Leo Tolstoy - 3 books to know Napoleonic Wars

Really, he had no longer the strength to speak.

‘And so I am completely forgotten by the one person who has ever loved me! What use to live any longer?’ All his courage had left him as soon as he no longer had to fear the danger of encountering a man; everything had vanished from his heart, save love.

He wept for a long time in silence. He took her hand, she tried to withdraw it; and yet, after a few almost convulsive movements, she let him keep it. The darkness was intense; they found themselves both seated upon Madame de Renal’s bed.

‘What a difference from the state of things fourteen months ago!’ thought Julien, and his flow of tears increased. ‘So absence unfailingly destroys all human feelings!

‘Be so kind as to tell me what has happened to you,’ Julien said at length, embarrassed by his silence and in a voice almost stifled by tears.

‘There can be no doubt,’ replied Madame de Renal in a harsh voice, the tone of which offered a cutting reproach to Julien, ‘my misdeeds were known in the town, at the time of your departure. You were so imprudent in your behaviour. Some time later, when I was in despair, the respectable M. Chelan came to see me. It was in vain that, for a long time, he sought to obtain a confession. One day, the idea occurred to him to take me into that church at Dijon in which I made my first Communion. There, he ventured to broach the subject . . . ’ Madame de Renal’s speech was interrupted by her tears. ‘What a shameful moment! I confessed all. That worthy man was kind enough not to heap on me the weight of his indignation: he shared my distress. At that time I was writing you day after day letters which I dared not send you; I concealed them carefully, and when I was too wretched used to shut myself up in my room and read over my own letters.

‘At length, M. Chelan persuaded me to hand them over to him . . . Some of them, written with a little more prudence than the rest, had been sent to you; never once did you answer me.’

‘Never, I swear to you, did I receive any letter from you at the Seminary.’

‘Great God! who can have intercepted them?’

‘Imagine my grief; until the day when I saw you in the Cathedral, I did not know whether you were still alive.’

‘God in His mercy made me understand how greatly I was sinning against Him, against my children, against my husband,’ replied Madame de Renal. ‘He has never loved me as I believed then that you loved me . . . ’

Julien flung himself into her arms, without any definite intention but with entire lack of self-control. But Madame de Renal thrust him from her, and continued quite firmly:

‘My respectable friend M. Chelan made me realise that, in marrying M. de Renal, I had pledged all my affections to him, even those of which I was still ignorant, which I had never felt before a certain fatal intimacy . . . Since the great sacrifice of those letters, which were so precious to me, my life has flowed on, if not happily, at any rate quietly enough. Do not disturb it any more; be a friend to me . . . the best of friends.’ Julien covered her hands with kisses; she could feel that he was still crying. ‘Do not cry, you distress me so . . . Tell me, it is your turn now, all that you have been doing.’ Julien was unable to speak. ‘I wish to know what sort of life you led at the Seminary,’ she repeated, ‘then you shall go.’

Without a thought of what he was telling her, Julien spoke of the endless intrigues and jealousies which he had encountered at first, then of his more peaceful life after he was appointed tutor.

‘It was then,’ he added, ‘that after a long silence, which was doubtless intended to make me understand what I see only too clearly now, that you no longer love me, and that I had become as nothing to you . . . ’

Madame de Renal gripped his hands. ‘It was then that you sent me a sum of five hundred francs.’

‘Never,’ said Madame de Renal.

‘It was a letter postmarked Paris and signed Paul Sorel, to avoid all suspicion.’

A short discussion followed as to the possible source of this letter. The atmosphere began to change. Unconsciously, Madame de Renal and Julien had departed from their solemn tone; they had returned to that of a tender intimacy. They could not see each other, so intense was the darkness, but the sound of their voices told all. Julien slipped his arm round the waist of his mistress; this movement was highly dangerous. She tried to remove Julien’s arm, whereupon he, with a certain adroitness, distracted her attention by an interesting point in his narrative.

The arm was then forgotten, and remained in the position that it had occupied.

After abundant conjectures as to the source of the letter with the five hundred francs, Julien had resumed his narrative; he became rather more his own master in speaking of his past life which, in comparison with what was happening to him at that moment, interested him so little. His attention was wholly concentrated on the manner in which his visit was to end. ‘You must leave me,’ she kept on telling him, in a curt tone.

‘What a disgrace for me if I am shown the door! The remorse will be enough to poison my whole life,’ he said to himself, ‘she will never write to me. God knows when I shall return to this place!’ From that moment, all the element of heavenly bliss in Julien’s situation vanished rapidly from his heart. Seated by the side of a woman whom he adored, clasping her almost in his arms, in this room in which he had been so happy, plunged in a black darkness, perfectly well aware that for the last minute she had been crying, feeling, from the movement of her bosom, that she was convulsed with sobs, he unfortunately became a frigid politician, almost as calculating and as frigid as when, in the courtyard of the Seminary, he saw himself made the butt of some malicious joke by one of his companions stronger than himself. Julien spun out his story, and spoke of the wretched life he had led since leaving Verrieres. ‘And so,’ Madame de Renal said to herself, ‘after a year’s absence, almost without a single token of remembrance, while I was forgetting him, his mind was entirely taken up with the happy days he had enjoyed at Vergy.’ Her sobs increased in violence. Julien saw that his story had been successful. He realised that he must now try his last weapon: he came abruptly to the letter that he had just received from Paris.

‘I have taken leave of Monseigneur, the Bishop.’

‘What! You are not returning to Besancon! You are leaving us for ever?’

‘Yes,’ replied Julien, in a resolute tone; ‘yes, I am abandoning the place where I am forgotten even by her whom I have most dearly loved in all my life, and I am leaving it never to set eyes on it again. I am going to Paris . . . ’

‘You are going to Paris!’ Madame de Renal exclaimed quite aloud.

Her voice was almost stifled by her tears, and showed the intensity of her grief. Julien had need of this encouragement; he was going to attempt a course which might decide everything against him; and before this exclamation, seeing no light, he was absolutely ignorant of the effect that he was producing. He hesitated no longer; the fear of remorse gave him complete command of himself; he added coldly as he rose to his feet:

‘Yes, Madame, I leave you for ever, may you be happy; farewell.’

He took a few steps towards the window; he was already opening it. Madame de Renal sprang after him and flung herself into his arms.

Thus, after three hours of conversation, Julien obtained what he had so passionately desired during the first two. Had they come a little earlier, this return to tender sentiments, the eclipse of remorse in Madame de Renal would have been a divine happiness; obtained thus by artifice, they were no more than mere pleasure. Julien positively insisted, against the entreaties of his mistress, upon lighting the nightlight.