Leo Tolstoy - 3 books to know Napoleonic Wars

Fortunately M. de Renal saw nothing of this fresh impertinence; it was noticed only by Madame Derville; her friend burst into tears. At this moment M. de Renal began flinging stones at a little peasant girl who was trespassing by taking a short cut across a corner of the orchard.

‘Monsieur Julien, kindly control yourself, remember that we are all of us liable to moments of ill temper,’ Madame Derville said hastily.

Julien looked at her coldly with eyes in which the loftiest contempt was portrayed.

This look astonished Madame Derville, and would have surprised her far more could she have guessed its full meaning; she would have read in it a vague hope of the most terrible revenge. It is doubtless to such moments of humiliation that we owe men like Robespierre.

‘Your Julien is very violent, he frightens me,’ Madame Derville murmured to her friend.

‘He has every reason to be angry,’ the other replied. ‘After the astonishing progress the children have made with him, what does it matter if he spends a morning without speaking to them? You must admit that gentlemen are very hard.’

For the first time in her life, Madame de Renal felt a sort of desire to be avenged on her husband. The intense hatred that animated Julien against rich people was about to break forth. Fortunately M. de Renal called for his gardener, with whom for the rest of the time he busied himself in stopping up with faggots of thorn the short cut that had been made across the orchard. Julien did not utter a single word in reply to the attentions that were shown him throughout the remainder of the walk. As soon as M. de Renal had left them, the two ladies, on the plea that they were tired, had asked him each for an arm.

As he walked between these women whose cheeks were flushed with the embarrassment of an intense discomfort, Julien’s sombre and decided air formed a striking contrast. He despised these women, and all tender feelings.

‘What!’ he said to himself, ‘not even an allowance of five hundred francs to complete my studies! Ah! How I should send her packing!’

Absorbed in these drastic thoughts, the little that he deigned to take in of the polite speeches of the two ladies displeased him as being devoid of meaning, silly, feeble, in a word feminine.

By dint of talking for talking’s sake, and of trying to keep the conversation alive, Madame de Renal found herself saying that her husband had come from Verrieres because he had made a bargain, for the purchase of maize straw, with one of his farmers. (In this district maize straw is used to stuff the palliasses of the beds.)

‘My husband will not be joining us again,’ Madame de Renal went on: ‘he will be busy with the gardener and his valet changing the straw in all the palliasses in the house. This morning he put fresh straw on all the beds on the first floor, now he is at work on the second.’

Julien changed colour; he looked at Madame de Renal in an odd manner, and presently drew her apart, so to speak, by increasing his pace. Madame Derville allowed them to move away from her.

‘Save my life,’ said Julien to Madame de Renal, ‘you alone can do it; for you know that the valet hates me like poison. I must confess to you, Ma’am, that I have a portrait; I have hidden it in the palliasse on my bed.’

At these words, Madame de Renal in turn grew pale.

‘You alone, Ma’am, can go into my room at this moment; feel, without letting yourself be observed, in the corner of the palliasse nearest to the window; you will find there a small box of shiny black pasteboard.’

‘It contains a portrait?’ said Madame de Renal, barely able to stand.

Her air of disappointment was noticed by Julien, who at once took advantage of it.

‘I have a second favour to ask of you, Ma’am; I beg you not to look at the portrait, it is my secret.’

‘It is a secret!’ repeated Madame de Renal, in faint accents.

But, albeit she had been reared among people proud of their wealth, and sensible of pecuniary interests alone, love had already instilled some generosity into her heart. Though cruelly wounded, it was with an air of the simplest devotion that Madame de Renal put to Julien the questions necessary to enable her to execute his commission properly.

‘And so,’ she said, as she left him, ‘it is a little round box, of black pasteboard, and very shiny.’

‘Yes, Ma’am,’ replied Julien in that hard tone which danger gives a man.

She mounted to the second floor of the house, as pale as though she were going to her death. To complete her misery she felt that she was on the point of fainting, but the necessity of doing Julien a service restored her strength.

‘I must have that box,’ she said to herself as she quickened her pace.

She could hear her husband talking to the valet, actually in Julien’s room. Fortunately they moved into the room in which the children slept. She lifted the mattress and plunged her hand into the straw with such force as to scratch her fingers. But, although extremely sensitive to slight injuries of this sort, she was now quite unconscious of the pain, for almost immediately she felt the polished surface of the pasteboard box. She seized it and fled.

No sooner was she rid of the fear of being surprised by her husband, than the horror inspired in her by this box made her feel that in another minute she must unquestionably faint.

‘So Julien is in love, and I have here the portrait of the woman he loves.’

Seated on a chair in the sitting-room of this apartment, Madame de Renal fell a prey to all the horrors of jealousy. Her extreme ignorance was of service to her again at this moment; astonishment tempered her grief. Julien appeared, snatched the box, without thanking her, without saying a word, and ran into his bedroom, where he struck a light and immediately destroyed it. He was pale, speechless; he exaggerated to himself the risk he had been running.

‘The portrait of Napoleon,’ he said to himself with a toss of the head, ‘found hidden in the room of a man who professes such hatred for the usurper! Found by M. de Renal, so ultra and so angry! and, to complete the imprudence, on the white card at the back of the portrait, lines in my writing! And lines that can leave no doubt as to the warmth of my admiration! And each of those transports of love is dated! There was one only two days ago!

‘All my reputation brought down, destroyed in a moment!’ Julien said to himself as he watched the box burn, ‘and my reputation is all I have, I live by it alone . . . and what a life at that, great God!’

An hour later, his exhaustion and the pity he felt for himself disposed him to feel affection. He met Madame de Renal and took her hand which he kissed with more sincerity than he had ever yet shown. She coloured with delight, and almost simultaneously repulsed Julien with the anger of a jealous woman. Julien’s pride, so recently wounded, made a fool of him at that moment. He saw in Madame de Renal only a rich woman, he let fall her hand with contempt, and strode away. He went out and walked pensively in the garden; presently a bitter smile appeared on his lips.

‘Here I am walking about as calm as a man who is his own master! I am not looking after the children! I am exposing myself to the humiliating remarks of M. de Renal, and he will be justified.’ He hastened to the children’s room.

The caresses of the youngest boy, to whom he was greatly attached, did something to soothe his agonising pain.

‘This one does not despise me yet,’ thought Julien. But presently he blamed himself for this relief from pain, as for a fresh weakness. These children fondle me as they might fondle the puppy that was bought yesterday.’

A LARGE HEART AND A Small Fortune