Minor EventsThen there were sighs, the deeper for suppression, And stolenglances, sweeter for the theft, And burning blushes, though for notransgression.
Don Juan, I. 74The angelic sweetness which Madame de Renal derived from her owncharacter as well as from her present happiness was interrupted onlywhen she happened to think of her maid Elisa. This young woman received a legacy, went to make her confession to the cure Chelan, and revealed to him her intention to marry Julien. The cure was genuinely delighted at his friend's good fortune; but his surprise was great when Julien informed him with a resolute air that Miss Elisa's offer could not beaccepted.
'Pay good heed, my son, to what is taking place in your heart,' said thecure, frowning; 'I congratulate you on your vocation, if it is to it alonethat must be ascribed your scorn of a more than adequate provision. Forfifty-six years and more have I been cure at Verrieres, and yet, so far asone can see, I am going to be deprived. This distresses me, albeit I havean income of eight hundred livres. I tell you of this detail in order thatyou may not be under any illusion as to what is in store for you in thepriestly calling. If you think of paying court to the men in power, youreternal ruin is assured. You may make your fortune, but you will have toinjure the poor and needy, flatter the Sub-Prefect, the Mayor, the important person, and minister to his passions: such conduct, which in theworld is called the art of life, may, in a layman, be not wholly incompatible with salvation; but in our calling, we have to choose; we must makeour fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way.
Go, my dear friend, reflect, and come back in three days' time with a definite answer. I am sorry to see underlying your character, a smoulderingardour which does not suggest to my mind the moderation and complete renunciation of earthly advantages necessary in a priest; I augur wellfrom your intelligence; but, allow me to tell you,' the good cure went on,with tears in his eyes, 'in the calling of a priest, I shall tremble for yoursalvation.'
Julien was ashamed of his emotion; for the first time in his life, he sawhimself loved; he wept for joy, and went to hide his tears in the greatwoods above Verrieres.
'Why am I in this state?' he asked himself at length; 'I feel that I wouldgive my life a hundred times over for that good Father Chelan, and yethe has just proved to me that I am no better than a fool. It is he above allthat I have to deceive, and he sees through me. That secret ardour ofwhich he speaks is my plan for making my fortune. He thinks me unfitto be a priest, at the very moment when I imagined that the sacrifice ofan income of fifty louis was going to give him the most exalted idea ofmy piety and my vocation.
'For the future,' Julien continued, 'I shall rely only upon those elementsof my character which I have tested. Who would ever have said that Ishould find pleasure in shedding tears? That I should love the man whoproves to me that I am nothing more than a fool?'
Three days later, Julien had found the pretext with which he shouldhave armed himself from the first; this pretext was a calumny, but whatof that? He admitted to the cure, after much hesitation, that a reasonwhich he could not explain to him, because to reveal it would injure athird party, had dissuaded him from the first from the projected marriage. This was tantamount to an indictment of Elisa's conduct. M.
Chelan detected in his manner a fire that was wholly mundane, and verydifferent from that which should have inspired a young Levite.
'My friend,' he appealed to him again, 'be an honest yeoman, educatedand respected, rather than a priest without a vocation.'
Julien replied to these fresh remonstrances extremely well, so far aswords went; he hit upon the expressions which a fervent young seminarist would have employed; but the tone in which he uttered them, the ill-concealed fire that smouldered in his eyes alarmed M. Chelan.
We need not augur ill for Julien's future; he hit upon the correct formof words of a cunning and prudent hypocrisy. That is not bad at his age.
As for his tone and gestures, he lived among country folk; he had beendebarred from seeing the great models. In the sequel, no sooner had hebeen permitted to mix with these gentlemen than he became admirableas well in gesture as in speech.
Madame de Renal was surprised that her maid's newly acquired fortune had not made the girl more happy; she saw her going incessantly tothe cure's, and returning with tears in her eyes; finally Elisa spoke to hermistress of her marriage.
Madame de Renal believed herself to have fallen ill; a sort of fever prevented her enjoying any sleep; she was alive only when she had hermaid or Julien before her eyes. She could think of nothing but them andthe happiness they would find in their married life. The poverty of thesmall house in which people would be obliged to live, with an income offifty louis, portrayed itself to her in enchanting colours. Julien might verywell become a lawyer at Bray, the Sub-Prefecture two leagues from Verrieres; in that event she would see something of him.
Madame de Renal sincerely believed that she was going mad; she saidso to her husband, and finally did fall ill. That evening, as her maid waswaiting upon her, she noticed that the girl was crying. She loathed Elisaat that moment, and had spoken sharply to her; she begged the girl's pardon. Elisa's tears increased; she said that if her mistress would allow it,she would tell her the whole tale of her distress.
