feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/sparknotes/The Red and the Black/section_3_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 1.chapters 19-23
feat_summary_id: book 1, chapters 19-23
feat_summary: {"name": "", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20210301223854/https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/redblack/section4/", "summary": "Julien and Mme. de Renal's affair takes a downward turn when her youngest son falls deathly ill. Mme. de Renal is convinced that God is punishing her for committing adultery and begs Julien to stay away from her. Julien thinks that her behavior is quite foolish, but worries that she might confess to both her husband and M. Chelan. She almost does, but then confides to Julien that she loves him more than anything else, even her own children. Moved by her devotion to him, Julien finally falls in love with Mme. de Renal. Their renewed happiness tips off Mme. de Renal's maid, Elisa, that something is going on and she tells M. Valenod, who writes an anonymous letter to M. de Renal. Julien immediately recognizes that the letter denounces his affair with Mme. de Renal. The two of them form a plan in order to convince M. de Renal that the accusations are false and just an attempt to embarrass the mayor. They forge a second anonymous letter and pretend to send it to Mme. de Renal. This second letter says that M. Valenod is both responsible for the first letter and out to seduce Mme. de Renal himself. Before receiving this second letter, M. de Renal spends the entire night in a state of wretched embarrassment and hatred. More concerned about his name and political position than his marriage, he considers killing both Julien and his wife. But when Mme. de Renal brings him the second letter, he no longer believes the accusations and thinks instead that M. Valenod is organizing a liberal plot against him. Mme. de Renal manipulates her husband even further by showing him old love letters written to her by M. Valenod. Julien is invited to dine with the Valenods, who want to hire him as the family tutor. He goes in order to give M. de Renal the impression that all of M. Valenod's letters were intended to make Renal fire Julien so he would move to the Valenod's. Julien is disgusted by the bourgeois liberals at the Valenod dinner party. They have all made money off the poor. Julien finds nothing honorable about their obsession with money and is doubly resolved to come to power through the Church. He gets his chance when the ever-jealous Elisa tells M. Chelan about the affair. Chelan, in order to avoid a scandal, arranges for Julien to enter a seminary in Besancon. M. de Renal, though now believing that nothing has happened between his wife and Julien, is happy to see Julien leave: the rumors will die out and M. Valenod will not get Julien to be his tutor. Mme. de Renal is devastated to see Julien leave and gives him a lock of her hair. Although Julien is excited to become a powerful figure in the Church, along the road to Besancon, he keeps looking back at Verrieres.", "analysis": "Commentary Stendhal's fascination with the psychology of love is very apparent in this section. It is only when Julien's vanity is sufficiently flattered by Mme. de Renal that he falls in love with her. Stendhal describes this change as a switch from love of possession and beauty to passion-love. When Julien realizes that she loves him more than her own children, he trusts Mme. de Renal's devotion enough to fall in love with her. Again, triangular desire enables Julien to love Mme. de Renal . The love triangle between Julien, Mme. de Renal, and Elisa also motivates the jealous Elisa to tell M. Valenod and then M. Chelan about Julien and Mme. de Renal. This section also juxtaposes Mme. de Renal's intelligence and religious faith with M. de Renal's foolish concerns for rank and lack of concern for his family. Mme. de Renal truly believes that God is punishing her for falling in love with Julien. When she actually tries to confess to her husband, Julien admires her lack of hypocrisy. When it comes to saving her family's reputation, Mme. de Renal also becomes very cunning. Julien realizes that M. Valenod has denounced them, but it is Mme. de Renal who drafts the second letter and manipulates her husband into discovering M. Valenod's old love letters. M. de Renal, in contrast, only cares about remaining the mayor of Verrieres. He considers killing Mme. de Renal and Julien but worries that then he would not receive an inheritance his wife is expecting. Mme. de Renal easily manipulates her husband with flatteries into believing her version of the story. Julien's dinner with the Valenods demonstrates Stendhal's disdain for both conservatives and liberals. Julien reads the major liberal newspapers, but when he finally meets a group of liberals at the Valenod's, he is disgusted by their stealing from the poor, lax morals, and obsession with money. For example, Mme. Valenod discusses the cost of the wine Julien is drinking. After leaving the Valenods', Julien realizes that he has much more aristocratic and refined tastes than he thought. The reader cannot help but notice Stendhal's ironical tone in describing Julien's change of heart, as well as his characteristic hypocrisy. Further tension between the red of the military and the black of the Church is played out in this section. Julien seeks the glory of a military-like seduction of Mme. de Renal, but ends up being sent to the seminary anyway. For all of Julien's ambition and determination to succeed in French society, he does not go to the seminary by choice: M. Chelan orders him there. Unlike most romantic heroes, Julien has very little free will. He does what other people tell him to do."}
text: CHAPTER XIX
  
  THINKING PRODUCES SUFFERING
  
  
      The grotesqueness of every-day events conceals the real
             unhappiness of the passions.--_Barnave_.
  
  As he was replacing the usual furniture in the room which M. de la
  Mole had occupied, Julien found a piece of very strong paper folded in
  four. He read at the bottom of the first page "To His Excellency M.
  le Marquis de la Mole, peer of France, Chevalier of the Orders of the
  King, etc. etc." It was a petition in the rough hand-writing of a cook.
  
          "Monsieur le Marquis, I have had religious principles
          all my life. I was in Lyons exposed to the bombs at
          the time of the siege, in '93 of execrable memory. I
          communicate, I go to Mass every Sunday in the parochial
          church. I have never missed the paschal duty, even in
          '93 of execrable memory. My cook used to keep servants
          before the revolution, my cook fasts on Fridays. I am
          universally respected in Verrieres, and I venture to
          say I deserve to be so. I walk under the canopy in the
          processions at the side of the cure and of the mayor. On
          great occasions I carry a big candle, bought at my own
          expense.
  
          "I ask Monsieur the marquis for the lottery appointment
          of Verrieres, which in one way or another is bound to
          be vacant shortly as the beneficiary is very ill, and
          moreover votes on the wrong side at elections, etc. De
          Cholin."
  
  In the margin of this petition was a recommendation signed "de Moirod"
  which began with this line, "I have had the honour, the worthy person
  who makes this request."
  
  "So even that imbecile de Cholin shows me the way to go about things,"
  said Julien to himself.
  
  Eight days after the passage of the King of ---- through Verrieres,
  the one question which predominated over the innumerable falsehoods,
  foolish conjectures, and ridiculous discussions, etc., etc., which had
  had successively for their object the king, the Marquis de la Mole,
  the ten thousand bottles of wine, the fall of poor de Moirod, who,
  hoping to win a cross, only left his room a week after his fall, was
  the absolute indecency of having _foisted_ Julien Sorel, a carpenter's
  son, into the Guard of Honour. You should have heard on this point the
  rich manufacturers of printed calico, the very persons who used to bawl
  themselves hoarse in preaching equality, morning and evening in the
  cafe. That haughty woman, Madame de Renal, was of course responsible
  for this abomination. The reason? The fine eyes and fresh complexion of
  the little abbe Sorel explained everything else.
  
  A short time after their return to Vergy, Stanislas, the youngest of
  the children, caught the fever; Madame de Renal was suddenly attacked
  by an awful remorse. For the first time she reproached herself for her
  love with some logic. She seemed to understand as though by a miracle
  the enormity of the sin into which she had let herself be swept. Up to
  that moment, although deeply religious, she had never thought of the
  greatness of her crime in the eyes of God.
  
  In former times she had loved God passionately in the Convent of
  the Sacred Heart; in the present circumstances, she feared him with
  equal intensity. The struggles which lacerated her soul were all the
  more awful in that her fear was quite irrational. Julien found that
  the least argument irritated instead of soothing her. She saw in the
  illness the language of hell. Moreover, Julien was himself very fond of
  the little Stanislas.
  
  It soon assumed a serious character. Then incessant remorse deprived
  Madame de Renal of even her power of sleep. She ensconced herself in a
  gloomy silence: if she had opened her mouth, it would only have been to
  confess her crime to God and mankind.
  
  "I urge you," said Julien to her, as soon as they got alone, "not to
  speak to anyone. Let me be the sole confidant of your sufferings. If
  you still love me, do not speak. Your words will not be able to take
  away our Stanislas' fever." But his consolations produced no effect.
  He did not know that Madame de Renal had got it into her head that, in
  order to appease the wrath of a jealous God, it was necessary either to
  hate Julien, or let her son die. It was because she felt she could not
  hate her lover that she was so unhappy.
  
