The Red and the Black (9 page)

by a wholly pleasurable sensation; never had so charming an
apparition come as a sequel to such alarming fears. So these lovely
children of hers, the objects of her tender care, wouldn't fall into
the hands of a dirty, ill-tempered priest. As soon as she was inside
the hall she turned to face Julien who was timidly following her. His
look of astonishment at the sight of such a fine house was a further
source of charm to M
^me
de Rênal. She couldn't believe her eyes; it seemed to her that the tutor would surely be wearing a black suit.

'But is it true, sir,' she asked him with the same hesitation and in
mortal dread of being wrong, so great was the happiness her
supposition gave her, 'that you really know Latin?'

These words wounded Julien's pride and broke the spell he had been living under for the past quarter of an hour.

'Yes, madam,' he replied, endeavouring to muster a chilly look, 'I
know Latin as well as Father Chélan does, and he's sometimes even good
enough to say better.'

M
^me
de Rênal thought Julien had a very fierce look on his face; he had
stopped some feet away from her. She went up to him and said quietly:
'You won't give my children the cane, will you, not the first few
days, even if they don't know their lessons?'

A voice so gentle and almost pleading from a lady of such beauty
caused Julien to forget at once what he owed to his reputation as a
Latin scholar. M
^me
de Rênal's face was close to his, and he
caught the fragrance of a woman's summer clothes--something quite
breathtaking to a simple peasant. Julien blushed deeply and said with a
sigh in scarcely audible tones: 'Never fear, madam, I shall obey your
every word.'

It was only at that moment, when her anxiety about her children was completely dispelled, that M
^me
de Rênal was struck by how extremely good-looking Julien was. The
almost feminine cast of his features and his air of embarrassment did
not appear at all ridiculous to a woman who was excessively shy
herself. She would have been frightened by the overt masculinity which
is commonly thought an essential ingredient of good looks in a man.

'How old are you, sir?' she asked Julien.

'Nearly nineteen.'

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'My eldest son is eleven,' M
^me
de Rênal went on, completely reassured, 'he'll almost be a companion
for you; you'll be able to reason with him. His father once decided to
thrash him, and the child was ill for a whole week, even though he
wasn't beaten at all hard.'

How different things are for me, thought Julien. Only yesterday my father beat me. How lucky these rich people are!

M
^me
de Rênal had already reached the stage of reading what was going on
in the tutor's mind, down to the finest subtleties. She took his
wistful expression for shyness and tried to encourage him.

'What's your name, sir?' she asked with a delicacy of tone which
thoroughly charmed Julien's feelings, although he was quite unaware of
what was going on.

'I'm called
Julien Sorel, madam. I'm very nervous at coming into a strange
household for the first time in my life; I shall need you to protect
me and to forgive me a good many things in the early days. I never
went to secondary school, I was too poor. I've never talked seriously
to anyone apart from my cousin the army surgeon who's a member of the
Legion of Honour, and Father Chélan our priest. He'll put in a good
word for me. My brothers have always beaten me: don't believe them if
they say nasty things about me to you. Forgive my mistakes, madam; I
shall never intend any wrong.'

Julien
was gaining confidence during this long speech. He looked closely at
Mme de Rênal. Such is the effect of perfect grace when it is a natural
part of someone's character-especially when the person it adorns does
not take pains to cultivate it--that Julien, who was a great
connoisseur of feminine beauty, would have sworn at that moment that
she was no more than twenty. He was at once struck with the bold
idea of kissing her hand. He soon took fright at his idea, but a
moment later said to himself: It would be cowardice on my part not to
carry out an action which may prove useful to me, and lessen the
disdain which this beautiful lady probably feels for a poor workman
only just wrested from his saw. Possibly Julien felt somewhat
encouraged at remembering the term
handsome lad
which he had heard some of the girls use a number of times on Sundays over the last six months. While

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this inner debate was going on, M
^me
de Rênal had been giving him one or two words of instruction on how
to make a start with the children. Julien's struggle to take hold of
himself made him turn very pale again, and he said awkwardly:

'I'll never beat your children, madam; I swear before God I won't.'

