by Stendhal
That's what these rich people are like, he reflected, they humiliate you, and then think they can make up for it all by a few ridiculous gestures!
Mme de Rênal took all this too much to heart and was as yet too much of an innocent to be able to refrain from telling her husband, despite her resolutions to the contrary, what she had offered Julien and how she had been rebuffed.
'How on earth', replied M. de Rênal in extreme vexation, 'could you tolerate a refusal from a mere servant?'
And as Mme de Rênal protested at this term:
'I am speaking, madam, as the late Prince de Condé * did
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when he presented his chamberlains to his new wife: "All these people", he said to her, "are our servants." I have read you that passage from Besenval's Memoirs * which is quite essential for an understanding of precedence. Anyone who isn't a gentleman, and lives in your house and receives a wage, is your servant. I shall have a word or two with this M. Julien, and give him a hundred francs.'
'Oh, my dear!' said Mme de Rênal, trembling, 'Then at least don't do it in front of the servants!'
'Quite so, they might be envious and with good reason,' said her husband as he went off, thinking about the relative size of the sum.
Mme de Rênal collapsed on to a chair, almost fainting with misery. He's going to humiliate Julien, and it's all my fault! She was revolted by her husband, and hid her face in her hands. She vowed never to go confiding again.
When she next saw Julien, she was trembling all over, and her chest felt so constricted she was unable to utter a single word. In her embarrassment she took hold of his hands and squeezed them.
'Well now, my dear,' she said at last, 'are you pleased with my husband?'
'How could I fail to be?' Julien answered with a bitter smile. 'He gave me a hundred francs.'
Mme de Rênal looked at him as if she did not know what to make of this.
'Give me your arm,' she said with a note of bravery in her voice that Julien had never heard before.
She was bold enough to venture as far as the bookseller's in Verrières, in spite of his terrible reputation for liberal views. There she chose books to the value of ten louis which she gave to her sons. But these were books she knew Julien wanted. She insisted there and then, in the bookseller's shop, that each of her sons write his name in the books which fell to his share. While Mme de Rênal was feeling glad that she was somehow able to make amends to Julien in this audacious manner, he was astonished at the number of books he saw displayed at the bookseller's. Never had he dared set foot in so profane a spot. His heart was thumping. Far from having any mind to guess
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what was going on in Mme de Rênal's heart, he was deep in thought about ways and means for a theology student to procure himself some of these books. He eventually came up with the idea that it would be possible with a little skill to persuade M. de Rênal that his sons ought to be set exercises on the history of the famous gentlefolk born in the region. After working at it for a month, Julien saw his idea catch on; so much so that when speaking to the mayor some time later, he was bold enough to risk suggesting a course of action which would be altogether more onerous for the noble mayor: it involved contributing to the wealth of a liberal by taking out a subscription with the bookseller. M. de Rênal was willing to agree that it was wise to acquaint his eldest son de visu * with a number of works he would hear mentioned in conversation when he was at the Military Academy; but Julien found that the mayor drew the line at going any further. He suspected there must be some hidden reason, but was unable to fathom what it might be.
'I was thinking, sir,' he said to him one day, 'that it would be highly unsuitable for the name of a worthy gentleman such as a member of the Rênal family to appear in the sordid files of the bookseller.'
M. de Rênal brightened visibly.
'It would also be a very bad mark for a poor theology student', Julien went on in humbler tones, 'if it could one day be discovered that his name had been on the files of a bookseller who hired out books. The liberals would be able to accuse me of having requested the most infamous books. Who knows if they mightn't even go as far as writing in after my name the titles of these wicked books.'
But Julien was losing the scent. He could see the mayor's face taking on a look of embarrassment and ill-temper. Julien stopped talking. I've got my man, he said to himself.
A few days later, when the eldest boy asked Julien in the presence of M. de Rênal about a book announced in La Quatidienne, * the young tutor replied:
'To avoid giving the Jacobin party * any cause for scoring a victory, and yet to enable me to answer Master Adolphe, it
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would be possible to have a subscription taken out with the bookseller in the name of the lowest of your servants.'
'Now that's not a bad idea at all,' said M. de Rênal, obviously quite delighted.
'All the same, it would have to be laid down,' said Julien with that solemn and almost sad expression which so becomes certain people when they see the fulfilment of aspirations they have cherished the longest, 'it would have to be laid down that the servant may not take out any novels. Once inside the house, these dangerous books could corrupt Mme de Rênal's women, and the servant himself.'
'You're forgetting political pamphlets,' added the mayor in a superior voice. He wanted to hide his admiration for the clever mezzo-termine * devised by his children's tutor.
Julien's life was thus made up of a series of little negotiations; and making a success of them preoccupied him much more than the feeling of special liking which he could easily have read in Mme de Rênal's heart if only he had wished to.
The psychological situation in which he had found himself all his life continued to apply in the mayor of Verrières's house. There, just as at his father's sawmill, he deeply despised the people he lived with, and was hated by them. Every day he could see from the way the sub-prefect or M. Valenod or other friends of the household related recent happenings they had witnessed, how out of touch they were with reality. If an action struck him as admirable, it was bound to be the one to attract the censure of the people around him. His private response was always: What monsters or what fools! The amusing thing is that with all his pride, it often happened that he didn't understand a word of what was being discussed.
