Part 5

The next day after lunch, Madame de Rênal gave herself the delicious voluptuousness of pleading the cause of her rival, and of seeing Élisa's hand and fortune constantly refused for a full hour.

Little by little Julien emerged from his stiff replies, and ended by responding with wit to the sensible representations of Madame de Rênal. She could not resist the torrent of happiness that flooded her soul after so many days of despair. She felt faint altogether. When she had recovered and was comfortably settled in her room, she sent everyone away. She was profoundly astonished.

Can I be in love with Julien? she said to herself at last.

This discovery, which at any other time would have plunged her into remorse and deep agitation, was for her only a singular spectacle, but as it were indifferent. Her soul, exhausted by all that she had just undergone, no longer had any sensibility left to serve the passions.

Madame de Rênal wished to work, and fell into a deep sleep; when she awoke she was not as alarmed as she ought to have been. She was too happy to be able to take anything amiss. Naïve and innocent, this good provincial woman had never tortured her soul to try to extract from it some sensibility for some new shade of feeling or misfortune. Entirely absorbed, before Julien's arrival, by that mass of work which, far from Paris, is the lot of a good mother of a family, Madame de Rênal thought of the passions as we think of the lottery: a certain duping and a happiness sought by fools.

The dinner bell rang; Madame de Rênal blushed deeply when she heard Julien's voice, as he brought in the children. A little adroit now that she was in love, to explain her blushing she complained of a dreadful headache.

"That is how all women are," Monsieur de Rênal answered her, with a loud laugh. "There is always something to mend with those machines!"

Though accustomed to that kind of wit, the tone of voice shocked Madame de Rênal. To distract herself, she looked at Julien's face; had he been the ugliest of men, at that instant he would have pleased her.

Attentive to copying the ways of men of honor, from the first fine days of spring Monsieur de Rênal established himself at Vergy, the village made famous by the tragic adventure of Gabrielle. A few hundred paces from the picturesque ruins of the old Gothic church, Monsieur de Rênal owns an old château with four towers, and a garden laid out like that of the Tuileries, with many wooden borders and walks of chestnut trees clipped twice a year. A neighboring field, planted with apple trees, served as a promenade. Eight or ten magnificent walnut trees stood at the end of the orchard; their immense foliage rose perhaps to eighty feet in height.

"Each of those accursed walnut trees," said Monsieur de Rênal when his wife admired them, "costs me the harvest of half an acre; the wheat cannot grow under their shade."

The view of the countryside seemed new to Madame de Rênal; her admiration rose to transports. The feeling that animated her gave her wit and resolution. The day after their arrival at Vergy, Monsieur de Rênal having returned to the city on municipal business, Madame de Rênal hired workmen at her own expense. Julien had given her the idea of a little graveled path, which would run through the orchard and under the great walnut trees, and allow the children to walk early in the morning without their shoes being wet by the dew. This idea was carried out less than twenty-four hours after being conceived. Madame de Rênal spent the whole day gaily with Julien directing the workmen.

When the mayor of Verrières returned from the city, he was much surprised to find the walk made. His arrival also surprised Madame de Rênal; she had forgotten his existence. For two months he spoke with ill humor of the boldness that had been shown in making, without consulting him, so important a repair; but Madame de Rênal had executed it at her own expense, which consoled him a little.

She spent her days running with her children in the orchard, and hunting butterflies. They had constructed large hoods of fine gauze, with which they caught the poor lepidoptera. That is the barbarous name Julien was teaching Madame de Rênal. For she had sent for from Besançon the fine work of Monsieur Godart; and Julien told her the singular habits of these insects.

They were pinned without pity with pins into a large cardboard frame arranged also by Julien.

There was at last between Madame de Rênal and Julien a subject of conversation; he was no longer exposed to the awful torment that silences had given him.

They spoke to each other incessantly, and with extreme interest, though always of very innocent things. This active, occupied, and gay life was to everyone's taste, except Mademoiselle Élisa's, who found herself overwhelmed with work. "Never during carnival," she said, "when there is a ball at Verrières, has madame taken such care with her toilet; she changes dresses two or three times a day."

As our intention is to flatter no one, we shall not deny that Madame de Rênal, who had superb skin, had dresses made that left the arms and bosom quite uncovered. She was very well formed, and this manner of dressing became her wonderfully.

"You have never been so young, madame," her friends from Verrières who came to dine at Vergy said to her. (It is a way of speaking in the country.)

