She was unable to distract her thoughts from the happiness of feeling Julian cover her hand with his burning kisses.
Suddenly the awful word adultery came into her mind.
All the loathesomeness with which the vilest debauchery can invest sensual love presented itself to her imagination.
These ideas essayed to pollute the divinely tender image which she was fashioning of Julien, and of the happiness of loving him.
The future began to be painted in terrible colours.
She began to regard herself as contemptible.
That moment was awful. Her soul was arriving in unknown countries.
During the evening she had tasted a novel happiness. Now she found herself suddenly plunged in an atrocious unhappiness.
She had never had any idea of such sufferings; they troubled her reason.
She thought for a moment of confessing to her husband that she was apprehensive of loving Julien.
It would be an opportunity of speaking of him.
Fortunately her memory threw up a maxim which her aunt had once given her on the eve of her marriage. The maxim dealt with the danger of making confidences to a husband, for a husband is after all a master.
She wrung her hands in the excess of her grief.
She was driven this way and that by clashing and painful ideas.
At one moment she feared that she was not loved. The next the awful idea of crime tortured her, as much as if she had to be exposed in the pillory on the following day in the public square of Verrieres, with a placard to explain her adultery to the populace.
Madame de Renal had no experience of life. Even in the full possession of her faculties, and when fully exercising her reason, she would never have appreciated any distinction between being guilty in the eyes of God, and finding herself publicly overwhelmed with the crudest marks of universal contempt.
When the awful idea of adultery, and of all the disgrace which in her view that crime brought in its train, left her some rest, she began to dream of the sweetness of living innocently with Julien as in the days that had gone by. She found herself confronted with the horrible idea that Julien loved another woman.
She still saw his pallor when he had feared to lose her portrait, or to compromise her by exposing it to view.
For the first time she had caught fear on that tranquil and noble visage.
He had never shewn such emotion to her or her children.
This additional anguish reached the maximum of unhappiness which the human soul is capable of enduring.
Unconsciously, Madame de Renal uttered cries which woke up her maid.
Suddenly she saw the brightness of a light appear near her bed, and recognized Elisa.
"Is it you he loves?" she exclaimed in her delirium.
Fortunately, the maid was so astonished by the terrible trouble in which she found her mistress that she paid no attention to this singular expression.
Madame de Renal appreciated her imprudence.
"I have the fever," she said to her, "and I think I am a little delirious."
Completely woken up by the necessity of controlling herself, she became less unhappy. Reason regained that supreme control which the semi-somnolent state had taken away.
To free herself from her maid's continual stare, she ordered her maid to read the paper, and it was as she listened to the monotonous voice of this girl, reading a long article from the Quotidienne that Madame de Renal made the virtuous resolution to treat Julien with absolute coldness when she saw him again. _____
CHAPTER XII
A JOURNEY _____
Elegant people are to be found in Paris. People of character may exist in the provinces.—Sieyes _____
At five o'clock the following day, before Madame de Renal was visible, Julien obtained a three days' holiday from her husband.
Contrary to his expectation Julien found himself desirous of seeing her again. He kept thinking of that pretty hand of hers.
He went down into the garden, but Madame de Renal kept him waiting for a long time.
But if Julien had loved her, he would have seen her forehead glued to the pane behind the half-closed blinds on the first floor. She was looking at him.
Finally, in spite of her resolutions, she decided to go into the garden.
Her habitual pallor had been succeeded by more lively hues.
This woman, simple as she was, was manifestly agitated; a sentiment of constraint, and even of anger, altered that expression of profound serenity which seemed, as it were, to be above all the vulgar interests of life and gave so much charm to that divine face.
Julien approached her with eagerness, admiring those beautiful arms which were just visible through a hastily donned shawl.
The freshness of the morning air seemed to accentuate still more the brilliance of her complexion which the agitation of the past night rendered all the more susceptible to all impressions.
This demure and pathetic beauty, which was, at the same time, full of thoughts which are never found in the inferior classes, seemed to reveal to Julien a faculty in his own soul which he had never before realised.
Engrossed in his admiration of the charms on which his his greedy gaze was riveted, Julien took for granted the friendly welcome which he was expecting to receive.
He was all the more astonished at the icy coldness which she endeavoured to manifest to him, and through which he thought he could even distinguish the intention of putting him in his place.
The smile of pleasure died away from his lips as he remembered his rank in society, especially from the point of view of a rich and noble heiress.
In a single moment his face exhibited nothing but haughtiness and anger against himself.
He felt violently disgusted that he could have put off his departure for more than an hour, simply to receive so humiliating a welcome.
"It is only a fool," he said to himself, "who is angry with others; a stone falls because it is heavy.
Am I going to be a child all my life?
How on earth is it that I manage to contract the charming habit of showing my real self to those people simply in return for their money?