The Red and the Black (24 page)

understand clearly enough that he was aware of these secret visits.'

'And
I
was quite unaware of them,
I
was!' exclaimed M. de Rênal, full of fury once more and stressing his
words. 'Things happen in my house that I'm unaware of... What, was
there ever anything between Elisa and Valenod?'

'Ha! That's ancient history, my dearest,' laughed M
^me
de Rênal, 'and perhaps nothing wicked happened. It was at the time
when your good friend Valenod wouldn't have been displeased if people
in Verrières had thought that a little affair was developing between
him and me--perfectly platonic, of course.'

'I thought as much at one time,' exclaimed M. de Rênal, hitting his
head furiously as he made one discovery after another, 'and you never
said anything to me about it?'

'Was
there any need to cause two friends to quarrel for the sake of a
little flight of vanity from our dear Master? You name me a society
woman to whom he hasn't sent some extremely witty and even flirtatious
letters!'

'Did he write to you by any chance?'

'He writes a lot.'

'Show me those letters at once, I order you to!' and M. de Rênal drew himself up to a full six foot.

'I shall certainly not,' came the reply, gentle almost to the point
of nonchalance, 'I'll show them to you one day, when you're behaving
better.'

'This very instant, by God!'
shouted M. de Rênal, intoxicated with anger, and yet happier than he
had been for the past twelve hours.

'Do you swear to me', said M
^me
de Rênal very gravely, 'that you will never quarrel with the master of the workhouse on the subject of these letters?'

'Quarrel or no quarrel, I can take the foundlings from him; but', he
went on furiously, 'I want those letters at once; where are they?'

'In a drawer of my desk; but I certainly won't give you the key.'

'I'll find a way of breaking into it,' he shouted as he ran off to his wife's room.

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He did indeed use an iron bar to smash a valuable writingdesk in veined
mahogany obtained in Paris that he often used to buff up with his
coat-tail when he thought he saw some mark on it.

M
^me
de Rênal had run up the hundred and twenty steps to the top of the
dovecot; she was fastening the corner of a white handkerchief to one
of the iron bars of the little window. She was the happiest of women.
She gazed with tears in her eyes towards the great woods on the
mountain. No doubt, she said to herself, Julien is underneath one of
those leafy beeches, watching out for this good-luck signal. She
strained her ears for a long time, then cursed the birdsong and the
monotonous chirruping of the cicadas. If it weren't for this unwelcome
noise, a shout of joy from the great rocks might have reached as
far as here. Her avid gaze devoured the vast slope of dark greenery,
smooth as a meadow, formed by the tops of the trees. How can he not
have the wit, she said to herself quite overcome, to invent some
signal to tell me that his happiness equals mine? She did not come
down from the dovecot until she grew afraid that her husband might
come and fetch her.

She found him in a
state of fury. He was running through M. Valenod's anodyne prose,
which was quite unaccustomed to being read with so much emotion.

Taking advantage of a pause in her husband's outbursts which allowed her to make herself heard:

'I keep coming back to this idea of mine,' said M. de Rênal, 'It
would be a good thing for Julien to go on a journey. Whatever his
talent for Latin, he's only a peasant after all, who is often coarse
and lacking in tact; every day, thinking he's being civil, he pays me
exaggerated compliments in poor taste which he learns by heart from
some novel...'

'He never reads
novels,' snapped M. de Rênal; 'I've made sure of that. Do you think
I'm the kind of master to be blind and unaware of what goes on in his
household?'

'All right! If he doesn't
read these ridiculous compliments anywhere, he invents them, in which
case, more fool him. He must have spoken about me in this vein in
Verrières...; and without supposing as much as that', said M. de Rênal
with the look of someone making a discovery, 'he must have spoken

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like that in front of Elisa, and that's to all intents and purposes as good as speaking in front of M. Valenod.'

'Ah!' shouted M. de Rênal shaking the table and the whole set of
rooms by slamming down his fist as hard as is humanly possible, 'The
printed anonymous letter and Valenod's letters are written on the same
paper.'

'About time too!' thought M
^me
de Rênal; she put on a dumbfounded look at this discovery, and
feeling too weak to add anything further, she went off and sat down on
the sofa at the far end of the drawing-room.

From then on the battle was won; she had a hard time preventing M. de
Rênal from going off to have words with the supposed author of the
anonymous letter.

'How can you fail
to understand that making a scene to M. Valenod without adequate proof
is the most signal piece of ineptitude? You are envied, sir, and who
is to blame? Your talents. Your wise administration, your buildings in
such good taste, the dowry I brought you, and especially the
substantial inheritance we may expect from my good aunt--people
grossly exaggerate its size, but still--all this has made you the most
important figure in Verrières'.

'You're forgetting my birth,' said M. de Rênal, with a hint of a smile.

'You are one of the most distinguished noblemen in the provinces,' M
^me
de Rênal went on eagerly; 'if the king were free and could do justice
to high birth, you would no doubt be a member of the house of peers,
etc. And with such a splendid position in society, do you really wish
to give envious tongues food for comment?

To speak to M. Valenod about his anonymous letter amounts to
proclaiming throughout the whole of Verrières--no, throughout
Besançon, indeed throughout the whole of the provinces--that this
little commoner, perhaps rather unwisely admitted to the family circle
of
a Rênal
, has found a way of insulting him. Supposing these
letters you've just turned up were to prove that I had responded to M.
Valenod's love, you ought to kill me, I should richly deserve it; but
you shouldn't show him any anger. Think how all your neighbours are
just waiting for an excuse to get their revenge for your superiority;

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think how in 1816 you did your bit to get certain people arrested. That man taking refuge on his roof...'
^*

'What I'm thinking is that you are showing no consideration or
friendship towards me,' exclaimed M. de Rênal with all the bitterness
evoked by a memory of this kind, 'and I wasn't made a peer!...'

