The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the Nineteenth Century

by Stendhal

Don't be in any doubt about it, my dear, if there's an anonymous letter, it comes from that hateful creature who pursued me for six years with his loud voice, his accounts of his jumping feats on horseback, his brazen smugness, and the endless enumeration of all his good points.

  Is there an anonymous letter? You beast, that's what I wanted to discuss with you; actually no, you did the right thing. Hugging you in my arms, perhaps for the last time, I'd never have been able to discuss things coolly, as I'm doing now on my own. From now on our happiness won't be so straightforward any more. Will you be in the least bit put out by it, Julien? Yes, on days when you haven't received some entertaining book from M. Fouqué. The sacrifice is made: tomorrow, whether or not there's an anonymous letter, I'm going to tell my husband that I've received an anonymous letter too, and that he's got to pay you to go elsewhere, he's got to find a decent excuse and send you back to your family right away.

  Alas! my dear, we shall be separated for a fortnight, maybe a month! There now, I'll do you justice, you'll suffer as much as I shall. But in the end this is the only way to counteract the effect of that anonymous letter; it's not the first one that my husband has received, and about me, what's more. Alas! how I used to laugh at them!

  The whole aim of my conduct is to make my husband think that the letter comes from M. Valenod; I have no doubt that he's the author of it. If you leave the house, be sure to go and live in Verrières. I'll see to it that my husband has the idea of spending a fortnight there, to show fools that there's no coolness between him and me. Once you're in Verrières, be friendly with everyone, even the liberals. I know that all the good ladies will seek you out.

  Don't go and quarrel with M. Valenod or cut his ears off, as you

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  were saying one day; on the contrary, show him all your charm. The main thing is that people in Verrières should believe that you are going to enter Valenod's household, or anyone else's, to instruct their children.

  That's what my husband will never be able to stand. Were he to resign himself to it, well, at least you'll be living in Verrières, and I shall see you from time to time. My children who love you so much will go and visit you. Oh God! I feel as if I love my children the more because they love you. What remorse! How will all this end... My mind is wandering... Anyway, you understand how to behave; be gentle, polite, not supercilious with these coarse individuals, I entreat you on my knees: they will decide our fate. Don't doubt for a moment that in dealing with you my husband will follow the dictates of public opinion.

  It's up to you to provide me with the anonymous letter; arm yourself with patience and a pair of scissors. Cut out from a book the words you'll find below; then stick them with gum on to the sheet of blue-tinted paper I enclose; it came from M. Valenod. Be prepared for your room to be searched; burn the pages of the book you have mutilated. If you can't find the words ready made, have the patience to compose them letter by letter. To spare you trouble, I've done the anonymous letter a bit too short. Alas! If you no longer love me, as I fear, how long you must be finding mine!

  ANONYMOUS LETTER

  Dear Madam,

  All your little goings-on are well-known; but the individuals who have an interest in putting a stop to them are informed. As a last vestige of friendship for you, I urge you to detach yourself completely from the little peasant. If you have the sense to do it, your husband will believe that the communication he has received is false, and he will be allowed to remain in error. Consider that I know your secret; tremble, unfortunate woman; as from now, I want to see you keep to the straight and narrow.

  As soon as you have finished sticking together the words which make up this letter (did you recognize the Master's way of talking?), come out into the house, I'll meet you.

  I'll go into the village and come back looking upset, and indeed I really will be. God Almighty! what am I risking, and all because you thought you detected an anonymous letter. Anyway, with my face distraught I shall give my husband this letter which a stranger has

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  handed to me. What you must do is go for a walk along the forest track with the children, and don't come back till dinner time.

  From the top of the rocks you can see the dovecot tower. If our affairs are going well, I'll put a white handkerchief there; if not, there'll be nothing.

  You unfeeling creature! won't your heart show you a way to tell me that you love me before you set off for this walk? Whatever may happen, you can be sure of one thing: I shan't go on living for a single day after our final separation. Ah! unworthy mother! These last two words I've just written are completely empty, dear Julien. They don't affect me at all; I can only think of you at this moment, I only wrote them so as not to be blamed by you. Now that I see myself on the brink of losing you, what's the point of hiding anything? Yes, let my soul appear black as hell to you, but let me not lie to the man I adore! I've been only too guilty of deception already in my life. There now, I forgive you if you don't love me any more. I haven't any time to reread my letter. It seems to me a small price to pay with my life for the days of happiness I've just spent in your arms. You know they will cost me more than that.

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  CHAPTER 21

  Dialogue with a master

  Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we: For such as we are made of, such we be.

  TWELFTH NIGHT

  JULIEN derived a childish pleasure from piecing words together for an hour on end. As he was leaving his room he ran into his pupils and their mother; she took the letter so straightforwardly and courageously that he was terrified by her calm.

  'Has the gum dried enough?' she asked him.

  Is this the woman who was driven so wild by remorse? he thought. What are her plans at this moment? He was too proud to ask her; but she struck him as more attractive than perhaps ever before.

  'If this goes wrong,' she added with the same composure, 'everything will be taken away from me. Bury this cache somewhere in the mountains; it may be my only resource one day.'

