of prudence; his imagination
was wholly taken up with forming pictures of what he would see in M.
de Renal's fine house.

'I must give up all that,' he said to himself, 'rather than let myself
be brought down to feeding with the servants. My father will try to
force me; I would sooner die. I have saved fifteen francs and eight
sous, I shall run away tonight; in two days, by keeping to side-roads
where I need not fear the police, I can be at Besancon; there I enlist
as a soldier, and, if necessary, cross the border into Switzerland.
But then, good-bye to everything, good-bye to that fine clerical
profession which is a stepping-stone to everything.'

This horror of feeding with the servants was not natural to Julien; he
would, in seeking his fortune, have done other things far more
disagreeable. He derived this repugnance from Rousseau's _Confessions_.
It was the one book that helped his imagination to form any idea of
the world.  The collection of reports of the Grand Army and the
_Memorial de Sainte-Helene_ completed his Koran. He would have gone to
the stake for those three books. Never did he believe in any other.
Remembering a saying of the old Surgeon-Major, he regarded all the
other books in the world as liars, written by rogues in order to
obtain advancement.

With his fiery nature Julien had one of those astonishing memories so
often found in foolish people. To win over the old priest Chelan, upon
whom he saw quite clearly that his own future depended, he had learned
by heart the entire New Testament in Latin; he knew also M. de
Maistre's book _Du Pape_, and had as little belief in one as in the
other.

As though by a mutual agreement, Sorel and his son avoided speaking to
one another for the rest of the day. At dusk, Julien went to the cure
for his divinity lesson, but did not think it prudent to say anything
to him of the strange proposal that had been made to his father. 'It
may be a trap,' he told himself; 'I must pretend to have forgotten
about it.'

Early on the following day, M. de Renal sent for old Sorel, who, after
keeping him waiting for an hour or two, finally appeared, beginning as
he entered the door a hundred excuses interspersed with as many
reverences. By dint of giving voice to every sort of objection, Sorel
succeeded in gathering that his son was to take his meals with the
master and mistress of the house, and on days when they had company in
a room by himself with the children. Finding an increasing desire to
raise difficulties the more he discerned a genuine anxiety on the
Mayor's part, and being moreover filled with distrust and
bewilderment, Sorel asked to see the room in which his son was to
sleep. It was a large chamber very decently furnished, but the
servants were already engaged in carrying into it the beds of the
three children.

At this the old peasant began to see daylight; he at once asked with
assurance to see the coat which would be given to his son. M. de Renal
opened his desk and took out a hundred francs.

'With this money, your son can go to M. Durand, the clothier, and get
himself a suit of black.'

'And supposing I take him away from you,' said the peasant, who had
completely forgotten the reverential forms of address. 'Will he take
this black coat with him?'

'Certainly.'

'Oh, very well!' said Sorel in a drawling tone, 'then there's only one
thing for us still to settle: the money you're to give him.'

'What!' M. de Renal indignantly exclaimed, 'we agreed upon that
yesterday: I give three hundred francs; I consider that plenty, if not
too much.'

'That was your offer, I do not deny it,' said old Sorel, speaking even
more slowly; then, by a stroke of genius which will astonish only
those who do not know the Franc-Comtois peasant, he added, looking M.
de Renal steadily in the face: '_We can do better elsewhere_.'

At these words the Mayor was thrown into confusion. He recovered
himself, however, and, after an adroit conversation lasting fully two
hours, in which not a word was said without a purpose, the peasant's
shrewdness prevailed over that of the rich man, who was not dependent
on his for his living. All the innumerable conditions which were to
determine Julien's new existence were finally settled; not only was
his salary fixed at four hundred francs, but it was to be paid in
advance, on the first day of each month.

'Very well! I shall let him have thirty-five francs,' said M. de
Renal.

'To make a round sum, a rich and generous gentleman like our Mayor,'
the peasant insinuated in a coaxing voice, 'will surely go as far as
thirty-six.'

'All right,' said M. de Renal, 'but let us have no more of this.'

For once, anger gave him a tone of resolution. The peasant saw that he
could advance no farther. Thereupon M. de Renal began in turn to make
headway. He utterly refused to hand over the thirty-six francs for the
first month to old Sorel, who was most eager to receive the money on
his son's behalf. It occurred to M. de Renal that he would be obliged
to describe to his wife the part he had played throughout this
transaction.

'Let me have back the hundred francs I gave you,' he said angrily. 'M.
Durand owes me money. I shall go with your son to choose the black
cloth.'

After this bold stroke, Sorel prudently retired upon his expressions
of respect; they occupied a good quarter of an hour. In the end,
seeing that there was certainly nothing more to be gained, he
withdrew. His final reverence ended with the words:

'I shall send my son up to the chateau.'

It was thus that the Mayor's subordinates spoke of his house when they
wished to please him.

Returning to his mill, Sorel looked in vain for his son. Doubtful as
to what might be in store for him, Julien had left home in the dead of
night.  He had been anxious to find a safe hiding-place for his books
and his Cross of the Legion of Honour. He had removed the whole of his
treasures to the house of a young timber-merchant, a friend of his, by
the name of Fouque, who lived on the side of the high mountain
overlooking Verrieres.

When he reappeared: 'Heaven knows, you damned idler,' his father said
to him, 'whether you will ever have enough honour to pay me for the
cost of your keep, which I have been advancing to you all these years!
Pack up your rubbish, and off with you to the Mayor's.'

Julien, astonished not to receive a thrashing, made haste to set off.
But no sooner was he out of sight of his terrible father than he
slackened his pace. He decided that it would serve the ends of his
hypocrisy to pay a visit to the church.

The idea surprises you? Before arriving at this horrible idea, the
soul of the young peasant had had a long way to go.

When he was still a child, the sight of certain dragoons of the 6th,
in their long, white cloaks, and helmets adorned with long crests of
black horsehair, who were returning from Italy, and whom Julien saw
tying their horses to the barred window of his father's house, drove
him mad with longing for a military career.

Later on he listened with ecstasy to the accounts of the battles of
the Bridge of Lodi, Arcole and Rivoli given him by the old
Surgeon-Major. He noticed the burning gaze which the old man directed
at his Cross.

But when Julien was fourteen, they began to build a church at
Verrieres, one that might be called magnificent for so small a town.
There were, in particular, four marble pillars the sight of which
impressed Julien; they became famous throughout the countryside, owing
to the deadly enmity which they aroused between the Justice of the
Peace and the young vicar, sent down from Besancon, who was understood
to be the spy of the Congregation. The Justice of the Peace came
within an ace of losing his post, such at least was the common report.
Had he not dared to have a difference of opinion with a priest who,
almost every fortnight, went to Besancon, where he saw, people said,
the Right Reverend Lord Bishop?

In the midst of all this, the Justice of the Peace, the father of a
large family, passed a number of sentences which appeared unjust; all
of these were directed against such of the inhabitants as read the
_Constitutionnel_. The right party was triumphant. The sums involved
amounted, it was true, to no more than four or five francs; but one of
these small fines was levied upon a nailsmith, Julien's godfather. In
his anger, this man exclaimed: 'What a change! And to think that, for
twenty years and more, the Justice was reckoned such an honest man!'
The Surgeon-Major, Julien's friend, was dead.

All at once Julien ceased to speak of Napoleon; he announced his
intention of becoming a priest, and was constantly to be seen, in his
father's sawmill, engaged in learning by heart a Latin Bible which the
cure had lent him. The good old man, amazed at his progress, devoted
whole evenings to instructing him in divinity. Julien gave utterance
in his company to none but pious sentiments. Who could have supposed
that that girlish face, so pale and gentle, hid the unshakeable
determination to expose himself to the risk of a thousand deaths
rather than fail to make his fortune?

To Julien, making a fortune meant in the first place leaving
Verrieres; he loathed his native place. Everything that he saw there
froze his imagination.

>From his earliest boyhood, he had had moments of exaltation. At such
times he dreamed with rapture that one day he would be introduced to
the beautiful ladies of Paris; he would manage to attract their
attention by some brilliant action. Why should he not be loved by one
of them, as Bonaparte, when still penniless, had been loved by the
brilliant Madame de Beauharnais? For many years now, perhaps not an
hour of Julien's life had passed without his reminding himself that
Bonaparte, an obscure subaltern with no fortune, had made himself
master of the world with his sword. This thought consoled him for his
misfortunes which he deemed to be great, and enhanced his joy when joy
came his way.

The building of the church and the sentences passed by the Justice
brought him sudden enlightenment; an idea which occurred to him drove
him almost out of his senses for some weeks, and finally took
possession of him with the absolute power of the first idea which a
passionate nature believes itself to have discovered.

'When Bonaparte made a name for himself, France was in fear of being
invaded; military distinction was necessary and fashionable. Today we
see priests at forty drawing stipends of a hundred thousand francs,
that is to say three times as much as the famous divisional commanders
under Napoleon.  They must have people to support them. Look at the
Justice here, so wise a man, always so honest until now, sacrificing
his honour, at his age, from fear of offending a young vicar of
thirty. I must become a priest.'

