Leo Tolstoy - 3 books to know Napoleonic Wars

It so happened that he really was faint with hunger. Madame de Renal went to the pantry to look for bread. Julien heard a loud cry. She returned and told him that on entering the dark pantry, making her way to a cupboard in which the bread was kept, and stretching out her hand, she had touched a woman’s arm. It was Elisa who had uttered the cry which Julien had heard.

‘What was she doing there?’

‘She was stealing a few sweetmeats, or possibly spying on us,’ said Madame de Renal with complete indifference. ‘But fortunately I have found a pate and a big loaf.’

‘And what have you got there?’ said Julien, pointing to the pockets of her apron.

Madame de Renal had forgotten that, ever since dinner, they had been filled with bread.

Julien clasped her in his arms with the keenest passion; never had she seemed to him so beautiful. ‘Even in Paris,’ he told himself vaguely, ‘I shall not be able to find a nobler character.’ She had all the awkwardness of a woman little accustomed to attentions of this sort, and at the same time the true courage of a person who fears only dangers of another kind and far more terrible.

While Julien was devouring his supper with a keen appetite, and his mistress was playfully apologising for the simplicity of the repast, for she had a horror of serious speech, the door of the room was all at once shaken violently. It was M. de Renal.

‘Why have you locked yourself in?’ he shouted to her.

Julien had just time to slip beneath the sofa.

‘What! You are fully dressed,’ said M. de Renal, as he entered; ‘you are having supper, and you have locked your door?’

On any ordinary day, this question, put with all the brutality of a husband, would have troubled Madame de Renal, but she felt that her husband had only to lower his eyes a little to catch sight of Julien; for M. de Renal had flung himself upon the chair on which Julien had been sitting a moment earlier, facing the sofa.

Her headache served as an excuse for everything. While in his turn her husband was giving her a long and detailed account of the pool he had won in the billiard room of the Casino, ‘a pool of nineteen francs, begad!’ he added, she saw lying on a chair before their eyes, and within a few feet of them, Julien’s hat. Cooler than ever, she began to undress, and, choosing her moment, passed swiftly behind her husband and flung a garment over the chair with the hat on it.

At length M. de Renal left her. She begged Julien to begin over again the story of his life in the Seminary: ‘Yesterday I was not listening to you, I was thinking, while you were speaking, only of how I was to bring myself to send you away.’

She was the embodiment of imprudence. They spoke very loud; and it might have been two o’clock in the morning when they were interrupted by a violent blow on the door. It was M. de Renal again:

‘Let me in at once, there are burglars in the house!’ he said, ‘Saint–Jean found their ladder this morning.’

‘This is the end of everything,’ cried Madame de Renal, throwing herself into Julien’s arms. ‘He is going to kill us both, he does not believe in the burglars; I am going to die in your arms, more fortunate in my death than I have been in my life.’ She made no answer to her husband, who was waiting angrily outside, she was holding Julien in a passionate embrace.

‘Save Stanislas’s mother,’ he said to her with an air of command. ‘I am going to jump down into the courtyard from the window of the closet, and escape through the garden, the dogs know me. Make a bundle of my clothes and throw it down into the garden as soon as you can. Meanwhile, let him break the door in. And whatever you do, no confession, I forbid it, suspicion is better than certainty.’

‘You will kill yourself, jumping down,’ was her sole reply and her sole anxiety.

She went with him to the window of the closet; she then took such time as she required to conceal his garments. Finally she opened the door to her husband, who was boiling with rage. He searched the bedroom, the closet, without uttering a word, and then vanished. Julien’s clothes were thrown down to him, he caught them and ran quickly down the garden towards the Doubs.

As he ran, he heard a bullet whistle past him, and simultaneously the sound of a gun being fired.

‘That is not M. de Renal,’ he decided, ‘he is not a good enough shot.’ The dogs were running by his side in silence, a second shot apparently shattered the paw of one dog, for it began to emit lamentable howls. Julien jumped the wall of a terrace, proceeded fifty yards under cover, then continued his flight in a different direction. He heard voices calling, and could distinctly see the servant, his enemy, fire a gun; a farmer also came and shot at him from the other side of the garden, but by this time Julien had reached the bank of the Doubs, where he put on his clothes.

An hour later, he was a league from Verrieres, on the road to Geneva. ‘If there is any suspicion,’ thought Julien, ‘it is on the Paris road that they will look for me.’

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She is not pretty, she is not wearing rouge.

SAINT-BEUVE

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COUNTRY PLEASURES

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O rus, quando ego te aspiciam!

VIRGIL

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‘THE GENTLEMAN IS WAITING, surely, for the mail-coach for Paris?’ he was asked by the landlord of an inn at which he stopped to break his fast.

‘Today or tomorrow, it is all the same to me,’ said Julien.

The coach arrived while he was feigning indifference. There were two places vacant.

‘What! It is you, my poor Falcoz,’ said the traveller, who had come from the direction of Geneva to him who now entered the coach with Julien.

‘I thought you had settled in the neighbourhood of Lyons,’ said Falcoz, ‘in a charming valley by the Rhone.’

‘Settled, indeed! I am running away.’

‘What! Running away? You, Saint–Giraud! With that honest face of yours, have you committed a crime?’ said Falcoz, with a laugh.

‘Upon my soul, not far off it. I am running away from the abominable life one leads in the country. I love the shade of the woods and the quiet of the fields, as you know; you have often accused me of being romantic. The one thing I never wished to hear mentioned was politics, and politics pursue me everywhere.’

‘But to what party do you belong?’

‘To none, and that is what has been fatal to me. These are all my politics: I enjoy music, and painting; a good book is an event in my life; I shall soon be four and forty. How many years have I to live? Fifteen, twenty, thirty, perhaps, at the most. Very well; I hold that in thirty years from now, our Ministers will be a little more able, but otherwise just as good fellows as we have today. The history of England serves as a mirror to show me our future. There will always be a King who seeks to extend his prerogative; the ambition to enter Parliament, the glory and the hundreds of thousands of francs amassed by Mirabeau will always keep our wealthy provincials awake at night: they will call that being Liberal and loving the people. The desire to become a Peer or a Gentleman in Waiting will always possess the Ultras. On board the Ship of State, everyone will wish to be at the helm, for the post is well paid. Will there never be a little corner anywhere for the mere passenger?’