Part 6
She went up to the second floor of the pale-colored castle as if she were going to her death. To complete her misery, she felt that she was on the point of fainting; but the necessity of doing Julien a service restored her strength.
"I must have that box," she said to herself, quickening her pace.
She heard her husband speaking with the valet in Julien's very room. Fortunately they passed into the children's room. She lifted the mattress and plunged her hand into the straw pallet with such violence that she scraped her fingers. But though she was very sensitive to little pains of that kind, she was not conscious of this one, for almost at the same moment she felt the smoothness of the cardboard box. She seized it and disappeared.
Scarcely was she delivered from the fear of being surprised by her husband, than the horror the box inspired in her nearly made her actually faint.
"Julien is in love, then, and here I hold the portrait of the woman he loves!"
Seated on a chair in the antechamber of that apartment, Mme de Rênal was prey to all the horrors of jealousy. Her extreme ignorance served her again in this moment; astonishment tempered the pain. Julien appeared, seized the box, without thanking her, without a word, and ran to his room where he made a fire and burned it at once. He was pale, overwhelmed; he exaggerated to himself the extent of the danger he had just run.
"Napoleon's portrait," he said to himself, shaking his head, "found hidden in the possession of a man who makes a profession of such hatred for the usurper! found by M. de Rênal, so ultra and so irritated! and, to crown the imprudence, on the white cardboard behind the portrait, lines written in my own hand! which can leave no doubt as to the excess of my admiration! and each of these transports of love is dated! There are some from the day before yesterday."
"My reputation fallen, annihilated in an instant!" said Julien, watching the box burn, "and my reputation is all my wealth, I live only by it... and yet, what a life, good God!"
An hour later, fatigue and the pity he felt for himself inclined him to tenderness. He met Mme de Rênal and took her hand, which he kissed with more sincerity than he had ever shown. She blushed with happiness, and almost at the same instant pushed Julien away with the anger of jealousy. Julien's pride, so recently wounded, made a fool of him in that moment. He saw in Mme de Rênal only a rich woman; he let her hand fall with disdain and withdrew. He went to walk, pensive, in the garden; soon a bitter smile appeared on his lips.
"I walk there, calm as a man master of his time! I do not concern myself with the children! I expose myself to the humiliating words of M. de Rênal, and he will be right." He ran to the children's room.
The caresses of the youngest, whom he loved dearly, calmed his burning pain a little.
"That one does not despise me yet," thought Julien. But soon he reproached himself for this lessening of pain as a new weakness. "These children caress me as they would caress the young hunting dog bought yesterday."
CHAPTER X
A GREAT HEART AND A SMALL FORTUNE
But passion most dissembles, yet betrays, Even by its darkness; as the blackest sky Foretells the heaviest tempest.
_Don Juan_, C. I, st. 73.
M. de Rênal, who was going through all the rooms of the castle, returned to the children's room with the servants who were bringing back the pallets. The sudden entrance of this man was, for Julien, the drop of water that makes the vessel overflow.
Paler, darker than usual, he sprang toward him. M. de Rênal stopped and looked at his servants.
"Sir," Julien said to him, "do you believe that with any other tutor your children would have made the same progress as with me? If you answer no," continued Julien, without giving M. de Rênal time to speak, "how dare you address to me the reproach that I neglect them?"
M. de Rênal, scarcely recovered from his fright, concluded from the strange tone he saw this little peasant adopting that he had some advantageous offer in his pocket, and that he was about to leave him. Julien's anger increasing as he spoke:
"I can live without you, sir," he added.
"I am truly sorry to see you so agitated," replied M. de Rênal, stammering a little. The servants were ten paces off, busy arranging the beds.
"That is not what I need, sir," resumed Julien, beside himself, "think of the infamy of the words you addressed to me, and before women too!"
M. de Rênal understood only too well what Julien was asking, and a painful struggle tore at his soul. It happened that Julien, actually mad with anger, cried:
"I know where to go, sir, on leaving your house."
At these words, M. de Rênal saw Julien installed at M. Valenod's.
"Well! sir," he said to him at last with a sigh and the air of one calling in the surgeon for the most painful operation, "I accede to your demand. Starting the day after tomorrow, which is the first of the month, I give you fifty francs a month."
Julien felt like laughing and remained stupefied: all his anger had vanished.
"I did not despise the animal enough!" he said to himself. "This is no doubt the greatest excuse a soul so base can make."
The children, who had listened to this scene with mouths open, ran to the garden to tell their mother that M. Julien had been very angry, but that he was going to have fifty francs a month.
