The Red and the Black (14 page)

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

Don Juan
, C. I, st. 73.

M. DE RÊNAL, who was going round all the rooms in the house, returned
to the childrens' room with the servants who were bringing back the
mattresses. The sudden appearance of this man was the last straw for
Julien.

Looking paler and more sombre than usual, Julien rushed towards him. M. de Rênal stopped and glanced at his servants.

'Sir,' Julien said to him, 'do you think that with any other tutor
your children would have made the same progress as with me? If your
answer is no,' he went on without giving M. de Rênal a chance to
reply, 'then how can you dare reproach me with neglecting them?'

M. de Rênal had no sooner got over his fright than he inferred from
the strange manner he observed the little peasant adopt that he was in
possession of some advantageous offer from elsewhere, and that he was
about to leave his service. Julien's anger increased as he spoke:

'I can make a living without you, sir,' he added.

'I am genuinely disturbed to see you so upset,' replied M. de Rênal
with something of a stammer. The servants were some way off, busy
putting back the beds.

'That doesn't
satisfy me, sir,' Julien went on, quite beside himself with anger.
'Consider the disgraceful language you used to me--and in the presence
of ladies, too!

M. de
Rênal understood only too well what Julien was asking for, and he was
torn by a painful conflict. Julien did indeed exclaim in a real fit of
rage:

'I know where to go, sir, when I leave your house.'

At this M. de Rênal pictured Julien installed in M. Valenod's establishment.

'Well then, sir!' he said to him at last with the sigh and the

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look he would have produced for summoning a surgeon to perform the
most painful of operations, 'I grant your request. Starting from the
day after tomorrow, which is the first of the month, I shall give you
fifty francs a month.'

Julien felt like laughing and was completely taken aback; an his anger had vanished.

I didn't despise this animal enough, he said to himself. This is no
doubt the greatest apology such a petty mind is capable of.

The children, who were listening to this scene with mouths agape, ran
off into the the garden to tell their mother that Mr Julien was
terribly angry, but he was going to get fifty francs a month.

Julien followed them out of habit, without even looking at M. de Rênal, whom he left in a state of profound vexation.

That makes a hundred and sixty-eight francs that M. Valenod is
costing me, said the mayor to himself. It's essential I have stern
words with him about his contract to provide supplies for the
foundlings.

A moment later Julien was back again face to face with M. de Rênal:

'I must speak to Father Chélan about my conscience; may I most
respectfully inform you that I shall be absent for a few hours.'

'Ah! my dear Julien,' said the mayor with a laugh that rang utterly
false, 'all day if you wish, and all tomorrow, my dear fellow. Take
the gardener's horse to get to Verrières.'

There he goes, M. de Rênal said to himself, to give an answer to
Valenod; he hasn't promised me anything, but I'll have to let the
young hothead simmer down.

Julien
made a quick escape and climbed up through the thick woods which lead
from Vergy to Verrières. He did not want to get to Father Chélan's
immediately. Far from wishing to inflict on himself a further scene of
hypocrisy, he needed to sort out what was going on inside himself,
and to attend to the welter of feelings which were agitating him.

I've won a battle, he said to himself as soon as he was safely in the woods, out of anyone's sight. So I've won a battle!

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This word depicted his situation to him in a favourable light, and restored some of his peace of mind.

Here I am with a salary of fifty francs a month: M. de Rênal must have been well and truly frightened. But what of?

This meditation on what could possibly have frightened the happy and
powerful man who had made him fume with rage only an hour beforehand
completed the process of calming Julien down. He almost responded for a
moment to the bewitching beauty of the woods he was walking through.
Enormous blocks of bare rock had at one time fallen from the
mountainside into the middle of the forest. Tall beeches grew almost
as high as these rocks, which afforded delightfully cool shade only a
few feet away from spots where the heat of the sun's rays would have
made it impossible to stop.

