finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Red and the Black/section_2_part_0.txt
The Red and the Black.part 1.chapters 6-8
chapters 6-8
{"name": "Chapters 6-8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201128052739/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/the-red-and-the-black/summary-and-analysis/part-1-chapters-68", "summary": "Mme. de Renal receives Julien, and after their mutual embarrassment has changed -- for Mme. de Renal to relief and for Julien to a beginning of composure -- he is outfitted in a new suit and presented to the children. Now in complete command of himself, Julien recites at random entire passages of the Bible in Latin, earning the respect and admiration of all. Within a month, he is considered as a real prize by M. de Renal. During the next five weeks, Julien engages in petty negotiations beginning his scheme of success through hypocrisy. The self-righteousness that this society feels causes him to feel superior to it, and this, in turn, alienates him from it. His utter ignorance of most matters prevents him, at this stage, from understanding much of what he hears. He craftily convinces Renal of the necessity of taking out a subscription with the liberal bookseller, presenting the matter in such a way that it will not offend the vanity of the Royalist. Julien is extremely wary of Mme. de Renal since her beauty caused him to stumble when he first arrived. She, on the other hand, is becoming increasingly drawn to this charming and intelligent young man. Unaware of what love is, she gives no thought to the fact that she is attentive to his needs and that her husband is becoming increasingly unbearable to her. Mme. de Renal's maid, Elisa, has designs on Julien, and Father Chelan urges him to consider favorably the possibility of such a match and discourages him from entering the priesthood. Julien's burning ardor makes Chelan fear for his salvation should he pursue a career in the Church. Julien retreats, then returns to try to impress the priest by a new tactic. To no avail, for Chelan is not fooled. This is a defeat for Julien. Mme. de Renal is overjoyed to hear Elisa confess tearfully that Julien has rejected her. Soon Mme. de Renal becomes aware that she is in love with Julien. In the spring, the family moves to the summer home in the neighboring village of Vergy. Animated by a fresh outlook, Mme. de Renal agrees to Julien's suggestion to create a meandering path \"a la Julie,\" among the walnut trees. Catching butterflies provides a new activity and topic of conversation for the inexperienced couple. Mme. de Renal changes clothes two or three times a day, unaware, however, of what prompts this interest in her appearance. The arrival of Mme. Derville creates a happy threesome. Julien relaxes to the point of reading not only at night in the solitude of his room but during the day. This increased reading finally gives him some ideas about women. The three begin to assemble at night outside in the darkness for conversation. One evening, in his animated gesticulation, Julien happens to touch Mme. de Renal's hand. When it is instantly withdrawn, he decides it is his duty to hold it. A new challenge disturbs his peace.", "analysis": "In these chapters, Stendhal brings Julien and Mme. de Renal together for the first time, then concentrates on their separate progression. As will be typical of Julien's character, he reacts spontaneously when surprised by Mme. de Renal. An aspiring hypocrite must learn to control his reactions. He hates her \"because she is beautiful\" -- that is, her beauty produces a violent reaction in him, a superior being born to exalt in beauty and to be offended by ugliness, but his reaction is spontaneous, and in betraying it, he ruins his \"pose.\" His pride is offended when she expresses amazement at his knowledge of Latin. Her supplicating tone causes him momentarily to forget his pride, and as his self-confidence becomes progressively stronger, he dares himself to kiss her hand. This daring act he accomplishes. His composure is shattered again when he gives way to the expression of joy, caused by his new clothes, but once again, after collecting himself in his room, he reassumes the calm and dignity befitting a tutor. The scene relating Julien's arrival is important for several reasons. It establishes the pattern of conduct that will characterize him throughout the novel. In him there seethes a conflict between spontaneous expression of joy associated with happiness and the hypocritical wearing of a mask imposed by ambition. The scene illustrates the tender irony that characterizes Stendhal's attitude toward his \"chosen\" characters. He deliberately places them in awkward situations that will challenge and embarrass them after already creating them with a contradictory nature that will cause them to stumble. He has great affection for his \"chosen\" characters, but he demands of them as much as he demands of himself. Julien's petty maneuvering wins him minor triumphs in this household which he disdains. Throughout the novel, his prodigious memory will be a sure means of winning for him the admiration of others, but it seems to produce a special effect on the provincial bourgeois, incapable, says Stendhal, of appreciating intelligence in any other form. The almost photographic memory that Julien possesses would seem to serve in place of keen reasoning and eloquence to convince the reader of Julien's superior nature, as we will see. Misunderstanding it, Julien rebuffs Mme. de Renal's offer of money and succeeds in tricking the mayor on two occasions. His social behavior is quite unacceptable, and his efforts to play a role accentuate his ineptness. On the other hand, he unknowingly charms Mme. de Renal with his eyes. He is unable to deceive Chelan, and the great emotion he experiences at the love and concern shown him by the priest betrays an ardent soul thirsting for friendship and happiness. Thus, to enjoy this emotion completely, Julien takes refuge in the mountains, where his superior soul may not be surprised -- unguarded -- by the watchful eyes of society. Stendhal intervenes at this point to assure the reader that Julien will succeed as a hypocrite -- he is only a beginner. This intervention betrays the sympathy of the author for his amoral hero and dictates the reader's reaction. Since the novel is also the story of the education of Julien, Stendhal will intervene periodically to praise or censure the conduct of his hero. For the first time in his life, Julien is happy -- interestingly enough, only when he momentarily forgets his relentless ambition and hypocrisy. His ambition reawakens at a gesture of Mme. de Renal: When she withdraws her hand, Julien vows, in a chivalric way, to force her to leave her hand in his. His code of honor is very demanding and depends entirely upon personal criteria. For Julien, personal honor replaces morality. The chapters advance Mme. de Renal toward her role as mistress more so than Julien toward his of lover, although the affair will necessarily begin awkwardly and almost by accident, both parties lacking experience and even a conception of what love is. The awakening and development of love in his characters is illustrative of the crystallization process that Stendhal elaborated in De l'Amour. The feeling manifests itself autonomously of will and, after a preliminary stage of admiration and hope, soon crystallizes in the mind of the lover. This means that it becomes the exclusive obsession of the victim smitten, and every subject, no matter how far removed in appearance, ultimately leads one back to discover new perfections in the loved one. Mme. de Renal has never before been so deeply moved by a purely agreeable sensation as when she learns that this delightful young man is the stern priest she had anticipated. Note that only when her mind is at ease over the fate of her children does she notice Julien's good looks. She will remain in the early stages of \"admiration\" for a seemingly long period of time because of utter inexperience and ignorance of love. She feels in Julien a kindred spirit and has never imagined that such a man existed, so different is he from the husband whom she has considered the prototype of manhood. She involuntarily conceals her pleasure at the prospect of Julien's staying, her subconscious forcing the opposite reaction in the conscious. Mme. de Renal is greatly moved when she finds Julien beaten by his brothers. She notices the attentiveness that Elisa shows him, then wants to show him kindnesses. Increasingly she disapproves of the lack of delicacy and tact in her husband. Leaning on Julien's arm during a walk, she offers him the gift. His refusal leaves her trembling, and she takes some pleasure in his reprimand. She redoubles her attentions, giving herself the pretext that she has offended him. She becomes physically ill when Elisa speaks to her of Julien's refusal. At this point, Mme. de Renal becomes consciously aware that she is in love; what pleasure it is to plead the cause of Elisa, to speak of Julien knowing that he has refused. She actually faints from the joy that the interview causes her. With this realization does not come guilt since Mme. de Renal is unaware of what love implies. Thus she plunges head on, in her innocence, attending to her toilette with unprecedented care."}
CHAPTER VI

ENNUI


    Non so piu cosa son
    Cosa facio.
                     MOZART (_Figaro_).


