CHAPTER VII

THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But what, Madame?" said Julien.

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

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

Madame de Renal was thunderstruck.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Madame de Renal looked at him doubtfully.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I should not have flinched."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Julien does a good job as a tutor, but he can't get over the inequality between the mayor's house and the kind of poverty he grew up with. He thinks it's unjust and harbors a secret hate for the mayor. Some days later, Julien runs into his brothers. They beat him up out of jealousy and leave him lying half-conscious on a path. Minutes later, Madame de Renal finds him while walking and thinks he's dead. Julien finds Madame so beautiful that he actually dislikes her. He assumes that a woman that beautiful could never be a good person. Meanwhile, Madame de Renal's chambermaid Elisa falls totally in love with Julien. Julien overhears her one day arguing with a male servant, who apparently used to have his eye on Elisa before she decided she liked Julien more. This just makes Julien pay even more attention to his appearance, since he's a proud kid. Madame de Renal wants to improve Julien's appearance even more by giving him clothes as gifts. Her husband thinks this is a silly idea, though. As time passes, Madame becomes more and more affectionate toward Julien. One day, Julien walks in on Madame while she bursts into tears. He asks what's wrong, but she just says she'd like him to go for a walk with her and her children. She takes his arm and leans against him. She tells him that she's like to give him some money for new clothes. She adds that she would prefer for him not to tell her husband about it. Yup, you can probably see where this relationship is headed. Julien surprises us by rejecting Madame's offer and saying that he won't dishonor his boss by taking gifts behind his back. Madame goes to her husband and tells her about what happened. He can't believe that a servant would reject an offer like hers. He meets with Julien and forces him to accept a gift of a hundred Francs. Madame takes Julien for another walk one day and leads him to the town bookstore. She buys a bunch of books that are supposed to be for her children, but she knows they're all ones that Julien wants to read. Julien convinces the mayor to take out a subscription to the bookstore through one of his servants. This will give Julien access to all the books he wants. All this time, Madame de Renal thinks constantly about Julien.


CHAPTER VIII

LITTLE EPISODES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Tell me," answered Madame de Renal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The chambermaid Elisa finds out that she's going to inherit some money. She hopes that this money will give her the freedom she needs to marry Julien. Her local priest, Father Chelan is happy about this. But he's sad to find out that Julien isn't interested. Father sits Julien down and tells him that he needs to think carefully about becoming a priest. He knows Julien is ambitious and he's worried that Julien will do whatever it takes to become rich. That's why he's worried that Julien is going to compromise on his holy values in order to flatter and make friends with powerful men. Father Chelan can see through Julien's phony belief in the church. He wants Julien to stay way from the priesthood. Meanwhile, Madame de Renal realizes that Elisa has been very depressed lately, in spite of the money she's just inherited. Elisa tells Madame about Julien refusing her. Madame feels bad, but also is secretly pleased. She still promises Elisa that she'll try to convince Julien to marry the girl. The narrator tells us that Madame only does this because she loves the pleasure of hearing Julien reject Elisa over and over. It's only after this encounter that she starts to wonder if she's in love with Julien. The mayor needs to leave for a few days on business. While he's gone, Madame asks the workmen to construct a walkway on her property. She relishes the opportunity to spend the next couple of days with Julien, with both of them directing the workers. In other words, she likes having Julien temporarily replace her husband as man of the house. Julien and Madame start hunting butterflies together and reading about them in books. They finally have something they can talk about. Neighbors notice that Madame has started paying more attention to her wardrobe. A cousin of Madame de Renal's, named Madame Derville, visits the de Renal house. The two spend a lot of time together, and Derville recognizes that Madame is happier than usual. Julien often spends time with the two women as they hang out beneath a tree. One evening, his hand accidentally brushes against Madame de Renal's. She quickly pulls hers away. Julien decides that he must find a way to touch her hand without this happening.


CHAPTER IX

AN EVENING IN THE COUNTRY

        M. Guerin's Dido, a charming sketch!--_Strombeck_.

His expression was singular when he saw Madame de Renal the next
day; he watched her like an enemy with whom he would have to fight a
duel. These looks, which were so different from those of the previous
evening, made Madame de Renal lose her head; she had been kind to him
and he appeared angry. She could not take her eyes off his.

Madame Derville's presence allowed Julien to devote less time to
conversation, and more time to thinking about what he had in his mind.
His one object all this day was to fortify himself by reading the
inspired book that gave strength to his soul.

He considerably curtailed the children's lessons, and when Madame de
Renal's presence had effectually brought him back to the pursuit of his
ambition, he decided that she absolutely must allow her hand to rest in
his that evening.

The setting of the sun which brought the crucial moment nearer and
nearer made Julien's heart beat in a strange way. Night came. He
noticed with a joy, which took an immense weight off his heart, that
it was going to be very dark. The sky, which was laden with big clouds
that had been brought along by a sultry wind, seemed to herald a storm.
The two friends went for their walk very late. All they did that night
struck Julien as strange. They were enjoying that hour which seems to
give certain refined souls an increased pleasure in loving.

At last they sat down, Madame de Renal beside Julien, and Madame
Derville near her friend. Engrossed as he was by the attempt which
he was going to make, Julien could think of nothing to say. The
conversation languished.

"Shall I be as nervous and miserable over my first duel?" said Julien
to himself; for he was too suspicious both of himself and of others,
not to realise his own mental state.

In his mortal anguish, he would have preferred any danger whatsoever.
How many times did he not wish some matter to crop up which would
necessitate Madame de Renal going into the house and leaving the
garden! The violent strain on Julien's nerves was too great for his
voice not to be considerably changed; soon Madame de Renal's voice
became nervous as well, but Julien did not notice it. The awful battle
raging between duty and timidity was too painful, for him to be in a
position to observe anything outside himself. A quarter to ten had
just struck on the chateau clock without his having ventured anything.
Julien was indignant at his own cowardice, and said to himself, "at
the exact moment when ten o'clock strikes, I will perform what I have
resolved to do all through the day, or I will go up to my room and blow
out my brains."

