Part 3

On leaving, Julien thought he saw blood near the holy-water font; it was spilt holy water: the reflection of the red curtains covering the windows made it look like blood.

At length Julien was ashamed of his secret terror.

Am I a coward? he said to himself. To arms!

That phrase, so often repeated in the old surgeon's battle tales, was heroic to Julien. He rose and walked rapidly toward M. de Rênal's house.

Despite his fine resolutions, as soon as he caught sight of him twenty paces away, he was seized by an invincible shyness. The iron gate stood open; it seemed magnificent to him, and he had to go in there.

Julien was not the only person whose heart was troubled by his arrival in that house. The extreme timidity of Mme de Rênal was thrown into confusion by the idea of this stranger, who, by virtue of his duties, would be constantly between her and her children. She was accustomed to having her sons sleep in her room. In the morning, many tears had been shed when she saw their little beds carried into the apartment destined for the tutor. It was in vain that she asked her husband that the bed of Stanislas-Xavier, the youngest, be brought back into her room.

Womanly delicacy was carried to an excessive point in Mme de Rênal. She pictured to herself the most unpleasant image of a coarse and ill-combed being, charged with scolding her children, solely because he knew Latin, a barbarous language for which her sons would be whipped.

CHAPTER VI

BOREDOM

Non so più cosa son, Cosa faccio.

MOZART: Figaro.

With the liveliness and grace that were natural to her when she was far from the eyes of men, Mme de Rênal was coming out through the French window of the salon that opened onto the garden, when she caught sight, near the entrance door, of the face of a young peasant, almost still a child, extremely pale and who had just been crying. He was in a very white shirt, and had under his arm a very clean jacket of purple fustian.

The complexion of this little peasant was so fair, his eyes so gentle, that the somewhat romantic spirit of Mme de Rênal at first had the idea that this might be a young girl in disguise, come to ask some favor of the mayor. She took pity on this poor creature, halted at the entrance door, and who evidently did not dare lift her hand to the bell. Mme de Rênal approached, distracted for a moment from the bitter sorrow given her by the tutor's arrival. Julien, turned toward the door, did not see her coming. He started when a soft voice said close to his ear:

"What do you want here, my child?"

Julien turned sharply, and struck by the gaze so full of grace of Mme de Rênal, he forgot part of his timidity. Soon, astonished by her beauty, he forgot everything, even what he had come to do. Mme de Rênal had repeated her question.

"I have come to be tutor, madame," he said at last, quite ashamed of his tears, which he wiped as best he could.

Mme de Rênal remained speechless; they were quite close to one another, looking at each other. Julien had never seen a being so well dressed and above all a woman with so dazzling a complexion, speak to him in so gentle a tone. Mme de Rênal looked at the great tears, which had stopped on the cheeks at first so pale and now so rosy of this young peasant. Soon she began to laugh, with all the wild gaiety of a young girl; she was mocking herself and could not imagine all her happiness. What, was this the tutor she had pictured to herself as a dirty and ill-clad priest, who would come to scold and whip her children!

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

This word "sir" so astonished Julien that he reflected for a moment.

"Yes, madame," he said timidly.

Mme de Rênal was so happy that she dared say to Julien:

"You will not scold these poor children too much?"

"I, scold them," said Julien, astonished, "and why?"

"Is it not so, sir," she added after a little silence, in a voice whose emotion increased every instant, "you will be good to them, you promise me?"

To hear himself called "sir" again, quite seriously, and by a lady so well dressed, was beyond all the expectations of Julien: in all the castles in Spain of his youth, he had told himself that no proper lady would deign to speak to him until he had a fine uniform. Mme de Rênal, for her part, was completely deceived by the beauty of complexion, the large black eyes of Julien, and his pretty hair, which curled more than usual because, to refresh himself, he had just plunged his head into the basin of the public fountain. To her great joy she found the shy air of a young girl in this fatal tutor, whose harshness and surly tone she had so greatly dreaded for her children. For the so peaceful soul of Mme de Rênal, the contrast of her fears and what she saw was a great event. At last she recovered from her surprise. She was astonished to find herself thus at the door of her house with this young man almost in his shirt and so close to him.

"Let us go in, sir," she said with rather an embarrassed air.