Madame de Renal was going out of the salon by the folding window which
opened on to the garden with that vivacity and grace which was natural
to her when she was free from human observation, when she noticed a
young peasant near the entrance gate. He was still almost a child,
extremely pale, and looked as though he had been crying. He was in a
white shirt and had under his arm a perfectly new suit of violet frieze.

The little peasant's complexion was so white and his eyes were so soft,
that Madame de Renal's somewhat romantic spirit thought at first that
it might be a young girl in disguise, who had come to ask some favour
of the M. the Mayor. She took pity on this poor creature, who had
stopped at the entrance of the door, and who apparently did not dare
to raise its hand to the bell. Madame de Renal approached, forgetting
for the moment the bitter chagrin occasioned by the tutor's arrival.
Julien, who was turned towards the gate, did not see her advance. He
trembled when a soft voice said quite close to his ear:

"What do you want here, my child."

Julien turned round sharply and was so struck by Madame de Renal's
look, full of graciousness as it was, that up to a certain point he
forgot to be nervous. Overcome by her beauty he soon forgot everything,
even what he had come for. Madame de Renal repeated her question.

"I have come here to be tutor, Madame," he said at last, quite ashamed
of his tears which he was drying as best as he could.

Madame de Renal remained silent. They had a view of each other at close
range. Julien had never seen a human being so well-dressed, and above
all he had never seen a woman with so dazzling a complexion speak to
him at all softly. Madame de Renal observed the big tears which had
lingered on the cheeks of the young peasant, those cheeks which had
been so pale and were now so pink. Soon she began to laugh with all the
mad gaiety of a young girl, she made fun of herself, and was unable to
realise the extent of her happiness. So this was that tutor whom she
had imagined a dirty, badly dressed priest, who was coming to scold and
flog her children.

"What! Monsieur," she said to him at last, "you know Latin?"

The word "Monsieur" astonished Julien so much that he reflected for a
moment.

"Yes, Madame," he said timidly.

Madame de Renal was so happy that she plucked up the courage to say to
Julien, "You will not scold the poor children too much?"

"I scold them!" said Julien in astonishment; "why should I?"

"You won't, will you, Monsieur," she added after a little silence, in
a soft voice whose emotion became more and more intense. "You will be
nice to them, you promise me?"

To hear himself called "Monsieur" again in all seriousness by so well
dressed a lady was beyond all Julien's expectations. He had always said
to himself in all the castles of Spain that he had built in his youth,
that no real lady would ever condescend to talk to him except when he
had a fine uniform. Madame de Renal, on her side, was completely taken
in by Julien's beautiful complexion, his big black eyes, and his pretty
hair, which was more than usually curly, because he had just plunged
his head into the basin of the public fountain in order to refresh
himself. She was over-joyed to find that this sinister tutor, whom
she had feared to find so harsh and severe to her children, had, as a
matter of fact, the timid manner of a girl. The contrast between her
fears and what she now saw, proved a great event for Madame de Renal's
peaceful temperament. Finally, she recovered from her surprise. She
was astonished to find herself at the gate of her own house talking in
this way and at such close quarters to this young and somewhat scantily
dressed man.

"Let us go in, Monsieur," she said to him with a certain air of
embarrassment.

During Madame de Renal's whole life she had never been so deeply moved
by such a sense of pure pleasure. Never had so gracious a vision
followed in the wake of her disconcerting fears. So these pretty
children of whom she took such care were not after all to fall into
the hands of a dirty grumbling priest. She had scarcely entered the
vestibule when she turned round towards Julien, who was following her
trembling. His astonishment at the sight of so fine a house proved but
an additional charm in Madame de Renal's eyes. She could not believe
her own eyes. It seemed to her, above all, that the tutor ought to have
a black suit.

"But is it true, Monsieur," she said to him, stopping once again, and
in mortal fear that she had made a mistake, so happy had her discovery
made her. "Is it true that you know Latin?" These words offended
Julien's pride, and dissipated the charming atmosphere which he had
been enjoying for the last quarter of an hour.

"Yes, Madame," he said, trying to assume an air of coldness, "I know
Latin as well as the cure, who has been good enough to say sometimes
that I know it even better."

Madame de Renal thought that Julien looked extremely wicked. He had
stopped two paces from her. She approached and said to him in a whisper:

"You won't beat my children the first few days, will you, even if they
do not know their lessons?"

The softness and almost supplication of so beautiful a lady made Julien
suddenly forget what he owed to his reputation as a Latinist. Madame de
Renal's face was close to his own. He smelt the perfume of a woman's
summer clothing, a quite astonishing experience for a poor peasant.
Julien blushed extremely, and said with a sigh in a faltering voice:

"Fear nothing, Madame, I will obey you in everything."

It was only now, when her anxiety about her children had been relieved
once and for all, that Madame de Renal was struck by Julien's extreme
beauty. The comparative effeminancy of his features and his air of
extreme embarrassment did not seem in any way ridiculous to a woman who
was herself extremely timid. The male air, which is usually considered
essential to a man's beauty, would have terrified her.

"How old are you, sir," she said to Julien.

"Nearly nineteen."

"My elder son is eleven," went on Madame de Renal, who had completely
recovered her confidence. "He will be almost a chum for you. You will
talk sensibly to him. His father started beating him once. The child
was ill for a whole week, and yet it was only a little tap."

What a difference between him and me, thought Julien. Why, it was only
yesterday that my father beat me. How happy these rich people are.
Madame de Renal, who had already begun to observe the fine nuances of
the workings in the tutor's mind, took this fit of sadness for timidity
and tried to encourage him.

"What is your name, Monsieur?" she said to him, with an accent and
a graciousness whose charm Julien appreciated without being able to
explain.

"I am called Julien Sorel, Madame. I feel nervous of entering a strange
house for the first time in my life. I have need of your protection
and I want you to make many allowances for me during the first few
days. I have never been to the college, I was too poor. I have never
spoken to anyone else except my cousin who was Surgeon-Major, Member
of the Legion of Honour, and M. the cure Chelan. He will give you a
good account of me. My brothers always used to beat me, and you must
not believe them if they speak badly of me to you. You must forgive my
faults, Madame. I shall always mean everything for the best."

Julien had regained his confidence during this long speech. He was
examining Madame de Renal. Perfect grace works wonders when it is
natural to the character, and above all, when the person whom it
adorns never thinks of trying to affect it. Julien, who was quite a
connoisseur in feminine beauty, would have sworn at this particular
moment that she was not more than twenty. The rash idea of kissing her
hand immediately occurred to him. He soon became frightened of his
idea. A minute later he said to himself, it will be an act of cowardice
if I do not carry out an action which may be useful to me, and lessen
the contempt which this fine lady probably has for a poor workman just
taken away from the saw-mill. Possibly Julien was a little encouraged
through having heard some young girls repeat on Sundays during the last
six months the words "pretty boy."

During this internal debate, Madame de Renal was giving him two or
three hints on the way to commence handling the children. The strain
Julien was putting on himself made him once more very pale. He said
with an air of constraint.

"I will never beat your children, Madame. I swear it before God." In
saying this, he dared to take Madame de Renal's hand and carry it
to his lips. She was astonished at this act, and after reflecting,
became shocked. As the weather was very warm, her arm was quite bare
underneath the shawl, and Julien's movement in carrying her hand to his
lips entirely uncovered it. After a few moments she scolded herself. It
seemed to her that her anger had not been quick enough.

M. de Renal, who had heard voices, came out of his study, and assuming
the same air of paternal majesty with which he celebrated marriages at
the mayoral office, said to Julien:

"It is essential for me to have a few words with you before my children
see you." He made Julien enter a room and insisted on his wife being
present, although she wished to leave them alone. Having closed the
door M. Renal sat down.