In all his life he had never talked sincerely to anyone except the old army surgeon, and the few ideas he had were about Bonaparte's campaigns in Italy, or about surgery. His youthful courage took pleasure in detailed descriptions of the most painful operations; he said to himself: I wouldn't have batted an eyelid.
The first time Mme de Rênal tried to have a conversation with him that did not concern her children's upbringing, he
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began to talk about surgical operations. She turned pale and begged him to stop.
Julien's knowledge went no further. And so, as he spent his days with Mme de Rênal, the strangest of silences fell between them as soon as they were alone together. In the drawingroom, however humble his air, she detected in his eyes a look of intellectual superiority towards any and every visitor to her house. But she had only to find herself alone with him for an instant to see him visibly embarrassed. This worried her, for her feminine instinct told her that this embarrassment did not spring from tenderness.
Basing himself on some vague idea picked up from an account of high society as seen by the old army surgeon, Julien felt humiliated as soon as silence fell at any time when he was in the company of a woman, as if he were to blame personally for this silence. His feeling was infinitely more distressing when he and the woman were alone together. His imagination, filled with the most exaggerated, the most Spanish of notions about what a man should say when he is alone with a woman, offered him nothing in his plight but suggestions which could not be entertained. His soul was up in the clouds, and yet he was unable to break the most humiliating of silences. His look of severity during his long walks with Mme de R�
�nal and the children was thus increased by the most cruel suffering. He despised himself horribly. If he was unfortunate enough to force himself to speak, he found himself saying totally ridiculous things. To crown his wretchedness, he could see his own absurdity and magnified it to himself; but what he could not see was the expression in his eyes: they were so beautiful, and revealed such an ardent spirit, that like good actors they sometimes put a charming gloss on words that scarcely deserved one. Mme de Rênal noticed that when he was alone with her he never succeeded in saying anything memorable unless he was distracted by some unforeseen event, and was not thinking about turning a nice compliment. As the friends of the family never treated her to any new and brilliant ideas, she revelled in Julien's bursts of wit.
Since the fall of Napoleon, any appearance of gallantry has been strictly banned from provincial mores. People are afraid
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of being deprived of office. Rogues look to the Congregation for support, and hypocrisy has made great strides even among the liberal classes. Boredom has become acute. The only pleasures left are reading and agriculture.
Mme de Rênal, the rich heiress of a devout aunt, and married at sixteen to a respectable gentleman, had never in her life experienced or witnessed anything remotely resembling love. It was really only her confessor, the worthy Father Chélan, who had talked to her about love, in connection with M. Valenod's advances; and he had given her such a disgusting picture of it that all the word conjured up in her mind was the idea of the most abject debauchery. She treated as an exception--or even as something quite outside the realm of nature-the kind of love she had encountered in the very small number of novels which chance had put in her path. Protected by this ignorance, Mme de Rênal went her way perfectly happy, with Julien constantly in her thoughts, and it never occurred to her that she might have the slightest cause for self-reproach.
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CHAPTER 8
Minor events
Then there were sighs, the deeper for suppression, And stolen glances, sweeter for the theft, And burning blushes, though for no transgression.
Don Juan, C. I, st. 74*
THE angelic sweetness which Mme de Rênal's character and her present happiness bestowed upon her only became clouded when her thoughts turned to her chambermaid Elisa. The girl inherited some money, and went to confess to Father Chélan that she had it in mind to marry Julien. The priest was genuinely delighted at his friend's happiness; and he was greatly surprised when Julien announced to him in resolute tones that Mlle Elisa's proposal was not acceptable to him.
'Beware, dear boy, of what your heart is up to,' said the priest with a frown. 'I congratulate you on the strength of your vocation, if that's the only reason why you spurn a more than adequate fortune. I've been the priest here in Verrières these fifty-six years, and yet all the signs are that I'm about to be dismissed from office. It distresses me greatly, although I do have an income of eight hundred pounds. I'm telling you this detail so that you don't have any illusions about what awaits you if you go into the priesthood. If you're thinking of courting men in high office, it's a sure road to eternal damnation. You'll be able to make your fortune, but you'll have to trample on the poor and wretched, flatter the sub-prefect, the mayor-anyone held in esteem--and serve their passions. Such conduct, which is known in society as worldly wisdom, need not for a layman be totally incompatible with salvation; but with our calling, we have to choose; you either make your fortune in this world or the next, there's no half-way house. So think about it, my dear fellow, and come back to me in three days' time with your final answer. I dimly perceive in the depths of your character a smouldering ardour which doesn't signal the sort of moderation and complete renunciation of worldly advantages that are essential in a priest. I predict great things
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of your intellect; but if you'll allow me to say so,' the kindly priest added with tears in his eyes, 'I shall fear for your salvation if you go into the priesthood.'