On one occasion, in the midst of his new-found piety, after Julien had
been studying divinity for two years, he was betrayed by a sudden
blaze of the fire that devoured his spirit. This was at M. Chelan's;
at a dinner party of priests, to whom the good cure had introduced him
as an educational prodigy, he found himself uttering frenzied praise
of Napoleon. He bound his right arm across his chest, pretending that
he had put the arm out of joint when shifting a fir trunk, and kept it
for two months in this awkward position. After this drastic penance,
he forgave himself. Such is the young man of eighteen, but weak in
appearance, whom you would have said to be, at the most, seventeen,
who, carrying a small parcel under his arm, was entering the
magnificent church of Verrieres.

He found it dark and deserted. In view of some festival, all the
windows in the building had been covered with crimson cloth; the
effect of this, when the sun shone, was a dazzling blaze of light, of
the most imposing and most religious character.  Julien shuddered.
Being alone in the church, he took his seat on the bench that had the
most handsome appearance. It bore the arms of M. de Renal.

On the desk in front, Julien observed a scrap of printed paper, spread
out there as though to be read. He looked at it closely and saw:

'Details of the execution and of the last moments of Louis Jenrel,
executed at Besancon, on the ...'

The paper was torn. On the other side he read the opening words of a
line, which were: 'The first step.'

'Who can have put this paper here?' said Julien. 'Poor wretch!' he
added with a sigh, 'his name has the same ending as mine.' And he
crumpled up the paper.

On his way out, Julien thought he saw blood by the holy water stoup;
it was some of the water that had been spilt: the light from the red
curtains which draped the windows made it appear like blood.

Finally, Julien felt ashamed of his secret terror.

'Should I prove coward?' he said to himself. '_To arms_!'

This phrase, so often repeated in the old Surgeon's accounts of
battles, had a heroic sound in Julien's ears. He rose and walked
rapidly to M. de Renal's house.

Despite these brave resolutions, as soon as he caught sight of the
house twenty yards away he was overcome by an unconquerable shyness.
The iron gate stood open; it seemed to him magnificent. He would have
now to go in through it.

Julien was not the only person whose heart was troubled by his arrival
in this household. Madame de Renal's extreme timidity was disconcerted
by the idea of this stranger who, in the performance of his duty,
would be constantly coming between her and her children. She was
accustomed to having her sons sleep in her own room. That morning,
many tears had flowed when she saw their little beds being carried
into the apartment intended for the tutor. In vain did she beg her
husband to let the bed of Stanislas Xavier, the youngest boy, be taken
back to her room.

Womanly delicacy was carried to excess in Madame de Renal. She formed
a mental picture of a coarse, unkempt creature, employed to scold her
children, simply because he knew Latin, a barbarous tongue for the
sake of which her sons would be whipped.




CHAPTER 6
Dullness


  Non so piu cosa son,
  Cosa facio.
    MOZART (Figaro)

With the vivacity and grace which came naturally to her when she was
beyond the reach of male vision, Madame de Renal was coming out
through the glass door which opened from the drawing-room into the
garden, when she saw, standing by the front door, a young peasant,
almost a boy still, extremely pale and showing traces of recent tears.
He was wearing a clean white shirt and carried under his arm a neat
jacket of violet ratteen.

This young peasant's skin was so white, his eyes were so appealing,
that the somewhat romantic mind of Madame de Renal conceived the idea
at first that he might be a girl in disguise, come to ask some favour
of the Mayor.  She felt sorry for the poor creature, who had come to a
standstill by the front door, and evidently could not summon up
courage to ring the bell.  Madame de Renal advanced, oblivious for the
moment of the bitter grief that she felt at the tutor's coming.
Julien, who was facing the door, did not see her approach. He trembled
when a pleasant voice sounded close to his ear:

'What have you come for, my boy?'

Julien turned sharply round, and, struck by the charm of Madame de
Renal's expression, forgot part of his shyness. A moment later,
astounded by her beauty, he forgot everything, even his purpose in
coming. Madame de Renal had repeated her question.

'I have come to be tutor, Madame,' he at length informed her, put to
shame by his tears which he dried as best he might.

Madame de Renal remained speechless; they were standing close
together, looking at one another. Julien had never seen a person so
well dressed as this, let alone a woman with so exquisite a
complexion, to speak to him in a gentle tone. Madame de Renal looked
at the large tears which lingered on the cheeks (so pallid at first
and now so rosy) of this young peasant. Presently she burst out
laughing, with all the wild hilarity of a girl; she was laughing at
herself, and trying in vain to realise the full extent of her
happiness. So this was the tutor whom she had imagined an unwashed and
ill-dressed priest, who was coming to scold and whip her children.

'Why, Sir!' she said to him at length, 'do you know Latin?'

The word 'Sir' came as such a surprise to Julien that he thought for a
moment before answering.

'Yes, Ma'am,' he said shyly.

Madame de Renal felt so happy that she ventured to say to Julien:

'You won't scold those poor children too severely?'

'Scold them? I?' asked Julien in amazement. 'Why should I?'

'You will, Sir,' she went on after a brief silence and in a voice that
grew more emotional every moment, 'you will be kind to them, you
promise me?'

To hear himself addressed again as 'Sir', in all seriousness, and by a
lady so fashionably attired, was more than Julien had ever dreamed of;
in all the cloud castles of his boyhood, he had told himself that no
fashionable lady would deign to speak to him until he had a smart
uniform. Madame de Renal, for her part, was completely taken in by the
beauty of Julien's complexion, his great dark eyes and his becoming
hair which was curling more than usual because, to cool himself, he
had just dipped his head in the basin of the public fountain. To her
great delight, she discovered an air of girlish shyness in this fatal
tutor, whose severity and savage appearance she had so greatly
dreaded for her children's sake. To Madame de Renal's peace-loving
nature the contrast between her fears and what she now saw before her
was a great event. Finally she recovered from her surprise. She was
astonished to find herself standing like this at the door of her house
with this young man almost in his shirtsleeves and so close to her.

'Let us go indoors, Sir,' she said to him with an air of distinct
embarrassment.

Never in her life had a purely agreeable sensation so profoundly
stirred Madame de Renal; never had so charming an apparition come in
the wake of more disturbing fears. And so those sweet children, whom
she had tended with such care, were not to fall into the hands of a
dirty, growling priest. As soon as they were in the hall, she turned
to Julien who was following her shyly. His air of surprise at the
sight of so fine a house was an additional charm in the eyes of Madame
de Renal. She could not believe her eyes; what she felt most of all
was that the tutor ought to be wearing a black coat.

'But is it true, Sir,' she said to him, again coming to a halt, and
mortally afraid lest she might be mistaken, so happy was the belief
making her, 'do you really know Latin?'

These words hurt Julien's pride and destroyed the enchantment in which
he had been living for the last quarter of an hour.

'Yes, Ma'am,' he informed her, trying to adopt a chilly air; 'I know
Latin as well as M. le cure; indeed, he is sometimes so kind as to say
that I know it better.'

Madame de Renal felt that Julien had a very wicked air; he had stopped
within arm's length of her. She went nearer to him, and murmured:

'For the first few days, you won't take the whip to my children, even
if they don't know their lessons?'

This gentle, almost beseeching tone coming from so fine a lady at once
made Julien forget what he owed to his reputation as a Latin scholar.
Madame de Renal's face was close to his own, he could smell the
perfume of a woman's summer attire, so astounding a thing to a poor
peasant. Julien blushed deeply, and said with a sigh and in a faint
voice:

'Fear nothing, Ma'am, I shall obey you in every respect.'

It was at this moment only, when her anxiety for her children was
completely banished, that Madame de Renal was struck by Julien's
extreme good looks. The almost feminine cast of his features and his
air of embarrassment did not seem in the least absurd to a woman who
was extremely timid herself. The manly air which is generally
considered essential to masculine beauty would have frightened her.

'How old are you, Sir?' she asked Julien.

'I shall soon be nineteen.'

'My eldest son is eleven,' went on Madame de Renal, completely
reassured; 'he will be almost a companion for you, you can talk to him
seriously. His father tried to beat him once, the child was ill for a
whole week, and yet it was quite a gentle blow.'

'How different from me,' thought Julien. 'Only yesterday my father was
thrashing me. How fortunate these rich people are!'

Madame de Renal had by this time arrived at the stage of remarking the
most trivial changes in the state of the tutor's mind; she mistook
this envious impulse for shyness, and tried to give him fresh courage.

'What is your name, Sir?' she asked him with an accent and a grace the
charm of which Julien could feel without knowing whence it sprang.

'They call me Julien Sorel, Ma'am; I am trembling as I enter a strange
house for the first time in my life; I have need of your protection,
and shall require you to forgive me many things at first. I have never
been to College, I was too poor; I have never talked to any other men,
except my cousin the Surgeon-Major, a Member of the Legion of Honour,
and the Reverend Father Chelan. He will give you a good account of me.
My brothers have always beaten me, do not listen to them if they speak
evil of me to you; pardon my faults, Ma'am, I shall never have any
evil intention.'

Julien plucked up his courage again during this long speech; he was
studying Madame de Renal. Such is the effect of perfect grace when it
is natural to the character, particularly when she whom it adorns has
no thought of being graceful. Julien, who knew all that was to be
known about feminine beauty, would have sworn at that moment that she
was no more than twenty. The bold idea at once occurred to him of
kissing her hand. Next, this idea frightened him; a moment later, he
said to himself: 'It would be cowardly on my part not to carry out an
action which may be of use to me, and diminish the scorn which this
fine lady probably feels for a poor workman, only just taken from the
sawbench.' Perhaps Julien was somewhat encouraged by the words
'good-looking boy' which for the last six months he had been used to
hearing on Sundays on the lips of various girls. While he debated thus
with himself, Madame de Renal offered him a few suggestions as to how
he should begin to handle her children. The violence of Julien's
effort to control himself made him turn quite pale again; he said,
with an air of constraint:

'Never, Ma'am, will I beat your children; I swear it before God.'