After a final moment of expectation and anxiety, during which Julien
was rendered almost beside himself by his excessive emotion, ten
o'clock struck from the clock over his head. Each stroke of the fatal
clock reverberated in his bosom, and caused an almost physical pang.

Finally, when the last stroke of ten was still reverberating, he
stretched out his hand and took Madame de Renal's, who immediately
withdrew it. Julien, scarcely knowing what he was doing, seized it
again. In spite of his own excitement, he could not help being struck
by the icy coldness of the hand which he was taking; he pressed it
convulsively; a last effort was made to take it away, but in the end
the hand remained in his.

His soul was inundated with happiness, not that he loved Madame de
Renal, but an awful torture had just ended. He thought it necessary
to say something, to avoid Madame Derville noticing anything. His
voice was now strong and ringing. Madame de Renal's, on the contrary,
betrayed so much emotion that her friend thought she was ill, and
suggested her going in. Julien scented danger, "if Madame de Renal goes
back to the salon, I shall relapse into the awful state in which I have
been all day. I have held the hand far too short a time for it really
to count as the scoring of an actual advantage."

At the moment when Madame Derville was repeating her suggestion to
go back to the salon, Julien squeezed vigorously the hand that was
abandoned to him.

Madame de Renal, who had started to get up, sat down again and said in
a faint voice,

"I feel a little ill, as a matter of fact, but the open air is doing me
good."

These words confirmed Julien's happiness, which at the present moment
was extreme; he spoke, he forgot to pose, and appeared the most
charming man in the world to the two friends who were listening to him.
Nevertheless, there was a slight lack of courage in all this eloquence
which had suddenly come upon him. He was mortally afraid that Madame
Derville would get tired of the wind before the storm, which was
beginning to rise, and want to go back alone into the salon. He would
then have remained _tete-a-tete_ with Madame de Renal. He had had,
almost by accident that blind courage which is sufficient for action;
but he felt that it was out of his power to speak the simplest word to
Madame de Renal. He was certain that, however slight her reproaches
might be, he would nevertheless be worsted, and that the advantage he
had just won would be destroyed.

Luckily for him on this evening, his moving and emphatic speeches found
favour with Madame Derville, who very often found him as clumsy as a
child and not at all amusing. As for Madame de Renal, with her hand in
Julien's, she did not have a thought; she simply allowed herself to go
on living.

The hours spent under this great pine tree, planted by by Charles the
Bold according to the local tradition, were a real period of happiness.
She listened with delight to the soughing of the wind in the thick
foliage of the pine tree and to the noise of some stray drops which
were beginning to fall upon the leaves which were lowest down. Julien
failed to notice one circumstance which, if he had, would have quickly
reassured him; Madame de Renal, who had been obliged to take away her
hand, because she had got up to help her cousin to pick up a flower-pot
which the wind had knocked over at her feet, had scarcely sat down
again before she gave him her hand with scarcely any difficulty and as
though it had already been a pre-arranged thing between them.

Midnight had struck a long time ago; it was at last necessary to leave
the garden; they separated. Madame de Renal swept away as she was, by
the happiness of loving, was so completely ignorant of the world that
she scarcely reproached herself at all. Her happiness deprived her of
her sleep. A leaden sleep overwhelmed Julien who was mortally fatigued
by the battle which timidity and pride had waged in his heart all
through the day.

He was called at five o'clock on the following day and scarcely gave
Madame de Renal a single thought.

He had accomplished his duty, and a heroic duty too. The consciousness
of this filled him with happiness; he locked himself in his room, and
abandoned himself with quite a new pleasure to reading exploits of his
hero.

When the breakfast bell sounded, the reading of the Bulletins of the
Great Army had made him forget all his advantages of the previous day.
He said to himself flippantly, as he went down to the salon, "I must
tell that woman that I am in love with her." Instead of those looks
brimful of pleasure which he was expecting to meet, he found the stern
visage of M. de Renal, who had arrived from Verrieres two hours ago,
and did not conceal his dissatisfaction at Julien's having passed the
whole morning without attending to the children. Nothing could have
been more sordid than this self-important man when he was in a bad
temper and thought that he could safely show it.

Each harsh word of her husband pierced Madame de Renal's heart.

As for Julien, he was so plunged in his ecstasy, and still so engrossed
by the great events which had been passing before his eyes for several
hours, that he had some difficulty at first in bringing his attention
sufficiently down to listen to the harsh remarks which M. de Renal was
addressing to him. He said to him at last, rather abruptly,

"I was ill."

The tone of this answer would have stung a much less sensitive man than
the mayor of Verrieres. He half thought of answering Julien by turning
him out of the house straight away. He was only restrained by the
maxim which he had prescribed for himself, of never hurrying unduly in
business matters.

"The young fool," he said to himself shortly afterwards, "has won a
kind of reputation in my house. That man Valenod may take him into his
family, or he may quite well marry Elisa, and in either case, he will
be able to have the laugh of me in his heart."

In spite of the wisdom of these reflections, M. de Renal's
dissatisfaction did not fail to vent itself any the less by a string
of coarse insults which gradually irritated Julien. Madame de Renal
was on the point of bursting into tears. Breakfast was scarcely over,
when she asked Julien to give her his arm for a walk. She leaned on him
affectionately. Julien could only answer all that Madame de Renal said
to him by whispering.

"_That's what rich people are like!_"

M. de Renal was walking quite close to them; his presence increased
Julien's anger. He suddenly noticed that Madame de Renal was leaning on
his arm in a manner which was somewhat marked. This horrified him, and
he pushed her violently away and disengaged his arm.