  "Fly from me," she said one day to Julien. "In the name of God leave
  this house. It is your presence here which kills my son. God punishes
  me," she added in a low voice. "He is just. I admire his fairness.
  My crime is awful, and I was living without remorse," she exclaimed.
  "That was the first sign of my desertion of God: I ought to be doubly
  punished."
  
  Julien was profoundly touched. He could see in this neither hypocrisy
  nor exaggeration. "She thinks that she is killing her son by loving me,
  and all the same the unhappy woman loves me more than her son. I cannot
  doubt it. It is remorse for that which is killing her. Those sentiments
  of hers have real greatness. But how could I have inspired such a love,
  I who am so poor, so badly-educated, so ignorant, and sometimes so
  coarse in my manners?"
  
  One night the child was extremely ill. At about two o'clock in the
  morning, M. de Renal came to see it. The child consumed by fever, and
  extremely flushed, could not recognise its father. Suddenly Madame de
  Renal threw herself at her husband's feet; Julien saw that she was
  going to confess everything and ruin herself for ever.
  
  Fortunately this extraordinary proceeding annoyed M. de Renal.
  
  "Adieu! Adieu!" he said, going away.
  
  "No, listen to me," cried his wife on her knees before him, trying to
  hold him back. "Hear the whole truth. It is I who am killing my son. I
  gave him life, and I am taking it back. Heaven is punishing me. In the
  eyes of God I am guilty of murder. It is necessary that I should ruin
  and humiliate myself. Perhaps that sacrifice will appease the the Lord."
  
  If M. de Renal had been a man of any imagination, he would then have
  realized everything.
  
  "Romantic nonsense," he cried, moving his wife away as she tried to
  embrace his knees. "All that is romantic nonsense! Julien, go and fetch
  the doctor at daybreak," and he went back to bed. Madame de Renal fell
  on her knees half-fainting, repelling Julien's help with a hysterical
  gesture.
  
  Julien was astonished.
  
  "So this is what adultery is," he said to himself. "Is it possible
  that those scoundrels of priests should be right, that they who commit
  so many sins themselves should have the privilege of knowing the true
  theory of sin? How droll!"
  
  For twenty minutes after M. de Renal had gone back to bed, Julien saw
  the woman he loved with her head resting on her son's little bed,
  motionless, and almost unconscious. "There," he said to himself, "is
  a woman of superior temperament brought to the depths of unhappiness
  simply because she has known me."
  
  "Time moves quickly. What can I do for her? I must make up my mind. I
  have not got simply myself to consider now. What do I care for men and
  their buffooneries? What can I do for her? Leave her? But I should be
  leaving her alone and a prey to the most awful grief. That automaton
  of a husband is more harm to her than good. He is so coarse that he is
  bound to speak harshly to her. She may go mad and throw herself out of
  the window."
  
  "If I leave her, if I cease to watch over her, she will confess
  everything, and who knows, in spite of the legacy which she is bound to
  bring him, he will create a scandal. She may confess everything (great
  God) to that scoundrel of an abbe who makes the illness of a child
  of six an excuse for not budging from this house, and not without a
  purpose either. In her grief and her fear of God, she forgets all she
  knows of the man; she only sees the priest."
  
  "Go away," said Madame de Renal suddenly to him, opening her eyes.
  
  "I would give my life a thousand times to know what could be of most
  use to you," answered Julien. "I have never loved you so much, my dear
  angel, or rather it is only from this last moment that I begin to adore
  you as you deserve to be adored. What would become of me far from you,
  and with the consciousness that you are unhappy owing to what I have
  done? But don't let my suffering come into the matter. I will go--yes,
  my love! But if I leave you, dear; if I cease to watch over you, to be
  incessantly between you and your husband, you will tell him everything.
  You will ruin yourself. Remember that he will hound you out of his
  house in disgrace. Besancon will talk of the scandal. You will be said
  to be absolutely in the wrong. You will never lift up your head again
  after that shame."
  
  "That's what I ask," she cried, standing up. "I shall suffer, so much
  the better."
  
  "But you will also make him unhappy through that awful scandal."
  
  "But I shall be humiliating myself, throwing myself into the mire, and
  by those means, perhaps, I shall save my son. Such a humiliation in the
  eyes of all is perhaps to be regarded as a public penitence. So far as
  my weak judgment goes, is it not the greatest sacrifice that I can make
  to God?--perhaps He will deign to accept my humiliation, and to leave
  me my son. Show me another sacrifice which is more painful and I will
  rush to it."
  
  "Let me punish myself. I too am guilty. Do you wish me to retire to the
  Trappist Monastery? The austerity of that life may appease your God.
  Oh, heaven, why cannot I take Stanislas's illness upon myself?"
  
  "Ah, do you love him then," said Madame de Renal, getting up and
  throwing herself in his arms.
  
  At the same time she repelled him with horror.
  
  "I believe you! I believe you! Oh, my one friend," she cried falling on
  her knees again. "Why are you not the father of Stanislas? In that case
  it would not be a terrible sin to love you more than your son."
  
  "Won't you allow me to stay and love you henceforth like a brother? It
  is the only rational atonement. It may appease the wrath of the Most
  High."
  
  "Am I," she cried, getting up and taking Julien's head between her two
  hands, and holding it some distance from her. "Am I to love you as if
  you were a brother? Is it in my power to love you like that?" Julien
  melted into tears.
  
  "I will obey you," he said, falling at her feet. "I will obey you in
  whatever you order me. That is all there is left for me to do. My mind
  is struck with blindness. I do not see any course to take. If I leave
  you you will tell your husband everything. You will ruin yourself
  and him as well. He will never be nominated deputy after incurring
  such ridicule. If I stay, you will think I am the cause of your son's
  death, and you will die of grief. Do you wish to try the effect of my
  departure. If you wish, I will punish myself for our sin by leaving you
  for eight days. I will pass them in any retreat you like. In the abbey
  of Bray-le-Haut, for instance. But swear that you will say nothing to
  your husband during my absence. Remember that if you speak I shall
  never be able to come back."
  
  She promised and he left, but was called back at the end of two days.
  
  "It is impossible for me to keep my oath without you. I shall speak to
  my husband if you are not constantly there to enjoin me to silence by
  your looks. Every hour of this abominable life seems to last a day."
  
  Finally heaven had pity on this unfortunate mother. Little by little
  Stanislas got out of danger. But the ice was broken. Her reason had
  realised the extent of her sin. She could not recover her equilibrium
  again. Her pangs of remorse remained, and were what they ought to have
  been in so sincere a heart. Her life was heaven and hell: hell when she
  did not see Julien; heaven when she was at his feet.
  
  "I do not deceive myself any more," she would say to him, even during
  the moments when she dared to surrender herself to his full love. "I
  am damned, irrevocably damned. You are young, heaven may forgive you,
  but I, I am damned. I know it by a certain sign. I am afraid, who would
  not be afraid at the sight of hell? but at the bottom of my heart I
  do not repent at all. I would commit my sin over again if I had the
  opportunity. If heaven will only forbear to punish me in this world and
  through my children, I shall have more than I deserve. But you, at any
  rate, my Julien," she would cry at other moments, "are you happy? Do
  you think I love you enough?"
  
  The suspiciousness and morbid pride of Julien, who needed, above all,
  a self-sacrificing love, altogether vanished when he saw at every hour
  of the day so great and indisputable a sacrifice. He adored Madame
  de Renal. "It makes no difference her being noble, and my being a
  labourer's son. She loves me.... she does not regard me as a valet
  charged with the functions of a lover." That fear once dismissed,
  Julien fell into all the madness of love, into all its deadly
  uncertainties.
  
  "At any rate," she would cry, seeing his doubts of her love, "let me
  feel quite happy during the three days we still have together. Let us
  make haste; perhaps to-morrow will be too late. If heaven strikes me
  through my children, it will be in vain that I shall try only to live
  to love you, and to be blind to the fact that it is my crime which has
  killed them. I could not survive that blow. Even if I wished I could
  not; I should go mad."
  
  "Ah, if only I could take your sin on myself as you so generously
  offered to take Stanislas' burning fever!"
  