And so saying he ventured to take Madame de Renal's hand
and carry it to his lips. She was astonished at this action, and, on
thinking it over, shocked. As the weather was very warm, her arm was
completely bare under her shawl, and Julien's action in raising her
hand to his lips had uncovered it to the shoulder. A minute later she
scolded herself; she felt that she had not been quickly enough
offended.

M. de Renal, who had heard the sound of voices, came out of his study;
with the same majestic and fatherly air that he assumed when he was
conducting marriages in the Town Hall, he said to Julien:

'It is essential that I speak to you before the children see you.'

He ushered Julien into one of the rooms and detained his wife, who was
going to leave them together. Having shut the door, M. de Renal seated
himself with gravity.

'The cure has told me that you were an honest fellow, everyone in this
house will treat you with respect, and if I am satisfied I shall help
you to set up for yourself later on. I wish you to cease to see
anything of either your family or your friends, their tone would not
be suited to my children. Here are thirty-six francs for the first
month; but I must have your word that you will not give a penny of
this money to your father.'

M. de Renal was annoyed with the old man, who, in this business, had
proved more subtle than he himself.

'And now, _Sir_, for by my orders everyone in this house is to address
you as Sir, and you will be conscious of the advantage of entering a
well-ordered household; now, Sir, it is not proper that the children
should see you in a jacket. Have the servants seen him?' M. de Renal
asked his wife.

'No, dear,' she replied with an air of deep thought.

'Good. Put on this,' he said to the astonished young man, handing him
one of his own frock coats. 'And now let us go to M. Durand, the
clothier.'

More than an hour later, when M. de Renal returned with the new tutor
dressed all in black, he found his wife still seated in the same
place. She felt soothed by Julien's presence; as she studied his
appearance she forgot to feel afraid. Julien was not giving her a
thought; for all his mistrust of destiny and of mankind, his heart at
that moment was just like a child's; he seemed to have lived whole
years since the moment when, three hours earlier, he stood trembling
in the church. He noticed Madame de Renal's frigid manner, and
gathered that she was angry because he had ventured to kiss her hand.
But the sense of pride that he derived from the contact of garments so
different from those which he was accustomed to wear caused him so
much excitement, and he was so anxious to conceal his joy that all his
gestures were more or less abrupt and foolish. Madame de Renal gazed
at him with eyes of astonishment.

'A little gravity, Sir,' M. de Renal told him, 'if you wish to be
respected by my children and my servants.'

'Sir,' replied Julien, 'I am uncomfortable in these new clothes; I, a
humble peasant, have never worn any but short jackets; with your
permission, I shall retire to my bedroom.'

'What think you of this new acquisition?' M. de Renal asked his wife.

With an almost instinctive impulse, of which she herself certainly was
not aware, Madame de Renal concealed the truth from her husband.

'I am by no means as enchanted as you are with this little peasant;
your kindness will turn him into an impertinent rascal whom you will
be obliged to send packing within a month.'

'Very well! We shall send him packing; he will have cost me a hundred
francs or so, and Verrieres will have grown used to seeing a tutor
with M. de Renal's children. That point I should not have gained if I
had let Julien remain in the clothes of a working man. When I dismiss
him, I shall of course keep the black suit which I have just ordered
from the clothier.  He shall have nothing but the coat I found ready
made at the tailor's, which he is now wearing.'

The hour which Julien spent in his room seemed like a second to Madame
de Renal. The children, who had been told of their new tutor's
arrival, overwhelmed their mother with questions. Finally Julien
appeared. He was another man. It would have been straining the word to
say that he was grave; he was gravity incarnate. He was introduced to
the children, and spoke to them with an air that surprised M. de Renal
himself.

'I am here, young gentlemen,' he told them at the end of his address,
'to teach you Latin. You know what is meant by repeating a lesson.
Here is the Holy Bible,' he said, and showed them a tiny volume in
32mo, bound in black. 'It is in particular the story of Our Lord Jesus
Christ, that is the part which is called the New Testament. I shall
often make you repeat lessons; now you must make me repeat mine.'

Adolphe, the eldest boy, had taken the book.

'Open it where you please,' Julien went on, 'and tell me the first
word of a paragraph. I shall repeat by heart the sacred text, the rule
of conduct for us all, until you stop me.'

Adolphe opened the book, read a word, and Julien repeated the whole
page as easily as though he were speaking French. M. de Renal looked
at his wife with an air of triumph. The children, seeing their
parents' amazement, opened their eyes wide. A servant came to the door
of the drawing-room, Julien went on speaking in Latin. The servant at
first stood motionless and then vanished. Presently the lady's maid
and the cook appeared in the doorway; by this time Adolphe had opened
the book at eight different places, and Julien continued to repeat the
words with the same ease.

'Eh, what a bonny little priest,' the cook, a good and truly devout
girl, said aloud.

M. de Renal's self-esteem was troubled; so far from having any thought
of examining the tutor, he was engaged in ransacking his memory for a
few words of Latin; at last, he managed to quote a line of Horace.
Julien knew no Latin apart from the Bible. He replied with a frown:

'The sacred ministry to which I intend to devote myself has forbidden
me to read so profane a poet.'

M. de Renal repeated a fair number of alleged lines of Horace. He
explained to his children what Horace was; but the children, overcome
with admiration, paid little attention to what he was saying. They
were watching Julien.

The servants being still at the door, Julien felt it incumbent upon
him to prolong the test.

'And now,' he said to the youngest boy, 'Master Stanislas Xavier too
must set me a passage from the Holy Book.'

Little Stanislas, swelling with pride, read out to the best of his
ability the opening words of a paragraph, and Julien repeated the
whole page. That nothing might be wanting to complete M. de Renal's
triumph, while Julien was reciting, there entered M. Valenod, the
possessor of fine Norman horses, and M. Charcot de Maugiron,
Sub-Prefect of the district. This scene earned for Julien the title
'Sir'; the servants themselves dared not withhold it from him.

That evening, the whole of Verrieres flocked to M. de Renal's to
behold the marvel. Julien answered them all with an air of gloom which
kept them at a distance. His fame spread so rapidly through the town
that, shortly afterwards, M. de Renal, afraid of losing him, suggested
his signing a contract for two years.

'No, Sir,' Julien replied coldly, 'if you chose to dismiss me I should
be obliged to go. A contract which binds me without putting you under
any obligation is unfair, I must decline.'

Julien managed so skilfully that, less than a month after his coming
to the house, M. de Renal himself respected him. The cure having
quarrelled with MM. de Renal and Valenod, there was no one who could
betray Julien's former passion for Napoleon, of whom he was careful to
speak with horror.




CHAPTER 7
Elective Affinities


  They can only touch the heart by bruising it.
    A MODERN

The children adored him, he did not care for them; his thoughts were
elsewhere. Nothing that these urchins could do ever tried his
patience.  Cold, just, impassive, and at the same time loved, because
his coming had in a measure banished dullness from the house, he was a
good tutor. For his part, he felt only hatred and horror for the high
society in which he was allowed to occupy the very foot of the
table, a position which may perhaps explain his hatred and horror.
There were certain formal dinners at which he could barely contain his
loathing of everything round about him.  On Saint Louis's day in
particular, M. Valenod was laying down the law at M. de Renal's;
Julien almost gave himself away; he escaped into the garden, saying
that he must look after the children. 'What panegyrics of honesty!' he
exclaimed; 'anyone would say that was the one and only virtue; and yet
what consideration, what a cringing respect for a man who obviously
has doubled and tripled his fortune since he has been in charge of the
relief of the poor! I would wager that he makes something even out of
the fund set apart for the foundlings, those wretches whose need is
even more sacred than that of the other paupers. Ah, monsters!
Monsters! And I too, I am a sort of foundling, hated by my father, my
brothers, my whole family.'

Some days earlier, Julien walking by himself and saying his office in
a little wood, known as the Belvedere, which overlooks the Cours de la
Fidelite, had tried in vain to avoid his two brothers, whom he saw
approaching him by a solitary path. The jealousy of these rough
labourers had been so quickened by the sight of their brother's
handsome black coat, and air of extreme gentility, as well as by the
sincere contempt which he felt for them, that they had proceeded to
thrash him, leaving him there unconscious and bleeding freely. Madame
de Renal, who was out walking with M. Valenod and the Sub-Prefect,
happened to turn into the little wood; she saw Julien lying on the
ground and thought him dead. She was so overcome as to make M. Valenod
jealous.

His alarm was premature. Julien admired Madame de Renal's looks, but
hated her for her beauty; it was the first reef on which his fortune
had nearly foundered. He spoke to her as seldom as possible, in the
hope of making her forget the impulse which, at their first encounter,
had led him to kiss her hand.

Elisa, Madame de Renal's maid, had not failed to fall in love with the
young tutor; she often spoke of him to her mistress. Miss Elisa's love
had brought upon Julien the hatred of one of the footmen. One day he
heard this man say to Elisa: 'You won't speak to me any more, since
that greasy tutor has been in the house.' Julien did not deserve the
epithet; but, with the instinct of a good-looking youth, became doubly
attentive to his person. M. Valenod's hatred was multiplied
accordingly. He said in public that so much concern with one's
appearance was not becoming in a young cleric. Barring the cassock,
Julien now wore clerical attire.