Julien followed them out of habit, without even looking at M. de Rênal, whom he left deeply irritated.
"There are a hundred and sixty-eight francs," said the mayor to himself, "that M. Valenod costs me. I must absolutely say two firm words to him about his enterprise of supplies for foundlings."
A moment later, Julien found himself face to face with M. de Rênal:
"I have to speak of my conscience to M. Chélan; I have the honor of informing you that I shall be absent a few hours."
"Ah, my dear Julien!" said M. de Rênal, laughing with the falsest air, "all day if you wish, and all of tomorrow, my good friend. Take the gardener's horse to go to Verrières."
"There he goes," said M. de Rênal to himself, "to carry an answer to Valenod; he has promised me nothing, but one must let this young man's head cool."
Julien slipped away quickly and went up into the great woods by which one can go from Vergy to Verrières. He did not wish to arrive so soon at M. Chélan's. Far from desiring to submit to a new scene of hypocrisy, he needed to see clearly into his soul, and to give audience to the crowd of sentiments agitating him.
"I have won a battle," he said to himself as soon as he saw himself in the woods and far from the eyes of men, "I have won a battle, then!"
This word painted his whole position in fair colors and restored some tranquillity to his soul.
"Here I am with fifty francs a month in wages; M. de Rênal must have been badly frightened. But of what?"
This meditation on what could have frightened the happy and powerful man against whom an hour before he had been boiling with anger, finished reassuring Julien's soul. He was almost sensible, for a moment, to the ravishing beauty of the woods amid which he walked. Enormous blocks of bare rock had fallen long ago in the midst of the forest on the mountain side. Great beeches rose almost as high as these rocks, whose shadow gave a delicious coolness three paces from the spots where the heat of the sun's rays would have made it impossible to stop.
Julien caught his breath a moment in the shadow of these great rocks, then set to climbing again. Soon, by a narrow barely marked path used only by the goatherds, he found himself standing on an immense rock, quite sure of being separated from all men. This physical position made him smile; it painted the position he burned to attain morally. The pure air of these high mountains communicated serenity and even joy to his soul. The mayor of Verrières was still, in his eyes, the representative of all the rich and all the insolent of the earth; but Julien felt that the hatred which had just agitated him, despite the violence of his movements, had nothing personal about it. If he had ceased to see M. de Rênal, in eight days he would have forgotten him, his castle, his dogs, his children and all his family.
"I have forced him, somehow or other, to make the greatest sacrifice. What! more than fifty crowns a year! An instant before I had drawn myself out of the greatest danger. There are two victories in one day; the second is without merit, one would have to guess how. But tomorrow for the painful researches."
Julien, standing on his great rock, looked at the sky set afire by an August sun. The cicadas sang in the field below the rock; when they fell silent all was silence around him. He saw at his feet twenty leagues of country. Some hawk, leaving the great rocks above his head, was now and then perceived by him, silently tracing its immense circles. Julien's eye followed the bird of prey mechanically. Its calm and powerful movements struck him; he envied that strength, he envied that isolation.
"Such was Napoleon's destiny; shall it one day be his?"
CHAPTER XI
AN EVENING
Yet Julia's very coldness still was kind, And tremulously gentle 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.
He had, however, to show himself at Verrières. On leaving the presbytery, a happy chance made Julien meet M. Valenod, to whom he hastened to relate the increase of his wages.
Back at Vergy, Julien did not go down into the garden until night had fully fallen. His soul was weary of the great number of powerful emotions that had agitated him during the day. "What shall I say to them?" he thought anxiously, thinking of the ladies. He was far from seeing that his soul was precisely on the level of the little circumstances which ordinarily occupy all the interest of women. Often Julien was unintelligible to Mme Derville and even to her friend, and in turn understood only half of all they said to him. Such was the effect of the force, and if I may so speak of the greatness, of the movements of passion which overturned the soul of this young ambitious man. In this singular being, it was almost every day a tempest.
On entering the garden that evening, Julien was disposed to occupy himself with the ideas of the pretty cousins. They awaited him with impatience. He took his usual place, beside Mme de Rênal. Darkness soon became profound. He wished to take a white hand which he had long seen near him, resting on the back of a chair. There was a little hesitation, but it was finally withdrawn from him in a way that marked ill humor. Julien was disposed to take it as said, and to continue the conversation gaily, when he heard M. de Rênal approaching.
Julien still had the coarse words of the morning in his ear. "Would it not be," he said to himself, "a way of mocking this being, so favored with all the advantages of fortune, to take possession of his wife's hand precisely in his presence? Yes, I shall do it, I for whom he has shown so much contempt."