  This great moral crisis changed the character of the sentiment
  which united Julien and his mistress. His love was no longer simply
  admiration for her beauty, and the pride of possessing her.
  
  Henceforth their happiness was of a quite superior character. The flame
  which consumed them was more intense. They had transports filled with
  madness. Judged by the worldly standard their happiness would have
  appeared intensified. But they no longer found that delicious serenity,
  that cloudless happiness, that facile joy of the first period of their
  love, when Madame de Renal's only fear was that Julien did not love her
  enough. Their happiness had at times the complexion of crime.
  
  In their happiest and apparently their most tranquil moments, Madame
  de Renal would suddenly cry out, "Oh, great God, I see hell," as she
  pressed Julien's hand with a convulsive grasp. "What horrible tortures!
  I have well deserved them." She grasped him and hung on to him like ivy
  onto a wall.
  
  Julien would try in vain to calm that agitated soul. She would take his
  hand, cover it with kisses. Then, relapsing into a gloomy reverie, she
  would say, "Hell itself would be a blessing for me. I should still have
  some days to pass with him on this earth, but hell on earth, the death
  of my children. Still, perhaps my crime will be forgiven me at that
  price. Oh, great God, do not grant me my pardon at so great a price.
  These poor children have in no way transgressed against You. I, I am
  the only culprit. I love a man who is not my husband."
  
  Julien subsequently saw Madame de Renal attain what were apparently
  moments of tranquillity. She was endeavouring to control herself;
  she did not wish to poison the life of the man she loved. They found
  the days pass with the rapidity of lightning amid these alternating
  moods of love, remorse, and voluptuousness. Julien lost the habit of
  reflecting.
  
  Mademoiselle Elisa went to attend to a little lawsuit which she had at
  Verrieres. She found Valenod very piqued against Julien. She hated the
  tutor and would often speak about him.
  
  "You will ruin me, Monsieur, if I tell the truth," she said one day to
  Valenod. "All masters have an understanding amongst themselves with
  regard to matters of importance. There are certain disclosures which
  poor servants are never forgiven."
  
  After these stereotyped phrases, which his curiosity managed to cut
  short, Monsieur Valenod received some information extremely mortifying
  to his self-conceit.
  
  This woman, who was the most distinguished in the district, the woman
  on whom he had lavished so much attention in the last six years, and
  made no secret of it, more was the pity, this woman who was so proud,
  whose disdain had put him to the blush times without number, had just
  taken for her lover a little workman masquerading as a tutor. And to
  fill the cup of his jealousy, Madame de Renal adored that lover.
  
  "And," added the housemaid with a sigh, "Julien did not put himself out
  at all to make his conquest, his manner was as cold as ever, even with
  Madame."
  
  Elisa had only become certain in the country, but she believed that
  this intrigue dated from much further back. "That is no doubt the
  reason," she added spitefully, "why he refused to marry me. And to
  think what a fool I was when I went to consult Madame de Renal and
  begged her to speak to the tutor."
  
  The very same evening, M. de Renal received from the town, together
  with his paper, a long anonymous letter which apprised him in the
  greatest detail of what was taking place in his house. Julien saw him
  pale as he read this letter written on blue paper, and look at him
  with a malicious expression. During all that evening the mayor failed
  to throw off his trouble. It was in vain that Julien paid him court by
  asking for explanations about the genealogy of the best families in
  Burgundy.
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER XX
  
  ANONYMOUS LETTERS
  
  
      Do not give dalliance
      Too much the rein; the strongest oaths are straw
      To the fire i' the blood.--_Tempest_.
  
  
  As they left the drawing-room about midnight, Julien had time to say to
  his love,
  
  "Don't let us see each other to-night. Your husband has suspicions. I
  would swear that that big letter he read with a sigh was an anonymous
  letter."
  
  Fortunately, Julien locked himself into his room. Madame de Renal had
  the mad idea that this warning was only a pretext for not seeing her.
  She absolutely lost her head, and came to his door at the accustomed
  hour. Julien, who had heard the noise in the corridor, immediately blew
  out his lamp. Someone was trying to open the door. Was it Madame de
  Renal? Was it a jealous husband?
  
  Very early next morning the cook, who liked Julien, brought him a book,
  on the cover of which he read these words written in Italian: _Guardate
  alla pagina_ 130.
  
  Julien shuddered at the imprudence, looked for page 130, and found
  pinned to it the following letter hastily written, bathed with tears,
  and full of spelling mistakes. Madame de Renal was usually very
  correct. He was touched by this circumstance, and somewhat forgot the
  awfulness of the indiscretion.
  
          "So you did not want to receive me to-night? There are
          moments when I think that I have never read down to the
          depths of your soul. Your looks frighten me. I am afraid
          of you. Great God! perhaps you have never loved me? In
          that case let my husband discover my love, and shut me
          up in a prison in the country far away from my children.
          Perhaps God wills it so. I shall die soon, but you will
          have proved yourself a monster.
  
          "Do you not love me? Are you tired of my fits of folly
          and of remorse, you wicked man? Do you wish to ruin me?
          I will show you an easy way. Go and show this letter to
          all Verrieres, or rather show it to M. Valenod. Tell him
          that I love you, nay, do not utter such a blasphemy,
          tell him I adore you, that it was only on the day I saw
          you that my life commenced; that even in the maddest
          moments of my youth I never even dreamt of the happiness
          that I owe to you, that I have sacrificed my life to
          you and that I am sacrificing my soul. You know that
          I am sacrificing much more. But does that man know
          the meaning of sacrifice? Tell him, I say, simply to
          irritate him, that I will defy all evil tongues, that
          the only misfortune for me in the whole world would
          be to witness any change in the only man who holds me
          to life. What a happiness it would be to me to lose
          my life, to offer it up as a sacrifice and to have no
          longer any fear for my children.
  
          "Have no doubt about it, dear one, if it is an
          anonymous letter, it comes from that odious being who
          has persecuted me for the last six years with his loud
          voice, his stories about his jumps on horseback, his
          fatuity, and the never ending catalogue of all his
          advantages.
  
          "Is there an anonymous letter? I should like to discuss
          that question with you, you wicked man; but no, you
          acted rightly. Clasping you in my arms perhaps for the
          last time, I should never have been able to argue as
          coldly as I do, now that I am alone. From this moment
          our happiness will no longer be so easy. Will that be a
          vexation for you? Yes, on those days when you haven't
          received some amusing book from M. Fouque. The sacrifice
          is made; to-morrow, whether there is or whether there is
          not any anonymous letter, I myself will tell my husband
          I have received an anonymous letter and that it is
          necessary to give you a golden bridge at once, find some
          honourable excuse, and send you back to your parents
          without delay.
  
          "Alas, dear one, we are going to be separated for a
          fortnight, perhaps a month! Go, I will do you justice,
          you will suffer as much as I, but anyway, this is the
          only means of disposing of this anonymous letter. It is
          not the first that my husband has received, and on my
          score too. Alas! how I used to laugh over them!
  
          "My one aim is to make my husband think that the letter
          comes from M. Valenod; I have no doubt that he is
          its author. If you leave the house, make a point of
          establishing yourself at Verrieres; I will manage that
          my husband should think of passing a fortnight there
          in order to prove to the fools there was no coldness
          between him and me. Once at Verrieres, establish ties of
          friendship with everyone, even with the Liberals. I am
          sure that all their ladies will seek you out.
  
          "Do not quarrel with M. Valenod, or cut off his ears,
          as you said you would one day. Try, on the contrary, to
          ingratiate yourself with him. The essential point is
          that it should be notorious in Verrieres that you are
          going to enter the household either of Valenod or of
          someone else to take charge of the children's education.
  
          "That is what my husband will never put up with. If he
          does feel bound to resign himself to it, well, at any
          rate, you will be living in Verrieres and I shall be
          seeing you sometimes. My children, who love you so much,
          will go and see you. Great God! I feel that I love my
          children all the more because they love you. How is
          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 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."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER XXII
  
  MANNERS OF PROCEDURE IN 1830
  
  
       Speech has been given to man to conceal his thought.
                                               _R.P. Malagrida_.
  