As he uttered these words, he plucked up the courage to take M
^me
de Rênal's hand and raise it to his lips. She was astonished at his
gesture, and when she thought about it, shocked. As the weather was
very hot, her arm was quite bare under her shawl, and it had been
completely uncovered when Julien raised her hand to his lips. After a
moment or so she was cross with herself, feeling that she had not been
quick enough to take offence.

Hearing the sound of voices M. de Rênal came out of his study and said
to Julien with the solemnity and smooth condescension he assumed when
officiating at weddings in the town hall: 'It is essential that I
have a word with you before the children see you.'

He ushered Julien into a room and asked his wife to remain with them,
despite her desire to leave them alone. Once the door was shut, M. de
Rênal sat down gravely.

' Father
Chélan tells me you are diligent and well-behaved. Everyone here will
treat you with respect, and if I am pleased with you I shall arrange a
modest settlement for you at a later date. My wish is that you should
have no further dealings with your family or friends, as their
manners are not fitting for my children. Here are thirty-six francs
for the first month; but I must have your word that you will not give a
single penny of this money to your father.'

M. de Rênal was furious with the old man for having been more cunning than himself over this deal.

'Now,
sir
--for
everyone here is under orders to call you "sir", and you will
appreciate the advantage of entering a respectable household--now,
sir, it is not appropriate for the children to see you dressed in a
jacket. Have the servants seen him?' M. de Rênal asked his wife.

'No, my dear,' she replied, looking deeply pensive.

'So much the better. Put this on,' he said to the astonished

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young man, handing him one of his own frock-coats. 'And now we shall call on M. Durand, the draper.'

When, over an hour later, M. de Rênal returned home with the new
tutor dressed entirely in black, he found his wife sitting in the same
spot. She felt her peace of mind return in Julien's presence:
studying him closely made her forget to be afraid of him. Julien had
no thoughts for her; despite all his mistrust of fate and of mankind,
he was at that moment still only a child at heart. It seemed to him
that aeons had passed since that moment three hours ago when he had
stood trembling in the church. He noticed how aloof M
^me
de
Rênal was looking, and took it she was angry because he had dared to
kiss her hand. But the sense of pride he derived from the feel of
clothes so unlike the ones he was accustomed to wearing put him in
such an abnormal state of excitement, and he was so anxious to hide
his delight, that every movement he made seemed jerky and
uncontrolled. M
^me
de Rênal gazed at him with astonishment in her eyes.

'A little gravity, sir,' said M. de Rênal to Julien, 'if you wish to be respected by my children and my servants.'

'Sir,' replied Julien, 'I feel uncomfortable in these new clothes.
I'm only a poor peasant, and I've never worn anything but jackets.
With your permission, I'll go and retire to my room.'

'What is your opinion of our new acquisition?' M. de Rênal asked his wife.

In an almost instinctive reaction--one which certainly escaped her conscious awareness--M
^me
de Rênal concealed the truth from her husband.

'I'm by no means as delighted as you are with this peasant lad. Your
attentions will give him ideas above his station, and you'll be
obliged to dismiss him before the month is up.'

'Well then! we'll dismiss him; it will have cost me a hundred francs
or so at most, and Verrières will have grown used to seeing a tutor in
charge of M. de Rênal's children. This end could not have been
achieved if I had left Julien in workman's attire. When I dismiss him,
I shall of course retain the full black suit I've just ordered from
the draper. He will only keep

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what I found ready-made at the the tailor's, and had him put on.'

The hour that Julien spent in his room seemed a brief moment to Mme
de Rênal. The children, who had been told of the new tutor's arrival,
were besieging their mother with questions. At last Julien made his
appearance. He was a changed man. It would have been incorrect to say
that he was grave: he was gravity incarnate. He was introduced to the
children, and spoke to them in a manner which astonished even M. de
Rênal.

'I am here, young gentlemen,'
he said to them as he wound up his address, 'to teach you Latin. You
know what it means to say your lessons. Here is the Holy Bible,' he
went on, showing them a pocket-sized volume bound in black. 'More
specifically it is the story of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the part we
call the New Testament. I shall often have you say your lessons, so
now you take me through mine.'

Adolphe, the eldest of the three children, had taken the book.