"M. the cure has told me that you are a worthy person, and everybody
here will treat you with respect. If I am satisfied with you I will
later on help you in having a little establishment of your own. I do
not wish you to see either anything more of your relatives or your
friends. Their tone is bound to be prejudicial to my children. Here are
thirty-six francs for the first month, but I insist on your word not to
give a sou of this money to your father."

M. de Renal was piqued against the old man for having proved the
shrewder bargainer.

"Now, Monsieur, for I have given orders for everybody here to call you
Monsieur, and you will appreciate the advantage of having entered the
house of real gentle folk, now, Monsieur, it is not becoming for the
children to see you in a jacket." "Have the servants seen him?" said M.
de Renal to his wife.

"No, my dear," she answered, with an air of deep pensiveness.

"All the better. Put this on," he said to the surprised young man,
giving him a frock-coat of his own. "Let us now go to M. Durand's the
draper."

When M. de Renal came back with the new tutor in his black suit more
than an hour later, he found his wife still seated in the same place.
She felt calmed by Julien's presence. When she examined him she forgot
to be frightened of him. Julien was not thinking about her at all. In
spite of all his distrust of destiny and mankind, his soul at this
moment was as simple as that of a child. It seemed as though he had
lived through years since the moment, three hours ago, when he had been
all atremble in the church. He noticed Madame de Renal's frigid manner
and realised that she was very angry, because he had dared to kiss her
hand. But the proud consciousness which was given to him by the feel
of clothes so different from those which he usually wore, transported
him so violently and he had so great a desire to conceal his
exultation, that all his movements were marked by a certain spasmodic
irresponsibility. Madame de Renal looked at him with astonishment.

"Monsieur," said M. de Renal to him, "dignity above all is necessary if
you wish to be respected by my children."

"Sir," answered Julien, "I feel awkward in my new clothes. I am a poor
peasant and have never wore anything but jackets. If you allow it, I
will retire to my room."

"What do you think of this 'acquisition?'" said M. de Renal to his wife.

Madame de Renal concealed the truth from her husband, obeying an almost
instinctive impulse which she certainly did not own to herself.

"I am not as fascinated as you are by this little peasant. Your favours
will result in his not being able to keep his place, and you will have
to send him back before the month is out."

"Oh, well! we'll send him back then, he cannot run me into more than
a hundred francs, and Verrieres will have got used to seeing M. de
Renal's children with a tutor. That result would not have been achieved
if I had allowed Julien to wear a workman's clothes. If I do send him
back, I shall of course keep the complete black suit which I have just
ordered at the draper's. All he will keep is the ready-made suit which
I have just put him into at the the tailor's."

The hour that Julien spent in his room seemed only a minute to Madame
de Renal. The children who had been told about their new tutor began
to overwhelm their mother with questions. Eventually Julien appeared.
He was quite another man. It would be incorrect to say that he was
grave--he was the very incarnation of gravity. He was introduced to
the children and spoke to them in a manner that astonished M. de Renal
himself.

"I am here, gentlemen, he said, as he finished his speech, to teach
you Latin. You know what it means to recite a lesson. Here is the Holy
Bible, he said, showing them a small volume in thirty-two mo., bound in
black. It deals especially with the history of our Lord Jesus Christ
and is the part which is called the New Testament. I shall often make
you recite your lesson, but do you make me now recite mine."

Adolphe, the eldest of the children, had taken up the book. "Open it
anywhere you like," went on Julien and tell me the first word of any
verse, "I will then recite by heart that sacred book which governs our
conduct towards the whole world, until you stop me."

Adolphe opened the book and read a word, and Julien recited the whole
of the page as easily as though he had been talking French. M. de Renal
looked at his wife with an air of triumph The children, seeing the
astonishment of their parents, opened their eyes wide. A servant came
to the door of the drawing-room; Julien went on talking Latin. The
servant first remained motionless, and then disappeared. Soon Madame's
house-maid, together with the cook, arrived at the door. Adolphe had
already opened the book at eight different places, while Julien went
on reciting all the time with the same facility. "Great heavens!" said
the cook, a good and devout girl, quite aloud, "what a pretty little
priest!" M. de Renal's self-esteem became uneasy. Instead of thinking
of examining the tutor, his mind was concentrated in racking his memory
for some other Latin words. Eventually he managed to spout a phrase of
Horace. Julien knew no other Latin except his Bible. He answered with a
frown. "The holy ministry to which I destine myself has forbidden me to
read so profane a poet."

M. de Renal quoted quite a large number of alleged verses from Horace.
He explained to his children who Horace was, but the admiring children,
scarcely attended to what he was saying: they were looking at Julien.

The servants were still at the door. Julien thought that he ought to
prolong the test--"M. Stanislas-Xavier also," he said to the youngest
of the children, "must give me a passage from the holy book."

Little Stanislas, who was quite flattered, read indifferently the first
word of a verse, and Julien said the whole page.

To put the finishing touch on M. de Renal's triumph, M. Valenod, the
owner of the fine Norman horses, and M. Charcot de Maugiron, the
sub-prefect of the district came in when Julien was reciting. This
scene earned for Julien the title of Monsieur; even the servants did
not dare to refuse it to him.

That evening all Verrieres flocked to M. de Renal's to see the prodigy.
Julien answered everybody in a gloomy manner and kept his own distance.
His fame spread so rapidly in the town that a few hours afterwards
M. de Renal, fearing that he would be taken away by somebody else,
proposed to that he should sign an engagement for two years.

"No, Monsieur," Julien answered coldly, "if you wished to dismiss me, I
should have to go. An engagement which binds me without involving you
in any obligation is not an equal one and I refuse it."

Julien played his cards so well, that in less than a month of his
arrival at the house, M. de Renal himself respected him. As the cure
had quarrelled with both M. de Renal and M. Valenod, there was no one
who could betray Julien's old passion for Napoleon. He always spoke of
Napoleon with abhorrence.





CHAPTER VII

THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES


        They only manage to touch the heart by wounding it.--_A
        Modern_.


The children adored him, but he did not like them in the least. His
thoughts were elsewhere. But nothing which the little brats ever did
made him lose his patience. Cold, just and impassive, and none the less
liked, inasmuch his arrival had more or less driven ennui out of the
house, he was a good tutor. As for himself, he felt nothing but hate
and abhorrence for that good society into which he had been admitted;
admitted, it is true at the bottom of the table, a circumstance which
perhaps explained his hate and his abhorrence. There were certain
'full-dress' dinners at which he was scarcely able to control his
hate for everything that surrounded him. One St. Louis feast day in
particular, when M. Valenod was monopolizing the conversation of M.
de Renal, Julien was on the point of betraying himself. He escaped
into the garden on the pretext of finding the children. "What praise
of honesty," he exclaimed. "One would say that was the only virtue,
and yet think how they respect and grovel before a man who has almost
doubled and trebled his fortune since he has administered the poor
fund. I would bet anything that he makes a profit even out of the
monies which are intended for the foundlings of these poor creatures
whose misery is even more sacred than that of others. Oh, Monsters!
Monsters! And I too, am a kind of foundling, hated as I am by my
father, my brothers, and all my family."

Some days before the feast of St. Louis, when Julien was taking a
solitary walk and reciting his breviary in the little wood called
the Belvedere, which dominates the _Cours de la Fidelite_, he had
endeavoured in vain to avoid his two brothers whom he saw coming along
in the distance by a lonely path. The jealousy of these coarse workmen
had been provoked to such a pitch by their brother's fine black suit,
by his air of extreme respectability, and by the sincere contempt which
he had for them, that they had beaten him until he had fainted and was
bleeding all over.