Never in her life had a purely pleasant sensation so deeply moved Mme de Rênal; never had so graceful an apparition succeeded such troubling fears. Thus her pretty children, so cared for by her, would not fall into the hands of a dirty and grumbling priest. Scarcely entered under the vestibule, she turned back toward Julien, who followed her timidly. His astonished air, at the sight of so fine a house, was an added grace in the eyes of Mme de Rênal. She could not believe her eyes; it seemed to her above all that the tutor ought to have a black habit.

"But is it true, sir," she said, stopping again, and fearing mortally to be mistaken, so much did her belief make her happy, "you know Latin?"

These words wounded the pride of Julien and dispelled the charm in which he had lived for a quarter of an hour.

"Yes, madame," he said, trying to assume a cold air, "I know Latin as well as the curé, and even sometimes he is kind enough to say better than he."

Mme de Rênal thought Julien looked very wicked; he had stopped two paces from her. She approached and said to him in a low voice:

"Is it not so, the first days, you will not whip my children, even when they do not know their lessons?"

This so gentle and almost supplicating tone of so beautiful a lady made Julien suddenly forget what he owed to his reputation as a Latinist. The face of Mme de Rênal was near his; he scented the perfume of a woman's summer clothes, a thing so astonishing to a poor peasant. Julien blushed extremely and said with a sigh, and in a failing voice:

"Fear nothing, madame, I shall obey you in all things."

It was only at this moment, when her anxiety for her children was quite dissipated, that Mme de Rênal was struck by the extreme beauty of Julien. The almost feminine form of his features, and his embarrassed air, did not seem ridiculous to a woman extremely timid herself. The manly air that is commonly thought necessary to a man's beauty would have frightened her.

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

"Soon nineteen years."

"My eldest son is eleven," resumed Mme de Rênal, quite reassured, "he will be almost a companion for you, you will talk reason to him. Once his father wanted to beat him; the child was ill for a whole week, and yet it was a very small blow."

What a difference with me, thought Julien. Only yesterday my father beat me. How happy these rich people are!

Mme de Rênal was already catching the slightest nuances of what passed in the soul of the tutor; she took this movement of sadness for timidity, and wished to encourage him.

"What is your name, sir?" she said to him, with an accent and a grace whose whole charm Julien felt, without being able to account for it.

"I am called Julien Sorel, madame; I tremble entering for the first time in my life into a strange house; I need your protection and that you pardon me many things the first days. I have never been to college, I was too poor; I have never spoken to other men than my cousin the surgeon-major, member of the Legion of Honor, and M. the curé Chélan. He will bear good witness of me to you. My brothers have always beaten me; do not believe them if they speak ill of me, pardon my faults, madame, I shall never have bad intentions."

Julien reassured himself during this long speech; he examined Mme de Rênal. Such is the effect of perfect grace when it is natural to the character, and above all when the person it adorns is not thinking of having grace; Julien, who knew feminine beauty very well, would have sworn in this instant that she was only twenty years old. He had at once the bold idea of kissing her hand. Soon he was afraid of his idea; an instant after, he said to himself: There would be cowardice in me not to execute an action which may be useful to me, and diminish the contempt this beautiful lady probably has for a poor workman barely snatched from the saw. Perhaps Julien was a little encouraged by that word "pretty boy," which for six months he had heard repeated on Sundays by some young girls. During these inward debates, Mme de Rênal addressed him two or three words of instruction on how to begin with the children. The violence Julien did himself made him again quite pale; he said, with a constrained air:

"Never, madame, will I beat your children; I swear it before God." And in saying these words, he dared take the hand of Mme de Rênal, and carry it to his lips. She was astonished at this gesture, and then offended. As it was very hot, her arm was quite bare under her shawl, and the movement of Julien, in carrying the hand to his lips, had entirely uncovered it. After a few moments, she scolded herself; it seemed to her she had not been indignant quickly enough.

M. de Rênal, who had heard voices, came out of his study, with the same majestic and paternal air he assumed when he performed marriages at the town hall; he said to Julien:

"It is essential that I speak to you before the children see you."

He made Julien enter a study and kept back his wife, who wished to leave them alone. The door shut, M. de Rênal sat down with gravity.

"M. the curé told me you are a good sort; everyone will treat you here with honor, and if I am satisfied I shall help to set you up later. I wish that you see no more either parents or friends; their tone cannot suit my children. Here are thirty-six francs for the first month; but I require your word not to give a sou of this money to your father."

