The Red and the Black (8 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Would Napoleon's destiny be one day his?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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