The Red and the Black (26 page)

with them. One fine day I'd betray myself; I'd be unable to refrain from expressing the disdain I feel for them.

He was obliged, however, on M
^me
de Rênal's instructions, to attend several dinners of the same sort;
Julien became all the rage: his guard of honour's outfit was forgiven
him, or rather, this piece of rashness was the true cause of his
success. Soon the only topic of concern in Verrières was who would
win the battle to obtain this learned young man--M. de Rênal or the
master of the workhouse. Together with Father Maslon these gentlemen
formed a triumvirate which for a good many years had tyrannized the
town. The mayor was an object of envy, the liberals had grievances
against him, but he was, after all, noble and destined for a position
of superiority, whereas M. Valenod's father hadn't even left him so
much as an income of six hundred pounds. In his case, people had had
to switch from feelings of pity for the shabby apple-green suit
universally associated with him in his youth to envy for his Normandy
cobs, his gold chains, his clothes sent from Paris--all his present
prosperity.

Amid the sea of faces in
this unfamiliar milieu, Julien thought he discerned an honourable man;
he was a geometer by the name of Gros,
^*
and had the reputation of being a Jacobin. Julien, who had committed
himself to the line of only ever saying things that seemed false to
him, was unable to get beyond mere suspicions in regard to M. Gros's
opinions. He received thick packages of Latin proses from Vergy. He
was advised to visit his father often, and he fell in with this dreary
necessity. In short, he was patching up his reputation rather well,
when one morning he was very surprised to be woken up and feel two
hands covering his eyes.

It was M
^me
de Rênal who had made a trip to town and, running up the stairs four
at a time, leaving the children playing with a favourite rabbit that
was of the party, had reached Julien's room just before they did. It
was a blissful moment, all too brief: M
^me
de Rênal had
disappeared when the children arrived with the rabbit, which they
wanted to show their friend. Julien welcomed them all warmly, even the
rabbit. It seemed to him that he was back with his family again; he
felt that he loved these children, that he enjoyed chattering

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with them. He was astonished at the sweetness of their voices, at how
simple and noble their little ways were; he needed to cleanse his
imagination of all the vulgar modes of behaviour, all the disagreeable
thoughts tainting the air he breathed in Verrières. You couldn't get
away from fear of doing without, you couldn't get away from luxury and
dire poverty tearing each other's hair out. The people he dined with
would indulge, on the subject of the joint of meat, in revelations
that were humiliating for them and nauseating for anyone listening.

'You nobles, you have reason to be proud,' he said to M
^me
de Rênal. And he described to her all the dinners he had put up with.

'So you've become all the rage!' And she laughed heartily at the thought of the rouge that M
^me
Valenod felt obliged to put on whenever she was expecting Julien. 'I think she has designs on your heart,' she added.

Lunch was delectable. The presence of the children, though inhibiting
at first sight, in fact increased the general happiness. These poor
children were beside themselves with joy at seeing Julien again. The
servants had not failed to relate to them that he was being offered
two hundred francs extra for
edicating
the little Valenods.

In the middle of lunch Stanislas-Xavier, still pale after his serious
illness, suddenly asked his mother how much his silver cutlery and
the tankard he drank from were worth.

'Why do you ask?'

'I want to sell them to give the money to Mr Julien, so he isn't a
sucker
for staying with us.'

Julien hugged him with tears in his eyes. His mother wept openly
while Julien, who had taken Stanislas on his lap, explained to him
that he shouldn't use the word sucker, which in that sense was a
lackey's way of talking. Seeing the pleasure he was giving M
^me
de Rênal, he tried to explain, using picturesque examples that amused the children, what being a sucker meant.

'I understand,' said Stanislas, 'it's like the crow who's silly
enough to drop his piece of cheese, and the fox gets it, and he was a
flatterer.'

M
^me
de Rênal was overcome with joy, and smothered her

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children in kisses, which she could hardly do without leaning a little on Julien.

