Part 19
The bishop had invited him to dinner, and, to tease his grand vicar de Frilair, was trying to draw him out. They were at dessert when the strange news arrived from Paris that the abbé Pirard had been appointed to the magnificent living of N..., four leagues from the capital. The good prelate congratulated him sincerely. He saw in the whole affair a well-played move which put him in good humor and gave him the highest opinion of the abbé's abilities. He gave him a magnificent Latin certificate, and silenced the abbé de Frilair, who permitted himself some remonstrances.
That evening, Monseigneur carried his admiration to the marquise de Rubempré's. It was great news for the high society of Besançon; people lost themselves in conjectures over this extraordinary favor. They already saw the abbé Pirard a bishop. The cleverest believed M. de La Mole to be a minister, and that day allowed themselves to smile at the imperious airs that M. l'abbé de Frilair carried into the world.
The next morning, people almost followed the abbé Pirard through the streets, and shopkeepers came to the doors of their shops, when he went to solicit the judges on behalf of the marquis. For the first time, he was received with politeness. The stern Jansenist, indignant at all he saw, did a long piece of work with the lawyers he had chosen for the marquis de La Mole and set off for Paris. He had the weakness to tell two or three college friends, who accompanied him to the carriage whose armorial bearings they admired, that after administering the seminary for fifteen years, he was leaving Besançon with five hundred and twenty francs in savings. These friends embraced him in tears, and said to one another:
--The good abbé might have spared himself that lie; it is altogether too ridiculous.
The common herd, blinded by love of money, was not made to understand that it was in his sincerity that the abbé Pirard had found the strength necessary to struggle alone for six years against Marie Alacoque, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Jesuits, and his bishop.
CHAPTER XXX
AN AMBITIOUS MAN
There is but one nobility now, the title of duke; marquis is ridiculous, at the word duke one turns one's head.
EDINBURGH REVIEW.
The abbé was astonished at the noble air and almost cheerful tone of the marquis. Yet this future minister received him without any of those little great-lord manners, so polite but so impertinent to those who understand them. It would have been time wasted, and the marquis was far enough advanced in great affairs to have no time to lose.
For six months he had been intriguing to have a certain ministry accepted at once by the king and by the nation, which, out of gratitude, would make him a duke.
The marquis had for long years in vain asked his Besançon lawyer for a clear and precise piece of work on his Franche-Comté lawsuits. How could the celebrated advocate have explained them to him, if he did not understand them himself?
The little square of paper, which the abbé handed him, explained everything.
--My dear abbé, said the marquis to him, after dispatching in less than five minutes all the formulas of politeness and inquiry into personal matters, my dear abbé, amid my so-called prosperity, I lack time to occupy myself seriously with two small things yet rather important: my family and my affairs. I look after the fortune of my house on a grand scale, I can carry it far; I look after my pleasures, and that is what must come before all else, at least in my eyes, he added, catching some astonishment in the eyes of the abbé Pirard.
Though a man of sense, the abbé was amazed to see an old man speak so frankly of his pleasures.
--Work exists no doubt in Paris, the great lord continued, but perched on the fifth floor; and as soon as I draw near a man, he takes an apartment on the second floor, and the wife takes a day, consequently more work, more effort than to be or appear a man of the world. That is their only business once they have bread.
As for my lawsuits, strictly speaking, and again for each lawsuit taken separately, I have lawyers who kill themselves over them; one died of the chest before yesterday. But, for my affairs in general, would you believe, sir, that for three years I have given up finding a man who, while he writes for me, deigns to think a little seriously about what he is doing? The rest of this is but a preface.
I esteem you, and I would dare add, though seeing you for the first time, I love you. Will you be my secretary, at eight thousand francs salary or else at the double? I shall still gain by it, I swear to you; and I make it my business to keep you your fine living, for the day when we no longer suit one another.
The abbé refused, but toward the end of the conversation the real embarrassment in which he saw the marquis suggested an idea to him.
--I left at the bottom of my seminary, he said to the marquis, a poor young man who, if I am not mistaken, is going to be harshly persecuted there. If he were but a simple religious, he would already be in pace.
Thus far this young man knows only Latin and Holy Scripture; but it is not impossible that one day he may display great talents either for preaching or for the direction of souls. I know not what he will do, but he has the sacred fire, he may go far. I counted on giving him to our bishop, if ever there came to us one who had a little of your way of seeing men and affairs.
--Where does your young man come from? said the marquis.
--He is said to be the son of a carpenter of our mountains, but I should rather believe him a natural son of some rich man. I saw him receive an anonymous or pseudonymous letter with a bill of exchange for five hundred francs.
--Ah! it is Julien Sorel, said the marquis.