  
  Julien had scarcely arrived at Verrieres before he reproached himself
  with his injustice towards Madame de Renal. "I should have despised
  her for a weakling of a woman if she had not had the strength to go
  through with her scene with M. de Renal. But she has acquitted herself
  like a diplomatist and I sympathise with the defeat of the man who is
  my enemy. There is a bourgeois prejudice in my action; my vanity is
  offended because M. de Renal is a man. Men form a vast and illustrious
  body to which I have the honour to belong. I am nothing but a fool." M.
  Chelan had refused the magnificent apartments which the most important
  Liberals in the district had offered him, when his loss of his living
  had necessitated his leaving the parsonage. The two rooms which he had
  rented were littered with his books. Julien, wishing to show Verrieres
  what a priest could do, went and fetched a dozen pinewood planks from
  his father, carried them on his back all along the Grande-Rue, borrowed
  some tools from an old comrade and soon built a kind of book-case in
  which he arranged M. Chelan's books.
  
  "I thought you were corrupted by the vanity of the world," said the
  old man to him as he cried with joy, "but this is something which well
  redeems all the childishness of that brilliant Guard of Honour uniform
  which has made you so many enemies."
  
  M. de Renal had ordered Julien to stay at his house. No one suspected
  what had taken place. The third day after his arrival Julien saw no
  less a personage than M. the sub-prefect de Maugiron come all the way
  up the stairs to his room. It was only after two long hours of fatuous
  gossip and long-winded lamentations about the wickedness of man, the
  lack of honesty among the people entrusted with the administration
  of the public funds, the dangers of his poor France, etc. etc., that
  Julien was at last vouchsafed a glimpse of the object of the visit.
  They were already on the landing of the staircase and the poor half
  disgraced tutor was escorting with all proper deference the future
  prefect of some prosperous department, when the latter was pleased to
  take an interest in Julien's fortune, to praise his moderation in money
  matters, etc., etc. Finally M. de Maugiron, embracing him in the most
  paternal way, proposed that he should leave M. de Renal and enter the
  household of an official who had children to educate and who, like King
  Philippe, thanked Heaven not so much that they had been granted to him,
  but for the fact that they had been born in the same neighbourhood as
  M. Julien. Their tutor would enjoy a salary of 800 francs, payable
  not from month to month, which is not at all aristocratic, said M. de
  Maugiron, but quarterly and always in advance.
  
  It was Julien's turn now. After he had been bored for an hour and a
  half by waiting for what he had to say, his answer was perfect and,
  above all, as long as a bishop's charge. It suggested everything and
  yet said nothing clearly. It showed at the same time respect for M.
  de Renal, veneration for the public of Verrieres and gratitude to the
  distinguished sub-prefect. The sub-prefect, astonished at finding
  him more Jesuitical than himself, tried in vain to obtain something
  definite. Julien was delighted, seized the opportunity to practise, and
  started his answer all over again in different language. Never has an
  eloquent minister who wished to make the most of the end of a session
  when the Chamber really seemed desirous of waking up, said less in more
  words.
  
  M. de Maugiron had scarcely left before Julien began to laugh like
  a madman. In order to exploit his Jesuitical smartness, he wrote a
  nine-page letter to M. de Renal in which he gave him an account of all
  that had been said to him and humbly asked his advice. "But the old
  scoundrel has not told me the name of the person who is making the
  offer. It is bound to be M. Valenod who, no doubt, sees in my exile at
  Verrieres the result of his anonymous letter."
  
  Having sent off his despatch and feeling as satisfied as a hunter who
  at six o'clock in the morning on a fine autumn day, comes out into
  a plain that abounds with game, he went out to go and ask advice of
  M. Chelan. But before he had arrived at the good cure's, providence,
  wishing to shower favours upon him, threw in his path M. de Valenod,
  to whom he owned quite freely that his heart was torn in two; a poor
  lad such as he was owed an exclusive devotion to the vocation to which
  it had pleased Heaven to call him. But vocation was not everything in
  this base world. In order to work worthily at the vine of the Lord,
  and to be not totally unworthy of so many worthy colleagues, it was
  necessary to be educated; it was necessary to spend two expensive years
  at the seminary of Besancon; saving consequently became an imperative
  necessity, and was certainly much easier with a salary of eight hundred
  francs paid quarterly than with six hundred francs which one received
  monthly. On the other hand, did not Heaven, by placing him by the side
  of the young de Renals, and especially by inspiring him with a special
  devotion to them, seem to indicate that it was not proper to abandon
  that education for another one.
  
  Julien reached such a degree of perfection in that particular kind of
  eloquence which has succeeded the drastic quickness of the empire, that
  he finished by boring himself with the sound of his own words.
  
  On reaching home he found a valet of M. Valenod in full livery who had
  been looking for him all over the town, with a card inviting him to
  dinner for that same day.
  
  Julien had never been in that man's house. Only a few days before
  he had been thinking of nothing but the means of giving him a sound
  thrashing without getting into trouble with the police. Although
  the time of the dinner was one o'clock, Julien thought it was more
  deferential to present himself at half-past twelve at the office of M.
  the director of the workhouse. He found him parading his importance in
  the middle of a lot of despatch boxes. His large black whiskers, his
  enormous quantity of hair, his Greek bonnet placed across the top of
  his head, his immense pipe, his embroidered slippers, the big chains
  of gold crossed all over his breast, and the whole stock-in-trade of
  a provincial financier who considers himself prosperous, failed to
  impose on Julien in the least: They only made him think the more of the
  thrashing which he owed him.
  
  He asked for the honour of being introduced to Madame Valenod. She
  was dressing and was unable to receive him. By way of compensation he
  had the privilege of witnessing the toilet of M. the director of the
  workhouse. They subsequently went into the apartment of Madame Valenod,
  who introduced her children to him with tears in her eyes. This lady
  was one of the most important in Verrieres, had a big face like a
  man's, on which she had put rouge in honour of this great function. She
  displayed all the maternal pathos of which she was capable.
  
  Julien thought all the time of Madame de Renal. His distrust made him
  only susceptible to those associations which are called up by their
  opposites, but he was then affected to the verge of breaking down.
  This tendency was increased by the sight of the house of the director
  of the workhouse. He was shown over it. Everything in it was new and
  magnificent, and he was told the price of every article of furniture.
  But Julien detected a certain element of sordidness, which smacked of
  stolen money into the bargain. Everybody in it, down to the servants,
  had the air of setting his face in advance against contempt.
  
  The collector of taxes, the superintendent of indirect taxes, the
  officer of gendarmerie, and two or three other public officials arrived
  with their wives. They were followed by some rich Liberals. Dinner was
  announced. It occurred to Julien, who was already feeling upset, that
  there were some poor prisoners on the other side of the dining-room
  wall, and that an illicit profit had perhaps been made over their
  rations of meat in order to purchase all that garish luxury with which
  they were trying to overwhelm him.
  
  "Perhaps they are hungry at this very minute," he said to himself. He
  felt a choking in his throat. He found it impossible to eat and almost
  impossible to speak. Matters became much worse a quarter of an hour
  afterwards; they heard in the distance some refrains of a popular song
  that was, it must be confessed, a little vulgar, which was being sung
  by one of the inmates. M. Valenod gave a look to one of his liveried
  servants who disappeared and soon there was no more singing to be
  heard. At that moment a valet offered Julien some Rhine wine in a green
  glass and Madame Valenod made a point of asking him to note that this
  wine cost nine francs a bottle in the market. Julien held up his green
  glass and said to M. Valenod,
  
  "They are not singing that wretched song any more."
  
  "Zounds, I should think not," answered the triumphant governor. "I have
  made the rascals keep quiet."
  
  These words were too much for Julien. He had the manners of his new
  position, but he had not yet assimilated its spirit. In spite of all
  his hypocrisy and its frequent practice, he felt a big tear drip down
  his cheek.
  
  He tried to hide it in the green glass, but he found it absolutely
  impossible to do justice to the Rhine wine. "Preventing singing he said
  to himself: Oh, my God, and you suffer it."
  
  Fortunately nobody noticed his ill-bred emotion. The collector of
  taxes had struck up a royalist song. "So this," reflected Julien's
  conscience during the hubbub of the refrain which was sung in chorus,
  "is the sordid prosperity which you will eventually reach, and you will
  only enjoy it under these conditions and in company like this. You
  will, perhaps, have a post worth twenty thousand francs; but while you
  gorge yourself on meat, you will have to prevent a poor prisoner from
  singing; you will give dinners with the money which you have stolen out
  of his miserable rations and during your dinners he will be still more
  wretched. Oh, Napoleon, how sweet it was to climb to fortune in your
  way through the dangers of a battle, but to think of aggravating the
  pain of the unfortunate in this cowardly way."
  