M. de Rênal was piqued against the old man, who, in this affair, had been shrewder than he.

"Now, _sir_, for by my orders everyone here is to call you sir and you will feel the advantage of entering a house of gentlefolk; now, sir, it is not seemly that the children see you in a jacket. Have the servants seen him?" said M. de Rênal to his wife.

"No, my friend," she answered, in a deeply thoughtful air.

"So much the better. Put this on," he said to the young man, surprised, giving him a redingote of his own. "Come now to M. Durand the draper."

More than an hour later, when M. de Rênal returned with the new tutor all dressed in black, he found his wife seated in the same place. She felt reassured by the presence of Julien; in examining him she forgot to be afraid of him. Julien thought not of her, despite all his mistrust of fate and men; his soul at this moment was only that of a child; it seemed to him he had lived years since the instant, three hours before, when he was trembling in the church. He noticed the icy air of Mme de Rênal; he understood she was angry at his having dared kiss her hand. But the feeling of pride given him by the contact of clothes so different from those he was used to wearing put him so beside himself, and he so much wished to hide his joy, that all his movements had something brusque and wild. Mme de Rênal contemplated him with astonished eyes.

"Some gravity, sir," said M. de Rênal, "if you wish to be respected by my children and my people."

"Sir," answered Julien, "I am constrained in these new clothes; I, a poor peasant, have never worn but jackets; I shall go, if you permit, and shut myself in my room."

"What think you of this new acquisition?" said M. de Rênal to his wife.

By an almost instinctive movement, of which certainly she was not aware, Mme de Rênal disguised the truth from her husband.

"I am not so enchanted as you by this little peasant; your attentions will make an impertinent of him whom you will be obliged to dismiss within a month."

"Well! we shall dismiss him; it will be a hundred francs it may cost me, and Verrières will be accustomed to seeing a tutor to the children of M. de Rênal. That aim would not have been fulfilled had I left Julien the garb of a workman. In dismissing him, I shall of course keep the complete black suit I have just fetched from the draper. There will remain to him only what I just found ready-made at the tailor's, and with which I have covered him."

The hour Julien passed in his room seemed an instant to Mme de Rênal. The children, to whom the new tutor had been announced, overwhelmed their mother with questions. At last Julien appeared. He was another man. It would be wrong to say he was grave; he was gravity incarnate. He was presented to the children, and spoke to them in a tone that astonished M. de Rênal himself.

"I am here, gentlemen," he said, finishing his allocation, "to teach you Latin. You know what it is to recite a lesson. Here is the holy Bible," he said, showing them a small in-32 volume, bound in black. "It is particularly the history of Our Lord Jesus Christ; it is the part called the New Testament. I shall often have you recite lessons; do you have me recite mine."

Adolphe, the eldest child, had taken the book.

"Open it at random," continued Julien, "and tell me the first three words of a paragraph. I shall recite by heart the sacred book, rule of our conduct all, until you stop me."

Adolphe opened the book, read two words, and Julien recited the whole page, with the same ease as if he had spoken French. M. de Rênal looked at his wife with a triumphant air. The children, seeing the astonishment of their parents, opened wide eyes. A servant came to the door of the salon; Julien continued to speak Latin. The servant remained at first motionless, and disappeared afterward. Soon the lady's maid, and the cook, arrived near the door, while Adolphe had already opened the book in eight places, and Julien always recited with the same ease.

"Ah! my God! the pretty little priest," said aloud the cook, a good girl, very devout.

The self-love of M. de Rênal was uneasy; far from thinking to examine the tutor, he was wholly occupied in searching his memory for some Latin words; at last he could say a verse of Horace. Julien knew no Latin but his Bible. He answered, frowning:

"The holy ministry to which I am destined has forbidden me to read so profane a poet."

M. de Rênal cited a fairly large number of pretended verses of Horace. He explained to his children what Horace was; but the children, struck with admiration, paid little attention to what he said. They looked at Julien.

The servants being still at the door, Julien thought he ought to prolong the trial:

"It is necessary," he said to the youngest child, "that M. Stanislas-Xavier indicate to me also a passage of the holy book."

Little Stanislas, quite proud, read as best he could the first word of a paragraph, and Julien said the whole page. So that nothing might be lacking to the triumph of M. de Rênal, as Julien recited, entered M. Valenod, the possessor of the fine Norman horses, and M. Charcot de Maugiron, sub-prefect of the district. This scene won Julien the title of sir; the servants themselves dared not refuse it him.

