3 books to know Napoleonic Wars. Leo Tolstoy

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СКАЧАТЬ ‘but after this passing weakness for which her pride is reproaching her, and as soon as she is no longer afraid of my going, she will return to her arrogance.’ This glimpse of their respective positions came to Julien like a flash of lightning; he replied, hesitatingly:

      ‘I should greatly regret leaving such attractive and well-born children, but perhaps it will be inevitable. A man has duties towards himself also.’

      As he uttered the words well born (this was one of the aristocratic expressions which Julien had recently acquired), he burned with a strong feeling of antipathy.

      ‘To this woman,’ he said to himself, ‘I am not well born.’

      Madame de Renal, as she listened to him, was admiring his intelligence, his beauty, her heart was pierced by the possibility of departure which he dangled before her. All her friends from Verrieres who, during Julien’s absence, had come out to dine at Vergy, had almost vied in complimenting her upon the astonishing young man that her husband had had the good fortune to unearth. This was not to say that they understood anything of the progress that the children had made. The fact of his knowing the Bible by heart, and in Latin, too, had provoked in the inhabitants of Verrieres an admiration that will endure for, it may be, a century.

      Julien, who spoke to no one, knew nothing of all this. If Madame de Renal had had the slightest self-control, she would have congratulated him on the reputation he had won, and Julien, his pride set at rest, would have been pleasant and affable to her, all the more as her new gown seemed to him charming. Madame de Renal, also pleased with her pretty gown, and with what Julien said to her about it, had proposed a turn in the garden; soon she had confessed that she was not well enough to walk. She had taken the returned traveller’s arm, and, far from restoring her strength, the contact of that arm deprived her of what little strength remained to her.

      It was dark; no sooner were they seated than Julien, relying on the privilege he had already won, ventured to press his lips to the arm of his pretty neighbour, and to take her hand. He was thinking of the boldness which Fouque had used with his mistresses, and not of Madame de Renal; the phrase well born still weighed upon his heart. His own hand was pressed, but this afforded him no pleasure. Far from his being proud, or even grateful for the affection which Madame de Renal betrayed this evening by unmistakable signs, beauty, elegance, freshness found him almost unconscious of their appeal. Purity of heart, freedom from any feeling of hatred, serve doubtless to prolong the duration of youth. It is the face that ages first in the majority of beautiful women.

      Julien was sullen all the evening; hitherto he had been angry only with fortune and with society; now that Fouque had offered him an ignoble way of arriving at comfort, he was angry with himself. Absorbed in his own thoughts, although now and then he addressed a few words to the ladies, Julien ended by unconsciously letting go Madame de Renal’s hand. This action completely nonplussed the poor woman; she saw in it an indication of her fate.

      Had she been certain of Julien’s affection, her virtue might perhaps have found strength to resist him. Trembling at the thought of losing him for ever, her passion carried her to the point of seizing Julien’s hand, which, in his distraction, he had allowed to rest upon the back of a chair. This action stirred the ambitious youth; he would have liked it to be witnessed by all those proud nobles who, at table, when he was at the lower end with the children, used to look at him with so patronising a smile. ‘This woman cannot despise me any longer: in that case,’ he said to himself, ‘I ought to be stirred by her beauty; I owe it to myself to be her lover.’ Such an idea would never have occurred to him before he received the artless confidences of his friend.

      The sudden resolution he had just made formed a pleasing distraction. He said to himself: ‘I must have one of these two women’; he realised that he would greatly have preferred to pay his court to Madame Derville; it was not that she was more attractive, but she had seen him always as a tutor honoured for his learning, and not as a working carpenter, with a ratteen jacket folded under his arm, as he had first appeared to Madame de Renal.

      It was precisely as a young workman, blushing to the whites of his eyes, hesitating outside the door of the house and not venturing to ring the bell, that Madame de Renal delighted most to picture him.

      As he followed up this survey of his position, Julien saw that he must not think of attempting the conquest of Madame Derville, who had probably noticed the weakness that Madame de Renal showed for him. Forced to return to the latter: ‘What do I know of this woman’s character?’ Julien asked himself. ‘Only this: before I went away, I took her hand, she withdrew it; today I withdraw my hand, she seizes it and presses it. A good opportunity to repay her all the contempt she has shown for me. God knows how many lovers she has had! Perhaps she is deciding in my favour only because of the facilities for our meeting.’

      Such is, alas, the drawback of an excessive civilisation. At the age of twenty, the heart of a young man, if he has any education, is a thousand leagues from that devil-may-care attitude without which love is often only the most tedious duty.

      ‘I owe it to myself all the more,’ went on Julien’s petty vanity, ‘to succeed with this woman, so that if I ever make my fortune, and someone reproaches me with having filled the humble post of tutor, I may let it be understood that it was love that brought me into that position.’

      Julien once more withdrew his hand from that of Madame de Renal, then took her hand again and pressed it. As they returned to the drawing-room, towards midnight, Madame de Renal murmured in his ear:

      ‘Are you leaving us, are you going away?’

      Julien answered with a sigh:

      ‘I must indeed go away, for I love you passionately; it is a sin . . . and what a sin for a young priest!’

      Madame de Renal leaned upon his arm, bending towards him until her cheek felt the warmth of his.

      The night passed for these two people very differently. Madame de Renal was exalted by transports of the most lofty moral pleasure. A coquettish girl who falls in love early grows accustomed to the distress of love; when she comes to the age of true passion, the charm of novelty is lacking. As Madame de Renal had never read any novels, all the refinements of her happiness were new to her. No melancholy truth came to freeze her heart, not even the spectre of the future. She saw herself as happy in ten years’ time as she was at that moment. Even the thought of virtue and of the fidelity she had vowed to M. de Renal, which had distressed her some days before, presented itself in vain, she dismissed it like an importunate stranger. ‘Never will I allow Julien to take any liberty,’ Madame de Renal told herself, ‘we shall live in future as we have been living for the last month. He shall be a friend.’

      Chapter 14

      THE ENGLISH SCISSORS

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      A girl of sixteen had a rosy complexion, and put on rouge.

      POLIDORI

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      AS FOR JULIEN, FOUQUE’S offer had indeed destroyed all his happiness; he could not decide upon any course.

      ‘Alas! Perhaps I am wanting in character, I should have made Napoleon a bad soldier. Anyhow,’ he went on, ‘my little intrigue with the СКАЧАТЬ