The Red and the Black/Chapter 30
CHAPTER XXX
AN AMBITIOUS MAN
There is only one nobility, the title of duke; a marquis is ridiculous; the word duke makes one turn round.
The Marquis de la Mole received the abbé Pirard without any of those aristocratic mannerisms whose very politeness is at the same time so impertinent to one who understands them. It would have been waste of time, and the Marquis was sufficiently expeditious in big affairs to have no time to lose.
He had been intriguing for six months to get both the king and people to accept a minister who, as a matter of gratitude, was to make him a Duke. The Marquis had been asking his Besançon advocate for years on end for a clear and precise summary of his Franche-Comté lawsuits. How could the celebrated advocate explain to him what he did not understand himself? The little square of paper which the abbé handed him explained the whole matter.
"My dear abbé," said the Marquis to him, having got through in less than five minutes all polite formulæ of personal questions. "My dear abbé, in the midst of my pretended prosperity I lack the time to occupy myself seriously with two little matters which are rather important, my family and my affairs. I manage the fortune of my house on a large scale. I can carry it far. I manage my pleasures, and that is the first consideration in my eyes," he added, as he saw a look of astonishment in the abbé Pirard's eyes. Although a man of common sense, the abbé was surprised to hear a man talk so frankly about his pleasures.
"Work doubtless exists in Paris," continued the great lord, "but it is perched on the fifth story, and as soon as I take anyone up, he takes an apartment on the second floor, and his wife starts a day at home; the result is no more work and no more efforts except either to be, or appear to be, a society man. That is the only thing they bother about, as soon as they have got their bread and butter.
"For my lawsuits, yes, for every single one of them, I have, to put it plainly, advocates who quarrel to death. One died of consumption the day before yesterday. Taking my business all round, would you believe, monsieur, that for three years I have given up all hope of finding a man who deigns, during the time he is acting as my clerk, to give a little serious thought to what he is doing. Besides, all this is only a preliminary.
"I respect you and would venture to add that, although I only see you for the first time; to-day, I like you. Will you be my secretary at a salary of eight hundred francs or even double. I shall still be the gainer by it, I swear to you, and I will manage to reserve that fine living for you for the day when we shall no longer be able to agree." The abbé refused, but the genuine embarrassment in which he saw the Marquis suggested an idea to him towards the end of the conversation.
"I have left in the depths of my seminary a poor young man who, if I mistake not, will be harshly persecuted. If he were only a simple monk he would be already in pace. So far this young man only knows Latin and the Holy Scriptures, but it is not impossible that he will one day exhibit great talent, either for preaching or the guiding of souls. I do not know what he will do, but he has the sacred fire. He may go far. I thought of giving him to our Bishop, if we had ever had one who was a little of your way of considering men and things."
"What is your young man's extraction?" said the Marquis.
"He is said to be the son of a carpenter in our mountains. I rather believe he is the natural son of some rich man. I have seen him receive an anonymous or pseudonymous letter with bill for five hundred francs."
"Oh, it is Julien Sorel," said the Marquis.
"How do you know his name?" said the abbé, in astonishment, reddening at his question.
"That's what I'm not going to tell you," answered the Marquis.
"Well," replied the abbé, "you might try making him your secretary. He has energy. He has a logical mind. In a word, it's worth trying."
"Why not?" said the Marquis. "But would he be the kind of man to allow his palm to be greased by the Prefect of Police or any one else and then spy on me? That is only my objection."
After hearing the favourable assurances of the abbé Pirard, the Marquis took a thousand franc note.
"Send this journey money to Julien Sorel. Let him come to me."
"One sees at once," said the abbé Pirard, "that you live in Paris. You do not know the tyranny which weighs us poor provincials down, and particularly those priests who are not friendly to the Jesuits. They will refuse to let Julien Sorel leave. They will manage to cloak themselves in the most clever excuses. They will answer me that he is ill, that his letters were lost in the post, etc., etc."
"I will get a letter from the minister to the Bishop, one of these days," answered the Marquis.