Madame de Renal, who was taking a walk with M. de Renal and the
sub-prefect, happened to arrive in the little wood. She saw Julien
lying on the ground and thought that he was dead. She was so overcome
that she made M. Valenod jealous.

His alarm was premature. Julien found Madame de Renal very pretty, but
he hated her on account of her beauty, for that had been the first
danger which had almost stopped his career.

He talked to her as little as possible, in order to make her forget the
transport which had induced him to kiss her hand on the first day.

Madame de Renal's housemaid, Elisa, had lost no time in falling
in love with the young tutor. She often talked about him to her
mistress. Elisa's love had earned for Julien the hatred of one of the
men-servants. One day he heard the man saying to Elisa, "You haven't
a word for me now that this dirty tutor has entered the household."
The insult was undeserved, but Julien with the instinctive vanity of a
pretty boy redoubled his care of his personal appearance. M. Valenod's
hate also increased. He said publicly, that it was not becoming for a
young abbe to be such a fop.

Madame de Renal observed that Julien talked more frequently than usual
to Mademoiselle Elisa. She learnt that the reason of these interviews
was the poverty of Julien's extremely small wardrobe. He had so little
linen that he was obliged to have it very frequently washed outside the
house, and it was in these little matters that Elisa was useful to him.
Madame de Renal was touched by this extreme poverty which she had never
suspected before. She was anxious to make him presents, but she did not
dare to do so. This inner conflict was the first painful emotion that
Julien had caused her. Till then Julien's name had been synonymous with
a pure and quite intellectual joy. Tormented by the idea of Julien's
poverty, Madame de Renal spoke to her husband about giving him some
linen for a present.

"What nonsense," he answered, "the very idea of giving presents to a
man with whom we are perfectly satisfied and who is a good servant. It
will only be if he is remiss that we shall have to stimulate his zeal."

Madame de Renal felt humiliated by this way of looking at things,
though she would never have noticed it in the days before Julien's
arrival. She never looked at the young abbe's attire, with its
combination of simplicity and absolute cleanliness, without saying to
herself, "The poor boy, how can he manage?"

Little by little, instead of being shocked by all Julien's
deficiencies, she pitied him for them.

Madame de Renal was one of those provincial women whom one is apt
to take for fools during the first fortnight of acquaintanceship.
She had no experience of the world and never bothered to keep up the
conversation. Nature had given her a refined and fastidious soul,
while that instinct for happiness which is innate in all human beings
caused her, as a rule, to pay no attention to the acts of the coarse
persons in whose midst chance had thrown her. If she had received the
slightest education, she would have been noticeable for the spontaneity
and vivacity of her mind, but being an heiress, she had been brought
up in a Convent of Nuns, who were passionate devotees of the _Sacred
Heart of Jesus_ and animated by a violent hate for the French as being
the enemies of the Jesuits. Madame de Renal had had enough sense to
forget quickly all the nonsense which she had learned at the convent,
but had substituted nothing for it, and in the long run knew nothing.
The flatteries which had been lavished on her when still a child, by
reason of the great fortune of which she was the heiress, and a decided
tendency to passionate devotion, had given her quite an inner life of
her own. In spite of her pose of perfect affability and her elimination
of her individual will which was cited as a model example by all the
husbands in Verrieres and which made M. de Renal feel very proud, the
moods of her mind were usually dictated by a spirit of the most haughty
discontent.

Many a princess who has become a bye-word for pride has given
infinitely more attention to what her courtiers have been doing around
her than did this apparently gentle and demure woman to anything which
her husband either said or did. Up to the time of Julien's arrival she
had never really troubled about anything except her children. Their
little maladies, their troubles, their little joys, occupied all the
sensibility of that soul, who, during her whole life, had adored no one
but God, when she had been at the Sacred Heart of Besancon.

A feverish attack of one of her sons would affect her almost as deeply
as if the child had died, though she would not deign to confide
in anyone. A burst of coarse laughter, a shrug of the shoulders,
accompanied by some platitude on the folly of women, had been the only
welcome her husband had vouchsafed to those confidences about her
troubles, which the need of unburdening herself had induced her to make
during the first years of their marriage. Jokes of this kind, and above
all, when they were directed at her children's ailments, were exquisite
torture to Madame de Renal. And these jokes were all she found to take
the place of those exaggerated sugary flatteries with which she had
been regaled at the Jesuit Convent where she had passed her youth. Her
education had been given her by suffering. Too proud even to talk to
her friend, Madame Derville, about troubles of this kind, she imagined
that all men were like her husband, M. Valenod, and the sub-prefect,
M. Charcot de Maugiron. Coarseness, and the most brutal callousness to
everything except financial gain, precedence, or orders, together with
blind hate of every argument to which they objected, seemed to her as
natural to the male sex as wearing boots and felt hats.

After many years, Madame de Renal had still failed to acclimatize
herself to those monied people in whose society she had to live.

Hence the success of the little peasant Julien. She found in the
sympathy of this proud and noble soul a sweet enjoyment which had all
the glamour and fascination of novelty.

Madame de Renal soon forgave him that extreme ignorance, which
constituted but an additional charm, and the roughness of his manner
which she succeeded in correcting. She thought that he was worth
listening to, even when the conversation turned on the most ordinary
events, even in fact when it was only a question of a poor dog which
had been crushed as he crossed the street by a peasant's cart going
at a trot. The sight of the dog's pain made her husband indulge in
his coarse laugh, while she noticed Julien frown, with his fine black
eyebrows which were so beautifully arched.

Little by little, it seemed to her that generosity, nobility of soul
and humanity were to be found in nobody else except this young abbe.
She felt for him all the sympathy and even all the admiration which
those virtues excite in well-born souls.

If the scene had been Paris, Julien's position towards Madame de Renal
would have been soon simplified. But at Paris, love is a creature of
novels. The young tutor and his timid mistress would soon have found
the elucidation of their position in three or four novels, and even
in the couplets of the Gymnase Theatre. The novels which have traced
out for them the part they would play, and showed them the model which
they were to imitate, and Julien would sooner or later have been forced
by his vanity to follow that model, even though it had given him no
pleasure and had perhaps actually gone against the grain.

If the scene had been laid in a small town in Aveyron or the Pyrenees,
the slightest episode would have been rendered crucial by the fiery
condition of the atmosphere. But under our more gloomy skies, a poor
young man who is only ambitious because his natural refinement makes
him feel the necessity of some of those joys which only money can give,
can see every day a woman of thirty who is sincerely virtuous, is
absorbed in her children, and never goes to novels for her examples of
conduct. Everything goes slowly, everything happens gradually, in the
provinces where there is far more naturalness.

Madame de Renal was often overcome to the point of tears when she
thought of the young tutor's poverty. Julien surprised her one day
actually crying.

"Oh Madame! has any misfortune happened to you?"

"No, my friend," she answered, "call the children, let us go for a
walk."

She took his arm and leant on it in a manner that struck Julien as
singular. It was the first time she had called Julien "My friend."

Towards the end of the walk, Julien noticed that she was blushing
violently. She slackened her pace.

"You have no doubt heard," she said, without looking at him, "that I
am the only heiress of a very rich aunt who lives at Besancon. She
loads me with presents.... My sons are getting on so wonderfully that
I should like to ask you to accept a small present as a token of my
gratitude. It is only a matter of a few louis to enable you to get
some linen. But--" she added, blushing still more, and she left off
speaking--

"But what, Madame?" said Julien.

"It is unnecessary," she went on lowering her head, "to mention this to
my husband."

"I may not be big, Madame, but I am not mean," answered Julien,
stopping, and drawing himself up to his full height, with his
eyes shining with rage, "and this is what you have not realised
sufficiently. I should be lower than a menial if I were to put myself
in the position of concealing from M de. Renal anything at all having
to do with my money."

