The Red and the Black (23 page)

hated by the majority of men he knew. I must consult my wife, he said
to himself through force of habit, getting up from the chair in which
he was slumped.

He was hardly up
before he exclaimed: 'God Almighty!' and banged his head with his
fists. She's the one I've got to be specially wary of: she's my enemy
at this moment. And from sheer anger, tears welled up in his eyes.

As a just reward for the emotional barrenness which is a matter of
practical wisdom in the provinces, the two men M.de Rênal feared most
at that moment were his two most intimate friends.

After these two, I've got maybe ten friends, and he ran through them,
reckoning as he did so how much solace he might hope to derive from
each of them. 'All of them! All of them!' he exclaimed in rage, 'will
get the greatest of enjoyment from my frightful misadventure.' He was
lucky enough to be, he believed, much envied, and with good cause too.
In addition to his splendid house in town, which the King of -----
had just honoured in perpetuity by sleeping there, he had done up
his chateau in Vergy very nicely indeed. The façade was painted white
and the windows were fitted with beautiful green shutters. He took a
moment's comfort from the thought of this magnificence. The fact is
that this chateau could be seen from three or four leagues away, to
the great detriment of all the neighbouring country houses or
so-called chateaux, which had been left the humble grey colour that
weathering had produced.

M. de
Rênal could count on the tears and pity of one of his friends, the
churchwarden of the parish; but he was an idiot who shed tears over
anything. This man, however, was his only recourse.

'What wretchedness can be compared with mine!' he exclaimed in rage. 'What isolation!'

Can it be, wondered this man who was genuinely to be pitied, can it
be possible that I haven't a friend to turn to for advice in my
misfortune? For I'm losing my reason, I can feel it! Ah! Falcoz! Ah!
Ducros! he exclaimed bitterly. These were the names of two childhood
friends whom he had estranged by his haughty behaviour in 1814. They
were not noble, and he

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had wished to alter the equal footing which had marked their relations since childhood.

One of them, Falcoz, an intelligent, warm-hearted man who was a paper
merchant in Verrières, had bought a printing press in the main town
of the departement, and had started up a newspaper. The Congregation
had determined to ruin him: his newspaper had been condemned and his
printer's licence withdrawn. In these sad circumstances he had tried
writing to M. de Rênal for the first time in ten years. The mayor of
Verrières thought it his duty to reply like an ancient Roman: 'If the
king's minister did me the honour of consulting me, I should say to
him: "Do not scruple to ruin all provincial printers, and turn
printing into a monopoly like tobacco." ' This letter to a close
friend was admired by the whole of Verrières at the time, and M. de
Rênal was now appalled to recall its terms. Who could have told me
that with my rank, my fortune, and my decorations, I should need him
one day? Tossed by fits of anger such as these, now directed against
himself, now against everything round about him, he spent a terrible
night; but fortunately he did not think to spy on his wife.

I'm used to Louise, he said to himself, she's familiar with all my
business; even supposing I were free to marry tomorrow, I shouldn't
find anyone to replace her. At that point he went along with the idea
that his wife was innocent; this view of matters did not impose on him
the need to show any force of character, and suited him much better;
what a common occurrence it is, anyway, to see women slandered!

'What the devil!' he exclaimed suddenly, striding fitfully up and
down. Am I to put up with her mocking me with her lover as if I were a
nobody, or a vagabond? Must the whole of Verrières laugh me to scorn
for turning a blind eye? Just think what they said about Charmier! (He
was one of the neighbourhood's notorious cuckolds.) When his name is
mentioned, doesn't a smile pass over everyone's lips? He's a good
barrister, but who on earth ever talks of his oratorical skills? 'Ah!
Charmier!' they say, 'Bernard's Charmier': that's what they call
him--by the name of the man who's the cause of his shame.

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Thank heavens, thought M. de Rênal at other moments, I haven't got a
daughter, and the way I'm going to punish their mother won't prejudice
the establishment of my children; I can surprise that little peasant
with my wife, and kill them both; in that case, the tragic side of the
adventure will perhaps remove the ridicule from it. This idea
appealed to him; he pursued it in every detail. The penal system is on
my side, and whatever happens, our Congregation and my friends on the
jury will save me. He examined his hunting knife which was
exceedingly sharp; but the thought of blood frightened him.

