Madame de Renal was thunderstruck.
"The Mayor," went on Julien, "has given me on five occasions sums of thirty-six francs since I have been living in his house.
I am ready to show any account-book to M. de Renal and anyone else, even to M. Valenod who hates me."
As the result of this outburst, Madame de Renal remained pale and nervous, and the walk ended without either one or the other finding any pretext for renewing the conversation.
Julien's proud heart had found it more and more impossible to love Madame de Renal. As for her, she respected him, she admired him, and she had been scolded by him.
Under the pretext of making up for the involuntary humiliation which she had caused him, she indulged in acts of the most tender solicitude.
The novelty of these attentions made Madame de Renal happy for eight days.
Their effect was to appease to some extent Julien's anger. He was far from seeing anything in them in the nature of a fancy for himself personally.
"That is just what rich people are," he said to himself—"they snub you and then they think they can make up for everything by a few monkey tricks."
Madame de Renal's heart was too full, and at the same time too innocent, for her not too tell her husband, in spite of her resolutions not to do so, about the offer she had made to Julien, and the manner in which she had been rebuffed.
"How on earth," answered M. de Renal, keenly piqued, "could you put up with a refusal on the part of a servant,"—and, when Madame de Renal protested against the word "Servant,"
"I am using, madam, the words of the late Prince of Conde, when he presented his Chamberlains to his new wife.
'All these people' he said 'are servants.'
I have also read you this passage from the Memoirs of Besenval, a book which is indispensable on all questions of etiquette.
'Every person, not a gentleman, who lives in your house and receives a salary is your servant.'
I'll go and say a few words to M. Julien and give him a hundred francs."
"Oh, my dear," said Madame De Renal trembling,
"I hope you won't do it before the servants!"
"Yes, they might be jealous and rightly so," said her husband as he took his leave, thinking of the greatness of the sum.
Madame de Renal fell on a chair almost fainting in her anguish.
He is going to humiliate Julien, and it is my fault!
She felt an abhorrence for her husband and hid her face in her hands.
She resolved that henceforth she would never make any more confidences.
When she saw Julien again she was trembling all over. Her chest was so cramped that she could not succeed in pronouncing a single word.
In her embarrassment she took his hands and pressed them.
"Well, my friend," she said to him at last, "are you satisfied with my husband?"
"How could I be otherwise," answered Julien, with a bitter smile, "he has given me a hundred francs."
Madame de Renal looked at him doubtfully.
"Give me your arm," she said at last, with a courageous intonation that Julien had not heard before.
She dared to go as far as the shop of the bookseller of Verrieres, in spite of his awful reputation for Liberalism.
In the shop she chose ten louis worth of books for a present for her sons.
But these books were those which she knew Julien was wanting.
She insisted on each child writing his name then and there in the bookseller's shop in those books which fell to his lot.
While Madame de Renal was rejoicing over the kind reparation which she had had the courage to make to Julien, the latter was overwhelmed with astonishment at the quantity of books which he saw at the bookseller's.
He had never dared to enter so profane a place. His heart was palpitating.
Instead of trying to guess what was passing in Madame de Renal's heart he pondered deeply over the means by which a young theological student could procure some of those books.
Eventually it occurred to him that it would be possible, with tact, to persuade M. de Renal that one of the proper subjects of his sons' curriculum would be the history of the celebrated gentlemen who had been born in the province.
After a month of careful preparation Julien witnessed the success of this idea. The success was so great that he actually dared to risk mentioning to M. de Renal in conversation, a matter which the noble mayor found disagreeable from quite another point of view. The suggestion was to contribute to the fortune of a Liberal by taking a subscription at the bookseller's.
M. de Renal agreed that it would be wise to give his elder son a first hand acquaintance with many works which he would hear mentioned in conversation when he went to the Military School. But Julien saw that the mayor had determined to go no further.
He suspected some secret reason but could not guess it.
"I was thinking, sir," he said to him one day, "that it would be highly undesirable for the name of so good a gentleman as a Renal to appear on a bookseller's dirty ledger."
M. de Renal's face cleared.
"It would also be a black mark," continued Julien in a more humble tone, "against a poor theology student if it ever leaked out that his name had been on the ledger of a bookseller who let out books.
The Liberals might go so far as to accuse me of having asked for the most infamous books. Who knows if they will not even go so far as to write the titles of those perverse volumes after my name?"
But Julien was getting off the track.
He noticed that the Mayor's physiognomy was re-assuming its expression of embarrassment and displeasure.
Julien was silent.
"I have caught my man," he said to himself.
It so happened that a few days afterwards the elder of the children asked Julien, in M. de Renal's presence, about a book which had been advertised in the Quotidienne.
"In order to prevent the Jacobin Party having the slightest pretext for a score," said the young tutor, "and yet give me the means of answering M. de Adolphe's question, you can make your most menial servant take out a subscription at the booksellers."