"I was forgetting to warn you of one thing," said the abbé. "This young man, though of low birth, has a high spirit. He will be of no use if you madden his pride. You will make him stupid."
"That pleases me," said the Marquis. "I will make him my son's comrade. Will that be enough for you?"
Some time afterwards, Julien received a letter in an unknown writing, and bearing the Chlon postmark. He found in it a draft on a Besançon merchant, and instructions to present himself at Paris without delay. The letter was signed in a fictitious name, but Julien had felt a thrill in opening it. A leaf of a tree had fallen down at his feet. It was the agreed signal between himself and the abbé Pirard.
Within an hour's time, Julien was summoned to the Bishop's Palace, where he found himself welcomed with a quite paternal benevolence. My lord quoted Horace and at the same time complimented him very adroitly on the exalted destiny which awaited him in Paris in such a way as to elicit an explanation by way of thanks. Julien was unable to say anything, simply because he did not know anything, and my Lord showed him much consideration. One of the little priests in the bishopric wrote to the mayor, who hastened to bring in person a signed passport, where the name of the traveller had been left in blank.
Before midnight of the same evening, Julien was at Fouqué's. His friend's shrewd mind was more astonished than pleased with the future which seemed to await his friend.
"You will finish up," said that Liberal voter, "with a place in the Government, which will compel you to take some step which will be calumniated. It will only be by your own disgrace that I shall have news of you. Remember that, even from the financial standpoint, it is better to earn a hundred louis in a good timber business, of which one is his own master, than to receive four thousand francs from a Government, even though it were that of King Solomon."
Julien saw nothing in this except the pettiness of spirit of a country bourgeois. At last he was going to make an appearance in the theatre of great events. Everything was over-shadowed in his eyes by the happiness of going to Paris, which he imagined to be populated by people of intellect, full of intrigues and full of hypocrisy, but as polite as the Bishop of Besançon and the Bishop of Agde. He represented to his friend that he was deprived of any free choice in the matter by the abbé Pirard's letter.
The following day he arrived at Verrières about noon. He felt the happiest of men for he counted on seeing Madame de Rênal again. He went first to his protector the good abbé Chélan. He met with a severe welcome.
"Do you think you are under any obligation to me?" said M. Chélan to him, without answering his greeting. "You will take breakfast with me. During that time I will have a horse hired for you and you will leave Verrières without seeing anyone."
"Hearing is obeying," answered Julien with a demeanour smacking of the seminary, and the only questions now discussed were theology and classical Latin.
He mounted his horse, rode a league, and then perceiving a wood and not seeing any one who could notice him enter, he plunged into it. At sunset, he sent away the horse. Later, he entered the cottage of a peasant, who consented to sell him a ladder and to follow him with it to the little wood which commands the Cours de la Fidelité at Verrières.
"I have been following a poor mutineer of a conscript … or a smuggler," said the peasant as he took leave of him, "but what does it matter? My ladder has been well paid for, and I myself have done a thing or two in that line."
The night was very black. Towards one o'clock in the morning, Julien, laden with his ladder, entered Verrières. He descended as soon as he could into the bed of the stream, which is banked within two walls, and traverses M. de Rênal's magnificent gardens at a depth of ten feet. Julien easily climbed up the ladder. "How will the watch dogs welcome me," he thought. "It all turns on that." The dogs barked and galloped towards him, but he whistled softly and they came and caressed him. Then climbing from terrace to terrace he easily managed, although all the grills were shut, to get as far as the window of Madame de Rênal's bedroom which, on the garden side, was only eight or six feet above the ground. There was a little heart shaped opening in the shutters which Julien knew well. To his great disappointment, this little opening was not illuminated by the flare of a little night-light inside.
"Good God," he said to himself. "This room is not occupied by Madame de Rênal. Where can she be sleeping? The family must be at Verrières since I have found the dogs here, but I might meet M. de Rênal himself, or even a stranger in this room without a light, and then what a scandal!" The most prudent course was to retreat, but this idea horrified Julien.