I can thrash this impertinent tutor and drive him from the house; but
what a furore in Verrières and even throughout the departement! After
Falcoz's newspaper had been banned, when its editor-in-chief came out
of prison, I helped to ensure that he lost his job worth six hundred
francs. They say this scribbler is daring to show his face again in
Besançon, he can offer me up cleverly to public ridicule, and in such a
way that it will be impossible to take him to court. Take him to
court!... The impertinent fellow will find innumerable ways of
insinuating that he has told the truth. A gentleman who maintains his
station as I do is hated by all plebeians. I shall get into those
frightful Paris newspapers; oh heavens! what a calamity! to see the
ancient name of Rênal plunged into the mire of ridicule... If ever I
travel I shall have to change my name. What! give up this name which
is my glory and my strength. What depths of misfortune!

If I don't kill my wife, but instead drive her from the house in
ignominy, she has her aunt in Besançon who will hand over her fortune
to her directly. My wife will go and live in Paris with Julien;
Verrières will come to hear of it, and once again I'll be taken for a
dupe. At this point the unhappy man noticed from the dimness of his
lamp that day was beginning to break. He went out into the garden for a
breath of fresh air. At that moment he was almost resolved not to
create a scandal, chiefly on the grounds that a scandal would
thoroughly delight his friends in Verrières.

The walk in the garden calmed him down a little. 'No,' he exclaimed,
'I shan't deprive myself of my wife, she's too useful to me.' He
pictured with horror what his house would be like

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without his wife; the only female relative he had was the Marquise de R -----, who was old, weak in the head and spiteful.

A very sensible idea occurred to him, but to carry it out would have
required strength of character far in excess of what little the poor
man possessed. If I keep my wife, he said, I know myself, one day when
I get impatient with her I'll reproach her with her infidelity. She's
proud, we'll quarrel, and all this will happen before she has
inherited her aunt's money. How I shall be mocked then! My wife loves
her children, everything will revert to them in the end. But I shall
be the laughing-stock of Verrières. What! they'll say, he didn't even
manage to get his revenge on his wife! Wouldn't it be better to stick
to suspicions and not try to prove anything? In that case I tie my
hands, and can't reproach her with anything subsequently.

A moment later M. de Rênal was seized again by wounded vanity and
laboriously recalled all the ploys quoted in the billiard room of the
Casino
^*
or
Noble Circle
of Verrières when someone with the gift of the gab interrupts the
pool to have a joke at the expense of a cuckolded husband. How cruel
these jibes seemed to him now!

God!
Why is my wife not dead! then I'd be impervious to ridicule. Why am I
not a widower! I'd go and spend six months in Paris in the best
circles. After this moment of happiness conjured up by the idea of
widowerhood, his imagination returned to the means of ascertaining the
truth. Should he emerge at midnight, after everyone had gone to bed,
to spread a thin layer of bran in front of the door to Julien's room?
Next morning at dawn he would see the footprints.

'But that method's no good,' he cried out in a sudden fit of rage,
'that sly minx Elisa would notice, and the household would soon know
that I'm jealous.'

In another story told at the
Casino
,
a husband had ascertained his misfortune by sealing up the doors to his
wife's and the gallant's bedrooms by means of a little wax and two
strands of hair.

After so many hours of uncertainty, this method of shedding light on his fate seemed to him to be decidedly the best, and

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he was thinking of using it when, at a bend in one of the paths, he met this wife whom he would have liked to see dead.

She was coming back from the village. She had gone to hear Mass in
the church at Vergy. A tradition of most dubious reliability in the
eyes of the cold man of reason, but one she believed in, has it that
the little church used today was the chapel of the château belonging
to the squire of Vergy. This idea obsessed M
^me
de Rênal for
the whole of the time she was intending to spend praying in this
church. She had a constant image of her husband killing Julien while
out hunting, as if by accident, and then making her eat his heart
^*
in the evening.

My fate, she told herself, depends on what he's going to think when
he listens to what I have to say. After this fateful quarter of an
hour, I may not find another opportunity to speak to him. He isn't a
man of sense, controlled by reason. Otherwise I could use my feeble
reasoning powers to foresee what he's going to do or say.
He
will decide our common fate, he has the power to do it. But that fate
depends on my cunning, my skill in guiding the thoughts of this
unpredictable mind turned blind by anger and prevented from seeing
half of what's going on. God Almighty! I need talent, I need a cool
head, where do I get them from?

She
regained her calm as if by magic on entering the garden and seeing her
husband from a distance. His rumpled hair and clothes signalled that
he had not slept.