  I own that the weakness which Julien had been manifesting in this
  soliloquy gives me a poor opinion of him. He is worthy of being the
  accomplice of those kid-gloved conspirators who purport to change the
  whole essence of a great country's existence, without wishing to have
  on their conscience the most trivial scratch.
  
  Julien was sharply brought back to his role. He had not been invited to
  dine in such good company simply to moon dreamily and say nothing.
  
  A retired manufacturer of cotton prints, a corresponding member of the
  Academy of Besancon and of that of Uzes, spoke to him from the other
  end of the table and asked him if what was said everywhere about his
  astonishing progress in the study of the New Testament was really true.
  
  A profound silence was suddenly inaugurated. A New Testament in Latin
  was found as though by magic in the possession of the learned member
  of the two Academies. After Julien had answered, part of a sentence
  in Latin was read at random. Julien then recited. His memory proved
  faithful and the prodigy was admired with all the boisterous energy of
  the end of dinner. Julien looked at the flushed faces of the ladies. A
  good many were not so plain. He recognised the wife of the collector,
  who was a fine singer.
  
  "I am ashamed, as a matter of fact, to talk Latin so long before these
  ladies," he said, turning his eyes on her. "If M. Rubigneau," that was
  the name of the member of the two Academies, "will be kind enough to
  read a Latin sentence at random instead of answering by following the
  Latin text, I will try to translate it impromptu." This second test
  completed his glory.
  
  Several Liberals were there, who, though rich, were none the less the
  happy fathers of children capable of obtaining scholarships, and had
  consequently been suddenly converted at the last mission. In spite of
  this diplomatic step, M. de Renal had never been willing to receive
  them in his house. These worthy people, who only knew Julien by name
  and from having seen him on horseback on the day of the king of ----'s
  entry, were his most noisy admirers. "When will those fools get tired
  of listening to this Biblical language, which they don't understand in
  the least," he thought. But, on the contrary, that language amused them
  by its strangeness and made them smile. But Julien got tired.
  
  As six o'clock struck he got up gravely and talked about a chapter in
  Ligorio's New Theology which he had to learn by heart to recite on the
  following day to M. Chelan, "for," he added pleasantly, "my business is
  to get lessons said by heart to me, and to say them by heart myself."
  
  There was much laughter and admiration; such is the kind of wit which
  is customary in Verrieres. Julien had already got up and in spite of
  etiquette everybody got up as well, so great is the dominion exercised
  by genius. Madame Valenod kept him for another quarter of an hour. He
  really must hear her children recite their catechisms. They made the
  most absurd mistakes which he alone noticed. He was careful not to
  point them out. "What ignorance of the first principles of religion,"
  he thought. Finally he bowed and thought he could get away; but they
  insisted on his trying a fable of La Fontaine.
  
  "That author is quite immoral," said Julien to Madame Valenod. A
  certain fable on Messire Jean Chouart dares to pour ridicule on
  all that we hold most venerable. He is shrewdly blamed by the best
  commentators. Before Julien left he received four or five invitations
  to dinner. "This young man is an honour to the department," cried all
  the guests in chorus. They even went so far as to talk of a pension
  voted out of the municipal funds to put him in the position of
  continuing his studies at Paris.
  
  While this rash idea was resounding through the dining-room Julien
  had swiftly reached the front door. "You scum, you scum," he cried,
  three or four times in succession in a low voice as he indulged in the
  pleasure of breathing in the fresh air.
  
  He felt quite an aristocrat at this moment, though he was the very
  man who had been shocked for so long a period by the haughty smile of
  disdainful superiority which he detected behind all the courtesies
  addressed to him at M. de Renal's. He could not help realising the
  extreme difference. Why let us even forget the fact of its being money
  stolen from the poor inmates, he said to himself as he went away, let
  us forget also their stopping the singing. M. de Renal would never
  think of telling his guests the price of each bottle of wine with
  which he regales them, and as for this M. Valenod, and his chronic
  cataloguing of his various belongings, he cannot talk of his house, his
  estate, etc., in the presence of his wife without saying, "Your house,
  your estate."
  
  This lady, who was apparently so keenly alive to the delights of
  decorum, had just had an awful scene during the dinner with a servant
  who had broken a wine-glass and spoilt one of her dozens; and the
  servant too had answered her back with the utmost insolence.
  
  "What a collection," said Julien to himself; "I would not live like
  they do were they to give me half of all they steal. I shall give
  myself away one fine day. I should not be able to restrain myself from
  expressing the disgust with which they inspire one."
  
  It was necessary, however, to obey Madame de Renal's injunction and be
  present at several dinners of the same kind. Julien was the fashion; he
  was forgiven his Guard of Honour uniform, or rather that indiscretion
  was the real cause of his successes. Soon the only question in
  Verrieres was whether M. de Renal or M. the director of the workhouse
  would be the victor in the struggle for the clever young man. These
  gentlemen formed, together with M. Maslon, a triumvirate which had
  tyrannised over the town for a number of years. People were jealous of
  the mayor, and the Liberals had good cause for complaint, but, after
  all, he was noble and born for a superior position, while M. Valenod's
  father had not left him six hundred francs a year. His career had
  necessitated a transition from pitying the shabby green suit which had
  been so notorious in his youth, to envying the Norman horses, his gold
  chains, his Paris clothes, his whole present prosperity.
  
  Julien thought that he had discovered one honest man in the whirlpool
  of this novel world. He was a geometrist named Gros, and had the
  reputation of being a Jacobin. Julien, who had vowed to say nothing
  but that which he disbelieved himself, was obliged to watch himself
  carefully when speaking to M. Gros. He received big packets of
  exercises from Vergy. He was advised to visit his father frequently,
  and he fulfilled his unpleasant duty. In a word he was patching his
  reputation together pretty well, when he was thoroughly surprised to
  find himself woken up one morning by two hands held over his eyes.
  
  It was Madame de Renal who had made a trip to the town, and who,
  running up the stairs four at a time while she left her children
  playing with a pet rabbit, had reached Julien's room a moment before
  her sons. This moment was delicious but very short: Madame de Renal
  had disappeared when the children arrived with the rabbit which
  they wanted to show to their friend. Julien gave them all a hearty
  welcome, including the rabbit. He seemed at home again. He felt that
  he loved these children and that he enjoyed gossiping with them. He
  was astonished at the sweetness of their voices, at the simplicity
  and dignity of their little ways; he felt he needed to purge his
  imagination of all the vulgar practices and all the unpleasantnesses
  among which he had been living in Verrieres. For there everyone was
  always frightened of being scored off, and luxury and poverty were at
  daggers drawn.
  
  The people with whom he would dine would enter into confidences over
  the joint which were as humiliating for themselves as they were
  nauseating to the hearer.
  
  "You others, who are nobles, you are right to be proud," he said to
  Madame de Renal, as he gave her an account of all the dinners which he
  had put up with.
  
  "You're the fashion then," and she laughed heartily as she thought of
  the rouge which Madame Valenod thought herself obliged to put on each
  time she expected Julien. "I think she has designs on your heart," she
  added.
  
  The breakfast was delicious. The presence of the children, though
  apparently embarrassing, increased as a matter of fact the happiness of
  the party. The poor children did not know how to give expression to the
  joy at seeing Julien again. The servants had not failed to tell them
  that he had been offered two hundred francs a year more to educate the
  little Valenods.
  
  Stanislas-Xavier, who was still pale from his illness, suddenly asked
  his mother in the middle of the breakfast, the value of his silver
  cover and of the goblet in which he was drinking.
  
  "Why do you want to know that?"
  
  "I want to sell them to give the price to M. Julien so that he shan't
  be _done_ if he stays with us."
  
  Julien kissed him with tears in his eyes. His mother wept
  unrestrainedly, for Julien took Stanislas on his knees and explained to
  him that he should not use the word "done" which, when employed in that
  meaning was an expression only fit for the servants' hall. Seeing the
  pleasure which he was giving to Madame de Renal, he tried to explain
  the meaning of being "done" by picturesque illustrations which amused
  the children.
  