"If it's a stranger, I will run away for all I'm worth, and leave my ladder behind me, but if it is she, what a welcome awaits me! I can well imagine that she has fallen into a mood of penitence and the most exalted piety, but after all, she still has some remembrance of me, since she has written to me." This bit of reasoning decided him.
With a beating heart, but resolved none the less to see her or perish in the attempt, he threw some little pebbles against the shutter. No answer. He leaned his long ladder beside the window, and himself knocked on the shutter, at first softly, and then more strongly. "However dark it is, they may still shoot me," thought Julien. This idea made the mad adventure simply a question of bravery.
"This room is not being slept in to-night," he thought, "or whatever person might be there would have woken up by now. So far as it is concerned, therefore, no further precautions are needed. I must only try not to be heard by the persons sleeping in the other rooms."
He descended, placed his ladder against one of the shutters, climbed up again, and placing his hand through the heartshaped opening, was fortunate enough to find pretty quickly the wire which is attached to the hook which closed the shutter. He pulled this wire. It was with an ineffable joy that he felt that the shutter was no longer held back, and yielded to his effort.
I must open it bit by bit and let her recognise my voice. He opened the shutter enough to pass his head through it, while he repeated in a low voice, "It's a friend."
He pricked up his ears and assured himself that nothing disturbed the profound silence of the room, but there could be no doubt about it, there was no light, even half-extinguished, on the mantelpiece. It was a very bad sign.
"Look out for the gun-shot," he reflected a little, then he ventured to knock against rhe window with his finger. No answer. He knocked harder. I must finish it one way or another, even if I have to break the window. When he was knocking very hard, he thought he could catch a glimpse through the darkness of something like a white shadow that was crossing the room. At last there was no doubt about it. He saw a shadow which appeared to advance with extreme slowness. Suddenly he saw a cheek placed against the pane to which his eye was glued.
He shuddered and went away a little, but the night was so black that he could not, even at this distance, distinguish if it were Madame de Rênal. He was frightened of her crying out at first in alarm. He heard the dogs prowling and growling around the foot of the ladder. "It is I," he repeated fairly loudly. "A friend."
No answer. The white phantom had disappeared.
"Deign to open to me. I must speak to you. I am too unhappy." And he knocked hard enough to break the pane.
A crisp sound followed. The casement fastening of the window yielded. He pushed the casement and leaped lightly into the room.
The white phantom flitted away from him. He took hold of its arms. It was a woman. All his ideas of courage vanished. "If it is she, what is she going to say?" What were his emotions when a little cry gave him to understand, that it was Madame de Rênal?
He clasped her in his arms. She trembled and scarcely had the strength to push him away.
"Unhappy man. What are you doing?" Her agonised voice could scarcely articulate the words.
Julien thought that her voice rang with the most genuine indignation.
"I have come to see you after a cruel separation of more than fourteen months."
"Go away, leave me at once. Oh, M. Chélan, why did you prevent me writing to him? I could then have foreseen this horror." She pushed him away with a truly extraordinary strength. "Heaven has deigned to enlighten me," she repeated in a broken voice. "Go away! Flee!"
"After fourteen months of unhappiness I shall certainly not leave you without a word. I want to know all you have done. Yes, I have loved you enough to deserve this confidence. I want to know everything." This authoritative tone dominated Madame de Rênal's heart in spite of herself. Julien, who was hugging her passionately and resisting her efforts to get loose, left off clasping her in his arms. This reassured Madame de Rênal a little.
"I will take away the ladder," he said, "to prevent it compromising us in case some servant should be awakened by the noise, and go on a round."
"Oh leave me, leave me!" she cried with an admirable anger. "What do men matter to me! It is God who sees the awful scene you are now making. You are abusing meanly the sentiments which I had for you but have no longer. Do you hear, Monsieur Julien?"
He took away the ladder very slowly so as not to make a noise.
"Is your husband in town, dear," he said to her not in order to defy her but as a sheer matter of habit.
"Don't talk to me like that, I beg you, or I will call my husband. I feel only too guilty in not having sent you away before. I pity you," she said to him, trying to wound his, as she well knew, irritable pride.
