CHAPTER XX

ANONYMOUS LETTERS

    Do not give dalliance
    Too much the rein; the strongest oaths are straw
    To the fire i' the blood.--_Tempest_.

As they left the drawing-room about midnight, Julien had time to say to
his love,

"Don't let us see each other to-night. Your husband has suspicions. I
would swear that that big letter he read with a sigh was an anonymous
letter."

Fortunately, Julien locked himself into his room. Madame de Renal had
the mad idea that this warning was only a pretext for not seeing her.
She absolutely lost her head, and came to his door at the accustomed
hour. Julien, who had heard the noise in the corridor, immediately blew
out his lamp. Someone was trying to open the door. Was it Madame de
Renal? Was it a jealous husband?

Very early next morning the cook, who liked Julien, brought him a book,
on the cover of which he read these words written in Italian: _Guardate
alla pagina_ 130.

Julien shuddered at the imprudence, looked for page 130, and found
pinned to it the following letter hastily written, bathed with tears,
and full of spelling mistakes. Madame de Renal was usually very
correct. He was touched by this circumstance, and somewhat forgot the
awfulness of the indiscretion.

        "So you did not want to receive me to-night? There are
        moments when I think that I have never read down to the
        depths of your soul. Your looks frighten me. I am afraid
        of you. Great God! perhaps you have never loved me? In
        that case let my husband discover my love, and shut me
        up in a prison in the country far away from my children.
        Perhaps God wills it so. I shall die soon, but you will
        have proved yourself a monster.

        "Do you not love me? Are you tired of my fits of folly
        and of remorse, you wicked man? Do you wish to ruin me?
        I will show you an easy way. Go and show this letter to
        all Verrieres, or rather show it to M. Valenod. Tell him
        that I love you, nay, do not utter such a blasphemy,
        tell him I adore you, that it was only on the day I saw
        you that my life commenced; that even in the maddest
        moments of my youth I never even dreamt of the happiness
        that I owe to you, that I have sacrificed my life to
        you and that I am sacrificing my soul. You know that
        I am sacrificing much more. But does that man know
        the meaning of sacrifice? Tell him, I say, simply to
        irritate him, that I will defy all evil tongues, that
        the only misfortune for me in the whole world would
        be to witness any change in the only man who holds me
        to life. What a happiness it would be to me to lose
        my life, to offer it up as a sacrifice and to have no
        longer any fear for my children.

        "Have no doubt about it, dear one, if it is an
        anonymous letter, it comes from that odious being who
        has persecuted me for the last six years with his loud
        voice, his stories about his jumps on horseback, his
        fatuity, and the never ending catalogue of all his
        advantages.

        "Is there an anonymous letter? I should like to discuss
        that question with you, you wicked man; but no, you
        acted rightly. Clasping you in my arms perhaps for the
        last time, I should never have been able to argue as
        coldly as I do, now that I am alone. From this moment
        our happiness will no longer be so easy. Will that be a
        vexation for you? Yes, on those days when you haven't
        received some amusing book from M. Fouque. The sacrifice
        is made; to-morrow, whether there is or whether there is
        not any anonymous letter, I myself will tell my husband
        I have received an anonymous letter and that it is
        necessary to give you a golden bridge at once, find some
        honourable excuse, and send you back to your parents
        without delay.

        "Alas, dear one, we are going to be separated for a
        fortnight, perhaps a month! Go, I will do you justice,
        you will suffer as much as I, but anyway, this is the
        only means of disposing of this anonymous letter. It is
        not the first that my husband has received, and on my
        score too. Alas! how I used to laugh over them!

        "My one aim is to make my husband think that the letter
        comes from M. Valenod; I have no doubt that he is
        its author. If you leave the house, make a point of
        establishing yourself at Verrieres; I will manage that
        my husband should think of passing a fortnight there
        in order to prove to the fools there was no coldness
        between him and me. Once at Verrieres, establish ties of
        friendship with everyone, even with the Liberals. I am
        sure that all their ladies will seek you out.

        "Do not quarrel with M. Valenod, or cut off his ears,
        as you said you would one day. Try, on the contrary, to
        ingratiate yourself with him. The essential point is
        that it should be notorious in Verrieres that you are
        going to enter the household either of Valenod or of
        someone else to take charge of the children's education.

        "That is what my husband will never put up with. If he
        does feel bound to resign himself to it, well, at any
        rate, you will be living in Verrieres and I shall be
        seeing you sometimes. My children, who love you so much,
        will go and see you. Great God! I feel that I love my
        children all the more because they love you. How is
        all this going to end? I am wandering.... Anyway you
        understand your line of conduct. Be nice, polite, but
        not in any way disdainful to those coarse persons. I
        ask you on my knees; they will be the arbiters of our
        fate. Do not fear for a moment but that, so far as you
        are concerned, my husband will conform to what public
        opinion lays down for him.

        "It is you who will supply me with the anonymous letter.
        Equip yourself with patience and a pair of scissors, cut
        out from a book the words which you will see, then stick
        them with the mouth-glue on to the leaf of loose paper
        which I am sending you. It comes to me from M. Valenod.
        Be on your guard against a search in your room; burn the
        pages of the book which you are going to mutilate. If
        you do not find the words ready-made, have the patience
        to form them letter by letter. I have made the anonymous
        letter too short.

        ANONYMOUS LETTER.

        'MADAME,

        All your little goings-on are known, but the persons
        interested in stopping have been warned. I have still
        sufficient friendship left for you to urge you to cease
        all relations with the little peasant. If you are
        sensible enough to do this, your husband will believe
        that the notification he has received is misleading, and
        he will be left in his illusion. Remember that I have
        your secret; tremble, unhappy woman, you must now _walk
        straight_ before me.'

        "As soon as you have finished glueing together the
        words that make up this letter (have you recognised the
        director's special style of speech) leave the house, I
        will meet you.

        "I will go into the village and come back with a
        troubled face. As a matter of fact I shall be very much
        troubled. Great God! What a risk I run, and all because
        you thought you guessed an anonymous letter. Finally,
        looking very much upset, I shall give this letter to my
        husband and say that an unknown man handed it to me. As
        for you, go for a walk with the children, on the road to
        the great woods, and do not come back before dinner-time.

        "You will be able to see the tower of the dovecot from
        the top of the rocks. If things go well for us, I
        will place a white handkerchief there, in case of the
        contrary, there will be nothing at all.

        "Ungrateful man, will not your heart find out some means
        of telling me that you love me before you leave for that
        walk. Whatever happens, be certain of one thing: I shall
        never survive our final separation by a single day.
        Oh, you bad mother! but what is the use of my writing
        those two words, dear Julien? I do not feel them, at
        this moment I can only think of you. I have only written
        them so as not to be blamed by you, but what is the good
        of deception now that I find myself face to face with
        losing you? Yes, let my soul seem monstrous to you,
        but do not let me lie to the man whom I adore. I have
        already deceived only too much in this life of mine. Go!
        I forgive you if you love me no more. I have not the
        time to read over my letter. It is a small thing in my
        eyes to pay for the happy days that I have just passed
        in your arms with the price of my life. You know that
        they will cost me more."

To be safe, Julien tells Madame de Renal that he won't be able to visit her at night. If the anonymous letter written to Monsieur de Renal says what Julien thinks it does, it would be crazy to try and sleep with Madame. The next day, Madame sends him a secret note asking whether he loves her anymore. She can't believe that he has stood her up. She also says that it doesn't matter if her husband has received a letter about her. It's not the first attempt to question her honor. Madame claims that she's going to convince her husband that the anonymous letter came from Monsieur Valenod and that Monsieur is just jealous that Madame has never given in to his sexual advances. Madame writes out a letter to her husband that she wants Julien to create by cutting words out of papers and magazines. The letter basically makes it obvious that Mr. Valenod is trying to steal Madame away from her husband.


CHAPTER XXI

DIALOGUE WITH A MASTER

     Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we;
     For such as we are made of, such we be.--_Twelfth Night_.

It was with a childish pleasure that for a whole hour Julien put the
words together. As he came out of his room, he met his pupils with
their mother. She took the letter with a simplicity and a courage whose
calmness terrified him.

"Is the mouth-glue dry enough yet?" she asked him.

"And is this the woman who was so maddened by remorse?" he thought.
"What are her plans at this moment?" He was too proud to ask her, but
she had never perhaps pleased him more.

"If this turns out badly," she added with the same coolness, "I shall
be deprived of everything. Take charge of this, and bury it in some
place of the mountain. It will perhaps one day be my only resource."

She gave him a glass case in red morocco filled with gold and some
diamonds.

"Now go," she said to him.

She kissed the children, embracing the youngest twice. Julien remained
motionless. She left him at a rapid pace without looking at him.

From the moment that M. de Renal had opened the anonymous letter his
life had been awful. He had not been so agitated since a duel which he
had just missed having in 1816, and to do him justice, the prospect of
receiving a bullet would have made him less unhappy. He scrutinised the
letter from every standpoint. "Is that not a woman's handwriting?" he
said to himself. In that case, what woman had written it? He reviewed
all those whom he knew at Verrieres without being able to fix his
suspicions on any one. Could a man have dictated that letter? Who
was that man? Equal uncertainty on this point. The majority of his
acquaintances were jealous of him, and, no doubt, hated him. "I must
consult my wife," he said to himself through habit, as he got up from
the arm-chair in which he had collapsed.

"Great God!" he said aloud before he got up, striking his head, "it is
she above all of whom I must be distrustful. At the present moment she
is my enemy," and tears came into his eyes through sheer anger.

By a poetic justice for that hardness of heart which constitutes the
provincial idea of shrewdness, the two men whom M. de Renal feared the
most at the present moment were his two most intimate friends.

"I have ten friends perhaps after those," and he passed them in review,
gauging the degree of consolation which he could get from each one.
"All of them, all of them," he exclaimed in a rage, "will derive the
most supreme pleasure from my awful experience."

