Title:      The Red and The Black
Author:     Stendahl [Henri Beyle, 1783-1842]
            translation by C. K. Scott Moncrieff [1889-1930]
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Date first posted:          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. Chelan. I have the
honour to inform you that I shall be absent for some hours.'

'Ah, my dear Julien,' said M. de Renal, laughing in the most insincere
manner, 'the whole day, if you wish, the whole of tomorrow, my worthy
friend. Take the gardener's horse to go to Verrieres.'

'There,' M. de Renal said to himself, 'he's going with an answer to
Valenod; he's given me no promise, but we must let the young hothead
cool down.'

Julien made a speedy escape and climbed up among the big woods through
which one can go from Vergy to Verrieres. He was in no hurry to reach
M. Chelan's. So far from desiring to involve himself in a fresh
display of hypocrisy, he needed time to see clearly into his own
heart, and to give audience to the swarm of conflicting feelings that
disturbed it.

'I have won a battle,' he said to himself as soon as he found himself
in the shelter of the woods and out of sight of anyone, 'I have really
won a battle!'

The last word painted his whole position for him in glowing colours,
and restored some degree of tranquillity to his heart.

'Here I am with a salary of fifty francs a month; M. de Renal must be
in a fine fright. But of what?'

His meditation as to what could have frightened the prosperous and
powerful man against whom, an hour earlier, he had been seething with
rage completely restored Julien's serenity. He was almost conscious,
for a moment, of the exquisite beauty of the woods through which he
was walking.  Enormous fragments of bare rock had in times past fallen
into the heart of the forest from the side of the mountain. Tall
beeches rose almost as high as these rocks whose shadow provided a
delicious coolness within a few yards of places where the heat of the
sun's rays would have made it impossible to stop.

Julien paused for a breathing-space in the shadow of these great
rocks, then went on climbing. Presently, by following a narrow path,
barely visible and used only by goatherds, he found himself standing
upon an immense rock, where he could be certain of his complete
isolation from his fellow-men. This natural position made him smile,
it suggested to him the position to which he was burning to attain in
the moral sphere. The pure air of these lofty mountains breathed
serenity and even joy into his soul.  The Mayor of Verrieres might
still, in his eyes, be typical of all the rich and insolent denizens
of the earth, but Julien felt that the hatred which had convulsed him
that afternoon contained, notwithstanding its violence, no element of
personal ill-feeling. Should he cease to see M. de Renal, within a
week he would have forgotten him, the man himself, his house, his
dogs, his children and all that was his. 'I have forced him, I do not
know how, to make the greatest of sacrifices. What, more than fifty
crowns a year? A moment earlier I had just escaped from the greatest
danger. That makes two victories in one day; the second contains no
merit, I must try to discover the reason. But we can leave such
arduous research for tomorrow.'

Julien, erect upon his mighty rock, gazed at the sky, kindled to flame
by an August sun. The grasshoppers were chirping in the patch of
meadow beneath the rock; when they ceased everything around him was
silence.  Twenty leagues of country lay at his feet. From time to time
a hawk, risen from the bare cliffs above his head, caught his eye as
it wheeled silently in its vast circles. Julien's eye followed
mechanically the bird of prey. Its calm, powerful motion impressed
him, he envied such strength, he envied such isolation.

It was the destiny of Napoleon, was it one day to be his own?




CHAPTER 11
Night Thoughts


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

He must, however, let himself be seen at Verrieres. As he left the
Presbytery the first person he met was, by a happy chance, M. Valenod,
whom he hastened to inform of the increase in his salary.

On his return to Vergy, Julien did not go down to the garden until
night had set in. His heart was worn out by the multitude of powerful
emotions that had assailed it in the course of the day. 'What shall I
say to them?' he asked himself anxiously, thinking of the ladies. It
never occurred to him that his spirits were precisely at the level of
the trivial happenings that as a rule occupy the whole interest of
women. Often Julien was unintelligible to Madame Derville, and even to
her friend, while he in turn only half understood all that they were
saying to him. Such was the effect of the force, and, if I may use the
word, of the magnitude of the waves of passion on which the heart of
this ambitious youth was being tossed. In this strange creature almost
every day was one of storm.

When he went into the garden that evening, Julien was ready to listen
with interest to the thoughts of the fair cousins. They awaited his
coming with impatience. He took his accustomed seat, by Madame de
Renal's side. The darkness soon became intense. He attempted to clasp
a white hand which for some time he had seen close beside him, resting
on the back of a chair.  There was some hesitation shown, but finally
the hand was withdrawn from him in a manner which betokened
displeasure. Julien was prepared to regard this as final, and to
continue the conversation in a light tone, when he heard M. de Renal
approach.

The rude words of the morning still rang in Julien's ears. 'Would it
not,' he said to himself, 'be a good way of scoring off this creature,
so lavishly endowed with every material advantage, to take possession
of his wife's hand under his very eyes? Yes, I will do it, I, for whom
he has shown such contempt.'

>From that moment peace of mind, so ill assorted to Julien's character,
speedily vanished; he desired most anxiously, and without being able
to fix his mind on anything else, that Madame de Renal might consent
to let him hold her hand.

M. de Renal talked politics in an angry tone: two or three
manufacturers at Verrieres were becoming decidedly richer than
himself, and wished to oppose him at the elections. Madame Derville
listened to him. Julien, irritated by this talk, moved his chair
nearer to Madame de Renal's. The darkness hid every movement. He
ventured to place his hand close to the pretty arm which her gown left
bare. Troubled, no longer conscious of what he was doing, he moved his
cheek in the direction of this pretty arm, and made bold to press his
lips to it.

Madame de Renal shuddered. Her husband was a few feet away, she
hastened to give Julien her hand, at the same time thrusting him
slightly from her.  While M. de Renal continued his abuse of the
good-for-nothings and Jacobins who were making fortunes, Julien
covered the hand which had been left in his with passionate kisses, or
so at least they seemed to Madame de Renal.  And yet the poor woman
had been furnished with proof, on this fatal day, that the heart of
the man whom she adored without confessing it was pledged elsewhere!
Throughout the hours of Julien's absence, she had been a prey to the
most abject misery, which had made her think.

'What,' she said to herself, 'am I to love, to have love offered to
me? Am I, a married woman, to fall in love? But,' she reminded
herself, 'I have never felt that dark passion for my husband, and so I
cannot tear my mind from Julien. At heart he is only a boy filled with
respect for me! This folly will pass. How can it concern my husband
what feelings I may entertain for this young man? M. de Renal would be
bored by the talks I have with Julien, about things of the
imagination. He himself thinks only about his business.  I am taking
nothing from him to give to Julien.'

No trace of hypocrisy came to sully the purity of this simple soul,
carried away by a passion such as she had never felt. She was
deceived, but quite unawares, and at the same time a virtuous instinct
had taken alarm. Such were the conflicts that were agitating her when
Julien appeared in the garden. She heard his voice, almost at the same
moment she saw him sit down by her side. Her heart was so to speak
carried away by this charming happiness which for the last fortnight
had astonished even more than it had bewitched her. Everything was
unexpected to her. And yet after a few moments: 'So Julien's presence
is enough,' she said to herself, 'to wipe out all memory of his
misconduct?' She took fright; then it was that she withdrew her hand
from his.

His kisses, filled with passion and such as she had never yet
received, made her at once forget the possibility of his loving
another woman. Soon he was no longer guilty in her eyes. The cessation
of her poignant grief, born of suspicion, the presence of a happiness
of which she had never even dreamed, plunged her in transports of
affection and wild gaiety. That evening was delightful for them all,
except for the Mayor of Verrieres, who could not forget the growing
wealth of his competitors. Julien no longer thought of his dark
ambition, nor of his plans that would be so difficult of execution.
For the first time in his life, he was carried away by the power of
beauty. Lost in a vague and pleasant dream, so foreign to his nature,
gently pressing that hand which pleased him as an example of perfect
beauty, he gave a divided attention to the rustle of the leaves of the
lime, stirred by the gentle night breeze, and to the dogs at the mill
by the Doubs, barking in the distance.

But this emotion was a pleasure and not a passion. On returning to his
room he thought of one happiness only, that of going on with his
favourite book; at twenty, the thought of the world and of the
impression one is going to make on it, prevails over everything else.

Presently, however, he put down the book. By dint of dreaming of
Napoleon's victories, he had discerned a new element in his own. 'Yes,
I have won a battle,' he told himself, 'but I must follow it up, I
must crush the arrogance of this proud gentleman while he is still
retreating. That is Napoleon out and out. I must ask him for three
days' holiday, to go and see my friend Fouque. If he refuses, I again
offer to break the agreement; but he will give way.'

Madame de Renal could not close an eye. She felt that she had never
lived until that moment. She could not tear her mind from the
happiness of feeling Julien cover her hand with burning kisses.

Suddenly the horrid word _adultery_ occurred to her. All the most
disgusting implications that the vilest debauchery can impart to the
idea of sensual love came crowding into her imagination. These ideas
sought to tarnish the tender and godlike image that she had made for
herself of Julien and of the pleasure of loving him. The future
portrayed itself in terrible colours.  She saw herself an object of
scorn.

It was a frightful moment; her soul journeyed into strange lands. That
evening she had tasted an unknown happiness; now she suddenly found
herself plunged in appalling misery. She had no conception of such
sufferings; they began to affect her reason. The thought occurred to
her for a moment of confessing to her husband that she was afraid of
falling in love with Julien. It would have allowed her to speak of
him. Fortunately she recalled a piece of advice given her long ago by
her aunt, on the eve of her marriage. It warned her of the danger of
confiding in a husband, who is after all a master. In the intensity of
her grief she wrung her hands.

She was carried away indiscriminately by conflicting and painful
imaginings. At one moment she was afraid of not being loved in return,
at another the fearful thought of the crime tortured her as though on
the morrow she would have to be exposed in the pillory, on the public
square of Verrieres, with a placard proclaiming her adultery to the
populace.

Madame de Renal was without any experience of life; even when wide
awake and in the full exercise of her reason, she would have seen no
distinction between being guilty in the sight of God and finding
herself publicly greeted with all the most flagrant marks of general
opprobrium.

When the frightful idea of adultery and of all the ignominy which (she
supposed) that crime brings in its train gave her at length a respite,
and she began to dream of the delight of living with Julien
innocently, as in the past, she found herself swept away by the
horrible thought that Julien was in love with another woman.  She saw
once again his pallor when he was afraid of losing her portrait, or of
compromising her by letting it be seen. For the first time, she had
surprised signs of fear on that calm and noble countenance. Never had
he shown himself in such a state for her or for her children. This
additional grief carried her to the utmost intensity of anguish which
the human soul is able to endure.  Unconsciously, Madame de Renal
uttered cries which roused her maid.  Suddenly she saw appear by her
bedside the light of a lamp, and recognised Elisa.

'Is it you that he loves?' she cried in her frenzy.

The maid, amazed at the fearful distress in which she found her
mistress, paid no attention fortunately to this singular utterance.
Madame de Renal realised her own imprudence: 'I am feverish,' she told
her, 'and I think, a little light-headed; stay beside me.'

Thoroughly awakened by the necessity of controlling herself, she felt
less wretched; reason resumed the sway of which her state of
drowsiness had deprived it. To escape from the fixed stare of her
maid, she ordered her to read the newspaper aloud, and it was to the
monotonous sound of the girl's voice, reading a long article from the
_Quotidienne_, that Madame de Renal formed the virtuous resolution to
treat Julien with absolute coldness when next she saw him.




CHAPTER 12
A Journey


  In Paris you find elegant people, there may be people with character
  in the provinces.
    SIEYES

Next morning, at five o'clock, before Madame de Renal was visible,
Julien had obtained from her husband three days' leave of absence.
Contrary to his expectation, Julien found himself longing to see her
again, and could think of nothing but that shapely hand. He went down
to the garden, Madame de Renal was long in coming. But if Julien had
been in love with her he would have seen her, behind her half-closed
shutters on the first floor, her face pressed to the glass. She was
watching him. At length, in spite of her resolutions, she decided to
show herself in the garden. Her customary pallor had given place to
the most glowing colour. This simple-minded woman was evidently
agitated: a feeling of constraint and even of resentment marred that
expression of profound serenity, as though raised above all the common
interests of life, which gave such charm to that heavenly face.

Julien lost no time in joining her; he admired those fine arms which a
shawl flung in haste across her shoulders left visible. The coolness
of the morning air seemed to increase the brilliance of a complexion
which the agitation of the past night made all the more sensible to
every impression.  This beauty, modest and touching, and yet full of
thoughts which are nowhere to be found among the lower orders, seemed
to reveal to Julien an aspect of her nature of which he had never yet
been aware. Wholly absorbed in admiration of the charms which his
greedy eye surprised, Julien was not thinking of the friendly greeting
which he might expect to receive. He was all the more astonished by
the icy coldness that was shown him, beneath which he even thought he
could make out a deliberate intention to put him in his place.

The smile of pleasure faded from his lips; he remembered the rank that
he occupied in society, especially in the eyes of a noble and wealthy
heiress.  In a moment, his features showed nothing but pride and anger
with himself.  He felt a violent disgust at having been so foolish as
to postpone his departure by more than an hour, only to receive so
humiliating a greeting.

'Only a fool,' he told himself, 'loses his temper with other people: a
stone falls because it is heavy. Am I always to remain a boy? When am
I going to form the good habit of giving these people their exact
money's worth and no more of my heart and soul? If I wish to be
esteemed by them and by myself, I must show them that it is my poverty
that deals with their wealth, but that my heart is a thousand leagues
away from their insolence, and is placed in too exalted a sphere to be
reached by their petty marks of contempt or favour.'

While these sentiments came crowding into the young tutor's mind, his
features assumed an expression of injured pride and ferocity. Madame
de Renal was greatly distressed by this. The virtuous coldness which
she had meant to impart to her greeting gave way to an expression of
interest, and of an interest animated by the surprise of the sudden
change which she had just beheld in him. The flow of idle words that
people exchange in the morning with regard to one another's health, to
the beauty of the day, and so forth, dried up at once in them both.
Julien, whose judgment was not disturbed by any passion, soon found a
way of letting Madame de Renal see how little he regarded himself as
being on terms of friendship with her; he said nothing to her of the
little expedition on which he was starting, bowed to her, and set off.

As she watched him go, overwhelmed by the sombre pride which she read
in that glance, so friendly the evening before, her eldest son, who
came running up from the other end of the garden, said to her as he
embraced her:

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

At these words Madame de Renal felt herself frozen by a deadly chill;
she was unhappy in her virtue, and more unhappy still in her weakness.

This latest development now occupied the whole of her imagination; she
was carried far beyond the wise resolutions which were the fruit of
the terrible night she had passed. It was a question no longer of
resisting this charming lover, but of losing him for ever.

She was obliged to take her place at table. To add to her misery, M.
de Renal and Madame Derville spoke of nothing but Julien's departure.
The Mayor of Verrieres had remarked something, unusual in the firm
tone with which he had demanded a holiday.

'The young peasant has doubtless an offer from someone in his pocket.
But that someone, even if it should be M. Valenod, must be a little
discouraged by the sum of 600 francs, which he must now be prepared to
spend annually.  Yesterday, at Verrieres, he will have asked for three
days in which to think things over; and this morning, so as not to be
obliged to give me an answer, the young gentleman goes off to the
mountains. To have to reckon with a wretched workman who puts on airs,
that's what we've come to!'

'Since my husband, who does not know how deeply he has wounded Julien,
thinks he is going to leave us, what am I to suppose?' Madame de Renal
asked herself. 'Ah! It is all settled!'

So as to be able at least to weep in freedom, and without having to
answer Madame Derville's questions, she pleaded a splitting headache,
and retired to bed.

'There you have a woman all over,' M. de Renal repeated; 'there's
always something wrong with those complicated machines.' And he went
on his way jeering.

While Madame de Renal was at the mercy of the most cruel inflictions
of the terrible passion into which accident had led her, Julien was
making his way light-heartedly amid the loveliest views that mountain
scenery has to offer. He was obliged to pass over the high range to
the north of Vergy.  The path which he followed, rising gradually amid
great beechwoods, forms an endless series of zigzags on the side of
the high mountain which bounds the valley of the Doubs on the north.
Presently the traveller's gaze, passing over the lower ridges which
confine the course of the Doubs on the south, was able to sweep the
fertile plains of Burgundy and Beaujolais.  Irresponsive as the heart
of this ambitious youth might be to this kind of beauty, he could not
refrain from stopping now and again to gaze at so vast and so imposing
a prospect.

At length he came to the summit of the high mountain, beneath which he
must pass in order to arrive, by this diagonal route, at the lonely
valley in which his friend Fouque, the young timber merchant, lived.
Julien was in no hurry to see him, or any other human being for that
matter. Concealed like a bird of prey, amid the bare rocks which
crowned the high mountain, he could see a long way off anyone that
might be coming his way. He discovered a small cave in the almost
perpendicular face of one of the rocks. He set his course for it, and
presently was ensconced in this retreat. 'Here,' he said, his eyes
sparkling with joy, 'men can do me no harm.' It occurred to him to
indulge in the pleasure of writing down his thoughts, so dangerous to
him in any other place. A smooth block of stone served as his table.
His pen flew: he saw nothing of the scene round about him. At length
he noticed that the sun was setting behind the distant mountains of
Beaujolais.

'Why should I not spend the night here?' he asked himself; 'I have
bread, and _I am free_!' At the sound of that great word his heart
leaped, his hypocrisy meant that he was not free even with Fouque. His
head supported on both his hands, Julien stayed in this cave happier
than he had ever been in his life, engrossed in his dreams and in the
joy of freedom. Without heeding it he saw fade and die, one after
another, the last rays of evening light. In the midst of that vast
darkness, his soul wandered in contemplation of what he imagined that
he would one day find in Paris. This was first and foremost a woman
far more beautiful and of a far higher intelligence than any it had
been his lot to see in the country. He loved with passion, he was
loved in return. If he tore himself from her for a few moments, it was
to cover himself with glory and earn the right to be loved more warmly
still.

Even if we allow him Julien's imagination, a young man brought up
among the melancholy truths of Paris would have been aroused at this
stage in his romance by the cold touch of irony; the mighty deeds
would have vanished with the hope of performing them, to give place to
the well-known maxim: 'When a man leaves his mistress, he runs the
risk of being betrayed two or three times daily.' The young peasant
saw no obstacle between himself and the most heroic actions, save want
of opportunity.

But black night had succeeded the day, and he had still two leagues to
cover before coming down to the hamlet in which Fouque lived. Before
leaving the little cave, Julien struck a light and carefully destroyed
all that he had written.

He greatly astonished his friend by knocking at his door at one
o'clock in the morning. He found Fouque engaged in making up his
accounts. He was a young man of tall stature, none too well made, with
large, hard features, a huge nose, and plenty of good nature concealed
beneath this repellent aspect.

'You've quarrelled with your M. de Renal, then, that you come here of
a sudden like this?'

Julien related to him, with suitable omissions, the events of the
previous evening.

'Stay with me,' Fouque said to him; 'I see that you know M. de Renal,
M. Valenod, the Sub-Prefect Maugiron, the cure Chelan; you have
grasped all the subtle points of their natures; you're ripe now to put
yourself up for auction. You know arithmetic better than I do, you
shall keep my books; I am making a big profit from my business. The
impossibility of doing everything by myself and the fear of hitting
upon a rogue in the man I might take as my partner prevent me every
day from doing the most profitable deals. Not a month ago I put six
thousand francs in the pocket of Michaud of Saint-Amand, whom I had
not seen for six years, and met quite by chance at the Pontarlier
sale. Why should not you have made those six thousand francs yourself,
or three thousand at least?  For if I had had you with me that day, I
should have gone on bidding for that lot of timber, and the other
would soon have left me with it. Be my partner.'

This offer annoyed Julien; it unsettled his erratic mind; throughout
supper, which the friends cooked for themselves, like Homeric heroes,
for Fouque lived by himself, he showed Julien his books, and proved to
him what advantages his trade in timber offered. Fouque had the
highest opinion of Julien's intelligence and character.

When at length the latter found himself alone in his little room
walled with planks of firwood, 'It is true,' he said to himself, 'I
can make a few thousand francs here, then return with advantage to the
calling of soldier or priest, according to the fashion prevailing in
France at the time. The little hoard that I shall have amassed will
remove all difficulties of detail. Alone on this mountainside, I can
do something to dispel my present appalling ignorance of so many of
the things that occupy the minds of all these fashionable gentlemen.
But Fouque is giving up the thought of marriage, he has told me again
and again that solitude is making him melancholy. It is obvious that
if he is taking a partner who has no money to put into his business,
it is in the hope of providing himself with a companion who will never
leave him.

'Shall I prove false to my friend?' exclaimed Julien angrily. This
creature, for whom hypocrisy and the absence of all fellow feeling
were the ordinary line of conduct, could not on this occasion bear the
thought of the slightest want of delicacy towards a man who loved him.

But all at once Julien became happy, he had a reason for refusing.
'What, I should be idly wasting seven or eight years! I should thus
arrive at eight and twenty; but, at that age, Napoleon had already
done his greatest deeds!  After I have obscurely scraped together a
little money by going round all these timber sales, and winning the
favour of various minor rascals, who can say whether I shall still
preserve the sacred fire with which one makes oneself a name?'

The following morning, Julien replied with great coolness to the
worthy Fouque, who looked upon the matter of their partnership as
settled, that his vocation to the sacred ministry of the altar did not
allow him to accept. Fouque could not believe his ears.

'But do you realise,' he kept on saying, 'that I make you my partner,
or, if you prefer, give you four thousand francs a year? And you want
to go back to your M. de Renal, who despises you like the mud on his
shoes! When you have two hundred louis in hand, what is to prevent you
from entering the Seminary? I will say more, I undertake to procure
for you the best parish in the district. For,' Fouque went on,
lowering his voice, 'I supply firewood to the ----, and the ----, and
M. ----. I give them the best quality of oak, for which they pay me
the price of white wood, but never was money better invested.'

Nothing could prevail against Julien's vocation. In the end Fouque
decided that he must be slightly mad. On the third day, at dawn,
Julien left his friend to pass the day among the rocks of the big
mountain. He found his little cave again, but he no longer enjoyed
peace of mind, his friend's offers had destroyed it. Like Hercules he
found himself called upon to choose not between vice and virtue, but
between mediocrity ending in an assured comfort and all the heroic
dreams of his youth. 'So I have no real firmness of character,' he
told himself; and this was the doubt that pained him most. 'I am not
of the stuff of which great men are made, since I am afraid that eight
years spent in providing myself with bread may rob me of that sublime
energy which makes men do extraordinary things.'




CHAPTER 13
Open-work Stockings

  A novel is a mirror taken along a road.
    SAINT-REAL

When Julien caught sight of the picturesque ruins of the old church of
Vergy, it occurred to him that for two whole days he had not once
thought of Madame de Renal. The other day, as I was leaving, that
woman reminded me of the vast gulf that separates us, she treated me
like a workman's son. No doubt she wished to show me that she repented
of having let me hold her hand the night before ... It is a lovely
hand, all the same! What charm, what nobility dwells in that woman's
glance!'

The possibility of making a fortune with Fouque gave a certain
facility to the course of Julien's reasoning; it was less often
interrupted by irritation, and the keen sense of his own poverty and
humble position in the eyes of the world. As though perched on a lofty
promontory, he was able to judge, and, so to speak, overlooked extreme
poverty on the one hand and that life of comfort which he still called
riches on the other. He was far from considering his position like a
philosopher, but he had sufficient perception to feel that he was
_different_ after this little expedition among the mountains.

He was struck by the extreme uneasiness with which Madame de Renal
listened to the short account of his journey, for which she had asked
him.

Fouque had had thoughts of marriage, unhappy love affairs; the
conversation between the friends had been filled with long confidences
of this nature.  After finding happiness too soon, Fouque had
discovered that he was not the sole possessor of his mistress's heart.
These disclosures had astonished Julien; he had learned much that was
new to him. His solitary life, compounded of imagination and
suspicion, had kept him aloof from everything that could have
enlightened him.

During his absence, life had been for Madame de Renal nothing more
than a succession of torments, each different but all alike
intolerable; she was really ill.

'You must not, on any account,' Madame Derville told her when she saw
Julien return, 'feeling as you do, sit in the garden this evening, the
damp air would make you worse.'

Madame Derville was surprised to see that her friend, who was always
being scolded by M. de Renal for the undue simplicity of her attire,
had put on open-work stockings and a pair of charming little shoes
that had arrived from Paris. For the last three days Madame de Renal's
sole distraction had been to cut out and make Elisa put together in
all haste a summer gown, of a charming little fabric greatly in
fashion. It was just possible to finish this gown a few minutes after
Julien's arrival; Madame de Renal at once put it on. Her friend had no
longer any doubt.

'She is in love, poor woman!' Madame Derville said to herself. She
understood all the strange symptoms of her illness.

She saw her speak to Julien. Pallor took the place of the most vivid
blushes. Anxiety stood revealed in her eyes, fastened on those of the
young tutor. Madame de Renal expected every moment that he was going
to offer an explanation, and announce that he was leaving the house,
or would remain.  It never occurred to Julien to say anything about
this subject, which had not entered his thoughts. After a terrible
struggle, Madame de Renal at last ventured to say to him, in a
tremulous voice, in which the whole extent of her passion lay
revealed:

'Are you going to leave your pupils to take a post elsewhere?'

Julien was struck by her quavering voice and by the look in her eyes.
'This woman loves me,' he said to himself; 'but after this passing
weakness for which her pride is reproaching her, and as soon as she is
no longer afraid of my going, she will return to her arrogance.' This
glimpse of their respective positions came to Julien like a flash of
lightning; he replied, hesitatingly:

'I should greatly regret leaving such attractive and _well-born_
children, but perhaps it will be inevitable. A man has duties towards
himself also.'

As he uttered the words well born (this was one of the aristocratic
expressions which Julien had recently acquired), he burned with a
strong feeling of antipathy.

'To this woman,' he said to himself, 'I am not well born.'

Madame de Renal, as she listened to him, was admiring his
intelligence, his beauty, her heart was pierced by the possibility of
departure which he dangled before her. All her friends from Verrieres
who, during Julien's absence, had come out to dine at Vergy, had
almost vied in complimenting her upon the astonishing young man that
her husband had had the good fortune to unearth. This was not to say
that they understood anything of the progress that the children had
made. The fact of his knowing the Bible by heart, and in Latin, too,
had provoked in the inhabitants of Verrieres an admiration that will
endure for, it may be, a century.

Julien, who spoke to no one, knew nothing of all this. If Madame de
Renal had had the slightest self-control, she would have congratulated
him on the reputation he had won, and Julien, his pride set at rest,
would have been pleasant and affable to her, all the more as her new
gown seemed to him charming. Madame de Renal, also pleased with her
pretty gown, and with what Julien said to her about it, had proposed a
turn in the garden; soon she had confessed that she was not well
enough to walk. She had taken the returned traveller's arm, and, far
from restoring her strength, the contact of that arm deprived her of
what little strength remained to her.

It was dark; no sooner were they seated than Julien, relying on the
privilege he had already won, ventured to press his lips to the arm of
his pretty neighbour, and to take her hand. He was thinking of the
boldness which Fouque had used with his mistresses, and not of Madame
de Renal; the phrase _well born_ still weighed upon his heart. His own
hand was pressed, but this afforded him no pleasure. Far from his
being proud, or even grateful for the affection which Madame de Renal
betrayed this evening by unmistakable signs, beauty, elegance,
freshness found him almost unconscious of their appeal. Purity of
heart, freedom from any feeling of hatred, serve doubtless to prolong
the duration of youth. It is the face that ages first in the majority
of beautiful women.

Julien was sullen all the evening; hitherto he had been angry only
with fortune and with society; now that Fouque had offered him an
ignoble way of arriving at comfort, he was angry with himself.
Absorbed in his own thoughts, although now and then he addressed a few
words to the ladies, Julien ended by unconsciously letting go Madame
de Renal's hand. This action completely nonplussed the poor woman; she
saw in it an indication of her fate.

Had she been certain of Julien's affection, her virtue might perhaps
have found strength to resist him. Trembling at the thought of losing
him for ever, her passion carried her to the point of seizing Julien's
hand, which, in his distraction, he had allowed to rest upon the back
of a chair. This action stirred the ambitious youth; he would have
liked it to be witnessed by all those proud nobles who, at table, when
he was at the lower end with the children, used to look at him with so
patronising a smile. 'This woman cannot despise me any longer: in that
case,' he said to himself, 'I ought to be stirred by her beauty; I owe
it to myself to be her lover.' Such an idea would never have occurred
to him before he received the artless confidences of his friend.

The sudden resolution he had just made formed a pleasing distraction.
He said to himself: 'I must have one of these two women'; he realised
that he would greatly have preferred to pay his court to Madame
Derville; it was not that she was more attractive, but she had seen
him always as a tutor honoured for his learning, and not as a working
carpenter, with a ratteen jacket folded under his arm, as he had first
appeared to Madame de Renal.

It was precisely as a young workman, blushing to the whites of his
eyes, hesitating outside the door of the house and not venturing to
ring the bell, that Madame de Renal delighted most to picture him.

As he followed up this survey of his position, Julien saw that he must
not think of attempting the conquest of Madame Derville, who had
probably noticed the weakness that Madame de Renal showed for him.
Forced to return to the latter: 'What do I know of this woman's
character?' Julien asked himself. 'Only this: before I went away, I
took her hand, she withdrew it; today I withdraw my hand, she seizes
it and presses it. A good opportunity to repay her all the contempt
she has shown for me. God knows how many lovers she has had! Perhaps
she is deciding in my favour only because of the facilities for our
meeting.'

Such is, alas, the drawback of an excessive civilisation. At the age
of twenty, the heart of a young man, if he has any education, is a
thousand leagues from that devil-may-care attitude without which love
is often only the most tedious duty.

'I owe it to myself all the more,' went on Julien's petty vanity, 'to
succeed with this woman, so that if I ever make my fortune, and
someone reproaches me with having filled the humble post of tutor, I
may let it be understood that it was love that brought me into that
position.'

Julien once more withdrew his hand from that of Madame de Renal, then
took her hand again and pressed it. As they returned to the
drawing-room, towards midnight, Madame de Renal murmured in his ear:

'Are you leaving us, are you going away?'

Julien answered with a sigh:

'I must indeed go away, for I love you passionately; it is a sin ...
and what a sin for a young priest!'

Madame de Renal leaned upon his arm, bending towards him until her
cheek felt the warmth of his.

The night passed for these two people very differently. Madame de
Renal was exalted by transports of the most lofty moral pleasure. A
coquettish girl who falls in love early grows accustomed to the
distress of love; when she comes to the age of true passion, the charm
of novelty is lacking. As Madame de Renal had never read any novels,
all the refinements of her happiness were new to her. No melancholy
truth came to freeze her heart, not even the spectre of the future.
She saw herself as happy in ten years' time as she was at that moment.
Even the thought of virtue and of the fidelity she had vowed to M. de
Renal, which had distressed her some days before, presented itself in
vain, she dismissed it like an importunate stranger. 'Never will I
allow Julien to take any liberty,' Madame de Renal told herself, 'we
shall live in future as we have been living for the last month. He
shall be a friend.'




CHAPTER 14
The English Scissors

  A girl of sixteen had a rosy complexion, and put on rouge.
    POLIDORI

As for Julien, Fouque's offer had indeed destroyed all his happiness;
he could not decide upon any course.

'Alas! Perhaps I am wanting in character, I should have made Napoleon
a bad soldier. Anyhow,' he went on, 'my little intrigue with the lady
of the house is going to distract me for the moment.'

Fortunately for him, even in this minor incident, his inward feelings
bore no relation to his cavalier language. He was afraid of Madame de
Renal because of her pretty gown. This gown was in his eyes the
advance guard of Paris. His pride was determined to leave nothing to
chance and to the inspiration of the moment. Drawing upon Fouque's
confessions and the little he had read about love in the Bible, he
prepared a plan of campaign in great detail. Since, though he did not
admit it to himself, he was extremely anxious, he committed this plan
to writing.

The following morning, in the drawing-room, Madame de Renal was alone
with him for a moment.

'Have you no other name besides Julien?' she asked him.

Our hero did not know what answer to give to so flattering a question.
No provision had been made in his plan for such an event. But for the
stupid mistake of making a plan, Julien's quick mind would soon have
come to his rescue, his surprise would only have added to the keenness
of his perceptions.

He was awkward and exaggerated his own awkwardness. Madame de Renal
soon forgave him that. She saw in it the effect of a charming candour.
And the one thing lacking, to her mind, in this man, who was
considered so brilliant, was an air of candour.

'I don't at all trust your little tutor,' Madame Derville said to her
on several occasions. 'He seems to me to be always thinking and to act
only from motives of policy. He's crafty.'

Julien remained deeply humiliated by the disaster of not having known
what answer to make to Madame de Renal.

'A man of my sort owes it to himself to make up for this check'; and,
seizing the moment at which she passed from one room to another, he
did what he considered his duty by giving Madame de Renal a kiss.

Nothing could have been less appropriate, less agreeable either to
himself or to her, nor could anything have been more imprudent. They
barely escaped being caught. Madame de Renal thought him mad. She was
frightened and even more shocked. This stupidity reminded her of M.
Valenod.

'What would happen to me,' she asked herself, 'if I were left alone
with him?' All her virtue returned, for her love was in eclipse.

She arranged matters so that there should always be one of her
children with her.

The day passed slowly for Julien, he spent the whole of it in clumsily
carrying out his plan of seduction. He never once looked at Madame de
Renal without embodying a question in his look; he was not, however,
such a fool as not to see that he was failing completely to be
agreeable, let alone seductive.

Madame de Renal could not get over her astonishment at finding him so
awkward and at the same time so bold. 'It is the timidity of love in a
man of parts!' she said to herself at length, with an inexpressible
joy. 'Can it be possible that he has never been loved by my rival!'

After luncheon, Madame de Renal returned to the drawing-room to
entertain M. Charcot de Maugiron, the Sub-Prefect of Bray. She was
working at a little tapestry frame on a tall stand. Madame Derville
was by her side. It was in this position, and in the full light of
day, that our hero thought fit to thrust forward his boot and press
the pretty foot of Madame de Renal, whose open-work stocking and smart
Parisian shoe were evidently attracting the gaze of the gallant
Sub-Prefect.

Madame de Renal was extremely alarmed; she let fall her scissors, her
ball of wool, her needles, and Julien's movement could thus pass for a
clumsy attempt to prevent the fall of the scissors, which he had seen
slipping down. Fortunately these little scissors of English steel
broke, and Madame de Renal could not sufficiently express her regret
that Julien had not been nearer at hand.

'You saw them falling before I did, you might have caught them; your
zeal has only succeeded in giving me a violent kick.'

All this play-acting took in the Sub-Prefect, but not Madame Derville.
'This pretty youth has very bad manners!' she thought; the
worldly-wisdom of a provincial capital can never pardon mistakes of
this sort. Madame de Renal found an opportunity of saying to Julien:

'Be careful, I order you.'

Julien realised his own clumsiness, and was annoyed. For a long time
he debated within himself whether he ought to take offence at the
words: 'I order you.' He was foolish enough to think: 'She might say
to me "I order you" if it was something to do with the children's
education; but in responding to my love, she assumes equality. One
cannot love without equality'; and he lost himself in composing
commonplaces on the subject of equality. He repeated angrily to
himself the verse of Corneille which Madame Derville had taught him a
few days earlier:

  Love creates equalities, it does not seek them.

Julien, insisting upon playing the part of a Don Juan, he who had
never had a mistress in his life, was deadly dull for the rest of the
day. He had only one sensible idea; bored with himself and with Madame
de Renal, he saw with alarm the evening approach when he would be
seated in the garden, by her side and in the dark. He told M. de Renal
that he was going to Verrieres to see the cure; he set off after
dinner, and did not return until late at night.

At Verrieres, Julien found M. Chelan engaged in packing up; he had at
last been deprived of his benefice; the vicar Maslon was to succeed
him. Julien helped the good cure, and it occurred to him to write to
Fouque that the irresistible vocation which he felt for the sacred
ministry had prevented him at first from accepting his friend's
obliging offer, but that he had just witnessed such an example of
injustice, that perhaps it would be more advantageous to his welfare
were he not to take holy orders.

Julien applauded his own deftness in making use of the deprivation of
the cure of Verrieres to leave a door open for himself and so return
to commerce, should the sad voice of prudence prevail, in his mind,
over heroism.




CHAPTER 15
Cock-crow


  Amour en latin faict amor;
  Or done provient d'amour la mort,
  Et, par avant, soulcy qui mord,
  Deuil, plours, pieges, forfaitz, remord . ..
    _Blason d'amour_

If Julien had had a little of that discernment which he so
gratuitously supposed himself to possess, he might have congratulated
himself next day on the effect produced by his visit to Verrieres. His
absence had caused his clumsiness to be forgotten. All that day too,
he was inclined to sulk; towards nightfall a preposterous idea
occurred to him, and he imparted it to Madame de Renal with a rare
intrepidity.

No sooner had they sat down in the garden than, without waiting for a
sufficient cloak of darkness, Julien put his lips to Madame de Renal's
ear, and, at the risk of compromising her horribly, said to her:

'Tonight, Ma'am, at two o'clock, I am coming to your room, I have
something to say to you.'

Julien was trembling lest his request should be granted; the part of a
seducer was so horrible a burden that if he had been free to follow
his own inclination, he would have retired to his room for some days,
and not set eyes on the ladies again. He realised that, by his clever
tactics of yesterday, he had squandered all the promise of the day
before, and really he did not know where to turn.

Madame de Renal replied with a genuine and by no means exaggerated
indignation to the impertinent announcement which Julien had had the
audacity to make. He thought he could read scorn in her brief answer.
It was certain that in this answer, uttered in the lowest of tones,
the word 'Fie!' had figured. Making the excuse that he had something
to say to the children, Julien went up to their room, and on his
return placed himself by the side of Madame Derville and at a distance
from Madame de Renal. He thus removed from himself all possibility of
taking her hand. The conversation took a serious turn, and Julien held
his own admirably, apart from a few intervals of silence during which
he cudgelled his brains. 'Why cannot I think of some fine plan,' he
asked himself, 'to force Madame de Renal to show me those unmistakable
marks of affection which made me imagine, three days ago, that she was
mine!'

Julien was extremely disconcerted by the almost desperate situation
into which he had been led. And yet nothing could have embarrassed him
so much as success.

When the party broke up at midnight, his pessimism led him to believe
that Madame Derville looked upon him with contempt, and that probably
he stood no higher in the favour of Madame de Renal.

Being in an extremely bad temper and deeply humiliated, Julien could
not sleep. He was a thousand leagues from any thought of abandoning
all pretence, all his plans, and of living from day to day with Madame
de Renal, contenting himself like a child with the happiness that each
day would bring.

He wearied his brain in devising clever stratagems; a moment later, he
felt them to be absurd; he was in short extremely wretched, when two
struck from the clock tower.

This sound aroused him as the crow of the cock aroused Saint Peter. He
saw himself arrived at the moment of the most distressing event. He
had not thought once again of his impertinent suggestion, from the
moment in which he had made it. It had met with so hostile a
reception!

'I told her that I should come to her at two o'clock,' he said to
himself as he rose; 'I may be inexperienced and coarse, as is natural
in the son of a peasant, Madame Derville has let me see that plainly
enough; but at any rate I will not be weak.'

Julien had every right to praise his own courage, never had he set
himself a more painful task. As he opened the door of his room, he
trembled so much that his knees gave way beneath him, and he was
obliged to lean against the wall.

He was in his stockinged feet. He went to listen at M. de Renal's
door, through which he could hear him snoring. This dismayed him. He
had no longer any excuse for not going to her. But, great God! What
should he do when he got there? He had no plan, and even if he had had
one, he was in such distress of mind that he would not have been in a
fit state to put it into practice.

Finally, with an anguish a thousand times keener than if he had been
going to the scaffold, he entered the little corridor that led to
Madame de Renal's room. He opened the door with a trembling hand,
making a fearful noise as he did so.