Luckily, M. de Renal did not see this new piece of impertinence; it was
only noticed by Madame Derville. Her friend burst into tears. M. de
Renal now started to chase away by a shower of stones a little peasant
girl who had taken a private path crossing a corner of the orchard.
"Monsieur Julien, restrain yourself, I pray you. Remember that we all
have our moments of temper," said madame Derville rapidly.

Julien looked at her coldly with eyes in which the most supreme
contempt was depicted.

This look astonished Madame Derville, and it would have surprised
her even more if she had appreciated its real expression; she would
have read in it something like a vague hope of the most atrocious
vengeance. It is, no doubt, such moments of humiliation which have made
Robespierres.

"Your Julien is very violent; he frightens me," said Madame Derville to
her friend, in a low voice.

"He is right to be angry," she answered. "What does it matter if
he does pass a morning without speaking to the children, after the
astonishing progress which he has made them make. One must admit that
men are very hard."

For the first time in her life Madame de Renal experienced a kind
of desire for vengeance against her husband. The extreme hatred of
the rich by which Julien was animated was on the point of exploding.
Luckily, M. de Renal called his gardener, and remained occupied
with him in barring by faggots of thorns the private road through
the orchard. Julien did not vouchsafe any answer to the kindly
consideration of which he was the object during all the rest of the
walk. M. de Renal had scarcely gone away before the two friends made
the excuse of being fatigued, and each asked him for an arm.

Walking as he did between these two women whose extreme nervousness
filled their cheeks with a blushing embarrassment, the haughty pallor
and sombre, resolute air of Julien formed a strange contrast. He
despised these women and all tender sentiments.

"What!" he said to himself, "not even an income of five hundred francs
to finish my studies! Ah! how I should like to send them packing."

And absorbed as he was by these stern ideas, such few courteous words
of his two friends as he deigned to take the trouble to understand,
displeased him as devoid of sense, silly, feeble, in a word--feminine.

As the result of speaking for the sake of speaking and of endeavouring
to keep the conversation alive, it came about that Madame de Renal
mentioned that her husband had come from Verrieres because he had made
a bargain for the May straw with one of his farmers. (In this district
it is the May straw with which the bed mattresses are filled).

"My husband will not rejoin us," added Madame de Renal; "he will occupy
himself with finishing the re-stuffing of the house mattresses with
the help of the gardener and his valet. He has put the May straw this
morning in all the beds on the first storey; he is now at the second."

Julien changed colour. He looked at Madame de Renal in a singular way,
and soon managed somehow to take her on one side, doubling his pace.
Madame Derville allowed them to get ahead.

"Save my life," said Julien to Madame de Renal; "only you can do it,
for you know that the valet hates me desperately. I must confess to
you, madame, that I have a portrait. I have hidden it in the mattress
of my bed."

At these words Madame de Renal in her turn became pale.

"Only you, Madame, are able at this moment to go into my room, feel
about without their noticing in the corner of the mattress; it
is nearest the window. You will find a small, round box of black
cardboard, very glossy."

"Does it contain a portrait?" said Madame de Renal, scarcely able to
hold herself upright.

Julien noticed her air of discouragement, and at once proceeded to
exploit it.

"I have a second favour to ask you, madame. I entreat you not to look
at that portrait; it is my secret."

"It is a secret," repeated Madame de Renal in a faint voice.

But though she had been brought up among people who are proud of their
fortune and appreciative of nothing except money, love had already
instilled generosity into her soul. Truly wounded as she was, it was
with an air of the most simple devotion that Madame de Renal asked
Julien the questions necessary to enable her to fulfil her commission.

"So" she said to him as she went away, "it is a little round box of
black cardboard, very glossy."

"Yes, Madame," answered Julien, with that hardness which danger gives
to men.

She ascended the second storey of the chateau as pale as though she had
been going to her death. Her misery was completed by the sensation that
she was on the verge of falling ill, but the necessity of doing Julien
a service restored her strength.

"I must have that box," she said to herself, as she doubled her pace.

She heard her husband speaking to the valet in Julien's very room.
Happily, they passed into the children's room. She lifted up the
mattress, and plunged her hand into the stuffing so violently that she
bruised her fingers. But, though she was very sensitive to slight pain
of this kind, she was not conscious of it now, for she felt almost
simultaneously the smooth surface of the cardboard box. She seized it
and disappeared.

She had scarcely recovered from the fear of being surprised by her
husband than the horror with which this box inspired her came within an
ace of positively making her feel ill.

"So Julien is in love, and I hold here the portrait of the woman whom
he loves!"

Seated on the chair in the ante-chamber of his apartment, Madame
de Renal fell a prey to all the horrors of jealousy. Her extreme
ignorance, moreover, was useful to her at this juncture; her
astonishment mitigated her grief. Julien seized the box without
thanking her or saying a single word, and ran into his room, where
he lit a fire and immediately burnt it. He was pale and in a state
of collapse. He exaggerated the extent of the danger which he had
undergone.

"Finding Napoleon's portrait," he said to himself, "in the possession
of a man who professes so great a hate for the usurper! Found, too,
by M. de Renal, who is so great an _ultra_, and is now in a state of
irritation, and, to complete my imprudence, lines written in my own
handwriting on the white cardboard behind the portrait, lines, too,
which can leave no doubt on the score of my excessive admiration. And
each of these transports of love is dated. There was one the day before
yesterday."

"All my reputation collapsed and shattered in a moment," said Julien
to himself as he watched the box burn, "and my reputation is my only
asset. It is all I have to live by--and what a life to, by heaven!"

An hour afterwards, this fatigue, together with the pity which he felt
for himself made him inclined to be more tender. He met Madame de Renal
and took her hand, which he kissed with more sincerity than he had
ever done before. She blushed with happiness and almost simultaneously
rebuffed Julien with all the anger of jealousy. Julien's pride which
had been so recently wounded made him act foolishly at this juncture.
He saw in Madame de Renal nothing but a rich woman, he disdainfully let
her hand fall and went away. He went and walked about meditatively in
the garden. Soon a bitter smile appeared on his lips.

