feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_20_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 21
feat_summary_id: part 1, chapter 21
feat_summary: {"name": "Part 1, Chapter 21", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-21", "summary": "Julien finishes putting together the anonymous letter for Madame de Renal and hands it to her. In return, she hands him a box with gold and diamonds in it and asks him to bury it in the mountains. She's afraid that someday she might need it if she's kicked out of her home. Meanwhile, Monsieur Renal stresses about how to bring up the letter he has received with his wife. It's clear that the letter has told him about his wife's affair. The whole thing makes de Renal think about how many men dislike him and how few like him. He even thinks about friends whom he cut ties with when he was younger because they weren't upper class enough. He thinks about beating up Julien and throwing him out of the house. But he knows that this would eventually cause the scandal to become known to everyone in town. He can't stand the thought of having the newspapers drag his name through the mud. Madame de Renal comes up to him with a devastated look on her face. She hands him a letter and says someone from town she didn't recognize just gave it to her. She asks Monsieur to send Julien back to his father as quickly as possible. Monsieur de Renal tells her to stop being an idiot. She waits patiently for him to get all his anger out of his system. Madame plants the suspicion in her husband's head that it is actually the servant Elisa and Valenod who are having an affair. She also tells him that Mr. Valenod has written her many love letters over the years. She shows them to her husband, and this proves that Valenod has a motive for trying to ruin Madame's reputation. The next step is for Madame to convince Monsieur never to confront Valenod about the letters . Madame demands that her husband send Julien away for at least a couple of weeks. He agrees. With all that's happened, Madame still asks Julien to come to her room that night. He thinks she's insane. But of course he comes.", "analysis": ""}
text: 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 Renal 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 Verrieres 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 Renal 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 chateau at Vergy extremely well. The
  facade 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 chateau was seen from three or
  four leagues off, to the great prejudice of all the country houses or
  so-called chateaux 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 Renal
  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 Verrieres, 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 Renal for the first time
  for ten years. The mayor of Verrieres 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
  Renal was horrified to remember the terms of this letter to an intimate
  friend whom all Verrieres 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 Verrieres 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 Renal 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
  Verrieres 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 Besancon. 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
  Renal 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 Besancon 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
  Verrieres, 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
  friends in Verrieres.
  
  The promenade in the garden calmed him a little. "No," he exclaimed,
  "I shall not deprive myself of my wife, she is too useful to me." He
  imagined with horror what his house would be without his wife. The only
  relative he had was the Marquise of R---- old, stupid, and malicious.
  
  A very sensible idea occurred to him, but its execution required a
  strength of character considerably superior to the small amount of
  character which the poor man possessed. "If I keep my wife," he said
  to himself, "I know what I shall do one day; on some occasion when
  she makes me lose patience, I shall reproach her with her guilt. She
  is proud, we shall quarrel, and all this will happen before she has
  inherited her aunt's fortune. And how they will all make fun of me
  then! My wife loves her children, the result will be that everything
  will go to them. But as for me, I shall be the laughing-stock of
  Verrieres. 'What,' they will say, 'he could not even manage to revenge
  himself on his wife!' Would it not be better to leave it and verify
  nothing? In that case I tie my hands, and cannot afterwards reproach
  her with anything."
  
  An instant afterwards M. de Renal, once more a prey to wounded vanity,
  set himself laboriously to recollect all the methods of procedure
  mentioned in the billiard-room of the _Casino_ or the _Nobles' Club_ in
  Verrieres, when some fine talker interrupted the pool to divert himself
  at the expense of some deceived husband. How cruel these pleasantries
  appeared to him at the present moment!
  
  "My God, why is my wife not dead! then I should be impregnable against
  ridicule. Why am I not a widower? I should go and pass six months in
  Paris in the best society. After this moment of happiness occasioned
  by the idea of widowerhood, his imagination reverted to the means of
  assuring himself of the truth. Should he put a slight layer of bran
  before the door of Julien's room at midnight after everyone had gone to
  bed? He would see the impression of the feet in the following morning.
  
  "But that's no good," he suddenly exclaimed with rage. "That
  inquisitive Elisa will notice it, and they will soon know all over the
  house that I am jealous."
  
  In another _Casino_ tale a husband had assured himself of his
  misfortune by tying a hair with a little wax so that it shut the door
  of the gallant as effectually as a seal.
  
