The Red and the Black

Home > Other > The Red and the Black > Page 8
The Red and the Black Page 8

by Stendhal


  The hours spent under this great pine tree, planted by Charles the Bold according to the local tradition, were a real period of happiness. She listened with delight to the soughing of the wind in the thick foliage of the pine tree and to the noise of some stray drops which were beginning to fall upon the leaves which were lowest down. Julien failed to notice one circumstance which, if he had, would have quickly reassured him; Madame de Rênal, who had been obliged to take away her hand, because she had got up to help her cousin to pick up a flower-pot which the wind had knocked over at her feet, had scarcely sat down again before she gave him her hand with scarcely any difficulty and as though it had already been a pre-arranged thing between them.

  Midnight had struck a long time ago; it was at last necessary to leave the garden; they separated. Madame de Rênal swept away as she was, by the happiness of loving, was so completely ignorant of the world that she scarcely reproached herself at all. Her happiness deprived her of her sleep. A leaden sleep overwhelmed Julien who was mortally fatigued by the battle which timidity and pride had waged in his heart all through the day.

  He was called at five o’clock on the following day and scarcely gave Madame de Rênal a single thought.

  He had accomplished his duty, and a heroic duty too. The consciousness of this filled him with happiness; he locked himself in his room, and abandoned himself with quite a new pleasure to reading exploits of his hero.

  When the breakfast bell sounded, the reading of the Bulletins of the Great Army had made him forget all his advantages of the previous day. He said to himself flippantly, as he went down to the salon, “I must tell that woman that I am in love with her.” Instead of those looks brimful of pleasure which he was expecting to meet, he found the stern visage of M. de Rênal, who had arrived from Verrières two hours ago, and did not conceal his dissatisfaction at Julien’s having passed the whole morning without attending to the children. Nothing could have been more sordid than this self-important man when he was in a bad temper and thought that he could safely show it.

  Each harsh word of her husband pierced Madame de Rênal’s heart.

  As for Julien, he was so plunged in his ecstasy, and still so engrossed by the great events which had been passing before his eyes for several hours, that he had some difficulty at first in bringing his attention sufficiently down to listen to the harsh remarks which M. de Rênal was addressing to him. He said to him at last, rather abruptly,

  “I was ill.”

  The tone of this answer would have stung a much less sensitive man than the mayor of Verrières. He half thought of answering Julien by turning him out of the house straight away. He was only restrained by the maxim which he had prescribed for himself, of never hurrying unduly in business matters.

  “The young fool,” he said to himself shortly afterwards, “has won a kind of reputation in my house. That man Valenod may take him into his family, or he may quite well marry Elisa, and in either case, he will be able to have the laugh of me in his heart.”

  In spite of the wisdom of these reflections, M. de Rênal’s dissatisfaction did not fail to vent itself any the less by a string of coarse insults which gradually irritated Julien. Madame de Rênal was on the point of bursting into tears. Breakfast was scarcely over, when she asked Julien to give her his arm for a walk. She leaned on him affectionately. Julien could only answer all that Madame de Rênal said to him by whispering.

  “That’s what rich people are like!”

  M. de Rênal was walking quite close to them; his presence increased Julien’s anger. He suddenly noticed that Madame de Rênal was leaning on his arm in a manner which was somewhat marked. This horrified him, and he pushed her violently away and disengaged his arm.

  Luckily, M. de Rênal did not see this new piece of impertinence; it was only noticed by Madame Derville. Her friend burst into tears. M. de Rênal now started to chase away by a shower of stones a little peasant girl who had taken a private path crossing a corner of the orchard. “Monsieur Julien, restrain yourself, I pray you. Remember that we all have our moments of temper,” said Madame Derville rapidly.

  Julien looked at her coldly with eyes in which the most supreme contempt was depicted.

  This look astonished Madame Derville, and it would have surprised her even more if she had appreciated its real expression; she would have read in it something like a vague hope of the most atrocious vengeance. It is, no doubt, such moments of humiliation which have made Robespierres.

  “Your Julien is very violent; he frightens me,” said Madame Derville to her friend, in a low voice.

  “He is right to be angry,” she answered. “What does it matter if he does pass a morning without speaking to the children, after the astonishing progress which he has made them make. One must admit that men are very hard.”

  For the first time in her life Madame de Rênal experienced a kind of desire for vengeance against her husband. The extreme hatred of the rich by which Julien was animated was on the point of exploding. Luckily, M. de Rênal called his gardener, and remained occupied with him in barring by faggots of thorns the private road through the orchard. Julien did not vouchsafe any answer to the kindly consideration of which he was the object during all the rest of the walk. M. de Rênal had scarcely gone away before the two friends made the excuse of being fatigued, and each asked him for an arm.

  Walking as he did between these two women whose extreme nervousness filled their cheeks with a blushing embarrassment, the haughty pallor and sombre, resolute air of Julien formed a strange contrast. He despised these women and all tender sentiments.

  “What!” he said to himself, “not even an income of five hundred francs to finish my studies! Ah! how I should like to send them packing.”

  And absorbed as he was by these stern ideas, such few courteous words of his two friends as he deigned to take the trouble to understand, displeased him as devoid of sense, silly, feeble, in a word—feminine.