'Speak,' replied Madame de Renal.
'Well, the fact is, Ma'am, he won't have me; wicked people must havespoken evil of me to him, and he believes them.'
'Who won't have you?' said Madame de Renal, scarcely able tobreathe.
'And who could it be, Ma'am, but M. Julien?' the maid replied throughher sobs. 'His Reverence has failed to overcome his resistance; for HisReverence considers that he ought not to refuse a decent girl, just because she has been a lady's maid. After all, M. Julien's own father is nobetter than a carpenter; and he himself, how was he earning his livingbefore he came to Madame's?'
Madame de Renal had ceased to listen; surfeit of happiness had almostdeprived her of the use of her reason. She made the girl repeat to herseveral times the assurance that Julien had refused in a positive manner,which would not permit of his coming to a more reasonable decisionlater on.
'I wish to make a final effort,' she said to her maid. 'I shall speak to M.
Julien.'
Next day after luncheon, Madame de Renal gave herself the exquisitesensation of pleading her rival's cause, and of seeing Elisa's hand andfortune persistently refused for an hour on end.
Little by little Julien abandoned his attitude of studied reserve, andended by making spirited answers to the sound arguments advanced byMadame de Renal. She could not hold out against the torrent of happiness which now poured into her heart after all those days of despair. Shefound herself really ill. When she had come to herself, and was comfortably settled in her own room, she asked to be left alone. She was in astate of profound astonishment.
'Can I be in love with Julien?' she asked herself at length.
This discovery, which at any other time would have filled her with remorse and with a profound agitation, was no more to her than a singularspectacle, but one that left her indifferent. Her heart, exhausted by allthat she had just undergone, had no sensibility left to place at the serviceof her passions.
Madame de Renal tried to work, and fell into a deep sleep; when sheawoke, she was less alarmed than she should have been. She was toohappy to be able to take anything amiss. Artless and innocent as she was,this honest provincial had never tormented her soul in an attempt towring from it some little sensibility to some novel shade of sentiment ordistress. Entirely absorbed, before Julien came, in that mass of workwhich, outside Paris, is the lot of a good wife and mother, Madame deRenal thought about the passions, as we think about the lottery: a certaindisappointment and a happiness sought by fools alone.
The dinner bell rang; Madame de Renal blushed deeply when sheheard Julien's voice as he brought in the children. Having acquired someadroitness since she had fallen in love, she accounted for her colour bycomplaining of a splitting headache.
'There you have women,' put in M. de Renal, with a coarse laugh.
'There's always something out of order in their machinery.'
Accustomed as she was to this form of wit, the tone of his voice hurtMadame de Renal. She sought relief in studying Julien's features; had hebeen the ugliest man in the world, he would have charmed her at thatmoment.
Always zealous in imitating the habits of the Court, with the first finedays of spring M. de Renal removed his household to Vergy; it is the village rendered famous by the tragic adventure of Gabrielle. A few hundred yards from the picturesque ruins of the old gothic church, M.
de Renal owned an old castle with its four towers, and a garden laid outlike that of the Tuileries, with a number of box borders, and chestnut alleys trimmed twice in the year. An adjoining field, planted with appletrees, allowed the family to take the air. Nine or ten splendid walnutsgrew at the end of the orchard; their massive foliage rose to a height ofsome eighty feet.
'Each of those damned walnuts,' M. de Renal would say when his wifeadmired them, 'costs me half an acre of crop; the corn will not grow intheir shade.'
The rustic scene appeared to come as a novelty to Madame de Renal;her admiration knew no bounds. The feeling that animated her gave hera new spirit and determination. On the second day after their removal toVergy, M. de Renal having returned to town upon some official business,his wife engaged labourers at her own expense. Julien had given her theidea of a little gravelled path, which should run round the orchard andbeneath the big walnuts, and would allow the children to walk there inthe early morning without wetting their shoes in the dew. This plan wasput into execution within twenty-four hours of its conception. Madamede Renal spent a long and happy day with Julieu supervising thelabourers.
When the Mayor of Verrieres returned from the town, he was greatlysurprised to find the path finished. His coming surprised Madame deRenal also; she had forgotten that he existed. For the next two months, hecontinued to speak with annoyance of their presumption in having carried out, without consulting him, so important a repair, but Madame deRenal had done it at her own expense, and this to some extent consoledhim.
She spent her days running about the orchard with her children, andchasing butterflies. They had made a number of large nets of light-coloured gauze, with which they caught the unfortunate lepidoptera. Thiswas the outlandish name which Julien taught Madame de Renal. For shehad sent to Besancon for the handsome work on the subject by M.