This refusal of all endearments, this abrupt way of breaking so tender a tie which he thought still subsisted, carried the transports of Julien's love to the point of delirium.
"What! is it possible you do not love me?" he said to her, with one of those accents that come straight from the heart and impose a severe strain on the cold equanimity of the listener.
She did not answer. As for him, he wept bitterly.
In fact he had no longer the strength to speak.
"So I am completely forgotten by the one being who ever loved me, what is the good of living on henceforth?" As soon as he had no longer to fear the danger of meeting a man all his courage had left him; his heart now contained no emotion except that of love.
He wept for a long time in silence.
He took her hand; she tried to take it away, and after a few almost convulsive moments, surrendered it to him. It was extremely dark; they were both sitting on Madame de Rênal's bed.
"What a change from fourteen months ago," thought Julien, and his tears redoubled. "So absence is really bound to destroy all human sentiments."
"Deign to tell me what has happened to you?" Julien said at last.
"My follies," answered Madame de Rênal in a hard voice whose frigid intonation contained in it a certain element of reproach, "were no doubt known in the town when you left, your conduct was so imprudent. Some time afterwards when I was in despair the venerable Chélan came to see me. He tried in vain for a long time to obtain a confession. One day he took me to that church at Dijon where I made my first communion. In that place he ventured to speak himself" Madame de Rênal was interrupted by her tears. "What a moment of shame. I confessed everything. The good man was gracious enough not to overwhelm me with the weight of his indignation. He grieved with me. During that time I used to write letters to you every day which I never ventured to send. I hid them carefully and when I was more than usually unhappy I shut myself up in my room and read over my letters."
"At last M. Chélan induced me to hand them over to him, some of them written a little more discreetly were sent to you, you never answered."
"I never received any letters from you, I swear!"
"Great heavens! Who can have intercepted them? Imagine my grief until the day I saw you in the cathedral. I did not know if you were still alive."
"God granted me the grace of understanding how much I was sinning towards Him, towards my children, towards my husband," went on Madame de Rênal. "He never loved me in the way that I then thought that you had loved me."
Julien rushed into her arms, as a matter of fact without any particular purpose and feeling quite beside himself. But Madame de Rênal repelled him and continued fairly firmly.
"My venerable friend, M. Chélan, made me understand that in marrying I had plighted all my affections, even those which I did not then know, and which I had never felt before a certain fatal attachment … after the great sacrifice of the letters that were so dear to me, my life has flowed on, if not happily, at any rate calmly. Do not disturb it. Be a friend to me, my best friend." Julien covered her hand with kisses. She perceived he was still crying. "Do not cry, you pain me so much. Tell me, in your turn, what you have been doing," Julien was unable to speak. "I want to know the life you lead at the seminary," she repeated. "And then you will go."
Without thinking about what he was saying Julien spoke of the numberless intrigues and jealousies which he had first encountered, and then of the great serenity of his life after he had been made a tutor.
"It was then," he added, "that after a long silence which was no doubt intended to make me realise what I see only too clearly to-day, that you no longer loved me and that I had become a matter of indifference to you.…"
Madame de Rênal wrung her hands.
"It was then that you sent me the sum of five hundred francs."
"Never," said Madame de Rênal.
"It was a letter stamped Paris and signed Paul Sorel so as to avert suspicion."
There was a little discussion about how the letter could possibly have originated.
The psychological situation was altered. Without knowing it Julien had abandoned his solemn tone; they were now once more on the footing of a tender affection. It was so dark that they did not see each other but the tone of their voices was eloquent of everything. Julien clasped his arm round his love's waist. This movement had its dangers. She tried to put Julien's arms away from her; at this juncture he cleverly diverted her attention by an interesting detail in his story. The arm was practically forgotten and remained in its present position.
After many conjectures as to the origin of the five hundred francs letter, Julien took up his story. He regained a little of his self-control as he spoke of his past life, which compared with what he was now experiencing interested him so little. His attention was now concentrated on the final outcome of of his visit. "You will have to go," were the curt words he heard from time to time.