--How do you know his name? said the abbé, astonished; and as he blushed at his question:
--That is what I shall not tell you, answered the marquis.
--Well then! resumed the abbé, you could try to make him your secretary; he has energy, reason; in a word, it is an experiment to attempt.
--Why not? said the marquis; but would he be a man to let himself be bribed by the prefect of police or by anyone else to spy on me? That is my only objection.
On the favorable assurances of the abbé Pirard, the marquis took a note for a thousand francs:
--Send this traveling money to Julien Sorel; have him come to me.
--The habit of living in Paris must, indeed, M. le marquis, produce this illusion in your mind; you do not know, because you are in an elevated social position, the tyranny that weighs on us poor provincials, and in particular on priests not friends of the Jesuits. They will not wish to let Julien Sorel go, they will know how to cover themselves with the most skillful pretexts; they will answer me that he is ill, the post will have lost the letters, etc., etc.
--I shall take one of these days a letter from the minister to the bishop, said the marquis.
--I forgot one precaution, said the abbé: this young man, though born very low, has a high heart; he will be of no use in your affairs if his pride is frightened; you would make him stupid.
--This pleases me, said the marquis, I shall make him the companion of my son, will that suffice?
Some time after, Julien received a letter in an unknown hand and bearing the postmark of Châlon; he found there a draft on a merchant of Besançon, and notice to proceed to Paris without delay. The letter was signed with a false name, but on opening it Julien had started: a great blot of ink had fallen in the middle of the thirteenth word. It was the signal he had agreed upon with the abbé Pirard.
Less than an hour after, Julien was summoned to the bishop's palace where he found himself received with a wholly paternal kindness. While quoting Horace, Monseigneur paid him, on the high destinies awaiting him in Paris, compliments very adroit and which, by way of thanks, awaited explanations. Julien could say nothing, first because he knew nothing; and Monseigneur conceived a great consideration for him. One of the little priests of the palace wrote to the mayor who hastened to bring himself a passport signed, but in which the name of the traveler had been left blank.
The evening before midnight, Julien was at Fouqué's, whose sensible mind was more astonished than charmed by the future that seemed to await his friend.
--This will end for you, said this liberal elector, in a government post, which will oblige you to some step that will be vilified in the newspapers. It is through your shame that I shall have news of you. Remember that, even financially speaking, it is better to earn a hundred louis in a good wood business, of which one is master, than to receive four thousand francs from a government were it that of King Solomon.
Julien saw in all this only the smallness of mind of a provincial bourgeois. He was at last going to appear on the stage of great things. He preferred less certainty and vaster chances. In that heart there was no longer the least fear of dying of hunger. The happiness of going to Paris, which he pictured to himself peopled with very intriguing, very hypocritical men of wit, but also as polite as the bishop of Besançon and as the bishop of Agde, eclipsed everything in his eyes. He represented himself humbly to his friend, as deprived of his free will by the letter of the abbé Pirard.
The next day toward noon, he arrived in Verrières the happiest of men; he counted on seeing Mme de Rênal again. He went first to his first protector, the good abbé Chélan. He found a severe reception.
--Do you believe you owe me any obligation? said M. Chélan, without answering his greeting. You will breakfast with me; in the meantime they will go hire you another horse, and you will leave Verrières, without seeing anyone.
--To hear is to obey, answered Julien with a seminary air, and nothing more was spoken of but theology and fine Latinity.
He mounted his horse, rode a league, after which, seeing a wood, and no one to see him enter it, he plunged into it. At sunset, he sent the horse back by a peasant to the neighboring gate. Later, he went into a vine-grower who consented to sell him a ladder and to follow him carrying it to the little wood overlooking the COURS DE LA FIDÉLITÉ, at Verrières.
--I am a poor refractory conscript...
--Or a smuggler, said the peasant, taking leave of him, but little do I care! my ladder is well paid, and I myself am not without having passed some watches in my life.
The night was very black. Toward one in the morning, Julien, loaded with his ladder, entered Verrières. He descended as quickly as he could into the bed of the torrent, which crosses the magnificent gardens of M. de Rênal at a depth of ten feet, and contained between two walls. Julien easily climbed with the ladder. What reception will the watchdogs give me? he thought. That is the whole question. The dogs barked, and advanced at a gallop upon him; but he whistled softly, and they came to caress him.
Then, climbing from terrace to terrace, though all the gates were closed, it was easy for him to arrive beneath the window of Mme de Rênal's bedroom, which, on the garden side, is raised only eight or ten feet above the ground.
In the shutters there was a little opening in the shape of a heart, which Julien knew well. To his great sorrow, this little opening was not lit by the inner light of a night-lamp.
