[...] As for Mme. de Renal, her hand in Julien's, she hadn't a thought in the world; she was letting herself live. For her the hours they spent beneath that great lime tree, which, as local tradition would have it, had been planted by Charles the Bold,* were a time of bliss. She listened delightedly to the wind moaning in the tree's thick foliage and to the sound of the first few scattered drops that were beginning to fall on its lowest leaves. Julien failed to remark one detail that might well have reassured him; Mme. de Renal, who had been forced to take her hand out of his so she could get up to help her cousin right a pot of flowers the wind had knocked over at their feet, was scarcely seated again when she gave him back her hand with almost no fuss, as if it were already a thing understood between them.

Midnight had struck long ago; it was high time to leave the garden; they separated. Mme. de Renal, transported by the joys of love, was so ignorant that she hardly blamed herself at all. Happiness robbed her of sleep. Julien, tired to death by the pitched battle between timidity and pride that had been raging in his heart all day long, was carried off by a leaden sleep.

"What! can this be love!" she kept asking herself, "could I have fallen in love! I, a married woman, in love! But," she said to herself, "I have never felt this somber passion for my husband that makes it impossible for me to take my mind off Julien. Really, he's nothing but a child full of respect for me! This madness will pass. Whatever my feelings about this young man may be, what dif- ference does it make to my husband! M. de Renal would be bored with the conversations I have with Julien about things of the imagination. He has nothing on his mind but business. I'm not taking anything from him to give to Julien."

No hypocritical thought came to debase the purity of this simple soul, led astray by a passion it had never known before. She was deluding herself, though unawares, and yet a virtuous instinct had been startled. [...]

All of a sudden the dreadful word "adultress" occurred to her. Everything disgusting that the vilest lewdness might impart to the idea of sensual love came crowding into her imagination. Ideas of this sort were doing their worst to tarnish the tender and divine image she had made of Julien and of her happiness in loving him. The future loomed before her in terrible shapes. She saw herself as a despicable woman.

It was a ghastly moment; her soul had crossed into alien territory. That evening she had tasted a happiness unknown to her; now she was plunged into the most atro- cious agony. She had no idea of such suffering; it affected her reason. For an instant she thought of confessing to her husband that she was afraid of falling in love with Julien. It would give her a chance to talk about him. Fortunately, she happened to remember a precept her aunt had once given her, on the eve of her marriage. It had to do with the dangers of confiding in a husband, who is, after all, one's master. Out of unbearable suffering, she kept wringing her hands.

She was being dragged this way and that by painful and conflicting visions. One minute she was afraid of not being loved; the next minute, the horrible idea of crime tormented her as much as if she were slated to be pilloried the next day in the public square with a placard around her neck proclaiming adultery to the whole populace. Mme. de Renal had no experience of life; even fully awake and in full possession of her faculties, she would not have seen any real distinction between being guilty in the sight of God and in being publicly harassed by the noisiest manifestation of popular scorn.

"Only a fool," he told himself, "gets angry with others: a stone falls because it is heavy. Will I always behave like a child? When will I ever acquire the good habit of giving those people only as much of my heart as they pay for? If I want to be esteemed by them as well as by myself, I will have to show them that though my poverty may do business with their wealth, my heart is a thousand leagues removed from their insolence, and set in too high a sphere to be reached by their petty marks of disdain or favor."

When Julien left Mme. de RSnal's bedroom some hours later, it might be said, in the style of the novel, that he had nothing more to desire. He was, in fact, obliged to the love he had inspired, and to the unexpected impression her seductive charms had made on him, for a conquest that all his clumsy maneuvering could never have brought off.

Yet, victim of a bizarre pride, even in the sweetest moments he still aspired to the role of a man who is used to subjugating women. He applied himself with incredible effort to spoil whatever was likable about him. Instead of being attentive to the raptures he had awakened and to the remorse that only heightened their intensity, he could think of nothing but his duty. He dreaded the terrible regret and sense of everlasting ridicule that must follow, should he lose sight of the model he had proposed for himself.

In a word, what made Julien a superior person was precisely what kept him from relishing the happiness that lay at his feet. He was like the sixteen-year-old girl with a lovely complexion who, when she goes to a ball, has the crazy notion of putting rouge on her face.

"My God! to be happy, to be loved, is that all there is to it?" Such was Julien's first thought when he got back to his room. He was in that state of astonishment and uneasiness into which a man who has just obtained what he has long desired may lapse. He is used to desiring, has nothing more to desire, and hasn't, as yet, any memories. Like the soldier who comes back from a parade, Julien was busy reviewing every detail of his conduct.

"Have I failed in any way with respect to what I owe myself? Have I played my part well?"

Which part? That of a man who is used to having his way with women.

After the bishop's speech and the king's reply, his Majesty took his place under the canopy; then he kneeled very devoutly on a cushion near the altar. The chancel was surrounded by stalls, and the stalls were elevated two steps above the stone floor. On the higher of these Julien was seated at M. Chelan's feet, very like a trainbearer close to his cardinal at the Sistine Chapel in Rome. There was a Te Deum, clouds of incense, and countless rounds fired by the musketry and the artillery; the peasants were drunk with happiness and piety. day like this can undo the work of a hundred editions of the Jacobin papers.

That same night, M. de Renal received from town, along with his newspaper, a long anonymous letter, which informed him in the greatest detail of what was going on in his house. Julien saw him turn pale as he read the letter, written on bluish paper, and cast evil glances at him. Not for the whole evening did the mayor regain his composure; it was to no avail that Julien courted his favor by asking for explanations about the genealogy of the best families in Burgundy.

"You are one of the most distinguished gentlemen in the province," Mme. de Renal resumed eagerly. "If the king were free and able to give birth its due, you would no doubt figure in the Chamber of Peers, etc. And in such a magnificent position, do you mean to give the town something to gossip about to their heart's content?

Once or twice during this great scene, Mme. de Renal was on the verge of feeling some sympathy for the very real unhappiness of this man who had been her friend for the past twelve years. But true passion is selfish. Besides, she was expecting at any moment an avowal of the anonymous letter he had received the night before, and that avowal was not forthcoming. Mme. de Renal's sense of security suffered for not knowing what ideas that letter might have suggested to the man on whom her fate depended. For in the provinces, husbands are the masters of public opinion. A husband who complains about his wife's conduct covers himself with ridicule (a thing that is becoming less dangerous every day in France); but his if he doesn't give her any money, is reduced to the condition of a working woman, at fifteen sous a day, and even then, virtuous women will hesitate to employ her.

In spite of everything, an odalisk in a harem may love the sultan; he is omnipotent; she can have no hope of escaping his authority by a series of little ruses. The master's vengeance is terrible, bloody, yet military, generous. A blow of the dagger ends all. In the nineteenth century, a husband kills his wife with blows of public scorn; by closing every door to her.