The Red and the Black (37 page)

dogs prowling and half-snarling round the foot of his ladder. 'It's
me,' he repeated quite loudly, 'a friend.' No answer; the white
phantom had disappeared. 'I beg you to open the window for me; I must
speak to you, I'm so unhappy!' And he knocked away as if he would
smash the glass.

There was a faint
grating sound; the fastening on the casement window was yielding; he
pushed one half in and jumped lightly into the room.

The white phantom was receding; he took it by the arms; it was a
woman. All his thoughts of courage vanished. If it's her, what's she
going to say? Imagine his reaction when he realized from her little
cry that it was M
^me
de Rênal!

He clasped her in his arms; she was trembling, and scarcely had the strength to push him away.

'You wretch! What are you doing?'

Only with great difficulty could her strangled voice get there words out. Julien detected genuine indignation in it.

'I've come to see you after fourteen months of the most cruel separation.'

'Get out! Leave me this instant. All! Father Chélan, why did you
prevent me from writing to him? I should have forestalled this
outrage.' She pushed him away with quite extraordinary force. 'I
repent my crime; heaven has deigned to enlighten me,' she repeated in a
broken voice. 'Get out! Be off with you!'

'After fourteen months of unhappiness, I shall certainly not leave
you without talking to you. I want to know everything you've done. Ah!
I've loved you enough to deserve a frank account . . . I want to know
everything.'

In spite of herself, M
^me
de Rênal found her heart swayed by this tone of authority.

Julien, who was holding her in a passionate embrace and resisting her
attempts to break free, stopped clasping her in his arms. This
movement reassured M
^me
de Rênal somewhat.

'I'm going to pull in the ladder', he said, 'so it doesn't compromise
us if some servant or other is roused by the noise and goes on a tour
of inspection.'

'No! Get out! On the
contrary, you get out of here!' came the genuinely furious reply.
'What do I care about other people? It's God who sees the frightful
scene you're making,

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and he'll punish me for it. You're taking cowardly advantage of the
feelings I once had for you, but don't have any more. Do you
understand, Mr Julien?'

He was brining in the ladder very slowly so as not to make any noise.

'Is your husband in town, my love?' he said to her tenderly, not in order to defy her, but carried away by old habits.

'Don't speak to me like that, I implore you, or I'll call my husband.
I'm guilty enough as it is for not having sent you away, whatever the
consequences. I pity you,' she said to him, trying to wound his
pride, which she knew to be so touchy.

This refusal to use terms of affection, this brusque way of breaking
so tender a bond, which he was still taking for granted, brought
Julien's love to a pitch of fervour.

'What! is it possible that you don't love me any more!' he said to her
with one of those cries from the heart that are so difficult to
listen to unmoved.

She did not answer; as for him, he wept bitterly.

In all honesty he did not have any strength left to speak.

'So I'm completely abandoned by the only being who has ever loved me!
What's the point of going on living now?' All his courage had ebbed
away as soon as he did not have to fear the danger of confronting a
man; everything had vanished from his heart except love.

He wept for a long time in silence. He took her hand, she tried to
withdraw it; yet after one or two almost convulsive attempts, she
abandoned it to him. It was pitch dark; they both found themselves
sitting on M
^me
de Rênal's bed.

What a change from how things were fourteen months ago! thought
Julien; and his tears welled up all the more. So absence is quite sure
to destroy all human feelings!

At
last, embarrassed at his silence, Julien said in a voice choked with
tears: 'Be so good as to tell me what has been happening to you.'

'No doubt', replied Mme de Rênal in a hard voice which sounded
somehow curt and reproachful towards Julien, 'my misdemeanours were
known throughout the town at the point when you left. There had been
so much recklessness in your

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actions! Some while later--I was in despair at the time--our esteemed
Father Chélan came to see me. He tried for ages in vain to get me to
confess. One day, he had the idea of taking me to the church in Dijon
where I made my first communion. There, he was bold enough to broach
the subject himself . . .' M
^me
de Rênal broke off in tears.
'What a moment of shame! I confessed everything. That kindly man was
good enough not to crush me under the weight of his indignation: he
shared my affliction. At that time I was writing letters to you every
day which I didn't dare send; I used to hide them away carefully,
and when I was too unhappy I shut myself up in my room and reread my
letters.

'Finally Father Chélan got
me to agree to give them to him . . . Some of the more guardedly
written ones had been sent off to you; you didn't answer.'

'I swear to you, my love, that I never received a single letter from you at the seminary.'

'Good God! who can have intercepted them?'

'Just think what my sorrow was like: up until the day I saw you in the cathedral I didn't know if you were still alive.'

'God granted me the grace to understand how deeply I was sinning against him, against my children, against my husband,' M
^me
de Rênal went on. 'He has never loved me the way I used to believe that you loved me . . .'

Julien flung himself into her arms, quite genuinely with nothing in mind, just beside himself with love. But M
^me
de Rênal pushed him away and went on with some determination:

'My esteemed friend Father Chélan gave me to understand that in
marrying M. de Rênal, I had pledged him all my affections, even feelings
I was ignorant of and had never experienced before our ill-omened
affair . . . Since the great sacrifice of handing over those letters
which were so dear to me, my life has flowed on if not happily, then
at least reasonably peacefully. Don't throw it into turmoil; be a friend
to me . . . my best friend.' Julien smothered her hands in kisses;
she could feel that he was still in tears. 'Don't cry, I feel so sorry
for you . . . It's your turn to tell me what you've been doing.'
Julien was unable to speak. 'I want to know what sort of life you lead
at the seminary,' she repeated, 'and then you'll have to go.'