Madame de Renal was thunderstruck.

"The Mayor," went on Julien, "has given me on five occasions sums of
thirty-six francs since I have been living in his house. I am ready
to show any account-book to M. de Renal and anyone else, even to M.
Valenod who hates me."

As the result of this outburst, Madame de Renal remained pale and
nervous, and the walk ended without either one or the other finding any
pretext for renewing the conversation. Julien's proud heart had found
it more and more impossible to love Madame de Renal.

As for her, she respected him, she admired him, and she had been
scolded by him. Under the pretext of making up for the involuntary
humiliation which she had caused him, she indulged in acts of the most
tender solicitude. The novelty of these attentions made Madame de
Renal happy for eight days. Their effect was to appease to some extent
Julien's anger. He was far from seeing anything in them in the nature
of a fancy for himself personally.

"That is just what rich people are," he said to himself--"they snub you
and then they think they can make up for everything by a few monkey
tricks."

Madame de Renal's heart was too full, and at the same time too
innocent, for her not too tell her husband, in spite of her resolutions
not to do so, about the offer she had made to Julien, and the manner in
which she had been rebuffed.

"How on earth," answered M. de Renal, keenly piqued, "could you put
up with a refusal on the part of a servant,"--and, when Madame de
Renal protested against the word "Servant," "I am using, madam, the
words of the late Prince of Conde, when he presented his Chamberlains
to his new wife. 'All these people' he said 'are servants.' I have
also read you this passage from the Memoirs of Besenval, a book which
is indispensable on all questions of etiquette. 'Every person, not
a gentleman, who lives in your house and receives a salary is your
servant.' I'll go and say a few words to M. Julien and give him a
hundred francs."

"Oh, my dear," said Madame De Renal trembling, "I hope you won't do it
before the servants!"

"Yes, they might be jealous and rightly so," said her husband as he
took his leave, thinking of the greatness of the sum.

Madame de Renal fell on a chair almost fainting in her anguish. He is
going to humiliate Julien, and it is my fault! She felt an abhorrence
for her husband and hid her face in her hands. She resolved that
henceforth she would never make any more confidences.

When she saw Julien again she was trembling all over. Her chest was so
cramped that she could not succeed in pronouncing a single word. In her
embarrassment she took his hands and pressed them.

"Well, my friend," she said to him at last, "are you satisfied with my
husband?"

"How could I be otherwise," answered Julien, with a bitter smile, "he
has given me a hundred francs."

Madame de Renal looked at him doubtfully.

"Give me your arm," she said at last, with a courageous intonation that
Julien had not heard before.

She dared to go as far as the shop of the bookseller of Verrieres, in
spite of his awful reputation for Liberalism. In the shop she chose
ten louis worth of books for a present for her sons. But these books
were those which she knew Julien was wanting. She insisted on each
child writing his name then and there in the bookseller's shop in
those books which fell to his lot. While Madame de Renal was rejoicing
over the kind reparation which she had had the courage to make to
Julien, the latter was overwhelmed with astonishment at the quantity
of books which he saw at the bookseller's. He had never dared to enter
so profane a place. His heart was palpitating. Instead of trying to
guess what was passing in Madame de Renal's heart he pondered deeply
over the means by which a young theological student could procure
some of those books. Eventually it occurred to him that it would be
possible, with tact, to persuade M. de Renal that one of the proper
subjects of his sons' curriculum would be the history of the celebrated
gentlemen who had been born in the province. After a month of careful
preparation Julien witnessed the success of this idea. The success was
so great that he actually dared to risk mentioning to M. de Renal in
conversation, a matter which the noble mayor found disagreeable from
quite another point of view. The suggestion was to contribute to the
fortune of a Liberal by taking a subscription at the bookseller's. M.
de Renal agreed that it would be wise to give his elder son a first
hand acquaintance with many works which he would hear mentioned in
conversation when he went to the Military School.

But Julien saw that the mayor had determined to go no further. He
suspected some secret reason but could not guess it.

"I was thinking, sir," he said to him one day, "that it would be highly
undesirable for the name of so good a gentleman as a Renal to appear on
a bookseller's dirty ledger." M. de Renal's face cleared.

"It would also be a black mark," continued Julien in a more humble
tone, "against a poor theology student if it ever leaked out that his
name had been on the ledger of a bookseller who let out books. The
Liberals might go so far as to accuse me of having asked for the most
infamous books. Who knows if they will not even go so far as to write
the titles of those perverse volumes after my name?" But Julien was
getting off the track. He noticed that the Mayor's physiognomy was
re-assuming its expression of embarrassment and displeasure. Julien was
silent. "I have caught my man," he said to himself.

It so happened that a few days afterwards the elder of the children
asked Julien, in M. de Renal's presence, about a book which had been
advertised in the _Quotidienne_.

"In order to prevent the Jacobin Party having the slightest pretext for
a score," said the young tutor, "and yet give me the means of answering
M. de Adolphe's question, you can make your most menial servant take
out a subscription at the booksellers."

"That's not a bad idea," said M. de Renal, who was obviously very
delighted.

"You will have to stipulate all the same," said Julien in that solemn
and almost melancholy manner which suits some people so well when they
see the realization of matters which they have desired for a long time
past, "you will have to stipulate that the servant should not take out
any novels. Those dangerous books, once they got into the house, might
corrupt Madame de Renal's maids, and even the servant himself."

"You are forgetting the political pamphlets," went on M. de Renal with
an important air. He was anxious to conceal the admiration with which
the cunning "middle course" devised by his children's tutor had filled
him.

In this way Julien's life was made up of a series of little acts of
diplomacy, and their success gave him far more food for thought than
the marked manifestation of favouritism which he could have read at any
time in Madame de Renal's heart, had he so wished.

The psychological position in which he had found himself all his
life was renewed again in the mayor of Verrieres' house. Here in the
same way as at his father's saw-mill, he deeply despised the people
with whom he lived, and was hated by them. He saw every day in the
conversation of the sub-perfect, M. Valenod and the other friends of
the family, about things which had just taken place under their very
eyes, how little ideas corresponded to reality. If an action seemed to
Julien worthy of admiration, it was precisely that very action which
would bring down upon itself the censure of the people with whom he
lived. His inner mental reply always was, "What beasts or what fools!"
The joke was that, in spite of all his pride, he often understood
absolutely nothing what they were talking about.

Throughout his whole life he had only spoken sincerely to the old
Surgeon-Major.

The few ideas he had were about Buonaparte's Italian Campaigns or else
surgery. His youthful courage revelled in the circumstantial details of
the most terrible operations. He said to himself.

"I should not have flinched."

The first time that Madame de Renal tried to enter into conversation
independently of the children's education, he began to talk of surgical
operations. She grew pale and asked him to leave off. Julien knew
nothing beyond that.

So it came about that, though he passed his life in Madame de Renal's
company, the most singular silence would reign between them as soon as
they were alone.

When he was in the salon, she noticed in his eyes, in spite of all the
humbleness of his demeanour, an air of intellectual superiority towards
everyone who came to visit her. If she found herself alone with him for
a single moment, she saw that he was palpably embarrassed. This made
her feel uneasy, for her woman's instinct caused her to realise that
this embarrassment was not inspired by any tenderness.