  She handed him a small red morocco case, * filled with gold and a few diamonds.

  'Off you go now,' she said to him.

  She kissed the children, the youngest one twice. Julien stood there motionless. She walked away from him swiftly and without looking at him.

  From the moment he had opened the anonymous letter, M. de Rênal's life had been quite ghastly. He had not been so agitated since a duel he had almost fought in 1816, and, to do him justice, at that time the prospect of being shot had made him less wretched. He examined the letter from all angles: Isn't this a woman's handwriting? he said to himself. In that case, what woman wrote it? He ran through all the women he knew in Verrières without being able to fix his suspicions on any one of them. Might a man have dictated the letter? What man? The same uncertainty again; he was envied and no doubt

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  hated by the majority of men he knew. I must consult my wife, he said to himself through force of habit, getting up from the chair in which he was slumped.

  He was hardly up before he exclaimed: 'God Almighty!' and banged his head with his fists. She's the one I've got to be specially wary of: she's my enemy at this moment. And from sheer anger, tears welled up in his eyes.

  As a just reward for the emotional barrenness which is a matter of practical wisdom in the provinces, the two men M.de Rênal feared most at that moment were his two most intimate friends.

  After these two, I've got maybe ten friends, and he ran through them, reckoning as he did so how much solace he might hope to derive from each of them. 'All of them! All of them!' he exclaimed in rage, 'will get the greatest of enjoyment from my frightful misadventure.' He was lucky enough to be, he believed, much envied, and with good cause too. In addition to his splendid house in town, which the King of ----- had just honoured in perpetuity by sleeping there, he had done up his chateau in Vergy very nicely indeed. The façade was painted white and the windows were fitted with beautiful green shutters. He took a moment's co
mfort from the thought of this magnificence. The fact is that this chateau could be seen from three or four leagues away, to the great detriment of all the neighbouring country houses or so-called chateaux, which had been left the humble grey colour that weathering had produced.

  M. de Rênal could count on the tears and pity of one of his friends, the churchwarden of the parish; but he was an idiot who shed tears over anything. This man, however, was his only recourse.

  'What wretchedness can be compared with mine!' he exclaimed in rage. 'What isolation!'

  Can it be, wondered this man who was genuinely to be pitied, can it be possible that I haven't a friend to turn to for advice in my misfortune? For I'm losing my reason, I can feel it! Ah! Falcoz! Ah! Ducros! he exclaimed bitterly. These were the names of two childhood friends whom he had estranged by his haughty behaviour in 1814. They were not noble, and he

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  had wished to alter the equal footing which had marked their relations since childhood.

  One of them, Falcoz, an intelligent, warm-hearted man who was a paper merchant in Verrières, had bought a printing press in the main town of the departement, and had started up a newspaper. The Congregation had determined to ruin him: his newspaper had been condemned and his printer's licence withdrawn. In these sad circumstances he had tried writing to M. de Rênal for the first time in ten years. The mayor of Verrières thought it his duty to reply like an ancient Roman: 'If the king's minister did me the honour of consulting me, I should say to him: "Do not scruple to ruin all provincial printers, and turn printing into a monopoly like tobacco." ' This letter to a close friend was admired by the whole of Verrières at the time, and M. de Rênal was now appalled to recall its terms. Who could have told me that with my rank, my fortune, and my decorations, I should need him one day? Tossed by fits of anger such as these, now directed against himself, now against everything round about him, he spent a terrible night; but fortunately he did not think to spy on his wife.

  I'm used to Louise, he said to himself, she's familiar with all my business; even supposing I were free to marry tomorrow, I shouldn't find anyone to replace her. At that point he went along with the idea that his wife was innocent; this view of matters did not impose on him the need to show any force of character, and suited him much better; what a common occurrence it is, anyway, to see women slandered!

  'What the devil!' he exclaimed suddenly, striding fitfully up and down. Am I to put up with her mocking me with her lover as if I were a nobody, or a vagabond? Must the whole of Verrières laugh me to scorn for turning a blind eye? Just think what they said about Charmier! (He was one of the neighbourhood's notorious cuckolds.) When his name is mentioned, doesn't a smile pass over everyone's lips? He's a good barrister, but who on earth ever talks of his oratorical skills? 'Ah! Charmier!' they say, 'Bernard's Charmier': that's what they call him--by the name of the man who's the cause of his shame.

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  Thank heavens, thought M. de Rênal at other moments, I haven't got a daughter, and the way I'm going to punish their mother won't prejudice the establishment of my children; I can surprise that little peasant with my wife, and kill them both; in that case, the tragic side of the adventure will perhaps remove the ridicule from it. This idea appealed to him; he pursued it in every detail. The penal system 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 exceedingly sharp; but the thought of blood frightened him.