Madame de Renal observed that he was speaking more often than before
to Miss Elisa; she learned that these conversations were due to the
limitations of Julien's extremely small wardrobe. He had so scanty a
supply of linen that he was obliged to send it out constantly to be
washed, and it was in performing these little services that Elisa made
herself useful to him.

This extreme poverty, of which she had had no suspicion, touched
Madame de Renal; she longed to make him presents, but did not dare;
this inward resistance was the first feeling of regret that Julien
caused her. Until then the name of Julien and the sense of a pure and
wholly intellectual joy had been synonymous to her.  Tormented by the
idea of Julien's poverty, Madame de Renal spoke to her husband about
making him a present of linen:

'What idiocy!' he replied. 'What! Make presents to a man with whom we
are perfectly satisfied, and who is serving us well? It is when he
neglects his duty that we should stimulate his zeal.'

Madame de Renal felt ashamed of this way of looking at things; before
Julien came she would not have noticed it. She never saw the young
cleric's spotless, though very simple, toilet without asking herself:
'Poor boy, how ever does he manage?'

As time went on she began to feel sorry for Julien's deficiencies,
instead of being shocked by them.

Madame de Renal was one of those women to be found in the provinces
whom one may easily take to be fools until one has known them for a
fortnight.  She had no experience of life, and made no effort at
conversation. Endowed with a delicate and haughty nature, that
instinct for happiness natural to all human beings made her, generally
speaking, pay no attention to the actions of the coarse creatures into
whose midst chance had flung her.

She would have been remarkable for her naturalness and quickness of
mind, had she received the most scanty education; but in her capacity
as an heiress she had been brought up by nuns who practised a
passionate devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and were animated by
a violent hatred of the French as being enemies of the Jesuits. Madame
de Renal had sufficient sense to forget at once, as absurdities,
everything she had learned in the convent; but she put nothing else in
its place, and ended by knowing nothing. The flatteries of which she
had been the precocious object, as the heiress to a large fortune, and
a marked tendency towards passionate devotion, had bred in her an
attitude towards life that was wholly inward.  With an outward show of
the most perfect submission, and a self-suppression which the husbands
of Verrieres used to quote as an example to their wives, and which was
a source of pride to M. de Renal, her inner life was, as a matter of
fact, dictated by the most lofty disdain. Any princess who is quoted
as an illustration of pride pays infinitely more attention to what her
gentlemen are doing round about her than this meekest of women, so
modest in appearance, gave to anything that her husband said or did.
Until Julien arrived, she had really paid no attention to anyone but
her children. Their little illnesses, their sorrows, their little
pleasures absorbed the whole sensibility of this human soul, which had
never, in the whole of her life, adored anyone save God, while she was
at the Sacred Heart in Besancon.

Although she did not condescend to say so to anyone, a feverish attack
coming to one of her sons threw her almost into the same state as if
the child had died. A burst of coarse laughter, a shrug of the
shoulders, accompanied by some trivial maxim as to the foolishness of
women, had regularly greeted the confessions of grief of this sort
which the need of an outlet had led her to make to her husband during
the first years of their married life. Witticisms of this sort,
especially when they bore upon the illnesses of the children, turned
the dagger in Madame de Renal's heart. This was all the substitute she
found for the obsequious, honeyed flatteries of the Jesuitical convent
in which she had passed her girlhood.  She was educated in the school
of suffering. Too proud to speak of griefs of this sort, even to her
friend Madame Derville, she imagined that all men resembled her
husband, M. Valenod, and the Sub-Prefect Charcot de Maugiron.  Coarse
wit and the most brutal insensibility to everything that did not
promise money, promotion or a Cross; a blind hatred of every argument
that went against them seemed to her to be things natural to the male
sex, like the wearing of boots and felt hats.

After many long years, Madame de Renal had not yet grown accustomed to
these money-grubbing creatures among whom she had to live.

Hence the success of the little peasant Julien. She found much
pleasant enjoyment, radiant with the charm of novelty, in the sympathy
of this proud and noble spirit. Madame de Renal had soon forgiven him
his extreme ignorance, which was an additional charm, and the
roughness of his manners, which she succeeded in improving. She found
that it was worth her while to listen to him, even when they spoke of
the most ordinary things, even when it was a question of a poor dog
that had been run over, as it was crossing the street, by a peasant's
cart going by at a trot. The sight of such a tragedy made her husband
utter his coarse laugh, whereas she saw Julien's fine, beautifully
arched black eyebrows wince. Generosity, nobility of soul, humanity,
seemed to her, after a time, to exist only in this young cleric.  She
felt for him alone all the sympathy and even admiration which those
virtues arouse in well-bred natures.

In Paris, Julien's position with regard to Madame de Renal would very
soon have been simplified; but in Paris love is the child of the
novels. The young tutor and his timid mistress would have found in
three or four novels, and even in the lyrics of the Gymnase, a clear
statement of their situation. The novels would have outlined for them
the part to be played, shown them the model to copy; and this model,
sooner or later, albeit without the slightest pleasure, and perhaps
with reluctance, vanity would have compelled Julien to follow.

In a small town of the Aveyron or the Pyrenees, the slightest incident
would have been made decisive by the ardour of the climate. Beneath
our more sombre skies, a penniless young man, who is ambitious only
because the refinement of his nature puts him in need of some of those
pleasures which money provides, is in daily contact with a woman of
thirty who is sincerely virtuous, occupied with her children, and
never looks to novels for examples of conduct. Everything goes slowly,
everything happens by degrees in the provinces: life is more natural.

Often, when she thought of the young tutor's poverty, Madame de Renal
was moved to tears. Julien came upon her, one day, actually crying.

'Ah, Ma'am, you have had some bad news!'

'No, my friend,' was her answer: 'Call the children, let us go for a
walk.'

She took his arm and leaned on it in a manner which Julien thought
strange.  It was the first time that she had called him 'my friend'.

Towards the end of their walk, Julien observed that she was blushing
deeply. She slackened her pace.

'You will have heard,' she said without looking at him, 'that I am the
sole heiress of a very rich aunt who lives at Besancon. She loads me
with presents. My sons are making ... such astonishing progress ...
that I should like to ask you to accept a little present, as a token
of my gratitude. It is only a matter of a few louis to supply you with
linen. But--' she added, blushing even more deeply, and was silent.

'What, Ma'am?' said Julien.

'It would be unnecessary,' she went on, lowering her head, 'to speak
of this to my husband.'

'I may be humble, Ma'am, but I am not base,' replied Julien coming to
a standstill, his eyes ablaze with anger, and drawing himself up to
his full height. 'That is a point which you have not sufficiently
considered. I should be less than a footman if I put myself in the
position of hiding from M. de Renal anything that had to do with my
money.'

Madame de Renal was overwhelmed.

'The Mayor,' Julien went on, 'has given me thirty-six francs five
times since I came to live in his house; I am prepared to show my
account-book to M. de Renal or to anyone else, including M. Valenod
who hates me.'

This outburst left Madame de Renal pale and trembling, and the walk
came to an end before either of them could find an excuse for renewing
the conversation. Love for Madame de Renal became more and more
impossible in the proud heart of Julien: as for her, she respected,
she admired him; she had been scolded by him. On the pretext of making
amends for the humiliation which she had unintentionally caused him,
she allowed herself to pay him the most delicate attentions. The
novelty of this procedure kept her happy for a week. Its effect was to
some extent to appease Julien's anger; he was far from seeing anything
in it that could be mistaken for personal affection.

'That,' he said to himself, 'is what rich people are like: they
humiliate one, and then think they can put things right by a few
monkey-tricks.'

Madame de Renal's heart was too full, and as yet too innocent for her,
notwithstanding the resolutions she had made, not to tell her husband
of the offer she had made to Julien and the manner in which she had
been repulsed.

'What,' M. de Renal retorted, with keen annoyance, 'could you tolerate
a refusal from a servant?'

And as Madame de Renal protested at this word:

'I speak, Ma'am, as the late Prince de Conde spoke, when presenting
his Chamberlains to his bride: "All these people," he told her, "are
our servants." I read you the passage from Besenval's _Memoirs_, it is
essential in questions of precedence. Everyone who is not a gentleman,
who lives in your house and receives a salary, is your servant. I
shall say a few words to this Master Julien, and give him a hundred
francs.'

'Ah, my dear,' said Madame de Renal trembling, 'please do not say
anything in front of the servants.'

'Yes, they might be jealous, and rightly,' said her husband as he left
the room, thinking of the magnitude of the sum.

Madame de Renal sank down on a chair, almost fainting with grief. 'He
is going to humiliate Julien, and it is my fault!' She felt a horror
of her husband, and hid her face in her hands. She promised herself
that she would never confide anything in him again.

When she next saw Julien, she was trembling all over, her bosom was so
contracted that she could not manage to utter a single word. In her
embarrassment she took his hands and wrung them.

'Well, my friend,' she said to him after a little, 'are you pleased
with my husband?'

'How should I not be?' Julien answered with a bitter smile; 'he has
given me a hundred francs.'

Madame de Renal looked at him as though uncertain what to do.