There was a light in the room, a night light was burning in the
fireplace; he had not expected this fresh calamity. Seeing him enter,
Madame de Renal sprang quickly out of bed. 'Wretch!' she cried. There
was some confusion.  Julien forgot his futile plans and returned to
his own natural character.  Not to please so charming a woman seemed
to him the greatest disaster possible. His only answer to her
reproaches was to fling himself at her feet, clasping her round the
knees. As she spoke to him with extreme harshness, he burst into
tears.

Some hours later, when Julien emerged from Madame de Renal's room, one
might have said, in the language of romance, that there was nothing
more left for him to wish. And indeed, he was indebted to the love he
had inspired and to the unforeseen impression made on him by her
seductive charms for a victory to which not all his misplaced
ingenuity would ever have led him.

But, in the most delicious moments, the victim of a freakish pride, he
still attempted to play the part of a man in the habit of captivating
women: he made incredible efforts to destroy his natural amiability.
Instead of his paying attention to the transports which he excited,
and to the remorse that increased their vivacity, the idea of duty was
continually before his eyes. He feared a terrible remorse, and undying
ridicule, should he depart from the ideal plan that he had set himself
to follow. In a word, what made Julien a superior being was precisely
what prevented him from enjoying the happiness that sprang up at his
feet. He was like a girl of sixteen who has a charming complexion and,
before going to a ball, is foolish enough to put on rouge.

In mortal terror at the apparition of Julien, Madame de Renal was soon
a prey to the cruellest alarms. Julien's tears and despair distressed
her greatly.

Indeed, when she had no longer anything to refuse him, she thrust him
from her, with genuine indignation, and then flung herself into his
arms. No purpose was apparent in all this behaviour. She thought
herself damned without remission, and sought to shut out the vision of
hell by showering the most passionate caresses on Julien. In a word,
nothing would have been wanting to complete our hero's happiness, not
even a burning sensibility in the woman he had just vanquished, had he
been capable of enjoying it.  Julien's departure brought no cessation
of the transports which were shaking her in spite of herself, nor of
her struggle with the remorse that was tearing her.

'Heavens! Is to be happy, to be loved, no more than that?' Such was
Julien's first thought on his return to his own room. He was in that
state of astonishment and uneasy misgivings into which a heart falls
when it has just obtained what it has long desired. It has grown used
to desiring, finds nothing left to desire, and has not yet acquired
any memories. Like a soldier returning from a parade, Julien was
busily engaged in reviewing all the details of his conduct. 'Have I
failed in one of the duties I owe to myself? Have I really played my
part?'

And what a part! The part of a man accustomed to shine before women.




CHAPTER 16
The Day After


  He turn'd his lips to hers, and with his hand
  Call'd back the tangles of her wandering hair.
    _Don Juan_, I. 170

Fortunately for Julien's pride, Madame de Renal had been too greatly
agitated and surprised to notice the fatuity of the man who in a
moment had become everything in the world to her.

As she was imploring him to withdraw, seeing the day begin to break:

'Oh, Heavens!' she said, 'if my husband has heard any sound, I am
lost.'

Julien, who had leisure for composing phrases, remembered one to the
point:

'Should you regret your life?'

'Ah! Very much at this moment, but I should not regret having known
you.'

Julien found that his dignity required him to return to his room in
broad daylight and with deliberate want of precaution.

The continuous attention with which he watched his own slightest
actions, in the insane idea of being taken for a man of experience,
had this one advantage; when he saw Madame de Renal again, at
luncheon, his behaviour was a miracle of prudence.

As for her, she could not look at him without blushing to the whites
of her eyes, and could not live for an instant without looking at him;
she noticed her own confusion, and her efforts to conceal it
increased. Julien raised his eyes to hers once only. At first, Madame
de Renal admired his prudence.  Presently, seeing that this solitary
glance was not repeated, she took alarm: 'Can it be that he does not
love me any more,' she asked herself; 'alas, I am far too old for him;
I am ten years his senior.'

On the way from the dining-room to the garden, she pressed Julien's
hand.  In the surprise that he felt at so extraordinary a token of
affection, he gazed at her with passion; for she had struck him as
looking very pretty at luncheon, and, without raising his eyes, he had
spent his time making a detailed catalogue of her charms. This look
consoled Madame de Renal; it did not remove all her uneasiness; but
her uneasiness removed, almost entirely, the remorse she felt when she
thought of her husband.

At luncheon, the said husband had noticed nothing; not so with Madame
Derville; she feared Madame de Renal to be on the point of succumbing.
All through the day, her bold, incisive friendship did not spare the
other those hinted suggestions intended to portray in hideous colours
the danger that she was running.

Madame de Renal was burning to be left alone with Julien; she wanted
to ask him whether he still loved her. Despite the unalterable
gentleness of her nature, she was more than once on the point of
letting her friend know what a nuisance she was making of herself.

That evening, in the garden, Madame Derville arranged things so
skilfully that she found herself placed between Madame de Renal and
Julien. Madame de Renal, who had formed a delicious image of the
pleasure of pressing Julien's hand and carrying it to her lips, could
not so much as address a word to him.

This catastrophe increased her agitation. Remorse for one thing was
gnawing her. She had so scolded Julien for the imprudence he had shown
in coming to her room the night before, that she trembled lest he
might not come that night. She left the garden early, and went up to
wait in her room. But, beside herself with impatience, she rose and
went to glue her ear to Julien's door. Despite the uncertainty and
passion that were devouring her, she did not dare enter. This action
seemed to her the last word in lowness, for it serves as text to a
country maxim.

The servants were not all in bed. Prudence obliged her finally to
return to her own room. Two hours of waiting were two centuries of
torment.

But Julien was too loyal to what he called his duty, to fail in the
execution, detail by detail, of what he had laid down for himself.

As one o'clock struck, he slipped quietly from his room, made sure
that the master of the house was sound asleep, and appeared before
Madame de Renal.  On this occasion he found greater happiness with his
mistress, for he was less continually thinking of the part he had to
play. He had eyes to see and ears to hear. What Madame de Renal said
to him about his age contributed to give him some degree of
self-assurance.

'Alas! I am ten years older than you! How can you love me?' she
repeated without any object, simply because the idea oppressed her.

Julien could not conceive such a thing, but he saw that her distress
was genuine, and almost entirely forgot his fear of being ridiculous.

The foolish idea of his being regarded as a servile lover, at his
mistress's beck and call, on account of his humble birth, vanished
likewise. In proportion as Julien's transports reassured his coy
mistress, she recovered some degree of happiness and the faculty of
criticising her lover. Fortunately, he showed almost nothing, on this
occasion, of that borrowed air which had made their meeting the night
before a victory, but not a pleasure. Had she noticed his intentness
upon playing a part, the painful discovery would have robbed her of
all happiness for ever. She could have seen in it nothing else than a
painful consequence of their disparity of age.

Albeit Madame de Renal had never thought about theories of love,
difference of age is, next to difference of fortune, one of the great
commonplaces of provincial humour, whenever there is any talk of love.

In a few days, Julien, all the ardour of his youth restored, was madly
in love.

'One must admit,' he said to himself, 'that her kindness of heart is
angelic, and that no one could be prettier.'

He had almost entirely lost the idea of a part to be played. In a
moment of unrestrained impulse, he even confessed to her all his
anxieties. This confidence raised to its climax the passion that he
inspired. 'So I have not had any fortunate rival,' Madame de Renal
said to herself with ecstasy.  She ventured to question him as to the
portrait in which he took such an interest; Julien swore to her that
it was that of a man.

When Madame de Renal was calm enough to reflect, she could not get
over her astonishment that such happiness could exist and that she had
never had the slightest idea of it.

'Ah!' she said to herself, 'if I had known Julien ten years ago, when
I might still be considered pretty!'

Julien's thoughts were worlds apart from these. His love was still
founded in ambition: it was the joy of possessing--he, a poor creature
so unfortunate and so despised--so noble and beautiful a woman. His
acts of adoration, his transports at the sight of his mistress's
charms, ended by reassuring her somewhat as to the difference in age.
Had she possessed a little of that worldly wisdom a woman of thirty
has long enjoyed in more civilised lands, she would have shuddered for
the continuance of a love which seemed to exist only upon surprise and
the titillation of self-esteem.

In the moments when he forgot his ambition, Julien went into
transports over everything that Madame de Renal possessed, including
her hats and gowns. He could not tire of the pleasure of inhaling
their perfume. He opened her wardrobe and stood for hours on end
marvelling at the beauty and neat arrangement of everything inside.
His mistress, leaning upon his shoulder, gazed at him; he himself
gazed at those ornaments and fripperies which on a wedding day are
displayed among the presents.

'I might have married a man like this!' Madame de Renal sometimes
thought; 'What a fiery spirit! What a rapturous life with him!'

As for Julien, never had he found himself so close to those terrible
weapons of feminine artillery. 'It is impossible,' he told himself,
'that in Paris there can be anything finer!' After which he could find
no objection to his happiness. Often his mistress's sincere
admiration, and her transports of passion made him forget the fatuous
theory that had kept him so restrained and almost ridiculous in the
first moments of their intimacy. There were moments when, despite his
hypocritical habits, he found an intense pleasure in confessing to
this great lady who admired him his ignorance of any number of little
usages. His mistress's rank seemed to raise him above himself. Madame
de Renal, for her part, found the most exquisite moral satisfaction in
thus instructing in a heap of little things this young man endowed
with genius whom everyone regarded as bound one day to go so far. Even
the Sub-Prefect and M. Valenod could not help admiring him: she
thought the better of them accordingly. As for Madame Derville, these
were by no means her sentiments. In despair at what she thought she
could discern, and seeing that her wise counsel was becoming hateful
to a woman who had positively lost her head, she left Vergy without
offering an explanation for which she was not asked. Madame de Renal
shed a few tears at her departure, and soon it seemed to her that
her happiness was doubled. By the withdrawal of her guest she found
herself left alone with her lover almost all day long.

Julien gave himself all the more readily to the pleasant society of
his mistress inasmuch as, whenever he was left too long by himself,
Fouque's fatal offer recurred to his mind to worry him. In the first
days of this new life, there were moments when he, who had never
loved, who had never been loved by anyone, found so exquisite a
pleasure in being sincere, that he was on the point of confessing to
Madame de Renal the ambition which until then had been the very
essence of his existence. He would have liked to be able to consult
her as to the strange temptation which he felt in Fouque's offer, but
a trifling occurrence put a stop to all frankness.




CHAPTER 17
The Principal Deputy


  O! how this spring of love resembleth
  The uncertain glory of an April day,
  Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
  And by and by a cloud takes all away!
    _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_

One evening as the sun set, sitting by his mistress, at the end of the
orchard, safe from disturbance, he was deep in thought. 'Will such
delicious moments,' he was wondering, 'last for ever?' His thoughts
were absorbed in the difficulty of adopting a profession, he was
deploring this great and distressing problem which puts an end to
boyhood and spoils the opening years of manhood when one has no money.

'Ah!' he cried, 'Napoleon was indeed the man sent by God to help the
youth of France! Who is to take his place? What will the poor wretches
do without him, even those who are richer than I, who have just the
few crowns needed to procure them a good education, and not enough
money to purchase a man at twenty and launch themselves in a career!
Whatever happens,' he added with deep sigh, 'that fatal memory will
for ever prevent us from being happy!'

He saw Madame de Renal frown suddenly; she assumed a cold, disdainful
air; this line of thought seemed to her worthy of a servant. Brought
up in the idea that she was extremely rich, it seemed to her a thing
to be taken for granted that Julien was also. She loved him a thousand
times more than life itself, and money to her meant nothing.

Julien was far from guessing what was in her mind. This frown brought
him back to earth. He had presence of mind enough to arrange his
sentence and to make it plain to the noble lady, seated so close
beside him on the bank of verdure, that the words he had just uttered
were some that he had heard during his expedition to his friend the
timber merchant. This was the reasoning of the impious.

'Very well! Don't mix any more with such people,' said Madame de
Renal, still preserving a trace of that glacial air which had suddenly
taken the place of an expression of the tenderest affection.

This frown, or rather his remorse for his imprudence, was the first
check administered to the illusion that was bearing Julien away. He
said to himself: 'She is good and kind, her feeling for me is strong,
but she has been brought up in the enemy's camp. They are bound to be
specially afraid of that class of men of spirit who, after a good
education, have not enough money to enter upon a career. What would
become of these nobles, if it were granted us to fight them with equal
weapons? Myself, for instance, as Mayor of Verrieres, well
intentioned, honest as M. de Renal is at heart, how I should deal with
the vicar, M. Valenod and all their rascalities! How justice should
triumph in Verrieres. It is not their talents that would prove an
obstacle. They are endlessly feeling their way.'

Julien's happiness was, that day, on the point of becoming permanent.
What our hero lacked was the courage to be sincere. He needed the
courage to give battle, but on the spot; Madame de Renal had been
surprised by his speech, because the men whom she was in the habit of
meeting were always saying that the return of Robespierre was made
possible especially by these young men of the lower orders, who had
been too well educated. Madame de Renal's cold manner persisted for
some time, and seemed to Julien to be marked. This was because the
fear of having said to him indirectly something unpleasant followed
her repugnance at his unfortunate speech.  This distress was clearly
shown on her pure countenance; so simple when she was happy and away
from bores.

Julien no longer dared give himself up freely to his dreams. More calm
and less amorous, he decided that it was imprudent in him to go to
Madame de Renal in her room. It would be better if she came to him; if
a servant saw her moving about the house, there would be a score of
possible reasons to account for her action.

But this arrangement also had its drawbacks. Julien had received from
Fouque certain books for which he, as a student of divinity, could
never have asked a bookseller. He ventured to open them only at night.
Often he would have been just as well pleased not to be interrupted by
an assignation, the tension of waiting for which, even before the
little scene in the orchard, would have left him incapable of reading.

He was indebted to Madame de Renal for an entirely new understanding
of the books he read. He had ventured to ply her with questions as to
all sorts of little things ignorance of which seriously handicaps the
intelligence of a young man born outside the ranks of society,
whatever natural genius one may choose to attribute to him.

This education in love, given by an extremely ignorant woman, was a
blessing. Julien was at once enabled to see society as it is today.
His mind was not perplexed by accounts of what it was in the past, two
thousand years ago, or sixty years ago merely, in the days of
Voltaire and Louis XV. To his unspeakable joy a cloud passed from
before his eyes; he understood at last the things that were happening
at Verrieres.

In the foreground appeared the highly complicated intrigues woven, for
the last two years, round the Prefect at Besancon. They were supported
by letters that came from Paris, and bore all the most illustrious
signatures.  It was a question of making M. de Moirod, the most
bigoted man in the place, the Principal instead of the Second Deputy
to the Mayor of Verrieres.

His rival was an extremely rich manufacturer, whom it was absolutely
essential to confine to the post of Second Deputy.

Julien at last understood the hints that he had overheard, when the
cream of local society came to dine with M. de Renal. This privileged
class was greatly taken up with this selection of a Principal Deputy,
of which the rest of the town and especially the Liberals did not even
suspect the possibility. What gave it its importance was that, as
everybody knew, the eastern side of the main street of Verrieres must
be moved back more than nine feet, for this street was now a royal
highway.

Well, if M. de Moirod, who owned three houses that would have to be
moved back, succeeded in becoming Principal Deputy, and so Mayor in
the event of M. de Renal's being returned to Parliament, he would shut
his eyes, and it would be possible to make little, imperceptible
repairs to the houses that encroached on the public thoroughfare, as a
result of which they would be good for a hundred years. Despite the
great piety and admitted probity of M. de Moirod, it was certain that
he _could be managed_, for he had a large family. Among the houses
that would have to be moved back, nine belonged to the very best
people in Verrieres.

In Julien's eyes, this intrigue was far more important than the
history of the battle of Fontenoy, a name which he saw for the first
time in one of the books that Fouque had sent him. Many things had
astonished Julien during the five years since he had begun to spend
his evenings with the cure. But discretion and a humble spirit being
the chief qualities required in a divinity student, it had always been
impossible for him to ask any questions.

One day, Madame de Renal had given an order to her husband's valet,
Julien's enemy.

'But, Ma'am, today is the last Friday of the month,' the man answered
her with a curious expression.

'Go,' said Madame de Renal.

'Well,' said Julien, 'he is going to that hay store, which used to be
a church, and was recently restored to the faith; but why? That is one
of the mysteries which I have never been able to penetrate.'

'It is a most beneficial, but a very strange institution,' replied
Madame de Renal. 'Women are not admitted; all that I know of it is
that they all address one another as _tu_. For instance, this servant
will find M. Valenod there, and that conceited fool will not be in the
least annoyed at hearing himself called _tu_ by Saint-Jean, and will
answer him in the same tone. If you really want to know what they do
there, I can ask M. de Maugiron and M. Valenod for details. We pay
twenty francs for each servant so that they do not cut our throats.'

The time flew. The memory of his mistress's charms distracted Julien
from his black ambition. The necessity to refrain from speaking to her
of serious, reasonable matters, since they were on opposite sides,
added, without his suspecting it, to the happiness that he owed to her
and to the power which she was acquiring over him.

At those moments when the presence of quick-eared children confined
them to the language of cold reason, it was with a perfect docility
that Julien, gazing at her with eyes that burned with love, listened
to her explanations of the world as it really was. Often, in the
middle of an account of some clever piece of roguery, in connection
with the laying out of a road, or of some astounding contract, Madame
de Renal's mind would suddenly wander to the point of delirium; Julien
was obliged to scold her, she allowed herself to caress him in the
same way as she caressed her children. This was because there were
days on which she imagined that she loved him like a child of her own.
Had she not to reply incessantly to his artless questions about a
thousand simple matters of which a child of good family is not
ignorant at fifteen? A moment later, she was admiring him as her
master.  His intelligence positively frightened her; she thought she
could perceive more clearly every day the future great man in this
young cleric. She saw him as Pope, she saw him as First Minister, like
Richelieu.

'Shall I live long enough to see you in your glory?' she said to
Julien; 'there is a place waiting for a great man; the Monarchy, the
Church need one; these gentlemen say so every day.  If some Richelieu
does not stem the torrent of private judgment, all is lost.'




CHAPTER 18
A King at Verrieres


  Are you fit only to be flung down like the corpse of a nation, its
  soul gone and its veins emptied of blood?
    (From the Bishop's address,
    delivered in the Chapel of Saint Clement)

On the third of September, at ten o'clock in the evening, a mounted
constable aroused the whole of Verrieres by galloping up the main
street; he brought the news that His Majesty the King of -- was coming
the following Sunday, and it was now Tuesday.  The Prefect authorised,
that is to say ordered, the formation of a Guard of Honour; he must be
received with all the pomp possible. A courier was sent to Vergy. M.
de Renal arrived during the night and found the whole town in a
ferment. Everybody was claiming a right to something; those who had no
other duty were engaging balconies to see the King enter the town.

Who was to command the Guard of Honour? M. de Renal saw at once how
important it was, in the interest of the houses that would have to be
moved back, that M. de Moirod should fill this post. It might be held
to constitute a claim to the place of Principal Deputy. There was
nothing to be said against M. de Moirod's devotion; it went beyond all
comparison, but he had never ridden a horse in his life. He was a man
of six and thirty, timid in every way, and equally afraid of falls and
of being laughed at.

The Mayor sent for him at five o'clock in the morning.

'You see, Sir, that I am asking your advice, as though you already
occupied the post in which all right-minded people would gladly see
you. In this unfortunate town the manufacturers prosper, the Liberal
Party are becoming millionaires, they aspire to power, they will forge
themselves weapons out of everything. We must consider the King's
interests, those of the Monarchy, and above all those of our holy
religion. To whom do you think, Sir, that we ought to entrust the
command of the Guard of Honour?'

In spite of the horrible fear that a horse inspired in him, M. de
Moirod ended by accepting this honour like a martyr. 'I shall manage
to adopt the right manner,' he told the Mayor. There was barely time
to overhaul the uniforms which had been used seven years before on the
passage of a Prince of the Blood.

At seven, Madame de Renal arrived from Vergy with Julien and the
children.  She found her drawing-room full of Liberal ladies who were
preaching the union of parties, and had come to implore her to make
her husband find room in the Guard of Honour for theirs. One of them
asserted that if her husband were not chosen he would go bankrupt from
grief. Madame de Renal sent them all packing at once. She seemed
greatly occupied.

Julien was surprised and even more annoyed by her making a mystery to
him of what was disturbing her. 'I thought as much,' he told himself
bitterly, 'her love is eclipsed by the joy of receiving a King in her
house. All this excitement dazzles her. She will begin to love me
again when her brain is no longer troubled by ideas of caste.'

The surprising thing was that he loved her all the more for this.

The upholsterers began to invade the whole house, he long watched in
vain for an opportunity of saying a word to her. At length he found
her coming out of his own room, carrying one of his coats. They were
alone. He tried to speak to her. She made off, declining to listen to
him. 'What a fool I am to be in love with a woman like that, ambition
makes her just as stupid as her husband.'

She was even more so: one of her great wishes, which she had never
confessed to Julien, for fear of shocking him, was to see him discard,
if only for a day, his gloomy black coat. With an ingenuity truly
admirable in so natural a woman, she secured, first from M. de Moirod,
and then from the Sub-Prefect M. de Maugiron, that Julien should be
appointed to the Guard of Honour in preference to five or six young
men, sons of manufacturers in easy circumstances, at least two of whom
were of an exemplary piety. M. Valenod, who was reckoning on lending
his carriage to the prettiest women of the town, in order to have his
fine Norman horses admired, agreed to let Julien, the person he hated
most, have one of them. But each of the members of the Guard of Honour
possessed or had borrowed one of those sky-blue coats with a pair of
colonel's epaulettes in silver, which had shone in public seven years
before. Madame de Renal wanted a new coat, and she had but four days
in which to send to Besancon, and to procure from there the uniform,
the weapons, the hat, and all the other requisites for a Guard of
Honour. What is rather amusing is that she thought it imprudent to
have Julien's coat made at Verrieres. She wished to take him by
surprise, him and the town.

The work of organising the Guard of Honour and popular feeling
finished, the Mayor had next to deal with a great religious ceremony;
the King of ---- refused to pass through Verrieres without paying a
visit to the famous relic of Saint Clement which is preserved at
Bray-le-Haut, a short league from the town. The clergy must be present
in full force, and this was the most difficult thing to arrange; M.
Maslon, the new cure, was determined, at any price, to keep M. Chelan
out. In vain did M. de Renal point out to him the imprudence of this
action. The Marquis de La Mole, whose ancestors for so long were
Governors of the Province, had been chosen to accompany the King of
----. He had known the abbe Chelan for thirty years.  He would be
certain to inquire for him on arriving at Verrieres, and, if he found
that he was in disgrace, was quite capable of going in search of him,
to the little house to which he had retired, accompanied by such of
the procession as were under his orders. What a rebuff that would be!

'I am dishonoured here and at Besancon,' replied the abbe Maslon, 'if
he appears among my clergy. A Jansenist, great heavens!'

'Whatever you may say, my dear abbe,' M. de Renal assured him, 'I
shall not expose the municipal government of Verrieres to the risk of
an insult from M. de La Mole. You don't know the man, he is sound
enough at court; but here, in the country, he has a satirical, mocking
spirit, and likes nothing so much as to embarrass people. He is
capable, simply for his own amusement, of covering us with ridicule in
the eyes of the Liberals.'

It was not until the night between Saturday and Sunday, after three
days of discussion, that the abbe Maslon's pride gave way before the
Mayor's fear, which had turned to courage. The next thing was to write
a honeyed note to the abbe Chelan, inviting him to be present at the
veneration of the relic at Bray-le-Haut, his great age and infirmities
permitting. M. Chelan asked for and obtained a letter of invitation
for Julien, who was to accompany him in the capacity of sub-deacon.

Early on Sunday morning, thousands of peasants, arriving from the
neighbouring mountains, flooded the streets of Verrieres. It was a day
of brilliant sunshine. At length, about three o'clock, a tremor ran
through the crowd; they had caught sight of a beacon blazing on a rock
two leagues from Verrieres. This signal announced that the King had
just entered the territory of the Department. Immediately the sound of
all the bells and the repeated discharge of an old Spanish cannon
belonging to the town proclaimed its joy at this great event. Half the
population climbed up on the roofs. All the women were on the
balconies. The Guard of Honour began to move. The brilliant uniforms
were greatly admired, each of the onlookers recognised a relative
or friend. There was general laughter at the alarm of M. de Moirod,
whose cautious hand lay ready at any moment to clutch hold of his
saddle. But one thing made them forget all the others: the left-hand
man in the ninth section was a handsome lad, very slender, who at
first was not identified.  Presently a cry of indignation from some,
the astonished silence of others announced a general sensation. The
onlookers recognised in this young man, riding one of M. Valenod's
Norman horses, young Sorel, the carpenter's son.  There was one
unanimous outcry against the Mayor, especially among the Liberals.
What, because this young labourer dressed up as a priest was tutor to
his brats, he had the audacity to appoint him to the Guard of Honour,
to the exclusion of M. This and M. That, wealthy manufacturers!  'Those
gentlemen,' said a banker's wife, 'ought really to offer an affront to
the little upstart, born in the gutter.'

'He has a wicked temper and he is wearing a sabre,' replied her
companion; 'he would be quite treacherous enough to slash them across
the face.'

The comments made by the aristocratic element were more dangerous. The
ladies asked themselves whether the Mayor alone was responsible for
this grave breach of etiquette. On the whole justice was done to his
contempt for humble birth.

While he was giving rise to so much comment, Julien was the happiest
man alive. Bold by nature, he had a better seat on a horse than most
of the young men of this mountain town. He saw in the eyes of the
women that they were talking about him.

His epaulettes were more brilliant because they were new. At every
moment his horse threatened to rear; he was in the seventh heaven of
joy.

His happiness knew no bounds when, as they passed near the old
rampart, the sound of the small cannon made his horse swerve out of
the ranks. By the greatest accident, he did not fall off; from that
moment he felt himself a hero. He was Napoleon's orderly officer and
was charging a battery.

There was one person happier than he. First of all she had watched him
pass from one of the windows of the town hall; then, getting into her
carriage, and rapidly making a wide detour, she was in time to tremble
when his horse carried him out of the ranks. Finally, her carriage
passing out at a gallop through another of the gates of the town, she
made her way back to the road along which the King was to pass, and
was able to follow the Guard of Honour at a distance of twenty paces,
in a noble cloud of dust. Ten thousand peasants shouted: 'Long live
the King' when the Mayor had the honour of addressing His Majesty. An
hour later, when, having listened to all the speeches, the King was
about to enter the town, the small cannon began to fire again with
frenzied haste. But an accident occurred, not to the gunners who had
learned their trade at Leipsic and Montmirail, but to the future
Principal Deputy, M. de Moirod.  His horse dropped him gently into the
one puddle to be found along the whole road, which created a scandal,
because he had to be pulled out of the way to enable the King's
carriage to pass.

His Majesty alighted at the fine new church, which was decked out for
the occasion with all its crimson hangings. The King was to halt for
dinner, immediately after which he would take the road again to go and
venerate the famous relic of Saint Clement. No sooner was the King
inside the church than Julien went off at a gallop to M. de Renal's.
There he discarded with a sigh his fine sky-blue coat, his sabre, his
epaulettes, to resume the little threadbare black coat. He mounted his
horse again, and in a few minutes was at Bray-le-Haut, which stands on
the summit of an imposing hill. 'Enthusiasm is multiplying these
peasants,' thought Julien. 'One cannot move at Verrieres, and here
there are more than ten thousand of them round this old abbey.' Half
ruined by the vandalism of the Revolution, it had been magnificently
restored since the Restoration, and there was already some talk of
miracles. Julien joined the abbe Chelan, who scolded him severely, and
gave him a cassock and surplice. He vested himself hurriedly in these
and followed M. Chelan, who was going in search of the youthful Bishop
of Agde. This was a nephew of M. de La Mole, recently appointed to the
See, who had been selected to exhibit the relic to the King. But the
Bishop was not to be found.

The clergy were growing impatient. They awaited their leader in the
sombre, gothic cloister of the ancient abbey. Four and twenty parish
priests had been collected to represent the original chapter of
Bray-le-Haut which prior to 1789 had consisted of four and twenty
canons. Having spent three quarters of an hour in deploring the
youthfulness of the Bishop, the priests decided that it would be a
good thing if their Dean were to go and inform His Lordship that the
King was on his way, and that it was time they were in the choir. M.
Chelan's great age had made him Dean; despite the anger he showed with
Julien, he made a sign to him to follow him. Julien carried his
surplice admirably. By some secret process of the ecclesiastical
toilet-table, he had made his fine curly hair lie quite flat; but, by
an oversight which intensified the anger of M. Chelan, beneath the
long folds of his cassock one could see the spurs of the Guard of
Honour.

When they reached the Bishop's apartment, the tall lackeys smothered
in gold lace barely condescended to inform the old cure that His
Lordship could not be seen. They laughed at him when he tried to
explain that in his capacity as Dean of the Noble Chapter of
Bray-le-Haut, it was his privilege to be admitted at all times to the
presence of the officiating Bishop.

Julien's proud spirit was offended by the insolence of the lackeys. He
set off on a tour of the dormitories of the old abbey, trying every
door that he came to. One quite small door yielded to his efforts and
he found himself in a cell in the midst of His Lordship's
body-servants, dressed in black with chains round their necks. Seeing
his air of haste, these gentlemen supposed that the Bishop had sent
for him and allowed him to pass. He went a little way and found
himself in an immense gothic chamber, very dark and panelled
throughout in black oak; with a single exception, its pointed windows
had been walled up with bricks. There was nothing to conceal the
coarse surface of this masonry, which formed a sorry contrast to the
venerable splendour of the woodwork. Both sides of this room, famous
among the antiquarians of Burgundy, which the Duke Charles the Bold
built about the year 1470 in expiation of some offence, were lined
with wooden stalls, richly carved. These displayed, inlaid in wood of
different colours, all the mysteries of the Apocalypse.

This melancholy splendour, degraded by the intrusion of the bare
bricks and white plaster, impressed Julien. He stood there in silence.
At the other end of the room, near the only window through which any
light came, he saw a portable mirror framed in mahogany. A young man,
robed in violet with a lace surplice, but bare-headed, was standing
three paces away from the mirror. This article appeared out of place
in such a room, and had doubtless been brought there from the town.
Julien thought that the young man seemed irritated; with his right
hand he was gravely giving benedictions in the direction of the
mirror.

'What can this mean?' he wondered. 'Is it a preliminary ceremony that
this young priest is performing? He is perhaps the Bishop's secretary
... he will be rude like the lackeys ... but what of that, let us try
him.'

He went forward and passed slowly down the length of the room, keeping
his eyes fixed on that solitary window and watching the young man who
continued to give benedictions, with a slow motion but in endless
profusion, and without pausing for a moment.

As he drew nearer he was better able to see the other's look of
annoyance.  The costliness of his lace-bordered surplice brought
Julien to a standstill some distance away from the magnificent mirror.

'It is my duty to speak,' he reminded himself at length; but the
beauty of the room had touched his feelings and he was chilled in
anticipation by the harsh words that would be addressed to him.

The young man caught sight of him in the glass, turned round, and
suddenly discarding his look of irritation said to him in the
pleasantest tone:

'Well, Sir, is it ready yet?'

Julien remained speechless. As this young man turned towards him,
Julien saw the pectoral cross on his breast: it was the Bishop of
Agde. 'So young,' thought Julien; 'at the most, only six or eight
years older than myself!'

And he felt ashamed of his spurs.

'Monseigneur,' he replied timidly. 'I am sent by the Dean of the
Chapter, M. Chelan.'

'Ah! I have an excellent account of him,' said the bishop in a
courteous tone which left Julien more fascinated than ever. 'But I beg
your pardon, Sir, I took you for the person who is to bring me back my
mitre. It was carelessly packed in Paris; the silver tissue has been
dreadfully frayed at the top. It will create a shocking effect,' the
young Bishop went on with a sorrowful air, 'and they are keeping me
waiting too.'

'Monseigneur, I shall go and find the mitre, with Your Lordship's
permission.'

Julien's fine eyes had their effect.

'Go, Sir,' the Bishop answered with exquisite courtesy; 'I must
have it at once. I am sorry to keep the gentlemen of the Chapter
waiting.'

When Julien was halfway down the room, he turned to look at the Bishop
and saw that he was once more engaged in giving benedictions. 'What
can that be?' Julien asked himself; 'no doubt, it is a religious
preparation necessary to the ceremony that is to follow.' When he came
to the cell in which the servants were waiting, he saw the mitre in
their hands. These gentlemen, yielding in spite of themselves to
Julien's imperious glance, surrendered it to him.

He felt proud to be carrying it: as he crossed the room, he walked
slowly; he held it with respect. He found the Bishop seated before the
glass; but, from time to time, his right hand, tired as it was, still
gave the benediction. Julien helped him to put on the mitre. The
Bishop shook his head.

'Ah! It will keep on,' he said to Julien with a satisfied air. 'Will
you go a little way off?'

Whereupon the Bishop walked at a smart pace to the middle of the room,
then returning towards the mirror with a slow step, he resumed his air
of irritation and went on solemnly giving benedictions.

Julien was spellbound with astonishment; he was tempted to guess what
this meant, but did not dare. The Bishop stopped, and looking at him
with an air from which the solemnity rapidly vanished:

'What do you say to my mitre, Sir, does it look right?'

'Quite right, Monseigneur.'

'It is not too far back? That would look rather silly; but it does not
do, either, to wear them pulled down over one's eyes like an officer's
shako.'

'It seems to me to be quite right.'

'The King of ---- is accustomed to venerable clergy who are doubtless
very solemn. I should not like, especially in view of my age, to
appear too frivolous.'

And the Bishop once more began to walk about the room scattering
benedictions.

'It is quite clear,' said Julien, at last venturing to understand, 'he
is practising the benediction.'

A few moments later:

'I am ready,' said the Bishop. 'Go, Sir, and inform the Dean and the
gentlemen of the Chapter.'

Presently M. Chelan, followed by the two oldest of the cures, entered
by an immense door, magnificently carved, which Julien had not
noticed. But this time he remained in his place in the extreme rear,
and could see the Bishop only over the shoulders of the ecclesiastics
who crowded towards this door.

The Bishop crossed the room slowly; when he came to the threshold the
cures formed in processional order. After a momentary confusion the
procession began to move, intoning a psalm. The Bishop came last,
between M. Chelan and another cure of great age. Julien found a place
for himself quite close to His Lordship, as being attached to the abbe
Chelan. They moved down the long corridors of the abbey of
Bray-le-Haut; in spite of the brilliant sunshine, these were dark and
damp. At length they arrived at the door of the cloister. Julien was
speechless with admiration of so fine a ceremony.  His heart was
divided between the ambition aroused by the Bishop's youthfulness, and
the sensibility and exquisite manners of this prelate.  His courtesy
was of a very different kind from M. de Renal's, even on his good
days. 'The more one rises towards the highest rank of society,'
thought Julien, 'the more one finds these charming manners.'

They entered the church by a side door; suddenly an appalling crash
made its ancient vaults resound; Julien thought that the walls were
collapsing.  It was again the small cannon; drawn by eight horses at a
gallop, it had just arrived; and immediately on its arrival, brought
into action by the gunners of Leipsic, it was firing five rounds a
minute, as though the Prussians had been in front of it.

But this stirring sound no longer had any effect upon Julien, he
dreamed no more of Napoleon and martial glory. 'So young,' he was
thinking, 'to be Bishop of Agde! But where is Agde? And how much is
it worth? Two or three hundred thousand francs, perhaps.'

His Lordship's servants appeared, carrying a magnificent dais; M.
Chelan took one of the poles, but actually it was Julien that bore it.
The Bishop took his place beneath it. He had really succeeded in
giving himself the air of an old man; our hero's admiration knew no
bounds. 'What cannot one do if one is clever!' he thought.

The King made his entry. Julien was so fortunate as to see him at
close range. The Bishop addressed him with unction, and did not forget
to include a slight touch of confusion, extremely flattering to His
Majesty. We shall not repeat the account of the ceremonies at
Bray-le-Haut; for a fortnight they filled the columns of all the
newspapers of the Department. Julien learned, from the Bishop's
speech, that the King was descended from Charles the Bold.

Later on it was one of Julien's duties to check the accounts of what
this ceremony had cost. M. de La Mole, who had secured a bishopric for
his nephew, had chosen to pay him the compliment of bearing the whole
of the expense himself. The ceremony at Bray-le-Haut alone cost three
thousand eight hundred francs.

After the Bishop's address and the King's reply, His Majesty took his
place beneath the dais; he then knelt down most devoutly upon a
cushion close to the altar. The choir was enclosed with stalls, and
these stalls were raised two steps above the pavement. It was on the
second of these steps that Julien sat at the feet of M. Chelan, not
unlike a train-bearer at the feet of his Cardinal, in the Sistine
Chapel, in Rome. There were a Te Deum, clouds of incense, endless
volleys of musketry and artillery; the peasants were frantic with joy
and piety. Such a day undoes the work of a hundred numbers of the
Jacobin papers.

Julien was within six paces of the King, who was praying with genuine
fervour. He noticed for the first time a small man of intelligent
appearance, whose coat was almost bare of embroidery. But he wore a
sky-blue riband over this extremely simple coat. He was nearer to the
King than many other gentlemen, whose coats were so covered with gold
lace that, to use Julien's expression, one could not see the cloth. He
learned a minute later that this was M. de La Mole. He decided that he
wore a haughty, indeed an insolent air.

'This Marquis would not be polite like my dear Bishop,' he thought.
'Ah!  The career of a churchman makes one gentle and wise. But the
King has come to venerate the relic, and I see no relic. Where can
Saint Clement be?'

A little clerk, who was next to him, informed him that the venerable
relic was in the upper part of the building, in a _chapelle ardente_.

'What is a _chapelle ardente_?' Julien asked himself.

But he would not ask for an explanation of the words. He followed the
proceedings with even closer attention.

On the occasion of a visit from a sovereign prince, etiquette requires
that the canons shall not accompany the Bishop. But as he started for
the chapelle ardente His Lordship of Agde summoned the abbe Chelan;
Julien ventured to follow him.

After climbing a long stair, they came to a very small door, the frame
of which was sumptuously gilded. This work had a look of having just
been completed.

Outside the door were gathered on their knees four and twenty girls,
belonging to the most distinguished families of Verrieres. Before
opening the door, the Bishop sank on his knees in the midst of these
girls, who were all pretty. While he was praying aloud, it seemed as
though they could not sufficiently admire his fine lace, his charm,
his young and pleasant face. This spectacle made our hero lose all
that remained of his reason. At that moment, he would have fought for
the Inquisition, and in earnest.  Suddenly the door flew open. The
little chapel seemed to be ablaze with light. One saw upon the altar
more than a thousand candles arranged in eight rows, separated from
one another by clusters of flowers. The sweet odour of the purest
incense rose in clouds from the gate of the sanctuary.  The newly
gilded chapel was quite small, but very lofty. Julien noticed that
there were on the altar candles more than fifteen feet long. The girls
could not restrain a cry of admiration. No one had been admitted to
the tiny ante-chapel save the twenty-four girls, the two priests and
Julien.

Presently the King arrived, followed only by M. de La Mole and his
Great Chamberlain. The guards themselves remained outside, on their
knees, presenting their arms.

His Majesty flung himself rather than knelt down on the faldstool. It
was then only that Julien, pressed against the gilded door, caught
sight, beneath a girl's bare arm, of the charming statue of Saint
Clement. It was hidden beneath the altar, in the garb of a young Roman
soldier. He had in his throat a large wound from which the blood
seemed to be flowing. The artist had surpassed himself; the eyes,
dying but full of grace, were half closed. A budding moustache adorned
the charming mouth, which being slightly open had the effect of being
still engaged in prayer. At the sight of this statue, the girl nearest
to Julien wept hot tears; one of her tears fell upon Julien's hand.