As luck would have it, he thought himself envied, and not without
reason. Apart from his superb town mansion in which the king of ----
had recently spent the night, and thus conferred on it an enduring
honour, he had decorated his chateau at Vergy extremely well. The
facade was painted white and the windows adorned with fine green
shutters. He was consoled for a moment by the thought of this
magnificence. The fact was that this chateau was seen from three or
four leagues off, to the great prejudice of all the country houses or
so-called chateaux of the neighbourhood, which had been left in the
humble grey colour given them by time.

There was one of his friends on whose pity and whose tears M. de Renal
could count, the churchwarden of the parish; but he was an idiot who
cried at everything. This man, however, was his only resource. "What
unhappiness is comparable to mine," he exclaimed with rage. "What
isolation!"

"Is it possible?" said this truly pitiable man to himself. "Is it
possible that I have no friend in my misfortune of whom I can ask
advice? for my mind is wandering, I feel it. Oh, Falcoz! oh, Ducros!"
he exclaimed with bitterness. Those were the names of two friends of
his childhood whom he had dropped owing to his snobbery in 1814. They
were not noble, and he had wished to change the footing of equality on
which they had been living with him since their childhood.

One of them, Falcoz, a paper-merchant of Verrieres, and a man of
intellect and spirit, had bought a printing press in the chief town of
the department and undertaken the production of a journal. The priestly
congregation had resolved to ruin him; his journal had been condemned,
and he had been deprived of his printer's diploma. In these sad
circumstances he ventured to write to M. de Renal for the first time
for ten years. The mayor of Verrieres thought it his duty to answer
in the old Roman style: "If the King's Minister were to do me the
honour of consulting me, I should say to him, ruin ruthlessly all the
provincial printers, and make printing a monopoly like tobacco." M. de
Renal was horrified to remember the terms of this letter to an intimate
friend whom all Verrieres had once admired, "Who would have said that
I, with my rank, my fortune, my decorations, would ever come to regret
it?" It was in these transports of rage, directed now against himself,
now against all his surroundings, that he passed an awful night; but,
fortunately, it never occurred to him to spy on his wife.

"I am accustomed to Louise," he said to himself, "she knows all my
affairs. If I were free to marry to-morrow, I should not find anyone to
take her place." Then he began to plume himself on the idea that his
wife was innocent. This point of view did not require any manifestation
of character, and suited him much better. "How many calumniated women
has one not seen?"

"But," he suddenly exclaimed, as he walked about feverishly, "shall I
put up with her making a fool of me with her lover as though I were
a man of no account, some mere ragamuffin? Is all Verrieres to make
merry over my complaisance? What have they not said about Charmier
(he was a husband in the district who was notoriously deceived)? Was
there not a smile on every lip at the mention of his name? He is a good
advocate, but whoever said anything about his talent for speaking? 'Oh,
Charmier,' they say, 'Bernard's Charmier,' he is thus designated by the
name of the man who disgraces him."

"I have no daughter, thank heaven," M. de Renal would say at other
times, "and the way in which I am going to punish the mother will
consequently not be so harmful to my children's household. I could
surprise this little peasant with my wife and kill them both; in that
case the tragedy of the situation would perhaps do away with the
grotesque element." This idea appealed to him. He followed it up in all
its details. "The penal code is on my side, and whatever happens our
congregation and my friends on the jury will save me." He examined his
hunting-knife which was quite sharp, but the idea of blood frightened
him.

"I could thrash this insolent tutor within an inch of his life and
hound him out of the house; but what a sensation that would make in
Verrieres and even over the whole department! After Falcoz' journal had
been condemned, and when its chief editor left prison, I had a hand
in making him lose his place of six hundred francs a year. They say
that this scribbler has dared to show himself again in Besancon. He
may lampoon me adroitly and in such a way that it will be impossible
to bring him up before the courts. Bring him up before the courts!
The insolent wretch will insinuate in a thousand and one ways that he
has spoken the truth. A well-born man who keeps his place like I do,
is hated by all the plebeians. I shall see my name in all those awful
Paris papers. Oh, my God, what depths. To see the ancient name of
Renal plunged in the mire of ridicule. If I ever travel I shall have
to change my name. What! abandon that name which is my glory and my
strength. Could anything be worse than that?

"If I do not kill my wife but turn her out in disgrace, she has her
aunt in Besancon who is going to hand all her fortune over to her.
My wife will go and live in Paris with Julien. It will be known at
Verrieres, and I shall be taken for a dupe." The unhappy man then
noticed from the paleness of the lamplight that the dawn was beginning
to appear. He went to get a little fresh air in the garden. At this
moment he had almost determined to make no scandal, particularly in
view of the fact that a scandal would overwhelm with joy all his good
friends in Verrieres.

The promenade in the garden calmed him a little. "No," he exclaimed,
"I shall not deprive myself of my wife, she is too useful to me." He
imagined with horror what his house would be without his wife. The only
relative he had was the Marquise of R---- old, stupid, and malicious.

A very sensible idea occurred to him, but its execution required a
strength of character considerably superior to the small amount of
character which the poor man possessed. "If I keep my wife," he said
to himself, "I know what I shall do one day; on some occasion when
she makes me lose patience, I shall reproach her with her guilt. She
is proud, we shall quarrel, and all this will happen before she has
inherited her aunt's fortune. And how they will all make fun of me
then! My wife loves her children, the result will be that everything
will go to them. But as for me, I shall be the laughing-stock of
Verrieres. 'What,' they will say, 'he could not even manage to revenge
himself on his wife!' Would it not be better to leave it and verify
nothing? In that case I tie my hands, and cannot afterwards reproach
her with anything."

An instant afterwards M. de Renal, once more a prey to wounded vanity,
set himself laboriously to recollect all the methods of procedure
mentioned in the billiard-room of the _Casino_ or the _Nobles' Club_ in
Verrieres, when some fine talker interrupted the pool to divert himself
at the expense of some deceived husband. How cruel these pleasantries
appeared to him at the present moment!

"My God, why is my wife not dead! then I should be impregnable against
ridicule. Why am I not a widower? I should go and pass six months in
Paris in the best society. After this moment of happiness occasioned
by the idea of widowerhood, his imagination reverted to the means of
assuring himself of the truth. Should he put a slight layer of bran
before the door of Julien's room at midnight after everyone had gone to
bed? He would see the impression of the feet in the following morning.

"But that's no good," he suddenly exclaimed with rage. "That
inquisitive Elisa will notice it, and they will soon know all over the
house that I am jealous."

In another _Casino_ tale a husband had assured himself of his
misfortune by tying a hair with a little wax so that it shut the door
of the gallant as effectually as a seal.

After so many hours of uncertainty this means of clearing up his fate
seemed to him emphatically the best, and he was thinking of availing
himself of it when, in one of the turnings of the avenue he met the
very woman whom he would like to have seen dead. She was coming back
from the village. She had gone to hear mass in the church of Vergy.
A tradition, extremely doubtful in the eyes of the cold philosopher,
but in which she believed, alleges that the little church was once the
chapel of the chateau of the Lord of Vergy. This idea obsessed Madame
de Renal all the time in the church that she had counted on spending in
prayer. She kept on imagining to herself the spectacle of her husband
killing Julien when out hunting as though by accident, and then making
her eat his heart in the evening.

"My fate," she said to herself, "depends on what he will think when
he listens to me. It may be I shall never get another opportunity
of speaking to him after this fatal quarter of an hour. He is not a
reasonable person who is governed by his intellect. In that case, with
the help of my weak intelligence, I could anticipate what he will do or
say. He will decide our common fate. He has the power. But this fate
depends on my adroitness, on my skill in directing the ideas of this
crank, who is blinded by his rage and unable to see half of what takes
place. Great God! I need talent and coolness, where shall I get it?"

She regained her calmness as though by magic, and she entered the
garden and saw her husband in the distance. His dishevelled hair and
disordered dress showed that he had not slept.

She gave him a letter with a broken seal but folded. As for him,
without opening it, he gazed at his wife with the eyes of a madman.

"Here's an abominable thing," she said to him, "which an evil-looking
man who makes out that he knows you and is under an obligation to you,
handed to me as I was passing behind the notary's garden. I insist on
one thing and that is that you send back this M. Julien to his parents
and without delay." Madame de Renal hastened to say these words,
perhaps a little before the psychological moment, in order to free
herself from the awful prospect of having to say them.

She was seized with joy on seeing that which she was occasioning to her
husband. She realised from the fixed stare which he was rivetting on
her that Julien had surmised rightly.

"What a genius he is to be so brilliantly diplomatic instead of
succumbing to so real a misfortune," she thought. "He will go very far
in the future! Alas, his successes will only make him forget me."

This little act of admiration for the man whom she adored quite cured
her of her trouble.

She congratulated herself on her tactics. "I have not been unworthy of
Julien," she said to herself with a sweet and secret pleasure.

M. de Renal kept examining the second anonymous letter which the
reader may remember was composed of printed words glued on to a paper
verging on blue. He did not say a word for fear of giving himself away.
"They still make fun of me in every possible way," said M. de Renal
to himself, overwhelmed with exhaustion. "Still more new insults to
examine and all the time on account of my wife." He was on the point
of heaping on her the coarsest insults. He was barely checked by the
prospects of the Besancon legacy. Consumed by the need of venting his
feelings on something, he crumpled up the paper of the second anonymous
letter and began to walk about with huge strides. He needed to get
away from his wife. A few moments afterwards he came back to her in a
quieter frame of mind.

"The thing is to take some definite line and send Julien away," she
said immediately, "after all it is only a labourer's son. You will
compensate him by a few crowns and besides he is clever and will easily
manage to find a place, with M. Valenod for example, or with the
sub-prefect De Maugiron who both have children. In that way you will
not be doing him any wrong...." "There you go talking like the fool
that you are," exclaimed M. de Renal in a terrible voice. "How can one
hope that a woman will show any good sense? You never bother yourself
about common sense. How can you ever get to know anything? Your
indifference and your idleness give you no energy except for hunting
those miserable butterflies, which we are unfortunate to have in our
houses."

Madame de Renal let him speak and he spoke for a long time. _He was
working off his anger_, to use the local expression.

"Monsieur," she answered him at last, "I speak as a woman who has
been outraged in her honour, that is to say, in what she holds most
precious."

