The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830
all this going to end? I am wandering.... Anyway you
understand your line of conduct. Be nice, polite, but
not in any way disdainful to those coarse persons. I
ask you on my knees; they will be the arbiters of our
fate. Do not fear for a moment but that, so far as you
are concerned, my husband will conform to what public
opinion lays down for him.
"It is you who will supply me with the anonymous letter.
Equip yourself with patience and a pair of scissors, cut
out from a book the words which you will see, then stick
them with the mouth-glue on to the leaf of loose paper
which I am sending you. It comes to me from M. Valenod.
Be on your guard against a search in your room; burn the
pages of the book which you are going to mutilate. If
you do not find the words ready-made, have the patience
to form them letter by letter. I have made the anonymous
letter too short.
ANONYMOUS LETTER.
'MADAME,
All your little goings-on are known, but the persons
interested in stopping have been warned. I have still
sufficient friendship left for you to urge you to cease
all relations with the little peasant. If you are
sensible enough to do this, your husband will believe
that the notification he has received is misleading, and
he will be left in his illusion. Remember that I have
your secret; tremble, unhappy woman, you must now _walk
straight_ before me.'
"As soon as you have finished glueing together the
words that make up this letter (have you recognised the
director's special style of speech) leave the house, I
will meet you.
"I will go into the village and come back with a
troubled face. As a matter of fact I shall be very much
troubled. Great God! What a risk I run, and all because
you thought you guessed an anonymous letter. Finally,
looking very much upset, I shall give this letter to my
husband and say that an unknown man handed it to me. As
for you, go for a walk with the children, on the road to
the great woods, and do not come back before dinner-time.
"You will be able to see the tower of the dovecot from
the top of the rocks. If things go well for us, I
will place a white handkerchief there, in case of the
contrary, there will be nothing at all.
"Ungrateful man, will not your heart find out some means
of telling me that you love me before you leave for that
walk. Whatever happens, be certain of one thing: I shall
never survive our final separation by a single day.
Oh, you bad mother! but what is the use of my writing
those two words, dear Julien? I do not feel them, at
this moment I can only think of you. I have only written
them so as not to be blamed by you, but what is the good
of deception now that I find myself face to face with
losing you? Yes, let my soul seem monstrous to you,
but do not let me lie to the man whom I adore. I have
already deceived only too much in this life of mine. Go!
I forgive you if you love me no more. I have not the
time to read over my letter. It is a small thing in my
eyes to pay for the happy days that I have just passed
in your arms with the price of my life. You know that
they will cost me more."
CHAPTER XXI
DIALOGUE WITH A MASTER
Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we;
For such as we are made of, such we be.--_Twelfth Night_.
It was with a childish pleasure that for a whole hour Julien put the
words together. As he came out of his room, he met his pupils with
their mother. She took the letter with a simplicity and a courage whose
calmness terrified him.
"Is the mouth-glue dry enough yet?" she asked him.
"And is this the woman who was so maddened by remorse?" he thought.
"What are her plans at this moment?" He was too proud to ask her, but
she had never perhaps pleased him more.
"If this turns out badly," she added with the same coolness, "I shall
be deprived of everything. Take charge of this, and bury it in some
place of the mountain. It will perhaps one day be my only resource."
She gave him a glass case in red morocco filled with gold and some
diamonds.
"Now go," she said to him.
She kissed the children, embracing the youngest twice. Julien remained
motionless. She left him at a rapid pace without looking at him.
From the moment that M. de Rênal had opened the anonymous letter his
life had been awful. He had not been so agitated since a duel which he
had just missed having in 1816, and to do him justice, the prospect of
receiving a bullet would have made him less unhappy. He scrutinised the
letter from every standpoint. "Is that not a woman's handwriting?" he
said to himself. In that case, what woman had written it? He reviewed
all those whom he knew at Verrières without being able to fix his
suspicions on any one. Could a man have dictated that letter? Who
was that man? Equal uncertainty on this point. The majority of his
acquaintances were jealous of him, and, no doubt, hated him. "I must
consult my wife," he said to himself through habit, as he got up from
the arm-chair in which he had collapsed.
"Great God!" he said aloud before he got up, striking his head, "it is
she above all of whom I must be distrustful. At the present moment she
is my enemy," and tears came into his eyes through sheer anger.
By a poetic justice for that hardness of heart which constitutes the
provincial idea of shrewdness, the two men whom M. de Rênal feared the
most at the present moment were his two most intimate friends.
"I have ten friends perhaps after those," and he passed them in review,
gauging the degree of consolation which he could get from each one.
"All of them, all of them," he exclaimed in a rage, "will derive the
most supreme pleasure from my awful experience."