Julien was ashamed of the emotion he felt; for the first time in his life, he could see that someone cared for him; he savoured his tears, and went off to hide them in the deep woods above Verrières.
Why am I in this state? he wondered to himself at last; I feel I would willingly give my life a hundred times over for kind old Father Chélan, and yet he's just proved to me that I'm a mere idiot. He's the crucial one I have to deceive, and he sees straight through me. This secret ardour he was talking about is my ambition to make my fortune. He thinks I'm unworthy to be a priest, at the very moment when I imagined that by sacrificing an income of fifty louis I would give him the highest opinion of my piety and my vocation.
In future, Julien went on, I shall only count on the parts of my character that I've put to the test. Whoever would have predicted that I'd get any pleasure from shedding tears! Or that I should feel affection for someone who proves to me that I'm a mere idiot!
Three days later Julien had found the pretext he should have been armed with right from the start: it was a piece of slander, but does that matter? He admitted to the priest with much hesitation that he had been put off the proposed marriage from the outset by a consideration which he could not go into because it would be damaging to a third party. This was tantamount to impugning Elisa's conduct. Father Chélan detected in Julien's attitude a sort of vehemence that was entirely worldly, and altogether different from the kind which should have inspired a young Levite.
'Dear fellow,' he said to him, pursuing the matter, 'you'd do better to become an honest country squire, learned and worthy of respect, than be a priest without a calling.'
Julien replied very ably to these fresh admonishments as far as language went: he was able to produce the words that a fervent young seminarist would have used. But his tone of voice in uttering them, and the ill-disguised vehemence which shone in his eyes, caused great alarm to Father Chélan.
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You mustn't take too dim a view of Julien's future prospects. He could come up with just the phrases required by a cautious and wily hypocrisy. That's not bad at his age. As far as tone and gesture were concerned, he lived among country folk, and had been deprived of great models to imitate. Later on, he had only to be given the opportunity to associate with such gentlemen and he at once became admirable in gesture as well as in word.
Mme de Rênal was astonished that her chambermaid's new fortune did not make her any happier; she noticed how the girl was constantly visiting the priest, and coming back with tears in her eyes. At last Elisa spoke to her of her marriage.
Mme de Rênal felt as though she had fallen ill; a kind of fever prevented her from sleeping; she only revived when she had her maid or Julien with her. She could think of nothing but the two of them, and the happiness they would experience in their married life. The little house where they would have to live in poverty on an income of fifty louis imprinted itself on her imagination in the most charming colours. Julien could very easily become a barrister in Bray, the sub-prefecture two leagues * away from Verrières; in which case she would see him from time to time.
Mme de Rênal genuinely believed that she was going to go mad; she told her husband, and eventually fell ill. That very evening, while her maid was attending to her, she noticed that the girl was crying. She loathed Elisa at the time, and had just been short with her; she apologized for it. Elisa's tears only increased; she said that if her mistress would allow it, she would tell her all her troubles.
'Go on,' replied Mme de Rênal.
'Well you see, madam, he's turned me down; people must have said nasty things to him about me out of spite, and he believes them.'
'Who's turned you down?' Mme de Rênal asked, hardly able to breathe.
'Who do you think, madam?' replied the maid, sobbing. 'Mr Julien, of course. Father Chélan couldn't overcome his reluctance; because, you see, Father Chélan thinks he shouldn't refuse an honest girl on the grounds she's been a
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chambermaid. After all, Mr Julie
n's father's only a carpenter; and how did he earn his living before he came to Madam's?'
Mme de Rênal had ceased to listen; the surfeit of happiness had almost deprived her of her senses. She asked her maid to confirm several times over that Julien had given a definite refusal which ruled out the possibility of going back to a more sensible decision.
'I want to make a last attempt,' she told her maid. 'I shall speak to Mr Julien.'
After lunch the next day, Mme de Rênal gave herself the sweet pleasure of pleading her rival's cause, and seeing Elisa's hand and fortune steadfastly spurned for an hour on end.
Gradually Julien dropped his stilted replies, and ended up answering Mme de Rênal's sensible arguments with some degree of wit. She could not withstand the flood of happiness which overwhelmed her after so many days of despair. She suddenly felt quite unwell. When she had recovered and was comfortably settled in her room, she sent everyone away. She was deeply astonished.
Could I be in love with Julien? she asked herself at last.
This discovery, which at any other moment would have plunged her into remorse and deep agitation, remained a matter of intellectual contemplation for her: she was very struck by it, but somehow indifferent. She was so exhausted by everything she had just been through that she had no emotional energy left to experience any feelings.
Mme de Rênal tried to settle to her needlework, and fell into a deep sleep. When she awoke, she did not experience as strong a sense of alarm as she should have done. She was too happy to be able to put a bad interpretation on anything. This good provincial woman was so naïve and innocent that she had never tortured her soul to try and force it to experience some new nuance of feeling or unhappiness. Before Julien's arrival she had been completely absorbed by the volume of work which, in regions remote from Paris, is the lot of a good mother and housewife; and she thought of passions as we think of the lottery: inevitably a confidence trick, and a source of happiness pursued only by madmen.