After an interval of prayer in the most profound silence, disturbed
only by the distant sound of the bells of all the villages within a
radius of ten leagues, the Bishop of Agde asked the King's permission
to speak. He concluded a brief but highly edifying discourse with
these words, simple in themselves, but thereby all the better assured
of their effect.

'Never forget, young Christian women, that you have seen one of the
great Kings of the earth upon his knees before the servants of this
all-powerful and terrible God. These servants, frail, persecuted,
martyred upon earth, as you can see from the still bleeding wound of
Saint Clement, are triumphant in heaven. All your lives, I think,
young Christians, you will remember this day. You will detest impiety.
Always you will remain faithful to this God who is so great, so
terrible, but so good.'

At these words, the Bishop rose with authority.

'You promise me?' he said, extending his arm with an air of
inspiration.

'We promise,' said the girls, bursting into tears.

'I receive your promise, in the name of our terrible God!' the Bishop
concluded in a voice of thunder. And the ceremony was at an end.

The King himself was in tears. It was not until long afterwards that
Julien was calm enough to inquire where were the bones of the Saint,
sent from Rome to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. He was told that
they were embodied in the charming wax figure.

His Majesty deigned to permit the girls who had accompanied him into
the chapel to wear a red riband upon which were embroidered the words:
'HATRED OF IMPIETY, PERPETUAL ADORATION.'

M. de La Mole ordered ten thousand bottles of wine to be distributed
among the peasants. That evening, at Verrieres, the Liberals found an
excuse for illuminating their houses a hundred times more brilliantly
than the Royalists. Before leaving the town, the King paid a visit to
M. de Moirod.




CHAPTER 19
To Think Is To Be Full of Sorrow

  The grotesque character of everyday occurrences conceals from
  one the real misery of passions.
    BARNAVE

While he was replacing its ordinary furniture in the room that M. de
La Mole had occupied, Julien found a piece of stout paper, folded
twice across. He read at the foot of the first page:

To H. E., M. le Marquis de La Mole, Peer of France, Knight of the
Royal Orders, etc., etc.

It was a petition in the rude handwriting of a cook.

Monsieur le Marquis,

All my life I have held religious principles. I was in Lyons, exposed
to the bombs, at the time of the siege, in '93, of execrable memory.
I am a communicant, I go every Sunday to mass in my parish church. I
have never failed in my Easter duty, not even in '93, of execrable
memory. My cook, for before the revolution I kept servants, my cook
observes Friday. I enjoy in Verrieres a general and I venture to say
merited respect. I walk beneath the dais in processions, beside the
cure and the mayor. I carry, on solemn occasions, a big candle bought
at my own cost. The certificates of all of which are in Paris at the
Ministry of Finance. I ask Monsieur le Marquis for the Verrieres
lottery office, which cannot fail to be vacant soon in one way or
another, the present holder being seriously ill, and besides voting
the wrong way at the elections; etc.

DE CHOLIN

On the margin of this petition was an endorsement signed de Moirod,
which began with the words:

'I had the honour yesterday to mention the respectable person who
makes this request,' and so forth.

'And so even that imbecile Cholin shows me the way that I must
follow,' Julien said to himself.

A week after the visit of the King of ---- to Verrieres, the chief
thing to emerge from the innumerable falsehoods, foolish
interpretations, absurd discussions, etc., etc., to which the King,
the Bishop of Agde, the Marquis de La Mole, the ten thousand bottles
of wine, the unseated Moirod (who, in the hope of a Cross, did not set
foot outside his own door for a whole month after his fall) were in
turn subjected, was the utter indelicacy of having jockeyed into the
Guard of Honour, Julien Sorel, the son of a carpenter. You ought to
have heard, on this topic, the wealthy calico printers, who, morning,
noon and night, used to talk themselves hoarse in preaching equality.
That proud woman, Madame de Renal, was the author of this abomination.
Her reason? The flashing eyes and pink cheeks of that young abbe Sorel
were reason enough and to spare.

Shortly after their return to Vergy, Stanislas Xavier, the youngest of
the children, took fever; at once Madame de Renal was seized by the
most fearful remorse. For the first time she blamed herself for
falling in love in a coherent fashion. She seemed to understand, as
though by a miracle, the appalling sin into which she had let herself
be drawn. Although deeply religious by nature, until this moment she
had never thought of the magnitude of her crime in the eyes of God.

Long ago, at the convent of the Sacred Heart, she had loved God with a
passionate love; she feared Him in the same way in this predicament.
The struggles that rent her heart asunder were all the more terrible
in that there was nothing reasonable in her fear. Julien discovered
that any recourse to argument irritated instead of calming her; she
saw in it the language of hell. However, as Julien himself was greatly
attached to little Stanislas, he was more welcome to speak to her of
the child's illness: presently it assumed a grave character. Then her
incessant remorse deprived Madame de Renal even of the power to sleep;
she never emerged from a grim silence: had she opened her mouth, it
would have been to confess her crime to God and before men.

'I beg of you,' Julien said to her, as soon as they were alone, 'say
nothing to anyone; let me be the sole confidant of your griefs. If you
still love me, do not speak! your words cannot cure our Stanislas of
his fever.'

But his attempts at consolation produced no effect; he did not know
that Madame de Renal had taken it into her head that, to appease the
anger of a jealous God, she must either hate Julien or see her son
die. It was because she felt that she could not hate her lover that
she was so unhappy.

'Avoid my presence,' she said to Julien one day; 'in the name of God,
leave this house: it is your presence here that is killing my son.

'God is punishing me,' she added in a whisper; 'He is just; I adore
His equity; my crime is shocking, and I was living without remorse! It
was the first sign of departure from God: I ought to be doubly
punished.'

Julien was deeply touched. He was unable to see in this attitude
either hypocrisy or exaggeration. 'She believes that she is killing
her son by loving me, and yet the unhappy woman loves me more than her
son. That, how can I doubt it, is the remorse that is killing her;
there is true nobility of feeling. But how can I have inspired such
love, I, so poor, so ill-bred, so ignorant, often so rude in my
manners?'

One night the child's condition was critical. About two o'clock in the
morning, M. de Renal came to see him. The boy, burning with fever, was
extremely flushed and did not recognise his father. Suddenly Madame de
Renal threw herself at her husband's feet: Julien saw that she was
going to reveal everything and to ruin herself for ever.

Fortunately, this strange exhibition annoyed M. de Renal.

'Good night! Good night!' he said and prepared to leave the room.

'No, listen to me,' cried his wife on her knees before him, seeking to
hold him back. 'Learn the whole truth. It is I that am killing my son.
I gave him his life, and I am taking it from him. Heaven is punishing
me; in the eyes of God, I am guilty of murder. I must destroy and
humble myself; it may be that such a sacrifice will appease the Lord.'

If M. de Renal had been a man of imagination, he would have guessed
everything.

'Romantic stuff,' he exclaimed, thrusting away his wife who sought to
embrace his knees. 'Romantic stuff, all that! Julien, tell them to
fetch the doctor at daybreak.'

And he went back to bed. Madame de Renal sank on her knees, half
unconscious, with a convulsive movement thrusting away Julien, who was
coming to her assistance.

Julien stood watching her with amazement.

'So this is adultery!' he said to himself ... 'Can it be possible
that those rascally priests are right after all? That they, who commit
so many sins, have the privilege of knowing the true theory of sin?
How very odd!'

For twenty minutes since M. de Renal had left the room, Julien had
seen the woman he loved, her head sunk on the child's little bed,
motionless and almost unconscious. 'Here we have a woman of superior
intelligence reduced to the last extremes of misery, because she has
known me,' he said to himself.

The hours passed rapidly. 'What can I do for her? I must make up my
mind. I have ceased to count here. What do I care for men, and their
silly affectations? What can I do for her? ... Go from her? But I
shall be leaving her alone, torn by the most frightful grief. That
automaton of a husband does her more harm than good. He will say
something offensive to her, in his natural coarseness; she may go mad,
throw herself from the window.

'If I leave her, if I cease to watch over her, she will tell him
everything. And then, for all one knows, in spite of the fortune he is
to inherit through her, he will make a scandal. She may tell
everything, great God, to that--abbe Maslon, who makes the illness of
a child of six an excuse for never stirring out of this house, and not
without purpose. In her grief and her fear of God, she forgets all
that she knows of the man; she sees only the priest.'

'Leave me,' came suddenly from Madame de Renal as she opened her eyes.

'I would give my life a thousand times to know how I can be of most
use to you,' replied Julien; 'never have I so loved you, my dear
angel, or rather, from this instant only, I begin to adore you as you
deserve to be adored.  What is to become of me apart from you, and
with the knowledge that you are wretched by my fault! But I must not
speak of my own sufferings. I shall go, yes, my love. But, if I leave
you, if I cease to watch over you, to be constantly interposing myself
between you and your husband, you will tell him everything, you will
be ruined. Think of the ignominy with which he will drive you from the
house; all Verrieres, all Besancon will ring with the scandal. All the
blame will be cast on you; you will never be able to lift up your head
again.'

'That is all that I ask,' she cried, rising to her feet. 'I shall
suffer, all the better.'

'But, by this appalling scandal, you will be harming him as well!'

'But I humble myself, I throw myself down in the mud; and in that way
perhaps I save my son. This humiliation, in the sight of all, is
perhaps a public penance. So far as my frailty can judge, is it not
the greatest sacrifice that I can make to God? Perhaps he will deign
to accept my humiliation and to spare me my son! Show me a harder
sacrifice and I will hasten to perform it.'

'Let me punish myself. I too am guilty. Would you have me retire to La
Trappe? The austerity of the life there may appease your God ... Oh,
heaven! Why can I not take upon myself Stanislas's illness?'

'Ah! You love him,' said Madame de Renal, rising and flinging herself
into his arms.

Immediately she thrust him from her with horror.

'I believe you! I believe you!' she went on, having fallen once more
on her knees; 'O my only friend, why are not you Stanislas's father?
Then it would not be a horrible sin to love you more than your son.'

'Will you permit me to stay, and henceforward only to love you as a
brother? It is the only reasonable expiation; it may appease the wrath
of the Most High.'

'And I,' she exclaimed, rising, and taking Julien's head in her hands,
and holding it at arm's length before her eyes, 'and I, shall I love
you like a brother? Is it in my power to love you like a brother?'

Julien burst into tears.

'I will obey you,' he said as he fell at her feet. 'I will obey you,
whatever you may bid me do; it is the one thing left for me. My brain
is smitten with blindness; I can see no course to take. If I leave
you, you tell your husband all; you ruin yourself, and him at the same
time. After such a disgrace he will never be elected Deputy. If I
stay, you regard me as the cause of your son's death, and you yourself
die of grief. Would you like to test the effect of my going? If you
like, I will punish myself for our sin by leaving you for a week. I
shall pass the time in retreat wherever you choose. At the abbey of
Bray-le-Haut, for instance; but swear to me that during my absence you
will reveal nothing to your husband.  Remember that I can never return
if you speak.'

She promised; he departed, but was recalled after two days.

'It is impossible for me to keep my oath without you. I shall speak to
my husband, if you are not constantly there to order me with your eyes
to be silent. Each hour of this abominable life seems to me to last a
day.'

In the end, heaven took pity on this unhappy mother. Gradually
Stanislas passed out of danger. But the ice was broken, her reason had
learned the magnitude of her sin, she could no more recover her
equilibrium. Remorse still remained, and took the form that it was
bound to take in so sincere a heart. Her life was heaven and hell;
hell when she did not see Julien, heaven when she was at his feet.

'I am no longer under any illusion,' she told him, even at the moments
when she ventured to give absolute rein to her love: 'I am damned,
irremediably damned. You are young, you have yielded to my seduction,
heaven may pardon you; but as for me, I am damned. I know it by an
infallible sign. I am afraid: who would not be afraid at the sight of
hell? But at heart, I am not in the least repentant. I would commit my
sin again, were it to be committed. Let heaven only refrain from
punishing me in this world and in my children, and I shall have more
than I deserve. But you, at least, my Julien,' she cried at other
moments, 'are you happy? Do you feel that I love you enough?'

Julien's distrust and suffering pride, which needed above all a love
that made sacrifices, could not stand out against the sight of so
great, so indubitable a sacrifice, and one that was made afresh every
moment. He adored Madame de Renal. 'She may well be noble, and I the
son of a working man; she loves me ... I am not to her a footman
employed in the part of lover.' Once rid of this fear, Julien fell
into all the follies of love, into its mortal uncertainties.

'At least.' she cried when she saw that he doubted her love, 'let me
make you happy during the few days we still have to spend together!
Let us make haste; tomorrow perhaps I shall be no longer yours. If
heaven strikes me through my children, in vain shall I seek to live
only for love of you, not to see that it is my crime that is killing
them. I shall not be able to survive that blow. Even if I would, I
could not; I should go mad.'

'Ah! If I could take your sin upon my conscience, as you so generously
wished that you might take Stanislas's fever!'

This great moral crisis changed the nature of the sentiment that
united Julien to his mistress. His love was no longer merely
admiration of her beauty, pride in the possession of her.

Their joy was thenceforward of a far higher nature, the flame that
devoured them was more intense. They underwent transports of utter
madness. Their happiness would have seemed great in the eyes of other
people. But they never recaptured the delicious serenity, the
unclouded happiness, the spontaneous joy of the first days of their
love, when Madame de Renal's one fear was that of not being loved
enough by Julien. Their happiness assumed at times the aspect of
crime.

In what were their happiest, and apparently their calmest moments:
'Oh!  Great God! I see hell before me,' Madame de Renal would suddenly
exclaim, gripping Julien's hand with a convulsive movement. 'What
fearful torments!  I have well deserved them.' She clutched him,
clinging to him like the ivy to the wall.

Julien tried in vain to calm this agitated soul. She took his hand,
which she covered with kisses. Then, relapsing into a sombre
meditation; 'Hell,' she said, 'hell would be a blessing to me; I
should still have some days in this world to spend with him, but hell
here on earth, the death of my children ... Yet, at that price,
perhaps my crime would be forgiven me ...  Oh! Great God! Grant me not
my pardon at that price. These poor children have done nothing to
offend thee; 'tis I, I, the guilt is mine alone! I love a man who is
not my husband.'

Julien next saw Madame de Renal reach a state that was outwardly
tranquil.  She sought to take the burden upon herself, she wished not
to poison the existence of him whom she loved.

In the midst of these alternations of love, remorse and pleasure, the
days passed for them with lightning rapidity. Julien lost the habit of
reflection.

Miss Elisa went to conduct a little lawsuit which she had at
Verrieres. She found M. Valenod greatly annoyed with Julien. She hated
the tutor and often spoke about him to M. Valenod.

'You would ruin me, Sir, if I told you the truth!' she said to him one
day.  'Employers all hang together in important things. They never
forgive us poor servants for certain revelations ...'

After these conventional phrases, which the impatient curiosity of M.
Valenod found a way of cutting short, he learned the most mortifying
things in the world for his own self-esteem.

This woman, the most distinguished in the place, whom for six years he
had surrounded with every attention, and, unluckily, before the eyes
of all the world; this proudest of women, whose disdain had so often
made him blush, had taken as her lover a little journeyman dressed up
as a tutor. And that nothing might be wanting to the discomfiture of
the governor of the poorhouse, Madame de Renal adored this lover.

'And,' the maid added with a sigh, 'M. Julien went to no pains to make
this conquest, he has never departed from his habitual coldness with
Madame.'

It was only in the country that Elisa had become certain of her facts,
but she thought that this intrigue dated from far earlier.

'That, no doubt, is why,' she continued bitterly, 'he refused at the
time to marry me. And I, like a fool, going to consult Madame de
Renal, begging her to speak to the tutor!'

That same evening M. de Renal received from the town, with his
newspaper, a long anonymous letter which informed him in the fullest
detail of all that was going on under his roof. Julien saw him turn
pale as he read this letter, which was written on blue paper, and cast
angry glances at himself.  For the rest of the evening the Mayor never
recovered his peace of mind; it was in vain that Julien tried to
flatter him by asking him to explain obscure points in the pedigrees
of the best families of Burgundy.




CHAPTER 20
The Anonymous Letters

    Do not give dalliance
  Too much the rein; the strongest oaths are straw
  To the fire i'the blood.
    _The Tempest_

As they left the drawing-room about midnight, Julien found time to say
to his mistress: 'Do not let us meet tonight, your husband has
suspicions; I would swear that that long letter he was reading with
such displeasure is an anonymous one.'

Fortunately, Julien locked himself into his room. Madame de Renal
conceived the mad idea that this warning was simply a pretext for not
coming to see her. She lost her head absolutely, and at the usual hour
came to his door.  Julien, hearing a sound in the corridor, instantly
blew out his lamp.  Someone was attempting to open his door; was it
Madame de Renal, was it a jealous husband?

Early the next morning, the cook, who took an interest in Julien,
brought him a book on the cover of which he read these words written
in Italian: _Guardate alia pagina 130_.

Julien shuddered at the imprudence, turned to page one hundred and
thirty and found fastened to it with a pin the following letter
written in haste, bedewed with tears, and without the least attempt at
spelling. Ordinarily Madame de Renal spelt quite well; he was moved by
this detail and began to forget the frightful imprudence.

'So you would not let me in tonight? There are moments when I feel
that I have never seen into the depths of your heart. Your look
frightens me. I am afraid of you. Great God! Can it be, you have never
loved me? In that case, my husband can discover our love, and shut me
up in lifelong imprisonment, in the country, apart from my children.
Perhaps God wills it so. I shall soon die; but you will be a monster.

'Do you not love me? Are you tired of my follies, of my remorse,
impious one? Do you wish to ruin me? I give you an easy method. Go,
show this letter to all Verrieres, or rather show it to M. Valenod
alone. Tell him that I love you; but no, utter no such blasphemy; tell
him that I adore you, that life only began for me on the day when I
first saw you; that in the wildest moments of my girlhood, I had never
even dreamed of the happiness that I owe to you; that I have
sacrificed my life to you, that I am sacrificing my soul to you. You
know that I am sacrificing far more.

'But what does he know of sacrifices, that man? Tell him, tell him, to
make him angry, that I defy all evil-speakers, and that there is but
one misfortune in the world for me, that of beholding a change in the
one man who holds me to life. What a blessing for me to lose it, to
offer it in sacrifice, and to fear no longer for my children!

'Doubt not, dear friend, if there be an anonymous letter, it comes
from that odious being who, for the last six years, has pursued me
with his loud voice, with a list of the jumps his horse has taken,
with his fatuity and with the endless enumeration of all his
advantages.

'Is there an anonymous letter? Wicked one, that is what I wished to
discuss with you; but no, you were right. Clasping you in my arms, for
the last time perhaps, I could never have discussed the matter calmly,
as I do when I am alone. From this moment our happiness will not be so
easily secured. Will that be an annoyance to you? Yes, on the days
when you have not received some amusing book from M. Fouque. The
sacrifice is made; tomorrow, whether there be an anonymous letter or
not, I shall tell my husband that I have received an anonymous letter,
that he must instantly offer you a large sum to accept another post,
find some decent pretext, and send you back without delay to your
family.

'Alas, dear friend, we are going to be parted for a fortnight, perhaps
a month! But there, I do you justice, you will suffer as much as I.
Still, this is the only way to counteract the effect of this anonymous
letter; it is not the first that my husband has received, and on my
account too. Alas!  How I have laughed at them!

'The whole purpose of my scheme is to make my husband think that the
letter comes from M. Valenod; I have no doubt that he is its author.
If you leave the house, do not fail to go and establish yourself at
Verrieres. I shall contrive that my husband conceives the idea of
spending a fortnight there, to prove to the fools that there is no
coolness between him and myself.  Once you are at Verrieres, make
friends with everyone, even the Liberals. I know that all the ladies
will run after you.

'Do not go and quarrel with M. Valenod, nor crop his ears, as you once
threatened; on the contrary, show him every politeness. The essential
thing is that it should be known throughout Verrieres that you are
going to Valenod's, or to some other house, for the children's
education.

'That is what my husband will never stand. Should he resign himself to
it, well, at least you will be living in Verrieres, and I shall see
you sometimes. My children, who are so fond of you, will go to see
you. Great God! I feel that I love my children more, because they love
you. What remorse! How is all this going to end? I am wandering ...
Well, you understand what you must do; be gentle, polite, never
contemptuous with these vulgar personages, I implore you on my knees:
they are to be the arbiters of our destiny. Doubt not for a moment
that my husband in dealing with you will conform to whatever _public
opinion_ may prescribe.

'It is you that are going to provide me with this anonymous
letter; arm yourself with patience and a pair of scissors. Cut out of
a book the words you will see below; paste them together, with
water-glue, on the sheet of blue paper that I send you; it came to me
from M. Valenod. Be prepared for a search of your room; burn the pages
of the book you mutilate. If you do not find the words ready made,
have the patience to compose them letter by letter. To spare you
trouble, I have cut the anonymous letter short. Alas! If you no longer
love me, as I fear, how long mine must seem to you!

ANONYMOUS LETTER

"MADAME,

All your little goings on are known; but the persons to whose interest
it is to check them have been warned. From a lingering affection for
yourself, I beg you to detach yourself entirely from the little
peasant. If you have the wisdom to do this, your husband will believe
that the warning he has received was misleading, and he will be left
in his error. Bear in mind that I know your secret; tremble, unhappy
woman; henceforward you must tread a straight path, driven by me."

'As soon as you have finished pasting together the words that make up
this letter (do you recognise the Governor's style in it?) come out of
your room, I shall meet you about the house.

'I shall go to the village, and return with a troubled countenance; I
shall indeed be greatly troubled. Great God! What a risk I am running,
and all because you _thought you detected_ an anonymous letter. Finally,
with a woebegone face, I shall give my husband this letter, which will
have been handed to me by a stranger. As for you, go for a walk in the
direction of the woods with the children, and do not return until
dinner time.

'From the rocks above, you can see the tower of the dovecote. If all
goes well, I shall place a white handkerchief there; if not, you will
see nothing.

'Ungrateful wretch, will not your heart find out some way of telling
me that you love me, before starting on this walk? Whatever may befall
me, be certain of one thing: I should not survive for a day a final
parting. Ah!  bad mother! These are two idle words that I have
written, dear Julien. I do not feel them; I can think only of you at
this moment, I have written them only so as not to be blamed by you.
Now that I find myself brought to the point of losing you, what use is
there in pretence? Yes, let my heart seem black as night to you, but
let me not lie to the man whom I adore! I have been all too deceitful
already in my life. Go to, I forgive you if you love me no longer. I
have not time to read my letter through. It is a small thing in my
eyes to pay with my life for the happy days which I have spent in your
arms. You know that they will cost me more than life.'




CHAPTER 21
Conversation with a Lord and Master

  Alas! our frailty is the cause, not we! For such as we are made of,
  such we be.
    _Twelfth Night_

It was with a childish pleasure that Julien spent an hour in pasting
words together. As he left his room he came upon his pupils and their
mother; she took the letter with a simplicity and courage, the
calmness of which terrified him.

'Is the gum quite dry?' she asked him.

'Can this be the woman who was being driven mad by remorse?' he
thought.  'What are her plans at this moment?' He was too proud to ask
her; but never, perhaps, had she appealed to him more strongly.

'If things go amiss,' she went on with the same coolness, 'I shall be
stripped of everything. Bury this store somewhere in the mountains; it
may some day be my last resource.'

She handed him a glass-topped case, in red morocco, filled with gold
and a few diamonds.

'Go now,' she said to him.

She embraced her children, the youngest of them twice over. Julien
stood spellbound. She left him at a rapid pace and without looking at
him again.

>From the moment of his opening the anonymous letter, M. de Renal's life
had been a burden to him. He had not been so agitated since a duel
that he had nearly had to fight in 1816, and, to do him justice, the
prospect of receiving a bullet in his person would now have distressed
him less. He examined the letter from every angle. 'Is not this a
woman's hand?' he asked himself.  'In that case, what woman can have
written it?' He considered in turn all the women he knew at Verrieres,
without finding a definite object for his suspicions. Could a man have
dictated the letter? If so, what man? Here again, a similar
uncertainty; he had earned the jealousy and no doubt the hatred of the
majority of the men he knew. 'I must consult my wife,' he said to
himself, from force of habit, as he rose from the armchair in which he
had collapsed.

No sooner had he risen than 'Good God!' he exclaimed, clapping his
hand to his head, 'she is the one person whom I cannot trust; from
this moment she is my enemy.' And tears of anger welled into his eyes.

It was a fitting reward for that barrenness of heart in which
practical wisdom in the provinces is rooted, that the two men whom, at
that moment, M. de Renal most dreaded were his two most intimate
friends.

'Apart from them, I have ten friends perhaps,' and he turned them over
in his mind, calculating the exact amount of comfort that he would be
able to derive from each. 'To all of them, to all of them,' he cried in
his rage, 'my appalling misfortune will give the most intense
pleasure.' Happily for him, he supposed himself to be greatly envied,
and not without reason.  Apart from his superb house in town on which
the King of ---- had just conferred everlasting honour by sleeping
beneath its roof, he had made an admirable piece of work of his
country house at Vergy. The front was painted white, and the windows
adorned with handsome green shutters. He was comforted for a moment by
the thought of this magnificence. The fact of the matter was that this
mansion was visible from a distance of three or four leagues, to the
great detriment of all the country houses or so-called _chateaux_ of
the neighbourhood, which had been allowed to retain the humble grey
tones imparted to them by time.

M. de Renal could reckon upon the tears and pity of one of his
friends, the churchwarden of the parish; but he was an imbecile who
shed tears at everything. This man was nevertheless his sole resource.

'What misfortune is comparable to mine?' he exclaimed angrily. 'What
isolation!

'Is it possible,' this truly pitiable man asked himself, 'is it
possible that, in my distress, I have not a single friend of whom
to ask advice? For my mind is becoming unhinged, I can feel it! Ah,
Falcoz!  Ah, Ducros!' he cried bitterly. These were the names of two
of his boyhood's friends whom he had alienated by his arrogance in
1814. They were not noble, and he had tried to alter the terms of
equality on which they had been living all their lives.

One of them, Falcoz, a man of spirit and heart, a paper merchant at
Verrieres, had purchased a printing press in the chief town of the
Department and had started a newspaper. The _Congregation_ had
determined to ruin him: his paper had been condemned, his printer's
licence had been taken from him. In these unfortunate circumstances he
ventured to write to M. de Renal for the first time in ten years. The
Mayor of Verrieres felt it incumbent on him to reply in the Ancient
Roman style: 'If the King's Minister did me the honour to consult me,
I should say to him: "Ruin without compunction all provincial
printers, and make printing a monopoly like the sale of tobacco."'
This letter to an intimate friend which had set the whole of Verrieres
marvelling at the time, M. de Renal now recalled, word for word, with
horror. 'Who would have said that with my rank, my fortune, my
Crosses, I should one day regret it?' It was in such transports of
anger, now against himself, now against all around him, that he passed
a night of anguish; but, fortunately, it did not occur to him to spy
upon his wife.

'I am used to Louise,' he said to himself, 'she knows all my affairs;
were I free to marry again tomorrow I could find no one fit to take
her place.' Next, he sought relief in the idea that his wife was
innocent; this point of view made it unnecessary for him to show his
strength of character, and was far more convenient; how many slandered
wives have we not all seen!

'But what!' he suddenly exclaimed, pacing the floor with a convulsive
step, 'am I to allow her, as though I were a man of straw, a mere
ragamuffin, to make a mock of me with her lover? Is the whole of
Verrieres to be allowed to sneer at my complacency? What have they not
said about Charmier?' (a notorious local cuckold). 'When he is
mentioned, is there not a smile on every face? He is a good pleader,
who is there that ever mentions his talent for public speaking? "Ah!
Charmier!" is what they say; "Bernard's Charmier." They actually give
him the name of the man that has disgraced him.

'Thank heaven,' said M. de Renal at other moments, 'I have no
daughter, and the manner in which I am going to punish their mother
will not damage the careers of my children; I can surprise that young
peasant with my wife, and kill the pair of them; in that event, the
tragic outcome of my misfortune may perhaps make it less absurd.' This
idea appealed to him: he worked it out in the fullest detail. 'The
Penal Code is on my side, and, whatever happens, our _Congregation_
and my friends on the jury will save me.' He examined his hunting
knife, which had a keen blade; but the thought of bloodshed frightened
him.

'I might thrash this insolent tutor black and blue and turn him from
the house; but what a stir in Verrieres and, indeed, throughout the
Department!  After the suppression of Falcoz's paper, when his editor
came out of prison, I was instrumental in making him lose a place
worth six hundred francs. They say that the scribbler has dared to
show his face again in Besancon, he may easily attack me, and so
cunningly that it will be impossible to bring him to justice! That
insolent fellow will insinuate in a thousand ways that he has been
speaking the truth. A man of family, who respects his rank as I do, is
always hated by plebeians. I shall see myself in those frightful Paris
papers; my God! what degradation! To see the ancient name of Renal
plunged in the mire of ridicule ... If I ever travel, I shall have to
change my name; what! give up this name which is my pride and my
strength. What a crowning infamy!

'If I do not kill my wife, if I drive her from the house with
ignominy, she has her aunt at Besancon, who will hand over the whole
of her fortune to her on the quiet. My wife will go and live in Paris
with Julien; Verrieres will hear of it, and I shall again be regarded
as a dupe.' This unhappy man then perceived, from the failing light of
his lamp, that day was beginning to break. He went to seek a breath of
air in the garden. At that moment, he had almost made up his mind to
create no scene, chiefly because a scene of that sort would fill his
good friends at Verrieres with joy.

His stroll in the garden calmed him somewhat. 'No,' he cried, 'I shall
certainly not part with my wife, she is too useful to me.' He pictured
to himself with horror what his house would be like without his wife;
his sole female relative was the Marquise de R---- who was old,
idiotic and evil-minded.

An idea of the greatest good sense occurred to him, but to put it into
practice required a strength of character far exceeding the little
that the poor man possessed. 'If I keep my wife,' he said to himself;
'I know my own nature; one day, when she taxes my patience, I shall
reproach her with her offence. She is proud, we are bound to quarrel,
and all this will happen before she has inherited her aunt's estate.
And then, how they will all laugh at me! My wife loves her children,
it will all come to them in the end. But I, I shall be the talk of
Verrieres. What, they will say, he couldn't even punish his wife!
Would it not be better to stick to my suspicions and to verify
nothing? Then I tie my own hands, I cannot afterwards reproach her
with anything.'

A moment later M. de Renal, his wounded vanity once more gaining the
mastery, was laboriously recalling all the stories told in the
billiard-room of the Casino or Noble Club of Verrieres, when some
fluent talker interrupted the pool to make merry at the expense of
some cuckolded husband. How cruel, at that moment, those pleasantries
seemed.

'God! Why is not my wife dead! Then I should be immune from ridicule.
Why am I not a widower! I should go and spend six months in Paris in
the best society.' After this momentary happiness caused by the idea
of widowhood, his imagination returned to the methods of ascertaining
the truth. Should he at midnight, after the whole household had gone
to bed, sprinkle a few handfuls of bran outside the door of Julien's
room? Next morning, at daybreak, he would see the footprints on it.

'But that would be no good,' he broke out angrily, 'that wretched
Elisa would notice it, and it would be all over the house at once that
I am jealous.'

In another story that circulated at the Casino, a husband had made
certain of his plight by fastening a hair with a little wax so as to
seal up the doors of his wife's room and her lover's.

After so many hours of vacillation, this method of obtaining
enlightenment seemed to him decidedly the best, and he was thinking of
adopting it, when at a bend in the path he came upon that wife whom he
would have liked to see dead.

She was returning from the village. She had gone to hear mass in the
church of Vergy. A tradition of extremely doubtful value in the eyes
of the cold philosopher, but one in which she believed, made out that
the little church now in use had been the chapel of the castle of the
Lord of Vergy. This thought obsessed Madame de Renal throughout the
time which she had meant to pass in prayer in this church. She kept on
picturing to herself her husband killing Julien during the chase, as
though by accident, and afterwards, that evening, making her eat his
heart.

'My fate,' she said to herself, 'depends on what he will think when he
hears me. After these terrible moments, perhaps I shall not find
another opportunity to speak to him. He is not a wise creature, swayed
by reason. I might, if he were, with the aid of my own feeble wits,
forecast what he would do or say.  But my fate lies in my cunning, in
the art of directing the thoughts of this whimsical creature, who
becomes blind with anger and incapable of seeing things.  Great God! I
require talent, coolness, where am I to find them?'

She recovered her calm as though by magic on entering the garden and
seeing her husband in the distance. The disorder of his hair and
clothes showed that he had not slept. She handed him a letter which,
though the seal was broken, was still folded. He, without opening it,
gazed at his wife with madness in his eyes.

'Here is an abomination,' she said to him, 'which an evil-looking man
who claims to know you and that you owe him a debt of gratitude,
handed to me as I came past the back of the lawyer's garden. One thing
I must ask of you, and that is that you send back to his own people,
and without delay, that Monsieur Julien.' Madame de Renal made haste
to utter this name, even beginning a little too soon perhaps, in order
to rid herself of the fearful prospect of having to utter it.

She was filled with joy on beholding the joy that it gave her husband.
>From the fixed stare which he directed at her she realised that Julien
had guessed aright. Instead of worrying about a very present trouble,
'what intelligence,' she thought to herself. 'What perfect tact! And
in a young man still quite devoid of experience! To what heights will
he not rise in time? Alas! Then his success will make him forget me.'

This little act of admiration of the man she adored completely
restored her composure.

She congratulated herself on the step she had taken. 'I have proved
myself not unworthy of Julien,' she said to herself, with a sweet and
secret relish.

Without saying a word, for fear of committing himself, M. de Renal
examined this second anonymous letter composed, as the reader may
remember, of printed words gummed upon a sheet of paper of a bluish
tinge. 'They are making a fool of me in every way,' M. de Renal said
to himself, utterly worn out.

'Fresh insults to be looked into, and all owing to my wife!' He was on
the point of deluging her with a stream of the coarsest invective; the
thought of the fortune awaiting her at Besancon just stopped him.
Overpowered by the necessity of venting his anger on something, he
tore up the sheet on which this second anonymous letter was gummed,
and strode rapidly away, feeling that he could not endure his wife's
company. A minute later, he returned to her, already more calm.

'We must take action at once and dismiss Julien,' she immediately
began; 'after all he is only the son of a working man. You can
compensate him with a few crowns, besides, he is clever and can easily
find another place, with M. Valenod, for instance, or the Sub-Prefect
Maugiron; they both have families. And so you will not be doing him
any harm ...'

'You speak like the fool that you are,' cried M. de Renal in a voice
of thunder. 'How can one expect common sense of a woman? You never pay
attention to what is reasonable; how should you have any knowledge?
Your carelessness, your laziness leave you just enough activity to
chase butterflies, feeble creatures which we are so unfortunate as to
have in our households ...'

Madame de Renal let him speak, and he spoke at length; he passed his
anger, as they say in those parts.

'Sir,' she answered him finally, 'I speak as a woman whose honour,
that is to say her most priceless possession, has been outraged.'

Madame de Renal preserved an unalterable calm throughout the whole of
this trying conversation, upon which depended the possibility of her
continuing to live beneath the same roof as Julien. She sought out the
ideas that seemed to her best fitted to guide her husband's blind
anger. She had remained unmoved by all the insulting remarks that he
had addressed to her, she did not hear them, she was thinking all the
time of Julien. 'Will he be pleased with me?'

'This little peasant upon whom we have lavished every attention,
including presents, may be innocent,' she said at length, 'but he is
none the less the occasion of the first insult I have ever received ...
Sir, when I read that abominable document, I vowed that either he
or I should leave your roof.'

'Do you wish to create a scandal that will dishonour me and yourself
as well? You'll be giving a fine treat to many people in Verrieres.'

'That is true; they are all jealous of the state of prosperity to
which your wise management has brought you, your family and the town ...
Very well, I shall go and bid Julien ask you for leave to spend a
month with that timber merchant in the mountain, a fit companion for
that little workman.'

'Take care what you do,' put in M. de Renal, calmly enough. 'The one
thing I must insist on is that you do not speak to him. You would show
temper and make him cross with me; you know how touchy the little
gentleman is.'

'That young man has no tact,' went on Madame de Renal; 'he may be
learned, you know about that, but at bottom he is nothing but a
peasant. For my own part, I have never had any opinion of him since he
refused to marry Elisa, it was a fortune ready made; and all because
now and again she pays a secret visit to M. Valenod.'

'Ah!' said M. de Renal, raising his eyebrows as far as they would go,
'what, did Julien tell you that?'

'No, not exactly; he has always spoken to me of the vocation that is
calling him to the sacred ministry; but believe me, the first vocation
for the lower orders is to find their daily bread. He made it fairly
clear to me that he was not unaware of these secret visits.'

'And I, I, knew nothing about them!' cried M. de Renal, all his fury
returning, emphasising every word. 'There are things going on in my
house of which I know nothing ... What! There has been something
between Elisa and Valenod?'

'Oh, that's an old story, my dear friend,' Madame de Renal said
laughing, 'and I daresay no harm was done. It was in the days when
your good friend Valenod would not have been sorry to have it thought
in Verrieres that there was a little love--of a purely platonic
sort--exchanged between him and me.'

'I had that idea at one time,' cried M. de Renal striking his head in
his fury as he advanced from one discovery to another, 'and you never
said a word to me about it?'

'Was I to make trouble between two friends all for a little outburst
of vanity on the part of our dear Governor? What woman is there in
society to whom he has not addressed one or more letters, extremely
witty and even a trifle gallant?'

'Has he written to you?'

'He writes frequently.'

'Show me his letters this instant, I order you'; and M. de Renal added
six feet to his stature.

'I shall do nothing of the sort,' the answer came in a tone so gentle
as to be almost indifferent, 'I shall let you see them some other day,
when you are more yourself.'

'This very instant, damn it!' cried M. de Renal, blind with rage, and
yet happier than he had been at any time in the last twelve hours.

'Will you swear to me,' said Madame de Renal solemnly, 'never to
quarrel with the Governor of the Poorhouse over these letters?'

'Quarrel or no quarrel, I can take the foundlings away from him; but,'
he continued, furiously, 'I want those letters this instant; where are
they?'

'In a drawer in my desk; but you may be certain, I shall not give you
the key of it.'

'I shall be able to force it,' he cried as he made off in the
direction of his wife's room.

He did indeed break open with an iron bar a valuable mahogany writing
desk, imported from Paris, which he used often to polish with the tail
of his coat when he thought he detected a spot on its surface.

Madame de Renal meanwhile had run up the hundred and twenty steps of
the dovecote; she knotted the corner of a white handkerchief to one of
the iron bars of the little window. She was the happiest of women.
With tears in her eyes she gazed out at the wooded slopes of the
mountain. 'Doubtless,' she said to herself, 'beneath one of those
spreading beeches, Julien is watching for this glad signal.' For long
she strained her ears, then cursed the monotonous drone of the
grasshoppers and the twitter of the birds. But for those tiresome
sounds, a cry of joy, issuing from among the rocks, might have reached
her in her tower. Her ravening gaze devoured that immense slope of
dusky verdure, unbroken as the surface of a meadow, that was formed by
the treetops. 'How is it he has not the sense,' she asked herself with
deep emotion, 'to think of some signal to tell me that his happiness
is no less than mine?' She came down from the dovecote only when she
began to be afraid that her husband might come up in search of her.

She found him foaming with rage. He was running through M. Valenod's
anodyne sentences, that were little used to being read with such
emotion.

Seizing a moment in which a lull in her husband's exclamations gave
her a chance to make herself heard:

'I cannot get away from my original idea,' said Madame de Renal,
'Julien ought to go for a holiday. Whatever talent he may have for
Latin, he is nothing more, after all, than a peasant who is often
coarse and wanting in tact; every day, thinking he is being polite, he
plies me with extravagant compliments in the worst of taste, which he
learns by heart from some novel ...'

'He never reads any,' cried M. de Renal; 'I am positive as to that. Do
you suppose that I am a blind master who knows nothing of what goes on
under his roof?'