"Here I am walking about as serenely as a man who is master of his own
time. I am not bothering about the children! I am exposing myself to M.
de Renal's humiliating remarks, and he will be quite right." He ran to
the children's room. The caresses of the youngest child, whom he loved
very much, somewhat calmed his agony.

"He does not despise me yet," thought Julien. But he soon reproached
himself for this alleviation of his agony as though it were a new
weakness. The children caress me just in the same way in which they
would caress the young hunting-hound which was bought yesterday.

Julien sits down with Madame de Renal and her friend Madame Derville one evening. When he's sure that Derville can't see, he reaches out and holds Madame de Renal's hand. She pulls away, but he grabs it again. When Madame Derville asks to head back inside the house, Madame de Renal says she'd like to stay out . Julien hardly sleeps that night and sleeps in until noon the next day. When he comes downstairs, he gets chewed out by a newly returned Monsieur de Renal. The boss isn't happy that Julien has wasted the entire morning with teaching anything to the de Renal children. While walking with Madame de Renal, Julie learns the Monsieur de Renal is going to have all the mattresses in the house re-stuffed. He is secretly hiding a picture under his mattress and he's worried that it'll be found. At this point, we don't know who's in the picture. He takes Madame de Renal aside and asks her to help him get his picture back. Madame is crushed because she assumes it's a picture of his sweetheart. Nonetheless, she goes up to his room for him and gets the box that the picture is in. She has also promised Julien not to look at the picture. We only find out afterward that it's a portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte that Julien is hiding. The rich folks of France all despise Napoleon, and Julien might get run out of town if people found out that he worshipped the man like a hero. Julien burns the box and everything in it. Afterward, he tries to kiss Madame's hand. But she pushes him away and he storms off, angry with hurt pride.


CHAPTER X

A GREAT HEART AND A SMALL FORTUNE

    But passion most disembles, yet betrays,
    Even by its darkness, as the blackest sky
    Foretells the heaviest tempest.
                           _Don Juan_, c. 4, st. 75.

M. De Renal was going through all the rooms in the chateau, and he came
back into the children's room with the servants who were bringing back
the stuffings of the mattresses. The sudden entry of this man had the
effect on Julien of the drop of water which makes the pot overflow.

Looking paler and more sinister than usual, he rushed towards him. M.
de Renal stopped and looked at his servants.

"Monsieur," said Julien to him, "Do you think your children would have
made the progress they have made with me with any other tutor? If you
answer 'No,'" continued Julien so quickly that M. de Renal did not have
time to speak, "how dare you reproach me with neglecting them?"

M. de Renal, who had scarcely recovered from his fright, concluded from
the strange tone he saw this little peasant assume, that he had some
advantageous offer in his pocket, and that he was going to leave him.

The more he spoke the more Julien's anger increased, "I can live
without you, Monsieur," he added.

"I am really sorry to see you so upset," answered M. de Renal
shuddering a little. The servants were ten yards off engaged in making
the beds.

"That is not what I mean, Monsieur," replied Julien quite beside
himself. "Think of the infamous words that you have addressed to me,
and before women too."

M. de Renal understood only too well what Julien was asking, and a
painful conflict tore his soul. It happened that Julien, who was really
mad with rage, cried out,

"I know where to go, Monsieur, when I leave your house."

At these words M. de Renal saw Julien installed with M. Valenod. "Well,
sir," he said at last with a sigh, just as though he had called in
a surgeon to perform the most painful operation, "I accede to your
request. I will give you fifty francs a month. Starting from the day
after to-morrow which is the first of the month."

Julien wanted to laugh, and stood there dumbfounded. All his anger had
vanished.

"I do not despise the brute enough," he said to himself. "I have no
doubt that that is the greatest apology that so base a soul can make."

The children who had listened to this scene with gaping mouths, ran
into the garden to tell their mother that M. Julien was very angry, but
that he was going to have fifty francs a month.

Julien followed them as a matter of habit without even looking at M. de
Renal whom he left in a considerable state of irritation.

"That makes one hundred and sixty-eight francs," said the mayor to
himself, "that M. Valenod has cost me. I must absolutely speak a few
strong words to him about his contract to provide for the foundlings."

A minute afterwards Julien found himself opposite M. de Renal.

"I want to speak to M. Chelan on a matter of conscience. I have the
honour to inform you that I shall be absent some hours."

"Why, my dear Julien," said M. de Renal smiling with the falsest
expression possible, "take the whole day, and to-morrow too if you
like, my good friend. Take the gardener's horse to go to Verrieres."

"He is on the very point," said M. de Renal to himself, "of giving an
answer to Valenod. He has promised me nothing, but I must let this
hot-headed young man have time to cool down."

Julien quickly went away, and went up into the great forest, through
which one can manage to get from Vergy to Verrieres. He did not wish
to arrive at M. Chelan's at once. Far from wishing to cramp himself in
a new pose of hypocrisy he needed to see clear in his own soul, and to
give audience to the crowd of sentiments which were agitating him.

"I have won a battle," he said to himself, as soon as he saw that he
was well in the forest, and far from all human gaze. "So I have won a
battle."

This expression shed a rosy light on his situation, and restored him to
some serenity.

"Here I am with a salary of fifty francs a month, M. de Renal must be
precious afraid, but what of?"

This meditation about what could have put fear into the heart of that
happy, powerful man against whom he had been boiling with rage only
an hour back, completed the restoration to serenity of Julien's soul.
He was almost able to enjoy for a moment the delightful beauty of the
woods amidst which he was walking. Enormous blocks of bare rocks had
fallen down long ago in the middle of the forest by the mountain side.
Great cedars towered almost as high as these rocks whose shade caused a
delicious freshness within three yards of places where the heat of the
sun's rays would have made it impossible to rest.