Madame de Renal preserved an unalterable sang-froid during all this
painful conversation on the result of which depended the possibility of
still living under the same roof as Julien. She sought for the ideas
which she thought most adapted to guide her husband's blind anger
into a safe channel. She had been insensible to all the insulting
imputations which he had addressed to her. She was not listening to
them, she was then thinking about Julien. "Will he be pleased with me?"

"This little peasant whom we have loaded with attentions, and even with
presents, may be innocent," she said to him at last, "but he is none
the less the occasion of the first affront that I have ever received.
Monsieur, when I read this abominable paper, I vowed to myself that
either he or I should leave your house."

"Do you want to make a scandal so as to dishonour me and yourself as
well? You will make things hum in Verrieres I can assure you."

"It is true, the degree of prosperity in which your prudent management
has succeeded in placing you yourself, your family and the town is the
subject of general envy.... Well, I will urge Julien to ask you for
a holiday to go and spend the month with that wood-merchant of the
mountains, a fit friend to be sure for this little labourer."

"Mind you do nothing at all," resumed M. de Renal with a fair amount of
tranquillity. "I particularly insist on your not speaking to him. You
will put him into a temper and make him quarrel with me. You know to
what extent this little gentleman is always spoiling for a quarrel."

"That young man has no tact," resumed Madame de Renal. "He may be
learned, you know all about that, but at bottom he is only a peasant.
For my own part I never thought much of him since he refused to
marry Elisa. It was an assured fortune; and that on the pretext that
sometimes she had made secret visits to M. Valenod."

"Ah," said M. de Renal, lifting up his eyebrows inordinately. "What,
did Julien tell you that?"

"Not exactly, he always talked of the vocation which calls him to the
holy ministry, but believe me, the first vocation for those lower-class
people is getting their bread and butter. He gave me to understand that
he was quite aware of her secret visits."

"And I--I was ignorant," exclaimed M. de Renal, growing as angry as
before and accentuating his words. "Things take place in my house which
I know nothing about.... What! has there been anything between Elisa
and Valenod?"

"Oh, that's old history, my dear," said Madame de Renal with a smile,
"and perhaps no harm has come of it. It was at the time when your good
friend Valenod would not have minded their thinking at Verrieres that a
perfectly platonic little affection was growing up between him and me."

"I had that idea once myself," exclaimed M. de Renal, furiously
striking his head as he progressed from discovery to discovery, "and
you told me nothing about it."

"Should one set two friends by the ears on account of a little fit of
vanity on the part of our dear director? What society woman has not had
addressed to her a few letters which were both extremely witty and even
a little gallant?"

"He has written to you?"

"He writes a great deal."

"Show me those letters at once, I order you," and M. de Renal pulled
himself up to his six feet.

"I will do nothing of the kind," he was answered with a sweetness
verging on indifference. "I will show you them one day when you are in
a better frame of mind."

"This very instant, odds life," exclaimed M. de Renal, transported with
rage and yet happier than he had been for twelve hours.

"Will you swear to me," said Madame de Renal quite gravely, "never to
quarrel with the director of the workhouse about these letters?"

"Quarrel or no quarrel, I can take those foundlings away from him,
but," he continued furiously, "I want those letters at once. Where are
they?"

"In a drawer in my secretary, but I shall certainly not give you the
key."

"I'll manage to break it," he cried, running towards his wife's room.

He did break in fact with a bar of iron a costly secretary of veined
mahogany which came from Paris and which he had often been accustomed
to wipe with the nap of his coat, when he thought he had detected a
spot.

Madame de Renal had climbed up at a run the hundred and twenty steps
of the dovecot. She tied the corner of a white handkerchief to one of
the bars of iron of the little window. She was the happiest of women.
With tears in her eyes she looked towards the great mountain forest.
"Doubtless," she said to herself, "Julien is watching for this happy
signal."

She listened attentively for a long time and then she cursed the
monotonous noise of the grasshopper and the song of the birds. "Had it
not been for that importunate noise, a cry of joy starting from the big
rocks could have arrived here." Her greedy eye devoured that immense
slope of dark verdure which was as level as a meadow.

"Why isn't he clever enough," she said to herself, quite overcome, "to
invent some signal to tell me that his happiness is equal to mine?" She
only came down from the dovecot when she was frightened of her husband
coming there to look for her.

She found him furious. He was perusing the soothing phrases of M. de
Valenod and reading them with an emotion to which they were but little
used.

"I always come back to the same idea," said Madame de Renal seizing
a moment when a pause in her husband's ejaculations gave her the
possibility of getting heard. "It is necessary for Julien to travel.
Whatever talent he may have for Latin, he is only a peasant after all,
often coarse and lacking in tact. Thinking to be polite, he addresses
inflated compliments to me every day, which are in bad taste. He learns
them by heart out of some novel or other."

"He never reads one," exclaimed M. de Renal. "I am assured of it. Do
you think that I am the master of a house who is so blind as to be
ignorant of what takes place in his own home."

"Well, if he doesn't read these droll compliments anywhere, he invents
them, and that's all the worse so far as he is concerned. He must have
talked about me in this tone in Verrieres and perhaps without going so
far," said Madame Renal with the idea of making a discovery, "he may
have talked in the same strain to Elisa, which is almost the same as if
he had said it to M. Valenod."

"Ah," exclaimed M. de Renal, shaking the table and the room with one of
the most violent raps ever made by a human fist. "The anonymous printed
letter and Valenod's letters are written on the same paper."

"At last," thought Madame de Renal. She pretended to be overwhelmed
at this discovery, and without having the courage to add a single
word, went and sat down some way off on the divan at the bottom of the
drawing-room.

From this point the battle was won. She had a great deal of trouble in
preventing M. de Renal from going to speak to the supposed author of
the anonymous letter. "What, can't you see that making a scene with M.
Valenod without sufficient proof would be the most signal mistake? You
are envied, Monsieur, and who is responsible? Your talents: your wise
management, your tasteful buildings, the dowry which I have brought
you, and above all, the substantial legacy which we are entitled to
hope for from my good aunt, a legacy, the importance of which is
inordinately exaggerated, have made you into the first person in
Verrieres."

"You are forgetting my birth," said M. de Renal, smiling a little.

"You are one of the most distinguished gentlemen in the province,"
replied Madame de Renal emphatically. "If the king were free and could
give birth its proper due, you would no doubt figure in the Chamber of
Peers, etc. And being in this magnificent position, you yet wish to
give the envious a fact to take hold of."

"To speak about this anonymous letter to M. Valenod is equivalent
to proclaiming over the whole of Verrieres, nay, over the whole of
Besancon, over the whole province that this little bourgeois who has
been admitted perhaps imprudently to intimacy _with a Renal_, has
managed to offend him. At the time when those letters which you have
just taken prove that I have reciprocated M. Valenod's love, you ought
to kill me. I should have deserved it a hundred times over, but not to
show him your anger. Remember that all our neighbours are only waiting
for an excuse to revenge themselves for your superiority. Remember that
in 1816 you had a hand in certain arrests.

"I think that you show neither consideration nor love for me,"
exclaimed M. de Renal with all the bitterness evoked by such a memory,
"and I was not made a peer."

"I am thinking, my dear," resumed Madame de Renal with a smile, "that
I shall be richer than you are, that I have been your companion for
twelve years, and that by virtue of those qualifications I am entitled
to have a voice in the council and, above all, in to-day's business. If
you prefer M. Julien to me," she added, with a touch of temper which
was but thinly disguised, "I am ready to go and pass a winter with my
aunt." These words proved a lucky shot. They possessed a firmness which
endeavoured to clothe itself with courtesy. It decided M. de Renal, but
following the provincial custom, he still thought for a long time, and
went again over all his arguments; his wife let him speak. There was
still a touch of anger in his intonation. Finally two hours of futile
rant exhausted the strength of a man who had been subject during the
whole night to a continuous fit of anger. He determined on the line of
conduct he was going to follow with regard to M. Valenod, Julien and
even Elisa.

Madame de Renal was on the point once or twice during this great scene
of feeling some sympathy for the very real unhappiness of the man
who had been so dear to her for twelve years. But true passions are
selfish. Besides she was expecting him every instant to mention the
anonymous letter which he had received the day before and he did not
mention it. In order to feel quite safe, Madame de Renal wanted to know
the ideas which the letter had succeeding in suggesting to the man on
whom her fate depended, for, in the provinces the husbands are the
masters of public opinion. A husband who complains covers himself with
ridicule, an inconvenience which becomes no less dangerous in France
with each succeeding year; but if he refuses to provide his wife with
money, she falls to the status of a labouring woman at fifteen sous a
day, while the virtuous souls have scruples about employing her.

An odalisque in the seraglio can love the Sultan with all her might.
He is all-powerful and she has no hope of stealing his authority by
a series of little subtleties. The master's vengeance is terrible
and bloody but martial and generous; a dagger thrust finishes
everything. But it is by stabbing her with public contempt that a
nineteenth-century husband kills his wife. It is by shutting against
her the doors of all the drawing-rooms.

When Madame de Renal returned to her room, her feeling of danger was
vividly awakened. She was shocked by the disorder in which she found
it. The locks of all the pretty little boxes had been broken. Many
planks in the floor had been lifted up. "He would have no pity on me,"
she said to herself. "To think of his spoiling like this, this coloured
wood floor which he likes so much; he gets red with rage whenever one
of his children comes into it with wet shoes, and now it is spoilt for
ever." The spectacle of this violence immediately banished the last
scruples which she was entertaining with respect to that victory which
she had won only too rapidly.

Julien came back with the children a little before the dinner-bell.
Madame de Renal said to him very drily at dessert when the servant had
left the room:

"You have told me about your wish to go and spend a fortnight at
Verrieres. M. de Renal is kind enough to give you a holiday. You can
leave as soon as you like, but the childrens' exercises will be sent to
you every day so that they do not waste their time."

"I shall certainly not allow you more than a week," said M. de Renal in
a very bitter tone. Julien thought his visage betrayed the anxiety of a
man who was seriously harassed.

"He has not yet decided what line to take," he said to his love during
a moment when they were alone together in the drawing-room.

Madame de Renal rapidly recounted to him all she had done since the
morning.

"The details are for to-night," she added with a smile.

