His Majesty precipitated, rather than threw himself, on to the stool. It was only then that Julien, who was keeping close to the gilded door, perceived over the bare arm of a young girl, the charming statue of St. Clement. It was hidden under the altar, and bore the dress of a young Roman soldier. It had a large wound on its neck, from which the blood seemed to flow. The artist had surpassed himself. The eyes, which though dying were full of grace, were half closed. A budding moustache adored that charming mouth which, though half closed, seemed notwithstanding to be praying. The young girl next to Julien wept warm tears at the sight. One of her tears fell on Julien's hand.

After a moment of prayer in the profoundest silence, that was only broken by the distant sound of the bells of all the villages within a radius of ten leagues, the bishop of Agde asked the king's permission to speak. He finished a short but very touching speech with a passage, the very simplicity of which assured its effectiveness:

"Never forget, young Christian women, that you have seen one of the greatest kings of the world on his knees before the servants of this Almighty and terrible God. These servants, feeble, persecuted, assassinated as they were on earth, as you can see by the still bleeding wounds of Saint Clement, will triumph in Heaven. You will remember them, my young Christian women, will you not, this day for ever, and will detest the infidel. You will be for ever faithful to this God who is so great, so terrible, but so good?"

With these words the bishop rose authoritatively.

"You promise me?" he said, lifting up his arm with an inspired air.

"We promise," said the young girls melting into tears.

"I accept your promise in the name of the terrible God," added the bishop in a thunderous voice, and the ceremony was at an end.

The king himself was crying. It was only a long time afterwards that Julien had sufficient self-possession to enquire "where were the bones of the Saint that had been sent from Rome to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy?" He was told that they were hidden in the charming waxen figure.

His Majesty deigned to allow the young ladies who had accompanied him into the chapel to wear a red ribbon on which were embroidered these words, "HATE OF THE INFIDEL. PERPETUAL ADORATION."

Monsieur de la Mole had ten thousand bottles of wine distributed among the peasants. In the evening at Verrières, the Liberals made a point of having illuminations which were a hundred times better than those of the Royalists. Before leaving, the king paid a visit to M. de Moirod.

CHAPTER XIX

THINKING PRODUCES SUFFERING

The grotesqness 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 Verrières, and I venture to say I deserve to be so. I walk under the canopy in the processions at the side of the curé and of the mayor. On great occasions I carry a big candle, bought at my own expense.

ask Monsieur the marquis for the lottery appointment of Verrierès , 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 Verrières, 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 café. That haughty woman, Madame de Rênal, was of course responsible for this abomination. The reason? The fine eyes and fresh complexion of the little abbé Sorel explained everything else.

A short time after their return to Vergy, Stanislas, the youngest of the children, caught the fever; Madame de Rênal 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 Rênal 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 Rênal 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 Rênal came to see it. The child consumed by fever, and extremely flushed, could not recognise its father. Suddenly Madame de Rênal 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 Rênal.

"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 Rênal 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 Rênal 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 Rênal 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 abbé 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 Rênal 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. Besançon 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 Rênal, 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 Rênal. "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 Rênal'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 Rênal 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 Rênal 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 Verrières. 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 Rênal 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 Rênal and begged her to speak to the tutor."

The very same evening, M. de Rênal 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 Rênal 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 Rênal? 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 Rênal 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 Verrières, 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. Fouqué. 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 Verrières; 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 Verrières, 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 Verrières 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 Verrières 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.

Annonymous 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 Rênal 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 Verrières 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 Rênal 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 château at Vergy extremely well. The façade 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 château was seen from three or four leagues off, to the great prejudice of all the country houses or so-called châteaux 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 Rênal 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 Rênal for the first time for ten years. The mayor of Verrières 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 Rênal was horrified to remember the terms of this letter to an intimate friend whom all Verrières 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 Verrières 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 Rênal 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 Verrières 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 Besançon. 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 Rênal 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 Besançon 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 Verrières, 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 Verrières.

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 Verrières. '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 Rênal, 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 Verrières, 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 château of the Lord of Vergy. This idea obsessed Madame de Rênal 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 Rênal 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 Rênal 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 accouut of my wife." He was on the point of heaping on her the coarsest insults He was barely checked by the prospects of the Besançon 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 Rênal 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 Rênal 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 Rênal 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 Verrières 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 Rênal 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 Rênal. "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 Rênal, 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 Rênal 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 Verrières that a perfectly platonic little affection was growing up between him and me."

"I had that idea once myself," exclaimed M. de Rênal, 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 Rênal 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 Rênal, transported with rage and yet happier than he had been for twelve hours.

"Will you swear to me," said Madame de Rênal 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 Rênal 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 Rênal 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 Rênal. "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 Verrières and perhaps without going so far," said Madame Rênal 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 Rênal, 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 Rênal. 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 Rênal 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 Verrières."

"You are forgetting my birth," said M. de Rênal, smiling a little.

"You are one of the most distinguished gentlemen in the province," replied Madame de Rênal 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 Verrières, nay, over the whole of Besançon, over the whole province that this little bourgeois who has been admitted perhaps imprudently to intimacy with a Rênal , 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 Rênal with all the bitterness evoked by such a memory, "and I was not made a peer."

"I am thinking, my dear," resumed Madame de Rênal 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 today'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 Rênal, 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 Rênal 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 Rênal 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 Rênal 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 Rênal 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 Verrières. M. de Rênal 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 Rênal 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 Rênal 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 Rênal 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 Rênal, 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 overjoyed 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 Verrières before he reproached himself with his injustice towards Madame de Rênal. "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 Rênal. 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 Rênal 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. Chélan 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 Verrières 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 bookcase in which he arranged M. Chélan'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 Rênal 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 Rênal 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 Rênal, veneration for the public of Verrières and gratitude to the distinguished subprefect. 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 Rênal 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 Verrières the result of his anonymous letter."