The Red and the Black (16 page)

goodbye to his friend early in the morning in order to spend the day
amid the crags on the high moutain peak. He found his little grotto
again, but his peace of mind was gone; his friend's proposition had
robbed him of it. Like Hercules he found himself with a choice--not
between vice and virtue, but between the unrelieved mediocrity of
guaranteed well-being, and all the heroic dreams of his youth. It
shows I haven't got real determination, he said to himself; and it was
this doubt which caused him the greatest anguish. I'm not made of the
stuff of great men, since I'm afraid that eight years spent earning
my living may drain me of the sublime energy which gets extraordinary
feats accomplished.

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A novel is a mirror you turn this way and that as you go down a path. SAINT-RÉAL
^*

WHEN Julien caught sight of the picturesque ruins of the old church
in Vergy, he realized that for the past three days he hadn't thought
once about M
^me
de Rênal. When I left the other day, that
woman reminded me of the immeasurable distance between us; she treated
me like a workman's son. No doubt she wanted to show me she regretted
having abandoned her hand to me the evening before. . . What a pretty
hand it is, though! and what a charming, noble look in that woman's
eyes!

The option of making his
fortune with Fouqué gave a degree of flexibility to Julien's
reasoning, which was now less often flawed by annoyance and an acute
sense of his own poverty and low standing in the eyes of the world.
From the heights of his metaphorical promontory he was able to pass
judgement-and he so to speak looked down--on both extreme poverty and
the comfortable circumstances which he still called wealth. He was a
long way from taking a philosophical view of his position, but he was
lucid enough to feel
different
after his little journey into the mountains.

He was struck by how extremely agitated M
^me
de Rênal looked while listening to the short account of his journey which she had begged him to give her.

Fouqué had had plans to get married, but had been unlucky in love. He
had confided at length in his friend during the course of their
conversations together. Having found happiness too soon, Fouqué had
discovered that he was not the only one to be loved. Julien had been
astonished by everything he was told; he had learned so much that was
new to him. His solitary life, fed entirely by his imagination and his
wariness, had distanced him from any possible source of
enlightenment.

Life for M
^me
de Rênal during his absence had been one long

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series of different ordeals, all of them unbearable; she was genuinely ill.

'Now above all,' M
^me
Derville said to her when she saw Julien return, 'in your state of
health, you're not to go into the garden this evening; the damp air
would only make you much worse.'

M
^me
Derville was astonished to observe that her friend, who was always
being taken to task by M. de Rênal for her excessively plain way of
dressing, had just acquired some openwork stockings and some charming
little shoes newly arrived from Paris. M
^me
de Rênal's sole
distraction for the past. three days had been to cut out and get Elisa
to run up a summer dress in a lovely fine fabric at the height of
fashion. The dress only just got finished a few minutes after Julien's
return; M
^me
de Rênal donned it there and then. Her friend was no longer in any doubt. She's in love, poor wretch! M
^me
Derville said to herself, and she understood all the strange manifestations of her illness.

She observed her talking to Julien. Pallor replaced her crimson
flush. Anxiety was depicted in her eyes which gazed into the young
tutor's. M
^me
de Rênal was expecting him to explain himself
at any moment, and announce that he was either leaving the household
or staying. After a terrible struggle, M
^me
de Rênal at last plucked up courage to ask him, in a trembling voice which betrayed all her passion:

'Will you be leaving your pupils to take a position elsewhere?'

Julien was struck by M
^me
de Rênal's quavering voice and the look on her face. That woman's in
love with me, he said to himself. But it's only a passing moment of
weakness which her pride is ashamed of, and once she's no longer
afraid that I'll leave, her haughtiness will be back. This vision of
their respective positions came to Julien like a flash, and he
answered hesitantly:

'I should find it very hard to leave such nice children--and
so well born
too--but it may perhaps be necessary. One does have oneself to think about too.'

As he uttered the words
so well born
(this was an aristocratic

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expression which Julien had recently picked up), Julien was fired with a deep feeling of animosity.

In the eyes of this woman, he said to himself, I don't count as well born.

M
^me
de Rênal listened to him in admiration at his brilliance and his good
looks, and her heart was wrung at the prospect he held out to her
that he might indeed leave. All her friends from Verrières who had
come to dine at Vergy during Julien's absence had seemed to be
deliberately outdoing one another in complimenting her on the amazing
young man whom her husband had had the good fortune to unearth. Not
that they understood a thing about the children's educational
progress. It was the ability to recite the Bible by heart, and in
Latin what's more, that had filled the inhabitants of Verrières with
an admiration that may well last a century.

Julien, who did not talk to anyone, knew none of this. If M
^me
de Rênal had kept any of her composure, she would have complimented
him on the reputation he had earned himself, and once Julien's pride
had been soothed, he would have been gentle and amiable with her--all
the more so as he found her new dress delightful. M
^me
de
Rênal, who was also pleased with her pretty dress, and Julien's
comments to her on it, had wanted to take a stroll round the garden;
but she soon confessed that she was quite incapable of walking. She
had taken the traveller's arm, and far from renewing her strength,
the feel of his arm against hers robbed her of all the strength she
had.

It was dark. No sooner had the
party sat down than Julien asserted his established privilege and
dared to put his lips to his pretty neighbour's arm and take her hand.
He was thinking of how forward Fouqué had been with his mistresses,
not of M
^me
de Rênal; the term
well born
still
rankled in his heart. He felt his hand being squeezed, but it gave him
no pleasure. Far from deriving any pride, or at least some gratitude
from the feelings which M
^me
de Rênal betrayed that evening
by quite unmistakable signs, he remained virtually unmoved by her
beauty, her elegance and her unspoilt charm. Purity of mind and the
absence of any hostile emotion are no doubt respons-

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ible for prolonging youth. The face is where the first signs of ageing appear with the majority of pretty women.