Great God! he said to himself, tonight this room is not occupied by Mme de Rênal! Where will she be sleeping? The family is at Verrières, since I found the dogs; but I may meet in this room, without a night-lamp, M. de Rênal himself or a stranger; and then what a scandal!
The most prudent course was to withdraw; but this course horrified Julien. If it is a stranger, I shall run off at full speed, abandoning my ladder; but if it is her, what reception awaits me? She has fallen into repentance and the deepest piety, I cannot doubt it; but after all, she still has some memory of me, since she has just written to me. This reason decided him.
His heart trembling, but nonetheless resolved to perish or to see her, he threw little pebbles against the shutter; no answer. He leaned his ladder against the side of the window, and knocked himself against the shutter, at first softly, then harder. However dark it is, someone may fire a gun at me, thought Julien. This idea reduced the mad enterprise to a question of bravery.
This room is uninhabited tonight, he thought; or, whoever sleeps there is awake now. Thus nothing more to spare toward her; one must only try not to be heard by those sleeping in the other rooms.
He went down, placed his ladder against one of the shutters, went up and, passing his hand through the heart-shaped opening, had the happiness of very quickly finding the wire attached to the hook that closed the shutter. He pulled this wire; it was with an inexpressible joy that he felt the shutter was no longer held and yielded to his effort. One must open it little by little, and make my voice recognized. He opened the shutter enough to pass his head, and repeating in a low voice: It is a friend.
He assured himself, by listening, that nothing troubled the profound silence of the room. But decidedly, there was no night-lamp, not even half-extinguished, in the fireplace; it was a very bad sign.
Beware the gunshot! He reflected a little; then, with his finger, he dared to knock against the pane: no answer; he knocked harder. When I must break the pane, it must be finished. As he knocked very hard, he thought he glimpsed, in the midst of the extreme darkness, a white shadow crossing the room. At last, there was no doubt; he saw a shadow that seemed to advance with extreme slowness. Suddenly he saw a cheek pressed against the pane against which was his eye.
He started, and drew back a little. But the night was so black that, even at that distance, he could not distinguish whether it was Mme de Rênal. He feared a first cry of alarm; for a moment he had heard the dogs prowl and half-growl around the foot of his ladder.
--It is I, he repeated rather loudly, a friend.
No answer; the white phantom had disappeared.
--Deign to open to me, I must speak with you, I am too unhappy! and he knocked in a way to break the pane.
A little dry sound was heard; the window catch yielded; he pushed the casement, and leapt lightly into the room.
The white phantom drew away; he took its arms; it was a woman. All his ideas of courage vanished. If it is her, what will she say? What became of him, when he understood by a little cry that it was Mme de Rênal?
He clasped her in his arms; she trembled, and had scarcely the strength to push him away.
--Unhappy man! what are you doing?
Scarcely could her convulsive voice articulate these words. Julien saw in it the most genuine indignation.
--I come to see you after fourteen months of cruel separation.
--Leave, quit me this instant. Ah! M. Chélan, why did you prevent me from writing to him? I could have prevented this horror. She pushed him away with a truly extraordinary force. I repent of my crime, heaven has deigned to enlighten me, she repeated in a broken voice. Leave! flee!
--After fourteen months of unhappiness, I shall certainly not quit you without having spoken to you. I wish to know all that you have done. Ah! I have loved you enough to deserve this confidence... I wish to know everything.
In spite of Mme de Rênal, this tone of authority had sway over her heart.
Julien, who held her pressed with passion, and resisted her efforts to free herself, ceased to clasp her in his arms. This movement reassured Mme de Rênal a little.
--I am going to withdraw the ladder, he said, so that it may not compromise us if some servant, awakened by the noise, makes a round.
--Ah! leave, leave rather, she said to him with a real anger. What are men to me? it is God who sees the dreadful scene you are making me undergo and who will punish me for it. You basely abuse the feelings I had for you, but which I no longer have. Do you hear, M. Julien?
He withdrew the ladder very slowly so as not to make a noise.
--Is your husband in town? he said to her, not to defy her but carried away by the old habit.
--Do not speak to me thus, I beg you, or I shall call my husband. I am already but too guilty in not having driven you out, whatever might come of it. I pity you, she said to him, seeking to wound his pride which she knew so irritable.
This refusal of the familiar thou, this brusque way of breaking so tender a bond, and on which he still counted, carried to delirium the transport of love in Julien.
--What! is it possible that you no longer love me! he said to her with one of those accents of the heart, so difficult to listen to with cold blood.
She did not answer; for him, he wept bitterly.
Really, he no longer had the strength to speak.
--Thus I am completely forgotten by the only being who ever loved me! What is there left to live for henceforth? All his courage had left him as soon as he no longer had to fear the danger of meeting a man; all had disappeared from his heart, save love.
