‘The details tonight,’ she added laughing.
‘The perversity of woman!’ thought Julien. ‘What pleasure, what instinct leads them to betray us?
‘I find you at once enlightened and blinded by your love,’ he said to her with a certain coldness; ‘your behaviour today has been admirable; but is there any prudence in our attempting to see each other tonight? This house is paved with enemies; think of the passionate hatred that Elisa has for me.’
‘That hatred greatly resembles the passionate indifference that you must have for me.’
‘Indifferent or not, I am bound to save you from a peril into which I have plunged you. If chance decrees that M. de Renal speaks to Elisa, by a single word she may disclose everything to him. What is to prevent him from hiding outside my room, well armed . . . ’
‘What! Lacking in courage even!’ said Madame de Renal, with all the pride of a woman of noble birth.
‘I shall never sink so low as to speak of my courage,’ said Julien coldly, ‘that is mean. Let the world judge by my actions. But,’ he went on, taking her hand, ‘you cannot conceive how attached I am to you, and what a joy it is to me to be able to take leave of you before this cruel parting.’
Chapter 22
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS in 1830
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Speech was given to man to enable him to conceal his thoughts.
MALAGRIDA, S.J.
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THE FIRST THING THAT Julien did on arriving in Verrieres was to reproach himself for his unfairness to Madame de Renal. ‘I should have despised her as a foolish woman if from weakness she had failed to bring off the scene with M. de Renal! She carried it through like a diplomat, and my sympathies are with the loser, who is my enemy. There is a streak of middle-class pettiness in my nature; my vanity is hurt, because M. de Renal is a man! That vast and illustrous corporation to which I have the honour to belong; I am a perfect fool.’
M. Chelan had refused the offers of hospitality which the most respected Liberals of the place had vied with one another in making him, when his deprivation drove him from the presbytery. The pair of rooms which he had taken were littered with his books. Julien, wishing to show Verrieres what it meant to be a priest, went and fetched from his father’s store a dozen planks of firwood, which he carried on his back the whole length of the main street. He borrowed some tools from an old friend and had soon constructed a sort of bookcase in which he arranged M. Chelan’s library.
‘I supposed you to have been corrupted by the vanity of the world,’ said the old man, shedding tears of joy; ‘this quite redeems the childishness of that dazzling guard of honour uniform which made you so many enemies.’
M. de Renal had told Julien to put up in his house. No one had any suspicion of what had happened. On the third day after his arrival, there came up to his room no less a personage than the Sub–Prefect, M. de Maugiron. It was only after two solid hours of insipid tittle-tattle, and long jeremiads on the wickedness of men, on the lack of honesty in the people entrusted with the administration of public funds, on the dangers besetting poor France, etc., etc., that Julien saw him come at length to the purpose of his visit. They were already on the landing, and the poor tutor, on the verge of disgrace, was ushering out with all due respect the future Prefect of some fortunate Department, when it pleased the latter gentleman to occupy himself with Julien’s career, to praise his moderation where his own interests were concerned, etc., etc. Finally M. de Maugiron, taking him in his arms in the most fatherly manner, suggested to him that he should leave M. de Renal and enter the household of an official who had children to educate, and who, like King Philip, would thank heaven, not so much for having given him them as for having caused them to be born in the neighbourhood of M. Julien. Their tutor would receive a salary of eight hundred francs, payable not month by month, ‘which is not noble,’ said M. de Maugiron, but quarterly, and in advance to boot.
It was now the turn of Julien who, for an hour and a half, had been waiting impatiently for an opportunity to speak. His reply was perfect, and as long as a pastoral charge; it let everything be understood, and at the same time said nothing definite. A listener would have found in it at once respect for M. de Renal, veneration for the people of Verrieres and gratitude towards the illustrious Sub–Prefect. The said Sub–Prefect, astonished at finding a bigger Jesuit than himself, tried in vain to obtain something positive. Julien, overjoyed, seized the opportunity to try his skill and began his answer over again in different terms. Never did the most eloquent Minister, seeking to monopolise the last hours of a sitting when the Chamber seems inclined to wake up, say less in more words. As soon as M. de Maugiron had left him, Julien broke out in helpless laughter. To make the most of his Jesuitical bent, he wrote a letter of nine pages to M. de Renal, in which he informed him of everything that had been said to him, and humbly asked his advice. ‘Why, that rascal never even told me the name of the person who is making the offer! It will be M. Valenod, who sees in my banishment to Verrieres the effect of his anonymous letter.’
His missive dispatched, Julien, as happy as a hunter who at six in the morning on a fine autumn day emerges upon a plain teeming with game, went out to seek the advice of M. Chelan. But before he arrived at the good cure’s house, heaven, which was anxious to shower its blessings on him, threw him into the arms of M. Valenod, from whom he did not conceal the fact that his heart was torn; a penniless youth like himself was bound to devote himself entirely to the vocation which heaven had placed in his heart, but a vocation was not everything in this vile world. To be a worthy labourer in the Lord’s vineyard, and not to be altogether unworthy of all one’s learned fellow-labourers, one required education; one required to spend in the seminary at Besancon two very expensive years; it became indispensable, therefore, to save money, which was considerably easier with a salary of eight hundred francs paid quarterly, than with six hundred francs which melted away month by month. On the other hand, did not heaven, by placing him with the Renal boys, and above all by inspiring in him a particular attachment to them, seem to indicate to him that it would be a mistake to abandon this form of education for another? . . .
Julien arrived at such a pitch of perfection in this kind of eloquence, which has taken the place of the swiftness of action of the Empire, that he ended by growing tired of the sound of his own voice.
Returning to the house he found one of M. Valenod’s servants in full livery, who had been looking for him all over the town, with a note inviting him to dinner that very day.
Never had Julien set foot in the man’s house; only a few days earlier, his chief thought was how he might give him a thorough good thrashing without subsequent action by the police. Although dinner was not to be until one o’clock, Julien thought it more respectful to present himself at half past twelve in the study of the Governor of the Poorhouse. He found him displaying his importance amid a mass of papers. His huge black whiskers, his enormous quantity of hair, his night-cap poised askew on the top of his head, his immense pipe, his embroidered slippers, the heavy gold chains slung across his chest in every direction, and all the equipment of a provincial financier, who imagines himself to be a ladies’ man, made not the slightest impression upon Julien; he only thought all the more of the thrashing that he owed him.
He craved the honour of being presented to Madame Valenod; she was making her toilet and could not see him. To make up for this, he had the privilege of witnessing that of the Governor of the Poorhouse. They then proceeded to join Madame Valenod, who presented her children to him with tears in her eyes. This woman, one of the most important people in Verrieres, had a huge masculine face, which she had plastered with rouge for this great ceremony. She displayed all the pathos of maternal feelings.
Julien thought of Madame