Suddenly the door opened: it was M. de Rênal. The stern look of
displeasure on his face contrasted strangely with the tender delight
that his presence dispelled. M
^me
de Rênal turned pale; she
felt in no state to deny anything. Julien decided to speak, and in a
loud voice began to tell his worship how Stanislas had wanted to sell
his silver tankard. He was sure that this story would not go down
well. To begin with, M. de Rênal frowned from sound habit at the very
word
silver
. 'When this metal is mentioned,' he would say, 'it's always the preface to some call on my purse.'

But in this instance there was more to it than a question of what
could be obtained with silver; there was an increase in the level of
suspicion. The look of happiness on the faces of his family in his
absence was unlikely to improve matters with a man ruled by such
prickly vanity. As his wife was praising the gracious and witty manner
in which Julien suggested new ideas to his pupils:

'Yes! Yes! I know, he makes me odious to my children; it's easy
enough for him to be infinitely more agreeable to them than I am,
being, when it comes down to it, the master in this house. Everything
nowadays conspires to cast odium on
legitimate
authority. Poor France!'

M
^me
de Rênal did not pause to examine the niceties of the reception she
was getting from her husband. She had just glimpsed a chance of
spending twelve hours with Julien. She had a host of purchases to make
in town, and declared that she insisted on going to dine in a
cabaret; in spite of everything her husband could say or do, she stuck
to her idea. The children were delighted at the very mention of the
word cabaret,
^*
uttered with such pleasure by the prudishness of our times.

M. de Rênal left his wife in the first fashion shop she entered; he
had to go off and pay some calls. He was more sullen on his return
than in the morning; he was convinced that the whole town was
engrossed with him and Julien. In actual fact no one had yet given him
cause to suspect the offensive aspect of public gossip. What had been
relayed to the

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mayor was exclusively concerned with whether Julien would remain in
his household at six hundred francs, or would accept the eight hundred
francs offered by the master of the workhouse.

The master himself, on meeting M. de Rênal in company,
gave him the cold shoulder
.
This behaviour was not unpremeditated; few things are done heedlessly
in the provinces: feelings are so rare there that they are exploited
to the full.

M. Valenod was what is known, a hundred leagues from Paris, as a
swaggerer
--that
is: a vulgar fellow of brazen and coarse disposition. His triumphant
existence since 1815 had reinforced his promising tendencies. He
reigned, so to speak, in Verrières under the orders of M. de Rênal;
but he was much more active, did not blush at anything, meddled in
everything, was constantly on the go, writing, speaking, forgetting
humiliations, having nothing personal at stake; so much so that in the
end his influence had come to outweigh his master's in the eyes of
the ecclesiastical authorities. M. Valenod had more or less said to
the local grocers: give me the two most foolish from among you; to the
legal profession: show me the two most ignorant; to the medical
practitioners:
^*
name me the two greatest charlatans. When he had done gathering
together the most brazen representatives of every trade, he had said
to them: let's reign together.

These people's ways wounded M. de Rênal's susceptibilities. Valenod's
vulgarity was not offended by anything, not even by the flat
contradictions that little Father Maslon did not spare him in public.

However, in the midst of all this prosperity, M. Valenod needed to
indulge in minor acts of effrontery to protect his self-image from the
blatant truths which, as he was well aware, everyone was entitled to
bring to his attention. His activity had been stepped up since the
state of alarm he was left in by the visit of M. Appert; he had made
three journeys to Besançon; he wrote several letters for each post; he
despatched others using the services of strangers who called at his
house at nightfall. He had perhaps been wrong to have old Father
Chélan removed from office, since this vindictive act had caused him
to be regarded by a number of pious ladies of good

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birth as a profoundly wicked man. Besides, doing this favour had put
him completely under the thumb of the vicar-general, M. de Frilair,
and he received strange instructions from him. This was the state of
his politicking when he succumbed to the pleasure of writing an
anonymous letter. To cap his embarrassment, his wife announced to him
that she wanted to have Julien in her household; her vanity had taken a
fancy to the idea.