  "I understand," said Stanislas, "it's like the crow who is silly enough
  to let his cheese fall and be taken by the fox who has been playing the
  flatterer."
  
  Madame de Renal felt mad with joy and covered her children with kisses,
  a process which involved her leaning a little on Julien.
  
  Suddenly the door opened. It was M. de Renal. His severe and
  discontented expression contrasted strangely with the sweet joy
  which his presence dissipated. Madame de Renal grew pale, she felt
  herself incapable of denying anything. Julien seized command of the
  conversation and commenced telling M. the mayor in a loud voice the
  incident of the silver goblet which Stanislas wanted to sell. He was
  quite certain this story would not be appreciated. M. de Renal first
  of all frowned mechanically at the mere mention of money. Any allusion
  to that mineral, he was accustomed to say, is always a prelude to some
  demand made upon my purse. But this was something more than a mere
  money matter. His suspicions were increased. The air of happiness which
  animated his family during his absence was not calculated to smooth
  matters over with a man who was a prey to so touchy a vanity. "Yes,
  yes," he said, as his wife started to praise to him the combined grace
  and cleverness of the way in which Julien gave ideas to his pupils. "I
  know, he renders me hateful to my own children. It is easy enough for
  him to make himself a hundred times more loveable to them than I am
  myself, though after all, I am the master. In this century everything
  tends to make _legitimate_ authority unpopular. Poor France!"
  
  Madame de Renal had not stopped to examine the fine shades of the
  welcome which her husband gave her. She had just caught a glimpse of
  the possibility of spending twelve hours with Julien. She had a lot of
  purchases to make in the town and declared that she positively insisted
  in going to dine at the tavern. She stuck to her idea in spite of all
  her husband's protests and remonstrances. The children were delighted
  with the mere word tavern, which our modern prudery denounces with so
  much gusto.
  
  M. de Renal left his wife in the first draper's shop which she entered
  and went to pay some visits. He came back more morose than he had
  been in the morning. He was convinced that the whole town was busy
  with himself and Julien. As a matter of fact no one had yet given him
  any inkling as to the more offensive part of the public gossip. Those
  items which had been repeated to M. the mayor dealt exclusively with
  the question of whether Julien would remain with him with six hundred
  francs, or would accept the eight hundred francs offered by M. the
  director of the workhouse.
  
  The director, when he met M. de Renal in society, gave him the cold
  shoulder. These tactics were not without cleverness. There is no
  impulsiveness in the provinces. Sensations are so rare there that they
  are never allowed to be wasted.
  
  M. le Valenod was what is called a hundred miles from Paris a _faraud_;
  that means a coarse imprudent type of man. His triumphant existence
  since 1815 had consolidated his natural qualities. He reigned, so
  to say, in Verrieres subject to the orders of M. de Renal; but as
  he was much more energetic, was ashamed of nothing, had a finger in
  everything, and was always going about writing and speaking, and
  was oblivious of all snubs, he had, although without any personal
  pretensions, eventually come to equal the mayor in reputation in the
  eyes of the ecclesiastical authorities. M. Valenod had, as it were,
  said to the local tradesmen "Give me the two biggest fools among your
  number;" to the men of law "Show me the two greatest dunces;" to the
  sanitary officials "Point out to me the two biggest charlatans." When
  he had thus collected the most impudent members of each separate
  calling, he had practically said to them, "Let us reign together."
  
  The manners of those people were offensive to M. de Renal. The
  coarseness of Valenod took offence at nothing, not even the frequency
  with which the little abbe Maslon would give the lie to him in public.
  
  But in the middle of all this prosperity M. Valenod found it necessary
  to reassure himself by a number of petty acts of insolence on the
  score of the crude truths which he well realised that everybody was
  justified in addressing to him. His activity had redoubled since the
  fears which the visit of M. Appert had left him. He had made three
  journeys to Besancon. He wrote several letters by each courier; he sent
  others by unknown men who came to his house at nightfall. Perhaps he
  had been wrong in securing the dismissal of the old cure Chelan. For
  this piece of vindictiveness had resulted in his being considered an
  extremely malicious man by several pious women of good birth. Besides,
  the rendering of this service had placed him in absolute dependence
  on M. the Grand Vicar de Frilair from whom he received some strange
  commissions. He had reached this point in his intrigues when he had
  yielded to the pleasure of writing an anonymous letter, and thus
  increasing his embarrassment. His wife declared to him that she wanted
  to have Julien in her house; her vanity was intoxicated with the idea.
  
  Such being his position M. Valenod imagined in advance a decisive
  scene with his old colleague M. de Renal. The latter might address
  to him some harsh words, which he would not mind much; but he might
  write to Besancon and even to Paris. Some minister's cousin might
  suddenly fall down on Verrieres and take over the workhouse. Valenod
  thought of coming to terms with the Liberals. It was for that purpose
  that several of them had been invited to the dinner when Julien was
  present. He would have obtained powerful support against the mayor but
  the elections might supervene, and it was only too evident that the
  directorship of the workhouse was inconsistent with voting on the wrong
  side. Madame de Renal had made a shrewd guess at this intrigue, and
  while she explained it to Julien as he gave her his arm to pass from
  one shop to another, they found themselves gradually taken as far as
  the _Cours de la Fidelite_ where they spent several hours nearly as
  tranquil as those at Vergy.
  
  At the same time M. Valenod was trying to put off a definite crisis
  with his old patron by himself assuming the aggressive. These tactics
  succeeded on this particular day, but aggravated the mayor's bad
  temper. Never has vanity at close grips with all the harshness and
  meanness of a pettifogging love of money reduced a man to a more sorry
  condition than that of M. de Renal when he entered the tavern. The
  children, on the other hand, had never been more joyful and more merry.
  This contrast put the finishing touch on his pique.
  
  "So far as I can see I am not wanted in my family," he said as he
  entered in a tone which he meant to be impressive.
  
  For answer, his wife took him on one side and declared that it was
  essential to send Julien away. The hours of happiness which she had
  just enjoyed had given her again the ease and firmness of demeanour
  necessary to follow out the plan of campaign which she had been
  hatching for a fortnight. The finishing touch to the trouble of the
  poor mayor of Verrieres was the fact that he knew that they joked
  publicly in the town about his love for cash. Valenod was as generous
  as a thief, and on his side had acquitted himself brilliantly in the
  last five or six collections for the Brotherhood of St. Joseph, the
  congregation of the Virgin, the congregation of the Holy Sacrament,
  etc., etc.
  
  M. de Renal's name had been seen more than once at the bottom of the
  list of gentlefolk of Verrieres, and the surrounding neighbourhood
  who were adroitly classified in the list of the collecting brethren
  according to the amount of their offerings. It was in vain that he said
  that he was _not making money_. The clergy stands no nonsense in such
  matters.
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER XXIII
  
  SORROWS OF AN OFFICIAL
  
  
          Il piacere di alzar la testa tutto l'anno, e ben pagato
          da certi quarti d'ora che bisogna passar.--_Casti_.
  
  
  Let us leave this petty man to his petty fears; why did he take a man
  of spirit into his household when he needed someone with the soul
  of a valet? Why can't he select his staff? The ordinary trend of
  the nineteenth century is that when a noble and powerful individual
  encounters a man of spirit, he kills him, exiles him and imprisons him,
  or so humiliates him that the other is foolish enough to die of grief.
  In this country it so happens that it is not merely the man of spirit
  who suffers. The great misfortunes of the little towns of France and of
  representative governments, like that of New York, is that they find
  it impossible to forget the existence of individuals like M. de Renal.
  It is these men who make public opinion in a town of twenty thousand
  inhabitants, and public opinion is terrible in a country which has a
  charter of liberty. A man, though of a naturally noble and generous
  disposition, who would have been your friend in the natural course of
  events, but who happens to live a hundred leagues off, judges you by
  the public opinion of your town which is made by those fools who have
  chanced to be born noble, rich and conservative. Unhappy is the man who
  distinguishes himself.
  
