Leo Tolstoy - 3 books to know Napoleonic Wars

Hence the success of the little peasant Julien. She found much pleasant enjoyment, radiant with the charm of novelty, in the sympathy of this proud and noble spirit. Madame de Renal had soon forgiven him his extreme ignorance, which was an additional charm, and the roughness of his manners, which she succeeded in improving. She found that it was worth her while to listen to him, even when they spoke of the most ordinary things, even when it was a question of a poor dog that had been run over, as it was crossing the street, by a peasant’s cart going by at a trot. The sight of such a tragedy made her husband utter his coarse laugh, whereas she saw Julien’s fine, beautifully arched black eyebrows wince. Generosity, nobility of soul, humanity, seemed to her, after a time, to exist only in this young cleric. She felt for him alone all the sympathy and even admiration which those virtues arouse in well-bred natures.

In Paris, Julien’s position with regard to Madame de Renal would very soon have been simplified; but in Paris love is the child of the novels. The young tutor and his timid mistress would have found in three or four novels, and even in the lyrics of the Gymnase, a clear statement of their situation. The novels would have outlined for them the part to be played, shown them the model to copy; and this model, sooner or later, albeit without the slightest pleasure, and perhaps with reluctance, vanity would have compelled Julien to follow.

In a small town of the Aveyron or the Pyrenees, the slightest incident would have been made decisive by the ardour of the climate. Beneath our more sombre skies, a penniless young man, who is ambitious only because the refinement of his nature puts him in need of some of those pleasures which money provides, is in daily contact with a woman of thirty who is sincerely virtuous, occupied with her children, and never looks to novels for examples of conduct. Everything goes slowly, everything happens by degrees in the provinces: life is more natural.

Often, when she thought of the young tutor’s poverty, Madame de Renal was moved to tears. Julien came upon her, one day, actually crying.

‘Ah, Ma’am, you have had some bad news!’

‘No, my friend,’ was her answer: ‘Call the children, let us go for a walk.’

She took his arm and leaned on it in a manner which Julien thought strange. It was the first time that she had called him ‘my friend’.

Towards the end of their walk, Julien observed that she was blushing deeply. She slackened her pace.

‘You will have heard,’ she said without looking at him, ‘that I am the sole heiress of a very rich aunt who lives at Besancon. She loads me with presents. My sons are making . . . such astonishing progress . . . that I should like to ask you to accept a little present, as a token of my gratitude. It is only a matter of a few louis to supply you with linen. But —’ she added, blushing even more deeply, and was silent.

‘What, Ma’am?’ said Julien.

‘It would be unnecessary,’ she went on, lowering her head, ‘to speak of this to my husband.’

‘I may be humble, Ma’am, but I am not base,’ replied Julien coming to a standstill, his eyes ablaze with anger, and drawing himself up to his full height. ‘That is a point which you have not sufficiently considered. I should be less than a footman if I put myself in the position of hiding from M. de Renal anything that had to do with my money.’

Madame de Renal was overwhelmed.

‘The Mayor,’ Julien went on, ‘has given me thirty-six francs five times since I came to live in his house; I am prepared to show my account-book to M. de Renal or to anyone else, including M. Valenod who hates me.’

This outburst left Madame de Renal pale and trembling, and the walk came to an end before either of them could find an excuse for renewing the conversation. Love for Madame de Renal became more and more impossible in the proud heart of Julien: as for her, she respected, she admired him; she had been scolded by him. On the pretext of making amends for the humiliation which she had unintentionally caused him, she allowed herself to pay him the most delicate attentions. The novelty of this procedure kept her happy for a week. Its effect was to some extent to appease Julien’s anger; he was far from seeing anything in it that could be mistaken for personal affection.

‘That,’ he said to himself, ‘is what rich people are like: they humiliate one, and then think they can put things right by a few monkey-tricks.’

Madame de Renal’s heart was too full, and as yet too innocent for her, notwithstanding the resolutions she had made, not to tell her husband of the offer she had made to Julien and the manner in which she had been repulsed.

‘What,’ M. de Renal retorted, with keen annoyance, ‘could you tolerate a refusal from a servant?’

And as Madame de Renal protested at this word:

‘I speak, Ma’am, as the late Prince de Conde spoke, when presenting his Chamberlains to his bride: “All these people,” he told her, “are our servants.” I read you the passage from Besenval’s Memoirs, it is essential in questions of precedence. Everyone who is not a gentleman, who lives in your house and receives a salary, is your servant. I shall say a few words to this Master Julien, and give him a hundred francs.’

‘Ah, my dear,’ said Madame de Renal trembling, ‘please do not say anything in front of the servants.’

‘Yes, they might be jealous, and rightly,’ said her husband as he left the room, thinking of the magnitude of the sum.

Madame de Renal sank down on a chair, almost fainting with grief. ‘He is going to humiliate Julien, and it is my fault!’ She felt a horror of her husband, and hid her face in her hands. She promised herself that she would never confide anything in him again.

When she next saw Julien, she was trembling all over, her bosom was so contracted that she could not manage to utter a single word. In her embarrassment she took his hands and wrung them.

‘Well, my friend,’ she said to him after a little, ‘are you pleased with my husband?’

‘How should I not be?’ Julien answered with a bitter smile; ‘he has given me a hundred francs.’

Madame de Renal looked at him as though uncertain what to do.

‘Give me your arm,’ she said at length with an accent of courage which Julien had never yet observed in her.

She ventured to enter the shop of the Verrieres bookseller, in spite of his terrible reputation as a Liberal. There she chose books to the value of ten louis which she gave to her sons. But these books were the ones which she knew that Julien wanted. She insisted that there, in the bookseller’s shop, each of the children should write his own name in the books that fell to his share. While Madame de Renal was rejoicing at the partial reparation which she had had the courage to make to Julien, he was lost in amazement at the quantity of books which he saw on the bookseller’s shelves. Never had he dared to set foot in so profane a place; his heart beat violently. So far from his having any thought of trying to guess what was occurring in the heart of Madame de Renal, he was plunged in meditation as to how it would be possible for a young student of divinity to procure some of these books. At length the idea came to him that it might be possible, by a skilful approach, to persuade M. de Renal that he ought to set his sons, as the subject for an essay, the lives of the celebrated gentlemen who were natives of the province. After a month of careful preliminaries, he saw his idea prove successful, so much so that, shortly afterwards, he ventured, in speaking to M. de Renal, to mention an action considerably more offensive to the noble Mayor; it was a matter of contributing to the prosperity of a Liberal, by taking out a subscription at the library. M. de Renal entirely agreed that it was wise to let his eldest son have a visual impression of various works which he would hear mentioned in conversation when he went to the Military School; but Julien found the Mayor obdurate in refusing to go any farther. He suspected a secret reason, which he was unable to guess.