  After so many hours of uncertainty this means of clearing up his fate
  seemed to him emphatically the best, and he was thinking of availing
  himself of it when, in one of the turnings of the avenue he met the
  very woman whom he would like to have seen dead. She was coming back
  from the village. She had gone to hear mass in the church of Vergy.
  A tradition, extremely doubtful in the eyes of the cold philosopher,
  but in which she believed, alleges that the little church was once the
  chapel of the chateau of the Lord of Vergy. This idea obsessed Madame
  de Renal all the time in the church that she had counted on spending in
  prayer. She kept on imagining to herself the spectacle of her husband
  killing Julien when out hunting as though by accident, and then making
  her eat his heart in the evening.
  
  "My fate," she said to herself, "depends on what he will think when
  he listens to me. It may be I shall never get another opportunity
  of speaking to him after this fatal quarter of an hour. He is not a
  reasonable person who is governed by his intellect. In that case, with
  the help of my weak intelligence, I could anticipate what he will do or
  say. He will decide our common fate. He has the power. But this fate
  depends on my adroitness, on my skill in directing the ideas of this
  crank, who is blinded by his rage and unable to see half of what takes
  place. Great God! I need talent and coolness, where shall I get it?"
  
  She regained her calmness as though by magic, and she entered the
  garden and saw her husband in the distance. His dishevelled hair and
  disordered dress showed that he had not slept.
  
  She gave him a letter with a broken seal but folded. As for him,
  without opening it, he gazed at his wife with the eyes of a madman.
  
  "Here's an abominable thing," she said to him, "which an evil-looking
  man who makes out that he knows you and is under an obligation to you,
  handed to me as I was passing behind the notary's garden. I insist on
  one thing and that is that you send back this M. Julien to his parents
  and without delay." Madame de Renal hastened to say these words,
  perhaps a little before the psychological moment, in order to free
  herself from the awful prospect of having to say them.
  
  She was seized with joy on seeing that which she was occasioning to her
  husband. She realised from the fixed stare which he was rivetting on
  her that Julien had surmised rightly.
  
  "What a genius he is to be so brilliantly diplomatic instead of
  succumbing to so real a misfortune," she thought. "He will go very far
  in the future! Alas, his successes will only make him forget me."
  
  This little act of admiration for the man whom she adored quite cured
  her of her trouble.
  
  She congratulated herself on her tactics. "I have not been unworthy of
  Julien," she said to herself with a sweet and secret pleasure.
  
  M. de Renal kept examining the second anonymous letter which the
  reader may remember was composed of printed words glued on to a paper
  verging on blue. He did not say a word for fear of giving himself away.
  "They still make fun of me in every possible way," said M. de Renal
  to himself, overwhelmed with exhaustion. "Still more new insults to
  examine and all the time on account of my wife." He was on the point
  of heaping on her the coarsest insults. He was barely checked by the
  prospects of the Besancon legacy. Consumed by the need of venting his
  feelings on something, he crumpled up the paper of the second anonymous
  letter and began to walk about with huge strides. He needed to get
  away from his wife. A few moments afterwards he came back to her in a
  quieter frame of mind.
  
  "The thing is to take some definite line and send Julien away," she
  said immediately, "after all it is only a labourer's son. You will
  compensate him by a few crowns and besides he is clever and will easily
  manage to find a place, with M. Valenod for example, or with the
  sub-prefect De Maugiron who both have children. In that way you will
  not be doing him any wrong...." "There you go talking like the fool
  that you are," exclaimed M. de Renal in a terrible voice. "How can one
  hope that a woman will show any good sense? You never bother yourself
  about common sense. How can you ever get to know anything? Your
  indifference and your idleness give you no energy except for hunting
  those miserable butterflies, which we are unfortunate to have in our
  houses."
  
  Madame de Renal let him speak and he spoke for a long time. _He was
  working off his anger_, to use the local expression.
  
  "Monsieur," she answered him at last, "I speak as a woman who has
  been outraged in her honour, that is to say, in what she holds most
  precious."
  
  Madame de Renal preserved an unalterable sang-froid during all this
  painful conversation on the result of which depended the possibility of
  still living under the same roof as Julien. She sought for the ideas
  which she thought most adapted to guide her husband's blind anger
  into a safe channel. She had been insensible to all the insulting
  imputations which he had addressed to her. She was not listening to
  them, she was then thinking about Julien. "Will he be pleased with me?"
  