From that moment, the tranquillity so little natural to Julien's character quickly departed; he desired with anxiety, and without being able to think of anything else, that Mme de Rênal would leave him her hand.
M. de Rênal was speaking politics with anger: two or three manufacturers of Verrières were becoming decidedly richer than he, and wished to thwart him in the elections. Mme Derville listened to him. Julien, irritated by these discourses, moved his chair close to Mme de Rênal's. The darkness hid all movements. He dared to place his hand very near the pretty arm left bare by the dress. He was troubled, his thought was no longer his own; he brought his cheek near that pretty arm, he dared to apply his lips to it.
Mme de Rênal trembled. Her husband was four paces off; she hastened to give her hand to Julien, and at the same time to push him away a little. As M. de Rênal continued his insults against the low-born and the Jacobins who grow rich, Julien covered the hand left to him with passionate kisses or at least such as seemed so to Mme de Rênal. Yet the poor woman had had proof, in that fatal day, that the man she adored without admitting it loved elsewhere! During all Julien's absence she had been prey to an extreme unhappiness which had made her reflect.
"What! I should love, should I?" she said to herself, "I should have love! I, a married woman, be in love! But," she said to herself, "I never felt for my husband this gloomy folly which makes me unable to detach my thought from Julien. After all, he is but a child full of respect for me! This folly will be passing. What matters it to my husband the sentiments I may have for this young man? M. de Rênal would be bored by the conversations I have with Julien, on matters of imagination. He thinks of his affairs. I take nothing from him to give to Julien."
No hypocrisy came to alter the purity of this naive soul, led astray by a passion she had never experienced. She was deceived, but unknowingly, and yet an instinct of virtue was frightened. Such were the struggles agitating her when Julien appeared in the garden. She heard him speak, almost at the same instant she saw him sit at her side. Her soul was carried away by that charming happiness which for fifteen days had astonished her more than it had seduced her. All was unforeseen for her. However, after a few moments, "Is it enough then," she said to herself, "the presence of Julien to erase all her faults?" She was frightened; it was then that she took her hand from him.
The passion-filled kisses, and such as she had never received the like of, made her suddenly forget that perhaps he loved another woman. Soon he was no longer guilty in her eyes. The ceasing of the poignant pain, daughter of suspicion, the presence of a happiness she had never even dreamed of, gave her transports of love and wild gaiety. This evening was charming for everyone, except for the mayor of Verrières, who could not forget his enriched manufacturers. Julien no longer thought of his black ambition, nor of his projects so difficult to execute. For the first time in his life, he was carried away by the power of beauty. Lost in a vague and sweet reverie, so foreign to his character, gently pressing that hand which pleased him as perfectly pretty, he half-listened to the movement of the linden leaves, stirred by the light night wind, and the dogs of the Doubs mill barking in the distance.
But this emotion was a pleasure and not a passion. On returning to his room, he thought only of one happiness, that of taking up his favorite book; at twenty, the idea of the world and of the effect to produce in it prevails over the most noisy public marks of general contempt.
When the dreadful idea of adultery and of all the ignominy which, in his opinion, this crime draws in its wake, left her some rest, and she came to think of the sweetness of living with Julien innocently, and as in the past, she was thrown into the horrible idea that Julien loved another woman. She again saw his pallor when he had feared losing his portrait, or compromising her by letting it be seen. For the first time, she had surprised fear on that physiognomy so tranquil and so noble. Never had he shown himself so moved for her or for her children. This increase of pain reached the full intensity of unhappiness the human soul can bear. Without suspecting it, Mme de Rênal cried out, which woke her chambermaid. Suddenly she saw the light of a lamp appear near her bed, and recognized Élisa.
"Is it you he loves?" she cried in her madness.
The chambermaid, astonished at the terrible agitation in which she found her mistress, fortunately paid no attention to this singular word. Mme de Rênal felt her imprudence:
"I have a fever," she said to her, "and, I believe, a little delirium; stay near me."
Quite awakened by the need to restrain herself, she found herself less unhappy; reason resumed the empire that the half-sleeping state had taken from her. To deliver herself from her chambermaid's fixed gaze, she ordered her to read the newspaper, and it was to the monotonous sound of the girl's voice, reading a long article from _La Quotidienne_, that Mme de Rênal formed the virtuous resolution to treat Julien with perfect coldness when she saw him again.
CHAPTER XII
A JOURNEY
One finds elegant people in Paris, there may be people of character in the provinces.
SIEYES.
