第 八 章 · LITTLE EPISODES

. LITTLE EPISODES

"Then there were sighs, the deeper for suppression,

And stolen glances sweeter for the theft,

And burning blushes, though for no transgression."

_Don Juan_, c. I, st. 74.

It was only when Madame de Rênal began to think of her maid Elisa

that there was some slight change in that angelic sweetness which she

owed both to her natural character and her actual happiness. The girl

had come into a fortune, went to confess herself to the curé Chélan

and confessed to him her plan of marrying Julien. The curé was truly

rejoiced at his friend's good fortune, but he was extremely surprised

when Julien resolutely informed him that Mademoiselle Elisa's offer

could not suit him.

"Beware, my friend, of what is passing within your heart," said the

curé with a frown, "I congratulate you on your mission, if that is the

only reason why you despise a more than ample fortune. It is fifty-six

years since I was first curé of Verrières, and yet I shall be turned

out, according to all appearances. I am distressed by it, and yet my

income amounts to eight hundred francs. I inform you of this detail so

that you may not be under any illusions as to what awaits you in your

career as a priest. If you think of paying court to the men who enjoy

power, your eternal damnation is assured. You may make your fortune,

but you will have to do harm to the poor, flatter the sub-prefect,

the mayor, the man who enjoys prestige, and pander to his passion;

this conduct, which in the world is called knowledge of life, is not

absolutely incompatible with salvation so far as a layman is concerned;

but in our career we have to make a choice; it is a question of making

one's fortune either in this world or the next; there is no middle

course. Come, my dear friend, reflect, and come back in three days with

a definite answer. I am pained to detect that there is at the bottom

of your character a sombre passion which is far from indicating to me

that moderation and that perfect renunciation of earthly advantages so

necessary for a priest; I augur well of your intellect, but allow me to

tell you," added the good curé with tears in his eyes, "I tremble for

your salvation in your career as a priest."

Julien was ashamed of his emotion; he found himself loved for the first

time in his life; he wept with delight; and went to hide his tears in

the great woods behind Verrières.

"Why am I in this position?" he said to himself at last, "I feel that

I would give my life a hundred times over for this good curé Chélan,

and he has just proved to me that I am nothing more than a fool. It

is especially necessary for me to deceive him, and he manages to find

me out. The secret ardour which he refers to is my plan of making my

fortune. He thinks I am unworthy of being a priest, that too, just when

I was imagining that my sacrifice of fifty louis would give him the

very highest idea of my piety and devotion to my mission."

"In future," continued Julien, "I will only reckon on those elements in

my character which I have tested. Who could have told me that I should

find any pleasure in shedding tears? How I should like some one to

convince me that I am simply a fool!"

Three days later, Julien found the excuse with which he ought to have

been prepared on the first day; the excuse was a piece of calumny, but

what did it matter? He confessed to the curé, with a great deal of

hesitation, that he had been persuaded from the suggested union by a

reason he could not explain, inasmuch as it tended to damage a third

party. This was equivalent to impeaching Elisa's conduct. M. Chélan

found that his manner betrayed a certain worldly fire which was very

different from that which ought to have animated a young acolyte.

"My friend," he said to him again, "be a good country citizen,

respected and educated, rather than a priest without a true mission."

So far as words were concerned, Julien answered these new remonstrances

very well. He managed to find the words which a young and ardent

seminarist would have employed, but the tone in which he pronounced

them, together with the thinly concealed fire which blazed in his eye,

alarmed M. Chélan.

You must not have too bad an opinion of Julien's prospects. He

invented with correctness all the words suitable to a prudent and

cunning hypocrisy. It was not bad for his age. As for his tone and his

gestures, he had spent his life with country people; he had never been

given an opportunity of seeing great models. Consequently, as soon as

he was given a chance of getting near such gentlemen, his gestures

became as admirable as his words.

Madame de Rênal was astonished that her maid's new fortune did not

make her more happy. She saw her repeatedly going to the curé and

coming back with tears in her eyes. At last Elisa talked to her of her

marriage.

Madame de Rênal thought she was ill. A kind of fever prevented her from

sleeping. She only lived when either her maid or Julien were in sight.

She was unable to think of anything except them and the happiness

which they would find in their home. Her imagination depicted in the

most fascinating colours the poverty of the little house, where they

were to live on their income of fifty louis a year. Julien could quite

well become an advocate at Bray, the sub-prefecture, two leagues from

Verrières. In that case she would see him sometimes. Madame de Rênal

sincerely believed she would go mad. She said so to her husband and

finally fell ill. That very evening when her maid was attending her,

she noticed that the girl was crying. She abhorred Elisa at that

moment, and started to scold her; she then begged her pardon. Elisa's

tears redoubled. She said if her mistress would allow her, she would

tell her all her unhappiness.