  I can thrash this impertinent tutor and drive him from the house; but what a furore in Verrières and even throughout the departement! After Falcoz's newspaper had been banned, when its editor-in-chief came out of prison, I helped to ensure that he lost his job worth six hundred francs. They say this scribbler is daring to show his face again in Besançon, he can offer me up cleverly to public ridicule, and in such a way that it will be impossible to take him to court. Take him to court!... The impertinent fellow will find innumerable ways of insinuating that he has told the truth. A gentleman who maintains his station as I do is hated by all plebeians. I shall get into those frightful Paris newspapers; oh heavens! what a calamity! to see the ancient name of Rênal plunged into the mire of ridicule... If ever I travel I shall have to change my name. What! give up this name which is my glory and my strength. What depths of misfortune!

  If I don't kill my wife, but instead drive her from the house in ignominy, she has her aunt in Besançon who will hand over her fortune to her directly. My wife will go and live in Paris with Julien; Verrières will come to hear of it, and once again I'll be taken for a dupe. At this point the unhappy man noticed from the dimness of his lamp that day was beginning to break. He went out into the garden for a breath of fresh air. At that moment he was almost resolved not to create a scandal, chiefly on the grounds that a scandal would thoroughly delight his friends in Verrières.

  The walk in the garden calmed him down a little. 'No,' he exclaimed, 'I shan't deprive myself of my wife, she's too useful to me.' He pictured with horror what his house would be like

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  without his wife; the only female relative he had was the Marquise de R -----, who was old, weak in the head and spiteful.

  A very sensible idea occurred to him, but to carry it out would have required strength of character far in excess of what little the poor man possessed. If I keep my wife, he said, I know myself, one day when I get impatient with her I'll reproach her with her infidelity. She's proud, we'll quarrel, and all this will happen before she has inherited her aunt's money. How I shall be mocked then! My wife loves her children, everything will revert to them in the end. But I shall be the laughing-stock of Verrières. What! they'll say, he didn't even manage to get his revenge on his wife! Wouldn't it be better to stick to suspicions and not try to prove anything? In that case I tie my hands, and can't reproach her with anything subsequently.

  A moment later M. de Rênal was seized again by wounded vanity and laboriously recalled all the ploys quoted in the billiard room of the Casino * or Noble Circle of Verrières when someone with the gift of the gab interrupts the pool to have a joke at the expense of a cuckolded husband. How cruel these jibes seemed to him now!

  God! Why is my wife not dead! then I'd be impervious to ridicule. Why am I not a widower! I'd go and spend six months in Paris in the best circles. After this moment of happiness conjured up by the idea of widowerhood, his imagination returned to the means of ascertaining the truth. Should he emerge at midnight, after everyone had gone to bed, to spread a thin layer of bran in front of the door to Julien's room? Next morning at dawn he would see the footprints.

  'But that method's no good,' he cried out in a sudden fit of rage, 'that sly minx Elisa would notice, and the household would soon know that I'm jealous.'

  In another story told at the Casino, a husband had ascertained his misfortune by sealing up the doors to his wife's and the gallant's bedrooms by means of a little wax and two strands of hair.

  After so many hours of uncertainty, this method of shedding light on his fate seemed to him to be decidedly the best, and

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  he was thinking of using it when, at a bend in one of the paths, he met this wife whom he would have liked to see dead.

  She was coming back from the village. She had gone to hear Mass in the church at Vergy. A tradition of most dubious reliability in the eyes of the cold man of reason, but one she believed in, has it that the little church used today was the chapel of the château belonging to the squire of Vergy. This idea obsessed Mme de Rênal for the whole of the time she was intending to spend praying in this church. She had a constant image of her husband killing Julien while out hunting, as if by accident, and then making her eat his heart * in the evening.

  My fate, she told herself, depends on what he's going to think when he listens to what I have to say. After this fateful quarter of an hour, I may not find another opportunity to speak to him. He isn't a man of sense, controlled by reason. Otherwise I could use
my feeble reasoning powers to foresee what he's going to do or say. He will decide our common fate, he has the power to do it. But that fate depends on my cunning, my skill in guiding the thoughts of this unpredictable mind turned blind by anger and prevented from seeing half of what's going on. God Almighty! I need talent, I need a cool head, where do I get them from?

  She regained her calm as if by magic on entering the garden and seeing her husband from a distance. His rumpled hair and clothes signalled that he had not slept.

  She handed him a letter with the seal broken but refolded. He did not open it but stared at his wife with wild eyes.

  'This is an abomination', she said to him, 'that was handed to me as I was passing round the back of the solicitor's garden, by a disreputable-looking man claiming to be acquainted with you and to owe you a debt of gratitude. I demand one thing of you: that you send this Mr Julien off packing back to his family, right away.' Mme de Rênal uttered his name hastily, perhaps a little too soon, in order to be rid of the fearful prospect of having to utter it.

  On seeing the joy which her words produced in her husband, she was overcome with the same feeling herself. She realized from the way he was staring at her that Julien had guessed right. Instead of lamenting this genuine misfortune, she

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  thought to herself: what a genius, what perfect intuition! And in a young man still lacking any experience! Will any doors remain closed to him later on! Alas! then his successes will make him forget me.

  This little act of admiration for the man she adored rid her completely of her nerves.

  She congratulated herself on what she had done. I haven't been unworthy of Julien, she said to herself with a sweet inner glow of pleasure.