The Red and the Black (13 page)

been in all day. I've held this hand for too short a time for this to count as a victory won.

Just as M
^me
Derville was repeating her suggestion that they go indoors to the
drawing-room, Julien gave a firm squeeze to the hand that had been
abandoned to him.

M
^me
de Rênal, who was already rising from her seat, sat down again and said in expiring tones:

'I do indeed feel a little ill, but the fresh air is doing me good.'

These words confirmed Julien's happiness, which at that moment was
intense. He talked, forgetting all pretence, and seemed the most
agreeable of men to the two friends listening to him. Yet there was
still a lack of courage in this sudden fit of eloquence. He was in
mortal dread that M
^me
Derville, wearied by the wind which
was beginning to get up before the storm, should decide to go indoors
to the drawing-room alone. This would have left him on his own with M
^me
de Rênal. It was almost by chance that he had had the blind courage
which suffices for action; but he sensed that it was beyond his powers
to say the simplest of words to M
^me
de Rênal. However gentle her reproaches, he was going to be defeated, and the advantage he had gained would be wiped out.

Fortunately for him that evening, his moving and grandiloquent speeches found favour with M
^me
Derville, who often found Julien uncouth like a child, and scarcely amusing. As for M
^me
de Rênal, with her hand in Julien's she was not thinking about
anything; she was letting life take its course. The hours they spent
beneath that great lime tree, which according to local tradition had
been planted by Charles the Bold
^*
were a long stretch of happiness for her. She listened in rapture to
the moaning of the wind in the dense foliage of the lime, and the
patter of isolated raindrops which were beginning to fall on its lower
leaves. Julien failed to notice an incident which would have greatly
reassured him: M
^me
de Rênal, who had been obliged to take
her hand out of his because she rose to help her cousin pick up a pot
of flowers which the wind had just blown over at their feet, had no
sooner sat down again than she gave him back her hand with scarcely
any reluctance, as if this were already an agreement between them.

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Midnight had struck long ago; the time came at last to leave the garden. They went their separate ways. M
^me
de Rênal, carried away by the happiness of love, was so innocent that
she hardly reproached herself at all. Happiness drove away sleep. A
leaden sleep took hold of Julien, who was wearied to death by the
battles which had been raging in his heart all day between nervousness
and pride.

The next day he was woken up at five; and--a cruel blow for M
^me
de Rênal had she but known it--he hardly had a thought for her. He had
done his duty
,
his heroic duty
.
Filled with happiness at this thought, he locked himself into his
room and gave himself up with new-found pleasure to reading about
the deeds of his hero.

When the bell
rang for lunch, the bulletins of the Great Army had made him forget
all the advantages he had won the day before. He said casually to
himself as he went downstairs to the drawing-room: I must tell this
woman I love her.

Instead of the
deeply amorous glances he was expecting to encounter, he was greeted
by the stern face of M. de Rênal, who had arrived back from Verrières
two hours previously, and did not hide his displeasure at finding that
Julien had spent the whole morning without attending to the children.
Nothing could be more ugly than this self-important man when he was
out of temper and believed he was entitled to show it.

Each sharp word from her husband pierced M
^me
de Rênal's heart. As for Julien, he was so deep in ecstasy, so
preoccupied still with the great happenings which had unfurled before
his eyes for hours on end, that at first he could scarcely bring his
attention down to the level required to take in the harsh words with
M. de Rênal was uttering. In the end he said rather abruptly:

'I was ill.'

The tone of this reply would have stung a man far less touchy than
the mayor of Verritres. It crossed his mind to answer Julien by
dismissing him forthwith. He was only prevented from doing so by the
maxim he had adopted of never showing undue haste in business.

This young fool, he soon said to himself, has acquired something of a reputation in my house; Valenod may offer him

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employment, or else he will marry Elisa, and in either case he will be able to mock me deep down in his heart.

For all his wise thoughts, M. de Rênal none the less gave vent to a
stream of coarse language which began to exasperate Julien. M
^me
de Rênal was on the point of bursting into tears. No sooner was lunch
over than she asked Julien to give her his arm for a walk, and leaned
on him in a gesture of friendliness. But to everything that M
^me
de Rênal said to him Julien could only mutter in reply:

'That's the rich for you!'

M. de Rênal was walking close beside them; his presence increased Julien's anger. He noticed suddenly that M
^me
de Rênal was leaning on his arm in a marked manner; this gesture
appalled him, he pushed her violently away and freed his arm.

Luckily M. de Rênal did not see this fresh piece of impertinence. It was only observed by M
^me
Derville: her friend was overcome with tears. At that moment M. de
Rênal began to throw stones to drive off a peasant girl who had taken a
wrong path and was crossing the corner of the orchard.

'Monsieur Julien, I beg you, control yourself; consider that we all have our moments of ill-temper,' said M
^me
Derville quickly.

Julien looked coldly at her with eyes which reflected the most supreme disdain.

His look astonished M
^me
Derville, and would have done so even more if she had fathomed what
it really expressed. She would have read in it a glimpse of hope of
the most atrocious revenge. It is doubtless such moments of
humiliation that create the Robespierres
^*
of this world.

'This Julien of yours is very aggressive, he frightens me,' M
^me
Derville said to her friend in a low voice.

'He has every reason to be angry,' the latter replied. 'After the
astonishing progress which the children have made at his hands, what
does it matter if he spends one morning without speaking to them. You
must agree that men are very hard.'