She handed him a letter with the seal broken but refolded. He did not open it but stared at his wife with wild eyes.

'This is an abomination', she said to him, 'that was handed to me as I
was passing round the back of the solicitor's garden, by a
disreputable-looking man claiming to be acquainted with you and to owe
you a debt of gratitude. I demand one thing of you: that you send
this Mr Julien off packing back to his family, right away.' M
^me
de Rênal uttered his name hastily, perhaps a little too soon, in
order to be rid of the fearful prospect of having to utter it.

On seeing the joy which her words produced in her husband, she was
overcome with the same feeling herself. She realized from the way he
was staring at her that Julien had guessed right. Instead of lamenting
this genuine misfortune, she

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thought to herself: what a genius, what perfect intuition! And in a
young man still lacking any experience! Will any doors remain closed
to him later on! Alas! then his successes will make him forget me.

This little act of admiration for the man she adored rid her completely of her nerves.

She congratulated herself on what she had done. I haven't been
unworthy of Julien, she said to herself with a sweet inner glow of
pleasure.

Without saying a word for
fear of committing himself, M.de Rênal examined the second anonymous
letter composed, the reader will remember, of printed words stuck on
to a sheet of blue-tinged paper. I am being mocked in any event, M. de
Rênal said to himself, overwhelmed with fatigue.

Yet more slander to examine, and my wife's the cause of it again! He
was on the point of subjecting her to the coarsest of insults, when
the prospect of the Besançon inheritance stopped him just in time.
Devoured by the need to vent his destructive urge on something, he
crumpled up the paper on which this second anonymous letter had been
written, and began striding off; he needed to get away from his wife. A
few moments later he returned to her, in a calmer frame of mind.

'You must take a decision and dismiss Julien,' she said to him at
once; 'after all, he's only a workman's son. You can make him a small
payment in compensation, and anyway he's very learned and will easily
find himself another post, for instance with M. Valenod or the
sub-prefect de Maugiron who both have children. In this way you won't
be doing him any harm...'

'You're
talking just like the silly idiot you are,' thundered M. de Rênal.
'What sense can anyone expect from a woman? You never pay any
attention to what is reasonable; how can you possibly know a thing?
your happy-go-lucky outlook and your laziness only give you energy for
chasing after butterflies, you feeble creatures that we are
unfortunate enough to have in the midst of our families!...'

M
^me
de Rênal let him have his say, and it went on for a good while; he was
getting shot of his anger
, as the local expression goes.

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'Sir,' she answered him at last, 'I speak as a woman impugned in her
honour, that is to say in the most precious thing she has.'

M
^me
de Rênal remained completely unruffled throughout the whole of this
painful conversation on which hung her chance of going on living under
the same roof with Julien. She tried to produce ideas she thought
most likely to guide the blind anger of her husband. She had been
unmoved by all the insulting remarks he had addressed to her, she
wasn't even listening, she was thinking about Julien at the time. Will
he be pleased with me?

'This
little peasant on whom we have showered kindness and even presents may
be innocent,' she said at last, 'but he is none the less the pretext
for the first affront I've received... Sir! when I read this
abominable missive, I vowed to myself that either he or I would leave
your house.'

'Do you want to cause a scandal to dishonour me and yourself too? You give rise to a lot of bad feeling in Verrières.'

'It's true: most people envy the prosperous state which your wise
administration has secured for yourself, your family and the town...
All right! I shall entreat Julien to ask you for a period of leave to
go and spend a month with that timber merchant in the mountains--a
worthy friend for this little workman.'

'Don't you take any kind of action,' replied M. de Renal quite
calmly. 'What I insist on above all is that you should not speak to
him. You would do it in anger and set him and me at loggerheads; you
know how touchy the little gentleman is.'

'The young man has no sense of propriety,' went on M
^me
de Rênal, 'he may be learned--you're the judge of that--but
underneath he's nothing but a real peasant. As far as I'm concerned,
I've never thought well of him since he refused to marry Elisa; it was
a guaranteed fortune; and all because she sometimes pays secret
visits to M. Valenod.'

'Ah!' said M. de Rênal, raising his eyebrows quite excessively, 'what was that? Did Julien tell you that?'

'Not exactly; he has always talked to me about his calling for the
sacred ministry; but believe you me, the first calling for common
people like him is to earn their bread. He led me to

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