'Open it up--at random,' Julien continued, 'and give me the first
word of any verse. I shall recite the Holy Book, which we all must
live by, word for word until you stop me.'

Adolphe opened the book and read out a word, and Julien recited the
whole page as fluently as if he had been speaking his native tongue.
M. de Rênal gazed at his wife in triumph. The children, seeing their
parents' astonishment, were looking on wide-eyed. A servant came to
the drawing-room door, and still Julien went on speaking Latin. The
servant stood stockstill at first, and then vanished. Soon the
mistress's chambermaid and the cook appeared at the door; by then
Adolphe had already opened the book in eight different places, and
Julien was still reciting with the same fluency.

'Bless my soul! there's a fine young priest for you!' exclaimed the cook, who was a good-hearted and very pious girl.

M. de Rênal's self-esteem was bothering him. Far from thinking of
putting the tutor to the test, he was wholly engrossed in racking his
brains for a few words of Latin. He eventually managed to bring out a
line of Horace. Julien's only Latin was the Bible. He replied with a
frown: 'The sacred

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ministry which is my calling forbids me to read so profane a poet.'

M. de Rênal quoted a fair number of lines purportedly from Horace. He
told his children all about Horace, but the children were so struck
with admiration that they scarcely paid any attention to what he was
saying. They were gazing at Julien.

As the servants were still at the door, Julien thought it right to prolong the ordeal.

'Now,' he said to the youngest of the children, ' Master Stanislas-Xavier must also give me a passage from the Holy Book.'

Little Stanislas, bursting with pride, read out the first word of a
verse as best he could, and Julien recited the whole page. To complete
M. de Rênal's triumph, while Julien was in the midst of reciting, in
came M. Valenod, the owner of the fine Normandy cobs, and M. Charcot
de Maugiron, the subprefect
^*
of the district. This scene earned Julien his title of sir: even the servants did not dare withhold it from him.

That evening the whole of Verrières flocked to M. de Rênal's house to
see the wonder. Julien replied to everyone in gloomy tones which
discouraged familiarity. His fame spread so fast through the town that
a few days later M. de Rênal, fearful of losing him to someone else,
invited him to sign an undertaking for two years.

'No, sir,' replied Julien coldly, 'if you wanted to dismiss me, I
should be obliged to leave. An undertaking which is binding on me
without putting you under any obligation is not equitable, and I
cannot accept it.'

Julien handled
matters so skilfully that less than a month after his arrival in the
house, he was even respected by M. de Rênal himself. As the priest was
on bad terms with both M. de Rênal and M. Valenod, there was no one
to betray Julien's former passion for Napoleon, and he never spoke of
him but with horror.

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Their only way of touching a heart is to wound it. MODERN AUTHOR

THE children adored him, but he did not like them at all: his mind
was on other things. Whatever the little rascals did, he never lost
his patience. He was a good tutor to them--cold, fair, imperturbable
and yet much loved, because his arrival had somehow dispelled the
boredom in the house. For his part he felt nothing but hatred and
loathing towards the high society he had been admitted to, right down
at the bottom end of the table, it's true, which perhaps explains the
hatred and the loathing. There were some ceremonial dinners where he
had great difficulty in containing his hatred for everything
surrounding him. On one occasion--it was the feast of St Louis
^*
--when M. Valenod was holding forth at M. de Rênal's house, Julien
was on the point of giving himself away; he escaped into the garden,
saying he wanted to see what the children were up to. All this praise
of honesty! he exclaimed, you'd think it was the only virtue there
was. And yet what esteem, what servile respect for a man whose fortune
has obviously doubled and even tripled since he's been in charge of
the workhouse! I'm ready to bet he even makes a profit on the funds
set aside for the foundlings, those paupers whose wretchedness gives
them a more sacred claim than anyone else! Ah! what monsters! what
monsters! I too am a sort of foundling, hated by my father, my
brothers and my whole family.

A few
days before the feast of St Louis, when Julien had been out walking
alone reciting his prayer book in a little wood called the Belvedere
which overlooks the Avenue de la Fidélité, he had tried in vain to
avoid meeting his two brothers whom he could see from a distance
coming towards him down a lonely path. Such jealousy had been stirred
up in these two coarse labourers by their brother's fine black suit,
by his

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