For the first time in her life, M
^me
de Rênal felt a kind of desire to get her revenge on her husband. The
dire hatred which Julien was nursing against the rich was about to
explode. Fortunately M. de Rênal summoned his gardener and was kept

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busy getting him to block off the illicit path across the orchard
with bundles of thorny twigs. Julien did not utter a single word in
response to the solicitous attentions paid to him during the remainder
of the walk. M. de Rênal had hardly left them before the two friends,
claiming to be tired, had each of them asked him for an arm.

Flanked by these two women whose cheeks were flushed with deep
embarrassment and discomfiture, Julien's haughty pallor and his glum
and resolute air formed an odd contrast. He despised these women and
every kind of tender feeling.

So! he
said to himself. I don't even get an income of five hundred francs to
finish my studies! Wouldn't I just like to tell him where he gets off!
Absorbed by these harsh thoughts, he was irritated by what little he
deigned to take in of the two friends' soothing words: they struck him
as empty, silly, ineffectual--in a word,
feminine.

In the course of talking for the sake of talking, and trying to keep the conversation alive, M
^me
de Rênal chanced to mention that her husband had returned from
Verrières because he had done a deal for some maize straw with one of
his farmers. (In this part of the country, maize straw is used to fill
undermattresses.)

'My husband won't be joining us again,' added M
^me
de Rênal. 'With the help of the gardener and his valet, he'll be
busy finishing off the job of renewing the mattresses in the house.
This morning he put maize straw in all the beds on the first floor,
and now he's on to the second.'

Julien changed colour; he gave M
^me
de Rênal a strange look and soon drew her aside, as it were, by quickening his pace. M
^me
Derville let them go on ahead.

'Please save my life,' he said to M
^me
de Rênal, 'only you can do it; for you know the valet loathes me
mercilessly. I must confess to you, madam, that I have a portrait;
I've hidden it inside the under-mattress on my bed.'

At these words M
^me
de Rênal grew pale in her turn.

'You alone, madam, can go into my room right now; please search,
without letting anyone see what you are doing, in the comer of the
under-mattress nearest to the window, and you'll find a little box of
smooth black cardboard.'

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'And there's a portrait inside it!' said M
^me
de Rênal, scarcely able to remain on her feet.

Her demoralized look did not pass unnoticed by Julien, who hastened to take advantage of it.

'I've a second favour to ask of you, madam: I beg you not to look at this portrait, it's my secret.'

'It's a secret!' repeated M
^me
de Rênal in a faint voice.

But although she had been brought up among people proud of their
fortunes, and only moved by financial interest, love had already
planted generosity in M
^me
de Rênal's heart. Cruelly wounded
as she was, she had an air of the most straightforward devotion when
she asked Julien the necessary questions to enable her to carry out
her errand properly.

'So,' she said to him as she went off, 'it's a little round box of black cardboard, nice and smooth.'

'Yes, madam,' Julien replied with the hard look which danger gives to men.

She went up to the second floor of the house, as pale as if she were
going to her death. To complete her wretchedness, she felt herself on
the point of being taken ill; but the necessity of doing Julien a
service restored strength to her.

'I must have that box,' she said to herself as she quickened her step.

She heard her husband talking to his valet in Julien's very room.
Luckily they went through into the children's bedroom. She lifted the
mattress and plunged her hand into the straw underneath it with such
violence that she took some of the skin off her fingers. But although
she was very sensitive to minor pain of this kind, she was unaware of
anything on this occasion, for almost simultaneously she felt the
smooth surface of the cardboard box. She seized it and slipped away.

No sooner was she relieved of the fear of being surprised by her
husband than the horror instilled in her by the box almost caused her
to be well and truly taken ill.

So Julien's in love, and I've got the portrait of the woman he loves in there!

Sitting on a chair in the entrance to this set of rooms, M
^me
de Rênal was racked by all the torments of jealousy. Her extreme ignorance was again of service to her at the moment,

-62-

since her pain was tempered by astonishment. Julien appeared, seized
the box without a word of thanks or any other kind, and ran into his
room where he lit a fire and burned it on the spot. He was pale and
shattered, greatly exaggerating the extent of the risk he had just
run.

Napoleon's portrait, he said to
himself, shaking his head, found hidden in the room of a man who
openly professes such hatred for the usurper! found by M. de Rênal,
such an extreme
Ultra
and in such a state of anger! and to
crown my rashness, on the white card at the back of the portrait there
are lines written in my own hand, which leave no doubt about the
excess of my admiration! And each of these passionate outbursts is
dated--there's one from the day before yesterday!

All my reputation gone, destroyed in a moment! said Julien to himself
as he saw the box go up in flames, and my reputation is my only
asset; it's all I have to live by . . . and what a life at that, by
God!

An hour later, fatigue and self-pity inclined him towards a tender mood. On meeting M
^me
de Rênal he took her hand and kissed it with more sincerity than he
had ever shown. She blushed with happiness and almost at the same
instant pushed Julien away with jealous anger. His pride, which had
been so recently wounded, made him act foolishly at that point. All he
saw in M
^me
de Rênal was a rich woman; he let go of her
hand with disdain and strode off. He went and walked round the
garden, deep in thought. Soon a bitter smile appeared on his lips.

Here I am walking about undisturbed like a man who is master of his
own time! I'm not looking after the children! I'm laying myself open
to being humiliated by M. de Rênal, and he'll be quite right. Julien
ran to the children's room.

The caresses of the youngest boy, for whom he had much affection, soothed his burning pain a little.

He at least doesn't despise me yet, Julien thought. But soon he
reproached himself with this diminution of his pain as a fresh sign of
weakness. These children fondle me just as they would the hunting pup
that was bought yesterday.

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