  "This little peasant whom we have loaded with attentions, and even with
  presents, may be innocent," she said to him at last, "but he is none
  the less the occasion of the first affront that I have ever received.
  Monsieur, when I read this abominable paper, I vowed to myself that
  either he or I should leave your house."
  
  "Do you want to make a scandal so as to dishonour me and yourself as
  well? You will make things hum in Verrieres I can assure you."
  
  "It is true, the degree of prosperity in which your prudent management
  has succeeded in placing you yourself, your family and the town is the
  subject of general envy.... Well, I will urge Julien to ask you for
  a holiday to go and spend the month with that wood-merchant of the
  mountains, a fit friend to be sure for this little labourer."
  
  "Mind you do nothing at all," resumed M. de Renal with a fair amount of
  tranquillity. "I particularly insist on your not speaking to him. You
  will put him into a temper and make him quarrel with me. You know to
  what extent this little gentleman is always spoiling for a quarrel."
  
  "That young man has no tact," resumed Madame de Renal. "He may be
  learned, you know all about that, but at bottom he is only a peasant.
  For my own part I never thought much of him since he refused to
  marry Elisa. It was an assured fortune; and that on the pretext that
  sometimes she had made secret visits to M. Valenod."
  
  "Ah," said M. de Renal, lifting up his eyebrows inordinately. "What,
  did Julien tell you that?"
  
  "Not exactly, he always talked of the vocation which calls him to the
  holy ministry, but believe me, the first vocation for those lower-class
  people is getting their bread and butter. He gave me to understand that
  he was quite aware of her secret visits."
  
  "And I--I was ignorant," exclaimed M. de Renal, growing as angry as
  before and accentuating his words. "Things take place in my house which
  I know nothing about.... What! has there been anything between Elisa
  and Valenod?"
  
  "Oh, that's old history, my dear," said Madame de Renal with a smile,
  "and perhaps no harm has come of it. It was at the time when your good
  friend Valenod would not have minded their thinking at Verrieres that a
  perfectly platonic little affection was growing up between him and me."
  
  "I had that idea once myself," exclaimed M. de Renal, furiously
  striking his head as he progressed from discovery to discovery, "and
  you told me nothing about it."
  
  "Should one set two friends by the ears on account of a little fit of
  vanity on the part of our dear director? What society woman has not had
  addressed to her a few letters which were both extremely witty and even
  a little gallant?"
  
  "He has written to you?"
  
  "He writes a great deal."
  
  "Show me those letters at once, I order you," and M. de Renal pulled
  himself up to his six feet.
  
  "I will do nothing of the kind," he was answered with a sweetness
  verging on indifference. "I will show you them one day when you are in
  a better frame of mind."
  
  "This very instant, odds life," exclaimed M. de Renal, transported with
  rage and yet happier than he had been for twelve hours.
  
  "Will you swear to me," said Madame de Renal quite gravely, "never to
  quarrel with the director of the workhouse about these letters?"
  
  "Quarrel or no quarrel, I can take those foundlings away from him,
  but," he continued furiously, "I want those letters at once. Where are
  they?"
  
  "In a drawer in my secretary, but I shall certainly not give you the
  key."
  
  "I'll manage to break it," he cried, running towards his wife's room.
  
  He did break in fact with a bar of iron a costly secretary of veined
  mahogany which came from Paris and which he had often been accustomed
  to wipe with the nap of his coat, when he thought he had detected a
  spot.
  
  Madame de Renal had climbed up at a run the hundred and twenty steps
  of the dovecot. She tied the corner of a white handkerchief to one of
  the bars of iron of the little window. She was the happiest of women.
  With tears in her eyes she looked towards the great mountain forest.
  "Doubtless," she said to herself, "Julien is watching for this happy
  signal."
  
  She listened attentively for a long time and then she cursed the
  monotonous noise of the grasshopper and the song of the birds. "Had it
  not been for that importunate noise, a cry of joy starting from the big
  rocks could have arrived here." Her greedy eye devoured that immense
  slope of dark verdure which was as level as a meadow.
  
  "Why isn't he clever enough," she said to herself, quite overcome, "to
  invent some signal to tell me that his happiness is equal to mine?" She
  only came down from the dovecot when she was frightened of her husband
  coming there to look for her.
  
  She found him furious. He was perusing the soothing phrases of M. de
  Valenod and reading them with an emotion to which they were but little
  used.
  