A singular thing, which will find little belief among us, was that without any direct intention Madame de Rênal gave herself to so much care. She found pleasure in it; and, without thinking further of it, all the time she did not spend butterfly hunting with the children and Julien, she worked with Élisa at making dresses. Her only trip to Verrières was caused by the wish to buy new summer dresses that had just been brought from Mulhouse.

She brought back to Vergy a young woman of her relations. Since her marriage, Madame de Rênal had insensibly become close with Madame Derville, who had formerly been her companion at the Sacré-Cœur.

Madame Derville laughed much at what she called her cousin's foolish ideas: "Alone, I should never think of them," she said. These unforeseen ideas that would have been called sallies in Paris, Madame de Rênal was ashamed of as of a foolishness, when she was with her husband; but the presence of Madame Derville gave her courage. She told her her thoughts at first in a timid voice; when these ladies were long alone, the mind of Madame de Rênal grew animated, and a long solitary morning passed like an instant and left the two friends quite gay. On this visit, the reasonable Madame Derville found her cousin much less gay and much happier.

Julien, for his part, had lived like a true child since his stay in the country, as happy to run after butterflies as his pupils. After so much constraint and clever policy, alone, far from the eyes of men, and, by instinct, fearing Madame de Rênal not at all, he gave himself up to the pleasure of existing, so vivid at that age, and amid the most beautiful mountains in the world.

Upon the arrival of Madame Derville it seemed to Julien that she was his friend; he hastened to show her the view one has from the end of the new walk under the great walnut trees; in fact it is equal, if not superior, to what Switzerland and the lakes of Italy can offer of most admirable. If one climbs the rapid slope that begins a few paces from there, one soon reaches great precipices bordered by oak woods, which advance almost to the river. It is on the summits of these sheer-cut rocks that Julien, happy, free, and something more, king of the house, led the two friends, and enjoyed their admiration for these sublime aspects.

"It is for me like Mozart's music," said Madame Derville.

The jealousy of his brothers, the presence of a despotic and ill-tempered father, had spoiled in Julien's eyes the countryside around Verrières. At Vergy he found none of those bitter memories; for the first time in his life he saw no enemy. When Monsieur de Rênal was in the city, which happened often, he dared to read; soon, instead of reading at night, and even then taking care to hide his lamp at the bottom of an overturned flower vase, he could give himself to sleep; by day in the interval of the children's lessons, he came to these rocks with the book, sole rule of his conduct and object of his transports. He found there at once happiness, ecstasy, and consolation in moments of discouragement.

Certain things that Napoleon said of women, several discussions on the merit of the novels in fashion under his reign, then gave him, for the first time, some ideas that any other young man of his age would have had long since.

The great heats arrived. They took the habit of spending the evenings under an immense linden tree a few paces from the house. The darkness there was profound. One evening, Julien was speaking with animation; he enjoyed with delight the pleasure of speaking well and to young women; in gesticulating, he touched the hand of Madame de Rênal, which was resting on the back of one of those painted wooden chairs that are placed in gardens.

This hand withdrew very quickly, but Julien thought it was his duty to obtain that the hand not be withdrawn when he touched it. The idea of a duty to accomplish, and of a ridicule or rather a feeling of inferiority to incur if he did not succeed, at once drove all pleasure from his heart.

CHAPTER IX

AN EVENING IN THE COUNTRY

Monsieur Guérin's Dido, charming sketch!

STROMBECK.

His looks the next day, when he saw Madame de Rênal again, were singular; he observed her like an enemy with whom he is about to fight. These looks so different from those of the eve, turned Madame de Rênal's head: she had been kind to him, and he seemed angry. She could not detach her gaze from his.

The presence of Madame Derville allowed Julien to speak less and occupy himself more with what he had in his head. His sole business, all that day, was to fortify himself by reading the inspired book that renewed his soul.

He much shortened the children's lessons, and afterwards, when the presence of Madame de Rênal came to recall him wholly to the cares of his glory, he decided that it was absolutely necessary that she permit that evening that her hand remain in his.

The sun lowering, and bringing near the decisive moment, made Julien's heart beat in a singular fashion. Night came. He observed with a joy that took an immense weight from his chest, that it would be very dark. The sky charged with big clouds, driven by a very warm wind, seemed to announce a storm. The two friends walked very late. All they did that evening seemed singular to Julien. They enjoyed this weather, which, for certain delicate souls, seems to increase the pleasure of loving.

They sat at last, Madame de Rênal next to Julien, and Madame Derville near her friend. Preoccupied with what he was about to attempt, Julien found nothing to say. The conversation languished.