He wept a long time in silence; she heard the sound of his sobs. He took her hand, she wished to withdraw it; and yet, after some almost convulsive movements, she left it to him. The darkness was extreme; they found themselves both seated on Mme de Rênal's bed.
What a difference from what was fourteen months ago! thought Julien; and his tears redoubled. Thus absence surely destroys all the feelings of man! I had better go away.
--Deign to tell me what has happened to you, said Julien at last in a voice almost extinguished by grief.
--Doubtless, answered Mme de Rênal in a hard voice, whose accent had something dry and reproachful for Julien, my wanderings were known in the town, at your departure. There had been so much imprudence in your proceedings! Some time after, then I was in despair, the respectable M. Chélan came to see me. It was in vain that, for a long time, he sought to obtain a confession. One day, he had the idea of taking me to that church of Dijon, where I made my first communion. There, he dared speak first...
Mme de Rênal was interrupted by her tears.
--What a moment of shame! I confessed all. That so good man deigned not to crush me with the weight of his indignation: he grieved with me. In that time, I wrote to you every day letters which I dared not send you; I hid them carefully, and when I was too unhappy, I shut myself in my room and reread my letters.
At last, M. Chélan obtained that I should give them to him... Some of them, written with a little more prudence, had been sent to you; you did not answer.
--Never, I swear to you, I never received any letter from you at the seminary.
--Great God! who will have intercepted them?
--Judge of my grief, before the day when I caught sight of you at the cathedral, I did not know if you still lived.
--God granted me the grace to understand how much I sinned against Him, against my children, against my husband, resumed Mme de Rênal. He never loved me as I then believed you loved me...
Julien threw himself into her arms, really without plan and beside himself. But Mme de Rênal pushed him away, and continued with enough firmness:
--My respectable friend M. Chélan made me understand that, in marrying M. de Rênal, I had pledged him all my affections, even those I did not know, and which I had never felt before a fatal connection... Since the great sacrifice of those letters, which were so dear to me, my life has flowed, if not happily, at least with enough tranquillity. Do not disturb it; be a friend to me... the best of my friends. Julien covered her hands with kisses; she felt that he wept again. Do not weep, you give me such pain... Tell me in your turn what you have done. Julien could not speak. I wish to know your manner of life at the seminary, she repeated, then you shall go.
Without thinking of what he told, Julien spoke of the intrigues and countless jealousies he had first met, then of his more tranquil life since he had been made repetitor.
--It was then, he added, after a long silence, which was doubtless meant to make me understand what I see too well today, that you no longer loved me and that I had become indifferent to you...
Mme de Rênal pressed his hands.
--It was then that you sent me a sum of five hundred francs.
--Never, said Mme de Rênal.
--It was a letter postmarked Paris and signed Paul Sorel so as to defeat all suspicion.
A little discussion arose on the possible origin of that letter. The moral position changed. Without knowing it, Mme de Rênal and Julien had left the solemn tone; they had returned to that of a tender friendship. They did not see one another, so profound was the darkness, but the sound of the voice said all. Julien passed his arm around his friend's waist; this movement had many dangers. She tried to remove Julien's arm, which, with some skill, attracted her attention at that moment by an interesting circumstance of his tale. That arm was as if forgotten and remained in the position it occupied.
After many conjectures on the origin of the letter with the five hundred francs, Julien had resumed his tale; he became a little more master of himself in speaking of his past life, which, beside what was happening to him at that instant, interested him so little. His attention fixed itself wholly on the manner in which his visit was to end.
--You are going to leave, she said to him always, from time to time, and with a brief accent.
What shame for me if I am shown the door! it will be a remorse to poison my whole life, he said to himself, never will she write to me. God knows when I shall return to this country! From that moment all that was celestial in Julien's position rapidly disappeared from his heart. Seated beside a woman he adored, almost clasping her in his arms, in that room where he had been so happy, in the midst of a profound darkness, distinguishing very well that for a moment she had been weeping, feeling, by the movement of her breast, that she had sobs, he had the misfortune to become a cold politician almost as calculating and as cold as when, in the seminary courtyard, he saw himself the butt of some bad joke on the part of a comrade stronger than he. Julien made his tale drag on, and spoke of the unhappy life he had led since his departure from Verrières. Thus, said Mme de Rênal to herself, after a year of absence, almost entirely deprived of marks of remembrance, while I forgot him he was occupied only with the happy days he had found at Vergy. Her sobs redoubled. Julien saw the success of his tale. He understood that he must attempt the last resource: he came abruptly to the letter he had just received from Paris.
--I have taken leave of Monseigneur the bishop.
--What! you are not returning to Besançon? you are leaving us forever?
“Stories of the world, in your language.”