The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830
listened to the brief account which she had asked for of his journey.
Fouqué had had plans of marriage, and unhappy love affairs, and long
confidences on this subject had formed the staple of the two friends'
conversation. Having found happiness too soon, Fouqué had realised
that he was not the only one who was loved. All these accounts had
astonished Julien. He had learnt many new things. His solitary life of
imagination and suspicion had kept him remote from anything which could
enlighten him.
During his absence, life had been nothing for Madame de Rênal but a
series of tortures, which, though different, were all unbearable. She
was really ill.
"Now mind," said Madame Derville to her when she saw Julien arrive,
"you don't go into the garden this evening in your weak state; the damp
air will make your complaint twice as bad."
Madame Derville was surprised to see that her friend, who was always
scolded by M. de Rênal by reason of the excessive simplicity of her
dress, had just got some open-work stockings and some charming little
shoes which had come from Paris. For three days Madame de Rênal's only
distraction had been to cut out a summer dress of a pretty little
material which was very fashionable, and get it made with express speed
by Elisa. This dress could scarcely have been finished a few moments
before Julien's arrival, but Madame de Rênal put it on immediately. Her
friend had no longer any doubt. "She loves," unhappy woman, said Madame
Derville to herself. She understood all the strange symptoms of the
malady.
She saw her speak to Julien. The most violent blush was succeeded by
pallor. Anxiety was depicted in her eyes, which were riveted on those
of the young tutor. Madame de Rênal expected every minute that he would
give an explanation of his conduct, and announce that he was either
going to leave the house or stay there. Julien carefully avoided that
subject, and did not even think of it. After terrible struggles, Madame
de Rênal eventually dared to say to him in a trembling voice that
mirrored all her passion:
"Are you going to leave your pupils to take another place?"
Julien was struck by Madame de Rênal's hesitating voice and look.
"That woman loves me," he said to himself! "But after this temporary
moment of weakness, for which her pride is no doubt reproaching her,
and as soon as she has ceased fearing that I shall leave, she will be
as haughty as ever." This view of their mutual position passed through
Julien's mind as rapidly as a flash of lightning. He answered with some
hesitation,
"I shall be extremely distressed to leave children who are so nice
and so well-born, but perhaps it will be necessary. One has duties to
oneself as well."
As he pronounced the expression, "well-born" (it was one of those
aristocratic phrases which Julien had recently learnt), he became
animated by a profound feeling of antipathy.
"I am not well-born," he said to himself, "in that woman's eyes."
As Madame de Rênal listened to him, she admired his genius and his
beauty, and the hinted possibility of his departure pierced her
heart. All her friends at Verrières who had come to dine at Vergy
during Julien's absence had complimented her almost jealously on the
astonishing man whom her husband had had the good fortune to unearth.
It was not that they understood anything about the progress of
children. The feat of knowing his Bible by heart, and what is more, of
knowing it in Latin, had struck the inhabitants of Verrières with an
admiration which will last perhaps a century.
Julien, who never spoke to anyone, was ignorant of all this. If Madame
de Rênal had possessed the slightest presence of mind, she would have
complimented him on the reputation which he had won, and Julien's
pride, once satisfied, he would have been sweet and amiable towards
her, especially as he thought her new dress charming. Madame de Rênal
was also pleased with her pretty dress, and with what Julien had
said to her about it, and wanted to walk round the garden. But she
soon confessed that she was incapable of walking. She had taken the
traveller's arm, and the contact of that arm, far from increasing her
strength, deprived her of it completely.
It was night. They had scarcely sat down before Julien, availing
himself of his old privilege, dared to bring his lips near his pretty
neighbour's arm, and to take her hand. He kept thinking of the boldness
which Fouqué had exhibited with his mistresses and not of Madame de
Rênal; the word "well-born" was still heavy on his heart. He felt his
hand pressed, but experienced no pleasure. So far from his being proud,
or even grateful for the sentiment that Madame de Rênal was betraying
that evening by only too evident signs, he was almost insensible to
her beauty, her elegance, and her freshness. Purity of soul, and the
absence of all hateful emotion, doubtless prolong the duration of
youth. It is the face which ages first with the majority of women.
Julien sulked all the evening. Up to the present he had only been angry
with the social order, but from that time that Fouqué had offered him
an ignoble means of obtaining a competency, he was irritated with
himself. Julien was so engrossed in his thoughts, that, although from
time to time he said a few words to the ladies, he eventually let go
Madame de Rênal's hand without noticing it. This action overwhelmed the
soul of the poor woman. She saw in it her whole fate.
If she had been certain of Julien's affection, her virtue would
possibly have found strength to resist him. But trembling lest she
should lose him for ever, she was distracted by her passion to
the point of taking again Julien's hand, which he had left in his
absent-mindedness leaning on the back of the chair. This action woke up
this ambitious youth; he would have liked to have had for witnesses all
those proud nobles who had regarded him at meals, when he was at the
bottom of the table with the children, with so condescending a smile.