"Feminine perversity," thought Julien, "What can be the pleasure, what
can be the instinct which induces them to deceive us."

"I think you are both enlightened and at the same time blinded by your
love," he said to her with some coldness. "Your conduct to-day has been
admirable, but is it prudent for us to try and see each other to-night?
This house is paved with enemies. Just think of Elisa's passionate
hatred for me."

"That hate is very like the passionate indifference which you no doubt
have for me."

"Even if I were indifferent I ought to save you from the peril in which
I have plunged you. If chance so wills it that M. de Renal should speak
to Elisa, she can acquaint him with everything in a single word. What
is to prevent him from hiding near my room fully armed?"

"What, not even courage?" said Madame de Renal, with all the
haughtiness of a scion of nobility.

"I will never demean myself to speak about my courage," said Julien,
coldly, "it would be mean to do so. Let the world judge by the facts.
But," he added, taking her hand, "you have no idea how devoted I am to
you and how over-joyed I am of being able to say good-bye to you before
this cruel separation."

Julien finishes putting together the anonymous letter for Madame de Renal and hands it to her. In return, she hands him a box with gold and diamonds in it and asks him to bury it in the mountains. She's afraid that someday she might need it if she's kicked out of her home. Meanwhile, Monsieur Renal stresses about how to bring up the letter he has received with his wife. It's clear that the letter has told him about his wife's affair. The whole thing makes de Renal think about how many men dislike him and how few like him. He even thinks about friends whom he cut ties with when he was younger because they weren't upper class enough. He thinks about beating up Julien and throwing him out of the house. But he knows that this would eventually cause the scandal to become known to everyone in town. He can't stand the thought of having the newspapers drag his name through the mud. Madame de Renal comes up to him with a devastated look on her face. She hands him a letter and says someone from town she didn't recognize just gave it to her. She asks Monsieur to send Julien back to his father as quickly as possible. Monsieur de Renal tells her to stop being an idiot. She waits patiently for him to get all his anger out of his system. Madame plants the suspicion in her husband's head that it is actually the servant Elisa and Valenod who are having an affair. She also tells him that Mr. Valenod has written her many love letters over the years. She shows them to her husband, and this proves that Valenod has a motive for trying to ruin Madame's reputation. The next step is for Madame to convince Monsieur never to confront Valenod about the letters . Madame demands that her husband send Julien away for at least a couple of weeks. He agrees. With all that's happened, Madame still asks Julien to come to her room that night. He thinks she's insane. But of course he comes.


CHAPTER XXII

MANNERS OF PROCEDURE IN 1830

     Speech has been given to man to conceal his thought.
                                             _R.P. Malagrida_.

Julien had scarcely arrived at Verrieres before he reproached himself
with his injustice towards Madame de Renal. "I should have despised
her for a weakling of a woman if she had not had the strength to go
through with her scene with M. de Renal. But she has acquitted herself
like a diplomatist and I sympathise with the defeat of the man who is
my enemy. There is a bourgeois prejudice in my action; my vanity is
offended because M. de Renal is a man. Men form a vast and illustrious
body to which I have the honour to belong. I am nothing but a fool." M.
Chelan had refused the magnificent apartments which the most important
Liberals in the district had offered him, when his loss of his living
had necessitated his leaving the parsonage. The two rooms which he had
rented were littered with his books. Julien, wishing to show Verrieres
what a priest could do, went and fetched a dozen pinewood planks from
his father, carried them on his back all along the Grande-Rue, borrowed
some tools from an old comrade and soon built a kind of book-case in
which he arranged M. Chelan's books.

"I thought you were corrupted by the vanity of the world," said the
old man to him as he cried with joy, "but this is something which well
redeems all the childishness of that brilliant Guard of Honour uniform
which has made you so many enemies."

M. de Renal had ordered Julien to stay at his house. No one suspected
what had taken place. The third day after his arrival Julien saw no
less a personage than M. the sub-prefect de Maugiron come all the way
up the stairs to his room. It was only after two long hours of fatuous
gossip and long-winded lamentations about the wickedness of man, the
lack of honesty among the people entrusted with the administration
of the public funds, the dangers of his poor France, etc. etc., that
Julien was at last vouchsafed a glimpse of the object of the visit.
They were already on the landing of the staircase and the poor half
disgraced tutor was escorting with all proper deference the future
prefect of some prosperous department, when the latter was pleased to
take an interest in Julien's fortune, to praise his moderation in money
matters, etc., etc. Finally M. de Maugiron, embracing him in the most
paternal way, proposed that he should leave M. de Renal and enter the
household of an official who had children to educate and who, like King
Philippe, thanked Heaven not so much that they had been granted to him,
but for the fact that they had been born in the same neighbourhood as
M. Julien. Their tutor would enjoy a salary of 800 francs, payable
not from month to month, which is not at all aristocratic, said M. de
Maugiron, but quarterly and always in advance.

It was Julien's turn now. After he had been bored for an hour and a
half by waiting for what he had to say, his answer was perfect and,
above all, as long as a bishop's charge. It suggested everything and
yet said nothing clearly. It showed at the same time respect for M.
de Renal, veneration for the public of Verrieres and gratitude to the
distinguished sub-prefect. The sub-prefect, astonished at finding
him more Jesuitical than himself, tried in vain to obtain something
definite. Julien was delighted, seized the opportunity to practise, and
started his answer all over again in different language. Never has an
eloquent minister who wished to make the most of the end of a session
when the Chamber really seemed desirous of waking up, said less in more
words.

M. de Maugiron had scarcely left before Julien began to laugh like
a madman. In order to exploit his Jesuitical smartness, he wrote a
nine-page letter to M. de Renal in which he gave him an account of all
that had been said to him and humbly asked his advice. "But the old
scoundrel has not told me the name of the person who is making the
offer. It is bound to be M. Valenod who, no doubt, sees in my exile at
Verrieres the result of his anonymous letter."

Having sent off his despatch and feeling as satisfied as a hunter who
at six o'clock in the morning on a fine autumn day, comes out into
a plain that abounds with game, he went out to go and ask advice of
M. Chelan. But before he had arrived at the good cure's, providence,
wishing to shower favours upon him, threw in his path M. de Valenod,
to whom he owned quite freely that his heart was torn in two; a poor
lad such as he was owed an exclusive devotion to the vocation to which
it had pleased Heaven to call him. But vocation was not everything in
this base world. In order to work worthily at the vine of the Lord,
and to be not totally unworthy of so many worthy colleagues, it was
necessary to be educated; it was necessary to spend two expensive years
at the seminary of Besancon; saving consequently became an imperative
necessity, and was certainly much easier with a salary of eight hundred
francs paid quarterly than with six hundred francs which one received
monthly. On the other hand, did not Heaven, by placing him by the side
of the young de Renals, and especially by inspiring him with a special
devotion to them, seem to indicate that it was not proper to abandon
that education for another one.

Julien reached such a degree of perfection in that particular kind of
eloquence which has succeeded the drastic quickness of the empire, that
he finished by boring himself with the sound of his own words.

On reaching home he found a valet of M. Valenod in full livery who had
been looking for him all over the town, with a card inviting him to
dinner for that same day.

Julien had never been in that man's house. Only a few days before
he had been thinking of nothing but the means of giving him a sound
thrashing without getting into trouble with the police. Although
the time of the dinner was one o'clock, Julien thought it was more
deferential to present himself at half-past twelve at the office of M.
the director of the workhouse. He found him parading his importance in
the middle of a lot of despatch boxes. His large black whiskers, his
enormous quantity of hair, his Greek bonnet placed across the top of
his head, his immense pipe, his embroidered slippers, the big chains
of gold crossed all over his breast, and the whole stock-in-trade of
a provincial financier who considers himself prosperous, failed to
impose on Julien in the least: They only made him think the more of the
thrashing which he owed him.

He asked for the honour of being introduced to Madame Valenod. She
was dressing and was unable to receive him. By way of compensation he
had the privilege of witnessing the toilet of M. the director of the
workhouse. They subsequently went into the apartment of Madame Valenod,
who introduced her children to him with tears in her eyes. This lady
was one of the most important in Verrieres, had a big face like a
man's, on which she had put rouge in honour of this great function. She
displayed all the maternal pathos of which she was capable.

Julien thought all the time of Madame de Renal. His distrust made him
only susceptible to those associations which are called up by their
opposites, but he was then affected to the verge of breaking down.
This tendency was increased by the sight of the house of the director
of the workhouse. He was shown over it. Everything in it was new and
magnificent, and he was told the price of every article of furniture.
But Julien detected a certain element of sordidness, which smacked of
stolen money into the bargain. Everybody in it, down to the servants,
had the air of setting his face in advance against contempt.

The collector of taxes, the superintendent of indirect taxes, the
officer of gendarmerie, and two or three other public officials arrived
with their wives. They were followed by some rich Liberals. Dinner was
announced. It occurred to Julien, who was already feeling upset, that
there were some poor prisoners on the other side of the dining-room
wall, and that an illicit profit had perhaps been made over their
rations of meat in order to purchase all that garish luxury with which
they were trying to overwhelm him.

"Perhaps they are hungry at this very minute," he said to himself. He
felt a choking in his throat. He found it impossible to eat and almost
impossible to speak. Matters became much worse a quarter of an hour
afterwards; they heard in the distance some refrains of a popular song
that was, it must be confessed, a little vulgar, which was being sung
by one of the inmates. M. Valenod gave a look to one of his liveried
servants who disappeared and soon there was no more singing to be
heard. At that moment a valet offered Julien some Rhine wine in a green
glass and Madame Valenod made a point of asking him to note that this
wine cost nine francs a bottle in the market. Julien held up his green
glass and said to M. Valenod,

"They are not singing that wretched song any more."

"Zounds, I should think not," answered the triumphant governor. "I have
made the rascals keep quiet."

These words were too much for Julien. He had the manners of his new
position, but he had not yet assimilated its spirit. In spite of all
his hypocrisy and its frequent practice, he felt a big tear drip down
his cheek.

He tried to hide it in the green glass, but he found it absolutely
impossible to do justice to the Rhine wine. "Preventing singing he said
to himself: Oh, my God, and you suffer it."

