Madame de Rênal's mind had now reached a state of desperation. In spite of her resolutions, she had explained to Julien all the details of the auction. “He will make me forget all my oaths!” she thought.
She would have sacrificed her life without hesitation to save that of her husband if she had seen him in danger. She was one of those noble, romantic souls who find a source of perpetual remorse equal to that occasioned by the actual perpetration of a crime, in seeing the possibility of a generous action and not doing it. None the less, there were deadly days when she was not able to banish the imagination of the excessive happiness which she would enjoy if she suddenly became a widow, and were able to marry Julien.
He loved her sons much more than their father did; in spite of his strict justice they were devoted to him. She quite realised that if she married Julien, it would be necessary to leave that Vergy, whose shades were so dear to her. She pictured herself living at Paris, and continuing to give her sons an education which would make them admired by everyone. Her children, herself, and Julien! They would be all perfectly happy!
Strange result of marriage such as the nineteenth century has made it! The boredom of matrimonial life makes love fade away inevitably, when love has preceded the marriage. But none the less, said a philosopher, married life soon reduces those people who are sufficiently rich not to have to work, to a sense of being utterly bored by all quiet enjoyments. And among women, it is only arid souls whom it does not predispose to love.
The philosopher's reflection makes me excuse Madame de Rênal, but she was not excused in Verrières, and without her suspecting it, the whole town found its sole topic of interest in the scandal of her intrigue. As a result of this great affair, the autumn was less boring than usual.
The autumn and part of the winter passed very quickly. It was necessary to leave the woods of Vergy. Good Verrières society began to be indignant at the fact that its anathemas made so little impression on Monsieur de Rênal. Within eight days, several serious personages who made up for their habitual gravity of demeanour by their pleasure in fulfilling missions of this kind, gave him the most cruel suspicions, at the same time utilising the most measured terms.
M. Valenod, who was playing a deep game, had placed Elisa in an aristocratic family of great repute, where there were five women. Elisa, fearing, so she said, not to find a place during the winter, had only asked from this family about two-thirds of what she had received in the house of the mayor. The girl hit upon the excellent idea of going to confession at the same time to both the old curé Chélan, and also to the new one, so as to tell both of them in detail about Julien's amours.
The day after his arrival, the Abbé Chélan summoned Julien to him at six o'clock in the morning.
“I ask you nothing,” he said. “I beg you, and if needs be I insist, that you either leave for the Seminary of Besançon, or for your friend Fouqué, who is always ready to provide you with a splendid future. I have seen to everything and have arranged everything, but you must leave, and not come back to Verrières for a year.”
Julien did not answer. He was considering whether his honour ought to regard itself offended at the trouble which Chélan, who, after all, was not his father, had taken on his behalf.
“I shall have the honour of seeing you again to-morrow at the same hour,” he said finally to the curé.
Chélan, who reckoned on carrying so young a man by storm, talked a great deal. Julien, cloaked in the most complete humbleness, both of demeanour and expression, did not open his lips.
Eventually he left, and ran to warn Madame de Rênal whom he found in despair. Her husband had just spoken to her with a certain amount of frankness. The weakness of his character found support in the prospect of the legacy, and had decided him to treat her as perfectly innocent. He had just confessed to her the strange state in which he had found public opinion in Verrières. The public was wrong; it had been misled by jealous tongues. But, after all, what was one to do?
Madame de Rênal was, for the moment, under the illusion that Julien would accept the offer of Valenod and stay at Verrières. But she was no longer the simple, timid woman that she had been the preceding year. Her fatal passion and remorse had enlightened her. She soon realised the painful truth (while at the same time she listened to her husband), that at any rate a temporary separation had become essential.