  As the result of speaking for the sake of speaking and of endeavouring to keep the conversation alive, it came about that Madame de Rênal mentioned that her husband had come from Verrières because he had made a bargain for the May straw with one of his farmers. (In this district it is the May straw with which the bed mattresses are filled).

  “My husband will not rejoin us,” added Madame de Rênal; “he will occupy himself with finishing the re-stuffing of the house mattresses with the help of the gardener and his valet. He has put the May straw this morning in all the beds on the first storey; he is now at the second.”

  Julien changed colour. He looked at Madame de Rênal in a singular way, and soon managed somehow to take her on one side, doubling his pace. Madame Derville allowed them to get ahead.

  “Save my life,” said Julien to Madame de Rênal; “only you can do it, for you know that the valet hates me desperately. I must confess to you, madame, that I have a portrait. I have hidden it in the mattress of my bed.”

  At these words Madame de Rênal in her turn became pale.

  “Only you, Madame, are able at this moment to go into my room, feel about without their noticing in the corner of the mattress; it is nearest the window. You will find a small, round box of black cardboard, very glossy.”

  “Does it contain a portrait?” said Madame de Rênal, scarcely able to hold herself upright.

  Julien noticed her air of discouragement, and at once proceeded to exploit it.

  “I have a second favour to ask you, madame. I entreat you not to look at that portrait; it is my secret.”

  “It is a secret,” repeated Madame de Rênal in a faint voice.

  But though she had been brought up among people who are proud of their fortune and appreciate of nothing except money, love had already instilled generosity into her soul. Truly wounded as she was, it was with an air of the most simple devotion that Madame de Rênal asked Julien the questions necessary to enable her to fulfil her commission.

  “So” she said to him as she went away, “it is a little round box
of black cardboard, very glossy.”

  “Yes, Madame,” answered Julien, with that hardness which danger gives to men.

  She ascended the second storey of the château as pale as though she had been going to her death. Her misery was completed by the sensation that she was on the verge of falling ill, but the necessity of doing Julien a service restored her strength.

  “I must have that box,” she said to herself, as she doubled her pace.

  She heard her husband speaking to the valet in Julien’s very room. Happily, they passed into the children’s room. She lifted up the mattress, and plunged her hand into the stuffing so violently that she bruised her fingers. But, though she was very sensitive to slight pain of this kind, she was not conscious of it now, for she felt almost simultaneously the smooth surface of the cardboard box. She seized it and disappeared.

  She had scarcely recovered from the fear of being surprised by her husband than the horror with which this box inspired her came within an ace of positively making her feel ill.

  “So Julien is in love, and I hold here the portrait of the woman whom he loves!”

  Seated on the chair in the ante-chamber of his apartment, Madame de Rênal fell a prey to all the horrors of jealousy. Her extreme ignorance, moreover, was useful to her at this juncture; her astonishment mitigated her grief. Julien seized the box without thanking her or saying a single word, and ran into his room, where he lit a fire and immediately burnt it. He was pale and in a state of collapse. He exaggerated the extent of the danger which he had undergone.

  “Finding Napoleon’s portrait,” he said to himself, “in the possession of a man who professes so great a hate for the usurper! Found, too, by M. de Rênal, who is so great an ultra, and is now in a state of irritation, and, to complete my imprudence, lines written in my own handwriting on the white cardboard behind the portrait, lines, too, which can leave no doubt on the score of my excessive admiration. And each of these transports of love is dated. There was one the day before yesterday.”

  “All my reputation collapsed and shattered in a moment,” said Julien to himself as he watched the box burn, “and my reputation is my only asset. It is all I have to live by—and what a life too, by heaven!”

  An hour afterwards, this fatigue, together with the pity which he felt for himself made him inclined to be more tender. He met Madame de Rênal and took her hand, which he kissed with more sincerity than he had ever done before. She blushed with happiness and almost simultaneously rebuffed Julien with all the anger of jealousy. Julien’s pride which had been so recently wounded made him act foolishly at this juncture. He saw in Madame de Rênal nothing but a rich woman, he disdainfully let her hand fall and went away. He went and walked about meditatively in the garden. Soon a bitter smile appeared on his lips.

  “Here I am walking about as serenely as a man who is master of his own time. I am not bothering about the children! I am exposing myself to M. de Rênal’s humiliating remarks, and he will be quite right.” He ran to the children’s room. The caresses of the youngest child, whom he loved very much, somewhat calmed his agony.

  “He does not despise me yet,” thought Julien. But he soon reproached himself for this alleviation of his agony as though it were a new weakness. “The children caress me just in the same way in which they would caress the young hunting-hound which was bought yesterday.”

  X. A Great Heart and a Small Fortune

  But passion most disembles, yet betrays,

  Even by its darkness, as the blackest sky

  Foretells the heaviest tempest.

  Don Juan, c. 4, st. 75.

  M. de Rênal was going through all the rooms in the château, and he came back into the children’s room with the servants who were bringing back the stuffings of the mattresses. The sudden entry of this man had the effect on Julien of the drop of water which makes the pot overflow.