'Very well, if he doesn't read those absurd compliments anywhere, he
invents them, which is even worse. He will have spoken of me in that
tone in Verrieres; and, without going so far,' said Madame de Renal,
with the air of one making a discovery, 'he will have spoken like that
before Elisa, which is just as though he had spoken to M. Valenod.'

'Ah!' cried M. de Renal, making the table and the whole room shake
with one of the stoutest blows that human fist ever gave, 'the
anonymous letter in print and Valenod's letters were all on the same
paper.'

'At last!' thought Madame de Renal; she appeared thunderstruck by this
discovery, and without having the courage to add a single word went
and sat down on the divan, at the farther end of the room.

The battle was now won; she had her work cut out to prevent M. de
Renal from going and talking to the supposed author of the anonymous
letter.

'How is it you do not feel that to make a scene, without sufficient
proof, with M. Valenod would be the most deplorable error? If you are
envied, Sir, who is to blame? Your own talents: your wise
administration, the buildings you have erected with such good taste,
the dowry I brought you, and above all the considerable fortune we may
expect to inherit from my worthy aunt, a fortune the extent of which
is vastly exaggerated, have made you the principal person in
Verrieres.'

'You forget my birth,' said M. de Renal, with a faint smile.

'You are one of the most distinguished gentlemen in the province,'
Madame de Renal hastily added; 'if the King were free and could do
justice to birth, you would doubtless be figuring in the House of
Peers,' and so forth. 'And in this magnificent position do you seek to
provide jealousy with food for comment?

'To speak to M. Valenod of his anonymous letter is to proclaim
throughout Verrieres, or rather in Besancon, throughout the Province,
that this petty cit, admitted perhaps imprudently to the friendship of
a Renal, has found out a way to insult him. Did these letters which
you have just discovered prove that I had responded to M. Valenod's
overtures, then it would be for you to kill me, I should have deserved
it a hundred times, but not to show anger with him. Think that all
your neighbours only await a pretext to be avenged for your
superiority; think that in 1816 you were instrumental in securing
certain arrests. That man who took refuge on your roof ...'

'What I think is that you have neither respect nor affection for me,'
shouted M. de Renal with all the bitterness that such a memory
aroused, 'and I have not been made a Peer!'

'I think, my friend,' put in Madame de Renal with a smile, 'that I
shall one day be richer than you, that I have been your companion for
twelve years, and that on all these counts I ought to have a voice in
your councils, especially in this business today. If you prefer
Monsieur Julien to me,' she added with ill-concealed scorn, 'I am
prepared to go and spend the winter with my aunt.'

This threat was uttered _with gladness_. It contained the firmness
which seeks to cloak itself in courtesy; it determined M. de Renal.
But, obeying the provincial custom, he continued to speak for a long
time, harked back to every argument in turn; his wife allowed him to
speak, there was still anger in his tone. At length, two hours of
futile discourse wore out the strength of a man who had been helpless
with rage all night. He determined upon the line of conduct which he
was going to adopt towards M. Valenod, Julien, and even Elisa.

Once or twice, during this great scene, Madame de Renal came within an
ace of feeling a certain sympathy for the very real distress of this
man who for ten years had been her friend. But our true passions are
selfish.  Moreover she was expecting every moment an avowal of the
anonymous letter which he had received overnight, and this avowal
never came. To gain complete confidence, Madame de Renal required to
know what ideas might have been suggested to the man upon whom her
fate depended. For, in the country, husbands control public opinion. A
husband who denounces his wife covers himself with ridicule, a thing
that every day is becoming less dangerous in France; but his wife, if
he does not supply her with money, declines to the position of a
working woman at fifteen sous daily, and even then the virtuous souls
have scruples about employing her.

An odalisque in the seraglio may love the Sultan with all her heart;
he is all powerful, she has no hope of evading his authority by a
succession of clever little tricks. The master's vengeance is
terrible, bloody, but martial and noble: a dagger blow ends
everything. It is with blows dealt by public contempt that a husband
kills his wife in the nineteenth century; it is by shutting the doors
of all the drawing-rooms in her face.

The sense of danger was keenly aroused in Madame de Renal on her
return to her own room; she was horrified by the disorder in which she
found it. The locks of all her pretty little boxes had been broken;
several planks in the floor had been torn up. 'He would have been
without pity for me!' she told herself. 'To spoil so this floor of
coloured parquet, of which he is so proud; when one of his children
comes in with muddy shoes, he flushes with rage. And now it is ruined
for ever!' The sight of this violence rapidly silenced the last
reproaches with which she had been blaming herself for her too rapid
victory.

Shortly before the dinner bell sounded, Julien returned with the
children.  At dessert, when the servants had left the room, Madame de
Renal said to him very drily:

'You expressed the desire to me to go and spend a fortnight at
Verrieres; M. de Renal is kind enough to grant you leave. You can go
as soon as you please. But, so that the children shall not waste any
time, their lessons will be sent to you every day, for you to
correct.'

'Certainly,' M. de Renal added in a most bitter tone, 'I shall not
allow you more than a week.'

Julien read in his features the uneasiness of a man in cruel torment.

'He has not yet come to a decision,' he said to his mistress, during a
moment of solitude in the drawing-room.

Madame de Renal informed him rapidly of all that she had done since
the morning.

'The details tonight,' she added laughing.

'The perversity of woman!' thought Julien. 'What pleasure, what
instinct leads them to betray us?

'I find you at once enlightened and blinded by your love,' he said to
her with a certain coldness; 'your behaviour today has been admirable;
but is there any prudence in our attempting to see each other tonight?
This house is paved with enemies; think of the passionate hatred that
Elisa has for me.'

'That hatred greatly resembles the passionate indifference that you
must have for me.'

'Indifferent or not, I am bound to save you from a peril into which I
have plunged you. If chance decrees that M. de Renal speaks to Elisa,
by a single word she may disclose everything to him. What is to
prevent him from hiding outside my room, well armed ...'

'What! Lacking in courage even!' said Madame de Renal, with all the
pride of a woman of noble birth.

'I shall never sink so low as to speak of my courage,' said Julien
coldly, 'that is mean. Let the world judge by my actions. But,' he
went on, taking her hand, 'you cannot conceive how attached I am to
you, and what a joy it is to me to be able to take leave of you before
this cruel parting.'




CHAPTER 22.
Manners and Customs in 1830

  Speech was given to man to enable him to conceal his thoughts.
    MALAGRIDA, S.J.

The first thing that Julien did on arriving in Verrieres was to
reproach himself for his unfairness to Madame de Renal. 'I should have
despised her as a foolish woman if from weakness she had failed to
bring off the scene with M. de Renal! She carried it through like a
diplomat, and my sympathies are with the loser, who is my enemy. There
is a streak of middle-class pettiness in my nature; my vanity is hurt,
because M. de Renal is a man!  That vast and illustrous corporation to
which I have the honour to belong; I am a perfect fool.'

M. Chelan had refused the offers of hospitality which the most
respected Liberals of the place had vied with one another in making
him, when his deprivation drove him from the presbytery. The pair of
rooms which he had taken were littered with his books. Julien, wishing
to show Verrieres what it meant to be a priest, went and fetched from
his father's store a dozen planks of firwood, which he carried on his
back the whole length of the main street. He borrowed some tools from
an old friend and had soon constructed a sort of bookcase in which he
arranged M. Chelan's library.

'I supposed you to have been corrupted by the vanity of the world,'
said the old man, shedding tears of joy; 'this quite redeems the
childishness of that dazzling guard of honour uniform which made you
so many enemies.'

M. de Renal had told Julien to put up in his house. No one had any
suspicion of what had happened. On the third day after his arrival,
there came up to his room no less a personage than the Sub-Prefect, M.
de Maugiron. It was only after two solid hours of insipid
tittle-tattle, and long jeremiads on the wickedness of men, on the
lack of honesty in the people entrusted with the administration of
public funds, on the dangers besetting poor France, etc., etc., that
Julien saw him come at length to the purpose of his visit. They were
already on the landing, and the poor tutor, on the verge of disgrace,
was ushering out with all due respect the future Prefect of some
fortunate Department, when it pleased the latter gentleman to occupy
himself with Julien's career, to praise his moderation where his own
interests were concerned, etc., etc. Finally M. de Maugiron, taking
him in his arms in the most fatherly manner, suggested to him that he
should leave M. de Renal and enter the household of an official who
had children to educate, and who, like King Philip, would thank
heaven, not so much for having given him them as for having caused
them to be born in the neighbourhood of M. Julien. Their tutor would
receive a salary of eight hundred francs, payable not month by month,
'which is not noble,' said M. de Maugiron, but quarterly, and in
advance to boot.

It was now the turn of Julien who, for an hour and a half, had been
waiting impatiently for an opportunity to speak. His reply was
perfect, and as long as a pastoral charge; it let everything be
understood, and at the same time said nothing definite. A listener
would have found in it at once respect for M. de Renal, veneration for
the people of Verrieres and gratitude towards the illustrious
Sub-Prefect. The said Sub-Prefect, astonished at finding a bigger
Jesuit than himself, tried in vain to obtain something positive.
Julien, overjoyed, seized the opportunity to try his skill and began
his answer over again in different terms. Never did the most eloquent
Minister, seeking to monopolise the last hours of a sitting when the
Chamber seems inclined to wake up, say less in more words. As soon as
M. de Maugiron had left him, Julien broke out in helpless laughter. To
make the most of his Jesuitical bent, he wrote a letter of nine pages
to M. de Renal, in which he informed him of everything that had been
said to him, and humbly asked his advice. 'Why, that rascal never even
told me the name of the person who is making the offer! It will be M.
Valenod, who sees in my banishment to Verrieres the effect of his
anonymous letter.'

His missive dispatched, Julien, as happy as a hunter who at six in the
morning on a fine autumn day emerges upon a plain teeming with game,
went out to seek the advice of M. Chelan. But before he arrived at the
good cure's house, heaven, which was anxious to shower its blessings
on him, threw him into the arms of M. Valenod, from whom he did not
conceal the fact that his heart was torn; a penniless youth like
himself was bound to devote himself entirely to the vocation which
heaven had placed in his heart, but a vocation was not everything in
this vile world. To be a worthy labourer in the Lord's vineyard, and
not to be altogether unworthy of all one's learned fellow-labourers,
one required education; one required to spend in the seminary at
Besancon two very expensive years; it became indispensable, therefore,
to save money, which was considerably easier with a salary of eight
hundred francs paid quarterly, than with six hundred francs which
melted away month by month. On the other hand, did not heaven, by
placing him with the Renal boys, and above all by inspiring in him a
particular attachment to them, seem to indicate to him that it would
be a mistake to abandon this form of education for another? ...

Julien arrived at such a pitch of perfection in this kind of
eloquence, which has taken the place of the swiftness of action of the
Empire, that he ended by growing tired of the sound of his own voice.

Returning to the house he found one of M. Valenod's servants in full
livery, who had been looking for him all over the town, with a note
inviting him to dinner that very day.

Never had Julien set foot in the man's house; only a few days earlier,
his chief thought was how he might give him a thorough good thrashing
without subsequent action by the police. Although dinner was not to be
until one o'clock, Julien thought it more respectful to present
himself at half past twelve in the study of the Governor of the
Poorhouse. He found him displaying his importance amid a mass of
papers. His huge black whiskers, his enormous quantity of hair, his
night-cap poised askew on the top of his head, his immense pipe, his
embroidered slippers, the heavy gold chains slung across his chest in
every direction, and all the equipment of a provincial financier, who
imagines himself to be a ladies' man, made not the slightest
impression upon Julien; he only thought all the more of the thrashing
that he owed him.

He craved the honour of being presented to Madame Valenod; she was
making her toilet and could not see him. To make up for this, he had
the privilege of witnessing that of the Governor of the Poorhouse.
They then proceeded to join Madame Valenod, who presented her children
to him with tears in her eyes. This woman, one of the most important
people in Verrieres, had a huge masculine face, which she had
plastered with rouge for this great ceremony.  She displayed all the
pathos of maternal feelings.

Julien thought of Madame de Renal. His distrustful nature made him
scarcely susceptible to any memories save those that are evoked by
contrast, but such memories moved him to tears. This tendency was
increased by the sight of the Governor's house. He was taken through
it. Everything in it was sumptuous and new, and he was told the price
of each article. But Julien felt that there was something mean about
it, a taint of stolen money.  Everyone, even the servants, wore a bold
air that seemed to be fortifying them against contempt.

The collector of taxes, the receiver of customs, the chief constable
and two or three other public officials arrived with their wives. They
were followed by several wealthy Liberals. Dinner was announced.
Julien, already in the worst of humours, suddenly reflected that on
the other side of the dining-room wall there were wretched prisoners,
whose rations of meat had perhaps been squeezed to purchase all this
tasteless splendour with which his hosts sought to dazzle him.

'They are hungry perhaps at this moment,' he said to himself; his
throat contracted, he found it impossible to eat and almost to speak.
It was much worse a quarter of an hour later; they could hear in the
distance a few snatches of a popular and, it must be admitted, not too
refined song which one of the inmates was singing. M. Valenod glanced
at one of his men in full livery, who left the room, and presently the
sound of singing ceased.  At that moment, a footman offered Julien
some Rhine wine in a green glass, and Madame Valenod took care to
inform him that this wine cost nine francs the bottle, direct from the
grower. Julien, the green glass in his hand, said to M. Valenod:

'I don't hear that horrid song any more.'

'Gad! I should think not, indeed,' replied the Governor triumphantly.
'I've made the rascal shut up.'

This was too much for Julien; he had acquired the manners but had not
yet the heart appropriate to his station. Despite all his hypocrisy,
which he kept in such constant practice, he felt a large tear trickle
down his cheek.

He tried to hide it with the green glass, but it was simply impossible
for him to do honour to the Rhine wine. 'Stop the man singing!' he
murmured to himself, 'O my God, and Thou permittest it!'

Fortunately for him, no one noticed his ill-bred emotion. The
collector of taxes had struck up a royalist ditty. During the clamour
of the refrain, sung in chorus: 'There,' Julien's conscience warned
him, 'you have the sordid fortune which you will achieve, and you will
enjoy it only in these conditions and in such company as this! You
will have a place worth perhaps twenty thousand francs, but it must be
that while you gorge to repletion you stop the poor prisoner from
singing; you will give dinner parties with the money you have filched
from his miserable pittance, and during your dinner he will be more
wretched still! O Napoleon! How pleasant it was in your time to climb
to fortune through the dangers of a battle; but meanly to intensify
the sufferings of the wretched!'

I admit that the weakness which Julien displays in this monologue
gives me a poor opinion of him. He would be a worthy colleague for
those conspirators in yellow gloves, who profess to reform all the
conditions of life in a great country, and would be horrified at
having to undergo the slightest inconvenience themselves.

Julien was sharply recalled to his proper part. It was not that he
might dream and say nothing that he had been invited to dine in such
good company.

A retired calico printer, a corresponding member of the Academy of
Besancon and of that of Uzes, was speaking to him, down the whole
length of the table, inquiring whether all that was commonly reported
as to his astonishing prowess in the study of the New Testament was
true.

A profound silence fell instantly; a New Testament appeared as though
by magic in the hands of the learned member of the two academies.
Julien having answered in the affirmative, a few words in Latin were
read out to him at random. He began to recite: his memory did not
betray him, and this prodigy was admired with all the noisy energy of
the end of a dinner.  Julien studied the glowing faces of the women.
Several of them were not ill-looking. He had made out the wife of the
collector who sang so well.

'Really, I am ashamed to go on speaking Latin so long before these
ladies,' he said, looking at her. 'If M. Rubigneau' (this was the
member of the two academies) 'will be so good as to read out any
sentence in Latin, instead of going on with the Latin text, I shall
endeavour to improvise a translation.'

This second test set the crown of glory on his achievement.

There were in the room a number of Liberals, men of means, but the
happy fathers of children who were capable of winning bursaries, and
in this capacity suddenly converted after the last Mission. Despite
this brilliant stroke of policy, M. de Renal had never consented to
have them in his house. These worthy folk, who knew Julien only by
reputation and from having seen him on horseback on the day of the
King of ----'s visit, were his most vociferous admirers. 'When will
these fools tire of listening to this Biblical language, of which they
understand nothing?' he thought. On the contrary, this language amused
them by its unfamiliarity; they laughed at it. But Julien had grown
tired.

He rose gravely as six o'clock struck and mentioned a chapter of the
new theology of Liguori, which he had to learn by heart in order to
repeat it next day to M. Chelan. 'For my business,' he added
pleasantly, 'is to make other people repeat lessons, and to repeat
them myself.'

His audience laughed heartily and applauded; this is the kind of wit
that goes down at Verrieres. Julien was by this time on his feet,
everyone else rose, regardless of decorum; such is the power of
genius. Madame Valenod kept him for a quarter of an hour longer; he
really must hear the children repeat their catechism; they made the
most absurd mistakes which he alone noticed. He made no attempt to
correct them. 'What ignorance of the first principles of religion,' he
thought. At length he said good-bye and thought that he might escape;
but the children must next attempt one of La Fontaine's Fables.

'That author is most immoral,' Julien said to Madame Valenod; 'in one
of his Fables on Messire Jean Chouart, he has ventured to heap
ridicule on all that is most venerable. He is strongly reproved by the
best commentators.'

Before leaving the house Julien received four or five invitations to
dinner. 'This young man does honour to the Department,' his
fellow-guests, in great hilarity, were all exclaiming at once. They
went so far as to speak of a pension voted out of the municipal funds,
to enable him to continue his studies in Paris.

While this rash idea was making the dining-room ring, Julien had
stolen away to the porch. 'Oh, what scum! What scum!' he murmured
three or four times, as he treated himself to the pleasure of drinking
in the fresh air.

He felt himself a thorough aristocrat for the moment, he who for long
had been so shocked by the disdainful smile and the haughty
superiority which he found lurking behind all the compliments that
were paid him at M. de Renal's. He could not help feeling the extreme
difference. 'Even if we forget,' he said to himself as he walked away,
'that the money has been stolen from the poor prisoners, and that they
are forbidden to sing as well, would it ever occur to M. de Renal to
tell his guests the price of each bottle of wine that he offers them?
And this M. Valenod, in going over the list of his property, which he
does incessantly, cannot refer to his house, his land and all the rest
of it, if his wife is present, without saying your house, your land.'

This lady, apparently so conscious of the joy of ownership, had just
made an abominable scene, during dinner, with a servant who had broken
a wineglass and spoiled one of her sets; and the servant had answered
her with the most gross insolence.

'What a household!' thought Julien; 'if they were to give me half of
all  the money they steal, I wouldn't live among them. One fine day I
should give myself away; I should be unable to keep back the contempt
they inspire in me.'

He was obliged, nevertheless, obeying Madame de Renal's orders, to
attend several dinners of this sort; Julien was the fashion; people
forgave him his uniform and the guard of honour, or rather that
imprudent display was the true cause of his success. Soon, the only
question discussed in Verrieres was who would be successful in the
struggle to secure the learned young man's services, M. de Renal or
the Governor of the Poorhouse. These two gentlemen formed with M.
Maslon a triumvirate which for some years past had tyrannised the
town. People were jealous of the Mayor, the Liberals had grounds for
complaint against him; but after all he was noble and created to fill
a superior station, whereas M. Valenod's father had not left him an
income of six hundred livres. He had been obliged to pass from the
stage of being pitied for the shabby apple-green coat in which
everybody remembered him in his younger days to that of being envied
for his Norman horses, his gold chains, the clothes he ordered from
Paris, in short, all his present prosperity.

In the welter of this world so new to Julien he thought he had
discovered an honest man; this was a geometrician, was named Gros and
was reckoned a Jacobin. Julien, having made a vow never to say
anything except what he himself believed to be false, was obliged to
make a show of being suspicious of M. Gros. He received from Vergy
large packets of exercises.  He was advised to see much of his father,
and complied with this painful necessity. In a word, he was quite
redeeming his reputation, when one morning he was greatly surprised to
find himself awakened by a pair of hands which were clapped over his
eyes.

It was Madame de Renal who had come in to town and, running upstairs
four steps at a time and leaving her children occupied with a
favourite rabbit that they had brought with them, had reached Julien's
room a minute in advance of them. The moment was delicious but all too
brief: Madame de Renal had vanished when the children arrived with
the rabbit, which they wanted to show to their friend. Julien welcomed
them all, including the rabbit. He seemed to be once more one of a
family party; he felt that he loved these children, that it amused him
to join in their chatter. He was amazed by the sweetness of their
voices, the simplicity and nobility of their manners; he required to
wash his imagination clean of all the vulgar behaviour, all the
unpleasant thoughts the atmosphere of which he had to breathe at
Verrieres. There was always the dread of bankruptcy, wealth and
poverty were always fighting for the upper hand. The people with whom
he dined, in speaking of the joint on their table, made confidences
humiliating to themselves, and nauseating to their hearers.

'You aristocrats, you have every reason to be proud,' he said to
Madame de Renal. And he told her of all the dinners he had endured.

'Why, so you are in the fashion!' And she laughed heartily at the
thought of the rouge which Madame Valenod felt herself obliged to put
on whenever she expected Julien. 'I believe she has designs on your
heart,' she added.

Luncheon was a joy. The presence of the children, albeit apparently a
nuisance, increased as a matter of fact the general enjoyment. These
poor children did not know how to express their delight at seeing
Julien again.  The servants had not failed to inform them that he was
being offered two hundred francs more to educate the little Valenods.

In the middle of luncheon, Stanislas Xavier, still pale after his
serious illness, suddenly asked his mother what was the value of his
silver spoon and fork and of the mug out of which he was drinking.

'Why do you want to know?'

'I want to sell them to give the money to M. Julien, so that he shan't
be a _dupe_ to stay with us.'

Julien embraced him, the tears standing in his eyes. The mother wept
outright, while Julien, who had taken Stanislas on his knees,
explained to him that he must not use the word _dupe_, which, employed
in that sense, was a servant's expression. Seeing the pleasure he was
giving Madame de Renal, he tried to explain, by picturesque examples,
which amused the children, what was meant by a dupe.

'I understand,' said Stanislas, 'it's the crow who is silly and drops
his cheese, which is picked up by the fox, who is a flatterer.'

Madame de Renal, wild with joy, smothered her children in kisses,
which she could hardly do without leaning slightly upon Julien.

Suddenly the door opened; it was M. de Renal. His stern, angry face
formed a strange contrast with the innocent gaiety which his presence
banished.  Madame de Renal turned pale; she felt herself incapable of
denying anything. Julien seized the opportunity and, speaking very
loud, began to tell the Mayor the incident of the silver mug which
Stanislas wanted to sell. He was sure that this story would be ill
received. At the first word M. de Renal frowned, from force of habit
at the mere name of silver. 'The mention of that metal,' he would say,
'is always a preliminary to some call upon my purse.'

But here there was more than money at stake; there was an increase of
his suspicions. The air of happiness which animated his family in his
absence was not calculated to improve matters with a man dominated by
so sensitive a vanity. When his wife praised the graceful and witty
manner in which Julien imparted fresh ideas to his pupils:

'Yes, yes, I know, he is making me odious to my children; it is very
easy for him to be a hundred times pleasanter to them than I, who am,
after all, the master. Everything tends in these days to bring
_lawful_ authority into contempt. Unhappy France!'

Madame de Renal did not stop to examine the implications of her
husband's manner. She had just seen the possibility of spending twelve
hours in Julien's company. She had any number of purchases to make in
the town, and declared that she absolutely must dine in a tavern; in
spite of anything her husband might say or do, she clung to her idea.
The children were in ecstasies at the mere word tavern, which modern
prudery finds such pleasure in pronouncing.

M. de Renal left his wife in the first linen-draper's shop that she
entered, to go and pay some calls. He returned more gloomy than in the
morning; he was convinced that the whole town was thinking about
nothing but himself and Julien. As a matter of fact, no one had as yet
allowed him to form any suspicion of the offensive element in the
popular comments.  Those that had been repeated to the Mayor had dealt
exclusively with the question whether Julien would remain with him at
six hundred francs or would accept the eight hundred francs offered by
the Governor of the Poorhouse.

The said Governor, when he met M. de Renal in society, gave him the
cold shoulder. His behaviour was not without a certain subtlety; there
is not much thoughtless action in the provinces: sensations are so
infrequent there that people suppress them.

M. Valenod was what is called, a hundred leagues from Paris, a
_faraud_; this is a species marked by coarseness and natural
effrontery. His triumphant existence, since 1815, had confirmed him in
his habits. He reigned, so to speak, at Verrieres, under the orders of
M. de Renal; but being far more active, blushing at nothing,
interfering in everything, everlastingly going about, writing,
speaking, forgetting humiliations, having no personal pretensions, he
had succeeded in equalling the credit of his Mayor in the eyes of
ecclesiastical authority. M. Valenod had as good as told the grocers
of the place: 'Give me the two biggest fools among you'; the lawyers:
'Point me out the two most ignorant'; the officers of health: 'Let me
have your two biggest rascals.' When he had collected the most
shameless representatives of each profession, he had said to them:
'Let us reign together.'

The manners of these men annoyed M. de Renal. Valenod's coarse nature
was offended by nothing, not even when the young abbe Maslon gave him
the lie direct in public.

But, in the midst of this prosperity, M. Valenod was obliged to
fortify himself by little insolences in points of detail against the
harsh truths which he was well aware that everyone was entitled to
address to him. His activity had multiplied since the alarms which M.
Appert's visit had left in its wake. He had made three journeys to
Besancon; he wrote several letters for each mail; he sent others by
unknown messengers who came to his house at nightfall. He had been
wrong perhaps in securing the deprivation of the old cure Chelan; for
this vindictive action had made him be regarded, by several pious
ladies of good birth, as a profoundly wicked man. Moreover this
service rendered had placed him in the absolute power of the
Vicar-General de Frilair, from whom he received strange orders. He had
reached this stage in his career when he yielded to the pleasure of
writing an anonymous letter. To add to his embarrassment, his wife
informed him that she wished to have Julien in the house; the idea
appealed to her vanity.

In this situation, M. Valenod foresaw a final rupture with his former
confederate M. de Renal. The Mayor would address him in harsh
language, which mattered little enough to him; but he might write to
Besancon, or even to Paris. A cousin of some Minister or other might
suddenly descend upon Verrieres and take over the Governorship of the
Poorhouse. M. Valenod thought of making friends with the Liberals; it
was for this reason that several of them were invited to the dinner at
which Julien recited. He would find powerful support there against the
Mayor. But an election might come, and it went without saying that the
Poorhouse and a vote for the wrong party were incompatible. The
history of these tactics, admirably divined by Madame de Renal, had
been imparted to Julien while he gave her his arm to escort her from
one shop to another, and little by little had carried them to the
Cours de la Fidelite, where they spent some hours, almost as peaceful
as the hours at Vergy.

At this period, M. Valenod was seeking to avoid a final rupture with
his former chief, by himself adopting a bold air towards him. On the
day of which we treat, this system proved successful, but increased
the Mayor's ill humour.

Never can vanity, at grips with all the nastiest and shabbiest
elements of a petty love of money, have plunged a man in a more
wretched state than that in which M. de Renal found himself, at the
moment of his entering the tavern. Never, on the contrary, had his
children been gayer or more joyful.  The contrast goaded him to fury.

'I am not wanted in my own family, so far as I can see!' he said as he
entered, in a tone which he sought to make imposing.

By way of reply, his wife drew him aside and explained to him the
necessity of getting rid of Julien. The hours of happiness she had
just enjoyed had given her back the ease and resolution necessary for
carrying out the plan of conduct which she had been meditating for the
last fortnight. What really and completely dismayed the poor Mayor of
Verrieres was that he knew that people joked publicly in the town at
the expense of his attachment to _hard cash_: M. Valenod was as
generous as a robber, whereas he had shown himself in a prudent rather
than a brilliant light in the last five or six subscription lists for
the Confraternity of Saint Joseph, the Congregation of Our Lady, the
Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, and so forth.

Among the country gentlemen of Verrieres and the neighbourhood,
skilfully classified in the lists compiled by the collecting Brethren,
according to the amount of their offerings, the name of M. de Renal
had more than once been seen figuring upon the lowest line. In vain
might he protest that he _earned nothing_. The clergy allow no joking
on that subject.




CHAPTER 13
The Sorrows of an Official


  Il piacere di alzar la testa tutto l'anno e ben pagato da certi quarti
  d'ora che bisogna passar.
    CASTI

But let us leave this little man to his little fears; why has he taken
into his house a man of feeling, when what he required was the soul of
a flunkey? Why does he not know how to select his servants? The
ordinary procedure of the nineteenth century is that when a powerful
and noble personage encounters a man of feeling, he kills, exiles,
imprisons or so humiliates him that the other, like a fool, dies of
grief. In this instance it so happens that it is not yet the man of
feeling who suffers. The great misfortune of the small towns of France
and of elected governments, like that of New York, is an inability to
forget that there exist in the world persons like M. de Renal. In a
town of twenty thousand inhabitants, these men form public opinion,
and public opinion is a terrible force in a country that has the
Charter. A man endowed with a noble soul, of generous instincts, who
would have been your friend did he not live a hundred leagues away,
judges you by the public opinion of your town, which is formed by the
fools whom chance has made noble, rich and moderate. Woe to him who
distinguishes himself!

Immediately after dinner, they set off again for Vergy; but, two days
later, Julien saw the whole family return to Verrieres.

An hour had not gone by before, greatly to his surprise, he discovered
that Madame de Renal was making a mystery of something. She broke off
her conversations with her husband as soon as he appeared, and seemed
almost to wish him to go away. Julien did not wait to be told twice.
He became cold and reserved; Madame de Renal noticed this, and did not
seek an explanation. 'Is she going to provide me with a successor?'
thought Julien.  'Only the day before yesterday, she was so intimate
with me! But they say that this is how great ladies behave.  They are
like kings, no one receives so much attention as the minister who, on
going home, finds the letter announcing his dismissal.'

Julien remarked that in these conversations, which ceased abruptly on
his approach, there was frequent mention of a big house belonging to
the municipality of Verrieres, old, but large and commodious, and
situated opposite the church, in the most valuable quarter of the
town. 'What connection can there be between that house and a new
lover?' Julien asked himself. In his distress of mind, he repeated to
himself those charming lines of Francois I, which seemed to him new,
because it was not a month since Madame de Renal had taught them to
him. At that time, by how many vows, by how many caresses had not each
line been proved false!

  Souvent femme varie
  Bien fol est qui s'y fie.

M. de Renal set off by post for Besancon. This journey was decided
upon at two hours' notice, he seemed greatly troubled. On his return,
he flung a large bundle wrapped in grey paper on the table.

'So much for that stupid business,' he said to his wife.

An hour later, Julien saw the bill-sticker carrying off this large
bundle; he followed him hastily. 'I shall learn the secret at the
first street corner.'

He waited impatiently behind the bill-sticker, who with his fat brush
was slapping paste on the back of the bill. No sooner was it in its
place than Julien's curiosity read on it the announcement in full
detail of the sale by public auction of the lease of that large and
old house which recurred so frequently in M. de Renal's conversations
with his wife. The assignation was announced for the following day at
two o'clock, in the town hall, on the extinction of the third light.
Julien was greatly disappointed; he considered the interval to be
rather short: how could all the possible bidders come to know of the
sale in time? But apart from this, the bill, which was dated a
fortnight earlier and which he read from beginning to end in three
different places, told him nothing.

He went to inspect the vacant house. The porter, who did not see him
approach, was saying mysteriously to a friend:

'Bah! It's a waste of time. M. Maslon promised him he should have it
for three hundred francs; and as the Mayor kicked, he was sent to the
Bishop's Palace, by the Vicar-General de Frilair.'

Julien's appearance on the scene seemed greatly to embarrass the two
cronies, who did not say another word.

Julien did not fail to attend the auction. There was a crowd of people
in an ill-lighted room; but everyone eyed his neighbours in a singular
fashion. Every eye was fixed on a table, where Julien saw, on a pewter
plate, three lighted candle-ends. The crier was shouting: 'Three
hundred francs, gentlemen!'

'Three hundred francs! It is too bad!' one man murmured to another.
Julien was standing between them. 'It is worth more than eight
hundred; I am going to cover the bid.'

'It's cutting off your nose to spite your face. What are you going to
gain by bringing M. Maslon, M. Valenod, the Bishop, his terrible
Vicar-General de Frilair and the whole of their gang down upon you?'

'Three hundred and twenty,' the other shouted.

'Stupid idiot!' retorted his neighbour. 'And here's one of the Mayor's
spies,' he added pointing at Julien.

Julien turned sharply to rebuke him for this speech; but the two
Franc-Comtois paid no attention to him. Their coolness restored his
own. At this moment the last candle-end went out, and the drawling
voice of the crier assigned the house for a lease of nine years to M.
de Saint-Giraud, chief secretary at the Prefecture of ----, and for
three hundred and thirty francs.

As soon as the Mayor had left the room, the discussion began.

'That's thirty francs Grogeot's imprudence has earned for the town,'
said one.

'But M. de Saint-Giraud,' came the answer, 'will have his revenge on
Grogeot, he will pass it on.'

'What a scandal,' said a stout man on Julien's left: 'a house for
which I'ld have given, myself, eight hundred francs as a factory, and
then it would have been a bargain.'

'Bah!' replied a young Liberal manufacturer, 'isn't M. de Saint-Giraud
one of the _Congregation_? Haven't his four children all got bursaries?
Poor man!  The town of Verrieres is simply bound to increase his
income with an allowance of five hundred francs; that is all.'

'And to think that the Mayor hasn't been able to stop it!' remarked a
third. 'For he may be an Ultra, if you like, but he's not a thief.'

'He's not a thief?' put in another; 'it's a regular thieves' kitchen.
Everything goes into a common fund, and is divided up at the end of
the year. But there's young Sorel; let us get away.'

Julien went home in the worst of tempers; he found Madame de Renal
greatly depressed.

'Have you come from the sale?' she said to him.

'Yes, Ma'am, where I had the honour to be taken for the Mayor's spy.'

'If he had taken my advice, he would have gone away somewhere.'

At that moment, M. de Renal appeared; he was very sombre. Dinner was
eaten in silence. M. de Renal told Julien to accompany the children to
Vergy; they travelled in unbroken gloom. Madame de Renal tried to
comfort her husband.

'Surely you are accustomed to it, my dear.'

That evening, they were seated in silence round the domestic hearth;
the crackle of the blazing beech logs was their sole distraction. It
was one of those moments of depression which are to be found in the
most united families. One of the children uttered a joyful cry.

'There's the bell! The bell!'

'Egad, if it's M. de Saint-Giraud come to get hold of me, on the
excuse of thanking me, I shall give him a piece of my mind; it's too
bad. It's Valenod that he has to thank, and it is I who am
compromised. What am I going to say if those pestilent Jacobin
papers get hold of the story, and make me out a M. Nonante-Cinq?'
[Footnote by C. K. S. M.:  M. Marsan explains this allusion to a
satire by Barthelemy at the expense of the Marseilles magistrate
Merindol, who in sentencing him to a fine had made use of the
Common Southern expression 'Nonante-cinq' for 'Quatre-vingt-quinze.]

A good-looking man, with bushy black whiskers, entered the room at
this moment in the wake of the servant.

'M. le Maire, I am Signor Geronimo. Here is a letter which M. le
Chevalier de Beauvaisis, attache at the Embassy at Naples, gave me for
you when I came away; it is only nine days ago,' Signor Geronimo
added, with a sprightly air, looking at Madame de Renal. 'Signor de
Beauvaisis, your cousin, and my good friend, Madame, tells me that
you know Italian.'

The good humour of the Neapolitan changed this dull evening into one
that was extremely gay. Madame de Renal insisted upon his taking
supper. She turned the whole house upside down; she wished at all
costs to distract Julien's thoughts from the description of him as a
spy which twice in that day he had heard ringing in his ear. Signer
Geronimo was a famous singer, a man used to good company, and at the
same time the best of company himself, qualities which, in France,
have almost ceased to be compatible. He sang after supper a little
duet with Madame de Renal. He told charming stories. At one o'clock in
the morning the children protested when Julien proposed that they
should go to bed.

'Just this story,' said the eldest.

'It is my own, Signorino,' replied Signer Geronimo. 'Eight years ago I
was, like you, a young scholar in the Conservatorio of Naples, by
which I mean that I was your age; for I had not the honour to be the
son of the eminent Mayor of the beautiful town of Verrieres.'

This allusion drew a sigh from M. de Renal, who looked at his wife.

'Signer Zingarelli,' went on the young singer, speaking with a
slightly exaggerated accent which made the children burst out
laughing, 'Signor Zingarelli is an exceedingly severe master. He is
not loved at the Conservatorio; but he makes them act always as though
they loved him. I escaped whenever I could; I used to go to the little
theatre of San Carlino, where I used to hear music fit for the gods:
but, O heavens, how was I to scrape together the eight soldi which
were the price of admission to the pit? An enormous sum,' he said,
looking at the children, and the children laughed again. 'Signer
Giovannone, the Director of San Carlino, heard me sing. I was sixteen
years old. "This boy is a treasure," he said.

'"Would you like me to engage you, my friend?" he said to me one day.

'"How much will you give me?"

'"Forty ducats a month." That, gentlemen, is one hundred and sixty
francs.  I seemed to see the heavens open.

'"But how," I said to Giovannone, "am I to persuade the strict
Zingarelli to let me go?"

'"_Lascia fare a me_."'

'Leave it to me!' cried the eldest of the children.

'Precisely, young Sir. Signor Giovannone said to me: "First of all,
_caro_, a little agreement." I signed the paper: he gave me three
ducats. I had never seen so much money. Then he told me what I must
do.

'Next day, I demanded an interview with the terrible Signer
Zingarelli. His old servant showed me into the room.

'"What do you want with me, you scapegrace?" said Zingarelli.

'"_Maestro_" I told him, "I repent of my misdeeds; never again will I
break out of the Conservatorio by climbing over the iron railings. I
am going to study twice as hard."

'"If I were not afraid of spoiling the finest bass voice I have ever
heard, I should lock you up on bread and water for a fortnight, you
scoundrel."

'"_Maestro_" I went on, "I am going to be a model to the whole school,
_credete a me_. But I ask one favour of you, if anyone comes to ask for
me to sing outside, refuse him. Please say that you cannot allow it."

'"And who do you suppose is going to ask for a good for nothing like
you?  Do you think I shall ever allow you to leave the Conservatorio?
Do you wish to make a fool of me? Off with you, off with you!" he
said, aiming a kick at my hindquarters, "or it will be bread and water
in a cell."

'An hour later, Signer Giovannone came to call on the Director.

'"I have come to ask you to make my fortune," he began, "let me have
Geronimo. If he sings in my theatre this winter I give my daughter in
marriage."

'"What do you propose to do with the rascal?" Zingarelli asked him. "I
won't allow it. You shan't have him; besides, even if I consented, he
would never be willing to leave the Conservatorio; he's just told me
so himself."

'"If his willingness is all that matters," said Giovannone gravely,
producing my agreement from his pocket, "_carta canta_! Here is his
signature."

'Immediately Zingarelli, furious, flew to the bell-rope: "Turn
Geronimo out of the Conservatorio," he shouted, seething with rage. So
out they turned me, I splitting my sides with laughter. That same
evening, I sang the _aria del Moltiplico_. Polichinelle intends to
marry, and counts up on his fingers the different things he will need
for the house, and loses count afresh at every moment.'

'Oh, won't you, Sir, please sing us that air?' said Madame de Renal.

Geronimo sang, and his audience all cried with laughter.

Signor Geronimo did not go to bed until two in the morning, leaving
the family enchanted with his good manners, his obliging nature and
his gay spirits.

Next day M. and Madame de Renal gave him the letters which he required
for the French Court.

'And so, falsehood everywhere,' said Julien. 'There is Signor Geronimo
on his way to London with a salary of sixty thousand francs. But for
the cleverness of the Director of San Carlino, his divine voice might
not have been known and admired for another ten years, perhaps ...
Upon my soul, I would rather be a Geronimo than a Renal. He is not so
highly honoured in society, but he has not the humiliation of having
to grant leases like that one today, and his is a merry life.'

