Leo Tolstoy - 3 books to know Napoleonic Wars

‘I might thrash this insolent tutor black and blue and turn him from the house; but what a stir in Verrieres and, indeed, throughout the Department! After the suppression of Falcoz’s paper, when his editor came out of prison, I was instrumental in making him lose a place worth six hundred francs. They say that the scribbler has dared to show his face again in Besancon, he may easily attack me, and so cunningly that it will be impossible to bring him to justice! That insolent fellow will insinuate in a thousand ways that he has been speaking the truth. A man of family, who respects his rank as I do, is always hated by plebeians. I shall see myself in those frightful Paris papers; my God! what degradation! To see the ancient name of Renal plunged in the mire of ridicule . . . If I ever travel, I shall have to change my name; what! give up this name which is my pride and my strength. What a crowning infamy!

‘If I do not kill my wife, if I drive her from the house with ignominy, she has her aunt at Besancon, who will hand over the whole of her fortune to her on the quiet. My wife will go and live in Paris with Julien; Verrieres will hear of it, and I shall again be regarded as a dupe.’ This unhappy man then perceived, from the failing light of his lamp, that day was beginning to break. He went to seek a breath of air in the garden. At that moment, he had almost made up his mind to create no scene, chiefly because a scene of that sort would fill his good friends at Verrieres with joy.

His stroll in the garden calmed him somewhat. ‘No,’ he cried, ‘I shall certainly not part with my wife, she is too useful to me.’ He pictured to himself with horror what his house would be like without his wife; his sole female relative was the Marquise de R—— who was old, idiotic and evil-minded.

An idea of the greatest good sense occurred to him, but to put it into practice required a strength of character far exceeding the little that the poor man possessed. ‘If I keep my wife,’ he said to himself; ‘I know my own nature; one day, when she taxes my patience, I shall reproach her with her offence. She is proud, we are bound to quarrel, and all this will happen before she has inherited her aunt’s estate. And then, how they will all laugh at me! My wife loves her children, it will all come to them in the end. But I, I shall be the talk of Verrieres. What, they will say, he couldn’t even punish his wife! Would it not be better to stick to my suspicions and to verify nothing? Then I tie my own hands, I cannot afterwards reproach her with anything.’

A moment later M. de Renal, his wounded vanity once more gaining the mastery, was laboriously recalling all the stories told in the billiard-room of the Casino or Noble Club of Verrieres, when some fluent talker interrupted the pool to make merry at the expense of some cuckolded husband. How cruel, at that moment, those pleasantries seemed.

‘God! Why is not my wife dead! Then I should be immune from ridicule. Why am I not a widower! I should go and spend six months in Paris in the best society.’ After this momentary happiness caused by the idea of widowhood, his imagination returned to the methods of ascertaining the truth. Should he at midnight, after the whole household had gone to bed, sprinkle a few handfuls of bran outside the door of Julien’s room? Next morning, at daybreak, he would see the footprints on it.

‘But that would be no good,’ he broke out angrily, ‘that wretched Elisa would notice it, and it would be all over the house at once that I am jealous.’

In another story that circulated at the Casino, a husband had made certain of his plight by fastening a hair with a little wax so as to seal up the doors of his wife’s room and her lover’s.

After so many hours of vacillation, this method of obtaining enlightenment seemed to him decidedly the best, and he was thinking of adopting it, when at a bend in the path he came upon that wife whom he would have liked to see dead.

She was returning from the village. She had gone to hear mass in the church of Vergy. A tradition of extremely doubtful value in the eyes of the cold philosopher, but one in which she believed, made out that the little church now in use had been the chapel of the castle of the Lord of Vergy. This thought obsessed Madame de Renal throughout the time which she had meant to pass in prayer in this church. She kept on picturing to herself her husband killing Julien during the chase, as though by accident, and afterwards, that evening, making her eat his heart.

‘My fate,’ she said to herself, ‘depends on what he will think when he hears me. After these terrible moments, perhaps I shall not find another opportunity to speak to him. He is not a wise creature, swayed by reason. I might, if he were, with the aid of my own feeble wits, forecast what he would do or say. But my fate lies in my cunning, in the art of directing the thoughts of this whimsical creature, who becomes blind with anger and incapable of seeing things. Great God! I require talent, coolness, where am I to find them?’

She recovered her calm as though by magic on entering the garden and seeing her husband in the distance. The disorder of his hair and clothes showed that he had not slept. She handed him a letter which, though the seal was broken, was still folded. He, without opening it, gazed at his wife with madness in his eyes.

‘Here is an abomination,’ she said to him, ‘which an evil-looking man who claims to know you and that you owe him a debt of gratitude, handed to me as I came past the back of the lawyer’s garden. One thing I must ask of you, and that is that you send back to his own people, and without delay, that Monsieur Julien.’ Madame de Renal made haste to utter this name, even beginning a little too soon perhaps, in order to rid herself of the fearful prospect of having to utter it.

She was filled with joy on beholding the joy that it gave her husband. >From the fixed stare which he directed at her she realised that Julien had guessed aright. Instead of worrying about a very present trouble, ‘what intelligence,’ she thought to herself. ‘What perfect tact! And in a young man still quite devoid of experience! To what heights will he not rise in time? Alas! Then his success will make him forget me.’

This little act of admiration of the man she adored completely restored her composure.

She congratulated herself on the step she had taken. ‘I have proved myself not unworthy of Julien,’ she said to herself, with a sweet and secret relish.

Without saying a word, for fear of committing himself, M. de Renal examined this second anonymous letter composed, as the reader may remember, of printed words gummed upon a sheet of paper of a bluish tinge. ‘They are making a fool of me in every way,’ M. de Renal said to himself, utterly worn out.

‘Fresh insults to be looked into, and all owing to my wife!’ He was on the point of deluging her with a stream of the coarsest invective; the thought of the fortune awaiting her at Besancon just stopped him. Overpowered by the necessity of venting his anger on something, he tore up the sheet on which this second anonymous letter was gummed, and strode rapidly away, feeling that he could not endure his wife’s company. A minute later, he returned to her, already more calm.

‘We must take action at once and dismiss Julien,’ she immediately began; ‘after all he is only the son of a working man. You can compensate him with a few crowns, besides, he is clever and can easily find another place, with M. Valenod, for instance, or the Sub–Prefect Maugiron; they both have families. And so you will not be doing him any harm . . . ’

‘You speak like the fool that you are,’ cried M. de Renal in a voice of thunder. ‘How can one expect common sense of a woman? You never pay attention to what is reasonable; how should you have any knowledge? Your carelessness, your laziness leave you just enough activity to chase butterflies, feeble creatures which we are so unfortunate as to have in our households . . . ’