  "I always come back to the same idea," said Madame de Renal seizing
  a moment when a pause in her husband's ejaculations gave her the
  possibility of getting heard. "It is necessary for Julien to travel.
  Whatever talent he may have for Latin, he is only a peasant after all,
  often coarse and lacking in tact. Thinking to be polite, he addresses
  inflated compliments to me every day, which are in bad taste. He learns
  them by heart out of some novel or other."
  
  "He never reads one," exclaimed M. de Renal. "I am assured of it. Do
  you think that I am the master of a house who is so blind as to be
  ignorant of what takes place in his own home."
  
  "Well, if he doesn't read these droll compliments anywhere, he invents
  them, and that's all the worse so far as he is concerned. He must have
  talked about me in this tone in Verrieres and perhaps without going so
  far," said Madame Renal with the idea of making a discovery, "he may
  have talked in the same strain to Elisa, which is almost the same as if
  he had said it to M. Valenod."
  
  "Ah," exclaimed M. de Renal, shaking the table and the room with one of
  the most violent raps ever made by a human fist. "The anonymous printed
  letter and Valenod's letters are written on the same paper."
  
  "At last," thought Madame de Renal. She pretended to be overwhelmed
  at this discovery, and without having the courage to add a single
  word, went and sat down some way off on the divan at the bottom of the
  drawing-room.
  
  From this point the battle was won. She had a great deal of trouble in
  preventing M. de Renal from going to speak to the supposed author of
  the anonymous letter. "What, can't you see that making a scene with M.
  Valenod without sufficient proof would be the most signal mistake? You
  are envied, Monsieur, and who is responsible? Your talents: your wise
  management, your tasteful buildings, the dowry which I have brought
  you, and above all, the substantial legacy which we are entitled to
  hope for from my good aunt, a legacy, the importance of which is
  inordinately exaggerated, have made you into the first person in
  Verrieres."
  
  "You are forgetting my birth," said M. de Renal, smiling a little.
  
  "You are one of the most distinguished gentlemen in the province,"
  replied Madame de Renal emphatically. "If the king were free and could
  give birth its proper due, you would no doubt figure in the Chamber of
  Peers, etc. And being in this magnificent position, you yet wish to
  give the envious a fact to take hold of."
  
  "To speak about this anonymous letter to M. Valenod is equivalent
  to proclaiming over the whole of Verrieres, nay, over the whole of
  Besancon, over the whole province that this little bourgeois who has
  been admitted perhaps imprudently to intimacy _with a Renal_, has
  managed to offend him. At the time when those letters which you have
  just taken prove that I have reciprocated M. Valenod's love, you ought
  to kill me. I should have deserved it a hundred times over, but not to
  show him your anger. Remember that all our neighbours are only waiting
  for an excuse to revenge themselves for your superiority. Remember that
  in 1816 you had a hand in certain arrests.
  
  "I think that you show neither consideration nor love for me,"
  exclaimed M. de Renal with all the bitterness evoked by such a memory,
  "and I was not made a peer."
  
  "I am thinking, my dear," resumed Madame de Renal with a smile, "that
  I shall be richer than you are, that I have been your companion for
  twelve years, and that by virtue of those qualifications I am entitled
  to have a voice in the council and, above all, in to-day's business. If
  you prefer M. Julien to me," she added, with a touch of temper which
  was but thinly disguised, "I am ready to go and pass a winter with my
  aunt." These words proved a lucky shot. They possessed a firmness which
  endeavoured to clothe itself with courtesy. It decided M. de Renal, but
  following the provincial custom, he still thought for a long time, and
  went again over all his arguments; his wife let him speak. There was
  still a touch of anger in his intonation. Finally two hours of futile
  rant exhausted the strength of a man who had been subject during the
  whole night to a continuous fit of anger. He determined on the line of
  conduct he was going to follow with regard to M. Valenod, Julien and
  even Elisa.
  
  Madame de Renal was on the point once or twice during this great scene
  of feeling some sympathy for the very real unhappiness of the man
  who had been so dear to her for twelve years. But true passions are
  selfish. Besides she was expecting him every instant to mention the
  anonymous letter which he had received the day before and he did not
  mention it. In order to feel quite safe, Madame de Renal wanted to know
  the ideas which the letter had succeeding in suggesting to the man on
  whom her fate depended, for, in the provinces the husbands are the
  masters of public opinion. A husband who complains covers himself with
  ridicule, an inconvenience which becomes no less dangerous in France
  with each succeeding year; but if he refuses to provide his wife with
  money, she falls to the status of a labouring woman at fifteen sous a
  day, while the virtuous souls have scruples about employing her.
  