One thing astonished Julien: the weeks of solitude spent at Verrieres,
in M. de Renal's house, had been for him a time of happiness. He had
encountered disgust and gloomy thoughts only at the dinners to which
he had been invited; in that empty house, was he not free to read,
write, meditate, undisturbed? He had not been aroused at every moment
from his radiant dreams by the cruel necessity of studying the motions
of a base soul, and that in order to deceive it by hypocritical words
or actions.

'Could happiness be thus within my reach? ... The cost of such a life
is nothing; I can, as I choose, marry Miss Elisa, or become Fouque's
partner ... But the traveller who has just climbed a steep mountain,
sits down on the summit, and finds a perfect pleasure in resting.
Would he be happy if he were forced to rest always?'

Madame de Renal's mind was a prey to carking thoughts. In spite of her
resolve to the contrary, she had revealed to Julien the whole business
of the lease. 'So he will make me forget all my vows!' she thought.

She would have given her life without hesitation to save that of her
husband, had she seen him in peril. Hers was one of those noble and
romantic natures, for which to see the possibility of a generous
action, and not to perform it gives rise to a remorse almost equal to
that which one feels for a past crime. Nevertheless, there were
dreadful days on which she could not banish the thought of the
absolute happiness which she would enjoy, if, suddenly left a widow,
she were free to marry Julien.

He loved her children far more than their father; in spite of his
strict discipline, he was adored by them. She was well aware that, if
she married Julien, she would have to leave this Vergy whose leafy
shade was so dear to her. She pictured herself living in Paris,
continuing to provide her sons with that education at which everyone
marvelled. Her children, she herself, Julien, all perfectly happy.

A strange effect of marriage, such as the nineteenth century has made
it!  The boredom of married life inevitably destroys love, when love
has preceded marriage. And yet, as a philosopher has observed, it
speedily brings about, among people who are rich enough not to have to
work, an intense boredom with all quiet forms of enjoyment. And it is
only dried up hearts, among women, that it does not predispose to
love.

The philosopher's observation makes me excuse Madame de Renal, but
there was no excuse for her at Verrieres, and the whole town, without
her suspecting it, was exclusively occupied with the scandal of her
love.  Thanks to this great scandal, people that autumn were less
bored than usual.

The autumn, the first weeks of winter had soon come and gone. It was
time to leave the woods of Vergy. The high society of Verrieres began
to grow indignant that its anathemas were making so little impression
upon M. de Renal. In less than a week, certain grave personages who
made up for their habitual solemnity by giving themselves the pleasure
of fulfilling missions of this sort, implanted in him the most cruel
suspicions, but without going beyond the most measured terms.

M. Valenod, who was playing a close game, had placed Elisa with a
noble and highly respected family, which included five women. Elisa
fearing, she said, that she might not find a place during the winter,
had asked this family for only about two thirds of what she was
receiving at the Mayor's.  Of her own accord, the girl had the
excellent idea of going to confess to the retired cure Chelan as well
as to the new cure, so as to be able to give them both a detailed
account of Julien's amours.

On the morning after his return, at six o'clock, the abbe Chelan sent
for Julien:

'I ask you nothing,' he said to him; 'I beg you, and if need be order
you to tell me nothing, I insist that within three days you leave
either for the Seminary at Besancon or for the house of your friend
Fouque, who is still willing to provide a splendid career for you. I
have foreseen and settled everything, but you must go, and not return
to Verrieres for a year.'

Julien made no answer; he was considering whether his honour ought to
take offence at the arrangements which M. Chelan, who after all was
not his father, had made for him.

'Tomorrow at this hour I shall have the honour of seeing you again,'
he said at length to the cure.

M. Chelan, who reckoned upon overcoming the young man by main force,
spoke volubly. His attitude, his features composed in the utmost
humility, Julien did not open his mouth.

At length he made his escape, and hastened to inform Madame de Renal,
whom he found in despair. Her husband had just been speaking to her
with a certain frankness. The natural weakness of his character,
seeking encouragement in the prospect of the inheritance from
Besancon, had made him decide to regard her as entirely innocent. He
had just confessed to her the strange condition in which he found
public opinion at Verrieres. The public were wrong, had been led
astray by envious ill-wishers, but what was to be done?

Madame de Renal had the momentary illusion that Julien might be able
to accept M. Valenod's offer, and remain at Verrieres. But she was no
longer the simple, timid woman of the previous year; her fatal
passion, her spells of remorse had enlightened her. Soon she had to
bear the misery of proving to herself, while she listened to her
husband, that a separation, at any rate for the time being, was now
indispensable. 'Away from me, Julien will drift back into those
ambitious projects that are so natural when one has nothing. And I,
great God! I am so rich, and so powerless to secure my own happiness!
He will forget me. Charming as he is, he will be loved, he will love.
Ah, unhappy woman! Of what can I complain? Heaven is just, I have not
acquired merit by putting a stop to my crime; it blinds my judgment.
It rested with me alone to win over Elisa with a bribe, nothing would
have been easier. I did not take the trouble to reflect for a moment,
the wild imaginings of love absorbed all my time. And now I perish.'

One thing struck Julien; as he conveyed to Madame de Renal the
terrible news of his departure, he was met with no selfish objection.
Evidently she was making an effort not to cry.

'We require firmness, my friend.'

She cut off a lock of her hair.

'I do not know what is to become of me,' she said to him, 'but if I
die, promise me that you will never forget my children.  Far or near,
try to make them grow up honourable men. If there is another
revolution, all the nobles will be murdered, their father may
emigrate, perhaps, because of that peasant who was killed upon a roof.
Watch over the family ... Give me your hand. Farewell, my friend!
These are our last moments together. This great sacrifice made, I hope
that in public I shall have the courage to think of my reputation.'

Julien had been expecting despair. The simplicity of this farewell
touched him.

'No, I do not accept your farewell thus. I shall go; they wish it; you
wish it yourself. But, three days after my departure, I shall return
to visit you by night.'

Madame de Renal's existence was changed. So Julien really did love her
since he had had the idea, of his own accord, of seeing her again. Her
bitter grief changed into one of the keenest bursts of joy that she
had ever felt in her life. Everything became easy to her. The
certainty of seeing her lover again took from these last moments all
their lacerating force. From that instant the conduct, like the
features of Madame de Renal was noble, firm, and perfectly
conventional.

M. de Renal presently returned; he was beside himself. For the first
time he mentioned to his wife the anonymous letter which he had
received two months earlier.

'I intend to take it to the Casino, to show them all that it comes
from that wretch Valenod, whom I picked up out of the gutter and made
into one of the richest citizens of Verrieres. I shall disgrace him
publicly, and then fight him. It is going too far.'

'I might be left a widow, great God!' thought Madame de Renal. But
almost at the same instant she said to herself: 'If I do not prevent
this duel, as I certainly can, I shall be my husband's murderess.'

Never before had she handled his vanity with so much skill. In less
than two hours she made him see, always by the use of arguments that
had occurred first to him, that he must show himself friendlier than
ever towards M. Valenod, and even take Elisa into the house again.
Madame de Renal required courage to make up her mind to set eyes on
this girl, the cause of all her troubles. But the idea had come to her
from Julien.

Finally, after having been set three or four times in the right
direction, M. de Renal arrived of his own accord at the idea (highly
distressing, from the financial point of view) that the most
unpleasant thing that could happen for himself was that Julien, amid
the seething excitement and gossip of the whole of Verrieres, should
remain there as tutor to M. Valenod's children. It was obviously in
Julien's interest to accept the offer made him by the Governor of the
Poorhouse. It was essential however to M. de Renal's fair fame that
Julien should leave Verrieres to enter the seminary at Besancon or at
Dijon. But how was he to be made to agree, and after that how was he
to maintain himself there?

M. de Renal, seeing the imminence of a pecuniary sacrifice, was in
greater despair than his wife. For her part, after this conversation,
she was in the position of a man of feeling who, weary of life, has
taken a dose of _stramonium_; he ceases to act, save, so to speak,
automatically, and no longer takes an interest in anything. Thus Louis
XIV on his deathbed was led to say: 'When I was king.' An admirable
speech!

On the morrow, at break of day, M. de Renal received an anonymous
letter.  It was couched in the most insulting style. The coarsest
words applicable to his position stared from every line. It was the
work of some envious subordinate. This letter brought him back to the
thought of fighting a duel with M. Valenod. Soon his courage had risen
to the idea of an immediate execution of his design. He left the house
unaccompanied, and went to the gunsmith's to procure a brace of
pistols, which he told the man to load.

'After all,' he said to himself, 'should the drastic rule of the
Emperor Napoleon be restored, I myself could not be charged with the
misappropriation of a halfpenny. At the most I have shut my eyes; but
I have plenty of letters in my desk authorising me to do so.'

Madame de Renal was frightened by her husband's cold anger, it brought
back to her mind the fatal thought of widowhood, which she found it so
hard to banish. She shut herself up with him. For hours on end she
pleaded with him in vain, the latest anonymous letter had determined
him. At length she succeeded in transforming the courage required to
strike M. Valenod into that required to offer Julien six hundred
francs for his maintenance for one year in a Seminary. M. de Renal,
heaping a thousand curses on the day on which he had conceived the
fatal idea of taking a tutor into his household, forgot the anonymous
letter.

He found a grain of comfort in an idea which he did not communicate to
his wife: by skilful handling, and by taking advantage of the young
man's romantic ideas, he hoped to bind him, for a smaller sum, to
refuse M. Valenod's offers.

Madame de Renal found it far harder to prove to Julien that, if he
sacrificed to her husband's convenience a post worth eight hundred
francs, publicly offered him by the Governor of the Poorhouse, he
might without blushing accept some compensation.

'But,' Julien continued to object, 'I have never had, even for a
moment, the slightest thought of accepting that offer. You have made
me too familiar with a life of refinement, the vulgarity of those
people would kill me.'

Cruel necessity, with its hand of iron, bent Julien's will. His pride
offered him the self-deception of accepting only as a loan the sum
offered by the Mayor of Verrieres, and giving him a note of hand
promising repayment with interest after five years.

Madame de Renal had still some thousands of francs hidden in the
little cave in the mountains.

She offered him these, trembling, and feeling only too sure that they
would be rejected with fury.

'Do you wish,' Julien asked her, 'to make the memory of our love
abominable?'

At length Julien left Verrieres. M. de Renal was overjoyed; at the
decisive moment of accepting money from him, this sacrifice proved to
be too great for Julien. He refused point-blank. M. de Renal fell upon
his neck, with tears in his eyes. Julien having asked him for a
testimonial to his character, he could not in his enthusiasm find
terms laudatory enough to extol the young man's conduct. Our hero had
saved up five louis and intended to ask Fouque for a similar amount.

He was greatly moved. But when he had gone a league from Verrieres,
where he was leaving such a treasure of love behind him, he thought
only of the pleasure of seeing a capital, a great military centre like
Besancon.

During this short parting of three days, Madame de Renal was duped by
one of love's most cruel illusions. Her life was tolerable enough,
there was between her and the last extremes of misery this final
meeting that she was still to have with Julien.

She counted the hours, the minutes that divided her from it. Finally,
during the night that followed the third day, she heard in the
distance the signal arranged between them. Having surmounted a
thousand perils, Julien appeared before her.

>From that moment, she had but a single thought: 'I am looking at you
now for the last time.' Far from responding to her lover's eagerness,
she was like a barely animated corpse. If she forced herself to tell
him that she loved him, it was with an awkward air that was almost a
proof to the contrary. Nothing could take her mind from the cruel
thought of eternal separation. The suspicious Julien fancied for a
moment that she had already forgotten him. His hints at such a
possibility were received only with huge tears that flowed in silence,
and with a convulsive pressure of his hand.

'But, Great God! How do you expect me to believe you?' was Julien's
reply to his mistress's chill protestations. 'You would show a hundred
times more of sincere affection to Madame Derville, to a mere
acquaintance.'

Madame de Renal, petrified, did not know how to answer.

'It would be impossible for a woman to be more wretched ... I hope I
am going to die ... I feel my heart freezing ...'

Such were the longest answers he was able to extract from her.

When the approach of day made his departure necessary, Madame de
Renal's tears ceased all at once. She saw him fasten a knotted cord to
the window without saying a word, without returning his kisses. In
vain might Julien say to her:

'At last we have reached the state for which you so longed.
Henceforward you will live without remorse. At the slightest
indisposition of one of your children, you will no longer see them
already in the grave.'

'I am sorry you could not say good-bye to Stanislas,' she said to him
coldly.

In the end, Julien was deeply impressed by the embraces, in which
there was no warmth, of this living corpse; he could think of nothing
else for some leagues. His spirit was crushed, and before crossing the
pass, so long as he was able to see the steeple of Verrieres church,
he turned round often.




CHAPTER 24
A Capital

  So much noise, so many busy people! So many ideas in the
  head of a man of twenty! So many distractions for love!
    BARNAVE

At length he made out, on a distant mountain, a line of dark walls; it
was the citadel of Besancon. 'How different for me,' he said with a
sigh, 'if I were arriving in this noble fortress to be a sublieutenant
in one of the regiments entrusted with its defence!'

Besancon is not merely one of the most charming towns in France, it
abounds in men and women of feeling and spirit. But Julien was only a
young peasant and had no way of approaching the distinguished people.

He had borrowed from Fouque a layman's coat, and it was in this attire
that he crossed the drawbridges. His mind full of the history of the
siege of 1674, he was determined to visit, before shutting himself up
in the Seminary, the ramparts and the citadel. More than once, he was
on the point of being arrested by the sentries for making his way into
places from which the engineers of the garrison excluded the public,
in order to make a profit of twelve or fifteen francs every year by
the sale of the hay grown there.

The height of the walls, the depth of the moats, the awe-inspiring
appearance of the guns had occupied him for some hours, when he
happened to pass by the principal cafe, on the boulevard. He stood
speechless with admiration; albeit he could read the word Cafe
inscribed in huge letters over the two vast doors, he could not
believe his eyes. He made an effort to master his timidity; he
ventured to enter, and found himself in a hall thirty or forty feet
long, the ceiling of which rose to a height of at least twenty feet.
On this day of days everything wore an air of enchantment for him.

Two games of billiards were in progress. The waiters were calling out
the scores; the players hurried round the tables through a crowd of
onlookers.  Streams of tobacco smoke, pouring from every mouth,
enveloped them in a blue haze. The tall stature of these men, their
rounded shoulders, their heavy gait, their bushy whiskers, the long
frock coats that coveted their bodies, all attracted Julien's
attention. These noble sons of ancient Bisontium conversed only in
shouts; they gave themselves the air of tremendous warriors. Julien
stood spellbound in admiration; he was thinking of the vastness and
splendour of a great capital like Besancon. He felt that he could not
possibly summon up courage to ask for a cup of coffee from one of
those gentlemen with the proud gaze who were marking the score at
billiards.

But the young lady behind the counter had remarked the charming
appearance of this young country cousin, who, brought to a standstill
three paces from the stove, hugging his little bundle under his arm,
was studying the bust of the King, in gleaming white plaster. This
young lady, a strapping Franc-Comtoise, extremely well made, and
dressed in the style calculated to give tone to a cafe, had already
said twice, in a low voice so modulated that only Julien should hear
her: 'Sir! Sir!' Julien's gaze met that of a pair of the most tender
blue eyes, and saw that it was himself who was being addressed.

He stepped briskly up to the counter and the pretty girl, as he might
have advanced in the face of the enemy. As he executed this great
movement, his bundle fell to the ground.

What pity will not our provincial inspire in the young scholars of
Paris, who at fifteen, have already learned how to enter a cafe with
so distinguished an air! But these children, so stylish at fifteen, at
eighteen begin to turn common. The passionate shyness which one meets
in the provinces now and then overcomes itself, and then teaches its
victim to desire. As he approached this beautiful girl who had deigned
to speak to him, 'I must tell her the truth,' thought Julien, who was
growing courageous by dint of his conquered shyness.

'Madame, I have come for the first time in my life to Besancon; I
should like to have, and to pay for, a roll of bread and a cup of
coffee.'

The girl smiled a little and then blushed; she feared, for this
good-looking young man, the satirical attention and witticisms of the
billiard players. He would be frightened and would never show his face
there again.

'Sit down here, near me,' she said, and pointed to a marble table,
almost entirely hidden by the enormous mahogany counter which
protruded into the room.

The young woman leaned over this counter, which gave her an
opportunity to display a superb figure. Julien observed this; all his
ideas altered. The pretty girl had just set before him a cup, some
sugar and a roll of bread.  She hesitated before calling to a waiter
for coffee, realising that on the arrival of the said waiter her
private conversation with Julien would be at an end.

Julien, lost in thought, was comparing this fair and sprightly beauty
with certain memories which often stirred him. The thought of the
passion of which he had been the object took from him almost all his
timidity. The pretty girl had only a moment; she read the expression
in Julien's eyes.

'This pipe smoke makes you cough, come to breakfast tomorrow before
eight o'clock; at that time, I am almost alone.'

'What is your name?' said Julien, with the caressing smile of happy
timidity.

'Amanda Binet.'

'Will you permit me to send you, in an hour's time, a little parcel no
bigger than this?'

The fair Amanda reflected for a while.

'I am watched: what you ask may compromise me; however, I am now going
to write down my address upon a card, which you can attach to your
parcel.  Send it to me without fear.'

'My name is Julien Sorel,' said the young man. 'I have neither family
nor friends in Besancon.'

'Ah! Now I understand,' she exclaimed joyfully, 'you have come for the
law school?'

'Alas, no!' replied Julien; 'they are sending me to the Seminary.'

The most complete discouragement extinguished the light in Amanda's
features; she called a waiter: she had the necessary courage now. The
waiter poured out Julien's coffee, without looking at him.

Amanda was taking money at the counter; Julien prided himself on
having ventured to speak to her: there was a dispute in progress at
one of the billiard tables. The shouts and contradictions of the
players, echoing through that vast hall, made a din which astonished
Julien. Amanda was pensive and did not raise her eyes.

'If you like, Mademoiselle,' he said to her suddenly with assurance,
'I can say that I am your cousin.'

This little air of authority delighted Amanda. This is no
good-for-nothing young fellow,' she thought. She said to him very
quickly, without looking at him, for her eye was occupied in watching
whether anyone were approaching the counter:

'I come from Genlis, near Dijon; say that you are from Genlis too, and
my mother's cousin.'

'I shall not forget.'

'On Thursdays, at five o'clock, in summer, the young gentlemen from
the Seminary come past the cafe here.'

'If you are thinking of me, when I pass, have a bunch of violets in
your hand.'

Amanda gazed at him with an air of astonishment; this gaze changed
Julien's courage into temerity; he blushed deeply, however, as he said
to her:

'I feel that I love you with the most violent love.'

'Don't speak so loud, then,' she warned him with an air of alarm.

Julien thought of trying to recollect the language of an odd volume of
the _Nouvelle Heloise_, which he had found at Vergy. His memory served
him well; he had been for ten minutes reciting the _Nouvelle Heloise_
to Miss Amanda, who was in ecstasies; he was delighted with his own
courage, when suddenly the fair Franc-Comtoise assumed a glacial air.
One of her admirers stood in the doorway of the cafe.

He came up to the counter, whistling and swaying his shoulders; he
stared at Julien. For the moment, the latter's imagination, always
flying to extremes, was filled entirely with thoughts of a duel. He
turned deadly pale, thrust away his cup, assumed an air of assurance
and studied his rival most attentively. While this rival's head was
lowered as he familiarly poured himself out a glass of brandy upon the
counter, with a glance Amanda ordered Julien to lower his gaze. He
obeyed, and for a minute or two sat motionless in his place, pale,
determined, and thinking only of what was going to happen; he was
really fine at that moment. The rival had been astonished by Julien's
eyes; his glass of brandy drained at a gulp, he said a few words to
Amanda, thrust his hands into the side pockets of his ample coat, and
made his way to one of the billiard tables, breathing loudly and
staring at Julien. The latter sprang to his feet in a transport of
rage; but did not know what action to take to be insulting. He laid
down his little bundle and, with the most swaggering gait that he
could assume, strode towards the billiard table.

In vain did prudence warn him: 'With a duel on the day of your arrival
at Besancon, your career in the church is gone for ever.'

'What does that matter, it shall never be said that I quailed before
an insult.'

Amanda observed his courage; it formed a charming contrast with the
simplicity of his manners; in an instant, she preferred him to the big
young man in the long coat. She rose, and, while appearing to be
following with her eyes the movements of someone going by in the
street, took her place swiftly between him and the billiard table.

'You are not to look askance at that gentleman; he is my
brother-in-law.'

'What do I care? He looked at me.'

'Do you wish to get me into trouble? No doubt, he looked at you,
perhaps he will even come up and speak to you. I have told him that
you are one of my mother's family and that you have just come from
Genlis. He is a Franc-Comtois and has never been farther than Dole, on
the road into Burgundy; so tell him whatever you like, don't be
afraid.'

Julien continued to hesitate; she added rapidly, her barmaid's
imagination supplying her with falsehoods in abundance:

'I dare say he did look at you, but it was when he was asking me who
you were; he is a man who is rude with everyone, he didn't mean to
insult you.'

Julien's eye followed the alleged brother-in-law; he saw him buy a
number for the game of pool which was beginning at the farther of the
two billiard tables. Julien heard his loud voice exclaim: 'I
volunteer!' He passed nimbly behind Miss Amanda's back and took a step
towards the billiard table. Amanda seized him by the arm.

'Come and pay me first,' she said to him.

'Quite right,' thought Julien; 'she is afraid I may leave without
paying.' Amanda was as greatly agitated as himself, and had turned
very red; she counted out his change as slowly as she could, repeating
to him in a whisper as she did so:

'Leave the cafe this instant, or I shan't like you any more; I do like
you, though, very much.'

Julien did indeed leave, but slowly. 'Is it not incumbent upon
me,' he repeated to himself, 'to go and stare at that rude person in
my turn, and breathe in his face?' This uncertainty detained him for
an hour on the boulevard, outside the cafe; he watched to see if his
man came out.  He did not however appear, and Julien withdrew.

He had been but a few hours in Besancon, and already he had something
to regret. The old Surgeon-Major had long ago, notwithstanding his
gout, taught him a few lessons in fencing; this was all the science
that Julien could place at the service of his anger. But this
embarrassment would have been nothing if he had known how to pick a
quarrel otherwise than by striking a blow; and, if they had come to
fisticuffs, his rival, a giant of a man, would have beaten him and
left him discomfited.

'For a poor devil like me,' thought Julien, 'without protectors and
without money, there will be no great difference between a Seminary
and a prison; I must leave my lay clothes in some inn, where I can put
on my black coat. If I ever succeed in escaping from the Seminary for
an hour or two, I can easily, in my lay clothes, see Miss Amanda
again.' This was sound reasoning; but Julien, as he passed by all the
inns in turn, had not the courage to enter any of them.

Finally, as he came again to the Hotel des Ambassadeurs, his roving
gaze met that of a stout woman, still reasonably young, with a high
complexion, a happy and gay expression. He went up to her and told her
his story.

'Certainly, my fine young priest,' the landlady of the Ambassadeurs
said to him, 'I shall keep your lay clothes for you, indeed I will
have them brushed regularly. In this weather, it is a mistake to leave
a broadcloth coat lying.' She took a key and led him herself to a
bedroom, advising him to write down a list of what he was leaving
behind.

'Lord, how nice you look like that, M. l'abbe Sorel,' said the stout
woman, when he came down to the kitchen. 'I am going to order you a
good dinner; and,' she added in an undertone, 'it will only cost you
twenty sous, instead of the fifty people generally pay; for you must
be careful with your little purse.'

'I have ten louis,' retorted Julien with a certain note of pride.

'Oh, good Lord!' replied the good landlady in alarm, 'do not speak so
loud; there are plenty of bad folk in Besancon. They will have that
out of you in less than no time. Whatever you do, never go into the
cafes, they are full of rogues.'

'Indeed!' said Julien, to whom this last statement gave food for
thought.

'Never go anywhere except to me, I will give you your coffee. Bear in
mind that you will always find a friend here and a good dinner for
twenty sous; that's good enough for you, I hope. Go and sit down at
the table, I am going to serve you myself.'

'I should not be able to eat,' Julien told her. 'I am too much
excited, I am going to enter the Seminary as soon as I leave here.'

The good woman would not allow him to leave until she had stuffed his
pockets with provisions. Finally Julien set out for the dread spot,
the landlady from her doorstep pointing out the way.




CHAPTER 25
The Seminary

  Three hundred and thirty-six dinners at 83 centimes, three
  hundred and thirty-six suppers at 38 centimes, chocolate to
  such as are entitled to it; how much is there to be made on
  the contract?
    THE VALENOD OF BESANCON

He saw from a distance the cross of gilded iron over the door; he went
towards it slowly; his legs seemed to be giving way under him. 'So
there is that hell upon earth, from which I can never escape!' Finally
he decided to ring. The sound of the bell echoed as though in a
deserted place. After ten minutes, a pale man dressed in black came
and opened the door to him.  Julien looked at him and at once lowered
his gaze. This porter had a singular physiognomy. The prominent green
pupils of his eyes were convex as those of a cat's; the unwinking
contours of his eyelids proclaimed the impossibility of any human
feeling; his thin lips were stretched and curved over his protruding
teeth. And yet this physiognomy did not suggest a criminal nature, so
much as that entire insensibility which inspires far greater terror in
the young. The sole feeling that Julien's rapid glance could discern
in that long, smug face was a profound contempt for every subject that
might be mentioned to him, which did not refer to another and a better
world.

Julien raised his eyes with an effort, and in a voice which the
palpitation of his heart made tremulous explained that he wished to
speak to M. Pirard, the Director of the Seminary. Without a word, the
man in black made a sign to him to follow. They climbed two flights of
a wide staircase with a wooden baluster, the warped steps of which
sloped at a downward angle from the wall, and seemed on the point of
collapse. A small door, surmounted by a large graveyard cross of white
wood painted black, yielded to pressure and the porter showed him into
a low and gloomy room, the whitewashed walls of which were adorned
with two large pictures dark with age. There, Julien was left to
himself; he was terrified, his heart throbbed violently; he would have
liked to find the courage to weep. A deathly silence reigned
throughout the building.

After a quarter of an hour, which seemed to him a day, the sinister
porter reappeared on the threshold of a door at the other end of the
room, and, without condescending to utter a word, beckoned to him to
advance. He entered a room even larger than the first and very badly
lighted. The walls of this room were whitewashed also; but they were
bare of ornament. Only in a corner by the door, Julien noticed in
passing a bed of white wood, two straw chairs and a little armchair
made of planks of firwood without a cushion. At the other end of the
room, near a small window with dingy panes, decked with neglected
flowerpots, he saw a man seated at a table and dressed in a shabby
cassock; he appeared to be in a rage, and was taking one after another
from a pile of little sheets of paper which he spread out on his table
after writing a few words on each. He did not observe Julien's
presence. The latter remained motionless, standing in the middle of
the room, where he had been left by the porter, who had gone out again
shutting the door behind him.

Ten minutes passed in this fashion; the shabbily dressed man writing
all the time. Julien's emotion and terror were such that he felt
himself to be on the point of collapsing. A philosopher would have
said, perhaps wrongly: 'It is the violent impression made by ugliness
on a soul created to love what is beautiful.'

The man who was writing raised his head; Julien did not observe this
for a moment, and indeed, after he had noticed it, still remained
motionless, as though turned to stone by the terrible gaze that was
fixed on him. Julien's swimming eyes could barely make out a long face
covered all over with red spots, except on the forehead, which
displayed a deathly pallor. Between the red cheeks and white forehead
shone a pair of little black eyes calculated to inspire terror in the
bravest heart. The vast expanse of his forehead was outlined by a mass
of straight hair, as black as jet.

'Are you coming nearer, or not?' the man said at length impatiently.

Julien advanced with an uncertain step, and at length, ready to fall
to the ground and paler than he had ever been in his life, came to a
halt a few feet away from the little table of white wood covered with
scraps of paper.

'Nearer,' said the man.

Julien advanced farther, stretching out his hand as though in search
of something to lean upon.

'Your name?'

'Julien Sorel.'

'You are very late,' said the other, once more fastening upon him a
terrible eye.

Julien could not endure this gaze; putting out his hand as though to
support himself, he fell full length upon the floor.

The man rang a bell. Julien had lost only his sense of vision and the
strength to move; he could hear footsteps approaching.

He was picked up and placed in the little armchair of white wood. He
heard the terrible man say to the porter:

'An epileptic, evidently; I might have known it.'

When Julien was able to open his eyes, the man with the red face was
again writing; the porter had vanished. 'I must have courage,' our
hero told himself, 'and above all hide my feelings.' He felt a sharp
pain at his heart. 'If I am taken ill, heaven knows what they will
think of me.' At length the man stopped writing, and with a sidelong
glance at Julien asked:

'Are you in a fit state to answer my questions?'

'Yes, Sir,' said Julien in a feeble voice.

'Ah! That is fortunate.'

The man in black had half risen and was impatiently seeking for a
letter in the drawer of his table of firwood which opened with a
creak. He found it, slowly resumed his seat, and once more gazing at
Julien, with an air which seemed to wrest from him the little life
that remained to him:

'You are recommended to me by M. Chelan, who was the best cure in the
diocese, a good man if ever there was one, and my friend for the last
thirty years.'

'Ah! It is M. Pirard that I have the honour to address,' said Julien
in a feeble voice.

'So it seems,' said the Director of the Seminary, looking sourly at
him.

The gleam in his little eyes brightened, followed by an involuntary
jerk of the muscles round his mouth. It was the physiognomy of a tiger
relishing in anticipation the pleasure of devouring its prey.

'Chelan's letter is short,' he said, as though speaking to himself.
'_Intelligenti pauca_; in these days, one cannot write too little.' He
read aloud:

'"I send you Julien Sorel, of this parish, whom I baptised nearly
twenty years ago; his father is a wealthy carpenter but allows him
nothing. Julien will be a noteworthy labourer in the Lord's vineyard.
Memory, intelligence are not wanting, he has the power of reflection.
Will his vocation last? Is it sincere?"'

'Sincere!' repeated the abbe Pirard with an air of surprise, gazing at
Julien; but this time the abbe's gaze was less devoid of all trace of
humanity. 'Sincere!' he repeated, lowering his voice and returning to
the letter:

'"I ask you for a bursary for Julien; he will qualify for it by
undergoing the necessary examinations. I have taught him a little
divinity, that old and sound divinity of Bossuet, Arnault, Fleury. If
the young man is not to your liking, send him back to me; the Governor
of our Poorhouse, whom you know well, offers him eight hundred francs
to come as tutor to his children. Inwardly I am calm, thank God. I am
growing accustomed to the terrible blow. _Vale et me ama_."'

The abbe Pirard, relaxing the speed of his utterance as he came to the
signature, breathed with a sigh the word 'Chelan.'

'He is calm,' he said; 'indeed, his virtue deserved that reward; God
grant it to me, when my time comes!'

He looked upwards and made the sign of the Cross. At the sight of this
holy symbol Julien felt a slackening of the profound horror which,
from his entering the building, had frozen him.

'I have here three hundred and twenty-one aspirants for the holiest of
callings,' the abbe Pirard said at length, in a severe but not hostile
tone; 'only seven or eight have been recommended to me by men like the
abbe Chelan; thus among the three hundred and twenty-one you will be
the ninth. But my protection is neither favour nor weakness, it is an
increase of precaution and severity against vice. Go and lock that
door.'

Julien made an effort to walk and managed not to fall. He noticed that
a little window, near the door by which he had entered, commanded a
view of the country. He looked at the trees; the sight of them did him
good, as though he had caught sight of old friends.

'_Loquerisne linguam latinam_? (Do you speak Latin?)' the abbe Pirard
asked him as he returned.

'_Ita, pater optime_ (Yes, excellent Father),' replied Julien, who was
beginning to come to himself. Certainly nobody in the world had
appeared to him less excellent than M. Pirard, during the last
half-hour.

The conversation continued in Latin. The expression in the abbe's eyes
grew gentler; Julien recovered a certain coolness. 'How weak I am,' he
thought, 'to let myself be imposed upon by this show of virtue! This
man will be simply a rascal like M. Maslon'; and Julien congratulated
himself on having hidden almost all his money in his boots.

The abbe Pirard examined Julien in theology, and was surprised by the
extent of his knowledge. His astonishment increased when he questioned
him more particularly on the Holy Scriptures. But when he came to
questions touching the doctrine of the Fathers, he discovered that
Julien barely knew the names of Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine, Saint
Bonaventure, Saint Basil, etc., etc.

'In fact,' thought the abbe Pirard, 'here is another instance of that
fatal tendency towards Protestantism which I have always had to rebuke
in Chelan.  A thorough, a too thorough acquaintance with the Holy
Scriptures.'

(Julien had just spoken to him, without having been questioned on the
subject, of the true date of authorship of Genesis, the Pentateuch,
etc.)

'To what does all this endless discussion of the Holy Scriptures lead,'
thought the abbe Pirard, 'if not to private judgment, that is to say
to the most fearful Protestantism? And, in conjunction with this rash
learning, nothing about the Fathers that can compensate for this
tendency.'

But the astonishment of the Director of the Seminary knew no bounds
when, questioning Julien as to the authority of the Pope, and
expecting the maxims of the ancient Gallican church, he heard the
young man repeat the whole of M. de Maistre's book.

'A strange man, Chelan,' thought the abbe Pirard; 'has he given him
this book to teach him to laugh at it?'

In vain did he question Julien, trying to discover whether he
seriously believed the doctrine of M. de Maistre. The young man could
answer him only by rote. From this moment, Julien was really
admirable, he felt that he was master of himself. After a prolonged
examination it seemed to him that M. Pirard's severity towards him
was no more than an affectation. Indeed, but for the rule of austere
gravity which, for the last fifteen years, he had imposed on himself
in dealing with his pupils in theology, the Director of the Seminary
would have embraced Julien in the name of logic, such clarity,
precision, and point did he find in the young man's answers.

'This is a bold and healthy mind,' he said to himself, 'but _corpus
debile_ (a frail body).

'Do you often fall like that?' he asked Julien in French, pointing
with his finger to the floor.

'It was the first time in my life; the sight of the porter's face
paralysed me,' Julien explained, colouring like a child.

The abbe Pirard almost smiled.

'Such is the effect of the vain pomps of this world; you are evidently
accustomed to smiling faces, positive theatres of falsehood. The truth
is austere, Sir. But is not our task here below austere also? You will
have to see that your conscience is on its guard against this
weakness: _Undue sensibility to vain outward charms_.

'Had you not been recommended to me,' said the abbe Pirard, returning
with marked pleasure to the Latin tongue, 'had you not been
recommended to me by a man such as the abbe Chelan, I should address
you in the vain language of this world to which it appears that you
are too well accustomed. The entire bursary for which you apply is, I
may tell you, the hardest thing in the world to obtain. But the abbe
Chelan has earned little, by fifty-six years of apostolic labours, if
he cannot dispose of a bursary at the Seminary.'

After saying these words, the abbe Pirard advised Julien not to join
any secret society or congregation without his consent.

'I give you my word of honour,' said Julien with the heartfelt warmth
of an honest man.

The Director of the Seminary smiled for the first time.

'That expression is not in keeping here,' he told him; 'it is too
suggestive of the vain honour of men of the world, which leads them
into so many errors and often into crime. You owe me obedience in
virtue of the seventeenth paragraph of the Bull _Unam Ecclesiam_ of
Saint Pius V. I am your ecclesiastical superior. In this house to
hear, my dearly beloved son, is to obey. How much money have you?'

('Now we come to the point,' thought Julien, 'this is the reason of
the "dearly beloved son".')

'Thirty-five francs, Father.'

'Keep a careful note of how you spend your money; you will have to
account for it to me.'

This exhausting interview had lasted three hours. Julien was told to
summon the porter.

'Put Julien Sorel in cell number 103,' the abbe Pirard told the man.

As a special favour, he was giving Julien a room to himself.

'Take up his trunk,' he added.

Julien lowered his eyes and saw his trunk staring him in the face; he
had been looking at it for three hours and had never seen it.

On arriving at No. 103, which was a tiny room eight feet square on the
highest floor of the building, Julien observed that it looked out
towards the ramparts, beyond which one saw the smiling plain which the
Doubs divides from the city.

'What a charming view!' exclaimed Julien; in speaking thus to himself
he was not conscious of the feeling implied by his words. The violent
sensations he had experienced in the short time that he had spent in
Besancon had completely drained his strength. He sat down by the
window on the solitary wooden chair that was in his cell, and at once
fell into a profound slumber. He did not hear the supper bell, nor
that for Benediction; he had been forgotten.

When the first rays of the sun awakened him next morning, he found
himself lying upon the floor.




CHAPTER 26
The World, or What the Rich Lack


  I am alone on earth, no one deigns to think of me. All the
  people I see making their fortunes have a brazenness and a
  hard-heartedness which I do not sense in myself. Ah! I shall
  soon be dead, either of hunger, or from the sorrow of finding
  men so hard.
    YOUNG

He made haste to brush his coat and to go downstairs; he was late. An
under-master rebuked him severely; instead of seeking to excuse
himself, Julien crossed his arms on his breast:

'_Peccavi, pater optime_ (I have sinned, I confess my fault, O Father),'
he said with a contrite air.

This was a most successful beginning. The sharp wits among the
seminarists saw that they had to deal with a man who was not new to
the game. The recreation hour came, Julien saw himself the object of
general curiosity.  But they found in him merely reserve and silence.
Following the maxims that he had laid down for himself, he regarded
his three hundred and twenty-one comrades as so many enemies; the most
dangerous of all in his eyes was the abbe Pirard.

A few days later, Julien had to choose a confessor, he was furnished
with a list.

'Eh; Great God, for what do they take me?' he said to himself. 'Do
they suppose I can't take a hint?' And he chose the abbe Pirard.

Though he did not suspect it, this step was decisive. A little
seminarist, still quite a boy, and a native of Verrieres, who, from
the first day, had declared himself his friend, informed him that if
he had chosen M. Castanede, the vice-principal of the Seminary, he
would perhaps have shown greater prudence.

'The abbe Castanede is the enemy of M. Pirard, who is suspected of
Jansenism'; the little seminarist added, whispering this information
in his ear.

All the first steps taken by our hero who fancied himself so prudent
were, like his choice of a confessor, foolish in the extreme. Led
astray by all the presumption of an imaginative man, he mistook his
intentions for facts, and thought himself a consummate hypocrite. His
folly went the length of his reproaching himself for his successes in
this art of the weak.

'Alas! It is my sole weapon! In another epoch, it would have been by
speaking actions in the face of the enemy that I should have _earned
my bread_.'

Julien, satisfied with his own conduct, looked around him; he found
everywhere an appearance of the purest virtue.

Nine or ten of the seminarists lived in the odour of sanctity, and had
visions like Saint Teresa and Saint Francis, when he received the
Stigmata upon Monte Verna, in the Apennines. But this was a great
secret which their friends kept to themselves. These poor young
visionaries were almost always in the infirmary. Some hundred others
combined with a robust faith an unwearying application. They worked
until they made themselves ill, but without learning much. Two or
three distinguished themselves by real talent, and, among these, one
named Chazel; but Julien felt himself repelled by them, and they by
him.

The rest of the three hundred and twenty-one seminarists were composed
entirely of coarse creatures who were by no means certain that they
understood the Latin words which they repeated all day long. Almost
all of them were the sons of peasants, and preferred to earn their
bread by reciting a few Latin words rather than by tilling the soil.
It was after making this discovery, in the first few days, that Julien
promised himself a rapid success. 'In every service, there is need of
intelligent people, for after all there is work to be done,' he told
himself. 'Under Napoleon, I should have been a serjeant; among these
future cures, I shall be a Vicar-General.

'All these poor devils,' he added, 'labourers from the cradle, have
lived, until they came here, upon skim milk and black bread. In their
cottages, they tasted meat only five or six times in a year. Like the
Roman soldiers who found active service a holiday, these boorish
peasants are enchanted by the luxuries of the Seminary.'