Julien
paused an instant for breath in the shade of these great rocks, and
then resumed his climb. Soon a narrow, barely visible track used only
by goatherds took him to the top of a huge rock, where he stood in the
certainty of being away from all humankind. His physical location
made him smile, depicting for him the position he yearned to attain in
the spiritual sphere. The pure air in these high mountains imparted
serenity to him, and even joy. The mayor of Verrières was indeed in
Julien's eyes still the representative of all the rich and the
impudent on earth; but he sensed that for all the violence of his
reactions, there was nothing personal about the hatred which had moved
him. If he were to stop seeing M. de Rênal, he would have forgotten
him in a week--him, his fine house, his dogs, his children and all his
family. I've forced him, I don't understand how, to make an enormous
sacrifice. Imagine! More than fifty crowns
^*
a year! Only an instant before, I had extracted myself from dire
danger. That makes two victories in one day; the second brings me no
credit, I shall have to get to the bottom of it. But tomorrow is time
enough for painstaking investigation.

Standing on the top of his great rock Julien gazed at the sky which
glowed in the August sunshine. Cicadas were chirruping in the field
beneath the rock, and when they fell silent all was stillness around
him. At his feet he could see the countryside for twenty leagues round
about. A sparrowhawk which had

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taken wing from the great rocks above his head came into view from
time to time as it wheeled its great circles in silence. Mechanically,
Julien's eyes followed the bird of prey. He was struck by its serene,
powerful movements; he envied such strength, he envied such
isolation.

Such was Napoleon's destiny; would it one day be his?

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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
, C. I, st. 71

IT was necessary nevertheless to put in an appearance in Verrières.
By a stroke of good luck, Julien ran into M. Valenod on leaving the
presbytery, and hastened to tell him of the increase in his salary.

Once back in Vergy, Julien did not go down to the garden until night
had fallen. He was worn out by the many powerful emotions which had
shaken him during the course of the day. What shall I say to them? he
worried to himself as he thought of the ladies. He was a long way from
realizing that his mind was precisely on the level of the petty
circumstances which normally absorb the whole of women's attention.
Julien was often unintelligible to M
^me
Derville, and even
to her friend, and in his turn he only half understood all the things
they said to him. Such was the effect of the strength, and if I may be
permitted the expression, the grandeur of the passionate impulses
which rocked this ambitious young man's inner being. Within this
strange individual, almost every day was stormy.

As he went into the garden that evening, Julien was all prepared to
take an interest in the pretty cousins' ideas. They were waiting
impatiently for him. He took his customary seat next to M
^me
de Rênal. It soon became pitch dark. He wanted to take hold of a
white hand which he had seen beside him for some time resting on the
back of a chair. There was some hesitation, but at length the hand was
withdrawn in a way which indicated pique. Julien was inclined to take
that for an

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answer and to continue brightly with the conversation, when he heard M. de Rênal approaching.

Julien's ears were still ringing with the rude words from that
morning. Wouldn't it be a way of mocking this so-and-so who has
everything fortune can offer, he said to himself, if I took possession
of his wife's hand, and in his presence too? Yes I'll do it,
I
will--the person he treated with so much scorn.

After this the calm that came so unnaturally to Julien was very soon
banished; he desired frenetically, and without being able to think of
anything else, that M
^me
de Rênal consent to yield him her hand.

M. de Rênal was angrily talking politics: two or three industrialists
in Verrières were definitely getting richer than he was, and were
trying to go against him in the elections. M
^me
Derville was listening to him. Annoyed at his haranguing, Julien drew his chair close to M
^me
de Rênal's. Darkness hid all his movements. He was bold enough to lay
his hand very close to the pretty arm left bare by the dress. He was
aroused and took leave of his senses; he put his cheek to this pretty
arm and dared to touch it with his lips.

M
^me
de Rênal quivered. Her husband was only a few feet away; she hastily
gave Julien her hand, and at the same time pushed him away a little.
As M. de Rênal continued his diatribe against people with nothing to
their name and Jacobins who grew rich, Julien smothered the hand which
had been abandoned to him with passionate kisses, or at least so they
seemed to M
^me
de Rênal. Yet the poor woman had had proof
on that fateful day that the heart of the man she adored without
admitting it to herself belonged to another! For the whole of Julien's
absence she had been in the throes of a deep distress which had
caused her to reflect.