Fortunately nobody noticed his ill-bred emotion. The collector of
taxes had struck up a royalist song. "So this," reflected Julien's
conscience during the hubbub of the refrain which was sung in chorus,
"is the sordid prosperity which you will eventually reach, and you will
only enjoy it under these conditions and in company like this. You
will, perhaps, have a post worth twenty thousand francs; but while you
gorge yourself on meat, you will have to prevent a poor prisoner from
singing; you will give dinners with the money which you have stolen out
of his miserable rations and during your dinners he will be still more
wretched. Oh, Napoleon, how sweet it was to climb to fortune in your
way through the dangers of a battle, but to think of aggravating the
pain of the unfortunate in this cowardly way."

I own that the weakness which Julien had been manifesting in this
soliloquy gives me a poor opinion of him. He is worthy of being the
accomplice of those kid-gloved conspirators who purport to change the
whole essence of a great country's existence, without wishing to have
on their conscience the most trivial scratch.

Julien was sharply brought back to his role. He had not been invited to
dine in such good company simply to moon dreamily and say nothing.

A retired manufacturer of cotton prints, a corresponding member of the
Academy of Besancon and of that of Uzes, spoke to him from the other
end of the table and asked him if what was said everywhere about his
astonishing progress in the study of the New Testament was really true.

A profound silence was suddenly inaugurated. A New Testament in Latin
was found as though by magic in the possession of the learned member
of the two Academies. After Julien had answered, part of a sentence
in Latin was read at random. Julien then recited. His memory proved
faithful and the prodigy was admired with all the boisterous energy of
the end of dinner. Julien looked at the flushed faces of the ladies. A
good many were not so plain. He recognised the wife of the collector,
who was a fine singer.

"I am ashamed, as a matter of fact, to talk Latin so long before these
ladies," he said, turning his eyes on her. "If M. Rubigneau," that was
the name of the member of the two Academies, "will be kind enough to
read a Latin sentence at random instead of answering by following the
Latin text, I will try to translate it impromptu." This second test
completed his glory.

Several Liberals were there, who, though rich, were none the less the
happy fathers of children capable of obtaining scholarships, and had
consequently been suddenly converted at the last mission. In spite of
this diplomatic step, M. de Renal had never been willing to receive
them in his house. These worthy people, who only knew Julien by name
and from having seen him on horseback on the day of the king of ----'s
entry, were his most noisy admirers. "When will those fools get tired
of listening to this Biblical language, which they don't understand in
the least," he thought. But, on the contrary, that language amused them
by its strangeness and made them smile. But Julien got tired.

As six o'clock struck he got up gravely and talked about a chapter in
Ligorio's New Theology which he had to learn by heart to recite on the
following day to M. Chelan, "for," he added pleasantly, "my business is
to get lessons said by heart to me, and to say them by heart myself."

There was much laughter and admiration; such is the kind of wit which
is customary in Verrieres. Julien had already got up and in spite of
etiquette everybody got up as well, so great is the dominion exercised
by genius. Madame Valenod kept him for another quarter of an hour. He
really must hear her children recite their catechisms. They made the
most absurd mistakes which he alone noticed. He was careful not to
point them out. "What ignorance of the first principles of religion,"
he thought. Finally he bowed and thought he could get away; but they
insisted on his trying a fable of La Fontaine.

"That author is quite immoral," said Julien to Madame Valenod. A
certain fable on Messire Jean Chouart dares to pour ridicule on
all that we hold most venerable. He is shrewdly blamed by the best
commentators. Before Julien left he received four or five invitations
to dinner. "This young man is an honour to the department," cried all
the guests in chorus. They even went so far as to talk of a pension
voted out of the municipal funds to put him in the position of
continuing his studies at Paris.

While this rash idea was resounding through the dining-room Julien
had swiftly reached the front door. "You scum, you scum," he cried,
three or four times in succession in a low voice as he indulged in the
pleasure of breathing in the fresh air.

He felt quite an aristocrat at this moment, though he was the very
man who had been shocked for so long a period by the haughty smile of
disdainful superiority which he detected behind all the courtesies
addressed to him at M. de Renal's. He could not help realising the
extreme difference. Why let us even forget the fact of its being money
stolen from the poor inmates, he said to himself as he went away, let
us forget also their stopping the singing. M. de Renal would never
think of telling his guests the price of each bottle of wine with
which he regales them, and as for this M. Valenod, and his chronic
cataloguing of his various belongings, he cannot talk of his house, his
estate, etc., in the presence of his wife without saying, "Your house,
your estate."

This lady, who was apparently so keenly alive to the delights of
decorum, had just had an awful scene during the dinner with a servant
who had broken a wine-glass and spoilt one of her dozens; and the
servant too had answered her back with the utmost insolence.

"What a collection," said Julien to himself; "I would not live like
they do were they to give me half of all they steal. I shall give
myself away one fine day. I should not be able to restrain myself from
expressing the disgust with which they inspire one."

It was necessary, however, to obey Madame de Renal's injunction and be
present at several dinners of the same kind. Julien was the fashion; he
was forgiven his Guard of Honour uniform, or rather that indiscretion
was the real cause of his successes. Soon the only question in
Verrieres was whether M. de Renal or M. the director of the workhouse
would be the victor in the struggle for the clever young man. These
gentlemen formed, together with M. Maslon, a triumvirate which had
tyrannised over the town for a number of years. People were jealous of
the mayor, and the Liberals had good cause for complaint, but, after
all, he was noble and born for a superior position, while M. Valenod's
father had not left him six hundred francs a year. His career had
necessitated a transition from pitying the shabby green suit which had
been so notorious in his youth, to envying the Norman horses, his gold
chains, his Paris clothes, his whole present prosperity.

Julien thought that he had discovered one honest man in the whirlpool
of this novel world. He was a geometrist named Gros, and had the
reputation of being a Jacobin. Julien, who had vowed to say nothing
but that which he disbelieved himself, was obliged to watch himself
carefully when speaking to M. Gros. He received big packets of
exercises from Vergy. He was advised to visit his father frequently,
and he fulfilled his unpleasant duty. In a word he was patching his
reputation together pretty well, when he was thoroughly surprised to
find himself woken up one morning by two hands held over his eyes.

It was Madame de Renal who had made a trip to the town, and who,
running up the stairs four at a time while she left her children
playing with a pet rabbit, had reached Julien's room a moment before
her sons. This moment was delicious but very short: Madame de Renal
had disappeared when the children arrived with the rabbit which
they wanted to show to their friend. Julien gave them all a hearty
welcome, including the rabbit. He seemed at home again. He felt that
he loved these children and that he enjoyed gossiping with them. He
was astonished at the sweetness of their voices, at the simplicity
and dignity of their little ways; he felt he needed to purge his
imagination of all the vulgar practices and all the unpleasantnesses
among which he had been living in Verrieres. For there everyone was
always frightened of being scored off, and luxury and poverty were at
daggers drawn.

The people with whom he would dine would enter into confidences over
the joint which were as humiliating for themselves as they were
nauseating to the hearer.

"You others, who are nobles, you are right to be proud," he said to
Madame de Renal, as he gave her an account of all the dinners which he
had put up with.

"You're the fashion then," and she laughed heartily as she thought of
the rouge which Madame Valenod thought herself obliged to put on each
time she expected Julien. "I think she has designs on your heart," she
added.

The breakfast was delicious. The presence of the children, though
apparently embarrassing, increased as a matter of fact the happiness of
the party. The poor children did not know how to give expression to the
joy at seeing Julien again. The servants had not failed to tell them
that he had been offered two hundred francs a year more to educate the
little Valenods.

Stanislas-Xavier, who was still pale from his illness, suddenly asked
his mother in the middle of the breakfast, the value of his silver
cover and of the goblet in which he was drinking.

"Why do you want to know that?"

"I want to sell them to give the price to M. Julien so that he shan't
be _done_ if he stays with us."

Julien kissed him with tears in his eyes. His mother wept
unrestrainedly, for Julien took Stanislas on his knees and explained to
him that he should not use the word "done" which, when employed in that
meaning was an expression only fit for the servants' hall. Seeing the
pleasure which he was giving to Madame de Renal, he tried to explain
the meaning of being "done" by picturesque illustrations which amused
the children.

"I understand," said Stanislas, "it's like the crow who is silly enough
to let his cheese fall and be taken by the fox who has been playing the
flatterer."

Madame de Renal felt mad with joy and covered her children with kisses,
a process which involved her leaning a little on Julien.

Suddenly the door opened. It was M. de Renal. His severe and
discontented expression contrasted strangely with the sweet joy
which his presence dissipated. Madame de Renal grew pale, she felt
herself incapable of denying anything. Julien seized command of the
conversation and commenced telling M. the mayor in a loud voice the
incident of the silver goblet which Stanislas wanted to sell. He was
quite certain this story would not be appreciated. M. de Renal first
of all frowned mechanically at the mere mention of money. Any allusion
to that mineral, he was accustomed to say, is always a prelude to some
demand made upon my purse. But this was something more than a mere
money matter. His suspicions were increased. The air of happiness which
animated his family during his absence was not calculated to smooth
matters over with a man who was a prey to so touchy a vanity. "Yes,
yes," he said, as his wife started to praise to him the combined grace
and cleverness of the way in which Julien gave ideas to his pupils. "I
know, he renders me hateful to my own children. It is easy enough for
him to make himself a hundred times more loveable to them than I am
myself, though after all, I am the master. In this century everything
tends to make _legitimate_ authority unpopular. Poor France!"

Madame de Renal had not stopped to examine the fine shades of the
welcome which her husband gave her. She had just caught a glimpse of
the possibility of spending twelve hours with Julien. She had a lot of
purchases to make in the town and declared that she positively insisted
in going to dine at the tavern. She stuck to her idea in spite of all
her husband's protests and remonstrances. The children were delighted
with the mere word tavern, which our modern prudery denounces with so
much gusto.

M. de Renal left his wife in the first draper's shop which she entered
and went to pay some visits. He came back more morose than he had
been in the morning. He was convinced that the whole town was busy
with himself and Julien. As a matter of fact no one had yet given him
any inkling as to the more offensive part of the public gossip. Those
items which had been repeated to M. the mayor dealt exclusively with
the question of whether Julien would remain with him with six hundred
francs, or would accept the eight hundred francs offered by M. the
director of the workhouse.

