The Red and the Black (17 page)

would say to her from time to time. 'He looks to me as if he's always
thinking, and never acts uncalculatingly. He's devious.'

Julien remained profoundly humiliated by the misfortune of having failed to find a reply to M
^me
de Rênal.

A man of my sort owes it to himself to recover from this setback; and
taking advantage of the moment when they were moving from one room to
the next, he decided it was his duty to give M
^me
de Rênal a kiss.

Nothing could have been less well prepared, or given less pleasure to
either of them; nothing could have been more unwise. They only just
escaped being seen. M
^me
de Rênal thought he had gone mad.
She was terrified and above all shocked. This piece of foolishness
reminded her of M. Valenod.

What
would happen to me, she asked herself, if I were alone with him? All
her virtue returned to her when love was thus eclipsed. She made sure
that one of her children was always by her side.

It was a boring day for Julien: he spent the whole of it ineptly
putting his plan of seduction into effect. He did not once look at M
^me
de Rênal without his glance having some reason behind it; yet he was
not so silly that he failed to see he was not succeeding in being
agreeable, let alone seductive.

M
^me
de Rênal could not get over her astonishment at finding him so inept
and at the same time so bold. It's the timidity of love in a man of
intellect! she said to herself at last with unutterable joy. Could it
possibly be that he has never been loved by my rival!

After lunch M
^me
de Rênal returned to the drawing-room to receive a visit from M.
Charcot de Maugiron, the sub-prefect of Bray. She was working at a
little tapestry frame that stood high off the floor. M
^me
Derville was at her side. In this position, in full daylight, our hero
saw fit to move his boot forward and press it against M
^me
de Rênal's pretty foot with its openwork stocking and pretty little
shoe from Paris which clearly attracted the eye of the gallant
sub-prefect.

M
^me
de Rênal
took extreme fright. She dropped her scissors, her ball of wool, and
her needles, and Julien's gesture could pass off as an inept attempt
to prevent the scissors he had seen

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starting to slide from actually falling to the ground. Fortunately, this little pair of English steel scissors broke, and M
^me
de Rênal gave full vent to her regrets that Julien had not been closer to her side.

'You noticed them falling before I did, you could have stopped them;
but instead, all you achieved in your eagerness was to give me a hefty
kick.'

All this deceived the sub-prefect, but not M
^me
Derville. This handsome fellow has some pretty foolish manners! she
thought. The etiquette of a provincial capital does not forgive
transgressions of this sort. M
^me
de Rênal found an opportunity to say to Julien:

'Be careful, I order you to.'

Julien realized how inept he had been, and it put him in a bad
temper. He debated at length with himself whether he ought to take
offence at the expression
I order you to.
He was silly enough to think: she could say to me
I order you to
if it were something to do with the children's upbringing, but in
responding to my love, she puts us on an equal footing. You can't love
without
equality...;
and his mind wandered off completely into platitudes about equality. He angrily repeated to himself a line of Corneille
^*
that M
^me
Derville had taught him a few days previously:

... ... ... Love Creates equalities, it does not seek them out.

Since Julien obstinately persisted in playing Don Juan despite never
having had a single mistress in his life, he was unutterably foolish
all day. He only had one sound idea. Fed up with himself and with M
^me
de Rênal, he was contemplating with dread the approach of evening,
when he would be seated in the garden by her side in the dark. He told
M. de Rênal he was going to Verrières to see the priest; he left
after dinner and did not return until well into the night.

In Verrières Julien found Father Chélan in the midst of moving house:
he had finally been stripped of his office, and was being replaced by
M. Maslon the curate. Julien lent a hand to the kindly old priest,
and was inspired to write to Fouqué to say that the irresistible
calling which he felt for the

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sacred ministry had prevented him at first from accepting his kind
offer, but that he had just seen such a flagrant example of injustice
that it might perhaps be more advantageous to his salvation not to
enter holy orders.

