No sooner had he risen than ‘Good God!’ he exclaimed, clapping his hand to his head, ‘she is the one person whom I cannot trust; from this moment she is my enemy.’ And tears of anger welled into his eyes.
It was a fitting reward for that barrenness of heart in which practical wisdom in the provinces is rooted, that the two men whom, at that moment, M. de Renal most dreaded were his two most intimate friends.
‘Apart from them, I have ten friends perhaps,’ and he turned them over in his mind, calculating the exact amount of comfort that he would be able to derive from each. ‘To all of them, to all of them,’ he cried in his rage, ‘my appalling misfortune will give the most intense pleasure.’ Happily for him, he supposed himself to be greatly envied, and not without reason. Apart from his superb house in town on which the King of —— had just conferred everlasting honour by sleeping beneath its roof, he had made an admirable piece of work of his country house at Vergy. The front was painted white, and the windows adorned with handsome green shutters. He was comforted for a moment by the thought of this magnificence. The fact of the matter was that this mansion was visible from a distance of three or four leagues, to the great detriment of all the country houses or so-called chateaux of the neighbourhood, which had been allowed to retain the humble grey tones imparted to them by time.
M. de Renal could reckon upon the tears and pity of one of his friends, the churchwarden of the parish; but he was an imbecile who shed tears at everything. This man was nevertheless his sole resource.
‘What misfortune is comparable to mine?’ he exclaimed angrily. ‘What isolation!
‘Is it possible,’ this truly pitiable man asked himself, ‘is it possible that, in my distress, I have not a single friend of whom to ask advice? For my mind is becoming unhinged, I can feel it! Ah, Falcoz! Ah, Ducros!’ he cried bitterly. These were the names of two of his boyhood’s friends whom he had alienated by his arrogance in 1814. They were not noble, and he had tried to alter the terms of equality on which they had been living all their lives.
One of them, Falcoz, a man of spirit and heart, a paper merchant at Verrieres, had purchased a printing press in the chief town of the Department and had started a newspaper. The Congregation had determined to ruin him: his paper had been condemned, his printer’s licence had been taken from him. In these unfortunate circumstances he ventured to write to M. de Renal for the first time in ten years. The Mayor of Verrieres felt it incumbent on him to reply in the Ancient Roman style: ‘If the King’s Minister did me the honour to consult me, I should say to him: “Ruin without compunction all provincial printers, and make printing a monopoly like the sale of tobacco.”’ This letter to an intimate friend which had set the whole of Verrieres marvelling at the time, M. de Renal now recalled, word for word, with horror. ‘Who would have said that with my rank, my fortune, my Crosses, I should one day regret it?’ It was in such transports of anger, now against himself, now against all around him, that he passed a night of anguish; but, fortunately, it did not occur to him to spy upon his wife.
‘I am used to Louise,’ he said to himself, ‘she knows all my affairs; were I free to marry again tomorrow I could find no one fit to take her place.’ Next, he sought relief in the idea that his wife was innocent; this point of view made it unnecessary for him to show his strength of character, and was far more convenient; how many slandered wives have we not all seen!
‘But what!’ he suddenly exclaimed, pacing the floor with a convulsive step, ‘am I to allow her, as though I were a man of straw, a mere ragamuffin, to make a mock of me with her lover? Is the whole of Verrieres to be allowed to sneer at my complacency? What have they not said about Charmier?’ (a notorious local cuckold). ‘When he is mentioned, is there not a smile on every face? He is a good pleader, who is there that ever mentions his talent for public speaking? “Ah! Charmier!” is what they say; “Bernard’s Charmier.” They actually give him the name of the man that has disgraced him.
‘Thank heaven,’ said M. de Renal at other moments, ‘I have no daughter, and the manner in which I am going to punish their mother will not damage the careers of my children; I can surprise that young peasant with my wife, and kill the pair of them; in that event, the tragic outcome of my misfortune may perhaps make it less absurd.’ This idea appealed to him: he worked it out in the fullest detail. ‘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 had a keen blade; but the thought of bloodshed frightened him.
‘I might thrash this insolent tutor black and blue and turn him from the house; but what a stir in Verrieres and, indeed, throughout the Department! After the suppression of Falcoz’s paper, when his editor came out of prison, I was instrumental in making him lose a place worth six hundred francs. They say that the scribbler has dared to show his face again in Besancon, he may easily attack me, and so cunningly that it will be impossible to bring him to justice! That insolent fellow will insinuate in a thousand ways that he has been speaking the truth. A man of family, who respects his rank as I do, is always hated by plebeians. I shall see myself in those frightful Paris papers; my God! what degradation! To see the ancient name of Renal plunged in the mire of ridicule . . . If I ever travel, I shall have to change my name; what! give up this name which is my pride and my strength. What a crowning infamy!
‘If I do not kill my wife, if I drive her from the house with ignominy, she has her aunt at Besancon, who will hand over the whole of her fortune to her on the quiet. My wife will go and live in Paris with Julien; Verrieres will hear of it, and I shall again be regarded as a dupe.’ This unhappy man then perceived, from the failing light of his lamp, that day was beginning to break. He went to seek a breath of air in the garden. At that moment, he had almost made up his mind to create no scene, chiefly because a scene of that sort would fill his good friends at Verrieres with joy.
His stroll in the garden calmed him somewhat. ‘No,’ he cried, ‘I shall certainly not part with my wife, she is too useful to me.’ He pictured to himself with horror what his house would be like without his wife; his sole female relative was the Marquise de R—— who was old, idiotic and evil-minded.
An idea of the greatest good sense occurred to him, but to put it into practice required a strength of character far exceeding the little that the poor man possessed. ‘If I keep my wife,’ he said to himself; ‘I know my own nature; one day, when she taxes my patience, I shall reproach her with her offence. She is proud, we are bound to quarrel, and all this will happen before she has inherited her aunt’s estate. And then, how they will all laugh at me! My wife loves her children, it will all come to them in the end. But I, I shall be the talk of Verrieres. What, they will say, he couldn’t even punish his wife! Would it not be better to stick to my suspicions and to verify nothing? Then I tie my own hands, I cannot afterwards reproach her with anything.’
A moment later M. de Renal, his wounded vanity once more gaining the mastery, was laboriously recalling all the stories told in the billiard-room of the Casino or Noble Club of Verrieres, when some fluent talker interrupted the pool to make merry at the expense of some cuckolded husband. How cruel, at that moment, those pleasantries seemed.
‘God! Why is not my wife dead! Then I should be immune from ridicule. Why am I not a widower! I should go and spend six months in Paris in the best society.’ After this momentary happiness caused by the idea of widowhood, his imagination returned to the methods of ascertaining the truth. Should he at midnight, after the whole household had gone to bed, sprinkle a few handfuls of bran outside the door of Julien’s room? Next morning, at daybreak, he would see the footprints on it.
‘But that would be no good,’ he broke out angrily, ‘that wretched Elisa would notice it, and it would be all over the house at once that I am jealous.’
In another story that circulated at the Casino, a husband had made certain of his plight by fastening a hair with a little