The director, when he met M. de Renal in society, gave him the cold
shoulder. These tactics were not without cleverness. There is no
impulsiveness in the provinces. Sensations are so rare there that they
are never allowed to be wasted.

M. le Valenod was what is called a hundred miles from Paris a _faraud_;
that means a coarse imprudent type of man. His triumphant existence
since 1815 had consolidated his natural qualities. He reigned, so
to say, in Verrieres subject to the orders of M. de Renal; but as
he was much more energetic, was ashamed of nothing, had a finger in
everything, and was always going about writing and speaking, and
was oblivious of all snubs, he had, although without any personal
pretensions, eventually come to equal the mayor in reputation in the
eyes of the ecclesiastical authorities. M. Valenod had, as it were,
said to the local tradesmen "Give me the two biggest fools among your
number;" to the men of law "Show me the two greatest dunces;" to the
sanitary officials "Point out to me the two biggest charlatans." When
he had thus collected the most impudent members of each separate
calling, he had practically said to them, "Let us reign together."

The manners of those people were offensive to M. de Renal. The
coarseness of Valenod took offence at nothing, not even the frequency
with which the little abbe Maslon would give the lie to him in public.

But in the middle of all this prosperity M. Valenod found it necessary
to reassure himself by a number of petty acts of insolence on the
score of the crude truths which he well realised that everybody was
justified in addressing to him. His activity had redoubled since the
fears which the visit of M. Appert had left him. He had made three
journeys to Besancon. He wrote several letters by each courier; he sent
others by unknown men who came to his house at nightfall. Perhaps he
had been wrong in securing the dismissal of the old cure Chelan. For
this piece of vindictiveness had resulted in his being considered an
extremely malicious man by several pious women of good birth. Besides,
the rendering of this service had placed him in absolute dependence
on M. the Grand Vicar de Frilair from whom he received some strange
commissions. He had reached this point in his intrigues when he had
yielded to the pleasure of writing an anonymous letter, and thus
increasing his embarrassment. His wife declared to him that she wanted
to have Julien in her house; her vanity was intoxicated with the idea.

Such being his position M. Valenod imagined in advance a decisive
scene with his old colleague M. de Renal. The latter might address
to him some harsh words, which he would not mind much; but he might
write to Besancon and even to Paris. Some minister's cousin might
suddenly fall down on Verrieres and take over the workhouse. Valenod
thought of coming to terms with the Liberals. It was for that purpose
that several of them had been invited to the dinner when Julien was
present. He would have obtained powerful support against the mayor but
the elections might supervene, and it was only too evident that the
directorship of the workhouse was inconsistent with voting on the wrong
side. Madame de Renal had made a shrewd guess at this intrigue, and
while she explained it to Julien as he gave her his arm to pass from
one shop to another, they found themselves gradually taken as far as
the _Cours de la Fidelite_ where they spent several hours nearly as
tranquil as those at Vergy.

At the same time M. Valenod was trying to put off a definite crisis
with his old patron by himself assuming the aggressive. These tactics
succeeded on this particular day, but aggravated the mayor's bad
temper. Never has vanity at close grips with all the harshness and
meanness of a pettifogging love of money reduced a man to a more sorry
condition than that of M. de Renal when he entered the tavern. The
children, on the other hand, had never been more joyful and more merry.
This contrast put the finishing touch on his pique.

"So far as I can see I am not wanted in my family," he said as he
entered in a tone which he meant to be impressive.

For answer, his wife took him on one side and declared that it was
essential to send Julien away. The hours of happiness which she had
just enjoyed had given her again the ease and firmness of demeanour
necessary to follow out the plan of campaign which she had been
hatching for a fortnight. The finishing touch to the trouble of the
poor mayor of Verrieres was the fact that he knew that they joked
publicly in the town about his love for cash. Valenod was as generous
as a thief, and on his side had acquitted himself brilliantly in the
last five or six collections for the Brotherhood of St. Joseph, the
congregation of the Virgin, the congregation of the Holy Sacrament,
etc., etc.

M. de Renal's name had been seen more than once at the bottom of the
list of gentlefolk of Verrieres, and the surrounding neighbourhood
who were adroitly classified in the list of the collecting brethren
according to the amount of their offerings. It was in vain that he said
that he was _not making money_. The clergy stands no nonsense in such
matters.

Julien reaches Verrieres on his two-week vacation. The first thing he does is visit Father Chelan and build him some bookshelves. On his third day of vacation, Julien gets a visit from a guy named Monsieur de Maugiron who wants to lure Julien away from the de Renals so he can teach de Maugiron's children. Julien is surprised at one point by an invitation to lunch with Monsieur Valenod. Julien would rather beat the man with a stick than lunch with him. But he goes anyway. A bunch of city officials come to lunch, too. They yell for some nearby poor people to shut up and stop singing before settling into their luxurious meals. Julien is understandably disgusted by their upper class behavior. The crowd asks Julien to demonstrates his knowledge of the Bible. He repeats his old performance of reciting from memory any passage the guests start reading. They're all super impressed, which only makes Julien more resentful of them. When he's had enough, he gets up and excuses himself from lunch. He knows that one day, he'll explode and tell these kinds of people what he really thinks of them. Nonetheless, he goes to lots of parties and makes nice with the upper crust of Verrieres because Madame de Renal has told him this is a smart thing to do. One day, he wakes up with a pair of hands covering his eyes. It's Madame de Renal, who is visiting him with her children. While the group lunches, Monsieur de Renal walks in with a gloomy face. He feels like his children are starting to like Julien more than him. Then he leaves to attend some business meetings. The chapter closes by mentioning Monsieur de Renal's insecurity about his reputation as a cheapskate. Mr. Valenod, on the other hand, is famous for giving a lot of money to charity.


CHAPTER XXIII

SORROWS OF AN OFFICIAL

        Il piacere di alzar la testa tutto l'anno, e ben pagato
        da certi quarti d'ora che bisogna passar.--_Casti_.

Let us leave this petty man to his petty fears; why did he take a man
of spirit into his household when he needed someone with the soul
of a valet? Why can't he select his staff? The ordinary trend of
the nineteenth century is that when a noble and powerful individual
encounters a man of spirit, he kills him, exiles him and imprisons him,
or so humiliates him that the other is foolish enough to die of grief.
In this country it so happens that it is not merely the man of spirit
who suffers. The great misfortunes of the little towns of France and of
representative governments, like that of New York, is that they find
it impossible to forget the existence of individuals like M. de Renal.
It is these men who make public opinion in a town of twenty thousand
inhabitants, and public opinion is terrible in a country which has a
charter of liberty. A man, though of a naturally noble and generous
disposition, who would have been your friend in the natural course of
events, but who happens to live a hundred leagues off, judges you by
the public opinion of your town which is made by those fools who have
chanced to be born noble, rich and conservative. Unhappy is the man who
distinguishes himself.

Immediately after dinner they left for Vergy, but the next day but
one Julien saw the whole family return to Verrieres. An hour had not
passed before he discovered to his great surprise that Madame de Renal
had some mystery up her sleeve. Whenever he came into the room she
would break off her conversation with her husband and would almost
seem to desire that he should go away. Julien did not need to be given
this hint twice. He became cold and reserved. Madame de Renal noticed
it and did not ask for an explanation. "Is she going to give me a
successor," thought Julien. "And to think of her being so familiar
with me the day before yesterday, but that is how these great ladies
are said to act. It's just like kings. One never gets any more warning
than the disgraced minister who enters his house to find his letter of
dismissal." Julien noticed that these conversations which left off so
abruptly at his approach, often dealt with a big house which belonged
to the municipality of Verrieres, a house which though old was large
and commodious and situated opposite the church in the most busy
commercial district of the town. "What connection can there be between
this house and a new lover," said Julien to himself. In his chagrin he
repeated to himself the pretty verses of Francis I. which seemed novel
to him, for Madame de Renal had only taught him them a month before:

    Souvent femme varie
    Bien fol est qui s'y fie.

M. de Renal took the mail to Besancon. This journey was a matter of two
hours. He seemed extremely harassed. On his return he threw a big grey
paper parcel on the table.

"Here's that silly business," he said to his wife. An hour afterwards
Julien saw the bill-poster carrying the big parcel. He followed him
eagerly. "I shall learn the secret at the first street corner." He
waited impatiently behind the bill-poster who was smearing the back of
the poster with his big brush. It had scarcely been put in its place
before Julien's curiosity saw the detailed announcement of the putting
up for public auction of that big old house whose name had figured so
frequently in M. de Renal's conversations with his wife. The auction of
the lease was announced for to-morrow at two o'clock in the Town Hall
after the extinction of the third fire. Julien was very disappointed.
He found the time a little short. How could there be time to apprise
all the other would-be purchasers. But, moreover, the bill, which was
dated a fortnight back, and which he read again in its entirety in
three distinct places, taught him nothing.

He went to visit the house which was to let. The porter, who had not
seen him approach, was saying mysteriously to a neighbour:

"Pooh, pooh, waste of time. M. Maslon has promised him that he shall
have it for three hundred francs; and, as the mayor kicked, he has been
summoned to the bishop's palace by M. the Grand Vicar de Frilair."

Julien's arrival seemed very much to disconcert the two friends who
did not say another word. Julien made a point of being present at the
auction of the lease.

There was a crowd in the badly-lighted hall, but everybody kept
quizzing each other in quite a singular way. All eyes were fixed on a
table where Julien perceived three little lighted candle-ends on a tin
plate. The usher was crying out "Three hundred francs, gentlemen."

"Three hundred francs, that's a bit too thick," said a man to his
neighbour in a low voice. Julien was between the two of them. "It's
worth more than eight hundred, I will raise the bidding." "It's cutting
off your nose to spite your face. What will you gain by putting M.
Maslon, M. Valenod, the Bishop, this terrible Grand Vicar de Frilair
and the whole gang on your track."

"Three hundred and twenty francs," shouted out the other.