"Shall I be as trembling and unhappy at the first duel that comes to me?" said Julien to himself, for he had too much distrust, both of himself and of others, not to see the state of his soul.

In his mortal anguish, all dangers would have seemed preferable to him. How often did he not wish to see some affair befall Madame de Rênal that obliged her to go back into the house and leave the garden! The violence Julien was obliged to do himself was too strong for his voice not to be deeply altered; soon the voice of Madame de Rênal became trembling also, but Julien did not notice it. The awful combat that duty waged against timidity was too painful, for him to be able to observe anything outside himself. A quarter to ten had just struck on the château clock without his having yet dared anything. Julien, indignant at his cowardice, said to himself: "At the precise moment when ten o'clock strikes, I shall execute what, all day long, I have promised myself to do this evening, or I shall go up to my room and blow my brains out."

After a last moment of waiting and anxiety, during which excess of emotion put Julien as beside himself, ten o'clock struck on the clock that was above his head. Each stroke of that fatal bell resounded in his chest, and caused there like a physical movement.

At last, as the last stroke of ten was still ringing, he stretched out his hand, and took Madame de Rênal's, which she withdrew at once. Julien, not quite knowing what he did, seized it again. Though much moved himself, he was struck by the icy coldness of the hand he held; he pressed it with convulsive force; a last effort was made to take it from him, but at last the hand remained his.

His soul was flooded with happiness, not that he loved Madame de Rênal, but an awful torment had just ceased. So that Madame Derville might notice nothing, he felt obliged to speak; his voice then was loud and strong. That of Madame de Rênal, on the contrary, betrayed so much emotion, that her friend thought her ill and proposed she go in. Julien felt the danger: if Madame de Rênal goes into the salon, I fall back into the awful position I passed the day in. I have held this hand too short a time for it to count as an advantage acquired.

At the moment when Madame Derville renewed the proposal to return to the salon, Julien pressed hard the hand abandoned to him.

Madame de Rênal, who was already rising, sat down again saying, in a dying voice:

"I feel, in truth, a little ill, but the open air does me good."

These words confirmed Julien's happiness, which at that moment was extreme: he spoke, he forgot to feign, he appeared the most amiable of men to the two friends who listened to him. Yet there was still a little lack of courage in this eloquence that came to him all at once. He mortally feared that Madame Derville, tired of the wind that was beginning to rise and that preceded the storm, might wish to go in alone to the salon. Then he would have remained tête-à-tête with Madame de Rênal. He had had almost by chance the blind courage that suffices to act; but he felt that it was beyond his power to say the simplest word to Madame de Rênal. However slight her reproaches, he was going to be beaten, and the advantage he had just gained annihilated.

Fortunately for him, that evening his touching and emphatic speeches found favor with Madame Derville, who very often found him awkward as a child, and little amusing. For Madame de Rênal the hand in Julien's, she thought of nothing; she let herself live. The hours passed under that great linden tree that the country tradition says was planted by Charles the Bold, were for her an epoch of happiness. She listened with delight to the moaning of the wind in the thick foliage of the linden, and the sound of a few rare drops that began to fall on its lowest leaves. Julien did not notice a circumstance that would have reassured him well: Madame de Rênal, who had been obliged to take her hand from him, because she rose to help her cousin raise a flower vase that the wind had just overturned at their feet, was scarcely seated again, than she gave him back her hand almost without difficulty, and as if already between them it were a thing agreed.

Midnight had long struck; they must at last leave the garden; they parted. Madame de Rênal, transported by the happiness of loving, was so ignorant that she made herself no reproach. Happiness took sleep from her. A leaden sleep seized Julien, mortally tired by the combats that, all day long, timidity and pride had waged in his heart.

The next day he was woken at five; and, what would have been cruel for Madame de Rênal, had she known it, gave him scarcely a thought. He had done his duty, and a heroic duty. Filled with happiness by this feeling, he locked himself in his room, and gave himself with a quite new pleasure to the reading of his hero's exploits.

When the lunch bell was heard, he had forgotten, in reading the bulletins of the great army, all his advantages of the eve. He said to himself, in a light tone, going down to the salon: "I must tell that woman that I love her."

Instead of those looks charged with voluptuousness, that he expected to meet, he found the severe face of Monsieur de Rênal, who, arrived since two hours from Verrières, hid not his discontent that Julien spent the whole morning without occupying himself with the children. Nothing was as ugly as this important man, being in ill humor and believing he could show it.