  An odalisque in the seraglio can love the Sultan with all her might.
  He is all-powerful and she has no hope of stealing his authority by
  a series of little subtleties. The master's vengeance is terrible
  and bloody but martial and generous; a dagger thrust finishes
  everything. But it is by stabbing her with public contempt that a
  nineteenth-century husband kills his wife. It is by shutting against
  her the doors of all the drawing-rooms.
  
  When Madame de Renal returned to her room, her feeling of danger was
  vividly awakened. She was shocked by the disorder in which she found
  it. The locks of all the pretty little boxes had been broken. Many
  planks in the floor had been lifted up. "He would have no pity on me,"
  she said to herself. "To think of his spoiling like this, this coloured
  wood floor which he likes so much; he gets red with rage whenever one
  of his children comes into it with wet shoes, and now it is spoilt for
  ever." The spectacle of this violence immediately banished the last
  scruples which she was entertaining with respect to that victory which
  she had won only too rapidly.
  
  Julien came back with the children a little before the dinner-bell.
  Madame de Renal said to him very drily at dessert when the servant had
  left the room:
  
  "You have told me about your wish to go and spend a fortnight at
  Verrieres. M. de Renal is kind enough to give you a holiday. You can
  leave as soon as you like, but the childrens' exercises will be sent to
  you every day so that they do not waste their time."
  
  "I shall certainly not allow you more than a week," said M. de Renal in
  a very bitter tone. Julien thought his visage betrayed the anxiety of a
  man who was seriously harassed.
  
  "He has not yet decided what line to take," he said to his love during
  a moment when they were alone together in the drawing-room.
  
  Madame de Renal rapidly recounted to him all she had done since the
  morning.
  
  "The details are for to-night," she added with a smile.
  
  "Feminine perversity," thought Julien, "What can be the pleasure, what
  can be the instinct which induces them to deceive us."
  
  "I think you are both enlightened and at the same time blinded by your
  love," he said to her with some coldness. "Your conduct to-day has been
  admirable, but is it prudent for us to try and see each other to-night?
  This house is paved with enemies. Just think of Elisa's passionate
  hatred for me."
  
  "That hate is very like the passionate indifference which you no doubt
  have for me."
  
  "Even if I were indifferent I ought to save you from the peril in which
  I have plunged you. If chance so wills it that M. de Renal should speak
  to Elisa, she can acquaint him with everything in a single word. What
  is to prevent him from hiding near my room fully armed?"
  
  "What, not even courage?" said Madame de Renal, with all the
  haughtiness of a scion of nobility.
  
  "I will never demean myself to speak about my courage," said Julien,
  coldly, "it would be mean to do so. Let the world judge by the facts.
  But," he added, taking her hand, "you have no idea how devoted I am to
  you and how over-joyed I am of being able to say good-bye to you before
  this cruel separation."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Part 1, Chapter 21
target: Julien finishes putting together the anonymous letter for Madame de Renal and hands it to her. In return, she hands him a box with gold and diamonds in it and asks him to bury it in the mountains. She's afraid that someday she might need it if she's kicked out of her home. Meanwhile, Monsieur Renal stresses about how to bring up the letter he has received with his wife. It's clear that the letter has told him about his wife's affair. The whole thing makes de Renal think about how many men dislike him and how few like him. He even thinks about friends whom he cut ties with when he was younger because they weren't upper class enough. He thinks about beating up Julien and throwing him out of the house. But he knows that this would eventually cause the scandal to become known to everyone in town. He can't stand the thought of having the newspapers drag his name through the mud. Madame de Renal comes up to him with a devastated look on her face. She hands him a letter and says someone from town she didn't recognize just gave it to her. She asks Monsieur to send Julien back to his father as quickly as possible. Monsieur de Renal tells her to stop being an idiot. She waits patiently for him to get all his anger out of his system. Madame plants the suspicion in her husband's head that it is actually the servant Elisa and Valenod who are having an affair. She also tells him that Mr. Valenod has written her many love letters over the years. She shows them to her husband, and this proves that Valenod has a motive for trying to ruin Madame's reputation. The next step is for Madame to convince Monsieur never to confront Valenod about the letters . Madame demands that her husband send Julien away for at least a couple of weeks. He agrees. With all that's happened, Madame still asks Julien to come to her room that night. He thinks she's insane. But of course he comes.