Julien
congratulated himself on his cunning in turning the sacking of the
priest of Verrières to his own advantage to leave the door ajar for
himself to return to the world of trade if, in the battle raging in
his mind, dreary caution got the better of heroism.

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Amour en latin faict amor;
Or done provient d'amour la mort,
Et, par avant, soulcy qui mord,
Deuil, plours, pièdges, forfaits, remords.

LOVE'S BLAZON
^*

HAD Julien had any of the shrewdness he so gratuitously imagined
himself to possess, he would have been able to congratulate himself
the next day on the effect produced by his trip to Verrières. His
absence had wiped out the memory of his inept antics. That day too he
was rather sullen. Towards evening, a ludicrous idea occurred to him,
and he imparted it to M
^me
de Rênal with singular intrepidness.

They were hardly seated in the garden when, without waiting for it to be sufficiently dark, Julien put his lips to M
^me
de Rênal's ear and, at the risk of compromising her most horribly, said:

'Madam, this very night I shall come to your room at two o'clock, I've got something to say to you.'

Julien trembled lest his request be granted; his seducer's role was
such a horrible burden on him that if he had been able to follow his
inclination, he would have withdrawn to his room for several days, and
avoided seeing the ladies. He was aware that his expert behaviour the
previous day had ruined all the promising signs of the day before
that, and he was genuinely at a loss which way to turn.

M
^me
de Rênal responded with real, unforced indignation to the impertinent
announcement that Julien had been bold enough to make to her. He
thought he detected scorn in her short reply. There is no doubt that
this reply, uttered in a low tone, had contained the phrase
how dare you.
Under the guise of saying something to the children, Julien went off
to their room, and on his return he took a seat beside M
^me
Derville, a long way away from M
^me
de Rênal. He thus made it impossible for himself to take her hand. The conversation was serious,

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and Julien made a very good showing, apart from one or two moments of
silence while he was racking his brains. Oh why can't I think up a
really good move, he said to himself, to force M
^me
de Rênal
back into giving me those unequivocal demonstrations of fondness which
led me to believe three days ago that she was mine!

Julien was extremely put out by the almost hopeless state into which
he had got his affairs. Yet nothing would have embarrassed him more
than success.

When they all went their own ways at midnight, his pessimism convinced him that he had earned M
^me
Derville's scorn, and that he had probably fared no better in the eyes of M
^me
de Rênal.

In this state of ill-temper and great humiliation, Julien was unable
to fall asleep. He couldn't have been further from the thought of
giving up all pretence, all strategy, and of living from one day to
the next with M
^me
de Rênal, perfectly content like a child with the happiness that each day brought him.

He exhausted his mind thinking up clever moves, and then the next
moment he decided they were absurd; in short, he was in an exceedingly
miserable mood when the château clock struck two

The noise roused him as the crowing of the cock roused St Peter. He
realized the time had come to embark on the most arduous of
undertakings. He hadn't given any further thought to his impertinent
proposal since making it; it had been so badly received!

I told her I'd go to her room at two o'clock, he said to himself as
he got up. I may indeed be inexperienced and coarse as befits a
peasant's son--M
^me
Derville has made that only too clear to me--but at least I won't be feeble.

Julien was right to congratulate himself on his courage; he had never
imposed a more arduous obligation on himself. He was shaking so much
as he opened his door that his knees gave way under him, and he was
forced to lean against the wall for support.

He had no shoes on. He went and listened at M. de Rênal's door, and
heard the sound of his snoring. He was bitterly disappointed. So there
was no excuse now for not going to her.

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But what on earth would he do there? He had no plan, and even if he
had had one, he felt in such turmoil that he would have been in no
state to follow it.

At last, suffering infinitely more than if he had been walking to his death, he turned down the little corridor leading to M
^me
de Rênal's bedroom. He opened the door with a shaking hand, making a terrible noise as he did so.