Each sharp word of her husband pierced the heart of Madame de Rênal. As for Julien, he was so plunged in ecstasy, still so occupied with the great things that, for several hours, had just passed before his eyes, that at first he could scarcely lower his attention enough to listen to the harsh remarks Monsieur de Rênal addressed to him. He said to him at last, rather brusquely:

"I was ill."

The tone of this reply would have piqued a man much less susceptible than the mayor of Verrières; he had some idea of answering Julien by dismissing him on the spot. He was restrained only by the maxim he had made for himself, never to be too hasty in affairs.

"This young fool," he said to himself soon, "has made himself a sort of reputation in my house; Valenod can take him into his service, or else he will marry Élisa, and in both cases deep in his heart he may mock me."

Despite the wisdom of his reflections the discontent of Monsieur de Rênal burst out no less in a series of coarse words which, little by little, irritated Julien. Madame de Rênal was on the point of dissolving in tears. Scarcely was lunch finished, than she asked Julien to give her his arm for the walk; she leaned on him with friendliness. To all that Madame de Rênal said to him, Julien could only answer in a half-voice:

"_That is how rich people are!_"

Monsieur de Rênal walked quite near them; his presence increased Julien's anger. He suddenly noticed that Madame de Rênal leaned on his arm in a marked way; this movement filled him with horror, he pushed her away violently and freed his arm.

Happily Monsieur de Rênal did not see this new impertinence; it was noticed only by Madame Derville, her friend was melting in tears. At this moment Monsieur de Rênal began to pursue with stones a little peasant girl who had taken a wrong path, and was crossing a corner of the orchard.

"Monsieur Julien, I beg you compose yourself, think that we all have moments of ill humor," said Madame Derville quickly.

Julien looked at her coldly with eyes where the most sovereign contempt was painted.

This look astonished Madame Derville, and would have surprised her much more had she divined its true expression; she would have read there like a vague hope of the most atrocious vengeance. It is no doubt such moments of humiliation that made Robespierres.

"Your Julien is very violent, he frightens me," said Madame Derville softly to her friend.

"He is right to be angry," her friend answered her. "After the astonishing progress he has made the children make, what does it matter if he spends a morning without speaking to them; one must admit that men are very hard."

For the first time in her life Madame de Rênal felt a sort of desire for vengeance against her husband. The extreme hatred that animated Julien against the rich was about to burst forth. Happily Monsieur de Rênal called his gardener, and remained occupied with him in barring with thorn fagots the wrong path across the orchard. Julien did not answer a single word to the attentions, of which for the rest of the walk he was the object. Scarcely had Monsieur de Rênal moved away, than the two friends, pretending each to be tired, asked him each for an arm.

Between these two women whose extreme trouble covered their cheeks with red and embarrassment, the haughty pallor, the dark and decided air of Julien formed a strange contrast. He despised these women and all tender feelings.

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

Absorbed by these severe ideas, the little he deigned to understand of the obliging words of the two friends displeased him as empty of meaning, silly, weak, in a word feminine.

By dint of speaking for the sake of speaking, and seeking to keep the conversation alive, it happened that Madame de Rênal said that her husband had come from Verrières because he had made a bargain, for maize straw, with one of his farmers. (In this country, it is with maize straw that one fills the mattresses of beds.)

"My husband will not rejoin us," added Madame de Rênal; "with the gardener and his valet he will occupy himself with finishing the renewal of the mattresses of the house. This morning he put maize straw in all the beds of the first floor, now he is on the second."

Julien changed color, he looked at Madame de Rênal with a singular air, and soon took her aside as it were by doubling his pace. Madame Derville let them draw away.

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

At this word Madame de Rênal grew pale in her turn.

"You alone, madame, can at this moment enter my room; search, without it showing, in the corner of the mattress that is nearest the window, you will find a little box of black and smooth cardboard."

"It contains a portrait!" said Madame de Rênal, scarcely able to stand.

Her look of discouragement was noticed by Julien, who at once profited by it.

"I have a second favor to ask of you, madame; I beg you not to look at this portrait, it is my secret."

"It is a secret!" repeated Madame de Rênal, in a dead voice.

But, though raised among people proud of their fortune and sensitive only to the interest of money, love had already put some generosity into this soul. Cruelly wounded, it was with the air of the simplest devotion that Madame de Rênal put to Julien the necessary questions to be able to well discharge her commission.

"Thus," she said to him as she moved away, "a little round box, of black cardboard, very smooth."

"Yes, madame," answered Julien, with that hard air that danger gives to men.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”