'I'm reflecting, my dear,' went on M
^me
de Rênal with a smile, 'that I shall be richer than you, I've been
your companion for twelve years, and all these considerations ought to
give me the right to a say in what goes on, especially in the matter
concerning us today. If you prefer a Mr Julien to me', she added with
ill-disguised pique, 'I'm ready to go and spend a winter with my
aunt.'

This remark was uttered
most appositely
.
There was a firm ring to it beneath a veneer of politeness; it
settled matters for M. de Rênal. But, as is the custom in the
provinces, he went on speaking for a long time, he went back over all
the arguments; his wife let him have his say, there was still anger
in his voice. At length, two hours of pointless chatter wore down the
strength of a man who had been in a fit of rage all night. He settled
the line he would take with M. Valenod, Julien and even Elisa.

Once or twice during this great scene M
^me
de Rênal was on the verge of feeling some sympathy for the very real
misfortune of this man who had been her friend for twelve years. But
true passions are selfish. Besides, she was expecting at every
moment that he would confess to having received an anonymous letter the
previous evening, and this confession was not forthcoming. M
^me
de Rênal's peace of mind was incomplete without knowledge of what
might have been suggested to the man in whose hands lay her fate. For
in the provinces husbands control public opinion. A husband who
complains brings ridicule upon himself, something which is becoming
daily less dangerous in France; but his wife, if deprived by him of
money, sinks to the level of a woman forced to work for a living on a
pitiful wage, and what's more, right-minded folk will scruple to
employ her.

An odalisque in a harem may love the sultan through thick and thin; but he is all-powerful, and she has no hope of stealing

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his authority from him by a series of little acts of cunning. The
master's vengeance is terrible and bloody, but military in its
generosity: a dagger blow ends it all. The blows are dealt by public
scorn when a husband kids his wife in the nineteenth century; he does
it by closing all salon doors to her.

M
^me
de Rênal's feeling of danger was rudely awakened when she returned to
her room; she was shocked at the state of chaos she found it in. The
locks on all her pretty little caskets had been forced; several blocks
of the parquet floor had been prised up. He would have had no pity on
me! she said to herself. Fancy ruining this parquet floor in
contrasting wood that he's so fond of; when one of his children comes
in with wet shoes, he turns red with anger. And now it's ruined for
good! The sight of this violence rapidly banished her last reproaches
to herself for her over-hasty victory.

Shortly before the dinner bell, Julien returned with the children.
During the sweet course, when the servants had withdrawn, M
^me
de Rênal said very curtly to him:

'You expressed the wish to me to go and spend a fortnight in
Verrières; M. de Rênal is agreeable to granting you leave. You may go
when you see fit. However, so that the children don't waste their
time, their Latin proses will be sent to you every day for you to
correct.'

'My mind is made up', M. de Rênal added in very sour tones, 'not to grant you more than a week.'

Julien read in his features the anxiety of a deeply tormented man.

'He hasn't yet settled on a course of action,' he said to his
mistress when they were alone together for a moment in the
drawing-room.

M
^me
de Rênal gave him a rapid account of everything she had done since the morning.

'The details can wait until tonight,' she added laughing.

Aren't women perverse! thought Julien. What pleasure, what instinct drives them to deceive us!

'I find you both enlightened and blinded by your love,' he said to
her somewhat coldly; 'your conduct today is admirable; but is it
prudent for us to try to see each other tonight? This

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house is lined with enemies; just think of the passionate hatred Elisa feels for me.'

'That hatred is very like the passionate indifference I must suppose you feel for me.'

'Even if I were indifferent, I must rescue you from the danger I've
put you in. If chance has it that M. de Rênal speaks to Elisa, one
word from her may reveal all to him. What's to stop him from hiding
near my room, well armed...'

'What! not even any courage!' said M
^me
de Rênal with all the hauteur of a daughter of the nobility.

'I shall never stoop to speak of my courage,' said Julien coldly,
'It's beneath me. Let the world judge according to deeds. But', he
added taking her hand, 'you cannot conceive how attached I am to you,
and what a joy it is for me to be able to take leave of you before
this cruel absence.'

-142-

Speech was given to men to conceal their thoughts.

R. P. MALAGRIDA
^*

JULIEN had no sooner arrived in Verrières than he began to reproach himself for his conduct towards M
^me
de Rênal. I'd have despised her like a feeble little woman if, out of
weakness, she'd messed up her scene with M. de Rênal. She pulls it
off like a diplomat, and I go and sympathize with the victim who is
my enemy. My action smacks of petty-mindedness; my vanity is shocked
because M. de Rênal is a man! What a vast and illustrious company I
have the honour of belonging to: I'm just an idiot.

Father Chélan had refused the lodgings that the most influential
liberals in the locality had vied with one another in offering him
when his removal from office drove him from the presbytery. The two
rooms he had rented were cluttered up with his books. Wishing to show
Verrières what a priest was worth, Julien went and fetched a dozen
deal planks from his father and carried them on his own back all the
way along the main street. He borrowed some tools from an old friend
and had soon constructed a sort of bookcase in which he put away
Father Chélan's books.

'I thought
you'd been corrupted by worldly vanity,' said the old man to him with
tears of delight. 'This certainly redeems the childish indulgence of
wearing a dazzling guard of honour's uniform, which made you so many
enemies.'

M. de Rênal had instructed
Julien to lodge in his house. No one suspected what had happened.
Three days after his arrival, Julien received a visit in his own room
at the top of the stairs from no less important a personage than the
sub-prefect M. de Maugiron. It was only after two lengthy hours of
insipid gossip and long laments over the wickedness of men, the lack
of honesty of the people in charge of administering public funds,

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