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The dinner bell rang; Mme. de Renal blushed a great deal when she heard Julien bringing back the children. bit more resourceful now that she was in love, she complained of a terrible headache to explain away her flushed face.

"Just like a woman," M. de Renal answered her with his big laugh. "Som…

Mme. de Renal intended to do some work but fell into a deep sleep; when she woke, she was not so alarmed as she should have been. She was too happy to think ill of anything. Artless and innocent, this good provincial woman had never tortured her soul with trying to squeeze a bit of sensibility from…

"Beware, my child, of what is going on in your heart," said the cure with a frown. "I congratulate you on your vocation if it is that alone to which you owe your contempt for a more than adequate income. I have been the cure of Verrieres for fifty-six years all told, and yet, to judge from the way …

Mme. de Renal, wealthy heiress of a pious aunt and married at sixteen to a fine gentleman, had never experienced or seen anything that bore the least resemblance to love. Scarcely anyone had ever spoken to her about love except good Father Chelan, and then only in connection with Valenod's advances…

In Paris, Julien's relationship with Mme. de Renal would have been simplified very quickly; but in Paris, love is the child of fiction. The young tutor and his timid mistress would have found their position clarified for them in three or four novels, even in the couplets sung at the Gymnase.* The n…