Julien took breath for a moment in the shade of these great rocks,
and then he began again to climb. Traversing a narrow path that was
scarcely marked, and was only used by the goat herds, he soon found
himself standing upon an immense rock with the complete certainty of
being far away from all mankind. This physical position made him smile.
It symbolised to him the position he was burning to attain in the moral
sphere. The pure air of these lovely mountains filled his soul with
serenity and even with joy. The mayor of Verrieres still continued to
typify in his eyes all the wealth and all the arrogance of the earth;
but Julien felt that the hatred that had just thrilled him had nothing
personal about it in spite of all the violence which he had manifested.
If he had left off seeing M. de Renal he would in eight days have
forgotten him, his castle, his dogs, his children and all his family.
"I forced him, I don't know how, to make the greatest sacrifice. What?
more than fifty crowns a year, and only a minute before I managed to
extricate myself from the greatest danger; so there are two victories
in one day. The second one is devoid of merit, I must find out the why
and the wherefore. But these laborious researches are for to-morrow."

Standing up on his great rock, Julien looked at the sky which was all
afire with an August sun. The grasshoppers sang in the field about the
rock; when they held their peace there was universal silence around
him. He saw twenty leagues of country at his feet. He noticed from
time to time some hawk, which launching off from the great rocks over
his head was describing in silence its immense circles. Julien's eye
followed the bird of prey mechanically. Its tranquil powerful movements
struck him. He envied that strength, that isolation.

"Would Napoleon's destiny be one day his?"

Julien walks up to Monsieur de Renal and scolds him for speaking so cruelly to him earlier that day. It's true that Julien slept in, but Monsieur was way overboard in his insults. Julien threatens to take his talents elsewhere. But Monsieur de Renal makes things all better by offering him fifty francs a month. Julien gets permission to go into town. Monsieur de Renal assumes he's going to tell Monsieur's rival, Valenod, that he will keep working for the de Renals. Julien retreats to a nearby mountain and looks over the countryside, wishing that he could conquer it all like Napoleon did.


CHAPTER XI

AN EVENING

    Yet Julia's very coldness still was kind,
    And tremulously gently her small hand
    Withdrew itself from his, but left behind
    A little pressure, thrilling, and so bland,
    And slight, so very slight that to the mind,
    'Twas but a doubt.
                        _Don Juan_, c. I. st, 71.

It was necessary, however, to put in an appearance at Verrieres. As
Julien left the cure house he was fortunate enough to meet M. Valenod,
whom he hastened to tell of the increase in his salary.

On returning to Vergy, Julien waited till night had fallen before going
down into the garden. His soul was fatigued by the great number of
violent emotions which had agitated him during the day. "What shall I
say to them?" he reflected anxiously, as he thought about the ladies.
He was far from realising that his soul was just in a mood to discuss
those trivial circumstances which usually monopolise all feminine
interests. Julien was often unintelligible to Madame Derville, and even
to her friend, and he in his turn only half understood all that they
said to him. Such was the effect of the force and, if I may venture to
use such language, the greatness of the transports of passion which
overwhelmed the soul of this ambitious youth. In this singular being it
was storm nearly every day.

As he entered the garden this evening, Julien was inclined to take an
interest in what the pretty cousins were thinking. They were waiting
for him impatiently. He took his accustomed seat next to Madame de
Renal. The darkness soon became profound. He attempted to take hold of
a white hand which he had seen some time near him, as it leant on the
back of a chair. Some hesitation was shewn, but eventually the hand was
withdrawn in a manner which indicated displeasure. Julien was inclined
to give up the attempt as a bad job, and to continue his conversation
quite gaily, when he heard M. de Renal approaching.

The coarse words he had uttered in the morning were still ringing in
Julien's ears. "Would not taking possession of his wife's hand in his
very presence," he said to himself, "be a good way of scoring off that
creature who has all that life can give him. Yes! I will do it. I, the
very man for whom he has evidenced so great a contempt."

From that moment the tranquillity which was so alien to Julien's real
character quickly disappeared. He was obsessed by an anxious desire
that Madame de Renal should abandon her hand to him.

M. de Renal was talking politics with vehemence; two or three
commercial men in Verrieres had been growing distinctly richer than he
was, and were going to annoy him over the elections. Madame Derville
was listening to him. Irritated by these tirades, Julien brought his
chair nearer Madame de Renal. All his movements were concealed by the
darkness. He dared to put his hand very near to the pretty arm which
was left uncovered by the dress. He was troubled and had lost control
of his mind. He brought his face near to that pretty arm and dared to
put his lips on it.

Madame de Renal shuddered. Her husband was four paces away. She
hastened to give her hand to Julien, and at the same time to push him
back a little. As M. de Renal was continuing his insults against those
ne'er-do-wells and Jacobins who were growing so rich, Julien covered
the hand which had been abandoned to him with kisses, which were either
really passionate or at any rate seemed so to Madame de Renal. But
the poor woman had already had the proofs on that same fatal day that
the man whom she adored, without owning it to herself, loved another!
During the whole time Julien had been absent she had been the prey to
an extreme unhappiness which had made her reflect.

"What," she said to herself, "Am I going to love, am I going to be in
love? Am I, a married woman, going to fall in love? But," she said to
herself, "I have never felt for my husband this dark madness, which
never permits of my keeping Julien out of my thoughts. After all, he
is only a child who is full of respect for me. This madness will be
fleeting. In what way do the sentiments which I may have for this young
man concern my husband? M. de Renal would be bored by the conversations
which I have with Julien on imaginative subjects. As for him, he simply
thinks of his business. I am not taking anything away from him to give
to Julien."