As luck would have it, he thought himself envied, and not without
reason. Apart from his superb town mansion in which the king of ----
had recently spent the night, and thus conferred on it an enduring
honour, he had decorated his château at Vergy extremely well. The
façade was painted white and the windows adorned with fine green
shutters. He was consoled for a moment by the thought of this
magnificence. The fact was that this château was seen from three or
four leagues off, to the great prejudice of all the country houses or
so-called châteaux of the neighbourhood, which had been left in the
humble grey colour given them by time.
There was one of his friends on whose pity and whose tears M. de Rênal
could count, the churchwarden of the parish; but he was an idiot who
cried at everything. This man, however, was his only resource. "What
unhappiness is comparable to mine," he exclaimed with rage. "What
isolation!"
"Is it possible?" said this truly pitiable man to himself. "Is it
possible that I have no friend in my misfortune of whom I can ask
advice? for my mind is wandering, I feel it. Oh, Falcoz! oh, Ducros!"
he exclaimed with bitterness. Those were the names of two friends of
his childhood whom he had dropped owing to his snobbery in 1814. They
were not noble, and he had wished to change the footing of equality on
which they had been living with him since their childhood.
One of them, Falcoz, a paper-merchant of Verrières, and a man of
intellect and spirit, had bought a printing press in the chief town of
the department and undertaken the production of a journal. The priestly
congregation had resolved to ruin him; his journal had been condemned,
and he had been deprived of his printer's diploma. In these sad
circumstances he ventured to write to M. de Rênal for the first time
for ten years. The mayor of Verrières thought it his duty to answer
in the old Roman style: "If the King's Minister were to do me the
honour of consulting me, I should say to him, ruin ruthlessly all the
provincial printers, and make printing a monopoly like tobacco." M. de
Rênal was horrified to remember the terms of this letter to an intimate
friend whom all Verrières had once admired, "Who would have said that
I, with my rank, my fortune, my decorations, would ever come to regret
it?" It was in these transports of rage, directed now against himself,
now against all his surroundings, that he passed an awful night; but,
fortunately, it never occurred to him to spy on his wife.
"I am accustomed to Louise," he said to himself, "she knows all my
affairs. If I were free to marry to-morrow, I should not find anyone to
take her place." Then he began to plume himself on the idea that his
wife was innocent. This point of view did not require any manifestation
of character, and suited him much better. "How many calumniated women
has one not seen?"
"But," he suddenly exclaimed, as he walked about feverishly, "shall I
put up with her making a fool of me with her lover as though I were
a man of no account, some mere ragamuffin? Is all Verrières to make
merry over my complaisance? What have they not said about Charmier
(he was a husband in the district who was notoriously deceived)? Was
there not a smile on every lip at the mention of his name? He is a good
advocate, but whoever said anything about his talent for speaking? 'Oh,
Charmier,' they say, 'Bernard's Charmier,' he is thus designated by the
name of the man who disgraces him."
"I have no daughter, thank heaven," M. de Rênal would say at other
times, "and the way in which I am going to punish the mother will
consequently not be so harmful to my children's household. I could
surprise this little peasant with my wife and kill them both; in that
case the tragedy of the situation would perhaps do away with the
grotesque element." This idea appealed to him. He followed it up in all
its details. "The penal code is on my side, and whatever happens our
congregation and my friends on the jury will save me." He examined his
hunting-knife which was quite sharp, but the idea of blood frightened
him.
"I could thrash this insolent tutor within an inch of his life and
hound him out of the house; but what a sensation that would make in
Verrières and even over the whole department! After Falcoz' journal had
been condemned, and when its chief editor left prison, I had a hand
in making him lose his place of six hundred francs a year. They say
that this scribbler has dared to show himself again in Besançon. He
may lampoon me adroitly and in such a way that it will be impossible
to bring him up before the courts. Bring him up before the courts!
The insolent wretch will insinuate in a thousand and one ways that he
has spoken the truth. A well-born man who keeps his place like I do,
is hated by all the plebeians. I shall see my name in all those awful
Paris papers. Oh, my God, what depths. To see the ancient name of
Rênal plunged in the mire of ridicule. If I ever travel I shall have
to change my name. What! abandon that name which is my glory and my
strength. Could anything be worse than that?
"If I do not kill my wife but turn her out in disgrace, she has her
aunt in Besançon who is going to hand all her fortune over to her.
My wife will go and live in Paris with Julien. It will be known at
Verrières, and I shall be taken for a dupe." The unhappy man then
noticed from the paleness of the lamplight that the dawn was beginning
to appear. He went to get a little fresh air in the garden. At this
moment he had almost determined to make no scandal, particularly in
view of the fact that a scandal would overwhelm with joy all his good