"Damned brute," answered his neighbour. "Why here we have a spy of the
mayor," he added, designating Julien.

Julien turned sharply round to punish this remark, but the two,
Franc-comtois, were no longer paying any attention to him. Their
coolness gave him back his own. At that moment the last candle-end
went out and the usher's drawling voice awarded the house to M. de St.
Giraud of the office of the prefecture of ---- for a term of nine years
and for a rent of 320 francs.

As soon as the mayor had left the hall, the gossip began again.

"Here's thirty francs that Grogeot's recklessness is landing the
municipality in for," said one--"But," answered another, "M. de Saint
Giraud will revenge himself on Grogeot."

"How monstrous," said a big man on Julien's left. "A house which I
myself would have given eight hundred francs for my factory, and I
would have got a good bargain."

"Pooh!" answered a young manufacturer, "doesn't M. de St. Giraud belong
to the congregation? Haven't his four children got scholarships? poor
man! The community of Verrieres must give him five hundred francs over
and above his salary, that is all."

"And to say that the mayor was not able to stop it," remarked a third.
"For he's an ultra he is, I'm glad to say, but he doesn't steal."

"Doesn't he?" answered another. "Suppose it's simply a mere game of
'snap'[1] then. Everything goes into a big common purse, and everything
is divided up at the end of the year. But here's that little Sorel,
let's go away."

Julien got home in a very bad temper. He found Madame de Renal very sad.

"You come from the auction?" she said to him.

"Yes, madam, where I had the honour of passing for a spy of M. the
Mayor."

"If he had taken my advice, he would have gone on a journey."

At this moment Monsieur de Renal appeared: he looked very dismal. The
dinner passed without a single word. Monsieur de Renal ordered Julien
to follow the children to Vergy.

Madame de Renal endeavoured to console her husband.

"You ought to be used to it, my dear."

That evening they were seated in silence around the domestic hearth.
The crackle of the burnt pinewood was their only distraction. It
was one of those moments of silence which happen in the most united
families. One of the children cried out gaily,

"Somebody's ringing, somebody's ringing!"

"Zounds! supposing it's Monsieur de Saint Giraud who has come under
the pretext of thanking me," exclaimed the mayor. "I will give him a
dressing down. It is outrageous. It is Valenod to whom he'll feel under
an obligation, and it is I who get compromised. What shall I say if
those damned Jacobin journalists get hold of this anecdote, and turn me
into a M. Nonante Cinque."

A very good-looking man, with big black whiskers, entered at this
moment, preceded by the servant.

"Monsieur the mayor, I am Signor Geronimo. Here is a letter which M.
the Chevalier de Beauvoisis, who is attached to the Embassy of Naples,
gave me for you on my departure. That is only nine days ago, added
Signor Geronimo, gaily looking at Madame de Renal. Your cousin, and my
good friend, Signor de Beauvoisis says that you know Italian, Madame."

The Neapolitan's good humour changed this gloomy evening into a very
gay one. Madame de Renal insisted upon giving him supper. She put the
whole house on the go. She wanted to free Julien at any price from the
imputation of espionage which she had heard already twice that day.

Signor Geronimo was an excellent singer, excellent company, and had
very gay qualities which, at any rate in France, are hardly compatible
with each other. After dinner he sang a little duet with Madame de
Renal, and told some charming tales. At one o'clock in the morning the
children protested, when Julien suggested that they should go to bed.

"Another of those stories," said the eldest.

"It is my own, Signorino," answered Signor Geronimo.

"Eight years ago I was, like you, a young pupil of the Naples
Conservatoire. I mean I was your age, but I did not have the honour to
be the son of the distinguished mayor of the pretty town of Verrieres."
This phrase made M. de Renal sigh, and look at his wife.

"Signor Zingarelli," continued the young singer, somewhat exaggerating
his action, and thus making the children burst into laughter, "Signor
Zingarelli was an excellent though severe master. He is not popular at
the Conservatoire, but he insists on the pretence being kept up that he
is. I went out as often as I could. I used to go to the little Theatre
de San Carlino, where I used to hear divine music. But heavens! the
question was to scrape together the eight sous which were the price of
admission to the parterre? An enormous sum," he said, looking at the
children and watching them laugh. "Signor Giovannone, director of the
San Carlino, heard me sing. I was sixteen. 'That child is a treasure,'
he said.

"'Would you like me to engage you, my dear boy?' he said.

"'And how much will you give me?'

"'Forty ducats a month.' That is one hundred and sixty francs,
gentlemen. I thought the gates of heaven had opened.

"'But,' I said to Giovannone, 'how shall I get the strict Zingarelli to
let me go out?'

"'_Lascia fare a me_.'"

"Leave it to me," exclaimed the eldest of the children.

"Quite right, my young sir. Signor Giovannone he says to me, 'First
sign this little piece of paper, my dear friend.' I sign.

"He gives me three ducats. I had never seen so much money. Then he told
me what I had to do.

"Next day I asked the terrible Zingarelli for an audience. His old
valet ushered me in.

"'What do you want of me, you naughty boy?' said Zingarelli.

"'Maestro,' I said, 'I repent of all my faults. I will never go out of
the Conservatoire by passing through the iron grill. I will redouble my
diligence.'

"'If I were not frightened of spoiling the finest bass voice I have
ever heard, I would put you in prison for a fortnight on bread and
water, you rascal.'

"'Maestro,' I answered, 'I will be the model boy of the whole school,
_credete a me_, but I would ask one favour of you. If anyone comes and
asks permission for me to sing outside, refuse. As a favour, please say
that you cannot let me.'

"'And who the devil do you think is going to ask for a ne'er-do-well
like you? Do you think I should ever allow you to leave the
Conservatoire? Do you want to make fun of me? Clear out! Clear out!' he
said, trying to give me a kick, 'or look out for prison and dry bread.'"

One thing astonished Julien. The solitary weeks passed at Verrieres in
de Renal's house had been a period of happiness for him. He had only
experienced revulsions and sad thoughts at the dinners to which he had
been invited. And was he not able to read, write and reflect, without
being distracted, in this solitary house? He was not distracted every
moment from his brilliant reveries by the cruel necessity of studying
the movement of a false soul in order to deceive it by intrigue and
hypocrisy.

"To think of happiness being so near to me--the expense of a life
like that is small enough. I could have my choice of either marrying
Mademoiselle Elisa or of entering into partnership with Fouque. But it
is only the traveller who has just scaled a steep mountain and sits
down on the summit who finds a perfect pleasure in resting. Would he be
happy if he had to rest all the time?"

Madame de Renal's mind had now reached a state of desperation. In spite
of her resolutions, she had explained to Julien all the details of the
auction. "He will make me forget all my oaths!" she thought.

She would have sacrificed her life without hesitation to save that
of her husband if she had seen him in danger. She was one of those
noble, romantic souls who find a source of perpetual remorse equal to
that occasioned by the actual perpetration of a crime, in seeing the
possibility of a generous action and not doing it. None the less, there
were deadly days when she was not able to banish the imagination of
the excessive happiness which she would enjoy if she suddenly became a
widow, and were able to marry Julien.

He loved her sons much more than their father did; in spite of his
strict justice they were devoted to him. She quite realised that if
she married Julien, it would be necessary to leave that Vergy, whose
shades were so dear to her. She pictured herself living at Paris, and
continuing to give her sons an education which would make them admired
by everyone. Her children, herself, and Julien! They would be all
perfectly happy!

Strange result of marriage such as the nineteenth century has made it!
The boredom of matrimonial life makes love fade away inevitably, when
love has preceded the marriage. But none the less, said a philosopher,
married life soon reduces those people who are sufficiently rich
not to have to work, to a sense of being utterly bored by all quiet
enjoyments. And among women, it is only arid souls whom it does not
predispose to love.

The philosopher's reflection makes me excuse Madame de Renal, but she
was not excused in Verrieres, and without her suspecting it, the whole
town found its sole topic of interest in the scandal of her intrigue.
As a result of this great affair, the autumn was less boring than usual.

The autumn and part of the winter passed very quickly. It was necessary
to leave the woods of Vergy. Good Verrieres society began to be
indignant at the fact that its anathemas made so little impression on
Monsieur de Renal. Within eight days, several serious personages who
made up for their habitual gravity of demeanour by their pleasure in
fulfilling missions of this kind, gave him the most cruel suspicions,
at the same time utilising the most measured terms.

M. Valenod, who was playing a deep game, had placed Elisa in an
aristocratic family of great repute, where there were five women.
Elisa, fearing, so she said, not to find a place during the winter, had
only asked from this family about two-thirds of what she had received
in the house of the mayor. The girl hit upon the excellent idea of
going to confession at the same time to both the old cure Chelan,
and also to the new one, so as to tell both of them in detail about
Julien's amours.

The day after his arrival, the abbe Chelan summoned Julien to him at
six o'clock in the morning.

"I ask you nothing," he said. "I beg you, and if needs be I insist,
that you either leave for the Seminary of Besancon, or for your friend
Fouque, who is always ready to provide you with a splendid future. I
have seen to everything and have arranged everything, but you must
leave, and not come back to Verrieres for a year."

Julien did not answer. He was considering whether his honour ought to
regard itself offended at the trouble which Chelan, who, after all, was
not his father, had taken on his behalf.

"I shall have the honour of seeing you again to-morrow at the same
hour," he said finally to the cure.

Chelan, who reckoned on carrying so young a man by storm, talked a
great deal. Julien, cloaked in the most complete humbleness, both of
demeanour and expression, did not open his lips.

Eventually he left, and ran to warn Madame de Renal whom he found in
despair. Her husband had just spoken to her with a certain amount of
frankness. The weakness of his character found support in the prospect
of the legacy, and had decided him to treat her as perfectly innocent.
He had just confessed to her the strange state in which he had found
public opinion in Verrieres. The public was wrong; it had been misled
by jealous tongues. But, after all, what was one to do?

Madame de Renal was, for the moment, under the illusion that Julien
would accept the offer of Valenod and stay at Verrieres. But she was no
longer the simple, timid woman that she had been the preceding year.
Her fatal passion and remorse had enlightened her. She soon realised
the painful truth (while at the same time she listened to her husband),
that at any rate a temporary separation had become essential.

