3 books to know Napoleonic Wars. Leo Tolstoy

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СКАЧАТЬ keep my books; I am making a big profit from my business. The impossibility of doing everything by myself and the fear of hitting upon a rogue in the man I might take as my partner prevent me every day from doing the most profitable deals. Not a month ago I put six thousand francs in the pocket of Michaud of Saint–Amand, whom I had not seen for six years, and met quite by chance at the Pontarlier sale. Why should not you have made those six thousand francs yourself, or three thousand at least? For if I had had you with me that day, I should have gone on bidding for that lot of timber, and the other would soon have left me with it. Be my partner.’

      This offer annoyed Julien; it unsettled his erratic mind; throughout supper, which the friends cooked for themselves, like Homeric heroes, for Fouque lived by himself, he showed Julien his books, and proved to him what advantages his trade in timber offered. Fouque had the highest opinion of Julien’s intelligence and character.

      When at length the latter found himself alone in his little room walled with planks of firwood, ‘It is true,’ he said to himself, ‘I can make a few thousand francs here, then return with advantage to the calling of soldier or priest, according to the fashion prevailing in France at the time. The little hoard that I shall have amassed will remove all difficulties of detail. Alone on this mountainside, I can do something to dispel my present appalling ignorance of so many of the things that occupy the minds of all these fashionable gentlemen. But Fouque is giving up the thought of marriage, he has told me again and again that solitude is making him melancholy. It is obvious that if he is taking a partner who has no money to put into his business, it is in the hope of providing himself with a companion who will never leave him.

      ‘Shall I prove false to my friend?’ exclaimed Julien angrily. This creature, for whom hypocrisy and the absence of all fellow feeling were the ordinary line of conduct, could not on this occasion bear the thought of the slightest want of delicacy towards a man who loved him.

      But all at once Julien became happy, he had a reason for refusing. ‘What, I should be idly wasting seven or eight years! I should thus arrive at eight and twenty; but, at that age, Napoleon had already done his greatest deeds! After I have obscurely scraped together a little money by going round all these timber sales, and winning the favour of various minor rascals, who can say whether I shall still preserve the sacred fire with which one makes oneself a name?’

      The following morning, Julien replied with great coolness to the worthy Fouque, who looked upon the matter of their partnership as settled, that his vocation to the sacred ministry of the altar did not allow him to accept. Fouque could not believe his ears.

      ‘But do you realise,’ he kept on saying, ‘that I make you my partner, or, if you prefer, give you four thousand francs a year? And you want to go back to your M. de Renal, who despises you like the mud on his shoes! When you have two hundred louis in hand, what is to prevent you from entering the Seminary? I will say more, I undertake to procure for you the best parish in the district. For,’ Fouque went on, lowering his voice, ‘I supply firewood to the — — and the — — and M. ——. I give them the best quality of oak, for which they pay me the price of white wood, but never was money better invested.’

      Nothing could prevail against Julien’s vocation. In the end Fouque decided that he must be slightly mad. On the third day, at dawn, Julien left his friend to pass the day among the rocks of the big mountain. He found his little cave again, but he no longer enjoyed peace of mind, his friend’s offers had destroyed it. Like Hercules he found himself called upon to choose not between vice and virtue, but between mediocrity ending in an assured comfort and all the heroic dreams of his youth. ‘So I have no real firmness of character,’ he told himself; and this was the doubt that pained him most. ‘I am not of the stuff of which great men are made, since I am afraid that eight years spent in providing myself with bread may rob me of that sublime energy which makes men do extraordinary things.’

      Chapter 13

      OPEN-WORK STOCKINGS

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      A novel is a mirror taken along a road.

      SAINT-REAL

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      WHEN JULIEN CAUGHT sight of the picturesque ruins of the old church of Vergy, it occurred to him that for two whole days he had not once thought of Madame de Renal. The other day, as I was leaving, that woman reminded me of the vast gulf that separates us, she treated me like a workman’s son. No doubt she wished to show me that she repented of having let me hold her hand the night before . . . It is a lovely hand, all the same! What charm, what nobility dwells in that woman’s glance!’

      The possibility of making a fortune with Fouque gave a certain facility to the course of Julien’s reasoning; it was less often interrupted by irritation, and the keen sense of his own poverty and humble position in the eyes of the world. As though perched on a lofty promontory, he was able to judge, and, so to speak, overlooked extreme poverty on the one hand and that life of comfort which he still called riches on the other. He was far from considering his position like a philosopher, but he had sufficient perception to feel that he was different after this little expedition among the mountains.

      He was struck by the extreme uneasiness with which Madame de Renal listened to the short account of his journey, for which she had asked him.

      Fouque had had thoughts of marriage, unhappy love affairs; the conversation between the friends had been filled with long confidences of this nature. After finding happiness too soon, Fouque had discovered that he was not the sole possessor of his mistress’s heart. These disclosures had astonished Julien; he had learned much that was new to him. His solitary life, compounded of imagination and suspicion, had kept him aloof from everything that could have enlightened him.

      During his absence, life had been for Madame de Renal nothing more than a succession of torments, each different but all alike intolerable; she was really ill.

      ‘You must not, on any account,’ Madame Derville told her when she saw Julien return, ‘feeling as you do, sit in the garden this evening, the damp air would make you worse.’

      Madame Derville was surprised to see that her friend, who was always being scolded by M. de Renal for the undue simplicity of her attire, had put on open-work stockings and a pair of charming little shoes that had arrived from Paris. For the last three days Madame de Renal’s sole distraction had been to cut out and make Elisa put together in all haste a summer gown, of a charming little fabric greatly in fashion. It was just possible to finish this gown a few minutes after Julien’s arrival; Madame de Renal at once put it on. Her friend had no longer any doubt.

      ‘She is in love, poor woman!’ Madame Derville said to herself. She understood all the strange symptoms of her illness.

      She saw her speak to Julien. Pallor took the place of the most vivid blushes. Anxiety stood revealed in her eyes, fastened on those of the young tutor. Madame de Renal expected every moment that he was going to offer an explanation, and announce that he was leaving the house, or would remain. It never occurred to Julien to say anything about this subject, which had not entered his thoughts. After a terrible struggle, Madame de Renal at last ventured to say to him, in a tremulous voice, in which the whole extent of her passion lay revealed:

      ‘Are you going to leave your pupils to take a post elsewhere?’

      Julien СКАЧАТЬ