Goodness!
Could I be in love! she said to herself. Could this be love I feel!
I'm a married woman, and I've fallen in love! But, she said to
herself, I've never felt for my husband this sinister madness which
makes me unable to take my mind off Julien. He's really only a child
full of respect for me. It'll only be a passing madness. What does it
matter to my husband what feelings I may have for this young man! M.
de Rênal would be bored by my conversations with Julien on matters of

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the imagination. He only thinks about his business. I'm not taking anything away from him to give it to Julien.

There was no hypocrisy there to taint the purity of this innocent
soul, led astray by a passion she had never experienced. She was
deceived, but unwittingly, and yet some virtuous instinct within her
had taken fright. These were the struggles disturbing her when Julien
appeared in the garden. She heard him speak, and almost at the same
instant saw him sit down beside her. She was quite carried away by
this delightful happiness which for the past fortnight had astonished
her even more than it had seduced her. She never knew what to expect.
After a few moments, however, she said to herself: Is Julien's
presence enough to wipe out all his wrongs? She took fright, and that
was when she withdrew her hand from his.

The passionate kisses, the like of which she had never experienced,
caused her to forget at once that perhaps he loved another woman. Soon
he was no longer guilty in her eyes. The abrupt end to a poignant
grief, born of suspicion, and her present of happiness, beyond
anything she had even dreamed of, filled her with ecstatic feelings of
love and mad gaiety. It was a delightful evening for everyone except
the mayor of Verrières, who was unable to forget those industrialists
on the make. Julien stopped thinking about his black ambition and
his plans that were so difficult to execute. For the first time in his
life he was carried away by the power of beauty. Lost in a sweet and
aimless dream quite alien to his character, gently clasping a hand he
could admire for its flawless prettiness, he listened distractedly to
the rustle of the lime leaves in the gentle night breeze, and the dogs
down at the mill by the Doubs barking in the distance.

But the emotion he felt was a pleasure not a passion. On returning to
his room there was only one thing he desired to make him happy: to
take up his favourite book. At twenty, the thought of the wide world
and the impact you can have on it overrides everything else.

Soon, however, he put the book down. Thinking about Napoleon's
victories had given him a new insight into his own. Yes, I've won a
battle, he said to himself, but I must take

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advantage of it, I must crush the pride of this proud gentleman while
he is in retreat. That would be Napoleon all over. I must ask for
three days' leave to go and see my friend Fouqué. If he refuses to
grant it, I'll spell out my terms to him again; but he'll give in.

Mme de Rênal was unable to sleep. It seemed to her that she had not
lived until that moment. She could not take her mind off the pleasure
of feeling Julien smothering her hand with ardent kisses.

Suddenly the dreadful word
adultery
came to her. All the revolting images that the vilest debauchery can
imprint on the idea of sensual love came crowding into her
imagination. These ideas did their best to tarnish the tender and
divine images she had of Julien and of her happiness in loving him.
The future appeared to her in terrible colours. She saw herself as
despicable.

It was a dreadful moment;
she was entering uncharted territory. The previous day she had tasted
a happiness never experienced before; now she suddenly found herself
plunged in atrocious misery. She had no conception of such suffering,
and it clouded her reason. She thought for an instant of confessing
to her husband that she feared she was in love with Julien. It would
have allowed her to talk about him. Fortunately her memory supplied her
with a precept given her long ago by her aunt, on the eve of her
wedding. It was about the dangers of confiding in a husband, who is
after all a master. The excess of her misery made her wring her hands.

She was carried this way and that by
contradictory and painful images. At one moment she was afraid of not
being loved; at the next, the dreadful thought of her crime tortured
her as if she were to face the pillory the next day in the public
square of Verrières, with a placard explaining her adultery to the
populace.

M
^me
de Rênal had
no experience of life; even when fully awake and in complete command
of her reasoning powers, she would not have perceived any gap between
being guilty in the eyes of God, and being subjected in public to the
rowdiest display of public scorn.

When she was able to rest her mind from the dreadful idea

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