  Immediately after dinner they left for Vergy, but the next day but
  one Julien saw the whole family return to Verrieres. An hour had not
  passed before he discovered to his great surprise that Madame de Renal
  had some mystery up her sleeve. Whenever he came into the room she
  would break off her conversation with her husband and would almost
  seem to desire that he should go away. Julien did not need to be given
  this hint twice. He became cold and reserved. Madame de Renal noticed
  it and did not ask for an explanation. "Is she going to give me a
  successor," thought Julien. "And to think of her being so familiar
  with me the day before yesterday, but that is how these great ladies
  are said to act. It's just like kings. One never gets any more warning
  than the disgraced minister who enters his house to find his letter of
  dismissal." Julien noticed that these conversations which left off so
  abruptly at his approach, often dealt with a big house which belonged
  to the municipality of Verrieres, a house which though old was large
  and commodious and situated opposite the church in the most busy
  commercial district of the town. "What connection can there be between
  this house and a new lover," said Julien to himself. In his chagrin he
  repeated to himself the pretty verses of Francis I. which seemed novel
  to him, for Madame de Renal had only taught him them a month before:
  
      Souvent femme varie
      Bien fol est qui s'y fie.
  
  M. de Renal took the mail to Besancon. This journey was a matter of two
  hours. He seemed extremely harassed. On his return he threw a big grey
  paper parcel on the table.
  
  "Here's that silly business," he said to his wife. An hour afterwards
  Julien saw the bill-poster carrying the big parcel. He followed him
  eagerly. "I shall learn the secret at the first street corner." He
  waited impatiently behind the bill-poster who was smearing the back of
  the poster with his big brush. It had scarcely been put in its place
  before Julien's curiosity saw the detailed announcement of the putting
  up for public auction of that big old house whose name had figured so
  frequently in M. de Renal's conversations with his wife. The auction of
  the lease was announced for to-morrow at two o'clock in the Town Hall
  after the extinction of the third fire. Julien was very disappointed.
  He found the time a little short. How could there be time to apprise
  all the other would-be purchasers. But, moreover, the bill, which was
  dated a fortnight back, and which he read again in its entirety in
  three distinct places, taught him nothing.
  
  He went to visit the house which was to let. The porter, who had not
  seen him approach, was saying mysteriously to a neighbour:
  
  "Pooh, pooh, waste of time. M. Maslon has promised him that he shall
  have it for three hundred francs; and, as the mayor kicked, he has been
  summoned to the bishop's palace by M. the Grand Vicar de Frilair."
  
  Julien's arrival seemed very much to disconcert the two friends who
  did not say another word. Julien made a point of being present at the
  auction of the lease.
  
  There was a crowd in the badly-lighted hall, but everybody kept
  quizzing each other in quite a singular way. All eyes were fixed on a
  table where Julien perceived three little lighted candle-ends on a tin
  plate. The usher was crying out "Three hundred francs, gentlemen."
  
  "Three hundred francs, that's a bit too thick," said a man to his
  neighbour in a low voice. Julien was between the two of them. "It's
  worth more than eight hundred, I will raise the bidding." "It's cutting
  off your nose to spite your face. What will you gain by putting M.
  Maslon, M. Valenod, the Bishop, this terrible Grand Vicar de Frilair
  and the whole gang on your track."
  
  "Three hundred and twenty francs," shouted out the other.
  
  "Damned brute," answered his neighbour. "Why here we have a spy of the
  mayor," he added, designating Julien.
  
  Julien turned sharply round to punish this remark, but the two,
  Franc-comtois, were no longer paying any attention to him. Their
  coolness gave him back his own. At that moment the last candle-end
  went out and the usher's drawling voice awarded the house to M. de St.
  Giraud of the office of the prefecture of ---- for a term of nine years
  and for a rent of 320 francs.
  
  As soon as the mayor had left the hall, the gossip began again.
  
  "Here's thirty francs that Grogeot's recklessness is landing the
  municipality in for," said one--"But," answered another, "M. de Saint
  Giraud will revenge himself on Grogeot."
  
  "How monstrous," said a big man on Julien's left. "A house which I
  myself would have given eight hundred francs for my factory, and I
  would have got a good bargain."
  
  "Pooh!" answered a young manufacturer, "doesn't M. de St. Giraud belong
  to the congregation? Haven't his four children got scholarships? poor
  man! The community of Verrieres must give him five hundred francs over
  and above his salary, that is all."
  
  "And to say that the mayor was not able to stop it," remarked a third.
  "For he's an ultra he is, I'm glad to say, but he doesn't steal."
  
  "Doesn't he?" answered another. "Suppose it's simply a mere game of
  'snap'[1] then. Everything goes into a big common purse, and everything
  is divided up at the end of the year. But here's that little Sorel,
  let's go away."
  
  Julien got home in a very bad temper. He found Madame de Renal very sad.
  
  "You come from the auction?" she said to him.
  
  "Yes, madam, where I had the honour of passing for a spy of M. the
  Mayor."
  
  "If he had taken my advice, he would have gone on a journey."
  
  At this moment Monsieur de Renal appeared: he looked very dismal. The
  dinner passed without a single word. Monsieur de Renal ordered Julien
  to follow the children to Vergy.
  
  Madame de Renal endeavoured to console her husband.
  
  "You ought to be used to it, my dear."
  
  That evening they were seated in silence around the domestic hearth.
  The crackle of the burnt pinewood was their only distraction. It
  was one of those moments of silence which happen in the most united
  families. One of the children cried out gaily,
  
  "Somebody's ringing, somebody's ringing!"
  
  "Zounds! supposing it's Monsieur de Saint Giraud who has come under
  the pretext of thanking me," exclaimed the mayor. "I will give him a
  dressing down. It is outrageous. It is Valenod to whom he'll feel under
  an obligation, and it is I who get compromised. What shall I say if
  those damned Jacobin journalists get hold of this anecdote, and turn me
  into a M. Nonante Cinque."
  
  A very good-looking man, with big black whiskers, entered at this
  moment, preceded by the servant.
  
  "Monsieur the mayor, I am Signor Geronimo. Here is a letter which M.
  the Chevalier de Beauvoisis, who is attached to the Embassy of Naples,
  gave me for you on my departure. That is only nine days ago, added
  Signor Geronimo, gaily looking at Madame de Renal. Your cousin, and my
  good friend, Signor de Beauvoisis says that you know Italian, Madame."
  
  The Neapolitan's good humour changed this gloomy evening into a very
  gay one. Madame de Renal insisted upon giving him supper. She put the
  whole house on the go. She wanted to free Julien at any price from the
  imputation of espionage which she had heard already twice that day.
  
  Signor Geronimo was an excellent singer, excellent company, and had
  very gay qualities which, at any rate in France, are hardly compatible
  with each other. After dinner he sang a little duet with Madame de
  Renal, and told some charming tales. At one o'clock in the morning the
  children protested, when Julien suggested that they should go to bed.
  
  "Another of those stories," said the eldest.
  
  "It is my own, Signorino," answered Signor Geronimo.
  
  "Eight years ago I was, like you, a young pupil of the Naples
  Conservatoire. I mean I was your age, but I did not have the honour to
  be the son of the distinguished mayor of the pretty town of Verrieres."
  This phrase made M. de Renal sigh, and look at his wife.
  
  "Signor Zingarelli," continued the young singer, somewhat exaggerating
  his action, and thus making the children burst into laughter, "Signor
  Zingarelli was an excellent though severe master. He is not popular at
  the Conservatoire, but he insists on the pretence being kept up that he
  is. I went out as often as I could. I used to go to the little Theatre
  de San Carlino, where I used to hear divine music. But heavens! the
  question was to scrape together the eight sous which were the price of
  admission to the parterre? An enormous sum," he said, looking at the
  children and watching them laugh. "Signor Giovannone, director of the
  San Carlino, heard me sing. I was sixteen. 'That child is a treasure,'
  he said.
  
  "'Would you like me to engage you, my dear boy?' he said.
  
  "'And how much will you give me?'
  
  "'Forty ducats a month.' That is one hundred and sixty francs,
  gentlemen. I thought the gates of heaven had opened.
  
  "'But,' I said to Giovannone, 'how shall I get the strict Zingarelli to
  let me go out?'
  
  "'_Lascia fare a me_.'"
  
  "Leave it to me," exclaimed the eldest of the children.
  
  "Quite right, my young sir. Signor Giovannone he says to me, 'First
  sign this little piece of paper, my dear friend.' I sign.
  