Owing to some mysterious idea, derived from some tale of good society,
such as the old Surgeon-Major had seen it, Julien felt humiliated
whenever the conversation languished on any occasion when he found
himself in a woman's society, as though the particular pause were his
own special fault. This sensation was a hundred times more painful in
_tete-a-tete_. His imagination, full as it was of the most extravagant
and most Spanish ideas of what a man ought to say when he is alone
with a woman, only suggested to the troubled youth things which were
absolutely impossible. His soul was in the clouds. Nevertheless he was
unable to emerge from this most humiliating silence. Consequently,
during his long walks with Madame de Renal and the children, the
severity of his manner was accentuated by the poignancy of his
sufferings. He despised himself terribly. If, by any luck, he made
himself speak, he came out with the most absurd things. To put the
finishing touch on his misery, he saw his own absurdity and exaggerated
its extent, but what he did not see was the expression in his eyes,
which were so beautiful and betokened so ardent a soul, that like good
actors, they sometimes gave charm to something which is really devoid
of it.

Madame de Renal noticed that when he was alone with her he never
chanced to say a good thing except when he was taken out of himself
by some unexpected event, and consequently forgot to try and turn a
compliment. As the friends of the house did not spoil her by regaling
her with new and brilliant ideas, she enjoyed with delight all the
flashes of Julien's intellect.

After the fall of Napoleon, every appearance of gallantry has been
severely exiled from provincial etiquette. People are frightened of
losing their jobs. All rascals look to the religious order for support,
and hypocrisy has made firm progress even among the Liberal classes.
One's ennui is doubled. The only pleasures left are reading and
agriculture.

Madame de Renal, the rich heiress of a devout aunt, and married at
sixteen to a respectable gentleman, had never felt or seen in her whole
life anything that had the slightest resemblance in the whole world
to love. Her confessor, the good cure Chelan, had once mentioned love
to her, in discussing the advances of M. de Valenod, and had drawn so
loathsome a picture of the passion that the word now stood to her for
nothing but the most abject debauchery. She had regarded love, such
as she had come across it, in the very small number of novels with
which chance had made her acquainted, as an exception if not indeed as
something absolutely abnormal. It was, thanks to this ignorance, that
Madame de Renal, although incessantly absorbed in Julien, was perfectly
happy, and never thought of reproaching herself in the slightest.





CHAPTER VIII

LITTLE EPISODES


    "Then there were sighs, the deeper for suppression,
    And stolen glances sweeter for the theft,
    And burning blushes, though for no transgression."
                                 _Don Juan_, c. I, st. 74.


It was only when Madame de Renal began to think of her maid Elisa
that there was some slight change in that angelic sweetness which she
owed both to her natural character and her actual happiness. The girl
had come into a fortune, went to confess herself to the cure Chelan
and confessed to him her plan of marrying Julien. The cure was truly
rejoiced at his friend's good fortune, but he was extremely surprised
when Julien resolutely informed him that Mademoiselle Elisa's offer
could not suit him.

"Beware, my friend, of what is passing within your heart," said the
cure with a frown, "I congratulate you on your mission, if that is the
only reason why you despise a more than ample fortune. It is fifty-six
years since I was first cure of Verrieres, and yet I shall be turned
out, according to all appearances. I am distressed by it, and yet my
income amounts to eight hundred francs. I inform you of this detail so
that you may not be under any illusions as to what awaits you in your
career as a priest. If you think of paying court to the men who enjoy
power, your eternal damnation is assured. You may make your fortune,
but you will have to do harm to the poor, flatter the sub-prefect,
the mayor, the man who enjoys prestige, and pander to his passion;
this conduct, which in the world is called knowledge of life, is not
absolutely incompatible with salvation so far as a layman is concerned;
but in our career we have to make a choice; it is a question of making
one's fortune either in this world or the next; there is no middle
course. Come, my dear friend, reflect, and come back in three days with
a definite answer. I am pained to detect that there is at the bottom
of your character a sombre passion which is far from indicating to me
that moderation and that perfect renunciation of earthly advantages so
necessary for a priest; I augur well of your intellect, but allow me to
tell you," added the good cure with tears in his eyes, "I tremble for
your salvation in your career as a priest."

Julien was ashamed of his emotion; he found himself loved for the first
time in his life; he wept with delight; and went to hide his tears in
the great woods behind Verrieres.

"Why am I in this position?" he said to himself at last, "I feel that
I would give my life a hundred times over for this good cure Chelan,
and he has just proved to me that I am nothing more than a fool. It
is especially necessary for me to deceive him, and he manages to find
me out. The secret ardour which he refers to is my plan of making my
fortune. He thinks I am unworthy of being a priest, that too, just when
I was imagining that my sacrifice of fifty louis would give him the
very highest idea of my piety and devotion to my mission."

"In future," continued Julien, "I will only reckon on those elements in
my character which I have tested. Who could have told me that I should
find any pleasure in shedding tears? How I should like some one to
convince me that I am simply a fool!"

Three days later, Julien found the excuse with which he ought to have
been prepared on the first day; the excuse was a piece of calumny, but
what did it matter? He confessed to the cure, with a great deal of
hesitation, that he had been persuaded from the suggested union by a
reason he could not explain, inasmuch as it tended to damage a third
party. This was equivalent to impeaching Elisa's conduct. M. Chelan
found that his manner betrayed a certain worldly fire which was very
different from that which ought to have animated a young acolyte.

"My friend," he said to him again, "be a good country citizen,
respected and educated, rather than a priest without a true mission."

So far as words were concerned, Julien answered these new remonstrances
very well. He managed to find the words which a young and ardent
seminarist would have employed, but the tone in which he pronounced
them, together with the thinly concealed fire which blazed in his eye,
alarmed M. Chelan.

You must not have too bad an opinion of Julien's prospects. He
invented with correctness all the words suitable to a prudent and
cunning hypocrisy. It was not bad for his age. As for his tone and his
gestures, he had spent his life with country people; he had never been
given an opportunity of seeing great models. Consequently, as soon as
he was given a chance of getting near such gentlemen, his gestures
became as admirable as his words.

Madame de Renal was astonished that her maid's new fortune did not
make her more happy. She saw her repeatedly going to the cure and
coming back with tears in her eyes. At last Elisa talked to her of her
marriage.

Madame de Renal thought she was ill. A kind of fever prevented her from
sleeping. She only lived when either her maid or Julien were in sight.
She was unable to think of anything except them and the happiness
which they would find in their home. Her imagination depicted in the
most fascinating colours the poverty of the little house, where they
were to live on their income of fifty louis a year. Julien could quite
well become an advocate at Bray, the sub-prefecture, two leagues from
Verrieres. In that case she would see him sometimes. Madame de Renal
sincerely believed she would go mad. She said so to her husband and
finally fell ill. That very evening when her maid was attending her,
she noticed that the girl was crying. She abhorred Elisa at that
moment, and started to scold her; she then begged her pardon. Elisa's
tears redoubled. She said if her mistress would allow her, she would
tell her all her unhappiness.

"Tell me," answered Madame de Renal.

"Well, Madame, he refuses me, some wicked people must have spoken badly
about me. He believes them."

"Who refuses you?" said Madame de Renal, scarcely breathing.

"Who else, Madame, but M. Julien," answered the maid sobbing. "M. the
cure had been unable to overcome his resistance, for M. the cure thinks
that he ought not to refuse an honest girl on the pretext that she
has been a maid. After all, M. Julien's father is nothing more than
a carpenter, and how did he himself earn his living before he was at
Madame's?"

Madame de Renal stopped listening; her excessive happiness had almost
deprived her of her reason. She made the girl repeat several times
the assurance that Julien had refused her, with a positiveness which
shut the door on the possibility of his coming round to a more prudent
decision.

"I will make a last attempt," she said to her maid. "I will speak to M.
Julien."

The following day, after breakfast, Madame de Renal indulged in the
delightful luxury of pleading her rival's cause, and of seeing Elisa's
hand and fortune stubbornly refused for a whole hour.