'Give me your arm,' she said at length with an accent of courage which
Julien had never yet observed in her.

She ventured to enter the shop of the Verrieres bookseller, in spite
of his terrible reputation as a Liberal. There she chose books to the
value of ten louis which she gave to her sons. But these books were
the ones which she knew that Julien wanted. She insisted that there,
in the bookseller's shop, each of the children should write his own
name in the books that fell to his share. While Madame de Renal was
rejoicing at the partial reparation which she had had the courage to
make to Julien, he was lost in amazement at the quantity of books
which he saw on the bookseller's shelves. Never had he dared to set
foot in so profane a place; his heart beat violently.  So far from his
having any thought of trying to guess what was occurring in the heart
of Madame de Renal, he was plunged in meditation as to how it would be
possible for a young student of divinity to procure some of these
books. At length the idea came to him that it might be possible, by a
skilful approach, to persuade M. de Renal that he ought to set his
sons, as the subject for an essay, the lives of the celebrated
gentlemen who were natives of the province. After a month of careful
preliminaries, he saw his idea prove successful, so much so that,
shortly afterwards, he ventured, in speaking to M. de Renal, to
mention an action considerably more offensive to the noble Mayor; it
was a matter of contributing to the prosperity of a Liberal, by taking
out a subscription at the library.  M. de Renal entirely agreed that
it was wise to let his eldest son have a _visual impression_ of various
works which he would hear mentioned in conversation when he went to
the Military School; but Julien found the Mayor obdurate in refusing
to go any farther. He suspected a secret reason, which he was unable
to guess.

'I was thinking, Sir,' he said to him one day, 'that it would be
highly improper for the name of a respectable gentleman like a Renal
to appear on the dirty ledger of the librarian.'

M. de Renal's face brightened.

'It would also be a very bad mark,' Julien went on, in a humbler tone,
'against a poor divinity student, if it should one day be discovered
that his name had been on the ledger of a bookseller who keeps a
library. The Liberals might accuse me of having asked for the most
scandalous books; for all one knows they might even go so far as to
write in after my name the titles of those perverse works.'

But Julien was going off the track. He saw the Mayor's features resume
their expression of embarrassment and ill humour. Julien was silent.
'I have my man hooked,' he said to himself.

A few days later, on the eldest boy's questioning Julien as to a book
advertised in the _Quotidienne_, in M. de Renal's presence:

'To remove all occasion for triumph from the Jacobin Party,' said the
young tutor, 'and at the same time to enable me to answer Master
Adolphe, one might open a subscription at the bookshop in the name of
the lowest of your servants.'

'That is not at all a bad idea,' said M. de Renal, obviously
delighted.

'Only it would have to be specified,' said Julien with that grave and
almost sorrowful air which becomes certain people so well, when they
see the success of the projects which have been longest in their
minds, 'it would have to be specified that the servant shall not take
out any novels.  Once they were in the house, those dangerous works
might corrupt Madame's maids, not to speak of the servant himself.'

'You forget the political pamphlets,' added M. de Renal, in a haughty
tone.  He wished to conceal the admiration that he felt for the clever
middle course discovered by his children's tutor.

Julien's life was thus composed of a series of petty negotiations; and
their success was of far more importance to him than the evidence of a
marked preference for himself which was only waiting for him to read
it in the heart of Madame de Renal.

The moral environment in which he had been placed all his life was
repeated in the household of the worshipful Mayor of Verrieres. There,
as in his father's sawmill, he profoundly despised the people with
whom he lived, and was hated by them. He saw every day, from the
remarks made by the Sub-Prefect, by M. Valenod and by the other
friends of the family, with reference to the things that had just
happened under their eyes, how remote their ideas were from any
semblance of reality. Did an action strike him as admirable, it was
precisely what called forth blame from the people round about him. His
unspoken retort was always: 'What monsters!' or 'What fools!' The
amusing thing was that, with all his pride, frequently he understood
nothing at all of what was being discussed.

In his whole life, he had never spoken with sincerity except to the
old Surgeon-Major; the few ideas that he had bore reference to
Napoleon's campaigns in Italy, or to surgery. His youthful courage
took delight in detailed accounts of the most painful operations; he
said to himself: 'I should not have flinched.'

The first time that Madame de Renal attempted a conversation with him
on a subject other than that of the children's education, he began to
talk of surgical operations; she turned pale, and begged him to stop.

Julien knew nothing apart from these matters. And so, as he spent his
time with Madame de Renal, the strangest silence grew up between them
as soon as they were alone together. In her own drawing-room, humble
as his bearing was, she found in his eyes an air of intellectual
superiority over everyone that came to the house. Were she left alone
for a moment with him, she saw him grow visibly embarrassed. This
troubled her, for her womanly instinct made her realise that his
embarrassment was not in the least degree amorous.

In consequence of some idea derived from a description of good
society, as the old Surgeon-Major had beheld it, as soon as
conversation ceased in a place where he found himself in the company
of a woman, Julien felt abashed, as though he himself were specially
to blame for this silence. This sensation was a hundred times more
painful when they were alone. His imagination, full of the most
extravagant, the most Spanish notions as to what a man ought to say,
when he is alone with a woman, offered him in his agitation none but
inadmissible ideas. His soul was in the clouds, and yet he was
incapable of breaking the most humiliating silence. Thus his air of
severity, during his long walks with Madame de Renal and the children,
was intensified by the most cruel sufferings. He despised himself
hideously. If by mischance he forced himself to speak, he found
himself saying the most ridiculous things. To increase his misery, he
saw and exaggerated his own absurdity; but what he did not see was the
expression in his eyes, they were so fine and revealed so burning a
soul that, like good actors, they imparted at times a charming meaning
to what was meaningless. Madame de Renal remarked that, when alone
with her, he never expressed himself well except when he was
distracted by some unforeseen occurrence, he never thought of turning
a compliment. As the friends of the family did not spoil her by
offering her new and brilliant ideas, she took a delight in the
flashes of Julien's intellect.

Since the fall of Napoleon, all semblance of gallantry in speech has
been sternly banished from the code of provincial behaviour. People
are afraid of losing their posts. The unscrupulous seek support from
the _Congregation_ and hypocrisy has made the most brilliant advances
even among the Liberal classes. Dulness increases. No pleasure is
left, save in reading and agriculture.

Madame de Renal, the wealthy heiress of a religious aunt, married at
sixteen to a worthy gentleman, had never in her life felt or seen
anything that bore the faintest resemblance to love. Her confessor,
the good cure Chelan, was the only person almost who had ever spoken
to her of love, with reference to the advances of M. Valenod, and he
had drawn so revolting a picture of it that the word conveyed nothing
to her but the idea of the most abject immorality. She regarded as an
exception, or rather as something quite apart from nature, love such
as she had found it in the very small number of novels that chance had
brought to her notice. Thanks to this ignorance, Madame de
Renal, entirely happy, occupied incessantly with the thought of
Julien, was far from reproaching herself in the slightest degree.




CHAPTER 8
Minor Events


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

The angelic sweetness which Madame de Renal derived from her own
character as well as from her present happiness was interrupted only
when she happened to think of her maid Elisa. This young woman
received a legacy, went to make her confession to the cure Chelan, and
revealed to him her intention to marry Julien. The cure was genuinely
delighted at his friend's good fortune; but his surprise was great
when Julien informed him with a resolute air that Miss Elisa's offer
could not be accepted.

'Pay good heed, my son, to what is taking place in your heart,' said
the cure, frowning; 'I congratulate you on your vocation, if it is to
it alone that must be ascribed your scorn of a more than adequate
provision. For fifty-six years and more have I been cure at Verrieres,
and yet, so far as one can see, I am going to be deprived. This
distresses me, albeit I have an income of eight hundred livres. I tell
you of this detail in order that you may not be under any illusion as
to what is in store for you in the priestly calling. If you think of
paying court to the men in power, your eternal ruin is assured. You
may make your fortune, but you will have to injure the poor and needy,
flatter the Sub-Prefect, the Mayor, the important person, and
minister to his passions: such conduct, which in the world is called
the art of life, may, in a layman, be not wholly incompatible with
salvation; but in our calling, we have to choose; we must make our
fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way.
Go, my dear friend, reflect, and come back in three days' time with a
definite answer. I am sorry to see underlying your character, a
smouldering ardour which does not suggest to my mind the moderation
and complete renunciation of earthly advantages necessary in a priest;
I augur well from your intelligence; but, allow me to tell you,' the
good cure went on, with tears in his eyes, 'in the calling of a
priest, I shall tremble for your salvation.'

Julien was ashamed of his emotion; for the first time in his life, he
saw himself loved; he wept for joy, and went to hide his tears in the
great woods above Verrieres.

'Why am I in this state?' he asked himself at length; 'I feel that I
would give my life a hundred times over for that good Father Chelan,
and yet he has just proved to me that I am no better than a fool. It
is he above all that I have to deceive, and he sees through me. That
secret ardour of which he speaks is my plan for making my fortune. He
thinks me unfit to be a priest, at the very moment when I imagined
that the sacrifice of an income of fifty louis was going to give him
the most exalted idea of my piety and my vocation.

'For the future,' Julien continued, 'I shall rely only upon those
elements of my character which I have tested. Who would ever have said
that I should find pleasure in shedding tears? That I should love the
man who proves to me that I am nothing more than a fool?'