Julien never read anything in their lack-lustre eyes beyond the
satisfaction of a bodily need after dinner, and the expectation of a
bodily pleasure before the meal. Such were the people among whom he
must distinguish himself; but what Julien did not know, what they
refrained from telling him, was that to be at the top of the various
classes of dogma, church history, etc., etc., which were studied in
the Seminary, was nothing more in their eyes than a sin of
_vainglory_.  Since Voltaire, since Two Chamber government, which is
at bottom only _distrust and private judgment_, and instils in the
hearts of the people that fatal habit of _want of confidence_, the
Church of France seems to have realised that books are its true
enemies. It is heartfelt submission that is everything in its eyes.
Success in studies, even in sacred studies, is suspect, and with good
reason. What is to prevent the superior man from going over to the
other side, like Sieyes or Gregoire? The trembling Church clings to
the Pope as to her sole chance of salvation. The Pope alone can
attempt to paralyse private judgment, and, by the pious pomps of the
ceremonies of his court, make an impression upon the sick and listless
minds of men and women of the world.

Having half mastered these several truths, which however all the words
uttered in a Seminary tend to deny, Julien fell into a deep
melancholy. He worked hard, and rapidly succeeded in learning things
of great value to a priest, entirely false in his eyes, and in which
he took no interest. He imagined that there was nothing else for him
to do.

'Am I then forgotten by all the world?' he wondered. He little knew
that M. Pirard had received and had flung in the fire several letters
bearing the Dijon postmark, letters in which, despite the most
conventional style and language, the most intense passion was
apparent. Keen remorse seemed to be doing battle with this love. 'So
much the better,' thought the abbe Pirard, 'at least it is not an
irreligious woman that this young man has loved.'

One day, the abbe Pirard opened a letter which seemed to be half
obliterated by tears, it was an eternal farewell. 'At last,' the
writer informed Julien, 'heaven has granted me the grace of hating not
the author of my fault, he will always be dearer to me than anything
in the world, but my fault itself. The sacrifice is made, my friend.
It is not without tears, as you see. The salvation of the beings to
whom I am bound, and whom you have loved so dearly, has prevailed. A
just but terrible God can no longer wreak vengeance upon them for
their mother's crimes. Farewell, Julien, be just towards men.'

This ending to the letter was almost entirely illegible. The writer
gave an address at Dijon, and at the same time hoped that Julien would
never reply, or that at least he would confine himself to language
which a woman restored to the ways of virtue could read without
blushing.

Julien's melancholy, assisted by the indifferent food supplied to the
Seminary by the contractor for dinners at 83 centimes a head, was
beginning to have an effect on his health, when one morning Fouque
suddenly appeared in his room.

'At last I have found my way in. I have come five times to Besancon,
honour bound, to see you. Always a barred door. I posted someone at
the gate of the Seminary; why the devil do you never come out?'

'It is a test which I have set myself.'

'I find you greatly altered. At last I see you again. Two good five
franc pieces have just taught me that I was no better than a fool not
to have offered them on my first visit.'

The conversation between the friends was endless. Julien changed
colour when Fouque said to him:

'Have you heard, by the way? The mother of your pupils has become most
devoutly religious.'

And he spoke with that detached air which makes so singular an
impression on the passionate soul whose dearest interests the speaker
unconsciously destroys.

'Yes, my friend, the most exalted strain of piety. They say that she
makes pilgrimages. But, to the eternal shame of the abbe Maslon, who
has been spying so long upon that poor M. Chelan, Madame de Renal will
have nothing to do with him. She goes to confession at Dijon or
Besancon.'

'She comes to Besancon!' said Julien, his brow flushing.

'Quite often,' replied Fouque with a questioning air.

'Have you any _Constitutionnels_ on you?'

'What's that you say?' replied Fouque.

'I ask you if you have any _Constitutionnels_?' Julien repeated, in a
calmer tone. 'They are sold here for thirty sous a copy.'

'What! Liberals even in the Seminary!' cried Fouque. 'Unhappy France!'
he went on, copying the hypocritical tone and meek accents of the abbe
Maslon.

This visit would have made a profound impression upon our hero, had
not, the very next day, a remark addressed to him by that little
seminarist from Verrieres who seemed such a boy, led him to make an
important discovery.  Ever since he had been in the Seminary, Julien's
conduct had been nothing but a succession of false steps. He laughed
bitterly at himself.

As a matter of fact, the important actions of his life were wisely
ordered; but he paid no attention to details, and the clever people in
a Seminary look only at details. And so he passed already among his
fellow students as a free thinker. He had been betrayed by any number
of trifling actions.

In their eyes he was convicted of this appalling vice, _he thought, he
judged for himself_, instead of blindly following _authority_ and
example. The abbe Pirard had been of no assistance to him; he had not
once uttered a word to him apart from the tribunal of penitence, and
even there he listened rather than spoke. It would have been very
different had Julien chosen the abbe Castanede.

The moment that Julien became aware of his own folly, his interest
revived.  He wished to know the whole extent of the harm, and, with
this object, emerged a little from that haughty and obstinate silence
with which he repulsed his fellows. It was then that they took their
revenge on him. His advances were received with a contempt which went
the length of derision.  He realised that since his entering the
Seminary, not an hour had passed, especially during recreation, that
had not borne some consequence for or against him, had not increased
the number of his enemies, or won him the good will of some seminarist
who was genuinely virtuous or a trifle less boorish than the rest. The
damage to be repaired was immense, the task one of great difficulty.
Thenceforward Julien's attention was constantly on the alert; it was a
case of portraying himself in an entirely new character.

The control of his eyes, for instance, gave him a great deal of
trouble. It is not without reason that in such places they are kept
lowered. 'What was not my presumption at Verrieres!' Julien said to
himself, 'I imagined I was alive; I was only preparing myself for
life; here I am at last in the world, as I shall find it until I have
played out my part, surrounded by real enemies. What an immense
difficulty,' he went on, 'is this incessant hypocrisy! It would put
the labours of Hercules to shame. The Hercules of modern times is
Sixtus V, who for fifteen years on end, by his modesty, deceived
forty Cardinals, who had seen him proud and vigorous in his youth.

'So learning is really nothing here!' he told himself with scorn;
'progress in dogma, in sacred history, and the rest of it, count only
in appearance.  All that is said on that topic is intended to make
fools like myself fall into the trap. Alas, my sole merit consisted in
my rapid progress, in my faculty for grasping all that nonsense. Can
it be that in their hearts they esteem it at its true value; judge of
it as I do?  And I was fool enough to be proud of myself! Those first
places in class which I always obtain have served only to give me
bitter enemies. Chazel, who knows far more than I, always puts into
his compositions some piece of stupidity which sends him down to the
fiftieth place; if he obtains the first, it is when he is not
thinking. Ah! one word, a single word from M. Pirard, how useful it
would have been to me!'

>From the moment in which Julien's eyes were opened, the long exercises
of ascetic piety, such as the Rosary five times weekly, the hymns to
the Sacred Heart, etc., etc., which had seemed to him of such deadly
dullness, became the most interesting actions of his life. Sternly
criticising his own conduct, and seeking above all not to exaggerate
his methods, Julien did not aspire from the first, like the
seminarists who served as models to the rest, to perform at every
moment some _significant_ action, that is to say one which gave proof
of some form of Christian perfection. In Seminaries, there is a way of
eating a boiled egg which reveals the progress one has made in the
godly life.

The reader, who is perhaps smiling, will please to remember all the
mistakes made, in eating an egg, by the abbe Delille when invited to
luncheon by a great lady of the Court of Louis XVI.

Julien sought at first to arrive at the _non culpa_, to wit, the state
of the young seminarist whose gait, his way of moving his arms, eyes,
etc., do not, it is true, indicate anything worldly, but do not yet
show the creature absorbed by the idea of the next life and the
_absolute nullity_ of this.

Everywhere Julien found inscribed in charcoal, on the walls of the
passages, sentences like the following: 'What are sixty years of
trial, set in the balance with an eternity of bliss or an eternity of
boiling oil in hell!' He no longer despised them; he realised that he
must have them always before his eyes. 'What shall I be doing all my
life?' he said to himself; 'I shall be selling the faithful a place in
heaven. How is that place to be made visible to them? By the
difference between my exterior and that of a layman.'

After several months of application kept up at every moment, Julien
still had the air of a _thinker_. His way of moving his eyes and
opening his lips did not reveal an implicit faith ready to believe
everything and to uphold everything, even by martyrdom. It was with
anger that Julien saw himself surpassed in this respect by the most
boorish peasants. They had good reasons for not having the air of
thinkers.

What pains did he not take to arrive at that expression of blind and
fervent faith, which is so frequently to be found in the convents of
Italy, and such perfect examples of which Guercino has bequeathed to
us laymen in his paintings in churches.  [Author's footnote: For
instance, in the Louvre, no. 1130: 'Francis Duke of Aquitaine laying
aside the crown and putting on a monastic habit.']

On the greatest festivals the seminarists were given sausages with
pickled cabbage. Julien's neighbours at table observed that he
remained unmoved by this good fortune; it was one of his first crimes.
His comrades saw in it an odious mark of the most stupid hypocrisy;
nothing made him so many enemies. 'Look at that gentleman, look at
that proud fellow,' they would say, 'pretending to despise our best
ration, sausages with cabbage! The wretched conceit of the damned
fellow!'  He should have refrained as an act of penance from eating
the whole of his portion, and should have made the sacrifice of
saying to some friend, with reference to the pickled cabbage: 'What
is there that man can offer to an All Powerful Being, if it be not
_voluntary suffering_?'

Julien lacked the experience which makes it so easy for us to see
things of this sort.

'Alas! The ignorance of these young peasants, my comrades, is a great
advantage to them,' Julien would exclaim in moments of discouragement.
'When they arrive in the Seminary, the teacher has not to rid them of
the appalling number of worldly thoughts which I brought with me, and
which they read on my face, do what I will.'

Julien studied with an attention that bordered upon envy the more
boorish of the young peasants who arrived at the Seminary. At the
moment when they were stripped of their ratteen jackets to be garbed
in the black cassock, their education was limited to an immense and
unbounded respect for dry and liquid money, as the saying goes in the
Franche-Comte.

It is the sacramental and heroic fashion of expressing the sublime
idea of ready cash.

Happiness, for these seminarists, as for the heroes of Voltaire's
tales, consists first and foremost in dining well. Julien discovered
in almost all of them an innate respect for the man who wears a coat
of _fine cloth_. This sentiment estimates _distributive justice_, as
it is dealt out to us by our courts, at its true worth, indeed below
its true worth. 'What is to be gained,' they would often say among
themselves, 'by going to law with the big?'

'Big' is the word used in the valleys of the Jura to denote a rich
man. One may imagine their respect for the richest party of all: the
Government!

Not to smile respectfully at the mere name of the Prefect is reckoned,
among the peasants of the Franche-Comte, an imprudence; and
imprudence, among the poor, is promptly punished with want of bread.

After having been almost suffocated at first by his sense of scorn,
Julien ended by feeling pity: it had often been the lot of the fathers
of the majority of his comrades to come home on a winter evening to
their cottages, and to find there no bread, no chestnuts, and no
potatoes. 'Is it surprising then,' Julien asked himself, 'if the happy
man, in their eyes, is first of all the man who has just eaten a good
dinner, and after that he who possesses a good coat! My comrades have
a definite vocation; that is to say, they see in the ecclesiastical
calling a long continuation of this happiness: dining well and having
a warm coat in winter.'

Julien happened to hear a young seminarist, endowed with imagination,
say to his companion:

'Why should not I become Pope like Sixtus v, who was a swineherd?'

'They make none but Italians Popes,' replied the friend; 'but they'll
draw lots among us, for sure, to fill places as Vicars-General and
Canons, and perhaps Bishops. M. P---- the Bishop of Chalons, is the
son of a cooper; that is my father's trade.'

One day, in the middle of a lesson in dogma, the abbe Pirard sent for
Julien. The poor young fellow was delighted to escape from the
physical and moral atmosphere in which he was plunged.

Julien found himself greeted by the Director in the manner which had
so frightened him on the day of his joining the Seminary.

'Explain to me what I see written upon this playing card,' he said to
him, looking at him in such a way as to make him wish that the earth
would open and swallow him.

Julien read:

'Amanda Binet, at the Giraffe cafe, before eight o'clock. Say you are
from Genlis, and a cousin of my mother.'

Julien perceived the immensity of the danger; the abbe Castanede's
police had stolen the address from him.

'The day on which I came here,' he replied, gazing at the abbe
Pirard's forehead, for he could not face his terrible eye, 'I was
trembling with fear: M. Chelan had told me that this was a place full
of tale-bearing and spite of all sorts; spying and the accusation of
one's comrades are encouraged here. Such is the will of heaven, to
show life as it is to young priests, and to inspire in them a disgust
with the world and its pomps.'

'And it is to me that you make these fine speeches'--the abbe Pirard
was furious. 'You young rascal!'

'At Verrieres,' Julien went on calmly, 'my brothers used to beat me
when they had any reason to be jealous of me ...'

'To the point! Get to the point!' cried M. Pirard, almost beside
himself.

Without being the least bit in the world intimidated, Julien resumed
his narrative.

'On the day of my coming to Besancon, about noon, I felt hungry, I
went into a cafe. My heart was filled with repugnance for so profane a
spot; but I thought that my luncheon would cost me less there than at
an inn. A lady, who seemed to be the mistress of the place, took pity
on my raw looks.  "Besancon is full of wicked people," she told me, "I
am afraid for you, Sir. If you find yourself in any trouble, come to
me, send a message to me before eight o'clock. If the porters at the
Seminary refuse to take your message, say that you are my cousin, and
come from Genlis ..."'

'All this farrago will have to be investigated,' exclaimed the abbe
Pirard who, unable to remain in one place, was striding up and down
the room.

'You will go back to your cell!'

The abbe accompanied Julien and locked him in. He himself at once
proceeded to examine his trunk, in the bottom of which the fatal card
had been carefully concealed. Nothing was missing from the trunk, but
several things had been disarranged; and yet the key never left his
possession. 'How fortunate,' Julien said to himself, 'that during the
time of my blindness I never made use of the permission to leave the
building, which M. Castanede so frequently offered me with a
generosity which I now understand.  Perhaps I might have been so
foolish as to change my clothes and pay the fair Amanda a visit, I
should have been ruined. When they despaired of making any use of
their information in that way, so as not to waste it they have used it
to denounce me.

A couple of hours later, the Director sent for him.

'You have not lied,' he said to him, looking at him less severely;
'but to keep such an address is an imprudence the serious nature of
which you cannot conceive. Unhappy boy! In ten years, perhaps, it will
redound to your hurt.'




CHAPTER 27
First Experience of Life


  The present moment, by God! is the ark of the Lord.
  Woe betide the man who lays his hand upon it.
    DIDEROT

The reader will kindly excuse our giving but few clear and precise
details of this epoch in Julien's life. Not that we lack them, far
from it; but perhaps the life he led in the Seminary is too black for
the modest colouring which we have sought to preserve in these pages.
People who have been made to suffer by certain things cannot be
reminded of them without a horror which paralyses every other
pleasure, even that to be found in reading a story.

Julien met with little success in his attempts at hypocrisy in action;
he passed through moments of disgust and even of complete
discouragement. He was utterly unsuccessful, and that moreover in a
vile career. The slightest help from without would have sufficed to
restore his morale, the difficulty to be overcome was not great; but
he was alone, as lonely as a vessel abandoned in mid-ocean. 'And if I
should succeed,' he said to himself; 'to have to spend my whole life
in such evil company! Gluttons who think of nothing but the ham
omelette they are going to devour at dinner, or men like the abbe
Castanede, to whom no crime is too black! They will rise to power; but
at what a price, great God!

'Man's will is powerful, I see it written everywhere; but is it
sufficiently so to overcome such repulsion? The task of great men has
always been easy; however terrible was their danger, it was beautiful
in their eyes; and who but myself can realise the ugliness of all that
surrounds me?'

This was the most trying moment in his life. It was so easy for him to
enlist in one of the fine regiments that were stationed at Besancon!
He might become a teacher of Latin; he wanted so little to keep
himself alive!  But then, no career, no future for his imagination: it
was a living death.  Here is a detailed account of one of his wretched
days.

'My presumption has so often flattered itself upon my being different
from the other young peasants! Well, I have lived long enough to see
that difference breeds hatred,' he said to himself one morning. This
great truth had just been revealed to him by one of his most annoying
failures. He had laboured for a week to make himself agreeable to a
student who lived in the odour of sanctity. He was walking with him in
the courtyard, listening submissively to idiocies that sent him to
sleep as he walked. Suddenly a storm broke, the thunder growled, and
the saintly student exclaimed, thrusting him rudely away:

'Listen, each for himself in this world, I have no wish to be struck
by lightning: God may blast you as an infidel, another Voltaire.'

His teeth clenched with rage and his eyes opened towards the sky
furrowed by streaks of lightning: 'I should deserve to be submerged,
were I to let myself sleep during the storm!' cried Julien. 'Let us
attempt the conquest of some other drudge.'

The bell rang for the abbe Castanede's class of sacred history.

These young peasants who lived in such fear of the hard toil and
poverty of their fathers, were taught that day by the abbe Castanede
that that being so terrible in their eyes, the Government, had no real
or legitimate power save what was delegated to it by God's Vicar on
Earth.

'Render yourselves worthy of the Pope's bounties by the sanctity of
your lives, by your obedience, be like a rod in his hands,' he went
on, 'and you will attain to a superb position where you will be in
supreme command, under no man's control; a permanent position, of
which the Government pays one third of the emoluments, and the
faithful, roused by your preaching, the other two thirds.'

On leaving his classroom, M. Castanede stopped in the courtyard.

'You may well say of a cure, each man gets what he deserves,' he said
to the students who gathered round him. 'I myself have known mountain
parishes where the fees came to more than those of many town cures.
There was as much in money, not to speak of the fat capons, eggs,
fresh butter, and endless little delicacies; and there the cure takes
the first place without challenge: no good meal to which he is not
invited, made much of,' etc.

No sooner had M. Castanede gone up to his own room, than the students
divided into groups. Julien belonged to none of these; they drew away
from him as from a tainted wether. In each of the groups, he saw a
student toss a copper in the air, and if he guessed head or tail
aright, his companions concluded that he would soon have one of these
livings with fat fees.

Stories followed. One young priest, barely a year in orders, having
presented a domestic rabbit to an old cure's servant, had got the cure
to ask for him as his assistant, and a few months afterwards, for the
cure had died almost immediately, had succeeded him in a good living.
Another had managed to have his name put forward for the eventual
succession to the curacy of a prosperous country town, by attending
all the meals of the paralytic old cure and carving his chickens for
him gracefully.

The seminarists, like young men in every profession, exaggerated the
effect of these little stratagems when they were out of the ordinary
and struck the imagination.

'I must,' thought Julien, 'take part in these conversations.' When
they were not discussing sausages and rich livings, their talk ran on
the worldly side of ecclesiastical teaching; the differences between
Bishops and Prefects, mayors and cures. Julien saw lurking in their
minds the idea of a second God, but of a God far more to be feared and
far more powerful than the first; this second God was the Pope. It was
said, but with lowered voice, and when the speaker was quite certain
of not being overheard by M. Pirard, that if the Pope did not take
the trouble to appoint all the Prefects and all the mayors in France,
it was because he had delegated the King of France for that duty, by
naming him the Eldest Son of the Church.

It was about this time that Julien thought he might derive some
benefit from his admiration for M. de Maistre's book on the Pope. He
did, as a matter of fact, astonish his fellow-students; but this was a
fresh misfortune. He annoyed them by expressing their opinions better
than they could themselves. M. Chelan had been a rash counsellor for
Julien as he had been for himself. After training him to the habit of
reasoning accurately and not letting himself be taken in by vain
words, he had omitted to tell him that in a person of little repute
this habit is a crime; for sound reasoning always gives offence.

Julien's fine speech was therefore only another crime against him. His
companions, being compelled to think about him, succeeded in finding
two words to express all the horror with which he filled them: they
nicknamed him Martin Luther; 'chiefly,' they said, 'because of that
infernal logic of which he is so proud.'

Several young seminarists had fresher complexions and might be
reckoned better looking than Julien; but he had white hands, and could
not hide certain habits of personal cleanliness. This distinction was
none at all in the grim dwelling into which destiny had cast him. The
unclean peasants among whom he lived declared that he had extremely
lax morals. We are afraid to tire the reader by an account of our
hero's endless mishaps. To take one instance, the more vigorous among
his companions tried to make a practice of thrashing him; he was
obliged to arm himself with a metal compass and to inform them, but
only by signs, that he would use it. Signs cannot be represented, in a
spy's report, so damningly as words.




CHAPTER 28
A Procession


  All hearts were moved. God's presence seemed to have come down
  into these narrow, gothic streets, decked on every side, and
  strewn with sand through the good offices of the faithful.
    YOUNG [Tr. footnote:  As in Chapter 26 I have left this motto
    in French.  It seems, however, to be taken from Arthur Young
    rather and Edward. C. K. S. M.]

In vain might Julien make himself small and foolish, he could not give
satisfaction, he was too different. 'And yet,' he said to himself,
'all these Professors are men of great discernment, and picked men,
each of them one in a thousand; how is it they do not like my
humility?' One alone seemed to him to be taking advantage of his
readiness to believe anything and to appear taken in by everything.
This was the abbe Chas-Bernard, Master of Ceremonies at the Cathedral,
where, for the last fifteen years, he had been kept in hopes of a
Canonry; in the meantime, he taught sacred eloquence at the Seminary.
In the period of his blindness, this class was one of those in which
Julien most regularly came out at the top. The abbe Chas had been led
by this to show a partiality for him, and, at the end of his class,
would gladly take his arm for a turn in the garden.

'What can his object be?' Julien asked himself. He found with
amazement that, for hours on end, the abbe talked to him of the
ornaments which the Cathedral possessed. It had seventeen apparelled
chasubles, apart from the vestments worn at requiems. They had great
hopes of President de Rubempre's widow; this lady, who was ninety
years old, had preserved for at least seventy of those years her
wedding garments of superb Lyons stuffs, figured in gold. 'Just
imagine, my friend,' said the abbe Chas coming to a standstill and
opening his eyes wide, 'these stuffs stand by themselves, there is so
much gold in them. It is common opinion in Besancon that, under the
Presidente's will, the treasury of the Cathedral will be enriched with
more than ten chasubles, not to mention four or five copes for the
greater feasts. I will go farther,' the abbe Chas added, lowering his
voice. 'I have good reason to think that the Presidente will bequeath
to us eight magnificent silver-gilt candlesticks, which are supposed
to have been bought in Italy, by the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the
Bold, whose favourite minister was an ancestor of hers.'

'But what is this man really aiming at behind all this frippery?'
Julien wondered. 'This careful preparation has been going on for an
age, and nothing comes of it. He must have singularly little faith in
me! He is cleverer than any of the others, whose secret purposes one
can see so plainly after a fortnight. I understand, this man's
ambition has been in torment for fifteen years.'

One evening, in the middle of the armed drill, Julien was sent for by
the abbe Pirard, who said to him:

'Tomorrow is the feast of Corpus Christi. M. l'abbe Chas-Bernard
requires you to help him to decorate the Cathedral; go and obey.'

The abbe Pirard called him back, and added, in a tone of compassion:

'It is for you to decide whether you wish to seize the opportunity of
taking a stroll through the town.'

'_Incedo per ignes_,' replied Julien: which is to say, I am treading on
dangerous ground.

Next morning at daybreak, Julien made his way to the Cathedral,
walking with lowered eyes. The sight of the streets and the activity
which was beginning to pervade the town did him good. On every side
people were draping the fronts of their houses for the procession. All
the time that he had spent in the Seminary seemed to him no more than
an instant. His thoughts were at Vergy, and with that charming Amanda
Binet, whom he might meet, for her cafe was but little out of his way.
He saw in the distance the abbe Chas-Bernard, standing by the door of
his beloved Cathedral; he was a large man with a joyful countenance
and an open air. This morning he was triumphant: 'I have been waiting
for you, my dear son,' he called out, as soon as he caught sight of
Julien, 'you are welcome. Our labours this day will be long and hard,
let us fortify ourselves with an early breakfast; the other we shall
take at ten o'clock during high mass.'

'I desire, Sir,' Julien said to him with an air of gravity, 'not to be
left alone for a moment; kindly observe,' he added, pointing to the
clock above their heads, 'that I have arrived at one minute before
five.'

'Ah! So you are afraid of those young rascals at the Seminary! It is
too kind of you to give them a thought,' said the abbe Chas; 'is a
road any the worse, because there are thorns in the hedges on either
side of it? The traveller goes his way and leaves the wicked thorns to
wither where they are. However, we must to work, my dear friend, to
work.'

The abbe Chas had been right in saying that their labours would be
hard.  There had been a great funeral service in the Cathedral the day
before; it had been impossible to make any preparations; they were
obliged, therefore, in the course of the morning, to drape each of the
gothic pillars which separate the nave from the aisles in a sort of
jacket of red damask which rose to a height of thirty feet. The Bishop
had ordered four decorators from Paris by mail coach, but these
gentlemen could not do everything themselves, and so far from
encouraging the awkward efforts of their Bisontine colleagues they
increased their awkwardness by laughing at it.

Julien saw that he would have to go up the ladders himself, his
agility stood him in good stead. He undertook to direct the local
decorators in person. The abbe Chas was in ecstasies as he watched him
spring from one ladder to another. When all the pillars were hung with
damask, the next thing was to go and place five enormous bunches of
plumes on top of the great baldachino, over the high altar. A richly
gilded wooden crown was supported on eight great twisted columns of
Italian marble. But, in order to reach the centre of the baldachino,
over the tabernacle, one had to step across an old wooden cornice,
possibly worm-eaten, and forty feet from the ground.

The sight of this perilous ascent had extinguished the gaiety, so
brilliant until then, of the Parisian decorators; they looked at it
from beneath, discussed it volubly, and did not go up. Julien took
possession of the bunches of plumes, and ran up the ladder. He
arranged them admirably upon the ornament in the form of a crown in
the centre of the baldachino. As he stepped down from the ladder, the
abbe Chas-Bernard took him in his arms.

'_Optime_!' exclaimed the worthy priest, 'I shall tell Monseigneur of
this.'

Their ten o'clock breakfast was a merry feast. Never had the abbe Chas
seen his church looking so well.

'My dear disciple,' he said to Julien, 'my mother used to hire out
chairs in this venerable fane, so that I was brought up in this great
edifice.  Robespierre's Terror ruined us; but, at eight years old, as
I then was, I was already serving masses in private houses, and
their owners gave me my dinner on mass days. No one could fold a
chasuble better than I, the gold braid was never broken. Since the
restoration of the Faith by Napoleon, it has been my happy lot to
take charge of everything in this venerable mother church. On five
days in the year, my eyes behold it decked out with these beautiful
ornaments. But never has it been so resplendent, never have the damask
strips been so well hung as they are today, have they clung so to the
pillars.'

'At last, he is going to tell me his secret,' thought Julien, 'here he
is talking to me of himself; he is beginning to expand.' But nothing
imprudent was said by this man, evidently in an excited state. 'And
yet he has worked hard, he is happy,' Julien said to himself, 'the
good wine has not been spared. What a man! What an example for me! He
takes the prize.' (This was a low expression which he had picked up
from the old surgeon.)

When the Sanctus bell rang during high mass, Julien wished to put on a
surplice so as to follow the Bishop in the superb procession.

'And the robbers, my friend, the robbers!' cried the abbe Chas, 'you
forget them. The procession is going out; the church will be left
empty; we must keep watch, you and I. We shall be fortunate if we lose
only a couple of ells of that fine braid which goes round the base of
the pillars. That is another gift from Madame de Rubempre; it comes
from the famous Count, her great-grandfather; it is pure gold, my
friend,' the abbe went on, whispering in his ear, and with an air of
evident exaltation, 'nothing false about it! I entrust to you the
inspection of the north aisle, do not stir from it. I keep for myself
the south aisle and nave. Keep an eye on the confessionals; it is
there that the robbers' women spies watch for the moment when our
backs are turned.'

As he finished speaking, the quarter before twelve struck, at once the
big bell began to toll. It was being pulled with all the ringers'
might; the rich and solemn sound stirred Julien deeply. His
imagination rose from the ground.

The odour of the incense and of the rose leaves strewn before the
Blessed Sacrament by children dressed as little Saint Johns,
intensified his excitement.

The sober note of the bell ought to have suggested to Julien only the
thought of the work of a score of men earning fifty centimes, and
assisted perhaps by fifteen or twenty of the faithful. He ought to
have thought of the wear and tear of the ropes, of the timber, of the
danger from the bell itself which fell every two hundred years, and to
have planned some way of diminishing the wage of the ringers, or of
paying them with some indulgence or other favour drawn from the
spiritual treasury of the Church, with no strain upon her purse.

In place of these sage reflections, Julien's soul, excited by these
rich and virile sounds, was straying through imaginary space. Never
will he make either a good priest or a great administrator. Souls that
are moved thus are capable at most of producing an artist. Here
Julien's presumption breaks out in the full light of day. Fifty,
perhaps, of his fellow seminarists, made attentive to the realities of
life by the public hatred and Jacobinism which, they are told, is
lurking behind every hedge, on hearing the big bell of the Cathedral,
would have thought only of the wages paid to the ringers.  They would
have applied the genius of a Bareme to determine the question whether
the degree of emotion aroused in the public was worth the money given
to the ringers. Had Julien chosen to give his mind to the material
interests of the Cathedral, his imagination flying beyond its goal
would have thought of saving forty francs for the Chapter, and would
have let slip the opportunity of avoiding an outlay of twenty-five
centimes.

While, in the most perfect weather ever seen, the procession wound its
way slowly through Besancon, and halted at the glittering stations
which all the local authorities had vied with one another in erecting,
the church remained wrapped in a profound silence. A suffused light,
an agreeable coolness reigned in it; it was still balmy with the
fragrance of flowers and incense.

The silence, the profound solitude, the coolness of the long aisles,
made Julien's musings all the sweeter. He had no fear of being
disturbed by the abbe Chas, who was occupied in another part of the
building. His soul had almost quitted its mortal envelope, which was
strolling at a slow pace along the north aisle committed to his
charge. He was all the more at rest, since he was certain that there
was nobody in the confessionals save a few devout women; he saw
without observing.

His distraction was nevertheless half conquered by the sight of two
women extremely well dressed who were kneeling, one of them in a
confessional, the other, close beside her, upon a chair. He saw
without observing them; at the same time, whether from a vague sense
of his duty, or from admiration of the plain but noble attire of these
ladies, he remarked that there was no priest in that confessional. 'It
is strange,' he thought, 'that these beautiful ladies are not kneeling
before some station, if they are religious; or placed in good seats in
the front of some balcony, if they are fashionable. How well cut that
gown is! What grace!' He slackened his pace in order to see their
faces.

The one who was kneeling in the confessional turned her head slightly
on hearing the sound of Julien's step amid the prevailing silence. All
at once she gave a little cry, and fainted.

As her strength left her, this kneeling lady fell back; her friend,
who was close at hand, hastened to the rescue. At the same time Julien
caught sight of the shoulders of the lady who had fallen back. A rope
of large seed pearls, well known to him, caught his eye. What was his
state when he recognised the hair of Madame de Renal! It was she. The
lady who was trying to hold up her head, and to arrest her fall, was
Madame Derville. Julien, beside himself with emotion, sprang forward;
Madame de Renal's fall would perhaps have brought down her friend if
he had not supported them. He saw Madame de Renal's head, pale,
absolutely devoid of consciousness, drooping upon her shoulder. He
helped Madame Derville to prop that charming head against the back of
a straw chair; he was on his knees.

Madame Derville turned and recognised him.

'Fly, Sir, fly!' she said to him in accents of the most burning anger.
'On no account must she see you again. The sight of you must indeed
fill her with horror, she was so happy before you came! Your behaviour
is atrocious.  Fly; be off with you, if you have any shame left.'

This speech was uttered with such authority, and Julien felt so weak
at the moment, that he withdrew. 'She always hated me,' he said to
himself, thinking of Madame Derville.

At that moment, the nasal chant of the leading priests in the
procession rang through the church; the procession was returning. The
abbe Chas-Bernard called repeatedly to Julien, who at first did not
hear him: finally he came and led him by the arm from behind a pillar
where Julien had taken refuge more dead than alive. He wished to
present him to the Bishop.

'You are feeling unwell, my child,' said the abbe, seeing him so pale
and almost unable to walk; 'you have been working too hard.' The abbe
gave him his arm. 'Come, sit down here, on the sacristan's little
stool, behind me; I shall screen you.' They were now by the side of
the main door. 'Calm yourself, we have still a good twenty minutes
before Monseigneur appears.  Try to recover yourself; when he passes,
I shall hold you up, for I am strong and vigorous, in spite of my
age.'

But when the Bishop passed, Julien was so tremulous that the abbe Chas
abandoned the idea of presenting him.

'Do not worry yourself about it,' he told him, 'I shall find another
opportunity.'

That evening, he sent down to the chapel of the Seminary ten pounds of
candles, saved, he said, by Julien's efforts and the rapidity with
which he extinguished them. Nothing could have been farther from the
truth. The poor boy was himself extinguished; he had not had a thought
in his head after seeing Madame de Renal.




CHAPTER 29
The First Step


  He knew his times, he knew his departement, and he is rich.
    _Le Precurseur_

Julien had not yet recovered from the profound abstraction in which
the incident in the Cathedral had plunged him, when one morning the
grim abbe Pirard sent for him.

'Here is M. l'abbe Chas-Bernard writing to me to commend you. I am
quite satisfied with your conduct as a whole. You are extremely
imprudent and indeed stupid, without showing it; however, up to the
present your heart is sound and even generous; your intellect is above
the average. Taking you all in all, I see a spark in you which must
not be neglected.

'After fifteen years of labour, I am on the eve of leaving this
establishment: my crime is that of having allowed the seminarists to
use their own judgment, and of having neither protected nor unmasked
that secret society of which you have spoken to me at the stool of
penitence.  Before I go, I wish to do something for you; I should have
acted two months ago, for you deserve it, but for the accusation based
upon the address of Amanda Binet, which was found in your possession.
I appoint you tutor in the New and Old Testaments.'

Julien, in a transport of gratitude, quite thought of falling on his
knees and thanking God; but he yielded to a more genuine impulse. He
went up to the abbe Pirard and took his hand, which he raised to his
lips.

'What is this?' cried the Director in a tone of annoyance; but
Julien's eyes were even more eloquent than his action.

The abbe Pirard gazed at him in astonishment, like a man who, in the
course of long years, has fallen out of the way of meeting with
delicate emotions. This attention pierced the Director's armour; his
voice changed.

'Ah, well! Yes, my child, I am attached to you. Heaven knows that it
is entirely against my will. I ought to be just, and to feel neither
hatred nor love for anyone. Your career will be difficult. I see in
you something that offends the common herd. Jealousy and calumny will
pursue you. In whatever place Providence may set you, your companions
will never set eyes on you without hating you; and if they pretend to
love you, it will be in order to betray you the more surely. For this
there is but one remedy: have recourse only to God, who has given you,
to punish you for your presumption, this necessity of being hated; let
your conduct be pure; that is the sole resource that I can see for
you. If you hold fast to the truth with an invincible embrace, sooner
or later your enemies will be put to confusion."

It was so long since Julien had heard a friendly voice, that we must
forgive him a weakness: he burst into tears. The abbe Pirard opened
his arms to embrace him; the moment was very precious to them both.

Julien was wild with joy; this promotion was the first that he had
obtained; the advantages were immense. In order to realise them, one
must have been condemned to pass whole months without a moment's
solitude, and in immediate contact with companions at best tiresome,
and mostly intolerable. Their shouts alone would have been enough to
create disorder in a sensitive organism. The boisterous joy of these
peasants well fed and well dressed, could find expression, thought
itself complete only when they were shouting with the full force of
their lungs.

Now Julien dined by himself, or almost so, an hour later than the rest
of the seminarists. He had a key to the garden, and might walk there
at the hours when it was empty.

Greatly to his surprise, Julien noticed that they hated him less; he
had been expecting, on the contrary, an intensification of their
hatred. That secret desire that no one should speak to him, which was
all too apparent and had made him so many enemies, was no longer a
sign of absurd pride. In the eyes of the coarse beings among whom he
lived, it was a proper sense of his own dignity. Their hatred
diminished perceptibly, especially among the youngest of his
companions, now become his pupils, whom he treated with great
courtesy. In course of time he had even supporters; it became bad form
to call him Martin Luther.

But why speak of his friends, his enemies? It is all so ugly, and all
the more ugly, the more accurately it is drawn from life. These are
however the only teachers of ethics that the people have, and without
them where should we be? Will the newspaper ever manage to take the
place of the parish priest?

Since Julien's promotion, the Director of the Seminary made a point of
never speaking to him except in the presence of witnesses. This was
only prudent, in the master's interest as well as the pupil's; but
more than anything else it was a test. The stern Jansenist Pirard's
invariable principle was: 'Has a man any merit in your eyes? Place an
obstacle in the way of everything that he desires, everything that he
undertakes. If his merit be genuine, he will certainly be able to
surmount or thrust aside your obstacles.'

It was the hunting season. Fouque took it into his head to send to the
Seminary a stag and a boar in the name of Julien's family. The dead
animals were left lying in the passage, between kitchen and refectory.
There all the seminarists saw them on their way to dinner. They
aroused much interest. The boar, although stone dead, frightened the
younger boys; they fingered his tusks. Nothing else was spoken of for
a week.

This present, which classified Julien's family in the section of
society that one must respect, dealt a mortal blow to jealousy. It was
a form of superiority consecrated by fortune. Chazel and the most
distinguished of the seminarists made overtures to him, and almost
complained to him that he had not warned them of his parents' wealth,
and had thus betrayed them into showing a want of respect for money.

There was a conscription from which Julien was exempt in his capacity
as a seminarist. This incident moved him deeply. 'And so there has
passed now for ever the moment at which, twenty years ago, a heroic
life would have begun for me!'

Walking by himself in the Seminary garden, he overheard a conversation
between two masons who were at work upon the enclosing wall.

'Ah, well! One will have to go, here's another conscription.'

In the _other man's_ days, well and good! A stone mason became an
officer, and became a general, that has been known.'

'Look what it's like now! Only the beggars go. A man with the
_wherewithal_ stays at home.'

'The man who is born poor stays poor, and that's all there is to it.'

'Tell me, now, is it true what people say, that the other is dead?'
put in a third mason.

'It's the big ones who say that, don't you see? They were afraid of
the other.'

'What a difference, how well everything went in his time! And to think
that he was betrayed by his Marshals! There must always be a traitor
somewhere!'

This conversation comforted Julien a little. As he walked away he
repeated to himself with a sigh:

'The only King whose memory the people cherish still!'

The examinations came round. Julien answered the questions in a
brilliant manner; he saw that Chazel himself was seeking to display
the whole extent of his knowledge.

On the first day, the examiners appointed by the famous Vicar-General
de Frilair greatly resented having always to place first, or at the
very most second on their list this Julien Sorel who had been pointed
out to them as the favourite of the abbe Pirard. Wagers were made in
the Seminary that in the aggregate list of the examinations, Julien
would occupy the first place, a distinction that carried with it the
honour of dining with the Bishop. But at the end of one session, in
which the subject had been the Fathers of the Church, a skilful
examiner, after questioning Julien upon Saint Jerome, and his passion
for Cicero, began to speak of Horace, Virgil and other profane
authors. Unknown to his companions, Julien had learned by heart a
great number of passages from these authors. Carried away by his
earlier successes, he forgot where he was and, at the repeated request
of the examiner, recited and paraphrased with enthusiasm several odes
of Horace. Having let him sink deeper and deeper for twenty minutes,
suddenly the examiner's face changed, and he delivered a stinging
rebuke to Julien for having wasted his time in these profane studies,
and stuffed his head with useless if not criminal thoughts.