  Looking paler and more sinister than usual, he rushed towards him. M. de Rênal stopped and looked at his servants.

  “Monsieur,” said Julien to him, “Do you think your children would have made the progress they have made with me with any other tutor? If you answer ‘No,’” continued Julien so quickly that M. de Rênal did not have time to speak, “how dare you reproach me with neglecting them?”

  M. de Rênal, who had scarcely recovered from his fright, concluded from the strange tone he saw this little peasant assume, that he had some advantageous offer in his pocket, and that he was going to leave him.

  The more he spoke the more Julien’s anger increased, “I can live without you, Monsieur,” he added.

  “I am really sorry to see you so upset,” answered M. de Rênal shuddering a little. The servants were ten yards off engaged in making the beds.

  “That is not what I mean, Monsieur,” replied Julien quite beside himself. “Think of the infamous words that you have addressed to me, and before women too.”

  M. de Rênal understood only too well what Julien was asking, and a painful conflict tore his soul. It happened that Julien, who was really mad with rage, cried out,

  “I know where to go, Monsieur, when I leave your house.”

  At these words M. de Rênal saw Julien installed with M. Valenod. “Well, sir,” he said at last with a sigh, just as though he had called in a surgeon to perform the most painful operation, “I accede to your request. I will give you fifty francs a month. Starting from the day after to-morrow which is the first of the month.”

  Julien wanted to laugh, and stood there dumbfounded. All his anger had vanished.

  “I do not despise the brute enough,” he said to himself. “I have no doubt that that is the greatest apology that so base a soul can make.”

  The children who had listened to this scene with gaping mouths, ran into the garden to tell their mother that M. Julien was very angry, but that he was going to have fifty francs a month.

  Julien followed them as a matter of habit without even looking at M. de Rênal whom he left in a considerable state of irritation.

  “That makes one hundred and sixty-eight francs,” said the mayor to himself, “that M. Valenod has cost me. I must absolutely speak a few strong words to him about his contract to provide for the foundlings.”

  A minute afterwards Julien found himself opposite M. de Rênal.

  “I want to speak to M. Chélan on a matter of conscience. I have the honour to inform you that I shall be absent some hours.”

  “Why, my dear Julien,” said M. de Rênal smiling with the falsest expression possible, “take the whole day, and to-morrow too if you like, my good friend. Take the gardener’s horse to go to Verrières.”

  “He is on the very point,” said M. de Rênal to himself, “of giving an answer to Valenod. He has promised me nothing, but I must let this hot-headed young man have time to cool down.”

  Julien quickly went away, and went up into the great forest, through which one can manage to get from Vergy to Verrières. He did not wish to arrive at M. Chélan’s at once. Far from wishing to cramp himself in a new pose of hypocrisy he needed to see clear in his own soul, and to give audience to the crowd of sentiments which were agitating him.

  “I have won a battle,” he said to himself, as soon as he saw that he was well in the forest, and far from all human gaze. “So I have won a battle.”

  This expression shed a rosy light on his situation, and restored him to some serenity.

  “Here I am with a salary of fifty francs a month, M. de Rênal must be precious afraid, but what of?”

  This meditation about what could have put fear into the heart of that happy, powerful man against whom he had been boiling with rage only an hour back, completed the restoration of serenity of Julien’s soul. He was almost able to enjoy for a moment the delightful beauty of the woods amidst which he was walking. Enormous blocks of bare rocks had fallen down long ago in the middle of the forest by the mountain side. Great cedars towered almost as high as these rocks whose shade caused a delicious freshness within three yards of places w
here the heat of the sun’s rays would have made it impossible to rest.

  Julien took breath for a moment in the shade of these great rocks, and then he began again to climb. Traversing a narrow path that was scarcely marked, and was only used by the goat herds, he soon found himself standing upon an immense rock with the complete certainty of being far away from all mankind. This physical position made him smile. It symbolised to him the position he was burning to attain in the moral sphere. The pure air of these lovely mountains filled his soul with serenity and even with joy. The mayor of Verrières still continued to typify in his eyes all the wealth and all the arrogance of the earth; but Julien felt that the hatred that had just thrilled him had nothing personal about it in spite of all the violence which he had manifested. If he had left off seeing M. de Rênal he would in eight days have forgotten him, his castle, his dogs, his children and all his family. “I forced him, I don’t know how, to make the greatest sacrifice. What? more than fifty crowns a year, and only a minute before I managed to extricate myself from the greatest danger; so there are two victories in one day. The second one is devoid of merit, I must find out the why and the wherefore. But these laborious researches are for to-morrow.”

  Standing up on his great rock, Julien looked at the sky which was all afire with an August sun. The grasshoppers sang in the field about the rock; when they held their peace there was universal silence around him. He saw twenty leagues of country at his feet. He noticed from time to time some hawk, which launching off from the great rocks over his head was describing in silence its immense circles. Julien’s eye followed the bird of prey mechanically. Its tranquil powerful movements struck him. He envied that strength, that isolation.

  “Would Napoleon’s destiny be one day his?”

  XI. An Evening

  Yet Julia’s very coldness still was kind,

 

‹ Prev