Three days later, Julien had found the pretext with which he should
have armed himself from the first; this pretext was a calumny, but
what of that?  He admitted to the cure, after much hesitation, that a
reason which he could not explain to him, because to reveal it would
injure a third party, had dissuaded him from the first from the
projected marriage. This was tantamount to an indictment of Elisa's
conduct. M. Chelan detected in his manner a fire that was wholly
mundane, and very different from that which should have inspired a
young Levite.

'My friend,' he appealed to him again, 'be an honest yeoman, educated
and respected, rather than a priest without a vocation.'

Julien replied to these fresh remonstrances extremely well, so far as
words went; he hit upon the expressions which a fervent young
seminarist would have employed; but the tone in which he uttered them,
the ill-concealed fire that smouldered in his eyes alarmed M. Chelan.

We need not augur ill for Julien's future; he hit upon the correct
form of words of a cunning and prudent hypocrisy. That is not bad at
his age. As for his tone and gestures, he lived among country folk; he
had been debarred from seeing the great models. In the sequel, no
sooner had he been permitted to mix with these gentlemen than he
became admirable as well in gesture as in speech.

Madame de Renal was surprised that her maid's newly acquired fortune
had not made the girl more happy; she saw her going incessantly to the
cure's, and returning with tears in her eyes; finally Elisa spoke to
her mistress of her marriage.

Madame de Renal believed herself to have fallen ill; a sort of fever
prevented her enjoying any sleep; she was alive only when she had her
maid or Julien before her eyes. She could think of nothing but them
and the happiness they would find in their married life. The poverty
of the small house in which people would be obliged to live, with an
income of fifty louis, portrayed itself to her in enchanting colours.
Julien might very well become a lawyer at Bray, the Sub-Prefecture two
leagues from Verrieres; in that event she would see something of
him.

Madame de Renal sincerely believed that she was going mad; she said so
to her husband, and finally did fall ill. That evening, as her maid
was waiting upon her, she noticed that the girl was crying. She
loathed Elisa at that moment, and had spoken sharply to her; she
begged the girl's pardon. Elisa's tears increased; she said that if
her mistress would allow it, she would tell her the whole tale of her
distress.

'Speak,' replied Madame de Renal.

'Well, the fact is, Ma'am, he won't have me; wicked people must have
spoken evil of me to him, and he believes them.'

'Who won't have you?' said Madame de Renal, scarcely able to breathe.

'And who could it be, Ma'am, but M. Julien?' the maid replied through
her sobs. 'His Reverence has failed to overcome his resistance; for
His Reverence considers that he ought not to refuse a decent girl,
just because she has been a lady's maid. After all, M. Julien's own
father is no better than a carpenter; and he himself, how was he
earning his living before he came to Madame's?'

Madame de Renal had ceased to listen; surfeit of happiness had almost
deprived her of the use of her reason. She made the girl repeat to her
several times the assurance that Julien had refused in a positive
manner, which would not permit of his coming to a more reasonable
decision later on.

'I wish to make a final effort,' she said to her maid. 'I shall speak
to M. Julien.'

Next day after luncheon, Madame de Renal gave herself the exquisite
sensation of pleading her rival's cause, and of seeing Elisa's hand
and fortune persistently refused for an hour on end.

Little by little Julien abandoned his attitude of studied reserve, and
ended by making spirited answers to the sound arguments advanced by
Madame de Renal. She could not hold out against the torrent of
happiness which now poured into her heart after all those days of
despair. She found herself really ill. When she had come to herself,
and was comfortably settled in her own room, she asked to be left
alone. She was in a state of profound astonishment.

'Can I be in love with Julien?' she asked herself at length.

This discovery, which at any other time would have filled her with
remorse and with a profound agitation, was no more to her than a
singular spectacle, but one that left her indifferent. Her heart,
exhausted by all that she had just undergone, had no sensibility left
to place at the service of her passions.

Madame de Renal tried to work, and fell into a deep sleep; when she
awoke, she was less alarmed than she should have been. She was too
happy to be able to take anything amiss. Artless and innocent as she
was, this honest provincial had never tormented her soul in an attempt
to wring from it some little sensibility to some novel shade of
sentiment or distress. Entirely absorbed, before Julien came, in that
mass of work which, outside Paris, is the lot of a good wife and
mother, Madame de Renal thought about the passions, as we think about
the lottery: a certain disappointment and a happiness sought by fools
alone.

The dinner bell rang; Madame de Renal blushed deeply when she heard
Julien's voice as he brought in the children. Having acquired some
adroitness since she had fallen in love, she accounted for her colour
by complaining of a splitting headache.

'There you have women,' put in M. de Renal, with a coarse laugh.
'There's always something out of order in their machinery.'

Accustomed as she was to this form of wit, the tone of his voice hurt
Madame de Renal. She sought relief in studying Julien's features; had
he been the ugliest man in the world, he would have charmed her at
that moment.

Always zealous in imitating the habits of the Court, with the first
fine days of spring M. de Renal removed his household to Vergy; it is
the village rendered famous by the tragic adventure of Gabrielle. A
few hundred yards from the picturesque ruins of the old gothic church,
M. de Renal owned an old castle with its four towers, and a garden
laid out like that of the Tuileries, with a number of box borders, and
chestnut alleys trimmed twice in the year. An adjoining field, planted
with apple trees, allowed the family to take the air. Nine or ten
splendid walnuts grew at the end of the orchard; their massive foliage
rose to a height of some eighty feet.

'Each of those damned walnuts,' M. de Renal would say when his wife
admired them, 'costs me half an acre of crop; the corn will not grow
in their shade.'

The rustic scene appeared to come as a novelty to Madame de Renal; her
admiration knew no bounds. The feeling that animated her gave her a
new spirit and determination. On the second day after their removal to
Vergy, M. de Renal having returned to town upon some official
business, his wife engaged labourers at her own expense. Julien had
given her the idea of a little gravelled path, which should run round
the orchard and beneath the big walnuts, and would allow the children
to walk there in the early morning without wetting their shoes in the
dew. This plan was put into execution within twenty-four hours of its
conception. Madame de Renal spent a long and happy day with Julieu
supervising the labourers.

When the Mayor of Verrieres returned from the town, he was greatly
surprised to find the path finished. His coming surprised Madame de
Renal also; she had forgotten that he existed. For the next two
months, he continued to speak with annoyance of their presumption in
having carried out, without consulting him, so important a repair, but
Madame de Renal had done it at her own expense, and this to some
extent consoled him.

She spent her days running about the orchard with her children, and
chasing butterflies. They had made a number of large nets of
light-coloured gauze, with which they caught the unfortunate
lepidoptera. This was the outlandish name which Julien taught Madame
de Renal. For she had sent to Besancon for the handsome work on the
subject by M. Godart; and Julien read to her the strange habits of
these insects.

They fastened them, without compunction, with pins upon a large sheet
of pasteboard, also prepared by Julien.

At last Madame de Renal and Julien had a subject for conversation; he
was no longer exposed to the frightful torture inflicted on him by
intervals of silence.

They conversed incessantly, and with extreme interest, although always
of the most innocent things. This life, active, occupied and cheerful,
suited everyone, except Miss Elisa, who found herself worked to death.
'Even at carnival-time,' she said, 'when there is a ball at Verrieres,
Madame has never taken so much trouble over her dress; she changes her
clothes two or three times a day.'

As it is our intention to flatter no one, we shall not conceal the
fact that Madame de Renal, who had a superb skin, had dresses made for
her which exposed her arms and bosom freely. She was very well made,
and this way of dressing suited her to perfection.

'You have never _been so young_, Ma'am,' her friends from Verrieres used
to tell her when they came to dine at Vergy. (It is a local form of
speech.)

A curious point, which our readers will scarcely believe, was that
Madame de Renal had no deliberate intention in taking such pains with
her appearance. She enjoyed doing so; and, without giving the matter
any particular thought, whenever she was not chasing butterflies with
the children and Julien, she was engaged with Elisa making dresses.
Her one expedition to Verrieres was due to a desire to purchase new
summer clothes which had just arrived there from Mulhouse.

She brought back with her to Vergy a young woman, one of her cousins.
Since her marriage, Madame de Renal had gradually formed an intimate
friendship with Madame Derville, who in their younger days had been
her school-fellow at the Sacre-Coeur.

Madame Derville laughed heartily at what she called her cousin's
absurd ideas. 'If I were alone, they would never occur to me,' she
used to say.  These sudden ideas, which in Paris would have been
called sallies, made Madame de Renal feel ashamed, as of something
foolish, when she was with her husband; but Madame Derville's presence
gave her courage. She began by telling her what she was thinking in a
timid voice; when the ladies were by themselves for any length of
time, Madame de Renal would become animated, and a long, undisturbed
morning passed in a flash and left the friends quite merry. On this
visit, the sensible Madame Derville found her cousin much less merry
and much happier.

Julien, meanwhile, had been living the life of a child since he had
come to the country, as happy to be running after butterflies as were
his pupils.  After so much constraint and skilful diplomacy, alone,
unobserved by his fellow-men, and, instinctively, feeling not in the
least afraid of Madame de Renal, he gave himself up to the pleasure of
being alive, so keen at his age, and in the midst of the fairest
mountains in the world.