Julien gradually emerged from his cautiously worded answers, and
finished by answering with spirit Madame de Renal's good advice. She
could not help being overcome by the torrent of happiness which, after
so many days of despair, now inundated her soul. She felt quite ill.
When she had recovered and was comfortably in her own room she sent
everyone away. She was profoundly astonished.

"Can I be in love with Julien?" she finally said to herself. This
discovery, which at any other time would have plunged her into remorse
and the deepest agitation, now only produced the effect of a singular,
but as it were, indifferent spectacle. Her soul was exhausted by all
that she had just gone through, and had no more sensibility to passion
left.

Madame de Renal tried to work, and fell into a deep sleep; when she
woke up she did not frighten herself so much as she ought to have. She
was too happy to be able to see anything wrong in anything. Naive and
innocent as she was, this worthy provincial woman had never tortured
her soul in her endeavours to extract from it a little sensibility to
some new shade of sentiment or unhappiness. Entirely absorbed as she
had been before Julien's arrival with that mass of work which falls
to the lot of a good mistress of a household away from Paris, Madame
de Renal thought of passion in the same way in which we think of a
lottery: a certain deception, a happiness sought after by fools.

The dinner bell rang. Madame de Renal blushed violently. She heard the
voice of Julien who was bringing in the children. Having grown somewhat
adroit since her falling in love, she complained of an awful headache
in order to explain her redness.

"That's just like what all women are," answered M. de Renal with a
coarse laugh. "Those machines have always got something or other to be
put right."

Although she was accustomed to this type of wit, Madame de Renal was
shocked by the tone of voice. In order to distract herself, she looked
at Julien's physiognomy; he would have pleased her at this particular
moment, even if he had been the ugliest man imaginable.

M. de Renal, who always made a point of copying the habits of the
gentry of the court, established himself at Vergy in the first fine
days of the spring; this is the village rendered celebrated by the
tragic adventure of Gabrielle. A hundred paces from the picturesque
ruin of the old Gothic church, M. de Renal owns an old chateau with its
four towers and a garden designed like the one in the Tuileries with
a great many edging verges of box and avenues of chestnut trees which
are cut twice in the year. An adjacent field, crowded with apple trees,
served for a promenade. Eight or ten magnificent walnut trees were at
the end of the orchard. Their immense foliage went as high as perhaps
eighty feet.

"Each of these cursed walnut trees," M. de Renal was in the habit of
saying, whenever his wife admired them, "costs me the harvest of at
least half an acre; corn cannot grow under their shade."

Madame de Renal found the sight of the country novel: her admiration
reached the point of enthusiasm. The sentiment by which she was
animated gave her both ideas and resolution. M. de Renal had returned
to the town, for mayoral business, two days after their arrival in
Vergy. But Madame de Renal engaged workmen at her own expense. Julien
had given her the idea of a little sanded path which was to go round
the orchard and under the big walnut trees, and render it possible
for the children to take their walk in the very earliest hours of the
morning without getting their feet wet from the dew. This idea was put
into execution within twenty-four hours of its being conceived. Madame
de Renal gaily spent the whole day with Julien in supervising the
workmen.

When the Mayor of Verrieres came back from the town he was very
surprised to find the avenue completed. His arrival surprised Madame
de Renal as well. She had forgotten his existence. For two months
he talked with irritation about the boldness involved in making so
important a repair without consulting him, but Madame de Renal had had
it executed at her own expense, a fact which somewhat consoled him.

She spent her days in running about the orchard with her children,
and in catching butterflies. They had made big hoods of clear gauze
with which they caught the poor _lepidoptera_. This is the barbarous
name which Julien taught Madame de Renal. For she had had M. Godart's
fine work ordered from Besancon, and Julien used to tell her about the
strange habits of the creatures.

They ruthlessly transfixed them by means of pins in a great cardboard
box which Julien had prepared.

Madame de Renal and Julien had at last a topic of conversation; he was
no longer exposed to the awful torture that had been occasioned by
their moments of silence.

They talked incessantly and with extreme interest, though always about
very innocent matters. This gay, full, active life, pleased the fancy
of everyone, except Mademoiselle Elisa who found herself overworked.
Madame had never taken so much trouble with her dress, even at carnival
time, when there is a ball at Verrieres, she would say; she changes her
gowns two or three times a day.

As it is not our intention to flatter anyone, we do not propose to
deny that Madame de Renal, who had a superb skin, arranged her gowns
in such a way as to leave her arms and her bosom very exposed. She was
extremely well made, and this style of dress suited her delightfully.

"You have never been _so young_, Madame," her Verrieres friends would
say to her, when they came to dinner at Vergy (this is one of the local
expressions).

It is a singular thing, and one which few amongst us will believe, but
Madame de Renal had no specific object in taking so much trouble. She
found pleasure in it and spent all the time which she did not pass in
hunting butterflies with the children and Julien, in working with Elisa
at making gowns, without giving the matter a further thought. Her only
expedition to Verrieres was caused by her desire to buy some new summer
gowns which had just come from Mulhouse.

She brought back to Vergy a young woman who was a relative of hers.
Since her marriage, Madame de Renal had gradually become attached to
Madame Derville, who had once been her school mate at the _Sacre Coeur_.

Madame Derville laughed a great deal at what she called her cousin's
mad ideas: "I would never have thought of them alone," she said. When
Madame de Renal was with her husband, she was ashamed of those sudden
ideas, which, are called sallies in Paris, and thought them quite
silly: but Madame Derville's presence gave her courage. She would start
to telling her her thoughts in a timid voice, but after the ladies
had been alone for a long time, Madame de Renal's brain became more
animated, and a long morning spent together by the two friends passed
like a second, and left them in the best of spirits. On this particular
journey, however, the acute Madame Derville thought her cousin much
less merry, but much more happy than usual.

Julien, on his side, had since coming to the country lived like an
absolute child, and been as happy as his pupils in running after
the butterflies. After so long a period of constraint and wary
diplomacy, he was at last alone and far from human observation; he
was instinctively free from any apprehension on the score of Madame
de Renal, and abandoned himself to the sheer pleasure of being alive,
which is so keen at so young an age, especially among the most
beautiful mountains in the world.

Ever since Madame Derville's arrival, Julien thought that she was his
friend; he took the first opportunity of showing her the view from the
end of the new avenue, under the walnut tree; as a matter of fact it is
equal, if not superior, to the most wonderful views that Switzerland
and the Italian lakes can offer. If you ascend the steep slope which
commences some paces from there, you soon arrive at great precipices
fringed by oak forests, which almost jut on to the river. It was to the
peaked summits of these rocks that Julien, who was now happy, free, and
king of the household into the bargain, would take the two friends, and
enjoy their admiration these sublime views.

"To me it's like Mozart's music," Madame Derville would say.

The country around Verrieres had been spoilt for Julien by the jealousy
of his brothers and the presence of a tyranous and angry father. He
was free from these bitter memories at Vergy; for the first time in
his life, he failed to see an enemy. When, as frequently happened, M.
de Renal was in town, he ventured to read; soon, instead of reading at
night time, a procedure, moreover, which involved carefully hiding his
lamp at the bottom of a flower-pot turned upside down, he was able to
indulge in sleep; in the day, however, in the intervals between the
children's lessons, he would come among these rocks with that book
which was the one guide of his conduct and object of his enthusiasm. He
found in it simultaneously happiness, ecstasy and consolation for his
moments of discouragement.

Certain remarks of Napoleon about women, several discussions about the
merits of the novels which were fashionable in his reign, furnished him
now for the first time with some ideas which any other young man of his
age would have had for a long time.

The dog days arrived. They started the habit of spending the evenings
under an immense pine tree some yards from the house. The darkness was
profound. One evening, Julien was speaking and gesticulating, enjoying
to the full the pleasure of being at his best when talking to young
women; in one of his gestures, he touched the hand of Madame de Renal
which was leaning on the back of one of those chairs of painted wood,
which are so frequently to be seen in gardens.