'I am a fool, Sir, and you are right,' said Julien with a modest air,
as he saw the clever stratagem by which he had been taken in.

This ruse on the examiner's part was considered a dirty trick, even in
the Seminary, though this did not prevent M. l'abbe de Frilair, that
clever man, who had so ably organised the framework of the Bisontine
_Congregation_, and whose reports to Paris made judges, prefect, and
even the general officers of the garrison tremble, from setting, with
his powerful hand, the number 198 against Julien's name. He was
delighted thus to mortify his enemy, the Jansenist Pirard.

For the last ten years his great ambition had been to remove Pirard
from control of the Seminary. That cleric, following in his own
conduct the principles which he had outlined to Julien, was sincere,
devout, innocent of intrigue, devoted to his duty. But heaven, in its
wrath, had given him that splenetic temperament, bound to feel deeply
insults and hatred. Not one of the affronts that were put upon him was
lost upon his ardent spirit.  He would have offered his resignation a
hundred times, but he believed that he was of use in the post in which
Providence had placed him. 'I prevent the spread of Jesuitry and
idolatry,' he used to say to himself.

At the time of the examinations, it was perhaps two months since he
had spoken to Julien, and yet he was ill for a week, when, on
receiving the official letter announcing the result of the
competition, he saw the number 198 set against the name of that pupil
whom he regarded as the glory of his establishment. The only
consolation for this stern character was to concentrate upon Julien
all the vigilance at his command. He was delighted to find in him
neither anger nor thoughts of revenge, nor discouragement.

Some weeks later, Julien shuddered on receiving a letter; it bore the
Paris postmark. 'At last,' he thought, 'Madame de Renal has remembered
her promises.' A gentleman who signed himself Paul Sorel, and
professed to be related to him, sent him a bill of exchange for five
hundred francs. The writer added that if Julien continued to study
with success the best Latin authors, a similar sum would be sent to
him every year.

'It is she, it is her bounty!' Julien said to himself with emotion,
'she wishes to comfort me; but why is there not one word of
affection?'

He was mistaken with regard to the letter; Madame de Renal, under the
influence of her friend Madame Derville, was entirely absorbed in her
own profound remorse. In spite of herself, she often thought of the
strange creature whose coming into her life had so upset it, but she
would never have dreamed of writing to him.

If we spoke the language of the Seminary, we might see a miracle in
this windfall of five hundred francs, and say that it was M. de
Frilair himself that heaven had employed to make this gift to Julien.

Twelve years earlier, M. l'abbe de Frilair had arrived at Besancon with
the lightest of portmanteaux, which, the story went, contained his
entire fortune. He now found himself one of the wealthiest landowners
in the Department. In the course of his growing prosperity he had
purchased one half of an estate of which the other half passed by
inheritance to M. de La Mole. Hence a great lawsuit between these
worthies.

Despite his brilliant existence in Paris, and the posts which he held
at court, the Marquis de La Mole felt that it was dangerous to fight
down at Besancon against a Vicar-General who was reputed to make and
unmake Prefects. Instead of asking for a gratuity of fifty thousand
francs, disguised under some head or other that would pass in the
budget, and allowing M. de Frilair to win this pettifogging action for
fifty thousand francs, the Marquis took offence. He believed that he
had a case: a fine reason!

For, if we may be so bold as to say it: what judge is there who has
not a son, or at least a cousin to help on in the world?

To enlighten the less clear-sighted, a week after the first judgment
that he obtained, M. l'abbe de Frilair took the Bishop's carriage, and
went in person to convey the Cross of the Legion of Honour to his
counsel. M. de La Mole, somewhat dismayed by the bold front assumed by
the other side, and feeling that his own counsel were weakening, asked
the advice of the abbe Chelan, who put him in touch with M. Pirard.

At the date of our story they had been corresponding thus for some
years.  The abbe Pirard dashed into the business with all the force of
his passionate nature. In constant communication with the Marquis's
counsel, he studied his case, and finding him to be in the right,
openly declared himself a partisan of the Marquis de La Mole against
the all powerful Vicar-General. The latter was furious at such
insolence, and coming from a little Jansenist to boot!

'You see what these court nobles are worth who claim to have such
power!' the abbe de Frilair would say to his intimates; 'M. de La Mole
has not sent so much as a wretched Cross to his agent at Besancon, and
is going to allow him to be deprived of his post without a murmur. And
yet, my friends write to me, this noble peer never allows a week to
pass without going to show off his blue riband in the drawing-room of
the Keeper of the Seals, for what that is worth.'

In spite of all M. Pirard's activity, and albeit M. de La Mole was
always on the best of terms with the Minister of Justice and still
more with his officials, all that he had been able to achieve, after
six years of constant effort, was to avoid actually losing his case.

In ceaseless correspondence with the abbe Pirard, over an affair which
they both pursued with passion, the Marquis came in time to appreciate
the abbe's type of mind. Gradually, despite the immense gulf between
their social positions, their correspondence took on a tone of
friendship. The abbe Pirard told the Marquis that his enemies were
seeking to oblige him, by their insults, to offer his resignation. In
the anger which he felt at the infamous stratagem (according to him)
employed against Julien, he related the latter's story to the Marquis.

Although extremely rich, this great nobleman was not in the least a
miser.  He had never once been able to make the abbe Pirard accept so
much as the cost of postage occasioned by the lawsuit. He took the
opportunity to send five hundred francs to the abbe's favourite pupil.

M. de La Mole took the trouble to write the covering letter with his
own hand. This set him thinking of the abbe.

One day the latter received a short note in which he was requested to
call at once, upon urgent business, at an inn on the outskirts of
Besancon.  There he found M. de La Mole's steward.

'M. le Marquis has instructed me to bring you his carriage,' he was
informed. 'He hopes that after you have read this letter, you will
find it convenient to start for Paris, in four or five days from now.
I am going to employ the time which you will be so kind as to indicate
to me in visiting the estates of M. le Marquis in the Franche-Comte.
After which, on whatever day suits you, we shall start for Paris.'

The letter was brief:

'Rid yourself, my dear Sir, of all these provincial bickerings, come
and breathe a calmer air in Paris. I am sending you my carriage, which
has orders to await your decision for four days.  I shall wait for you
myself, in Paris, until Tuesday. It requires only the word yes, from
you, Sir, to make me accept in your name one of the best livings in
the neighbourhood of Paris. The wealthiest of your future parishioners
has never set eyes on you, but is devoted to you more warmly than you
can suppose; he is the Marquis de La Mole.'

Without knowing it, the stern abbe Pirard loved this Seminary, peopled
with his enemies, to which, for fifteen years, he had devoted all his
thoughts.  M. de La Mole's letter was to him like the sudden
appearance of a surgeon with the duty of performing a painful but
necessary operation. His dismissal was certain. He gave the steward an
appointment, in three days' time.

For the next forty-eight hours, he was in a fever of uncertainty.
Finally, he wrote to M. de La Mole and composed, for the Bishop's
benefit, a letter, a masterpiece of ecclesiastical diction, though a
trifle long. It would have been difficult to find language more
irreproachable, or breathing a more sincere respect. And yet this
letter, intended to give M. de Frilair a trying hour with his patron,
enumerated all the serious grounds for complaint and descended to the
sordid little pinpricks which, after he had borne them, with
resignation, for six years, were forcing the abbe Pirard to leave the
diocese.

They stole the wood from his shed, they poisoned his dog, etc., etc.

This letter written, he sent to awaken Julien who, at eight o'clock in
the evening, was already asleep, as were all the seminarists.

'You know where the Bishop's Palace is?' he said to him in the best
Latin; 'take this letter to Monseigneur. I shall not attempt to
conceal from you that I am sending you amongst wolves. Be all eyes and
ears. No prevarication in your answers; but remember that the man who
is questioning you would perhaps take a real delight in trying to harm
you. I am glad, my child, to give you this experience before I leave
you, for I do not conceal from you that the letter which you are
taking contains my resignation.'

Julien did not move; he was fond of the abbe Pirard. In vain might
prudence warn him:

'After this worthy man's departure, the Sacred Heart party will
degrade and perhaps even expel me.'

He could not think about himself. What embarrassed him was a sentence
which he wished to cast in a polite form, but really he was incapable
of using his mind.

'Well, my friend, aren't you going?'

'You see, Sir, they say,' Julien began timidly, 'that during your long
administration here, you have never put anything aside. I have six
hundred francs.'

Tears prevented him from continuing.

'That too will be noticed,' said the ex-Director of the Seminary
coldly.  'Go to the Palace, it is getting late.'

As luck would have it, that evening M. l'abbe de Frilair was in
attendance in the Bishop's parlour; Monseigneur was dining at the
Prefecture. So that it was to M. de Frilair himself that Julien gave
the letter, but he did not know who he was.

Julien saw with astonishment that this priest boldly opened the letter
addressed to the Bishop. The fine features of the Vicar-General soon
revealed a surprise mingled with keen pleasure, and his gravity
increased.  While he was reading, Julien, struck by his good looks,
had time to examine him. It was a face that would have had more
gravity but for the extreme subtlety that appeared in certain of its
features, and would actually have suggested dishonesty, if the owner
of that handsome face had ceased for a moment to control it. The nose,
which was extremely prominent, formed an unbroken and perfectly
straight line, and gave unfortunately to a profile that otherwise was
most distinguished, an irremediable resemblance to the mask of a fox.
In addition, this abbe who seemed so greatly interested in M. Pirard's
resignation, was dressed with an elegance that greatly pleased Julien,
who had never seen its like on any other priest.

It was only afterwards that Julien learned what was the abbe de
Frilair's special talent. He knew how to amuse his Bishop, a pleasant
old man, made to live in Paris, who regarded Besancon as a place of
exile. This Bishop was extremely short-sighted, and passionately fond
of fish. The abbe de Frilair used to remove the bones from the fish
that was set before Monseigneur.

Julien was silently watching the abbe as he read over again the letter
of resignation, when suddenly the door burst open. A lackey, richly
attired, passed rapidly through the room. Julien had barely time to
turn towards the door; he saw a little old man, wearing a pectoral
cross. He fell on his knees: the Bishop bestowed a kind smile upon him
as he passed through the room. The handsome abbe followed him, and
Julien was left alone in this parlour, the pious magnificence of which
he could now admire at his leisure.

The Bishop of Besancon, a man of character, tried, but not crushed by
the long hardships of the Emigration, was more than seventy-five, and
cared infinitely little about what might happen in the next ten years.

'Who is that clever-looking seminarist, whom I seemed to see as I
passed?' said the Bishop. 'Ought they not, by my orders, to be in
their beds at this hour?'

'This one is quite wide awake, I assure you, Monseigneur, and he brings
great news: the resignation of the only Jansenist left in your
diocese.  That terrible abbe Pirard understands at last the meaning of
a hint.'

'Well,' said the Bishop with a laugh, 'I defy you to fill his place
with a man of his quality. And to show you the value of the man, I
invite him to dine with me tomorrow.'

The Vicar-General wished to insinuate a few words as to the choice of
a successor. The prelate, little disposed to discuss business, said to
him:

'Before we put in the next man, let us try to discover why this one is
going. Fetch me in that seminarist, the truth is to be found in the
mouths of babes.'

Julien was summoned: 'I shall find myself trapped between two
inquisitors,' he thought. Never had he felt more courageous.

At the moment of his entering the room, two tall valets, better
dressed than M. Valenod himself, were disrobing Monseigneur. The
prelate, before coming to the subject of M. Pirard, thought fit to
question Julien about his studies. He touched upon dogma, and was
amazed. Presently he turned to the Humanities, Virgil, Horace, Cicero.
'Those names,' thought Julien, 'earned me my number 198. I have
nothing more to lose, let us try to shine.' He was successful; the
prelate, an excellent humanist himself, was enchanted.

At dinner at the Prefecture, a girl, deservedly famous, had recited
the poem of _La Madeleine_. [Footnote: A poem by  Delphine Gay]  He
was in the mood for literary conversation, and at once forgot the abbe
Pirard and everything else, in discussing with the seminarist the
important question, whether Horace had been rich or poor.  The prelate
quoted a number of odes, but at times his memory began to fail him,
and immediately Julien would recite the entire ode, with a modest air;
what struck the Bishop was that Julien never departed from
the tone of the conversation; he said his twenty or thirty Latin
verses as he would have spoken of what was going on in his Seminary. A
long discussion followed of Virgil and Cicero. At length the prelate
could not refrain from paying the young seminarist a compliment.

'It would be impossible to have studied to better advantage.'

'Monseigneur,' said Julien, 'your Seminary can furnish you with one
hundred and ninety-seven subjects far less unworthy of your esteemed
approval.'

'How so?' said the prelate, astonished at this figure.

'I can support with official proof what I have the honour to say
before Monseigneur.

'At the annual examination of the Seminary, answering questions upon
these very subjects which have earned me, at this moment,
Monseigneur's approval, I received the number 198.'

'Ah! This is the abbe Pirard's favourite,' exclaimed the Bishop, with
a laugh, and with a glance at M. de Frilair; 'we ought to have
expected this; but it is all in fair play. Is it not the case, my
friend,' he went on, turning to Julien, 'that they waked you from your
sleep to send you here?'

'Yes, Monseigneur. I have never left the Seminary alone in my life but
once, to go and help M. l'abbe Chas-Bernard to decorate the Cathedral,
on the feast of Corpus Christi.'

'_Optime_,' said the Bishop; 'what, it was you that showed such great
courage, by placing the bunches of plumes on the baldachino? They
make me shudder every year; I am always afraid of their costing me a
man's life. My friend, you will go far; but I do not wish to cut short
your career, which will be brilliant, by letting you die of hunger.'

And, on an order from the Bishop, the servants brought in biscuits and
Malaga wine, to which Julien did honour, and even more so than abbe
Frilair, who knew that his Bishop liked to see him eat cheerfully and
with a good appetite.

The prelate, growing more and more pleased with the close of his
evening, spoke for a moment of ecclesiastical history. He saw that
Julien did not understand. He then passed to the moral conditions of
the Roman Empire, under the Emperors of the Age of Constantine. The
last days of paganism were accompanied by that state of uneasiness and
doubt which, in the nineteenth century, is disturbing sad and weary
minds. Monseigneur remarked that Julien seemed hardly to know even the
name of Tacitus.

Julien replied with candour, to the astonishment of the prelate, that
this author was not to be found in the library of the Seminary.

'I am really delighted to hear it,' said the Bishop merrily. 'You
relieve me of a difficulty; for the last ten minutes, I have been
trying to think of a way of thanking you for the pleasant evening
which you have given me, and certainly in a most unexpected manner.
Although the gift is scarcely canonical, I should like to give you a
set of Tacitus.'

The prelate sent for eight volumes handsomely bound, and insisted upon
writing with his own hand, on the title-page of the first, a Latin
inscription to Julien Sorel. The Bishop prided himself on his fine
Latinity; he ended by saying to him, in a serious tone, completely at
variance with his tone throughout the rest of the conversation:

'Young man, if you are wise, you shall one day have the best living in
my diocese, and not a hundred leagues from my episcopal Palace; but
you must be wise.'

Julien, burdened with his volumes, left the Palace, in great
bewilderment, as midnight was striking.

Monseigneur had not said a word to him about the abbe Pirard. Julien
was astonished most of all by the extreme politeness shown him by the
Bishop.  He had never imagined such an urbanity of form, combined with
so natural an air of dignity. He was greatly struck by the contrast
when he set eyes once more on the sombre abbe Pirard, who awaited him
with growing impatience.

'_Quid tibi dixerunt_? (What did they say to you?)' he shouted at the
top of his voice, the moment Julien came within sight.

Then, as Julien found some difficulty in translating the Bishop's
conversation into Latin:

'Speak French, and repeat to me Monseigneur's own words, without
adding or omitting anything,' said the ex-Director of the Seminary, in
his harsh tone and profoundly inelegant manner.

'What a strange present for a Bishop to make to a young seminarist,'
he said as he turned the pages of the sumptuous Tacitus, the gilded
edges of which seemed to fill him with horror.

Two o'clock was striking when, after a detailed report of everything,
he allowed his favourite pupil to retire to his own room.

'Leave me the first volume of your Tacitus, which contains the
Bishop's inscription,' he said to him. 'That line of Latin will be
your lightning conductor in this place, when I have gone.

'_Erit tibi, fili mi, successor meus tanquam leo quaerens quern
devoret_. (My successor will be to you, my son, as a lion seeking whom
he may devour.)'

On the following morning, Julien detected something strange in the
manner in which his companions addressed him. This made him all the
more reserved.  'Here,' he thought, 'we have the effect of M. Pirard's
resignation. It is known throughout the place, and I am supposed to be
his favourite. There must be an insult behind this attitude'; but he
could not discover it.  There was, on the contrary, an absence of
hatred in the eyes of all whom he encountered in the dormitories.
'What can this mean? It is doubtless a trap, we are playing a close
game.' At length the young seminarist from Verrieres said to him with
a laugh: '_Cornelii Taciti opera omnia_ (Complete Works of Tacitus).'

At this speech, which was overheard, all the rest seemed to vie with
one another in congratulating Julien, not only upon the magnificent
present which he had received from Monseigneur, but also upon the two
hours of conversation with which he had been honoured. It was common
knowledge, down to the most trifling details. From this moment, there
was no more jealousy; everyone paid court to him most humbly; the abbe
Castanede who, only yesterday, had treated him with the utmost
insolence, came to take him by the arm and invited him to luncheon.

Owing to a weakness in Julien's character, the insolence of these
coarse creatures had greatly distressed him; their servility caused
him disgust and no pleasure.

Towards midday, the abbe Pirard took leave of his pupils, not without
first delivering a severe allocution. 'Do you seek the honours of this
world,' he said to them, 'all social advantages, the pleasure of
commanding men, that of defying the laws and of being insolent to all
men with impunity? Or indeed do you seek your eternal salvation? The
most ignorant among you have only to open their eyes to distinguish
between the two paths.'

No sooner had he left than the devotees of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
went to chant a _Te Deum_ in the chapel. Nobody in the Seminary took
the late Director's allocution seriously. 'He is very cross at being
dismissed,' was what might be heard on all sides. Not one seminarist
was simple enough to believe in the voluntary resignation of a post
which provided so many opportunities for dealing with the big
contractors.

The abbe Pirard took up his abode in the best inn in Besancon; and on
the pretext of some imaginary private affairs, proposed to spend a
couple of days there.

The Bishop invited him to dinner, and, to tease his Vicar-General, de
Frilair, endeavoured to make him shine. They had reached the dessert
when there arrived from Paris the strange tidings that the abbe Pirard
was appointed to the splendid living of N ----, within four leagues of
the capital. The worthy prelate congratulated him sincerely. He saw in
the whole affair a well played game which put him in a good humour and
gave him the highest opinion of the abbe's talents. He bestowed upon
him a magnificent certificate in Latin, and silenced the abbe de
Frilair, who ventured to make remonstrances.

That evening, Monseigneur carried his admiration to the drawing-room
of the Marquise de Rubempre. It was a great piece of news for the
select society of Besancon; people were lost in conjectures as to the
meaning of this extraordinary favour. They saw the abbe Pirard a
Bishop already. The sharper wits supposed M. de La Mole to have become
a Minister, and allowed themselves that evening to smile at the
imperious airs which M. l'abbe de Frilair assumed in society.

Next morning, the abbe Pirard was almost followed through the streets,
and the tradesmen came out to their shop-doors when he went to beg an
audience of the Marquis's judges. For the first time, he was received
by them with civility. The stern Jansenist, indignant at everything
that he saw around him, spent a long time at work with the counsel
whom he had chosen for the Marquis de La Mole, and then left for
Paris. He was so foolish as to say to two or three lifelong friends
who escorted him to the carriage and stood admiring its heraldic
blason, that after governing the Seminary for fifteen years he was
leaving Besancon with five hundred and twenty francs in savings.
These friends embraced him with tears in their eyes, and then said to
one another: The good abbe might have spared himself that lie, it is
really too absurd.'

The common herd, blinded by love of money, were not fitted to
understand that it was in his sincerity that the abbe Pirard had found
the strength to fight single-handed for six years against Marie
Alacoque, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Jesuits and his Bishop.




CHAPTER 30
Ambition


  There is only one true nobility left; namely, the title of Duke;
  Marquis is absurd, at the word Duke one turns one's head.
    The Edinburgh Review  [Trans. footnote: I have translated this
    motto, which is quoted in French by Stendahl, but have not been
    able to find the original passage in the _Edinburgh Review.
    C. K. S. M.]

The Marquis de La Mole received the abbe Pirard without any of those
little mannerisms of a great gentleman, outwardly so polite, but so
impertinent to him who understands them. It would have been a waste of
time, and the Marquis was so far immersed in public business as to
have no time to waste.

For six months he had been intriguing to make both King and nation
accept a certain Ministry, which, as a mark of gratitude, would make
him a Duke.

The Marquis had appealed in vain, year after year, to his lawyer at
Besancon for a clear and definite report on his lawsuits in the
Franche-Comte. How was the eminent lawyer to explain them to him, if
he did not understand them himself?

The little slip of paper which the abbe gave him explained everything.

'My dear abbe,' said the Marquis, after polishing off in less than
five minutes all the polite formulas and personal inquiries, 'my dear
abbe, in the midst of my supposed prosperity, I lack the time to
occupy myself seriously with two little matters which nevertheless are
of considerable importance: my family and my affairs. I take the
greatest interest in the fortunes of my house, I may carry it far; I
look after my pleasures, and that is what must come before everything
else, at least in my eyes,' he went on, noticing the astonishment in
the eyes of the abbe Pirard. Although a man of sense, the abbe was
amazed to see an old man talking so openly of his pleasures.

'Work does no doubt exist in Paris,' the great nobleman continued,
'but perched in the attics; and as soon as I come in contact with a
man, he takes an apartment on the second floor, and his wife starts a
day; consequently, no more work, no effort except to be or to appear
to be a man of fashion. That is their sole interest once they are
provided with bread.

'For my lawsuits, to be strictly accurate, and also for each lawsuit
separately, I have lawyers who work themselves to death; one of them
died of consumption, the day before yesterday. But, for my affairs in
general, would you believe, Sir, that for the last three years I have
given up hope of finding a man who, while he is writing for me, will
deign to think a little seriously of what he is doing. However, all
this is only a preamble.

'I respect you, and, I would venture to add, although we meet for the
first time, I like you. Will you be my secretary, with a salary of
eight thousand francs, or indeed twice that sum? I shall gain even
more, I assure you; and I shall make it my business to keep your fine
living for you, for the day on which we cease to agree.'

The abbe declined, but towards the end of the conversation, the sight
of the Marquis's genuine embarrassment suggested an idea to him.

'I have left down in my Seminary a poor young man who, if I be not
mistaken, is going to be brutally persecuted. If he were only a simple
monk he would be already _in pace_.

'At present this young man knows only Latin and the Holy Scriptures;
but it is by no means impossible that one day he may display great
talent, either for preaching or for the guidance of souls. I do not
know what he will do; but he has the sacred fire, he may go far. I
intended to give him to our Bishop, should one ever be sent to us who
had something of your way of looking at men and affairs.'

'What is your young man's origin?' said the Marquis.

'He is said to be the son of a carpenter in our mountains, but I am
inclined to believe that he is the natural son of some rich man. I
have seen him receive an anonymous or pseudonymous letter containing a
bill of exchange for five hundred francs.'

'Ah! It is Julien Sorel,' said the Marquis.

'How do you know his name?' asked the astonished abbe; and, as he was
blushing at his own question:

'That is what I am not going to tell you,' replied the Marquis.

'Very well!' the abbe went on, 'you might try making him your
secretary, he has energy, and judgment; in short, it is an experiment
worth trying.'

'Why not?' said the Marquis; 'but would he be the sort of man to let
his palm be greased by the Prefect of Police or by anyone else, to
play the spy on me? That is my only objection.'

Receiving favourable assurances from the abbe Pirard, the Marquis
produced a note for one thousand francs:

'Send this to Julien Sorel for his journey; tell him to come to me.'

'One can see,' said the abbe Pirard, 'that you live in Paris! You are
unaware of the tyranny that weighs upon us poor provincials, and
especially upon priests who are not on good terms with the Jesuits.
They will never allow Julien Sorel to leave, they will manage to cover
themselves with the cleverest excuses, they will reply that he is ill,
letters will have gone astray in the post,' etc., etc.

'One of these days I shall procure a letter from the Minister to the
Bishop,' said the Marquis.

'I was forgetting one thing,' said the abbe: 'this young man, although
of quite humble birth, has a proud heart, he will be of no use to you
if his pride is offended; you will only make him stupid.'

'I like that,' said the Marquis, 'I shall make him my son's companion,
will that do?'

Some time after this, Julien received a letter in an unknown hand and
bearing the postmark of Chalons, and found a draft upon a merchant in
Besancon and instructions to proceed to Paris without delay. The
letter was signed with an assumed name, but as he opened it Julien
trembled: a leaf from a tree had fallen out at his feet; it was the
signal arranged between him and the abbe Pirard.

Within an hour, Julien was summoned to the Bishop's Palace, where he
found himself greeted with a wholly fatherly welcome. Interspersed
with quotations from Horace, Monseigneur paid him, with regard to the
exalted destiny that awaited him in Paris, a number of very neat
compliments, which required an explanation if he were to express his
thanks. Julien could say nothing, chiefly because he knew nothing, and
Monseigneur showed a high regard for him. One of the minor clergy of
the Palace wrote to the Mayor who made haste to appear in person
bringing a passport already signed, but with a blank space for the
name of the traveller.

Before midnight, Julien was with Fouque, whose sober mind was more
astonished than delighted by the future which seemed to be in store
for his friend.

'The end of it will be,' said this Liberal elector, 'a post under
Government, which will oblige you to take some action that will be
pilloried in the newspapers. It will be through your disgrace that I
shall have news of you. Remember that, even financially speaking, it
is better to earn one hundred louis in an honest trade in timber,
where you are your own master, than to receive four thousand francs
from a Government, were it that of King Solomon himself.'

Julien saw no more in this than the pettiness of a rustic mind. He was
at last going to appear on the stage of great events. The good fortune
of going to Paris, which he peopled in his imagination with men of
intelligence, great intriguers, great hypocrites, but as courteous as
the Bishop of Besancon and the Bishop of Agde, eclipsed everything
else in his eyes. He represented himself to his friend as deprived of
his free will by the abbe Pirard's letter.

Towards noon on the following day he arrived in Verrieres the happiest
of men, he reckoned upon seeing Madame de Renal again. He went first
of all to his original protector, the good abbe Chelan. He met with a
stern reception.

'Do you consider that you are under any obligation to me?' said M.
Chelan, without acknowledging his greeting. 'You will take luncheon
with me, meanwhile another horse will be hired for you, and you will
leave Verrieres, without seeing anyone.'

'To hear is to obey,' replied Julien, with the prim face of a
seminarist; and there was no further discussion save of theology and
Latin scholarship.

He mounted his horse, rode a league, after which, coming upon a wood,
with no one to see him enter it, he hid himself there. At sunset he
sent the horse back. Later on, he entered the house of a peasant, who
agreed to sell him a ladder, and to go with him, carrying the ladder,
to the little wood that overhung the Cours de la Fidelite, in
Verrieres.

'We are a poor conscript deserting--or a smuggler,' said the peasant,
as he took leave of him, 'but what do I care? My ladder is well paid
for, and I myself have had to pass some awkward moments in my life.'

The night was very dark. About one o'clock in the morning, Julien,
carrying his ladder, made his way into Verrieres. He climbed down as
soon as he could into the bed of the torrent, which ran through M. de
Renal's magnificent gardens at a depth of ten feet, and confined
between walls.  Julien climbed up easily by his ladder. 'What sort of
greeting will the watch-dogs give me?' he wondered. 'That is the whole
question.' The dogs barked, and rushed towards him; but he whistled
softly, and they came and fawned upon him.

Then climbing from terrace to terrace, although all the gates were
shut, he had no difficulty in arriving immediately beneath the window
of Madame de Renal's bedroom, which, on the garden side, was no more
than nine or ten feet above the ground.

There was in the shutters a small opening in the shape of a heart,
which Julien knew well. To his great dismay, this little opening was
not lighted by the glimmer of a nightlight within.

'Great God!' he said to himself; 'tonight, of all nights, this room is
not occupied by Madame de Renal! Where can she be sleeping? The family
are at Verrieres, since I found the dogs here; but I may in this room,
without a light, come upon M. de Renal himself or a stranger, and then
what a scandal!'

The most prudent course was to retire; but the idea filled Julien with
horror. 'If it is a stranger, I shall make off as fast as my legs will
carry me, leaving my ladder behind; but if it is she, what sort of
welcome awaits me? She is steeped in repentance and the most extreme
piety, I may be sure of that; but after all, she has still some memory
of me, since she has just written to me.' With this argument he made
up his mind.

His heart trembling, but determined nevertheless to see her or to
perish, he flung a handful of gravel against the shutter; no reply. He
placed his ladder against the wall by the side of the window and
tapped himself on the shutter, softly at first then more loudly. 'Dark
as it is, they may fire a gun at me,' thought Julien. This thought
reduced his mad undertaking to a question of physical courage.

'This room is unoccupied tonight,' he thought, 'or else whoever it is
that is sleeping here is awake by this time. So there is no need for
any further precaution here; all I need think of is not making myself
heard by the people who are sleeping in the other rooms.'

He stepped down, placed his ladder against one of the shutters,
climbed up again and passing his hand through the heart-shaped
opening, was fortunate in finding almost at once the wire fastened to
the latch that closed the shutter. He pulled this wire; it was with an
unspeakable joy that he felt that the shutter was no longer closed and
was yielding to his efforts. 'I must open it little by little and let
her recognise my voice.' He opened the shutter sufficiently to pass
his head through the gap, repeating in a whisper: 'It is a friend.'

He made certain, by applying his ear, that nothing broke the profound
silence in the room. But decidedly, there was no nightlight, even half
extinguished, on the hearth; this was indeed a bad sign.

'Beware of a gunshot!' He thought for a moment; then, with one finger,
ventured to tap the pane: no response; he tapped more loudly. 'Even if
I break the glass, I must settle this business.' As he was knocking
hard, he thought he could just make out, in the pitch darkness,
something like a white phantom coming across the room. In a moment,
there was no doubt about it, he did see a phantom which seemed to be
advancing with extreme slowness. Suddenly he saw a cheek pressed to
the pane to which his eye was applied.

He shuddered, and recoiled slightly. But the night was so dark that,
even at this close range, he could not make out whether it was Madame
de Renal.  He feared an instinctive cry of alarm; he could hear the
dogs prowling with muttered growls round the foot of his ladder. 'It
is I,' he repeated, quite loudly, 'a friend.' No answer; the white
phantom had vanished. 'For pity's sake, open the window. I must speak
to you, I am too wretched!' and he knocked until the window nearly
broke.

A little sharp sound was heard; the catch of the window gave way; he
pushed it open and sprang lightly into the room.

The white phantom moved away; he seized it by the arms; it was a
woman. All his ideas of courage melted. 'If it is she, what will she
say to me?' What was his state when he realised from a faint cry that
it was Madame de Renal.

He gathered her in his arms; she trembled, and had barely the strength
to repulse him.

'Wretch! What are you doing?'

Scarcely could her tremulous voice articulate the words. Julien saw
that she was genuinely angry.

'I have come to see you after fourteen months of a cruel parting.'

'Go, leave me this instant. Ah! M. Chelan, why did you forbid me to
write to him? I should have prevented this horror.' She thrust him
from her with a force that was indeed extraordinary. 'I repent of my
crime; heaven has deigned to enlighten me,' she repeated in a stifled
voice. 'Go! Fly!'

'After fourteen months of misery, I shall certainly not leave you
until I have spoken to you. I wish to know all that you have been
doing. Ah! I have loved you well enough to deserve this confidence ...
I wish to know all.'

In spite of herself Madame de Renal felt this tone of authority exert
its influence over her heart.

Julien, who was holding her in a passionate embrace, and resisting her
efforts to liberate herself, ceased to press her in his arms. This
relaxation helped to reassure Madame de Renal.

'I am going to draw up the ladder,' he said, 'so that it may not
compromise us if one of the servants, awakened by the noise, goes the
rounds.'

'Ah! Leave me, leave me rather,' the answer came with unfeigned anger.
'What do men matter to me? It is God that sees the terrible wrong you
are doing me, and will punish me for it. You are taking a cowardly
advantage of the regard that I once felt for you, but no longer feel.
Do you hear, Master Julien?'

He drew up the ladder very slowly, so as not to make any noise.

'Is your husband in town?' he asked, not to defy her, but from force
of habit.

'Do not speak to me so, for pity's sake, or I shall call my husband. I
am all too guilty already of not having sent you away, at any cost. I
pity you,' she told him, seeking to wound his pride which she knew to
be so irritable.

Her refusal to use the _tu_ form, that abrupt method of breaking so
tender a bond, and one upon which he still reckoned, roused Julien's
amorous transport to a frenzy.

'What! Is it possible that you no longer love me!' he said to her, in
those accents of the heart to which it is so difficult to listen
unmoved.

She made no reply; as for him, he was weeping bitter tears.

Really, he had no longer the strength to speak.

'And so I am completely forgotten by the one person who has ever loved
me!  What use to live any longer?' All his courage had left him as
soon as he no longer had to fear the danger of encountering a man;
everything had vanished from his heart, save love.

He wept for a long time in silence. He took her hand, she tried to
withdraw it; and yet, after a few almost convulsive movements, she let
him keep it.  The darkness was intense; they found themselves both
seated upon Madame de Renal's bed.

'What a difference from the state of things fourteen months ago!'
thought Julien, and his flow of tears increased. 'So absence
unfailingly destroys all human feelings!

'Be so kind as to tell me what has happened to you,' Julien said at
length, embarrassed by his silence and in a voice almost stifled by
tears.

'There can be no doubt,' replied Madame de Renal in a harsh voice, the
tone of which offered a cutting reproach to Julien, 'my misdeeds were
known in the town, at the time of your departure. You were so
imprudent in your behaviour. Some time later, when I was in despair,
the respectable M. Chelan came to see me. It was in vain that, for a
long time, he sought to obtain a confession. One day, the idea
occurred to him to take me into that church at Dijon in which I made
my first Communion. There, he ventured to broach the subject...'
Madame de Renal's speech was interrupted by her tears. 'What a
shameful moment! I confessed all. That worthy man was kind enough not
to heap on me the weight of his indignation: he shared my distress. At
that time I was writing you day after day letters which I dared not
send you; I concealed them carefully, and when I was too wretched used
to shut myself up in my room and read over my own letters.

'At length, M. Chelan persuaded me to hand them over to him ... Some
of them, written with a little more prudence than the rest, had been
sent to you; never once did you answer me.'

'Never, I swear to you, did I receive any letter from you at the
Seminary.'

'Great God! who can have intercepted them?'

'Imagine my grief; until the day when I saw you in the Cathedral, I
did not know whether you were still alive.'

'God in His mercy made me understand how greatly I was sinning against
Him, against my children, against my husband,' replied Madame de
Renal. 'He has never loved me as I believed then that you loved me
...'

Julien flung himself into her arms, without any definite intention but
with entire lack of self-control. But Madame de Renal thrust him from
her, and continued quite firmly:

'My respectable friend M. Chelan made me realise that, in marrying M.
de Renal, I had pledged all my affections to him, even those of which
I was still ignorant, which I had never felt before a certain fatal
intimacy ...  Since the great sacrifice of those letters, which were
so precious to me, my life has flowed on, if not happily, at any rate
quietly enough. Do not disturb it any more; be a friend to me ... the
best of friends.' Julien covered her hands with kisses; she could feel
that he was still crying. 'Do not cry, you distress me so ... Tell me,
it is your turn now, all that you have been doing.' Julien was unable
to speak. 'I wish to know what sort of life you led at the Seminary,'
she repeated, 'then you shall go.'

Without a thought of what he was telling her, Julien spoke of the
endless intrigues and jealousies which he had encountered at first,
then of his more peaceful life after he was appointed tutor.

'It was then,' he added, 'that after a long silence, which was
doubtless intended to make me understand what I see only too clearly
now, that you no longer love me, and that I had become as nothing to
you ...'

Madame de Renal gripped his hands. 'It was then that you sent me a sum
of five hundred francs.'

'Never,' said Madame de Renal.

'It was a letter postmarked _Paris_ and signed Paul Sorel, to avoid all
suspicion.'

A short discussion followed as to the possible source of this letter.
The atmosphere began to change. Unconsciously, Madame de Renal and
Julien had departed from their solemn tone; they had returned to that
of a tender intimacy. They could not see each other, so intense was
the darkness, but the sound of their voices told all. Julien slipped
his arm round the waist of his mistress; this movement was highly
dangerous. She tried to remove Julien's arm, whereupon he, with a
certain adroitness, distracted her attention by an interesting point
in his narrative.

The arm was then forgotten, and remained in the position that it had
occupied.

After abundant conjectures as to the source of the letter with the
five hundred francs, Julien had resumed his narrative; he became
rather more his own master in speaking of his past life which, in
comparison with what was happening to him at that moment, interested
him so little. His attention was wholly concentrated on the manner in
which his visit was to end. 'You must leave me,' she kept on telling
him, in a curt tone.

'What a disgrace for me if I am shown the door! The remorse will be
enough to poison my whole life,' he said to himself, 'she will never
write to me.  God knows when I shall return to this place!' From that
moment, all the element of heavenly bliss in Julien's situation
vanished rapidly from his heart. Seated by the side of a woman whom he
adored, clasping her almost in his arms, in this room in which he had
been so happy, plunged in a black darkness, perfectly well aware that
for the last minute she had been crying, feeling, from the movement of
her bosom, that she was convulsed with sobs, he unfortunately became a
frigid politician, almost as calculating and as frigid as when, in the
courtyard of the Seminary, he saw himself made the butt of some
malicious joke by one of his companions stronger than himself. Julien
spun out his story, and spoke of the wretched life he had led since
leaving Verrieres. 'And so,' Madame de Renal said to herself, 'after a
year's absence, almost without a single token of remembrance, while I
was forgetting him, his mind was entirely taken up with the happy days
he had enjoyed at Vergy.' Her sobs increased in violence. Julien saw
that his story had been successful. He realised that he must now try
his last weapon: he came abruptly to the letter that he had just
received from Paris.

'I have taken leave of Monseigneur, the Bishop.'

'What! You are not returning to Besancon! You are leaving us for
ever?'

'Yes,' replied Julien, in a resolute tone; 'yes, I am abandoning the
place where I am forgotten even by her whom I have most dearly loved
in all my life, and I am leaving it never to set eyes on it again. I
am going to Paris ...'

'You are going to Paris!' Madame de Renal exclaimed quite aloud.

Her voice was almost stifled by her tears, and showed the intensity of
her grief. Julien had need of this encouragement; he was going to
attempt a course which might decide everything against him; and before
this exclamation, seeing no light, he was absolutely ignorant of the
effect that he was producing. He hesitated no longer; the fear of
remorse gave him complete command of himself; he added coldly as he
rose to his feet:

'Yes, Madame, I leave you for ever, may you be happy; farewell.'

He took a few steps towards the window; he was already opening it.
Madame de Renal sprang after him and flung herself into his arms.

Thus, after three hours of conversation, Julien obtained what he had
so passionately desired during the first two. Had they come a little
earlier, this return to tender sentiments, the eclipse of remorse in
Madame de Renal would have been a divine happiness; obtained thus by
artifice, they were no more than mere pleasure. Julien positively
insisted, against the entreaties of his mistress, upon lighting the
nightlight.

'Do you then wish me,' he asked her, 'to retain no memory of having
seen you? The love that is doubtless glowing in those charming eyes,
shall it then be lost to me? Shall the whiteness of that lovely hand
be invisible to me? Think that I am leaving you for a very long time
perhaps!'

Madame de Renal could refuse nothing in the face of this idea which
made her dissolve in tears. Dawn was beginning to paint in clear hues
the outline of the fir trees on the mountain to the least of
Verrieres. Instead of going away, Julien, intoxicated with pleasure,
asked Madame de Renal to let him spend the whole day hidden in her
room, and not to leave until the following night.