When he is far from me, Julien will revert to those ambitious projects
which are so natural when one has no money. And I, Great God! I am so
rich, and my riches are so useless for my happiness. He will forget
me. Loveable as he is, he will be loved, and he will love. You unhappy
woman. What can I complain of? Heaven is just. I was not virtuous
enough to leave off the crime. Fate robs me of my judgment. I could
easily have bribed Elisa if I had wanted to; nothing was easier. I did
not take the trouble to reflect for a moment. The mad imagination of
love absorbed all my time. I am ruined.

When Julien apprised Madame de Renal of the terrible news of his
departure, he was struck with one thing. He did not find her put
forward any selfish objections. She was evidently making efforts not to
cry.

"We have need of firmness, my dear." She cut off a strand of her hair.
"I do no know what I shall do," she said to him, "but promise me if I
die, never to forget my children. Whether you are far or near, try to
make them into honest men. If there is a new revolution, all the nobles
will have their throats cut. Their father will probably emigrate,
because of that peasant on the roof who got killed. Watch over my
family. Give me your hand. Adieu, my dear. These are our last moments.
Having made this great sacrifice, I hope I shall have the courage to
consider my reputation in public."

Julien had been expecting despair. The simplicity of this farewell
touched him.

"No, I am not going to receive your farewell like this. I will leave
you now, as you yourself wish it. But three days after my departure I
will come back to see you at night."

Madame de Renal's life was changed. So Julien really loved her, since
of his own accord he had thought of seeing her again. Her awful grief
became changed into one of the keenest transports of joy which she had
felt in her whole life. Everything became easy for her. The certainty
of seeing her lover deprived these last moments of their poignancy.
From that moment, both Madame de Renal's demeanour and the expression
of her face were noble, firm, and perfectly dignified.

M. de Renal soon came back. He was beside himself. He eventually
mentioned to his wife the anonymous letter which he had received two
months before.

"I will take it to the Casino, and shew everybody that it has been sent
by that brute Valenod, whom I took out of the gutter and made into one
of the richest tradesmen in Verrieres. I will disgrace him publicly,
and then I will fight him. This is too much."

"Great Heavens! I may become a widow," thought Madame de Renal, and
almost at the same time she said to herself,

"If I do not, as I certainly can, prevent this duel, I shall be the
murderess of my own husband."

She had never expended so much skill in honoring his vanity. Within
two hours she made him see, and always by virtue of reasons which he
discovered himself, that it was necessary to show more friendship than
ever to M. Valenod, and even to take Elisa back into the household.

Madame de Renal had need of courage to bring herself to see again the
girl who was the cause of her unhappiness. But this idea was one of
Julien's. Finally, having been put on the track three or four times,
M. de Renal arrived spontaneously at the conclusion, disagreeable
though it was from the financial standpoint, that the most painful
thing that could happen to him would be that Julien, in the middle of
the effervescence of popular gossip throughout Verrieres, should stay
in the town as the tutor of Valenod's children. It was obviously to
Julien's interest to accept the offer of the director of the workhouse.
Conversely, it was essential for M. de Renal's prestige that Julien
should leave Verrieres to enter the seminary of Besancon or that of
Dijon. But how to make him decide on that course? And then how is he
going to live?

M. de Renal, seeing a monetary sacrifice looming in the distance,
was in deeper despair than his wife. As for her, she felt after this
interview in the position of a man of spirit who, tired of life, has
taken a dose of stramonium. He only acts mechanically so to speak, and
takes no longer any interest in anything. In this way, Louis XIV. came
to say on his death-bed, "When I was king." An admirable epigram.

Next morning, M. de Renal received quite early an anonymous letter.
It was written in a most insulting style, and the coarsest words
applicable to his position occurred on every line. It was the work of
some jealous subordinate. This letter made him think again of fighting
a duel with Valenod. Soon his courage went as far as the idea of
immediate action. He left the house alone, went to the armourer's and
got some pistols which he loaded.

"Yes, indeed," he said to himself, "even though the strict
administration of the Emperor Napoleon were to become fashionable
again, I should not have one sou's worth of jobbery to reproach myself
with; at the outside, I have shut my eyes, and I have some good letters
in my desk which authorise me to do so."

Madame de Renal was terrified by her husband's cold anger. It recalled
to her the fatal idea of widowhood which she had so much trouble in
repelling. She closeted herself with him. For several hours she talked
to him in vain. The new anonymous letter had decided him. Finally she
succeeded in transforming the courage which had decided him to box
Valenod's ears, into the courage of offering six hundred francs to
Julien, which would keep him for one year in a seminary.

M. de Renal cursed a thousand times the day that he had had the
ill-starred idea of taking a tutor into his house, and forgot the
anonymous letter.

He consoled himself a little by an idea which he did not tell his
wife. With the exercise of some skill, and by exploiting the romantic
ideas of the young man, he hoped to be able to induce him to refuse M.
Valenod's offer at a cheaper price.

Madame de Renal had much more trouble in proving to Julien that
inasmuch as he was sacrificing the post of six hundred francs a year
in order to enable her husband to keep up appearances, he need have no
shame about accepting the compensation. But Julien would say each time,
"I have never thought for a moment of accepting that offer. You have
made me so used to a refined life that the coarseness of those people
would kill me."

Cruel necessity bent Julien's will with its iron hand. His pride gave
him the illusion that he only accepted the sum offered by M. de Renal
as a loan, and induced him to give him a promissory note, repayable in
five years with interest.

Madame de Renal had, of course, many thousands of francs which had been
concealed in the little mountain cave.

She offered them to him all a tremble, feeling only too keenly that
they would be angrily refused.

"Do you wish," said Julien to her, "to make the memory of our love
loathsome?"

Finally Julien left Verrieres. M. de Renal was very happy, but when
the fatal moment came to accept money from him the sacrifice proved
beyond Julien's strength. He refused point blank. M. de Renal embraced
him around the neck with tears in his eyes. Julien had asked him for
a testimonial of good conduct, and his enthusiasm could find no terms
magnificent enough in which to extol his conduct.

Our hero had five louis of savings and he reckoned on asking Fouque for
an equal sum.

He was very moved. But one league from Verrieres, where he left so much
that was dear to him, he only thought of the happiness of seeing the
capital of a great military town like Besancon.

During the short absence of three days, Madame de Renal was the victim
of one of the cruellest deceptions to which love is liable. Her life
was tolerable, because between her and extreme unhappiness there was
still that last interview which she was to have with Julien.

Finally during the night of the third day, she heard from a distance
the preconcerted signal. Julien, having passed through a thousand
dangers, appeared before her. In this moment she only had one
thought--"I see him for the last time." Instead of answering the
endearments of her lover, she seemed more dead than alive. If she
forced herself to tell him that she loved him, she said it with an
embarrassed air which almost proved the contrary. Nothing could rid her
of the cruel idea of eternal separation. The suspicious Julien thought
for the moment that he was already forgotten. His pointed remarks to
this effect were only answered by great tears which flowed down in
silence, and by some hysterical pressings of the hand.

"But," Julien would answer his mistress's cold protestations, "Great
Heavens! How can you expect me to believe you? You would show one
hundred times more sincere affection to Madame Derville to a mere
acquaintance."

Madame de Renal was petrified, and at a loss for an answer.

"It is impossible to be more unhappy. I hope I am going to die. I feel
my heart turn to ice."

Those were the longest answers which he could obtain.

When the approach of day rendered it necessary for him to leave Madame
de Renal, her tears completely ceased. She saw him tie a knotted rope
to the window without saying a word, and without returning her kisses.
It was in vain that Julien said to her.

"So now we have reached the state of affairs which you wished for
so much. Henceforward you will live without remorse. The slightest
indisposition of your children will no longer make you see them in the
tomb."

"I am sorry that you cannot kiss Stanislas," she said coldly.

Julien finished by being profoundly impressed by the cold embraces of
this living corpse. He could think of nothing else for several leagues.
His soul was overwhelmed, and before passing the mountain, and while
he could still see the church tower of Verrieres he turned round
frequently.

[1] C'est pigeon qui vole. A reference to a contemporary animal game
with a pun on the word "vole."

Two days after their first visit, the de Renals return to Verrieres. This time, Madame acts aloof towards Julien, who wonders if there is some other new man in her life. Julien soon finds out that Madame and her husband have been discussing an old mansion in Verrieres that's about to go up for public auction. Julien attends the auction. The old mansion gets rented to a friend of Monsieur de Renals, and for some reason, everyone in the room looks at Julien as though he has conspired to help his boss rent the house to the man he wants. The truth is, though, that the house has gone to a man for a price that Monsieur de Renal doesn't approve of. When he gets back to Julien's place, he sends Julien back home to the de Renal house with the children. A man shows up at the door named Signor Geronimo. He delivers a letter to Monsieur de Renal and stays for dinner. He's a really charming and funny man, and he quickly improves the spirits of everyone in the house. Julien thinks about how much he'd rather be a travelling singer than someone like Monsieur de Renal. Meanwhile, the whole town of Verrieres gossips about Madame de Renal's affair with Julien. Hearing this, Father Chelan summons Julien and tells him to leave Verrieres for a year. His options are to go into business with his buddy Fouqe or to go to a seminary to study to become a priest. Julien visits Madame again before leaving. She gives him a lock of her hair and begs him to make sure her children turn out well if she ever dies. Julien promises Madame that three days after he leaves, he'll come back at night to visit her. And yes, we're talking about a sexy rendezvous here. Monsieur Renal gets a moment alone with Madame and tells her he can't take it anymore. He's going to the casino to throw the anonymous letters about Madame in Monsieur Valenod's face. Madame is worried that the two will have a duel and one will die. Worse yet, she'll be responsible. She convinces her husband that he actually needs to be nicer to Valenod than ever. They also decide that the best thing for Julien is for him to leave town and go into a priest's seminary in the nearby town of Besancon. The next day, Monsieur de Renal gets another insulting anonymous letter. Julien agrees to go into the seminary instead of taking a job with Valenod. Madame falls into depression at the thought that she won't see Julien again. She is emotionally cold the last time they see one another.