As soon as Madame Derville arrived, Julien felt that she was his
friend; he hastened to show her the view that was to be seen from the
end of the new path; as a matter of fact it was equal, if not superior
to the most admirable scenery which Switzerland and the Italian lakes
have to offer. By climbing the steep slope which began a few yards
farther on, one came presently to high precipices fringed with
oakwoods, which projected almost over the bed of the river. It was to
the summits of these sheer rocks that Julien, happy, free, and indeed
something more, lord of the house, led the two friends, and relished
their admiration of those sublime prospects.

'To me it is like Mozart's music,' said Madame Derville.

His brothers' jealousy, the presence of a despotic and ill-tempered
father had spoiled the country round Verrieres in Julien's eyes. At
Vergy, he found no trace of these unpleasant memories; for the first
time in his life, he could see no one that was his enemy. When M. de
Renal was in town, as frequently happened, he ventured to read; soon,
instead of reading at night, and then taking care, moreover, to shade
his lamp with an inverted flower-pot, he could take his full measure
of sleep; during the day, in the interval between the children's
lessons, he climbed up among these rocks with the book that was his
sole rule of conduct, and the sole object of his transports. He found
in it at once happiness, ecstasy and consolation in moments of
depression.

Certain things which Napoleon says of women, various discussions of
the merits of the novels in vogue during his reign, furnished him
now, for the first time, with several ideas which would long since
have been familiar to any other young man of his age.

The hot weather came. They formed the habit of spending the evening
under a huge lime a few yards from the house. There the darkness was
intense. One evening, Julien was talking with emphasis, he was
revelling in the pleasure of talking well and to young married women;
as he gesticulated, he touched the hand of Madame de Renal, who was
leaning on the back of one of those chairs of painted wood that are
placed in gardens.

The hand was hurriedly withdrawn; but Julien decided that it was his
_duty_ to secure that the hand should not be withdrawn when he touched
it. The idea of a duty to be performed, and of making himself
ridiculous, or rather being left with a sense of inferiority if he did
not succeed in performing it, at once took all the pleasure from his
heart.




CHAPTER 9
An Evening in the Country


  M. Guerin's Dido, a charming sketch!
    STROMBECK

When he saw Madame de Renal again, the next morning, there was a
strange look in his eyes; he watched her like an enemy with whom he
would presently be engaged. This expression, so different from his
expression overnight, made Madame de Renal lose her head; she had been
kind to him, and he appeared vexed. She could not take her eyes from
his.

Madame Derville's presence excused Julien from his share of the
conversation, and enabled him to concentrate his attention upon what
he had in mind. His sole occupation, throughout the day, was that of
fortifying himself by reading the inspired text which refreshed his
soul.

He greatly curtailed the children's lessons, and when, later on, the
presence of Madame de Renal recalled him to the service of his own
vanity, decided that it was absolutely essential that this evening she
should allow her hand to remain in his.

The sun as it set and so brought nearer the decisive moment made
Julien's heart beat with a strange excitement. Night fell. He
observed, with a joy that lifted a huge weight from his breast, that
it was very dark. A sky packed with big clouds, kept in motion by a
hot breeze, seemed to forebode a tempest. The two women continued
strolling until a late hour. Everything that they did this evening
seemed strange to Julien.  They were enjoying this weather, which, in
certain delicate natures, seems to enhance the pleasure of love.

At last they sat down, Madame de Renal next to Julien, and Madame
Derville on the other side of her friend. Preoccupied with the attempt
he must shortly make, Julien could think of nothing to say. The
conversation languished.

'Shall I tremble like this and feel as uncomfortable the first time I
have to fight a duel?' Julien wondered; for he had too little
confidence either in himself or in others not to observe the state he
was in.

In this agonising uncertainty, any danger would have seemed to him
preferable. How often did he long to see Madame de Renal called by
some duty which would oblige her to return to the house and so leave
the garden!  The violence of the effort which Julien had to make to
control himself was such that his voice was entirely altered;
presently Madame de Renal's voice became tremulous also, but Julien
never noticed this. The ruthless warfare which his sense of duty was
waging with his natural timidity was too exhausting for him to be in a
condition to observe anything outside himself. The quarter before ten
had sounded from the tower clock, without his having yet ventured on
anything. Julien, ashamed of his cowardice, told himself: 'At the
precise moment when ten o'clock strikes, I shall carry out the
intention which, all day long, I have been promising myself that I
would fulfil this evening, or I shall go up to my room and blow my
brains out.'

After a final interval of tension and anxiety, during which the excess
of his emotion carried Julien almost out of his senses, the strokes of
ten sounded from the clock overhead. Each stroke of that fatal bell
stirred an echo in his bosom, causing him almost a physical revulsion.

Finally, while the air was still throbbing with the last stroke of
ten, he put out his hand and took that of Madame de Renal, who at once
withdrew it.  Julien, without exactly knowing what he was doing,
grasped her hand again.  Although greatly moved himself, he was struck
by the icy coldness of the hand he was clasping; he pressed it with
convulsive force; a last attempt was made to remove it from him, but
finally the hand was left in his grasp.

His heart was flooded with joy, not because he loved Madame de Renal,
but because a fearful torment was now at an end. So that Madame
Derville should not notice anything, he felt himself obliged to speak;
his voice, now, was loud and ringing. Madame de Renal's, on the other
hand, betrayed such emotion that her friend thought she must be ill
and suggested to her that they should go indoors. Julien saw the
danger: 'If Madame de Renal returns to the drawing-room, I am going to
fall back into the horrible position I have been in all day. I have
not held this hand long enough to be able to reckon it as a definite
conquest.'

When Madame Derville repeated her suggestion that they should go into
the drawing-room, Julien pressed the hand that lay in his.

Madame de Renal, who was preparing to rise, resumed her seat, saying
in a faint tone:

'I do, as a matter of fact, feel a little unwell, but the fresh air is
doing me good.'

These words confirmed Julien's happiness, which, at this moment, was
extreme: he talked, forgot to dissimulate, appeared the most charming
of men to his two hearers. And yet there was still a slight want of
courage in this eloquence which had suddenly come to him. He was in a
deadly fear lest Madame Derville, exhausted by the wind which was
beginning to rise, and heralded the storm, might decide to go in by
herself to the drawing-room.  Then he would be left alone with Madame
de Renal. He had found almost by accident the blind courage which was
sufficient for action; but he felt that it lay beyond his power to
utter the simplest of words to Madame de Renal. However mild her
reproaches might be, he was going to be defeated, and the advantage
which he had just gained wiped out.

Fortunately for him, this evening, his touching and emphatic speeches
found favour with Madame Derville, who as a rule found him as awkward
as a schoolboy, and by no means amusing. As for Madame de Renal, her
hand lying clasped in Julien's, she had no thought of anything; she
was allowing herself to live. The hours they spent beneath this huge
lime, which, local tradition maintained, had been planted by Charles
the Bold, were for her a time of happiness. She listened with rapture
to the moaning of the wind in the thick foliage of the lime, and the
sound of the first few drops that were beginning to fall upon its
lowest leaves. Julien did not notice a detail which would have greatly
reassured him; Madame de Renal, who had been obliged to remove her
hand from his, on rising to help her cousin to pick up a pot of
flowers which the wind had overturned at their feet, had no sooner sat
down again than she gave him back her hand almost without difficulty,
and as though it had been an understood thing between them.

Midnight had long since struck; at length it was time to leave the
garden: the party broke up. Madame de Renal, transported by the joy of
being in love, was so ignorant that she hardly reproached herself at
all. Happiness robbed her of sleep. A sleep like lead carried off
Julien, utterly worn out by the battle that had been raging all day in
his heart between timidity and pride.

Next morning he was called at five o'clock; and (what would have been
a cruel blow to Madame de Renal had she known of it) he barely gave
her a thought. He had done _his duty, and a heroic duty_. Filled with
joy by this sentiment, he turned the key in the door of his bedroom
and gave himself up with an entirely new pleasure to reading about the
exploits of his hero.

When the luncheon bell sounded, he had forgotten, in reading the
reports of the Grand Army, all the advantages he had won overnight. He
said to himself, in a careless tone, as he went down to the
drawing-room: 'I must tell this woman that I love her.'

Instead of that gaze charged with passion which he expected to meet,
he found the stern face of M. de Renal, who, having arrived a couple
of hours earlier from Verrieres, did not conceal his displeasure on
finding that Julien was wasting the whole morning without attending to
the children. No sight could have been so unprepossessing as that of
this self-important man, conscious of a grievance and confident of his
right to let it be seen.

Each of her husband's harsh words pierced Madame de Renal to the
heart. As for Julien, he was so plunged in ecstasy, still so absorbed
in the great events which for the last few hours had been happening
before his eyes, that at first he could barely lower the pitch of his
attention to listen to the stern voice of M. de Renal. At length he
answered him, sharply enough:

'I was unwell.'

The tone of this reply would have stung a man far less susceptible
than the Mayor of Verrieres; it occurred to him to reply to Julien
with an immediate dismissal. He was restrained only by the maxim which
he had laid down for himself, never to be too hasty in business
matters.

'This young fool,' he soon reminded himself, 'has made himself a sort
of reputation in my house; Valenod may take him on, or else he will
marry Elisa, and, in either case, he can afford to laugh at me in his
heart.'