No hypocrisy had sullied the purity of that naive soul, now swept away
by a passion such as it had never felt before. She deceived herself,
but without knowing it. But none the less, a certain instinct of virtue
was alarmed. Such were the combats which were agitating her when
Julien appeared in the garden. She heard him speak and almost at the
same moment she saw him sit down by her side. Her soul was as it were
transported by this charming happiness which had for the last fortnight
surprised her even more than it had allured. Everything was novel for
her. None the less, she said to herself after some moments, "the mere
presence of Julien is quite enough to blot out all his wrongs." She was
frightened; it was then that she took away her hand.

His passionate kisses, the like of which she had never received before,
made her forget that perhaps he loved another woman. Soon he was no
longer guilty in her eyes. The cessation of that poignant pain which
suspicion had engendered and the presence of a happiness that she had
never even dreamt of, gave her ecstasies of love and of mad gaiety.
The evening was charming for everyone, except the mayor of Verrieres,
who was unable to forget his _parvenu_ manufacturers. Julien left off
thinking about his black ambition, or about those plans of his which
were so difficult to accomplish. For the first time in his life he was
led away by the power of beauty. Lost in a sweetly vague reverie, quite
alien to his character, and softly pressing that hand, which he thought
ideally pretty, he half listened to the rustle of the leaves of the
pine trees, swept by the light night breeze, and to the dogs of the
mill on the Doubs, who barked in the distance.

But this emotion was one of pleasure and not passion. As he entered his
room, he only thought of one happiness, that of taking up again his
favourite book. When one is twenty the idea of the world and the figure
to be cut in it dominate everything.

He soon, however, laid down the book. As the result of thinking of the
victories of Napoleon, he had seen a new element in his own victory.
"Yes," he said to himself, "I have won a battle. I must exploit it. I
must crush the pride of that proud gentleman while he is in retreat.
That would be real Napoleon. I must ask him for three days' holiday to
go and see my friend Fouque. If he refuses me I will threaten to give
him notice, but he will yield the point."

Madame de Renal could not sleep a wink. It seemed as though, until this
moment, she had never lived. She was unable to distract her thoughts
from the happiness of feeling Julian cover her hand with his burning
kisses.

Suddenly the awful word adultery came into her mind. All the
loathesomeness with which the vilest debauchery can invest sensual love
presented itself to her imagination. These ideas essayed to pollute the
divinely tender image which she was fashioning of Julien, and of the
happiness of loving him. The future began to be painted in terrible
colours. She began to regard herself as contemptible.

That moment was awful. Her soul was arriving in unknown countries.
During the evening she had tasted a novel happiness. Now she found
herself suddenly plunged in an atrocious unhappiness. She had never
had any idea of such sufferings; they troubled her reason. She thought
for a moment of confessing to her husband that she was apprehensive
of loving Julien. It would be an opportunity of speaking of him.
Fortunately her memory threw up a maxim which her aunt had once given
her on the eve of her marriage. The maxim dealt with the danger of
making confidences to a husband, for a husband is after all a master.
She wrung her hands in the excess of her grief. She was driven this way
and that by clashing and painful ideas. At one moment she feared that
she was not loved. The next the awful idea of crime tortured her, as
much as if she had to be exposed in the pillory on the following day in
the public square of Verrieres, with a placard to explain her adultery
to the populace.

Madame de Renal had no experience of life. Even in the full possession
of her faculties, and when fully exercising her reason, she would never
have appreciated any distinction between being guilty in the eyes of
God, and finding herself publicly overwhelmed with the crudest marks of
universal contempt.

When the awful idea of adultery, and of all the disgrace which in her
view that crime brought in its train, left her some rest, she began to
dream of the sweetness of living innocently with Julien as in the days
that had gone by.

She found herself confronted with the horrible idea that Julien loved
another woman. She still saw his pallor when he had feared to lose
her portrait, or to compromise her by exposing it to view. For the
first time she had caught fear on that tranquil and noble visage. He
had never shewn such emotion to her or her children. This additional
anguish reached the maximum of unhappiness which the human soul is
capable of enduring. Unconsciously, Madame de Renal uttered cries which
woke up her maid. Suddenly she saw the brightness of a light appear
near her bed, and recognized Elisa. "Is it you he loves?" she exclaimed
in her delirium.

Fortunately, the maid was so astonished by the terrible trouble in
which she found her mistress that she paid no attention to this
singular expression. Madame de Renal appreciated her imprudence.
"I have the fever," she said to her, "and I think I am a little
delirious." Completely woken up by the necessity of controlling
herself, she became less unhappy. Reason regained that supreme control
which the semi-somnolent state had taken away. To free herself from her
maid's continual stare, she ordered her maid to read the paper, and
it was as she listened to the monotonous voice of this girl, reading
a long article from the _Quotidienne_ that Madame de Renal made the
virtuous resolution to treat Julien with absolute coldness when she saw
him again.

After a quick visit to Father Chelan, Julien returns to the de Renals' house. He goes into the garden and sits with Madame de Renal and her cousin, Madame Dervilles. Monsieur de Renal comes to sit with them and talks angrily about politics. When he's not looking, Julien kisses Madame de Renal's arm. After her husband has left, Madame de Renal feels overcome with passion. But she's also scared that she's on the road to becoming an adulteress. She's also scared that Julien still loves another woman. She decides to treat Julien with total coldness the next time she sees him.


CHAPTER XII

A JOURNEY

        Elegant people are to be found in Paris. People of
        character may exist in the provinces.--Sieyes

At five o'clock the following day, before Madame de Renal was visible,
Julien obtained a three days' holiday from her husband. Contrary to his
expectation Julien found himself desirous of seeing her again. He kept
thinking of that pretty hand of hers. He went down into the garden, but
Madame de Renal kept him waiting for a long time. But if Julien had
loved her, he would have seen her forehead glued to the pane behind the
half-closed blinds on the first floor. She was looking at him. Finally,
in spite of her resolutions, she decided to go into the garden. Her
habitual pallor had been succeeded by more lively hues. This woman,
simple as she was, was manifestly agitated; a sentiment of constraint,
and even of anger, altered that expression of profound serenity which
seemed, as it were, to be above all the vulgar interests of life and
gave so much charm to that divine face.