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Without thinking about what he was saying, Julien spoke about all the
intrigues and countless manifestations of jealousy he had encountered
at first, and then of the more peaceful life he had led since being
appointed an instructor.

'It was at
that point', he added, 'that after a long period of silence doubtless
intended to impart to me what I can see only too clearly now, that you
no longer loved me or cared in the least about me . . .'. M
^me
de Rênal squeezed his hands. '--it was at that point that you sent me
the sum of five hundred francs.' 'I never did any such thing,' said M
^me
de Rênal.

'It was a letter postmarked Paris and signed Paul Sorel, to allay any suspicions.'

A short discussion arose on the possible source of this letter. Their psychological stance changed. Without realizing it, M
^me
de Rênal and Julien had abandoned their tone of formality; they had
reverted to one of tender friendship. It was so dark they could not
see each other, but there was something in their voices which gave
everything away. Julien slipped his arm round her waist; it was a very
risky gesture to make. She tried to shift his arm, but he rather
cleverly caught her attention at that very moment with an interesting
element in his story. The arm was somehow forgotten and remained where
it was.

After a good many
conjectures about the source of the letter with five hundred francs in
it, Julien had taken up his story again; he was more in control of
himself now that he was talking about his past life, which interested
him very little in comparison with what was happening to him at that
moment. His attention focused entirely on the way in which his visit
was going to end. 'You'll have to leave,' a brisk voice still kept on
telling him at intervals.

What a
disgrace for me if I'm shown out! I'll feel so mortified it'll poison
my whole life, he said to himself, she'll never write to me. God knows
when I'll ever come back to this part of the world! From that moment
on, everything blissful in Julien's situation rapidly faded from his
heart. Sitting beside a woman he adored, virtually clasping her in his
arms, in the very room where he had been so happy, in the midst of
total darkness, perceiving very clearly that for some time now she had
been crying, feeling from the heaving of her breast that she was

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indeed sobbing, he had the misfortune to become a cold schemer,
almost as calculating and cold as when, in the recreation ground of
the seminary, he found himself the victim of some nasty joke from a
fellow seminarist who was tougher than he was. Julien spun out his
story, and told of the unhappy life he had led since leaving
Verrières. So, said M
^me
de Rênal to herself--after a year's
absence, when he was almost entirely deprived of anything tangible to
foster memories, while here I was forgetting him, he only had
thoughts for the happy days he had spent at Vergy. Her sobs grew more
violent. Julien saw how well his story had worked. He realized he had
to try his last resort: he moved abruptly to the letter he had just
received from Paris.

'I've taken my leave of Monsignor the bishop.'

'What! you're not going back to Besançon! Are you leaving us for ever?'

'Yes,' said Julien resolutely; 'Yes, I'm leaving a place where I'm
forgotten even by the one I've loved most dearly in my life, and I'm
leaving it never to set eyes on it again, I'm going to Paris . . .'

'You're going to Paris, my love!' came M
^me
de Rênal's more than audible cry.

Her voice was almost choked with tears and revealed her overwhelming
emotion. Julien needed this encouragement: he was about to try a move
which might settle everything against him; and before this outburst,
since he couldn't see a thing, he was totally unaware of the effect he
was succeeding in producing. He hesitated no longer; fear of regretting
his conduct later gave him perfect serf-control; he added coldly as
he got up:

'Yes, madam, I am leaving you for ever, I wish you happiness; farewell.'

He walked a few steps towards the window; he was already in the process of opening it. M
^me
de Rênal sprang after him and flung herself into his arms.

And so it was that after three hours of dialogue Julien obtained what
he had so passionately desired for the first two. Had it come a
little sooner, this return to tender feeling, this total eclipse of M
^me
de Rênal's remorse, would have given truly divine happiness; being thus obtained by skill, they afforded

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no more than mere pleasure. In spite of his mistress's entreaties, Julien insisted on lighting the nightlight.

'Do you want me to be without any memory of having seen you?' he said
to her. 'Shall the love that I don't doubt is shining in those
enchanting eyes of yours then be lost on me? Shall the whiteness of
this pretty hand then be invisible to me? Just think, I'm leaving you
for a very long time maybe!'

M
^me
de Rênal was unable to refuse anything when faced with this thought
which reduced her to tears. But dawn was beginning to sketch in the
sharp outlines of the fir trees on the mountain slope to the east of
Verrières. Instead of leaving, Julien, intoxicated with the sweetness
of love, asked M
^me
de Rênal if he might spend the whole day hidden in her room and only set off the following night.

'Why not?' she replied. 'This fatal relapse takes away all my
self-respect and brings about my eternal misfortune.' And she clasped
him to her heart. 'My husband is a changed man, he has his suspicions;
he thinks I've been taking him in over this whole business, and he's
behaving with great resentment towards me. If he hears the slightest
noise, that's the end of me, he'll turn me out of the house like the
wretch I am.'

'Ah! that's one of
Father Chélan's expressions,' said Julien. 'You wouldn't have spoken
to me like that before my cruel departure for the seminary; you loved
me then!'

Julien was rewarded for the
detachment with which he had uttered these words: he saw his beloved
quick to forget the danger she was in from the presence of her husband
and become mindful of the far greater danger of seeing Julien doubt
her love. The daylight was fast growing brighter and the room was
clearly lit; Julien rediscovered all the sweet satisfactions of pride
when he was able to see so charming a woman in his arms again, and
almost at his feet--the only one he had ever loved, and one who, only a
few hours previously, had been totally overwhelmed by the fear of a
terrible God and by devotion to her duties. Resolutions fortified by a
year of constancy had not been able to withstand his courage.

Soon they heard stirrings in the house; something she had not thought of brought a sudden worry to M
^me
de Rênal.

'That beastly Elisa is going to come into the room, what's to

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