'And why not?' was her answer. 'This fatal relapse destroys all my
self-esteem, and dooms me to lifelong misery,' and she pressed him to
her heart. 'My husband is no longer the same, he has suspicions; he
believes that I have been fooling him throughout this affair, and is
in the worst of tempers with me. If he hears the least sound I am
lost, he will drive me from the house like the wretch that I am.'

'Ah! There I can hear the voice of M. Chelan,' said Julien; you would
not have spoken to me like that before my cruel departure for the
Seminary; you loved me then!'

Julien was rewarded for the coolness with which he had uttered this
speech; he saw his mistress at once forget the danger in which the
proximity of her husband involved her, to think of the far greater
danger of seeing Julien doubtful of her love for him. The daylight was
rapidly increasing and now flooded the room; Julien recovered all the
exquisite sensations of pride when he was once more able to see in his
arms and almost at his feet this charming woman, the only woman that
he had ever loved, who, a few hours earlier, had been entirely wrapped
up in the fear of a terrible God and in devotion to duty. Resolutions
fortified by a year of constancy had not been able to hold out against
his boldness.

Presently they heard a sound in the house; a consideration to which
she had not given a thought now disturbed Madame de Renal.

'That wicked Elisa will be coming into the room, what are we to do
with that enormous ladder?' she said to her lover; 'where are we to
hide it? I am going to take it up to the loft,' she suddenly
exclaimed, with a sort of playfulness.

'But you will have to go through the servant's room,' said Julien with
astonishment.

'I shall leave the ladder in the corridor, call the man and send him
on an errand.'

'Remember to have some excuse ready in case the man notices the ladder
when he passes it in the passage.'

'Yes, my angel,' said Madame de Renal as she gave him a kiss. 'And
you, remember to hide yourself quickly under the bed if Elisa comes
into the room while I am away.'

Julien was amazed at this sudden gaiety. 'And so,' he thought, 'the
approach of physical danger, so far from disturbing her, restores her
gaiety because she forgets her remorse! Indeed a superior woman! Ah!
There is a heart in which it is glorious to reign!' Julien was in
ecstasies.

Madame de Renal took the ladder; plainly it was too heavy for her.
Julien went to her assistance; he was admiring that elegant figure,
which suggested anything rather than strength, when suddenly, without
help, she grasped the ladder and picked it up as she might have picked
up a chair.  She carried it swiftly to the corridor on the third
storey, where she laid it down by the wall. She called the manservant,
and, to give him time to put on his clothes, went up to the dovecote.
Five minutes later, when she returned to the corridor, the ladder was
no more to be seen. What had become of it? Had Julien been out of the
house, the danger would have been nothing. But, at that moment, if her
husband saw the ladder! The consequences might be appalling. Madame de
Renal ran up and down the house. At last she discovered the ladder
under the roof, where the man had taken it and in fact hidden it
himself. This in itself was strange, and at another time would have
alarmed her.

'What does it matter to me,' she thought, 'what may happen in
twenty-four hours from now, when Julien will have gone? Will not
everything then be to me horror and remorse?'

She had a sort of vague idea that she ought to take her life, but what
did that matter? After a parting which she had supposed to be for
ever, he was restored to her, she saw him again, and what he had done
in making his way to her gave proof of such a wealth of love!

In telling Julien of the incident of the ladder:

'What shall I say to my husband,' she asked him, 'if the man tells him
how he found the ladder?' She meditated for a moment. 'It will take
them twenty-four hours to discover the peasant who sold it to you';
and flinging herself into Julien's arms and clasping him in a
convulsive embrace: 'Ah!  to die, to die like this!' she cried as she
covered him with kisses; 'but I must not let you die of hunger,' she
added with a laugh.

'Come; first of all, I am going to hide you in Madame Derville's room,
which is always kept locked.' She kept watch at the end of the
corridor and Julien slipped from door to door. 'Remember not to
answer, if anyone knocks,' she reminded him as she turned the key
outside; 'anyhow, it would only be the children playing.'

'Make them go into the garden, below the window,' said Julien, 'so
that I may have the pleasure of seeing them, make them speak.'

'Yes, yes,' cried Madame de Renal as she left him.

She returned presently with oranges, biscuits, a bottle of Malaga; she
had found it impossible to purloin any bread.

'What is your husband doing?' said Julien.

'He is writing down notes of the deals he proposes to do with some
peasants.'

But eight o'clock had struck, the house was full of noise. If Madame
de Renal were not to be seen, people would begin searching everywhere
for her; she was obliged to leave him. Presently she returned, in
defiance of all the rules of prudence, to bring him a cup of coffee;
she was afraid of his dying of hunger.  After luncheon she managed to
shepherd the children underneath the window of Madame Derville's room.
He found that they had grown considerably, but they had acquired a
common air, or else his ideas had changed. Madame de Renal spoke to
them of Julien. The eldest replied with affection and regret for his
former tutor, but it appeared that the two younger had almost
forgotten him.

M. de Renal did not leave the house that morning; he was incessantly
going up and downstairs, engaged in striking bargains with certain
peasants, to whom he was selling his potato crop. Until dinner time,
Madame de Renal had not a moment to spare for her prisoner. When
dinner was on the table, it occurred to her to steal a plateful of hot
soup for him. As she silently approached the door of the room in which
he was, carrying the plate carefully, she found herself face to face
with the servant who had hidden the ladder that morning. At that
moment, he too was coming silently along the corridor, as though
listening. Probably Julien had forgotten to tread softly. The servant
made off in some confusion. Madame de Renal went boldly into Julien's
room; her account of the incident made him shudder.

'You are afraid'; she said to him; 'and I, I would brave all the
dangers in the world without a tremor. I fear one thing only, that is
the moment when I shall be left alone after you have gone,' and she
ran from the room.

'Ah!' thought Julien, greatly excited, 'remorse is the only danger
that sublime soul dreads!'

Night came at last. M. de Renal went to the Casino.

His wife had announced a severe headache, she retired to her room,
made haste to dismiss Elisa, and speedily rose from her bed to open
the door to Julien.

It so happened that he really was faint with hunger. Madame de Renal
went to the pantry to look for bread. Julien heard a loud cry. She
returned and told him that on entering the dark pantry, making her way
to a cupboard in which the bread was kept, and stretching out her
hand, she had touched a woman's arm. It was Elisa who had uttered the
cry which Julien had heard.

'What was she doing there?'

'She was stealing a few sweetmeats, or possibly spying on us,' said
Madame de Renal with complete indifference. 'But fortunately I have
found a pate and a big loaf.'

'And what have you got there?' said Julien, pointing to the pockets of
her apron.

Madame de Renal had forgotten that, ever since dinner, they had been
filled with bread.

Julien clasped her in his arms with the keenest passion; never had she
seemed to him so beautiful. 'Even in Paris,' he told himself vaguely,
'I shall not be able to find a nobler character.' She had all the
awkwardness of a woman little accustomed to attentions of this sort,
and at the same time the true courage of a person who fears only
dangers of another kind and far more terrible.

While Julien was devouring his supper with a keen appetite, and his
mistress was playfully apologising for the simplicity of the repast,
for she had a horror of serious speech, the door of the room was all
at once shaken violently. It was M. de Renal.

'Why have you locked yourself in?' he shouted to her.

Julien had just time to slip beneath the sofa.

'What! You are fully dressed,' said M. de Renal, as he entered; 'you
are having supper, and you have locked your door?'

On any ordinary day, this question, put with all the brutality of a
husband, would have troubled Madame de Renal, but she felt that her
husband had only to lower his eyes a little to catch sight of Julien;
for M. de Renal had flung himself upon the chair on which Julien had
been sitting a moment earlier, facing the sofa.

Her headache served as an excuse for everything. While in his turn her
husband was giving her a long and detailed account of the pool he had
won in the billiard room of the Casino, 'a pool of nineteen francs,
begad!' he added, she saw lying on a chair before their eyes, and
within a few feet of them, Julien's hat. Cooler than ever, she began
to undress, and, choosing her moment, passed swiftly behind her
husband and flung a garment over the chair with the hat on it.

At length M. de Renal left her. She begged Julien to begin over again
the story of his life in the Seminary: 'Yesterday I was not listening
to you, I was thinking, while you were speaking, only of how I was to
bring myself to send you away.'

She was the embodiment of imprudence. They spoke very loud; and it
might have been two o'clock in the morning when they were interrupted
by a violent blow on the door. It was M. de Renal again:

'Let me in at once, there are burglars in the house!' he said,
'Saint-Jean found their ladder this morning.'

'This is the end of everything,' cried Madame de Renal, throwing
herself into Julien's arms. 'He is going to kill us both, he does not
believe in the burglars; I am going to die in your arms, more
fortunate in my death than I have been in my life.' She made no answer
to her husband, who was waiting angrily outside, she was holding
Julien in a passionate embrace.

'Save Stanislas's mother,' he said to her with an air of command. 'I
am going to jump down into the courtyard from the window of the
closet, and escape through the garden, the dogs know me. Make a bundle
of my clothes and throw it down into the garden as soon as you can.
Meanwhile, let him break the door in. And whatever you do, no
confession, I forbid it, suspicion is better than certainty.'

'You will kill yourself, jumping down,' was her sole reply and her
sole anxiety.

She went with him to the window of the closet; she then took such time
as she required to conceal his garments. Finally she opened the door
to her husband, who was boiling with rage. He searched the bedroom,
the closet, without uttering a word, and then vanished. Julien's
clothes were thrown down to him, he caught them and ran quickly down
the garden towards the Doubs.

As he ran, he heard a bullet whistle past him, and simultaneously the
sound of a gun being fired.

'That is not M. de Renal,' he decided, 'he is not a good enough shot.'
The dogs were running by his side in silence, a second shot apparently
shattered the paw of one dog, for it began to emit lamentable howls.
Julien jumped the wall of a terrace, proceeded fifty yards under
cover, then continued his flight in a different direction. He heard
voices calling, and could distinctly see the servant, his enemy, fire
a gun; a farmer also came and shot at him from the other side of the
garden, but by this time Julien had reached the bank of the Doubs,
where he put on his clothes.

An hour later, he was a league from Verrieres, on the road to Geneva.
'If there is any suspicion,' thought Julien, 'it is on the Paris road
that they will look for me.'





BOOK TWO

  She is not pretty, she is not wearing rouge.
    SAINT-BEUVE



CONTENTS

BOOK TWO

Chapter 1 Country Pleasures

Chapter 2 First Appearance in Society

Chapter 3 First Steps

Chapter 4 The Hotel de La Mole

Chapter 5 Sensibility and a Pious Lady

Chapter 6 Pronunciation

Chapter 7 An Attack of Gout

Chapter 8 What Is the Decoration that Confers Distinction?

Chapter 9 The Ball

Chapter 10 Queen Marguerite

Chapter 11 The Tyranny of a Girl

Chapter 12 Another Danton?

Chapter 13 A Plot

Chapter 14 A Girl's Thoughts

Chapter 15 Is It a Plot?

Chapter 16 One o'Clock in the Morning

Chapter 17 An Old Sword

Chapter 18 Painful Moments

Chapter 19 The Opera-Bouffe

Chapter 20 The Japanese Vase

Chapter 21 The Secret Note

Chapter 22 The Discussion

Chapter 23 The Clergy, their Forests, Liberty

Chapter 24 Strasbourg

Chapter 25 The Office of Virtue

Chapter 26 Moral Love

Chapter 27 The Best Positions in the Church

Chapter 28 Manon Lescaut

Chapter 29 Boredom

Chapter 30 A Box at the Bouffes

Chapter 31 Making Her Afraid

Chapter 32 The Tiger

Chapter 33 The Torment of the Weak

Chapter 34 A Man of Spirit

Chapter 35 A Storm

Chapter 36 Painful Details

Chapter 37 A Dungeon

Chapter 38 A Man of Power

Chapter 39 Intrigue

Chapter 40 Tranquillity

Chapter 41 The Trial

Chapter 42 In the Prison

Chapter 43 Last Adieux

Chapter 44 The Shadow of the Guillotine

Chapter 45 Exit Julien

           Translator's Note




CHAPTER 1
Country Pleasures


  O rus, quando ego te aspiciam!
    VIRGIL  [HORACE in earlier edition]

'The gentleman is waiting, surely, for the mail-coach for Paris?' he
was asked by the landlord of an inn at which he stopped to break his
fast.

'Today or tomorrow, it is all the same to me,' said Julien.

The coach arrived while he was feigning indifference. There were two
places vacant.

'What! It is you, my poor Falcoz,' said the traveller, who had come
from the direction of Geneva to him who now entered the coach with
Julien.

'I thought you had settled in the neighbourhood of Lyons,' said
Falcoz, 'in a charming valley by the Rhone.'

'Settled, indeed! I am running away.'

'What! Running away? You, Saint-Giraud! With that honest face of
yours, have you committed a crime?' said Falcoz, with a laugh.

'Upon my soul, not far off it. I am running away from the abominable
life one leads in the country. I love the shade of the woods and the
quiet of the fields, as you know; you have often accused me of being
romantic. The one thing I never wished to hear mentioned was politics,
and politics pursue me everywhere.'

'But to what party do you belong?'

'To none, and that is what has been fatal to me. These are all my
politics: I enjoy music, and painting; a good book is an event in my
life; I shall soon be four and forty. How many years have I to live?
Fifteen, twenty, thirty, perhaps, at the most. Very well; I hold that
in thirty years from now, our Ministers will be a little more able,
but otherwise just as good fellows as we have today. The history of
England serves as a mirror to show me our future. There will always be
a King who seeks to extend his prerogative; the ambition to enter
Parliament, the glory and the hundreds of thousands of francs amassed
by Mirabeau will always keep our wealthy provincials awake at night:
they will call that being Liberal and loving the people. The desire to
become a Peer or a Gentleman in Waiting will always possess the
Ultras. On board the Ship of State, everyone will wish to be at the
helm, for the post is well paid.  Will there never be a little corner
anywhere for the mere passenger?'

'Why, of course, and a very pleasant one, too, for a man of your
peaceful nature. Is it the last election that is driving you from
your district?'

'My trouble dates from farther back. I was, four years ago, forty
years old, and had five hundred thousand francs, I am four years older
now, and have probably fifty thousand less, which I shall lose by the
sale of my place, Monfleury, by the Rhone, a superb position.

'In Paris, I was tired of that perpetual play-acting, to which one is
driven by what you call nineteenth-century civilisation. I felt a
longing for human fellowship and simplicity. I bought a piece of land
in the mountains by the Rhone, the most beautiful spot in the world.

'The vicar of the village and the neighbouring squires made much of me
for the first six months; I had them to dine; I had left Paris, I told
them, so as never to mention or to hear of politics again. You see, I
subscribe to no newspaper. The fewer letters the postman brings me,
the happier I am.

'This was not what the vicar wanted; presently I was besieged with
endless indiscreet requests, intrigues, and so forth. I wished to give
two or three hundred francs every year to the poor, they pestered me
for them on behalf of pious associations; Saint Joseph, Our Lady, and
so forth. I refused: then I came in for endless insults. I was foolish
enough to show annoyance.  I could no longer leave the house in the
morning to go and enjoy the beauty of our mountain scenery, without
meeting some bore who would interrupt my thoughts with an unpleasant
reminder of my fellow men and their evil ways.  In the Rogationtide
processions, for instance, the chanting in which I like (it is
probably a Greek melody), they no longer bless my fields, because, the
vicar says, they belong to an unbeliever. A pious old peasant woman's
cow dies, she says that it is because there is a pond close by which
belongs to me, the unbeliever, a philosopher from Paris, and a week
later I find all my fish floating on the water, poisoned with lime. I
am surrounded by trickery in every form. The justice of the peace, an
honest man, but afraid of losing his place, always decides against me.
The peace of the fields is hell to me. As soon as they saw me
abandoned by the vicar, head of the village _Congregation_, and not
supported by the retired captain, head of the Liberals, they all fell
upon me, even the mason who had been living upon me for a year, even
the wheelwright, who tried to get away with cheating me when he mended
my ploughs.

'In order to have some footing and to win a few at least of my
lawsuits, I turned Liberal; but, as you were saying, those damned
elections came, they asked me for my vote ...'

'For a stranger?'

'Not a bit of it, for a man I know only too well. I refused, a fearful
imprudence! From that moment, I had the Liberals on top of me as well,
my position became intolerable. I believe that if it had ever entered
the vicar's head to accuse me of having murdered my servant, there
would have been a score of witnesses from both parties, ready to swear
that they had seen me commit the crime.'

'You wish to live in the country without ministering to your
neighbours' passions, without even listening to their gossip. What a
mistake!'

'I have made amends for it now. Monfleury is for sale. I shall lose
fifty thousand francs, if I must, but I am overjoyed, I am leaving
that hell of hypocrisy and malice. I am going to seek solitude and
rustic peace in the one place in France where they exist, in a
fourth-floor apartment, overlooking the Champs-Elysees. And yet I am
just thinking whether I shall not begin my political career, in the
Roule quarter, by presenting the blessed bread in the parish church.'

'None of that would have happened to you under Bonaparte,' said
Falcoz, his eyes shining with anger and regret.

'That's all very well, but why couldn't he keep going, your Bonaparte?
Everything that I suffer from today is his doing.'

Here Julien began to listen with increased attention. He had realised
from the first that the Bonapartist Falcoz was the early playmate of
M. de Renal, repudiated by him in 1816, while the philosopher
Saint-Giraud must be a brother of that chief clerk in the Prefecture
of ----, who knew how to have municipal property knocked down to him
on easy terms.

'And all that has been your Bonaparte's doing,' Saint-Giraud
continued: 'An honest man, harmless if ever there was one, forty years
old and with five hundred thousand francs, can't settle down in the
country and find peace there. Bonaparte's priests and nobles drive him
out again.'

'Ah! You must not speak evil of him,' cried Falcoz, 'never has France
stood so high in the esteem of foreign nations as during the thirteen
years of his reign. In those days, everything that was done had
greatness in it.'

'Your Emperor, may the devil fly away with him,' went on the man of
four and forty, 'was great only upon his battlefields, and when he
restored our financial balance in 1801. What was the meaning of all
his conduct after that? With his chamberlains and his pomp and his
receptions at the Tuileries, he simply furnished a new edition of all
the stuff and nonsense of the monarchy. It was a corrected edition, it
might have served for a century or two. The nobles and priests
preferred to return to the old edition, but they have not the iron
hand that they need to bring it before the public.'

'Listen to the old printer talking!'

'Who is it that is turning me off my land?' went on the printer with
heat.  'The priests, whom Napoleon brought back with his Concordat,
instead of treating them as the State treats doctors, lawyers,
astronomers, of regarding them merely as citizens, without inquiring
into the trade by which they earn their living. Would there be these
insolent gentlemen today if your Bonaparte had not created barons and
counts? No, the fashion had passed. Next to the priests, it is the
minor country nobles that have annoyed me most, and forced me to turn
Liberal.'

The discussion was endless, this theme will occupy the minds and
tongues of France for the next half-century. As Saint-Giraud kept on
repeating that it was impossible to live in the provinces, Julien
timidly cited the example of M. de Renal.

'Egad, young man, you're a good one!' cried Falcoz, 'he has turned
himself into a hammer so as not to be made the anvil, and a terrible
hammer at that. But I can see him cut out by Valenod. Do you know that
rascal? He's the real article. What will your M. de Renal say when he
finds himself turned out of office one of these fine days, and Valenod
filling his place?'

'He will be left to meditate on his crimes,' said Saint-Giraud. 'So
you know Verrieres, young man, do you? Very good! Bonaparte, whom
heaven confound, made possible the reign of the Renals and Chelans,
which has paved the way for the reign of the Valenods and Maslons.'

This talk of shady politics astonished Julien, and took his thoughts
from his dreams of sensual bliss.

He was little impressed by the first view of Paris seen in the
distance.  His fantastic imaginings of the future in store for him had
to do battle with the still vivid memory of the twenty-four hours
which he had just spent at Verrieres. He made a vow that he would
never abandon his mistress's children, but would give up everything to
protect them, should the impertinences of the priests give us a
Republic and lead to persecutions of the nobility.

What would have happened to him on the night of his arrival at
Verrieres if, at the moment when he placed his ladder against Madame
de Renal's bedroom window, he had found that room occupied by a
stranger, or by M. de Renal?

But also what bliss in those first few hours, when his mistress really
wished to send him away, and he pleaded his cause, seated by her side
in the darkness! A mind like Julien's is pursued by such memories for
a lifetime. The rest of their meeting had already merged into the
first phases of their love, fourteen months earlier.

Julien was awakened from his profound abstraction by the stopping of
the carriage. They had driven into the courtyard of the posthouse in
the rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 'I wish to go to La Malmaison,' he
told the driver of a passing cabriolet. 'At this time of night, Sir?
What to do?' 'What business is it of yours? Drive on.'

True passion thinks only of itself. That, it seems to me, is why the
passions are so absurd in Paris, where one's neighbour always insists
upon one's thinking largely of him. I shall not describe Julien's
transports at La Malmaison. He wept. What! In spite of the ugly white
walls set up this year, which divide the park in pieces? Yes, sir;
for Julien, as for posterity, there was no distinction between
Arcole, Saint Helena and La Malmaison.

That evening, Julien hesitated for long before entering the playhouse;
he had strange ideas as to that sink of iniquity.

An intense distrust prevented him from admiring the Paris of today, he
was moved only by the monuments bequeathed by his hero.

'So here I am in the centre of intrigue and hypocrisy! This is where
the abbe de Frilair's protectors reign.'

On the evening of the third day, curiosity prevailed over his plan of
seeing everything before calling upon the abbe Pirard.

The said abbe explained to him, in a frigid tone, the sort of life
that awaited him at M. de La Mole's.

'If after a few months you are of no use to him, you will return to
the Seminary, but by the front door. You are going to lodge with the
Marquis, one of the greatest noblemen in France. You will dress in
black, but like a layman in mourning, not like a churchman. I require
that, thrice weekly, you pursue your theological studies in a
Seminary, where I shall introduce you. Each day, at noon, you will
take your place in the library of the Marquis, who intends to employ
you in writing letters with reference to lawsuits and other business.
The Marquis notes down, in a word or two, upon the margin of each
letter that he receives, the type of answer that it requires. I have
undertaken that, by the end of three months, you will have learned to
compose these answers to such effect that, of every twelve which you
present to the Marquis for his signature, he will be able to sign
eight or nine. In the evening, at eight o'clock, you will put his
papers in order, and at ten you will be free.

'It may happen,' the abbe Pirard continued, 'that some old lady or
some man of persuasive speech will hint to you the prospect of immense
advantages, or quite plainly offer you money to let him see the
letters received by the Marquis ...'

'Oh, Sir!' cried Julien, blushing.

'It is strange,' said the abbe with a bitter smile, 'that, poor as you
are, and after a year of Seminary, you still retain these virtuous
indignations.  You must indeed have been blind!

'Can it be his blood coming out?' murmured the abbe, as though putting
the question to himself. 'The strange thing is,' he added, looking at
Julien, 'that the Marquis knows you ... How, I cannot say. He is
giving you, to begin with, a salary of one hundred louis. He is a man
who acts only from caprice, that is his weakness; he will outdo you in
puerilities. If he is pleased with you, your salary may rise in time
to eight thousand francs.

'But you must be well aware,' the abbe went on in a harsh tone, 'that
he is not giving you all this money for your handsome face. You will
have to be of use to him. If I were in your position, I should speak
as little as possible, and above all, never speak of matters of which
I know nothing.

'Ah!' said the abbe, 'I have been making inquiries on your behalf; I
was forgetting M. de La Mole's family. He has two children, a
daughter, and a son of nineteen, the last word in elegance, a mad
fellow, who never knows at one minute what he will be doing the next.
He has spirit, and courage; he has fought in Spain.  The Marquis
hopes, I cannot say why, that you will become friends with the young
Comte Norbert. I have said that you are a great Latin scholar, perhaps
he reckons upon your teaching his son a few ready-made phrases about
Cicero and Virgil.

'In your place, I should never allow this fine young man to make free
with me; and, before yielding to his overtures, which will be
perfectly civil, but slightly marred by irony, I should make him
repeat them at least twice.

'I shall not conceal from you that the young Comte de La Mole is bound
to look down upon you at first, because of your humble birth. He is
the direct descendant of a courtier, who had the honour to have his
head cut off on the Place de Greve, on the 26th of April, 1574, for a
political intrigue.  As for you, you are the son of a carpenter at
Verrieres, and moreover, you are in his father's pay. Weigh these
differences carefully, and study the history of this family in
Moreri, all the flatterers who dine at their table make from time to
time what they call delicate allusions to it.

'Take care how you respond to the pleasantries of M. le Comte Norbert
de La Mole, Squadron Commander of Hussars and a future Peer of France,
and do not come and complain to me afterwards.'

'It seems to me,' said Julien, blushing deeply, 'that I ought not even
to answer a man who looks down upon me.'

'You have no idea of this form of contempt; it will reveal itself only
in exaggerated compliments. If you were a fool, you might let yourself
be taken in by them; if you wished to succeed, you ought to let
yourself be taken in.'

'On the day when all this ceases to agree with me,' said Julien,
'shall I be considered ungrateful if I return to my little cell,
number 103?'

'No doubt,' replied the abbe, 'all the sycophants of the house will
slander you, but then I shall appear. _Adsum qui fed_. I shall say that
it was from me that the decision came.'

Julien was dismayed by the bitter and almost malicious tone which he
remarked in M. Pirard; this tone completely spoiled his last
utterance.

The fact was that the abbe felt a scruple of conscience about loving
Julien, and it was with a sort of religious terror that he was thus
directly interfering with the destiny of another man.

'You will also see,' he continued, with the same ill grace, and as
though in the performance of a painful duty, 'you will see Madame la
Marquise de La Mole. She is a tall, fair woman, pious, proud,
perfectly civil and even more insignificant. She is a daughter of the
old Due de Chaulnes, so famous for his aristocratic prejudices. This
great lady is a sort of compendium, in high relief, of all that makes
up the character of the women of her rank. She makes it no secret that
to have had ancestors who went to the Crusades is the sole advantage
to which she attaches any importance. Money comes only a long way
after: does that surprise you? We are no longer in the country, my
friend.

'You will find in her drawing-room many great noblemen speaking of our
Princes in a tone of singular disrespect. As for Madame de La Mole,
she lowers her voice in respect whenever she names a Prince, let alone
a Princess. I should not advise you to say in her hearing that Philip
II or Henry VIII was a monster. They were KINGS, and that gives them
an inalienable right to the respect of everyone, and above all to the
respect of creatures without birth, like you and me. However,' M.
Pirard added, 'we are priests, for she will take you for one; on that
footing, she regards us as lackeys necessary to her salvation.'

'Sir,' said Julien, 'it seems to me that I shall not remain long in
Paris.'

'As you please; but observe that there is no hope of success, for a
man of our cloth, except through the great nobles. With that
indefinable element (at least, I cannot define it), which there is in
your character, if you do not succeed you will be persecuted; there is
no middle way for you. Do not abuse your position. People see that you
are not pleased when they speak to you; in a social environment like
this, you are doomed to misfortune, if you do not succeed in winning
respect.

'What would have become of you at Besancon, but for this caprice on
the part of the Marquis de La Mole? One day, you will appreciate all
the singularity of what he is doing for you, and, if you are not a
monster, you will feel eternal gratitude to him and his family. How
many poor abbes, cleverer men than you, have lived for years in Paris,
upon the fifteen sous for their mass and the ten sous for their
lectures in the Sorbonne! ...  Remember what I told you, last winter,
of the early years of that wretch, Cardinal Dubois. Are you, by any
chance, so proud as to imagine that you have more talent than he?

'I, for example, a peaceable and insignificant man, expected to end my
days in my Seminary; I was childish enough to have grown attached to
it. Very well! I was going to be turned out when I offered my
resignation. Do you know what was the extent of my fortune? I had five
hundred and twenty francs of capital, neither more nor less; not a
friend, at most two or three acquaintances. M. de La Mole, whom I had
never seen, saved me from disaster; he had only to say the word, and I
was given a living in which all my parishioners are people in easy
circumstances, above the common vices, and the stipend fills me with
shame, so far out of proportion is it to my work. I have spoken to you
at this length only to put a little ballast into that head of yours.

'One word more; it is my misfortune to have a hasty temper; it is
possible that you and I may cease to speak to one another.

'If the arrogance of the Marquise, or the mischievous pranks of her
son, make the house definitely insupportable to you, I advise you to
finish your studies in some Seminary thirty leagues from Paris, and in
the North, rather than in the South. You will find in the North more
civilisation and fewer injustices; and,' he added, lowering his voice,
'I must admit it, the proximity of the Parisian newspapers makes the
petty tyrants afraid.

'If we continue to find pleasure in each other's company, and the
Marquis's household does not agree with you, I offer you a place as my
vicar, and shall divide the revenues of this living with you equally.
I owe you this and more,' he added, cutting short Julien's expressions
of gratitude, 'for the singular offer which you made me at Besancon.
If, instead of five hundred and twenty francs, I had had nothing, you
would have saved me.'

The cruel tone had gone from the abbe's voice. To his great confusion,
Julien felt the tears start to his eyes; he was longing to fling
himself into the arms of his friend: he could not resist saying to
him, with the most manly air that he was capable of affecting:

'I have been hated by my father from the cradle; it was one of my
great misfortunes; but I shall no longer complain of fortune. I have
found another father in you, Sir.'

'Good, good,' said the abbe, with embarrassment; then remembering most
opportunely a phrase from the vocabulary of a Director of a Seminary:
'You must never say fortune, my child, always say Providence.'

The cab stopped; the drier lifted the bronze knocker on an immense
door:  it was the HOTEL DE LA MOLE; and, so that the passer-by might
be left in no doubt of this, the words were to be read on a slab of
black marble over the door.

This affectation was not to Julien's liking.  'They are so afraid of
the Jacobins!  They see a Robespierre and his tumbril behind every
hedge; often they make one die with laughing, and they advertise their
house like this so that the mob shall know it in the event of a
rising, and sack it.'  He communicated what was in his mind to the
Abbe Pirard.

'Ah!  Poor boy, you will soon be my vicar.  What an appalling idea to
come into your head!'

'I can think of nothing more simple,' said Julien.

The gravity of the porter and above all the cleanness of the courtyard
had filled him with admiration.  The sun was shining brightly.

'What magnificent architecture!' he said to his friend.

It was one of the typical town houses, with their lifeless fronts, of
the Faubourg Saint-Germain, built about the date of Voltaire's death.
Never have the fashionable and the beautiful been such worlds apart.




CHAPTER 2
First Appearance in Society


  Absurd and touching memory:  one's first appearance, at
  eighteen, alone and unsupported, in a drawing-room!  A
  glance from a woman was enough to terrify me.  The more
  I tried to shine, the more awkward I became.  I formed
  the most false ideas of everything; either I surrendered
  myself for no reason, or I saw an enemy in a man because
  he had looked at me with a serious expression.  But then,
  amid all the fearful sufferings of my shyness, how fine
  was a fine day!
    KANT

Julien stopped in confusion in the middle of the courtyard.

'Do assume a reasonable air,' said the Abbe Picard; 'you take hold of
horrible ideas, and you are only a boy! Where is the _nil mirari_ of
Horace?' (That is: no enthusiasm.) 'Reflect that this tribe of
flunkeys, seeing you established here, will try to make a fool of you;
they will regard you as an equal, unjustly set over them. Beneath a
show of good nature, of good advice, of a wish to guide you, they will
try to catch you out in some stupid blunder.'

'I defy them to do so,' said Julien, biting his lip; and he recovered
all his former distrust.

The drawing-rooms through which our friends passed on the first floor,
before coming to the Marquis's study, would have seemed to you, gentle
reader, as depressing as they were magnificent. Had you been made a
present of them as they stood, you would have refused to live in them;
they are the native heath of boredom and dreary argument. They
redoubled Julien's enchantment. 'How can anyone be unhappy,' he
thought, 'who lives in so splendid a residence?'

Finally, our friends came to the ugliest of the rooms in this superb
suite: the daylight barely entered it; here, they found a wizened
little man with a keen eye and a fair periwig. The abbe turned to
Julien, whom he presented. It was the Marquis. Julien had great
difficulty in recognising him, so civil did he find him. This was no
longer the great nobleman, so haughty in his mien, of the Abbey of
Bray-le-Haut. It seemed to Julien that there was far too much hair in
his wig. Thanks to this impression, he was not in the least
intimidated. The descendant of Henri III's friend struck him at first
as cutting but a poor figure. He was very thin and greatly agitated.
But he soon remarked that the Marquis showed a courtesy even more
agreeable to the person he was addressing than that of the Bishop of
Besancon himself. The audience did not occupy three minutes. As they
left the room, the abbe said to Julien:

'You looked at the Marquis as you would have looked at a picture. I am
no expert in what these people call politeness, soon you will know
more about it than I; still, the boldness of your stare seemed to me
to be scarcely polite.'

They had returned to their vehicle; the driver stopped by the
boulevard; the abbe led Julien through a series of spacious rooms.
Julien remarked that they were unfurnished. He was looking at a
magnificent gilt clock, representing a subject that in his opinion was
highly indecent, when a most elegant gentleman approached them with an
affable expression. Julien made him a slight bow.

The gentleman smiled and laid a hand on his shoulder. Julien quivered
and sprang back. He was flushed with anger. The abbe Pirard, for all
his gravity, laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. The gentleman
was a tailor.

'I leave you at liberty for two days,' the abbe told him as they
emerged; 'it is not until then that you can be presented to Madame de
La Mole. Most people would protect you like a young girl, in these
first moments of your sojourn in this modern Babylon. Ruin yourself at
once, if you are to be ruined, and I shall be rid of the weakness I
show in caring for you. The day after tomorrow, in the morning, this
tailor will bring you two coats; you will give five francs to the boy
who tries them on you. Otherwise, do not let these Parisians hear the
sound of your voice. If you utter a word, they will find a way of
making you look foolish. That is their talent. The day after tomorrow,
be at my house at midday ... Run along, ruin yourself ... I was
forgetting, go and order boots, shirts, a hat at these addresses.'

Julien studied the handwriting of the addresses.

'That is the Marquis's hand,' said the abbe, 'he is an active man who
provides for everything, and would rather do a thing himself than
order it to be done. He is taking you into his household so that you
may save him trouble of this sort. Will you have sufficient
intelligence to carry out all the orders that this quick-witted man
will suggest to you in a few words? The future will show: have a
care!'

Julien, without uttering a word, made his way into the shops indicated
on the list of addresses; he observed that he was greeted there with
respect, and the bootmaker, in entering his name in his books, wrote
'M. Julien de Sorel'.

In the Cemetery of Pere-Lachaise a gentleman who seemed highly
obliging, and even more Liberal in his speech, offered to guide Julien
to the tomb of Marshal Ney, from which a wise administration has
withheld the honour of an epitaph. But, after parting from this
Liberal, who, with tears in his eyes, almost clasped him to his bosom,
Julien no longer had a watch. It was enriched by this experience that,
two days later, at noon, he presented himself before the abbe Pirard,
who studied him attentively.

'You are perhaps going to become a fop,' the abbe said to him, with a
severe expression. Julien had the appearance of an extremely young
man, in deep mourning; he did, as a matter of fact, look quite well,
but the good abbe was himself too provincial to notice that Julien
still had that swing of the shoulders which in the provinces betokens
at once elegance and importance. On seeing Julien, the Marquis
considered his graces in a light so different from that of the good
abbe that he said to him:

'Should you have any objection to M. Sorel's taking dancing-lessons?'

The abbe was rooted to the spot.

'No,' he replied, at length, 'Julien is not a priest.'

The Marquis, mounting two steps at a time by a little secret stair,
conducted our hero personally to a neat attic which overlooked the
huge garden of the house. He asked him how many shirts he had ordered
from the hosier.

'Two,' replied Julien, dismayed at seeing so great a gentleman descend
to these details.

'Very good,' said the Marquis, with a serious air, and an imperative,
curt note in his voice, which set Julien thinking: 'very good! Order
yourself two and twenty more. Here is your first quarter's salary.'

As they came down from the attic, the Marquis summoned an elderly man:
'Arsene,' he said to him, 'you will look after M. Sorel.' A few
minutes later, Julien found himself alone in a magnificent library: it
was an exquisite moment. So as not to be taken by surprise in his
emotion, he went and hid himself in a little dark corner; from which
he gazed with rapture at the glittering backs of the books. 'I can
read all of those,' he told himself. 'And how should I fail to be
happy here? M. de Renal would have thought himself disgraced for ever
by doing the hundredth part of what the Marquis de La Mole has just
done for me.

'But first of all, we must copy the letters.' This task ended, Julien
ventured towards the shelves; he almost went mad with joy on finding
an edition of Voltaire. He ran and opened the door of the library so
as not to be caught. He then gave himself the pleasure of opening each
of the eighty volumes in turn. They were magnificently bound, a
triumph of the best craftsman in London. This was more than was needed
to carry Julien's admiration beyond all bounds.

An hour later, the Marquis entered the room, examined the copies, and
was surprised to see that Julien wrote cela with a double _l_, _cella_
'So all that the abbe has been telling me of his learning is simply a
tale!' The Marquis, greatly discouraged, said to him gently:

'You are not certain of your spelling?'

'That is true,' said Julien, without the least thought of the harm he
was doing himself; he was moved by the Marquis's kindness, which made
him think of M. de Renal's savage tone.

'It is all a waste of time, this experiment with a little
Franc-comtois priest,' thought the Marquis; 'but I did so want a
trustworthy man.

'_Cela_ has only one _l_,' the Marquis told him; 'when you have
finished your copies, take the dictionary and look out all the words
of which you are not certain.'

At six o'clock the Marquis sent for him; he looked with evident dismay
at Julien's boots: 'I am to blame. I forgot to tell you that every
evening at half-past five you must dress.'

Julien looked at him without understanding him.

'I mean put on stockings. Arsene will remind you; today I shall make
your apologies.'

So saying, M. de La Mole ushered Julien into a drawing-room
resplendent with gilding. On similar occasions, M. de Renal never
failed to increase his pace so that he might have the satisfaction of
going first through the door.

The effect of his old employer's petty vanity was that Julien now trod
upon the Marquis's heels, and caused him considerable pain, owing to
his gout.  'Ah! He is even more of a fool than I thought,' the Marquis
said to himself. He presented him to a woman of tall stature and
imposing aspect.  It was the Marquise. Julien decided that she had an
impertinent air, which reminded him a little of Madame de Maugiron,
the Sub-Prefect's wife of the Verrieres district, when she attended
the Saint Charles's day dinner.  Being somewhat embarrassed by the
extreme splendour of the room, Julien did not hear what M. de La Mole
was saying. The Marquise barely deigned to glance at him. There were
several men in the room, among whom Julien recognised with unspeakable
delight the young Bishop of Agde, who had condescended to say a few
words to him once at the ceremony at Bray-le-Haut. The young prelate
was doubtless alarmed by the tender gaze which Julien, in his
timidity, fastened upon him, and made no effort to recognise this
provincial.

The men assembled in this drawing-room seemed to Julien to be somehow
melancholy and constrained; people speak low in Paris, and do not
exaggerate trifling matters.

A handsome young man, wearing moustaches, very pale and slender,
entered the room at about half-past six; he had an extremely small
head.

'You always keep us waiting,' said the Marquise, as he kissed her
hand.

Julien gathered that this was the Comte de La Mole. He found him
charming from the first.

'Is it possible,' he said to himself, 'that this is the man whose
offensive pleasantries are going to drive me from this house?'

By dint of a survey of Comte Norbert's person, Julien discovered that
he was wearing boots and spurs; 'and I ought to be wearing shoes,
evidently as his inferior.' They sat down to table. Julien heard the
Marquise utter a word of rebuke, slightly raising her voice. Almost at
the same moment he noticed a young person extremely fair and very
comely, who was taking her place opposite