The next day, at five o'clock, before Mme de Rênal was visible, Julien had obtained from her husband a leave of three days. Contrary to his expectation, Julien found the desire to see her again; he thought of her hand so pretty. He went down into the garden; Mme de Rênal made him wait long. But if Julien had loved her, he would have perceived her behind the half-closed blinds of the first floor, her forehead against the pane. She was looking at him. At last, despite her resolutions, she determined to appear in the garden. Her habitual pallor had given way to the liveliest colors. This so naive woman was evidently agitated: a feeling of constraint and even of anger altered that expression of profound serenity and as if above all vulgar interests of life, which gave so much charm to that celestial face.
Julien approached her eagerly; he admired those so beautiful arms which a hastily thrown shawl left partly visible. The freshness of the morning air seemed to increase still more a complexion which the agitation of the night rendered only more sensitive to all impressions. This modest and touching beauty, and yet full of thoughts one does not find in the lower classes, seemed to reveal to Julien a faculty of his soul he had never felt. Entirely given to the admiration of the charms surprised by his eager gaze, Julien thought not at all of the friendly welcome he expected to receive. He was all the more astonished at the icy coldness they sought to show him, and through which he even thought he distinguished the intention of putting him back in his place.
The smile of pleasure expired on his lips; he remembered the rank he occupied in society, and above all in the eyes of a noble and rich heiress. In an instant there was no longer on his physiognomy anything but pride and anger against himself. He felt a violent spite at having been able to delay his departure by more than an hour to receive so humiliating a welcome.
"There is only a fool," he said to himself, "who is angry at others: a stone falls because it is heavy. Shall I always be a child? When shall I have contracted the good habit of giving of my soul to these people exactly for their money? If I wish to be esteemed by them and by myself, I must show them that it is my poverty which is in commerce with their wealth; but that my heart is a thousand leagues from their insolence and placed in a sphere too high to be reached by their little marks of disdain or favor."
While these sentiments crowded in throng into the young tutor's soul, his mobile physiognomy took on the expression of suffering pride and ferocity. Mme de Rênal was quite troubled by it. The virtuous coldness she had wished to give her welcome gave way to the expression of interest, and of an interest animated by all the surprise of the sudden change she had just seen. The empty words one addresses in the morning about health, about the beauty of the day, dried up at once in both of them. Julien, whose judgment was troubled by no passion, very quickly found a means of marking to Mme de Rênal how little he considered himself with her in relations of friendship; he said nothing to her of the little journey he was about to undertake, bowed to her and left.
As she watched him go, stricken by the dark haughtiness she read in that gaze so kindly the day before, her eldest son, who came running from the end of the garden, said to her, embracing her:
"We have a holiday, M. Julien is leaving on a journey."
At these words, Mme de Rênal felt seized by a mortal cold: she was unhappy through her virtue, and still more unhappy through her weakness.
This new event came to occupy all her imagination; she was carried far beyond the wise resolutions she owed to the terrible night she had just passed. It was no longer a question of resisting this so amiable lover, but of losing him forever.
She had to attend the breakfast. To crown her pain, M. de Rênal and Mme Derville spoke only of Julien's departure. The mayor of Verrières had noticed something unusual in the firm tone with which he had asked for leave.
"This little peasant no doubt has in his pocket propositions from someone. But that someone, were it M. Valenod, must be a little discouraged by the sum of six hundred francs, to which one must now raise the annual outlay. Yesterday at Verrières, a delay of three days to reflect will have been asked; and this morning, so as not to be obliged to give me an answer, the little gentleman sets off for the mountain. To be obliged to reckon with a miserable workman who gives himself airs, that is where we have arrived, nevertheless!"
"Since my husband, who ignores how deeply he has wounded Julien, thinks he will leave us, what am I myself to believe?" said Mme de Rênal. "Ah! all is decided!"
So as to be able at least to weep in freedom, and not answer Mme Derville's questions, she spoke of a frightful headache, and went to bed.
"That is what women are," repeated M. de Rênal, "there is always something out of order in those complicated machines."
And he went off jeering.
While Mme de Rênal was prey to what is cruellest in the terrible passion into which chance had drawn her, Julien gaily pursued his way amid the finest aspects mountain scenes can present. He had to cross the great chain north of Vergy. The path he followed, rising little by little among great beech woods, forms infinite zigzags on the slope of the high mountain which bounds the Doubs valley to the north. Soon the traveler's gaze, passing over the lower hills that contain the course of the Doubs toward the south, extended to the fertile plains of Burgundy and Beaujolais. However insensible the soul of this young ambitious man was to this kind of beauty, he could not help stopping from time to time, to look at a spectacle so vast and imposing.
“Stories of the world, in your language.”