Godart; and Julien read to her the strange habits of these insects.
They fastened them, without compunction, with pins upon a largesheet of pasteboard, also prepared by Julien.
At last Madame de Renal and Julien had a subject for conversation; hewas no longer exposed to the frightful torture inflicted on him by intervals of silence.
They conversed incessantly, and with extreme interest, although always of the most innocent things. This life, active, occupied and cheerful,suited everyone, except Miss Elisa, who found herself worked to death.
'Even at carnival-time,' she said, 'when there is a ball at Verrieres, Madame has never taken so much trouble over her dress; she changes herclothes two or three times a day.'
As it is our intention to flatter no one, we shall not conceal the fact thatMadame de Renal, who had a superb skin, had dresses made for herwhich exposed her arms and bosom freely. She was very well made, andthis way of dressing suited her to perfection.
'You have never been so young, Ma'am,' her friends from Verrieres usedto tell her when they came to dine at Vergy. (It is a local form of speech.)A curious point, which our readers will scarcely believe, was that Madame de Renal had no deliberate intention in taking such pains with herappearance. She enjoyed doing so; and, without giving the matter anyparticular thought, whenever she was not chasing butterflies with thechildren and Julien, she was engaged with Elisa making dresses. Her oneexpedition to Verrieres was due to a desire to purchase new summerclothes which had just arrived there from Mulhouse.
She brought back with her to Vergy a young woman, one of her cousins. Since her marriage, Madame de Renal had gradually formed an intimate friendship with Madame Derville, who in their younger days hadbeen her school-fellow at the Sacre-Coeur.
Madame Derville laughed heartily at what she called her cousin's absurd ideas. 'If I were alone, they would never occur to me,' she used tosay. These sudden ideas, which in Paris would have been called sallies,made Madame de Renal feel ashamed, as of something foolish, when shewas with her husband; but Madame Derville's presence gave her courage. She began by telling her what she was thinking in a timid voice;when the ladies were by themselves for any length of time, Madame deRenal would become animated, and a long, undisturbed morning passedin a flash and left the friends quite merry. On this visit, the sensible Madame Derville found her cousin much less merry and much happier.
Julien, meanwhile, had been living the life of a child since he had cometo the country, as happy to be running after butterflies as were his pupils. After so much constraint and skilful diplomacy, alone, unobservedby his fellow-men, and, instinctively, feeling not in the least afraid of Madame de Renal, he gave himself up to the pleasure of being alive, so keenat his age, and in the midst of the fairest mountains in the world.
As soon as Madame Derville arrived, Julien felt that she was hisfriend; he hastened to show her the view that was to be seen from theend of the new path; as a matter of fact it was equal, if not superior to themost admirable scenery which Switzerland and the Italian lakes have tooffer. By climbing the steep slope which began a few yards farther on,one came presently to high precipices fringed with oakwoods, whichprojected almost over the bed of the river. It was to the summits of thesesheer rocks that Julien, happy, free, and indeed something more, lord ofthe house, led the two friends, and relished their admiration of thosesublime prospects.
'To me it is like Mozart's music,' said Madame Derville.
His brothers' jealousy, the presence of a despotic and ill-temperedfather had spoiled the country round Verrieres in Julien's eyes. At Vergy,he found no trace of these unpleasant memories; for the first time in hislife, he could see no one that was his enemy. When M. de Renal was intown, as frequently happened, he ventured to read; soon, instead ofreading at night, and then taking care, moreover, to shade his lamp withan inverted flower-pot, he could take his full measure of sleep; duringthe day, in the interval between the children's lessons, he climbed upamong these rocks with the book that was his sole rule of conduct, andthe sole object of his transports. He found in it at once happiness, ecstasyand consolation in moments of depression.
Certain things which Napoleon says of women, various discussions ofthe merits of the novels in vogue during his reign, furnished him now,for the first time, with several ideas which would long since have beenfamiliar to any other young man of his age.
The hot weather came. They formed the habit of spending the eveningunder a huge lime a few yards from the house. There the darkness wasintense. One evening, Julien was talking with emphasis, he was revellingin the pleasure of talking well and to young married women; as he gesticulated, he touched the hand of Madame de Renal, who was leaning onthe back of one of those chairs of painted wood that are placed ingardens.
The hand was hurriedly withdrawn; but Julien decided that it was hisduty to secure that the hand should not be withdrawn when he touchedit. The idea of a duty to be performed, and of making himself ridiculous,or rather being left with a sense of inferiority if he did not succeed in performing it, at once took all the pleasure from his heart.