  "He gives me three ducats. I had never seen so much money. Then he told
  me what I had to do.
  
  "Next day I asked the terrible Zingarelli for an audience. His old
  valet ushered me in.
  
  "'What do you want of me, you naughty boy?' said Zingarelli.
  
  "'Maestro,' I said, 'I repent of all my faults. I will never go out of
  the Conservatoire by passing through the iron grill. I will redouble my
  diligence.'
  
  "'If I were not frightened of spoiling the finest bass voice I have
  ever heard, I would put you in prison for a fortnight on bread and
  water, you rascal.'
  
  "'Maestro,' I answered, 'I will be the model boy of the whole school,
  _credete a me_, but I would ask one favour of you. If anyone comes and
  asks permission for me to sing outside, refuse. As a favour, please say
  that you cannot let me.'
  
  "'And who the devil do you think is going to ask for a ne'er-do-well
  like you? Do you think I should ever allow you to leave the
  Conservatoire? Do you want to make fun of me? Clear out! Clear out!' he
  said, trying to give me a kick, 'or look out for prison and dry bread.'"
  
  One thing astonished Julien. The solitary weeks passed at Verrieres in
  de Renal's house had been a period of happiness for him. He had only
  experienced revulsions and sad thoughts at the dinners to which he had
  been invited. And was he not able to read, write and reflect, without
  being distracted, in this solitary house? He was not distracted every
  moment from his brilliant reveries by the cruel necessity of studying
  the movement of a false soul in order to deceive it by intrigue and
  hypocrisy.
  
  "To think of happiness being so near to me--the expense of a life
  like that is small enough. I could have my choice of either marrying
  Mademoiselle Elisa or of entering into partnership with Fouque. But it
  is only the traveller who has just scaled a steep mountain and sits
  down on the summit who finds a perfect pleasure in resting. Would he be
  happy if he had to rest all the time?"
  
  Madame de Renal'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 Renal, but she
  was not excused in Verrieres, 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 Verrieres society began to be
  indignant at the fact that its anathemas made so little impression on
  Monsieur de Renal. 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 cure Chelan,
  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 abbe Chelan 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 Besancon, or for your friend
  Fouque, 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 Verrieres for a year."
  
  Julien did not answer. He was considering whether his honour ought to
  regard itself offended at the trouble which Chelan, 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 cure.
  
  Chelan, 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 Renal 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 Verrieres. The public was wrong; it had been misled
  by jealous tongues. But, after all, what was one to do?
  
  Madame de Renal was, for the moment, under the illusion that Julien
  would accept the offer of Valenod and stay at Verrieres. 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 Renal of the terrible news of his
  departure, he was struck with one thing. He did not find her put
  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 no 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 Renal'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 Renal's demeanour and the expression
  of her face were noble, firm, and perfectly dignified.
  
  M. de Renal 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 Verrieres. 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 Renal, 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 Renal 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 Renal 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 Verrieres, 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 Renal's prestige that Julien
  should leave Verrieres to enter the seminary of Besancon or that of
  Dijon. But how to make him decide on that course? And then how is he
  going to live?
  
  M. de Renal, 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 death-bed, "When I was king." An admirable epigram.
  
  Next morning, M. de Renal 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 Renal 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 Renal 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 Renal 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 Renal
  as a loan, and induced him to give him a promissory note, repayable in
  five years with interest.
  
  Madame de Renal 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 Verrieres. M. de Renal 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 Renal 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 Fouque for
  an equal sum.
  
  He was very moved. But one league from Verrieres, 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 Besancon.
  
  During the short absence of three days, Madame de Renal 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
  thought--"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 Derville to a mere
  acquaintance."
  
  Madame de Renal 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 Renal, 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 Verrieres he turned round
  frequently.
  
  
  [1] C'est pigeon qui vole. A reference to a contemporary animal game
  with a pun on the word "vole."
  
  
  
  
  
target: Julien and Mme. de Renal's affair takes a downward turn when her youngest son falls deathly ill. Mme. de Renal is convinced that God is punishing her for committing adultery and begs Julien to stay away from her. Julien thinks that her behavior is quite foolish, but worries that she might confess to both her husband and M. Chelan. She almost does, but then confides to Julien that she loves him more than anything else, even her own children. Moved by her devotion to him, Julien finally falls in love with Mme. de Renal. Their renewed happiness tips off Mme. de Renal's maid, Elisa, that something is going on and she tells M. Valenod, who writes an anonymous letter to M. de Renal. Julien immediately recognizes that the letter denounces his affair with Mme. de Renal. The two of them form a plan in order to convince M. de Renal that the accusations are false and just an attempt to embarrass the mayor. They forge a second anonymous letter and pretend to send it to Mme. de Renal. This second letter says that M. Valenod is both responsible for the first letter and out to seduce Mme. de Renal himself. Before receiving this second letter, M. de Renal spends the entire night in a state of wretched embarrassment and hatred. More concerned about his name and political position than his marriage, he considers killing both Julien and his wife. But when Mme. de Renal brings him the second letter, he no longer believes the accusations and thinks instead that M. Valenod is organizing a liberal plot against him. Mme. de Renal manipulates her husband even further by showing him old love letters written to her by M. Valenod. Julien is invited to dine with the Valenods, who want to hire him as the family tutor. He goes in order to give M. de Renal the impression that all of M. Valenod's letters were intended to make Renal fire Julien so he would move to the Valenod's. Julien is disgusted by the bourgeois liberals at the Valenod dinner party. They have all made money off the poor. Julien finds nothing honorable about their obsession with money and is doubly resolved to come to power through the Church. He gets his chance when the ever-jealous Elisa tells M. Chelan about the affair. Chelan, in order to avoid a scandal, arranges for Julien to enter a seminary in Besancon. M. de Renal, though now believing that nothing has happened between his wife and Julien, is happy to see Julien leave: the rumors will die out and M. Valenod will not get Julien to be his tutor. Mme. de Renal is devastated to see Julien leave and gives him a lock of her hair. Although Julien is excited to become a powerful figure in the Church, along the road to Besancon, he keeps looking back at Verrieres.
feat_summary_analysis: Commentary Stendhal's fascination with the psychology of love is very apparent in this section. It is only when Julien's vanity is sufficiently flattered by Mme. de Renal that he falls in love with her. Stendhal describes this change as a switch from love of possession and beauty to passion-love. When Julien realizes that she loves him more than her own children, he trusts Mme. de Renal's devotion enough to fall in love with her. Again, triangular desire enables Julien to love Mme. de Renal . The love triangle between Julien, Mme. de Renal, and Elisa also motivates the jealous Elisa to tell M. Valenod and then M. Chelan about Julien and Mme. de Renal. This section also juxtaposes Mme. de Renal's intelligence and religious faith with M. de Renal's foolish concerns for rank and lack of concern for his family. Mme. de Renal truly believes that God is punishing her for falling in love with Julien. When she actually tries to confess to her husband, Julien admires her lack of hypocrisy. When it comes to saving her family's reputation, Mme. de Renal also becomes very cunning. Julien realizes that M. Valenod has denounced them, but it is Mme. de Renal who drafts the second letter and manipulates her husband into discovering M. Valenod's old love letters. M. de Renal, in contrast, only cares about remaining the mayor of Verrieres. He considers killing Mme. de Renal and Julien but worries that then he would not receive an inheritance his wife is expecting. Mme. de Renal easily manipulates her husband with flatteries into believing her version of the story. Julien's dinner with the Valenods demonstrates Stendhal's disdain for both conservatives and liberals. Julien reads the major liberal newspapers, but when he finally meets a group of liberals at the Valenod's, he is disgusted by their stealing from the poor, lax morals, and obsession with money. For example, Mme. Valenod discusses the cost of the wine Julien is drinking. After leaving the Valenods', Julien realizes that he has much more aristocratic and refined tastes than he thought. The reader cannot help but notice Stendhal's ironical tone in describing Julien's change of heart, as well as his characteristic hypocrisy. Further tension between the red of the military and the black of the Church is played out in this section. Julien seeks the glory of a military-like seduction of Mme. de Renal, but ends up being sent to the seminary anyway. For all of Julien's ambition and determination to succeed in French society, he does not go to the seminary by choice: M. Chelan orders him there. Unlike most romantic heroes, Julien has very little free will. He does what other people tell him to do.