Despite the wisdom of these reflections, M. de Renal's displeasure
found an outlet nevertheless in a succession of coarse utterances
which succeeded in irritating Julien. Madame de Renal was on the point
of subsiding in tears.  As soon as the meal was ended, she asked
Julien to give her his arm for their walk; she leaned upon it in a
friendly way. To all that Madame de Renal said to him, Julien could
only murmur in reply:

'This is what rich people are like!'

M. de Renal kept close beside them; his presence increased Julien's
anger.  He noticed suddenly that Madame de Renal was leaning upon his
arm in a marked manner; this action horrified him, he repulsed her
violently, freeing his arm from hers.

Fortunately M. de Renal saw nothing of this fresh impertinence; it was
noticed only by Madame Derville; her friend burst into tears. At this
moment M. de Renal began flinging stones at a little peasant girl who
was trespassing by taking a short cut across a corner of the orchard.

'Monsieur Julien, kindly control yourself, remember that we are all of
us liable to moments of ill temper,' Madame Derville said hastily.

Julien looked at her coldly with eyes in which the loftiest contempt
was portrayed.

This look astonished Madame Derville, and would have surprised her far
more could she have guessed its full meaning; she would have read in
it a vague hope of the most terrible revenge. It is doubtless to such
moments of humiliation that we owe men like Robespierre.

'Your Julien is very violent, he frightens me,' Madame Derville
murmured to her friend.

'He has every reason to be angry,' the other replied. 'After the
astonishing progress the children have made with him, what does it
matter if he spends a morning without speaking to them? You must admit
that gentlemen are very hard.'

For the first time in her life, Madame de Renal felt a sort of desire
to be avenged on her husband. The intense hatred that animated Julien
against rich people was about to break forth. Fortunately M. de Renal
called for his gardener, with whom for the rest of the time he busied
himself in stopping up with faggots of thorn the short cut that had
been made across the orchard. Julien did not utter a single word in
reply to the attentions that were shown him throughout the remainder
of the walk. As soon as M. de Renal had left them, the two ladies, on
the plea that they were tired, had asked him each for an arm.

As he walked between these women whose cheeks were flushed with the
embarrassment of an intense discomfort, Julien's sombre and decided
air formed a striking contrast. He despised these women, and all
tender feelings.

'What!' he said to himself, 'not even an allowance of five hundred
francs to complete my studies! Ah! How I should send her packing!'

Absorbed in these drastic thoughts, the little that he deigned to take
in of the polite speeches of the two ladies displeased him as being
devoid of meaning, silly, feeble, in a word _feminine_.

By dint of talking for talking's sake, and of trying to keep the
conversation alive, Madame de Renal found herself saying that her
husband had come from Verrieres because he had made a bargain, for the
purchase of maize straw, with one of his farmers. (In this district
maize straw is used to stuff the palliasses of the beds.)

'My husband will not be joining us again,' Madame de Renal went on:
'he will be busy with the gardener and his valet changing the straw in
all the palliasses in the house. This morning he put fresh straw on
all the beds on the first floor, now he is at work on the second.'

Julien changed colour; he looked at Madame de Renal in an odd manner,
and presently drew her apart, so to speak, by increasing his pace.
Madame Derville allowed them to move away from her.

'Save my life,' said Julien to Madame de Renal, 'you alone can do it;
for you know that the valet hates me like poison. I must confess to
you, Ma'am, that I have a portrait; I have hidden it in the palliasse
on my bed.'

At these words, Madame de Renal in turn grew pale.

'You alone, Ma'am, can go into my room at this moment; feel, without
letting yourself be observed, in the corner of the palliasse nearest
to the window; you will find there a small box of shiny black
pasteboard.'

'It contains a portrait?' said Madame de Renal, barely able to stand.

Her air of disappointment was noticed by Julien, who at once took
advantage of it.

'I have a second favour to ask of you, Ma'am; I beg you not to look at
the portrait, it is my secret.'

'It is a secret!' repeated Madame de Renal, in faint accents.

But, albeit she had been reared among people proud of their wealth,
and sensible of pecuniary interests alone, love had already instilled
some generosity into her heart. Though cruelly wounded, it was with an
air of the simplest devotion that Madame de Renal put to Julien the
questions necessary to enable her to execute his commission properly.

'And so,' she said, as she left him, 'it is a little round box, of
black pasteboard, and very shiny.'

'Yes, Ma'am,' replied Julien in that hard tone which danger gives a
man.

She mounted to the second floor of the house, as pale as though she
were going to her death. To complete her misery she felt that she was
on the point of fainting, but the necessity of doing Julien a service
restored her strength.

'I must have that box,' she said to herself as she quickened her pace.

She could hear her husband talking to the valet, actually in Julien's
room.  Fortunately they moved into the room in which the children
slept. She lifted the mattress and plunged her hand into the straw
with such force as to scratch her fingers. But, although extremely
sensitive to slight injuries of this sort, she was now quite
unconscious of the pain, for almost immediately she felt the polished
surface of the pasteboard box. She seized it and fled.

No sooner was she rid of the fear of being surprised by her husband,
than the horror inspired in her by this box made her feel that in
another minute she must unquestionably faint.

'So Julien is in love, and I have here the portrait of the woman he
loves.'

Seated on a chair in the sitting-room of this apartment, Madame de
Renal fell a prey to all the horrors of jealousy. Her extreme
ignorance was of service to her again at this moment; astonishment
tempered her grief.  Julien appeared, snatched the box, without
thanking her, without saying a word, and ran into his bedroom, where
he struck a light and immediately destroyed it. He was pale,
speechless; he exaggerated to himself the risk he had been running.

'The portrait of Napoleon,' he said to himself with a toss of the
head, 'found hidden in the room of a man who professes such hatred for
the usurper! Found by M. de Renal, so _ultra_ and so angry! and, to
complete the imprudence, on the white card at the back of the
portrait, lines in my writing! And lines that can leave no doubt as to
the warmth of my admiration! And each of those transports of love is
dated! There was one only two days ago!

'All my reputation brought down, destroyed in a moment!' Julien said
to himself as he watched the box burn, 'and my reputation is all I
have, I live by it alone ... and what a life at that, great God!'

An hour later, his exhaustion and the pity he felt for himself
disposed him to feel affection. He met Madame de Renal and took her
hand which he kissed with more sincerity than he had ever yet shown.
She coloured with delight, and almost simultaneously repulsed Julien
with the anger of a jealous woman. Julien's pride, so recently
wounded, made a fool of him at that moment. He saw in Madame de Renal
only a rich woman, he let fall her hand with contempt, and strode
away. He went out and walked pensively in the garden; presently a
bitter smile appeared on his lips.

'Here I am walking about as calm as a man who is his own master! I am
not looking after the children! I am exposing myself to the
humiliating remarks of M. de Renal, and he will be justified.' He
hastened to the children's room.

The caresses of the youngest boy, to whom he was greatly attached, did
something to soothe his agonising pain.

'This one does not despise me yet,' thought Julien. But presently he
blamed himself for this relief from pain, as for a fresh weakness.
These children fondle me as they might fondle the puppy that was
bought yesterday.'




CHAPTER 1O
A Large Heart and a Small Fortune

  But passion most dissembles, yet betrays,
  Even by its darkness; as the blackest sky
  Foretells the heaviest tempest.
    _Don Juan_, I. 73

M. de Renal, who was visiting every room in the house, reappeared in
the children's room with the servants who brought back the palliasses
refilled.  The sudden entry of this man was the last straw to Julien.

Paler, more sombre than usual, he advanced towards him. M. de Renal
stood still and looked at his servants.

'Sir,' Julien began, 'do you suppose that with any other tutor your
children would have made the same progress that they have made with
me? If your answer is no,' he went on without giving M. de Renal time
to speak, 'how dare you presume to reproach me with neglecting them?'

M. de Renal, who had barely recovered from his alarm, concluded from
the strange tone which he saw this young peasant adopt that he had in
his pocket some more attractive offer and was going to leave him.
Julien's anger increasing as he spoke:

'I can live without you, Sir,' he concluded.

'I am extremely sorry to see you so agitated,' replied M. de Renal,
stammering a little. The servants were a few feet away, and were
occupied in making the beds.

'That is not enough for me, Sir,' Julien went on, beside himself with
rage; 'think of the abominable things you said to me, and in the
presence of ladies, too!'

M. de Renal was only too well aware of what Julien was asking, and
conflicting passions did battle in his heart. It so happened that
Julien, now really mad with rage, exclaimed: 'I know where to go, Sir,
when I leave your house.'

On hearing these words, M. de Renal had a vision of Julien established
in M. Valenod's household.

'Very well, Sir,' he said at length with a sigh, and the air of a man
calling in a surgeon to perform the most painful operation, 'I agree
to your request. From the day after tomorrow, which is the first of
the month, I shall give you fifty francs monthly.'

Julien wanted to laugh and remained speechless: his anger had
completely vanished.

'I did not despise the animal enough,' he said to himself. 'This, no
doubt, is the most ample apology so base a nature is capable of
making.'

The children, who had listened to this scene open-mouthed, ran to the
garden to tell their mother that M. Julien was in a great rage, but
that he was to have fifty francs a month.

Julien went after them from force of habit, without so much as a
glance at M. de Renal, whom he left in a state of intense annoyance.

'That's a hundred and sixty-eight francs,' the Mayor said to himself,
'that M. Valenod has cost me. I must really say a few firm words to
him about his contract to supply the foundlings.'

A moment later, Julien again stood before him.

'I have a matter of conscience to discuss with M. Che