CHAPTER XIV
THE ENGLISH SCISSORS
A young girl of sixteen had a pink complexion, and
yet used red rouge.–Polidori.
Fouqué's offer had, as a matter of fact, taken away all Julien's happiness; he could not make up his mind to any definite course. "Alas! perhaps I am lacking in character. I should have been a bad soldier of Napoleon. At least," he added, "my little intrigue with the mistress of the house will distract me a little."
Happily for him, even in this little subordinate incident, his inner emotions quite failed to correspond with his flippant words. He was frightened of Madame de Rênal because of her pretty dress. In his eyes, that dress was a vanguard of Paris. His pride refused to leave anything to chance and the inspiration of the moment. He made himself a very minute plan of campaign, moulded on the confidences of Fouqué, and a little that he had read about love in the Bible. As he was very nervous, though he did not admit it to himself, he wrote down this plan.
Madame de Rênal was alone with him for a moment in the drawing-room on the following morning.
"Have you no other name except Julien," she said.
Our hero was at a loss to answer so flattering a question. This circumstance had not been anticipated in his plan. If he had not been stupid enough to have made a plan, Julien's quick wit would have served him well, and the surprise would only have intensified the quickness of his perception.
He was clumsy, and exaggerated his clumsiness, Madame de Rênal quickly forgave him. She attributed it to a charming frankness. And an air of frankness was the very thing which in her view was just lacking in this man who was acknowledged to have so much genius.
"That little tutor of yours inspires me with a great deal of suspicion," said Madame Derville to her sometimes. "I think he looks as if he were always thinking, and he never acts without calculation. He is a sly fox."
Julien remained profoundly humiliated by the misfortune of not having known what answer to make to Madame de Rênal.
"A man like I am ought to make up for this check!" and seizing the moment when they were passing from one room to another, he thought it was his duty to give Madame de Rênal a kiss.
Nothing could have been less tactful, nothing less agreeable, and nothing more imprudent both for him and for her. They were within an inch of being noticed. Madame de Rênal thought him mad. She was frightened, and above all, shocked. This stupidity reminded her of M. Valenod.
"What would happen to me," she said to herself, "if I were alone with him?" All her virtue returned, because her love was waning.
She so arranged it that one of her children always remained with her. Julien found the day very tedious, and passed it entirely in clumsily putting into operation his plan of seduction. He did not look at Madame de Rênal on a single occasion without that look having a reason, but nevertheless he was not sufficiently stupid to fail to see that he was not succeeding at all in being amiable, and was succeeding even less in being fascinating.
Madame de Rênal did not recover from her astonishment at finding him so awkward and at the same time so bold. "It is the timidity of love in men of intellect," she said to herself with an inexpressible joy. "Could it be possible that he had never been loved by my rival?"
After breakfast Madame de Rênal went back to the drawing-room to receive the visit of M. Charcot de Maugiron, the sub-prefect of Bray. She was working at a little frame of fancy-work some distance from the ground. Madame Derville was at her side; that was how she was placed when our hero thought it suitable to advance his boot in the full light and press the pretty foot of Madame de Rênal, whose open-work stockings, and pretty Paris shoe were evidently attracting the looks of the gallant sub-prefect.
Madame de Rênal was very much afraid, and let fall her scissors, her ball of wool and her needles, so that Julien's movement could be passed for a clumsy effort, intended to prevent the fall of the scissors, which presumably he had seen slide. Fortunately, these little scissors of English steel were broken, and Madame de Rênal did not spare her regrets that Julien had not succeeded in getting nearer to her. "You noticed them falling before I did—you could have prevented it, instead, all your zealousness only succeeding in giving me a very big kick." All this took in the sub-perfect, but not Madame Derville. "That pretty boy has very silly manners," she thought. The social code of a provincial capital never forgives this kind of lapse.
Madame de Rênal found an opportunity of saying to Julien, "Be prudent, I order you."
Julien appreciated his own clumsiness. He was upset. He deliberated with himself for a long time, in order to ascertain whether or not he ought to be angry at the expression "I order you." He was silly enough to think she might have said "I order you," if it were some question concerning the children's education, but in answering my love she puts me on an equality. It is impossible to love without equality…and all his mind ran riot in making common-places on equality. He angrily repeated to himself that verse of Corneille which Madame Derville had taught him some days before.
"L'amour
Fait les égalités, et ne les cherche pas."
Julien who had never had a mistress in his whole life, but yet insisted on playing the rôle of a Don Juan, made a shocking fool of himself all day. He had only one sensible idea. Bored with himself and Madame de Rênal, he viewed with apprehension the advance of the evening when he would have to sit by her side in the darkness of the garden. He told M. de Rênal that he was going to Verrières to see the curé. He left after dinner, and only came back in the night.
At Verrières Julien found M. Chélan occupied in moving. He had just been deprived of his living; the curate Maslon was replacing him. Julien helped the good cure, and it occurred to him to write to Fouqué that the irresistible mission which he felt for the holy ministry had previously prevented him from accepting his kind offer, but that he had just seen an instance of injustice, and that perhaps it would be safer not to enter into Holy Orders.
Julien congratulated himself on his subtlety in exploiting the dismissal of the cure of Verrières so as to leave himself a loophole for returning to commerce in the event of a gloomy prudence routing the spirit of heroism from his mind.