Julien approached her with eagerness, admiring those beautiful arms
which were just visible through a hastily donned shawl. The freshness
of the morning air seemed to accentuate still more the brilliance of
her complexion which the agitation of the past night rendered all the
more susceptible to all impressions. This demure and pathetic beauty,
which was, at the same time, full of thoughts which are never found in
the inferior classes, seemed to reveal to Julien a faculty in his own
soul which he had never before realised. Engrossed in his admiration of
the charms on which his his greedy gaze was riveted, Julien took for
granted the friendly welcome which he was expecting to receive. He was
all the more astonished at the icy coldness which she endeavoured to
manifest to him, and through which he thought he could even distinguish
the intention of putting him in his place.

The smile of pleasure died away from his lips as he remembered his
rank in society, especially from the point of view of a rich and noble
heiress. In a single moment his face exhibited nothing but haughtiness
and anger against himself. He felt violently disgusted that he could
have put off his departure for more than an hour, simply to receive so
humiliating a welcome.

"It is only a fool," he said to himself, "who is angry with others; a
stone falls because it is heavy. Am I going to be a child all my life?
How on earth is it that I manage to contract the charming habit of
showing my real self to those people simply in return for their money?
If I want to win their respect and that of my own self, I must shew
them that it is simply a business transaction between my poverty and
their wealth, but that my heart is a thousand leagues away from their
insolence, and is situated in too high a sphere to be affected by their
petty marks of favour or disdain."

While these feelings were crowding the soul of the young tutor, his
mobile features assumed an expression of ferocity and injured pride.
Madame de Renal was extremely troubled. The virtuous coldness that she
had meant to put into her welcome was succeeded by an expression of
interest--an interest animated by all the surprise brought about by
the sudden change which she had just seen. The empty morning platitudes
about their health and the fineness of the day suddenly dried up.
Julien's judgment was disturbed by no passion, and he soon found a
means of manifesting to Madame de Renal how light was the friendly
relationship that he considered existed between them. He said nothing
to her about the little journey that he was going to make; saluted her,
and went away.

As she watched him go, she was overwhelmed by the sombre haughtiness
which she read in that look which had been so gracious the previous
evening. Her eldest son ran up from the bottom of the garden, and said
as he kissed her,

"We have a holiday, M. Julien is going on a journey."

At these words, Madame de Renal felt seized by a deadly coldness. She
was unhappy by reason of her virtue, and even more unhappy by reason of
her weakness.

This new event engrossed her imagination, and she was transported far
beyond the good resolutions which she owed to the awful night she had
just passed. It was not now a question of resisting that charming
lover, but of losing him for ever.

It was necessary to appear at breakfast. To complete her anguish, M. de
Renal and Madame Derville talked of nothing but Julien's departure. The
mayor of Verrieres had noticed something unusual in the firm tone in
which he had asked for a holiday.

"That little peasant has no doubt got somebody else's offer up his
sleeve, but that somebody else, even though it's M. Valenod, is bound
to be a little discouraged by the sum of six hundred francs, which the
annual salary now tots up to. He must have asked yesterday at Verrieres
for a period of three days to think it over, and our little gentleman
runs off to the mountains this morning so as not to be obliged to give
me an answer. Think of having to reckon with a wretched workman who
puts on airs, but that's what we've come to."

"If my husband, who does not know how deeply he has wounded Julien,
thinks that he will leave us, what can I think myself?" said Madame de
Renal to herself. "Yes, that is all decided." In order to be able at
any rate to be free to cry, and to avoid answering Madame Derville's
questions, she pleaded an awful headache, and went to bed.

"That's what women are," repeated M. de Renal, "there is always
something out of order in those complicated machines," and he went off
jeering.

While Madame de Renal was a prey to all the poignancy of the terrible
passion in which chance had involved her, Julien went merrily on his
way, surrounded by the most beautiful views that mountain scenery
can offer. He had to cross the great chain north of Vergy. The path
which he followed rose gradually among the big beech woods, and ran
into infinite spirals on the slope of the high mountain which forms
the northern boundary of the Doubs valley. Soon the traveller's view,
as he passed over the lower slopes bounding the course of the Doubs
towards the south, extends as far as the fertile plains of Burgundy and
Beaujolais. However insensible was the soul of this ambitious youth to
this kind of beauty, he could not help stopping from time to time to
look at a spectacle at once so vast and so impressive.

Finally, he reached the summit of the great mountain, near which
he had to pass in order to arrive by this cross-country route at
the solitary valley where lived his friend Fouque, the young wood
merchant. Julien was in no hurry to see him; either him, or any other
human being. Hidden like a bird of prey amid the bare rocks which
crowned the great mountain, he could see a long way off anyone coming
near him. He discovered a little grotto in the middle of the almost
vertical slope of one of the rocks. He found a way to it, and was soon
ensconced in this retreat. "Here," he said, "with eyes brilliant with
joy, men cannot hurt me." It occurred to him to indulge in the pleasure
of writing down those thoughts of his which were so dangerous to him
everywhere else. A square stone served him for a desk; his pen flew. He
saw nothing of what was around him. He noticed at last that the sun was
setting behind the distant mountains of Beaujolais.

"Why shouldn't I pass the night here?" he said to himself. "I have
bread, and I am free." He felt a spiritual exultation at the sound of
that great word. The necessity of playing the hypocrite resulted in his
not being free, even at Fouque's. Leaning his head on his two hands,
Julien stayed in the grotto, more happy than he had ever been in his
life, thrilled by his dreams, and by the bliss of his freedom. Without
realising it, he saw all the rays of the twilight become successively
extinguished. Surrounded by this immense obscurity, his soul wandered
into the contemplation of what he imagined that he would one day meet
in Paris. First it was a woman, much more beautiful and possessed of a
much more refined temperament than anything he could have found in the
provinces. He loved with passion, and was loved. If he separated from
her for some instants, it was only to cover himself with glory, and to
deserve to be loved still more.