When he is far from me, Julien will revert to those ambitious projects which are so natural when one has no money. And I, Great God! I am so rich, and my riches are so useless for my happiness. He will forget me. Loveable as he is, he will be loved, and he will love. You unhappy woman. What can I complain of? Heaven is just. I was not virtuous enough to leave off the crime. Fate robs me of my judgment. I could easily have bribed Elisa if I had wanted to; nothing was easier. I did not take the trouble to reflect for a moment. The mad imagination of love absorbed all my time. I am ruined.
When Julien apprised Madame de Rênal of the terrible news of his departure, he was struck with one thing. He did not find her putting forward any selfish objections. She was evidently making efforts not to cry.
“We have need of firmness, my dear.” She cut off a strand of her hair. “I do not know what I shall do,” she said to him, “but promise me if I die, never to forget my children. Whether you are far or near, try to make them into honest men. If there is a new revolution, all the nobles will have their throats cut. Their father will probably emigrate, because of that peasant on the roof who got killed. Watch over my family. Give me your hand. Adieu, my dear. These are our last moments. Having made this great sacrifice, I hope I shall have the courage to consider my reputation in public.”
Julien had been expecting despair. The simplicity of this farewell touched him.
“No, I am not going to receive your farewell like this. I will leave you now, as you yourself wish it. But three days after my departure I will come back to see you at night.”
Madame de Rênal's life was changed. So Julien really loved her, since of his own accord he had thought of seeing her again. Her awful grief became changed into one of the keenest transports of joy which she had felt in her whole life. Everything became easy for her. The certainty of seeing her lover deprived these last moments of their poignancy. From that moment, both Madame de Rênal's demeanour and the expression of her face were noble, firm, and perfectly dignified.
M. de Rênal soon came back. He was beside himself. He eventually mentioned to his wife the anonymous letter which he had received two months before.
“I will take it to the Casino, and shew everybody that it has been sent by that brute Valenod, whom I took out of the gutter and made into one of the richest tradesmen in Verrières. I will disgrace him publicly, and then I will fight him. This is too much.”
“Great Heavens! I may become a widow,” thought Madame de Rênal, and almost at the same time she said to herself,
“If I do not, as I certainly can, prevent this duel, I shall be the murderess of my own husband.”
She had never expended so much skill in honoring his vanity. Within two hours she made him see, and always by virtue of reasons which he discovered himself, that it was necessary to show more friendship than ever to M. Valenod, and even to take Elisa back into the household.
Madame de Rênal had need of courage to bring herself to see again the girl who was the cause of her unhappiness. But this idea was one of Julien's. Finally, having been put on the track three or four times, M. de Rênal arrived spontaneously at the conclusion, disagreeable though it was from the financial standpoint, that the most painful thing that could happen to him would be that Julien, in the middle of the effervescence of popular gossip throughout Verrières, should stay in the town as the tutor of Valenod's children. It was obviously to Julien's interest to accept the offer of the director of the workhouse. Conversely, it was essential for M. de Rênal's prestige that Julien should leave Verrières to enter the seminary of Besançon or that of Dijon. But how to make him decide on that course? And then how is he going to live?
M. de Rênal, seeing a monetary sacrifice looming in the distance, was in deeper despair than his wife. As for her, she felt after this interview in the position of a man of spirit who, tired of life, has taken a dose of stramonium. He only acts mechanically so to speak, and takes no longer any interest in anything. In this way, Louis XIV. came to say on his deathbed, “When I was King.” An admirable epigram.
Next morning, M. de Rênal received quite early an anonymous letter. It was written in a most insulting style, and the coarsest words applicable to his position occurred on every line. It was the work of some jealous subordinate. This letter made him think again of fighting a duel with Valenod. Soon his courage went as far as the idea of immediate action. He left the house alone, went to the armourer's and got some pistols which he loaded.
“Yes, indeed,” he said to himself, “even though the strict administration of the Emperor Napoleon were to become fashionable again, I should not have one sou's worth of jobbery to reproach myself with; at the outside, I have shut my eyes, and I have some good letters in my desk which authorise me to do so.”