"That woman cannot despise me; in that case," he said to himself. "I
ought to shew my appreciation of her beauty. I owe it to myself to be
her lover." That idea would not have occurred to him before the naïve
confidences which his friend had made.
The sudden resolution which he had just made formed an agreeable
distraction. He kept saying to himself, "I must have one of those two
women;" he realised that he would have very much preferred to have
paid court to Madame Derville. It was not that she was more agreeable,
but that she had always seen him as the tutor distinguished by his
knowledge, and not as the journeyman carpenter with his cloth jacket
folded under his arm as he had first appeared to Madame de Rênal.
It was precisely as a young workman, blushing up to the whites of his
eyes, standing by the door of the house and not daring to ring, that he
made the most alluring appeal to Madame de Rênal's imagination.
As he went on reviewing his position, Julien saw that the conquest of
Madame Derville, who had probably noticed the taste which Madame de
Rênal was manifesting for him, was out of the question. He was thus
brought back to the latter lady. "What do I know of the character of
that woman?" said Julien to himself. "Only this: before my journey, I
used to take her hand, and she used to take it away. To-day, I take my
hand away, and she seizes and presses it. A fine opportunity to pay her
back all the contempt she had had for me. God knows how many lovers she
has had, probably she is only deciding in my favour by reason of the
easiness of assignations."
Such, alas, is the misfortune of an excessive civilisation. The soul
of a young man of twenty, possessed of any education, is a thousand
leagues away from that _abandon_ without which love is frequently but
the most tedious of duties.
"I owe it all the more to myself," went on the petty vanity of Julien,
"to succeed with that woman, by reason of the fact that if I ever make
a fortune, and I am reproached by anyone with my menial position as a
tutor, I shall then be able to give out that it was love which got me
the post."
Julien again took his hand away from Madame de Rênal, and then took her
hand again and pressed it. As they went back to the drawing-room about
midnight, Madame de Rênal said to him in a whisper.
"You are leaving us, you are going?"
Julien answered with a sigh.
"I absolutely must leave, for I love you passionately. It is wrong
... how wrong indeed for a young priest?" Madame de Rênal leant upon
his arm, and with so much abandon that her cheek felt the warmth of
Julien's.
The nights of these two persons were quite different. Madame de
Rênal was exalted by the ecstacies of the highest moral pleasure. A
coquettish young girl, who loves early in life, gets habituated to
the trouble of love, and when she reaches the age of real passion,
finds the charm of novelty lacking. As Madame de Rênal had never read
any novels, all the refinements of her happiness were new to her. No
mournful truth came to chill her, not even the spectre of the future.
She imagined herself as happy in ten years' time as she was at the
present moment. Even the idea of virtue and of her sworn fidelity to M.
de Rênal, which had agitated her some days past, now presented itself
in vain, and was sent about its business like an importunate visitor.
"I will never grant anything to Julien," said Madame de Rênal; "we will
live in the future like we have been living for the last month. He
shall be a friend."
CHAPTER XIV
THE ENGLISH SCISSORS
A young girl of sixteen had a pink complexion, and yet
used red rouge.--_Polidori_.
Fouqué's offer had, as a matter of fact, taken away all Julien's
happiness; he could not make up his mind to any definite course. "Alas!
perhaps I am lacking in character. I should have been a bad soldier of
Napoleon. At least," he added, "my little intrigue with the mistress of
the house will distract me a little."
Happily for him, even in this little subordinate incident, his inner
emotions quite failed to correspond with his flippant words. He was
frightened of Madame de Rênal because of her pretty dress. In his
eyes, that dress was a vanguard of Paris. His pride refused to leave
anything to chance and the inspiration of the moment. He made himself
a very minute plan of campaign, moulded on the confidences of Fouqué,
and a little that he had read about love in the Bible. As he was very
nervous, though he did not admit it to himself, he wrote down this plan.
Madame de Rênal was alone with him for a moment in the drawing-room on
the following morning.
"Have you no other name except Julien," she said.
Our hero was at a loss to answer so nattering a question. This
circumstance had not been anticipated in his plan. If he had not been
stupid enough to have made a plan, Julien's quick wit would have served
him well, and the surprise would only have intensified the quickness of
his perception.
He was clumsy, and exaggerated his clumsiness, Madame de Rênal quickly
forgave him. She attributed it to a charming frankness. And an air of
frankness was the very thing which in her view was just lacking in this
man who was acknowledged to have so much genius.
"That little tutor of yours inspires me with a great deal of
suspicion," said Madame Derville to her sometimes. "I think he looks as
if he were always thinking, and he never acts without calculation. He
is a sly fox."
Julien remained profoundly humiliated by the misfortune of not having
known what answer to make to Madame de Rênal.
"A man like I am ought to make up for this check!" and seizing the
moment when they were passing from one room to another, he thought it
was his duty to give Madame de Rênal a kiss.