‘What think you of this new acquisition?’ M. de Renal asked his wife.
With an almost instinctive impulse, of which she herself certainly was not aware, Madame de Renal concealed the truth from her husband.
‘I am by no means as enchanted as you are with this little peasant; your kindness will turn him into an impertinent rascal whom you will be obliged to send packing within a month.’
‘Very well! We shall send him packing; he will have cost me a hundred francs or so, and Verrieres will have grown used to seeing a tutor with M. de Renal’s children. That point I should not have gained if I had let Julien remain in the clothes of a working man. When I dismiss him, I shall of course keep the black suit which I have just ordered from the clothier. He shall have nothing but the coat I found ready made at the tailor’s, which he is now wearing.’
The hour which Julien spent in his room seemed like a second to Madame de Renal. The children, who had been told of their new tutor’s arrival, overwhelmed their mother with questions. Finally Julien appeared. He was another man. It would have been straining the word to say that he was grave; he was gravity incarnate. He was introduced to the children, and spoke to them with an air that surprised M. de Renal himself.
‘I am here, young gentlemen,’ he told them at the end of his address, ‘to teach you Latin. You know what is meant by repeating a lesson. Here is the Holy Bible,’ he said, and showed them a tiny volume in 32mo, bound in black. ‘It is in particular the story of Our Lord Jesus Christ, that is the part which is called the New Testament. I shall often make you repeat lessons; now you must make me repeat mine.’
Adolphe, the eldest boy, had taken the book.
‘Open it where you please,’ Julien went on, ‘and tell me the first word of a paragraph. I shall repeat by heart the sacred text, the rule of conduct for us all, until you stop me.’
Adolphe opened the book, read a word, and Julien repeated the whole page as easily as though he were speaking French. M. de Renal looked at his wife with an air of triumph. The children, seeing their parents’ amazement, opened their eyes wide. A servant came to the door of the drawing-room, Julien went on speaking in Latin. The servant at first stood motionless and then vanished. Presently the lady’s maid and the cook appeared in the doorway; by this time Adolphe had opened the book at eight different places, and Julien continued to repeat the words with the same ease.
‘Eh, what a bonny little priest,’ the cook, a good and truly devout girl, said aloud.
M. de Renal’s self-esteem was troubled; so far from having any thought of examining the tutor, he was engaged in ransacking his memory for a few words of Latin; at last, he managed to quote a line of Horace. Julien knew no Latin apart from the Bible. He replied with a frown:
‘The sacred ministry to which I intend to devote myself has forbidden me to read so profane a poet.’
M. de Renal repeated a fair number of alleged lines of Horace. He explained to his children what Horace was; but the children, overcome with admiration, paid little attention to what he was saying. They were watching Julien.
The servants being still at the door, Julien felt it incumbent upon him to prolong the test.
‘And now,’ he said to the youngest boy, ‘Master Stanislas Xavier too must set me a passage from the Holy Book.’
Little Stanislas, swelling with pride, read out to the best of his ability the opening words of a paragraph, and Julien repeated the whole page. That nothing might be wanting to complete M. de Renal’s triumph, while Julien was reciting, there entered M. Valenod, the possessor of fine Norman horses, and M. Charcot de Maugiron, Sub–Prefect of the district. This scene earned for Julien the title ‘Sir’; the servants themselves dared not withhold it from him.
That evening, the whole of Verrieres flocked to M. de Renal’s to behold the marvel. Julien answered them all with an air of gloom which kept them at a distance. His fame spread so rapidly through the town that, shortly afterwards, M. de Renal, afraid of losing him, suggested his signing a contract for two years.
‘No, Sir,’ Julien replied coldly, ‘if you chose to dismiss me I should be obliged to go. A contract which binds me without putting you under any obligation is unfair, I must decline.’
Julien managed so skilfully that, less than a month after his coming to the house, M. de Renal himself respected him. The cure having quarrelled with MM. de Renal and Valenod, there was no one who could betray Julien’s former passion for Napoleon, of whom he was careful to speak with horror.
Chapter 7
ELECTIVE AFFINITIES
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They can only touch the heart by bruising it.
A MODERN
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THE CHILDREN ADORED him, he did not care for them; his thoughts were elsewhere. Nothing that these urchins could do ever tried his patience. Cold, just, impassive, and at the same time loved, because his coming had in a measure banished dullness from the house, he was a good tutor. For his part, he felt only hatred and horror for the high society in which he was allowed to occupy the very foot of the table, a position which may perhaps explain his hatred and horror. There were certain formal dinners at which he could barely contain his loathing of everything round about him. On Saint Louis’s day in particular, M. Valenod was laying down the law at M. de Renal’s; Julien almost gave himself away; he escaped into the garden, saying that he must look after the children. ‘What panegyrics of honesty!’ he exclaimed; ‘anyone would say that was the one and only virtue; and yet what consideration, what a cringing respect for a man who obviously has doubled and tripled his fortune since he has been in charge of the relief of the poor! I would wager that he makes something even out of the fund set apart for the foundlings, those wretches whose need is even more sacred than that of the other paupers. Ah, monsters! Monsters! And I too, I am a sort of foundling, hated by my father, my brothers, my whole family.’
Some days earlier, Julien walking by himself and saying his office in a little wood, known as the Belvedere, which overlooks the Cours de la Fidelite, had tried in vain to avoid his two brothers, whom he saw approaching him by a solitary path. The jealousy of these rough labourers had been so quickened by the sight of their brother’s handsome black coat, and air of extreme gentility, as well as by the sincere contempt which he felt for them, that they had proceeded to thrash him, leaving him there unconscious and bleeding freely. Madame de Renal, who was out walking with M. Valenod and the Sub–Prefect, happened to turn into the little wood; she saw Julien lying on the ground and thought him dead. She was so overcome as to make M. Valenod jealous.
His alarm was premature. Julien admired Madame de Renal’s looks, but hated her for her beauty; it was the first reef on which his fortune had nearly foundered. He spoke to her as seldom as possible, in the hope of making her forget the impulse which, at their first encounter, had led him to kiss her hand.
Elisa, Madame de Renal’s maid, had not failed to fall in love with the young tutor; she often spoke of him to her mistress. Miss Elisa’s love had brought upon Julien the hatred of one of the footmen. One day he heard this man say to Elisa: ‘You won’t speak to me any more, since that greasy tutor has been in the house.’ Julien did not deserve the epithet; but, with the instinct of a good-looking youth, became doubly attentive to his person. M. Valenod’s hatred was multiplied accordingly. He said in public that so much concern with one’s appearance was not becoming in a young cleric. Barring the cassock, Julien now wore clerical attire.
Madame de Renal observed that he was speaking more often than before to Miss Elisa; she learned that these conversations were due to the limitations