"What a disgrace for me if I am dismissed. My remorse will embitter all my life," he said to himself, "she will never write to me. God knows when I shall come back to this part of the country. From this moment Julien's heart became rapidly oblivious of all the heavenly delights of his present position.
Seated as he was close to a woman whom he adored and practically clasping her in his arms in this room, the scene of his former happiness, amid a deep obscurity, seeing quite clearly as he did that she had just started crying, and feeling that she was sobbing from the heaving of her chest, he was unfortunate enough to turn into a cold diplomatist, nearly as cold as in those days when in the courtyard of the seminary he found himself the butt of some malicious joke on the part of one of his comrades who was stronger than he was. Julien protracted his story by talking of his unhappy life since his departure from Verrières.
"So," said Madame de Rênal to herself, "after a year's absence and deprived almost entirely of all tokens of memory while I myself was forgetting him, he only thought of the happy days that he had had in Verrières." Her sobs redoubled. Julien saw the success of his story. He realised that he must play his last card. He abruptly mentioned a letter he had just received from Paris.
"I have taken leave of my Lord Bishop."
"What! you are not going back to Besançon? You are leaving us for ever?"
"Yes," answered Julien resolutely, "yes, I am leaving a country where I have been forgotten even by the woman whom I loved more than anyone in my life; I am leaving it and I shall never see it again. I am going to Paris."
"You are going to Paris, dear," exclaimed Madame Rênal.
Her voice was almost choked by her tears and showed the extremity of her trouble. Julien had need of this encouragement. He was on the point of executing a manœuvre which might decide everything against him; and up to the time of this exclamation he could not tell what effect he was producing as he was unable to see. He no longer hesitated. The fear of remorse gave him complete control over himself. He coldly added as he got up.
"Yes, madame, I leave you for ever. May you be happy. Adieu."
He moved some steps towards the window. He began to open it. Madame de Rênal rushed to him and threw herself into his arms. So it was in this way that, after a dialogue lasting three hours, Julien obtained what he desired so passionately during the first two hours.
Madame de Rênal's return to her tender feelings and this overshadowing of her remorse would have been a divine happiness had they come a little earlier; but, as they had been obtained by artifice, they were simply a pleasure. Julien insisted on lighting the nightlight in spite of his mistress's opposition.
"Do you wish me then," he said to her "to have no recollection of having seen you." Is the love in those charming eyes to be lost to me for ever? Is the whiteness of that pretty hand to remain invisible? Remember that perhaps I am leaving you for a very long time."
Madame de Rênal could refuse him nothing. His argument made her melt into tears. But the dawn was beginning to throw into sharp relief the outlines of the pine trees on the mountain east of Verrières. Instead of going away Julien, drunk with pleasure, asked Madame de Rênal to let him pass the day in her room and leave the following night.
"And why not?" she answered. "This fatal relapse robs me of all my respect and will mar all my life," and she pressed him to her heart. My husband is no longer the same; he has suspicions, he believes I led him the way I wanted in all this business, and shows great irritation against me. If he hears the slightest noise I shall be ruined, he will hound me out like the unhappy woman that I am."
"Ah here we have a phrase of M. Chélan's," said Julien "you would not have talked like that before my cruel departure to the seminary; in those days you used to love me,"
Julien was rewarded for the frigidity which he put into those words. He saw his love suddenly forget the danger which her husband's presence compelled her to run, in thinking of the much greater danger of seeing Julien doubt her love. The daylight grew rapidly brighter and vividly illuminated the room. Julien savoured once more all the deliciousness of pride, when he saw this charming woman in his arms and almost at his feet, the only woman whom he had ever loved, and who had been entirely absorbed only a few hours before by her fear of a terrible God and her devotion to her duties. Resolutions, fortified by a year's persuasion, had failed to hold out against his courage.
They soon heard a noise in the house. A matter that Madame de Rênal had not thought of began to trouble her.
"That wicked Elisa will come into the room. What are we to do with this enormous ladder?" she said to her sweetheart, "where are we to hide it? I will take it to the loft," she exclaimed suddenly half playfully.