Julien was sulky all evening. Until then, he had only felt anger at
fate and at society, but since Fouqué had offered him an unworthy
means of becoming comfortably off, he felt resentment against himself.
Lost in his own thoughts, although he did from time to time say a few
words to the ladies, Julien eventually let go of M
^me
de
Rênal's hand without even noticing. The poor woman was utterly
shattered by this gesture: she read it as a symbol of her fate.

Had she been sure of Julien's affection, her virtue might perhaps
have found the strength to resist him. Fearful of losing him for ever,
she was led astray by her passion to the point of taking hold of
Julien's hand which he had distractedly left resting on the back of a
chair. Her gesture brought the ambitious young man to himself: he
would have liked it to be witnessed by all those snobbish noblemen who
gave him such patronizing smiles at table when he was down at the far
end with the children. This woman can't despise me any more: in
which case I must respond to her beauty; I owe it to myself to become
her lover. Such an idea would never have occurred to him before his
friend so innocently confided in him.

The sudden resolve he had just made provided him with a welcome
distraction. He said to himself: I must have one of these two women.
He realized he would have much preferred to make advances to M
^me
Derville; not because she had more charm, but because she had only
ever seen him as a tutor respected for his learning, and not as a
carpenter's lad with a woollen jacket folded under his arm, as he had
first appeared to M
^me
de Rênal.

It was precisely as a young workman blushing to the roots of his hair
as he stood at the front door of her house not daring to knock, that M
^me
de Rênal pictured him at his most charming.

Continuing to review his situation, Julien realized that it was out of the question to think of conquering M
^me
Derville, who was probably aware of M
^me
de Rênal's fondness for him. Forced to return to her, he asked
himself: What do I know of this woman's character? Merely this: before
I went away, when I took hold of her hand she withdrew it; today, I
withdraw my

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hand and she grasps it and squeezes it. It's a fine opportunity to
pay her back for all the times she's disdained me. Heaven knows how
many lovers she's had! Maybe she's only settled for me because it's so
easy for us to see each other.

This,
alas, is the unfortunate consequence of too much civilization! At
twenty, the heart of a young man who has had some education is utterly
remote from the carefree abandon without which love is often only the
most tedious of duties.

I owe it to
myself all the more to succeed with this woman, continued Julien's
petty vanity, since if ever I make my fortune, and the humble job of
tutor is held against me, I shall be able to insinuate that love cast
me in that role.

Once more Julien moved his hand away from M
^me
de Rênal's, and then he took hold of it again in a tight grasp. As
they were going back into the drawing-room towards midnight, M
^me
de Rênal said to him under her breath:

'Will you be leaving us? Will you be going?'

Julien replied with a sigh:

'I must indeed leave, because I love you passionately, and it's a sin. . . such a sin for a young priest!'

M
^me
de Rênal leaned on his arm, with such abandon that she felt the warmth of Julien's cheek against hers.

These two individuals each spent a very different kind of night. M
^me
de Rênal's mind was uplifted by feelings of the purest ecstasy. A
flirtatious young girl who falls in love early grows used to the
turmoil of love; when she reaches the age of true passion, the charm
of novelty has worn off. As M
^me
de Rênal had never read any
novels, all the facets of her happiness were new to her. No sorry
truths were there to chill her, not even the spectre of the future.
She saw herself as happy in ten years' time as she was at that moment.
Even the thought of her virtue, and the fidelity she had sworn to M.
de Rênal, which had caused her such agitation a few days previously,
came to her now in vain and was banished like an unwelcome guest. I
shall never yield anything to Julien, said M
^me
de Rênal to herself. We'll go on living just as we've lived for the past month. He'll be a good friend.

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A girl of sixteen had a complexion like a rose, and she put on rouge. POLIDORI
^*

As for Julien, Fouqué's offer really had taken all his pleasure away:
he was incapable of settling on any course of action. Alas! Perhaps I
lack character; I'd have been no good as one of Napoleon's soldiers.
At any rate, he added, my little intrigue with the lady of the house
will keep my mind occupied for a while.

Fortunately for him, even in this minor incident, his offhand words
were a poor reflection of what was going on inside him. He was afraid
of M
^me
de Rênal because she had such a pretty dress. In his
eyes this dress was the vanguard of Paris. His self-esteem was
reluctant to leave anything to chance or to the inspiration of the
moment. On the basis of what Fouqué had confided in him, and the
little he had read about love in his Bible, he drew up a highly
detailed plan of campaign for himself. And since without admitting it
he was extremely agitated, he wrote this plan down.

The next morning, M
^me
de Rênal found herself alone with him for a moment in the drawing-room.

'Is
Julien
your only name?' she asked him.

This flattering enquiry left our hero at a loss for an answer. It was
a detail that had not been anticipated in his plan. Had it not been
for this silly idea of making a plan, Julien's sharp wits would have
served him well, and the effect of surprise would only have increased
the sharpness of his perceptions.

He reacted ineptly, and his ineptness took on exaggerated proportions in his mind. M
^me
de Rênal was quick to forgive him for it. She read it as evidence of
charming candour. And the very thing she found lacking in this man
held to be so brilliant was precisely a look of candour.

'Your young tutor fills me with deep mistrust,' M
^me
Derville

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