"Tell me," answered Madame de Rênal.

"Well, Madame, he refuses me, some wicked people must have spoken badly

about me. He believes them."

"Who refuses you?" said Madame de Rênal, scarcely breathing.

"Who else, Madame, but M. Julien," answered the maid sobbing. "M. the

curé had been unable to overcome his resistance, for M. the curé thinks

that he ought not to refuse an honest girl on the pretext that she

has been a maid. After all, M. Julien's father is nothing more than

a carpenter, and how did he himself earn his living before he was at

Madame's?"

Madame de Rênal stopped listening; her excessive happiness had almost

deprived her of her reason. She made the girl repeat several times

the assurance that Julien had refused her, with a positiveness which

shut the door on the possibility of his coming round to a more prudent

decision.

"I will make a last attempt," she said to her maid. "I will speak to M.

Julien."

The following day, after breakfast, Madame de Rênal indulged in the

delightful luxury of pleading her rival's cause, and of seeing Elisa's

hand and fortune stubbornly refused for a whole hour.

Julien gradually emerged from his cautiously worded answers, and

finished by answering with spirit Madame de Rênal's good advice. She

could not help being overcome by the torrent of happiness which, after

so many days of despair, now inundated her soul. She felt quite ill.

When she had recovered and was comfortably in her own room she sent

everyone away. She was profoundly astonished.

"Can I be in love with Julien?" she finally said to herself. This

discovery, which at any other time would have plunged her into remorse

and the deepest agitation, now only produced the effect of a singular,

but as it were, indifferent spectacle. Her soul was exhausted by all

that she had just gone through, and had no more sensibility to passion

left.

Madame de Rênal tried to work, and fell into a deep sleep; when she

woke up she did not frighten herself so much as she ought to have. She

was too happy to be able to see anything wrong in anything. Naïve and

innocent as she was, this worthy provincial woman had never tortured

her soul in her endeavours to extract from it a little sensibility to

some new shade of sentiment or unhappiness. Entirely absorbed as she

had been before Julien's arrival with that mass of work which falls

to the lot of a good mistress of a household away from Paris, Madame

de Rênal thought of passion in the same way in which we think of a

lottery: a certain deception, a happiness sought after by fools.

The dinner bell rang. Madame de Rênal blushed violently. She heard the

voice of Julien who was bringing in the children. Having grown somewhat

adroit since her falling in love, she complained of an awful headache

in order to explain her redness.

"That's just like what all women are," answered M. de Rênal with a

coarse laugh. "Those machines have always got something or other to be

put right."

Although she was accustomed to this type of wit, Madame de Rênal was

shocked by the tone of voice. In order to distract herself, she looked

at Julien's physiognomy; he would have pleased her at this particular

moment, even if he had been the ugliest man imaginable.

M. de Rênal, who always made a point of copying the habits of the

gentry of the court, established himself at Vergy in the first fine

days of the spring; this is the village rendered celebrated by the

tragic adventure of Gabrielle. A hundred paces from the picturesque

ruin of the old Gothic church, M. de Rênal owns an old château with its

four towers and a garden designed like the one in the Tuileries with

a great many edging verges of box and avenues of chestnut trees which

are cut twice in the year. An adjacent field, crowded with apple trees,

served for a promenade. Eight or ten magnificent walnut trees were at

the end of the orchard. Their immense foliage went as high as perhaps

eighty feet.

"Each of these cursed walnut trees," M. de Rênal was in the habit of

saying, whenever his wife admired them, "costs me the harvest of at

least half an acre; corn cannot grow under their shade."

Madame de Rênal found the sight of the country novel: her admiration

reached the point of enthusiasm. The sentiment by which she was

animated gave her both ideas and resolution. M. de Rênal had returned

to the town, for mayoral business, two days after their arrival in

Vergy. But Madame de Rênal engaged workmen at her own expense. Julien

had given her the idea of a little sanded path which was to go round

the orchard and under the big walnut trees, and render it possible

for the children to take their walk in the very earliest hours of the

morning without getting their feet wet from the dew. This idea was put

into execution within twenty-four hours of its being conceived. Madame

de Rênal gaily spent the whole day with Julien in supervising the

workmen.

When the Mayor of Verrières came back from the town he was very

surprised to find the avenue completed. His arrival surprised Madame

de Rênal as well. She had forgotten his existence. For two months

he talked with irritation about the boldness involved in making so

important a repair without consulting him, but Madame de Rênal had had

it executed at her own expense, a fact which somewhat consoled him.

She spent her days in running about the orchard with her children,

and in catching butterflies. They had made big hoods of clear gauze

with which they caught the poor _lepidoptera_. This is the barbarous

name which Julien taught Madame de Rênal. For she had had M. Godart's

fine work ordered from Besançon, and Julien used to tell her about the

strange habits of the creatures.