"But you will have to pass through the servants' room," said Julien in astonishment.
"I will leave the ladder in the corridor and will call the servant and send him on an errand."
"Think of some explanation to have ready in the event of a servant passing the ladder and noticing it in the corridor."
"Yes, my angel," said Madame de Rênal giving him a kiss "as for you, dear, remember to hide under the bed pretty quickly if Elisa enters here during my absence."
Julien was astonished by this sudden gaiety—"So" he thought, "the approach of a real danger instead of troubling her gives her back her spirits before she forgets her remorse. Truly a superior woman. Yes, that's a heart over which it is glorious to reign." Julien was transported with delight.
Madame de Rênal took the ladder, which was obviously too heavy for her. Julien went to her help. He was admiring that elegant figure which was so far from betokening any strength when she suddenly seized the ladder without assistance and took it up as if it had been a chair. She took it rapidly into the corridor of the third storey where she laid it alongside the wall. She called a servant, and in order to give him time to dress himself, went up into the dovecot.
Five minutes later, when she came back to the corridor, she found no signs of the ladder. What had happened to it? If Julien had been out of the house she would not have minded the danger in the least. But supposing her husband were to see the ladder just now, the incident might be awful. Madame de Rênal ran all over the house.
Madame de Rênal finally discovered the ladder under the roof where the servant had carried it and even hid it.
"What does it matter what happens in twenty-four hours," she thought, "when Julien will be gone?"
She had a vague idea that she ought to take leave of life but what mattered her duty? He was restored to her after a separation which she had thought eternal. She was seeing him again and the efforts he had made to reach her showed the extent of his love.
"What shall I say to my husband," she said to him. "If the servant tells him he found this ladder?" She was pensive for a moment. "They will need twenty-four hours to discover the peasant who sold it to you." And she threw herself into Julien's arms and clasped him convulsively.
"Oh, if I could only die like this," she cried covering him with kisses. "But you mustn't die of starvation," she said with a smile.
"Come, I will first hide you in Madame Derville's room which is always locked." She went and watched at the other end of the corridor and Julien ran in. "Mind you don't try and open if any one knocks," she said as she locked him in. "Anyway it would only be a frolic of the children as they play together."
"Get them to come into the garden under the window," said Julien, "so that I may have the pleasure of seeing them. Make them speak."
"Yes, yes," cried Madame de Rênal to him as she went away. She soon returned with oranges, biscuits and a bottle of Malaga wine. She had not been able to steal any bread.
"What is your husband doing?" said Julien.
"He is writing out the figures of the bargains he is going to make with the peasants."
But eight o'clock had struck and they were making a lot of noise in the house. If Madame de Rênal failed to put in an appearance, they would look for her all over the house. She was obliged to leave him. Soon she came back, in defiance of all prudence, bringing him a cup of coffee. She was frightened lest he should die of starvation.
She managed after breakfast to bring the children under the window of Madame Derville's room. He thought they had grown a great deal, but they had begun to look common, or else his ideas had changed. Madame de Rênal spoke to them about Julien. The elder answered in an affectionate tone and regretted his old tutor, but he found that the younger children had almost forgotten him.
M. de Rênal did not go out that morning; he was going up and downstairs incessantly engaged in bargaining with some peasants to whom he was selling potatoes.
Madame de Rênal did not have an instant to give to her prisoner until dinner-time. When the bell had been rung and dinner had been served, it occurred to her to steal a plate of warm soup for him. As she noiselessly approached the door of the room which he occupied, she found herself face to face with the servant who had hid the ladder in the morning. At the time he too was going noiselessly along the corridor, as though listening for something. The servant took himself off in some confusion.
Madame de Rênal boldly entered Julien's room. The news of this encounter made him shudder.
"You are frightened," she said to him, "but I would brave all the dangers in the world without flinching. There is only one thing I fear, and that is the moment when I shall be alone after you have left," and she left him and ran downstairs.
"Ah," thought Julien ecstatically, "remorse is the only panger which this sublime soul is afraid of."
At last evening came. Monsieur de Rênal went to the Casino.