Madame de Rênal was terrified by her husband's cold anger. It recalled to her the fatal idea of widowhood which she had so much trouble in repelling. She closeted herself with him. For several hours she talked to him in vain. The new anonymous letter had decided him. Finally she succeeded in transforming the courage which had decided him to box Valenod's ears, into the courage of offering six hundred francs to Julien, which would keep him for one year in a seminary.
M. de Rênal cursed a thousand times the day that he had had the ill-starred idea of taking a tutor into his house, and forgot the anonymous letter.
He consoled himself a little by an idea which he did not tell his wife. With the exercise of some skill, and by exploiting the romantic ideas of the young man, he hoped to be able to induce him to refuse M. Valenod's offer at a cheaper price.
Madame de Rênal had much more trouble in proving to Julien that inasmuch as he was sacrificing the post of six hundred francs a year in order to enable her husband to keep up appearances, he need have no shame about accepting the compensation. But Julien would say each time, “I have never thought for a moment of accepting that offer. You have made me so used to a refined life that the coarseness of those people would kill me.”
Cruel necessity bent Julien's will with its iron hand. His pride gave him the illusion that he only accepted the sum offered by M. de Rênal as a loan, and induced him to give him a promissory note, repayable in five years with interest.
Madame de Rênal had, of course, many thousands of francs which had been concealed in the little mountain cave.
She offered them to him all a tremble, feeling only too keenly that they would be angrily refused.
“Do you wish,” said Julien to her, “to make the memory of our love loathsome?”
Finally Julien left Verrières. M. de Rênal was very happy, but when the fatal moment came to accept money from him the sacrifice proved beyond Julien's strength. He refused point blank. M. de Rênal embraced him around the neck with tears in his eyes. Julien had asked him for a testimonial of good conduct, and his enthusiasm could find no terms magnificent enough in which to extol his conduct.
Our hero had five louis of savings and he reckoned on asking Fouqué for an equal sum.
He was very moved. But one league from Verrières, where he left so much that was dear to him, he only thought of the happiness of seeing the capital of a great military town like Besançon.
During the short absence of three days, Madame de Rênal was the victim of one of the cruellest deceptions to which love is liable. Her life was tolerable, because between her and extreme unhappiness there was still that last interview which she was to have with Julien.
Finally during the night of the third day, she heard from a distance the preconcerted signal. Julien, having passed through a thousand dangers, appeared before her. In this moment she only had one thoughtâ“I see him for the last time.” Instead of answering the endearments of her lover, she seemed more dead than alive. If she forced herself to tell him that she loved him, she said it with an embarrassed air which almost proved the contrary. Nothing could rid her of the cruel idea of eternal separation. The suspicious Julien thought for the moment that he was already forgotten. His pointed remarks to this effect were only answered by great tears which flowed down in silence, and by some hysterical pressings of the hand.
“But,” Julien would answer his mistress's cold protestations, “Great Heavens! How can you expect me to believe you? You would show one hundred times more sincere affection to Madame Dervilleâto a mere acquaintance.”
Madame de Rênal was petrified, and at a loss for an answer.
“It is impossible to be more unhappy. I hope I am going to die. I feel my heart turn to ice.”
Those were the longest answers which he could obtain.
When the approach of day rendered it necessary for him to leave Madame de Rênal, her tears completely ceased. She saw him tie a knotted rope to the window without saying a word, and without returning her kisses. It was in vain that Julien said to her,
“So now we have reached the state of affairs which you wished for so much. Henceforward you will live without remorse. The slightest indisposition of your children will no longer make you see them in the tomb.”
“I am sorry that you cannot kiss Stanislas,” she said coldly.
Julien finished by being profoundly impressed by the cold embraces of this living corpse. He could think of nothing else for several leagues. His soul was overwhelmed, and before passing the mountain, and while he could still see the church tower of Verrières, he turned round frequently.