In this
situation M. Valenod foresaw a decisive confrontation with his former
associate M. de Rênal. The latter would address harsh words to him,
which he didn't mind that much; but he might write to Besançon and
even to Paris. A cousin of some minister or other might suddenly
descend on Verrières and take over the workhouse. M. Valenod
considered aligning himself with the liberals: that was why a number
of them were invited to the dinner at which Julien had performed. He
would have got powerful support against the mayor, but elections
might come along, and it was patently obvious that the workhouse and a
vote the wrong way were incompatible. An account of this politicking,
astutely surmised by M
^me
de Rênal, had been given to
Julien while he offered her his arm to walk from one shop to another,
and had gradually taken them as far as the Avenue de la Fidélité,
where they spent several hours almost as undisturbed as at Vergy.

During this time M. Valenod was attempting to avert a decisive
confrontation with his former protector by adopting an audacious
stance towards him himself. That day the strategy worked, but it
increased the mayor's ill-temper.

Never had vanity in conflict with petty love of money in all its
harshest and meanest aspects put a man in a more wretched state than
that afflicting M. de Rênal when he went into the
cabaret
.
Never, on the other hand, had his children been more full of joy and
good cheer. This contrast put the finishing touches to his pique.

'I'm not welcome in my family, so I see!' he said as he came in, trying to make his tone of voice sound forceful.

By way of reply, his wife took him on one side and urged on him the
need to get Julien out of the way. The hours of happiness she had just
enjoyed had given her the necessary

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poise and firmness to carry out the plan of action she had been
meditating for the past fortnight. What really succeeded in upsetting
the poor mayor of Verrières through and through was that he knew jokes
were being made openly in town about his attachment to his
cash
.
M. Valenod was as generous as a thief, while he himself had behaved
more prudently than outstandingly in the last five or six collections
in aid of the Brotherhood of St Joseph,
^*
the Congregation of the Virgin, the Congregation of the Holy Sacrament etc., etc., etc.

Among the gentry of Verrières and its neighbourhood, cunningly listed
on the collecting brothers' register in order of the magnitude of
their donations, M. de Rênal's name had been observed more than once
down on the bottom line. It was to no avail that he said he
earned nothing
himself. This is no joking matter for the clergy.

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Il piacere di alur la testa tutto l'anno è ben pagato da certi quarti d'ora che bisogna passar
.

CASTI
^*

BUT let us leave this petty man to his petty fears; why did he take a
man with a generous heart into his house when what he needed was the
soul of a valet? Why isn't he any good at choosing his servants? The
normal course of events in the nineteenth century is that when a
powerful member of the nobility encounters a man of generosity, he
kills him, exiles him, imprisons him, or humiliates him so much that
the other man is foolish enough to die of grief. By chance in this
instance, the man of generosity is not yet the one to suffer. The
great misfortune afflicting small towns in France and elected
governments like the one in New York, is that they cannot forget that
there exist individuals like M. de Rênal. In the midst of a town of
twenty thousand inhabitants these men shape public opinion, and public
opinion is dreadful in a country that has its Charter.
^*
A man endowed with a noble and generous spirit, someone who might
even have been your friend, but lives a hundred leagues away, will
judge you by public opinion in your town, and this is shaped by the
fools who by sheer chance were born noble, rich and moderate. Woe
betide you if you stand out from the herd!

Immediately after dinner the family left for Vergy; but two days later Julien found them all back again in Verrières.

An hour had not gone by before he discovered to his great surprise that M
^me
de Rênal was keeping a secret from him. She broke off her
conversations with her husband as soon as he appeared, and seemed
almost to wish him to go away. Julien did not wait to be asked twice.
He became cold and reserved; M
^me
de Rênal noticed and did
not seek any explanation for it. Is she going to find a successor to
me? Julien wondered. And so intimate with me only the day before
yesterday! But they

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