In the evening all Verrières flocked to M. de Rênal's to see the marvel. Julien answered all with a somber air that kept distance. His glory spread so rapidly in the town that a few days after, M. de Rênal, fearing someone might take him away, proposed to him to sign a two-year engagement.

"No, sir," answered Julien coldly, "if you wished to dismiss me I should be obliged to leave. An engagement that binds me without obliging you to anything is not equal. I refuse it."

Julien so well managed that less than a month after his arrival in the house, M. de Rênal himself respected him. The curé being quarreled with MM. de Rênal and Valenod, no one could betray Julien's old passion for Napoleon; he spoke of him only with horror.

CHAPTER VII

ELECTIVE AFFINITIES

They know how to touch the heart only by wounding it.

A MODERN.

The children adored him, he did not love them; his thought was elsewhere. All that these brats could do never impatiented him. Cold, just, impassive, and yet loved, because his arrival had in some sort chased boredom from the house, he was a good tutor. For himself, he felt only hatred and horror for the high society where he was admitted, it is true at the lower end of the table—which perhaps explains the hatred and horror. There were certain grand dinners where he could hardly contain his hatred for all around him. One Saint-Louis day among others, M. Valenod was holding the game at M. de Rênal's; Julien was on the point of betraying himself; he fled into the garden, under pretext of seeing the children. "What praise of probity!" he cried. "One would say it is the only virtue; and yet what consideration, what base respect for a man who evidently has doubled and tripled his fortune since he administers the goods of the poor! I would wager he even profits on the funds destined for foundlings, those poor whose misery is yet more sacred than that of others! Ah! monsters! monsters! And I too am a sort of foundling, hated by my father, my brothers, all my family."

A few days before Saint-Louis, Julien, walking alone and saying his breviary in a little wood called the Belvedere, which overlooks the Cours de la Fidélité, had sought in vain to avoid his two brothers, whom he saw coming from afar by a lonely path. The jealousy of these coarse workmen had been so provoked by the fine black habit, by the extremely clean air of their brother, by the sincere contempt he had for them, that they had beaten him to the point of leaving him fainting and all bloody. Mme de Rênal, walking with M. Valenod and the sub-prefect, arrived by chance in the little wood; she saw Julien stretched on the ground and believed him dead. Her fright was such that it gave M. Valenod cause for jealousy.

He took alarm too soon. Julien found Mme de Rênal very beautiful, but he hated her because of her beauty; she was the first reef that had nearly stopped his fortune. He spoke to her as little as possible in order to make her forget the transport which, on the first day, had carried him to kiss her hand.

Elisa, Mme de Rênal's lady's maid, had not failed to fall in love with the young tutor; she spoke of it often to her mistress. The love of Mlle Elisa had won Julien the hatred of one of the valets. One day he heard this man say to Elisa: "You no longer want to speak to me, since that dirty tutor entered the house." Julien did not deserve the insult; but, by instinct of a pretty boy, he redoubled his care for his person. The hatred of M. Valenod redoubled also. He said publicly that so much coquetry did not befit a young abbé. Save the cassock, it was the costume Julien wore.

Mme de Rênal noticed he spoke more often than usual to Mlle Elisa; she learned that these interviews were caused by the scarcity of Julien's very small wardrobe. He had so little linen that he was obliged to have it washed very often outside the house, and it was for these little cares that Elisa was useful to him. This extreme poverty, which she had not suspected, touched Mme de Rênal; she had a mind to make him gifts, but did not dare; this inward resistance was the first painful sentiment Julien caused her. Until then the name of Julien, and the sentiment of a pure and wholly intellectual joy, had been synonymous for her. Tormented by the idea of Julien's poverty, Mme de Rênal spoke to her husband of making him a gift of linen:

"What duping!" he answered. "What! make gifts to a man of whom we are perfectly satisfied, and who serves us well? It would be in case he neglected himself that one must stimulate his zeal."

Mme de Rênal was humiliated by this way of seeing; she would not have noticed it before Julien's arrival. She never saw the extreme cleanliness of the dress, otherwise very simple, of the young abbé, without saying to herself: "This poor boy, how can he manage?"

Little by little, she pitied all that Julien lacked, instead of being shocked by it.

Mme de Rênal was one of those provincial women whom one may very well take for fools during the first fifteen days one sees them. She had no experience of life, and did not care to talk. Endowed with a delicate and disdainful soul, that instinct of happiness natural to all beings made that, most of the time, she paid no attention to the actions of the coarse personages amid whom chance had cast her.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”