A young man brought up in the environment of the sad truths of Paris
society, would, on reaching this point in his romance, even if we
assume him possessed of Julien's imagination, have been brought back
to himself by the cold irony of the situation. Great deeds would have
disappeared from out his ken together with hope of achieving them and
have been succeeded by the platitude. "If one leave one's mistress
one runs alas! the risk of being deceived two or three times a day."
But the young peasant saw nothing but the lack of opportunity between
himself and the most heroic feats.

But a deep night had succeeded the day, and there were still two
leagues to walk before he could descend to the cabin in which Fouque
lived. Before leaving the little cave, Julien made a light and
carefully burnt all that he had written. He quite astonished his friend
when he knocked at his door at one o'clock in the morning. He found
Fouque engaged in making up his accounts. He was a young man of high
stature, rather badly made, with big, hard features, a never-ending
nose, and a large fund of good nature concealed beneath this repulsive
appearance.

"Have you quarelled with M. de Renal then that you turn up unexpectedly
like this?" Julien told him, but in a suitable way, the events of the
previous day.

"Stay with me," said Fouque to him. "I see that you know M. de Renal,
M. Valenod, the sub-prefect Maugron, the cure Chelan. You have
understood the subtleties of the character of those people. So there
you are then, quite qualified to attend auctions. You know arithmetic
better than I do; you will keep my accounts; I make a lot in my
business. The impossibility of doing everything myself, and the fear
of taking a rascal for my partner prevents me daily from undertaking
excellent business. It's scarcely a month since I put Michaud de
Saint-Amand, whom I haven't seen for six years, and whom I ran across
at the sale at Pontarlier in the way of making six thousand francs. Why
shouldn't it have been you who made those six thousand francs, or at
any rate three thousand. For if I had had you with me that day, I would
have raised the bidding for that lot of timber and everybody else would
soon have run away. Be my partner."

This offer upset Julien. It spoilt the train of his mad dreams. Fouque
showed his accounts to Julien during the whole of the supper--which the
two friends prepared themselves like the Homeric heroes (for Fouque
lived alone) and proved to him all the advantages offered by his timber
business. Fouque had the highest opinion of the gifts and character of
Julien.

When, finally, the latter was alone in his little room of pinewood, he
said to himself: "It is true I can make some thousands of francs here
and then take up with advantage the profession of a soldier, or of a
priest, according to the fashion then prevalent in France. The little
hoard that I shall have amassed will remove all petty difficulties. In
the solitude of this mountain I shall have dissipated to some extent my
awful ignorance of so many of the things which make up the life of all
those men of fashion. But Fouque has given up all thoughts of marriage,
and at the same time keeps telling me that solitude makes him unhappy.
It is clear that if he takes a partner who has no capital to put into
his business, he does so in the hopes of getting a companion who will
never leave him."

"Shall I deceive my friend," exclaimed Julien petulantly. This being
who found hypocrisy and complete callousness his ordinary means of
self-preservation could not, on this occasion, endure the idea of the
slightest lack of delicate feeling towards a man whom he loved.

But suddenly Julien was happy. He had a reason for a refusal. What!
Shall I be coward enough to waste seven or eight years. I shall get to
twenty-eight in that way! But at that age Bonaparte had achieved his
greatest feats. When I shall have made in obscurity a little money by
frequenting timber sales, and earning the good graces of some rascally
under-strappers who will guarantee that I shall still have the sacred
fire with which one makes a name for oneself?

The following morning, Julien with considerable sangfroid, said in
answer to the good Fouque, who regarded the matter of the partnership
as settled, that his vocation for the holy ministry of the altars would
not permit him to accept it. Fouque did not return to the subject.

"But just think," he repeated to him, "I'll make you my partner, or if
you prefer it, I'll give you four thousand francs a year, and you want
to return to that M. de Renal of yours, who despises you like the mud
on his shoes. When you have got two hundred louis in front of you, what
is to prevent you from entering the seminary? I'll go further: I will
undertake to procure for you the best living in the district, for,"
added Fouque, lowering his voice, I supply firewood to M. le ----, M.
le ----, M. ----. I provide them with first quality oak, but they only
pay me for plain wood, but never was money better invested.

Nothing could conquer Julien's vocation. Fouque finished by thinking
him a little mad. The third day, in the early morning, Julien left his
friend, and passed the day amongst the rocks of the great mountain. He
found his little cave again, but he had no longer peace of mind. His
friend's offers had robbed him of it. He found himself, not between
vice and virtue, like Hercules, but between mediocrity coupled with
an assured prosperity, and all the heroic dreams of his youth. "So I
have not got real determination after all," he said to himself, and it
was his doubt on this score which pained him the most. "I am not of
the stuff of which great men are made, because I fear that eight years
spent in earning a livelihood will deprive me of that sublime energy
which inspires the accomplishment of extraordinary feats."

Julien asks for a three-day leave from his boss so he can go visit his friend Fouqe. While leaving, he meets with Madame outside the house. She acts coldly toward him and his pride makes him angry with her. She backs down and gets scared that he'll stop loving her. That afternoon, Madame cries at the thought of Julien leaving. She excuses herself from her cousin and goes to cry in bed. Meanwhile, Julien sets off for his friend's house. On the way, he stops on a mountain and writes out his deepest thoughts. He feels completely free and decides to spend the night sleeping on the mountain. When he reaches his destination, his buddy Fouqe offers him a good job as his partner in the timber business. Julien doesn't like the offer because he's afraid it will seduce him away from his ambitions. Julien turns down the offer. Fouqe thinks he's crazy to turn down such a good deal. But there you have it.