They ruthlessly transfixed them by means of pins in a great cardboard

box which Julien had prepared.

Madame de Rênal and Julien had at last a topic of conversation; he was

no longer exposed to the awful torture that had been occasioned by

their moments of silence.

They talked incessantly and with extreme interest, though always about

very innocent matters. This gay, full, active life, pleased the fancy

of everyone, except Mademoiselle Elisa who found herself overworked.

Madame had never taken so much trouble with her dress, even at carnival

time, when there is a ball at Verrières, she would say; she changes her

gowns two or three times a day.

As it is not our intention to flatter anyone, we do not propose to

deny that Madame de Rênal, who had a superb skin, arranged her gowns

in such a way as to leave her arms and her bosom very exposed. She was

extremely well made, and this style of dress suited her delightfully.

"You have never been _so young_, Madame," her Verrières friends would

say to her, when they came to dinner at Vergy (this is one of the local

expressions).

It is a singular thing, and one which few amongst us will believe, but

Madame de Rênal had no specific object in taking so much trouble. She

found pleasure in it and spent all the time which she did not pass in

hunting butterflies with the children and Julien, in working with Elisa

at making gowns, without giving the matter a further thought. Her only

expedition to Verrières was caused by her desire to buy some new summer

gowns which had just come from Mulhouse.

She brought back to Vergy a young woman who was a relative of hers.

Since her marriage, Madame de Rênal had gradually become attached to

Madame Derville, who had once been her school mate at the _Sacré Cœur_.

Madame Derville laughed a great deal at what she called her cousin's

mad ideas: "I would never have thought of them alone," she said. When

Madame de Rênal was with her husband, she was ashamed of those sudden

ideas, which, are called sallies in Paris, and thought them quite

silly: but Madame Derville's presence gave her courage. She would start

to telling her her thoughts in a timid voice, but after the ladies

had been alone for a long time, Madame de Rênal's brain became more

animated, and a long morning spent together by the two friends passed

like a second, and left them in the best of spirits. On this particular

journey, however, the acute Madame Derville thought her cousin much

less merry, but much more happy than usual.

Julien, on his side, had since coming to the country lived like an

absolute child, and been as happy as his pupils in running after

the butterflies. After so long a period of constraint and wary

diplomacy, he was at last alone and far from human observation; he

was instinctively free from any apprehension on the score of Madame

de Rênal, and abandoned himself to the sheer pleasure of being alive,

which is so keen at so young an age, especially among the most

beautiful mountains in the world.

Ever since Madame Derville's arrival, Julien thought that she was his

friend; he took the first opportunity of showing her the view from the

end of the new avenue, under the walnut tree; as a matter of fact it is

equal, if not superior, to the most wonderful views that Switzerland

and the Italian lakes can offer. If you ascend the steep slope which

commences some paces from there, you soon arrive at great precipices

fringed by oak forests, which almost jut on to the river. It was to the

peaked summits of these rocks that Julien, who was now happy, free, and

king of the household into the bargain, would take the two friends, and

enjoy their admiration these sublime views.

"To me it's like Mozart's music," Madame Derville would say.

The country around Verrières had been spoilt for Julien by the jealousy

of his brothers and the presence of a tyranous and angry father. He

was free from these bitter memories at Vergy; for the first time in

his life, he failed to see an enemy. When, as frequently happened, M.

de Rênal was in town, he ventured to read; soon, instead of reading at

night time, a procedure, moreover, which involved carefully hiding his

lamp at the bottom of a flower-pot turned upside down, he was able to

indulge in sleep; in the day, however, in the intervals between the

children's lessons, he would come among these rocks with that book

which was the one guide of his conduct and object of his enthusiasm. He

found in it simultaneously happiness, ecstasy and consolation for his

moments of discouragement.

Certain remarks of Napoleon about women, several discussions about the

merits of the novels which were fashionable in his reign, furnished him

now for the first time with some ideas which any other young man of his

age would have had for a long time.

The dog days arrived. They started the habit of spending the evenings

under an immense pine tree some yards from the house. The darkness was

profound. One evening, Julien was speaking and gesticulating, enjoying

to the full the pleasure of being at his best when talking to young

women; in one of his gestures, he touched the hand of Madame de Rênal

which was leaning on the back of one of those chairs of painted wood,

which are so frequently to be seen in gardens.

The hand was quickly removed, but Julien thought it a point of duty

to secure that that hand should not be removed when he touched it.

The idea of a duty to be performed and the consciousness of his

stultification, or rather of his social inferiority, if he should fail

in achieving it, immediately banished all pleasure from his heart.