The Red and the Black (6 page)

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

Madame de Rênal looked at him doubtfully.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I should not have flinched.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Tell me,” answered Madame de Rênal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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