His wife had given out that she was suffering from an awful headache. She went to her room, hastened to dismiss Elisa and quickly got up in order to let Julien out.
He was literally starving. Madame de Rênal went to the pantry to fetch some bread. Julien heard a loud cry. Madame de Rênal came back and told him that when she went to the dark pantry and got near the cupboard where they kept the bread, she had touched a woman's arm as she stretched out her hand. It was Elisa who had uttered the cry Julien had heard.
"What was she doing there?"
"Stealing some sweets or else spying on us," said Madame de Rênal with complete indifference, "but luckily I found a pie and a big loaf of bread."
"But what have you got there?" said Julien pointing to the pockets of her apron.
Madame de Rênal had forgotten that they had been filled with bread since dinner.
Julien clasped her in his arms with the most lively passion. She had never seemed to him so beautiful. "I could not meet a woman of greater character even at Paris," he said confusedly to himself. She combined all the clumsiness of a woman who was but little accustomed to paying attentions of this kind, with all the genuine courage of a person who is only afraid of dangers of quite a different sphere and quite a different kind of awfulness.
While Julien was enjoying his supper with a hearty appetite and his sweetheart was rallying him on the simplicity of the meal, the door of the room was suddenly shaken violently. It was M. de Rênal.
"Why have you shut yourself in?" he cried to her.
Julien had only just time to slip under the sofa.
On any ordinary day Madame de Rênal would have been upset by this question which was put with true conjugal harshness; but she realised that M. de Rênal had only to bend down a little to notice Julien, for M. de Rênal had flung himself into the chair opposite the sofa which Julien had been sitting in one moment before.
Her headache served as an excuse for everything. While her husband on his side went into a long-winded account of the billiards pool which he had won at Casino, "yes, to be sure a nineteen franc pool," he added. She noticed Julien's hat on a chair three paces in front of them. Her self-possession became twice as great, she began to undress, and rapidly passing one minute behind her husband threw her dress over the chair with the hat on it.
At last M. de Rênal left. She begged Julien to start over again his account of his life at the Seminary. "I was not listening to you yesterday all the time you were speaking, I was only thinking of prevailing on myself to send you away."
She was the personification of indiscretion. They talked very loud and about two o'clock in the morning they were interrupted by a violent knock at the door. It was M. de Rênal again.
"Open quickly, there are thieves in the house!" he said. "Saint Jean found their ladder this morning."
"This is the end of everything," cried Madame de Rênal, throwing herself into Julien's arms. "He will kill both of us, he doesn't believe there are any thieves. I will die in your arms, and be more happy in my death than I ever was in my life." She made no attempt to answer her husband who was beginning to lose his temper, but started kissing Julien passionately.
"Save Stanislas's mother," he said to her with an imperious look. "I will jump down into the courtyard through the lavatory window, and escape in the garden; the dogs have recognised me. Make my clothes into a parcel and throw them into the garden as soon as you can. In the meanwhile let him break the door down. But above all, no confession, I forbid you to confess, it is better that he should suspect rather than be certain."
"You will kill yourself as you jump!" was her only answer and her only anxiety.
She went with him to the lavatory window; she then took sufficient time to hide his clothes. She finally opened the door to her husband who was boiling with rage. He looked in the room and in the lavatory without saying a word and disappeared. Julien's clothes were thrown down to him; he seized them and ran rapidly towards the bottom of the garden in the direction of the Doubs.
As he was running he heard a bullet whistle past him, and heard at the same time the report of a gun.
"It is not M. de Rênal," he thought, "he's far too bad a shot." The dogs ran silently at his side, the second shot apparently broke the paw of one dog, for he began to whine piteously. Julien jumped the wall of the terrace, did fifty paces under cover, and began to fly in another direction. He heard voices calling and had a distinct view of his enemy the servant firing a gun; a farmer also began to shoot away from the other side of the garden. Julien had already reached the bank of the Doubs where he dressed himself.
An hour later he was a league from Verrières on the Geneva road. "If they had suspicions," thought Julien, "they will look for me on the Paris road."