The hand was quickly removed, but Julien thought it a point of duty
to secure that that hand should not be removed when he touched it.
The idea of a duty to be performed and the consciousness of his
stultification, or rather of his social inferiority, if he should fail
in achieving it, immediately banished all pleasure from his heart.






Chapters 6-8
Mme. de Renal receives Julien, and after their mutual embarrassment has changed -- for Mme. de Renal to relief and for Julien to a beginning of composure -- he is outfitted in a new suit and presented to the children. Now in complete command of himself, Julien recites at random entire passages of the Bible in Latin, earning the respect and admiration of all. Within a month, he is considered as a real prize by M. de Renal. During the next five weeks, Julien engages in petty negotiations beginning his scheme of success through hypocrisy. The self-righteousness that this society feels causes him to feel superior to it, and this, in turn, alienates him from it. His utter ignorance of most matters prevents him, at this stage, from understanding much of what he hears. He craftily convinces Renal of the necessity of taking out a subscription with the liberal bookseller, presenting the matter in such a way that it will not offend the vanity of the Royalist. Julien is extremely wary of Mme. de Renal since her beauty caused him to stumble when he first arrived. She, on the other hand, is becoming increasingly drawn to this charming and intelligent young man. Unaware of what love is, she gives no thought to the fact that she is attentive to his needs and that her husband is becoming increasingly unbearable to her. Mme. de Renal's maid, Elisa, has designs on Julien, and Father Chelan urges him to consider favorably the possibility of such a match and discourages him from entering the priesthood. Julien's burning ardor makes Chelan fear for his salvation should he pursue a career in the Church. Julien retreats, then returns to try to impress the priest by a new tactic. To no avail, for Chelan is not fooled. This is a defeat for Julien. Mme. de Renal is overjoyed to hear Elisa confess tearfully that Julien has rejected her. Soon Mme. de Renal becomes aware that she is in love with Julien. In the spring, the family moves to the summer home in the neighboring village of Vergy. Animated by a fresh outlook, Mme. de Renal agrees to Julien's suggestion to create a meandering path "a la Julie," among the walnut trees. Catching butterflies provides a new activity and topic of conversation for the inexperienced couple. Mme. de Renal changes clothes two or three times a day, unaware, however, of what prompts this interest in her appearance. The arrival of Mme. Derville creates a happy threesome. Julien relaxes to the point of reading not only at night in the solitude of his room but during the day. This increased reading finally gives him some ideas about women. The three begin to assemble at night outside in the darkness for conversation. One evening, in his animated gesticulation, Julien happens to touch Mme. de Renal's hand. When it is instantly withdrawn, he decides it is his duty to hold it. A new challenge disturbs his peace.
In these chapters, Stendhal brings Julien and Mme. de Renal together for the first time, then concentrates on their separate progression. As will be typical of Julien's character, he reacts spontaneously when surprised by Mme. de Renal. An aspiring hypocrite must learn to control his reactions. He hates her "because she is beautiful" -- that is, her beauty produces a violent reaction in him, a superior being born to exalt in beauty and to be offended by ugliness, but his reaction is spontaneous, and in betraying it, he ruins his "pose." His pride is offended when she expresses amazement at his knowledge of Latin. Her supplicating tone causes him momentarily to forget his pride, and as his self-confidence becomes progressively stronger, he dares himself to kiss her hand. This daring act he accomplishes. His composure is shattered again when he gives way to the expression of joy, caused by his new clothes, but once again, after collecting himself in his room, he reassumes the calm and dignity befitting a tutor. The scene relating Julien's arrival is important for several reasons. It establishes the pattern of conduct that will characterize him throughout the novel. In him there seethes a conflict between spontaneous expression of joy associated with happiness and the hypocritical wearing of a mask imposed by ambition. The scene illustrates the tender irony that characterizes Stendhal's attitude toward his "chosen" characters. He deliberately places them in awkward situations that will challenge and embarrass them after already creating them with a contradictory nature that will cause them to stumble. He has great affection for his "chosen" characters, but he demands of them as much as he demands of himself. Julien's petty maneuvering wins him minor triumphs in this household which he disdains. Throughout the novel, his prodigious memory will be a sure means of winning for him the admiration of others, but it seems to produce a special effect on the provincial bourgeois, incapable, says Stendhal, of appreciating intelligence in any other form. The almost photographic memory that Julien possesses would seem to serve in place of keen reasoning and eloquence to convince the reader of Julien's superior nature, as we will see. Misunderstanding it, Julien rebuffs Mme. de Renal's offer of money and succeeds in tricking the mayor on two occasions. His social behavior is quite unacceptable, and his efforts to play a role accentuate his ineptness. On the other hand, he unknowingly charms Mme. de Renal with his eyes. He is unable to deceive Chelan, and the great emotion he experiences at the love and concern shown him by the priest betrays an ardent soul thirsting for friendship and happiness. Thus, to enjoy this emotion completely, Julien takes refuge in the mountains, where his superior soul may not be surprised -- unguarded -- by the watchful eyes of society. Stendhal intervenes at this point to assure the reader that Julien will succeed as a hypocrite -- he is only a beginner. This intervention betrays the sympathy of the author for his amoral hero and dictates the reader's reaction. Since the novel is also the story of the education of Julien, Stendhal will intervene periodically to praise or censure the conduct of his hero. For the first time in his life, Julien is happy -- interestingly enough, only when he momentarily forgets his relentless ambition and hypocrisy. His ambition reawakens at a gesture of Mme. de Renal: When she withdraws her hand, Julien vows, in a chivalric way, to force her to leave her hand in his. His code of honor is very demanding and depends entirely upon personal criteria. For Julien, personal honor replaces morality. The chapters advance Mme. de Renal toward her role as mistress more so than Julien toward his of lover, although the affair will necessarily begin awkwardly and almost by accident, both parties lacking experience and even a conception of what love is. The awakening and development of love in his characters is illustrative of the crystallization process that Stendhal elaborated in De l'Amour. The feeling manifests itself autonomously of will and, after a preliminary stage of admiration and hope, soon crystallizes in the mind of the lover. This means that it becomes the exclusive obsession of the victim smitten, and every subject, no matter how far removed in appearance, ultimately leads one back to discover new perfections in the loved one. Mme. de Renal has never before been so deeply moved by a purely agreeable sensation as when she learns that this delightful young man is the stern priest she had anticipated. Note that only when her mind is at ease over the fate of her children does she notice Julien's good looks. She will remain in the early stages of "admiration" for a seemingly long period of time because of utter inexperience and ignorance of love. She feels in Julien a kindred spirit and has never imagined that such a man existed, so different is he from the husband whom she has considered the prototype of manhood. She involuntarily conceals her pleasure at the prospect of Julien's staying, her subconscious forcing the opposite reaction in the conscious. Mme. de Renal is greatly moved when she finds Julien beaten by his brothers. She notices the attentiveness that Elisa shows him, then wants to show him kindnesses. Increasingly she disapproves of the lack of delicacy and tact in her husband. Leaning on Julien's arm during a walk, she offers him the gift. His refusal leaves her trembling, and she takes some pleasure in his reprimand. She redoubles her attentions, giving herself the pretext that she has offended him. She becomes physically ill when Elisa speaks to her of Julien's refusal. At this point, Mme. de Renal becomes consciously aware that she is in love; what pleasure it is to plead the cause of Elisa, to speak of Julien knowing that he has refused. She actually faints from the joy that the interview causes her. With this realization does not come guilt since Mme. de Renal is unaware of what love implies. Thus she plunges head on, in her innocence, attending to her toilette with unprecedented care.