The room was lit: a nightlight was burning in the chimneyplace. He
wasn't expecting this new misfortune. On seeing him come in, M
^me
de Rênal sprang out of bed. 'You wretch!' she cried. There was a bit
of confusion. Julien forgot his idle plans and reverted to his natural
role: not to find favour with such a charming woman struck him as the
height of misfortune. His only response to her words of reproach was to
fling himself at her feet and clasp her knees. As she spoke extremely
harshly to him, he burst into tears.

Some hours later, when Julien left M
^me
de Rênal's room, one could say, in novelettish style, that he had
nothing left to desire. For the love he had inspired and the
unexpected impression made on him by her seductive charms had given
him a victory which would never have been achieved by all his clumsy
skill.

But, in the sweetest moments,
he was still the victim of a bizarre pride, and aspired to play the
role of a man accustomed to subjugate women: he tried unbelievably
hard to spoil his endearing characteristics. Instead of being
attentive to the ecstasy which he aroused, and the expressions of
remorse which heightened its intensity, he was constantly beset by
the idea of
duty.
He was afraid of terrible remorse and eternal
ridicule if he deviated from the ideal model he had set himself to
follow. In short, what made Julien a superior being was precisely what
prevented him from savouring the happiness which came his way. Every
inch the young girl of sixteen who has delightful colouring, and is
foolish enough to put on rouge to go to a ball.

Terrified out of her wits by the sudden appearance of Julien, M
^me
de Rênal was soon in the throes of the most cruel fears. She was intensely stirred by Julien's tears and his despair.

Even when she had nothing left to refuse him, she pushed

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Julien away from her with genuine indignation, only to fling herself
back into his arms. There was no forethought apparent in this sequence
of behaviour. She believed herself damned beyond reprieve, and sought
to conceal the sight of hell from herself by smothering Julien with
the most passionate of caresses. In short, nothing would have been
lacking to our hero's happiness, not even a passionate sensuousness in
the woman he had just conquered, if he had but known how to enjoy
it. Julien's departure did not put an end to the storms of passion
which buffeted her in spite of herself, or to her struggles with the
remorse that devoured her.

Good Lord!
Being happy, being loved--is that all there is to it? This was
Julien's first thought on returning to his room. He was in that state
of astonishment and uneasy agitation which overwhelms a person who has
just obtained something long desired. You're in the habit of
desiring, you can't find anything to desire any more, but you don't
yet have any memories. Like a soldier returning from parade, Julien
was intently engaged in reviewing all the details of his conduct.

'I didn't fail, did I, in any of the things I owe to myself? Did I play my part properly?'

And what part was it? That of a man accustomed to dazzling success with women.

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He turn'd his lips to hers, and with his hand
Call'd back the tangles of her wandering hair.

Don Juan
, C. I, st. 170

FORTUNATELY--for Julien's image--M
^me
de Rênal had been too agitated, too astonished to notice the
foolishness of the man who in an instant had become everything in the
world to her.

As she entreated him to leave, seeing the dawn about to break, she said:

'Oh! my goodness! if my husband has heard any noise, it's the end of me.'

Julien, who had time to turn a fine phrase, remembered this one:

'Would you leave this world with regret?'

'Ah! very much at this moment! but I wouldn't regret having known you.'

Julien thought it befitted his dignity to make a point of going back to his room in broad daylight, defying prudence.

The constant attention with which he studied his every action in the
mad hope of appearing a man of experience did have one fortunate
consequence: when he saw M
^me
de Rênal again at lunch, his behaviour was a masterpiece of prudence.

For her part she could not look at him without blushing deeply, and
she could not exist for a moment without looking at him; she was aware
of her discomfiture, but her efforts to conceal it only made matters
worse. Julien only glanced up at her once. At first, M
^me
de
Rênal admired his prudence. Soon, seeing that this single glance was
not repeated, she became alarmed: Can it be that he doesn't love me?
she wondered. Alas! I'm rather old for him; there's ten years
difference between us.

As they moved from the dining-room into the garden, she squeezed Julien's hand. Taken aback by such an extraordinary

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