The sudden resolution which he had just made formed an agreeable distraction.
He kept saying to himself, "I must have one of those two women;" he realised that he would have very much preferred to have paid court to Madame Derville. It was not that she was more agreeable, but that she had always seen him as the tutor distinguished by his knowledge, and not as the journeyman carpenter with his cloth jacket folded under his arm as he had first appeared to Madame de Renal.
It was precisely as a young workman, blushing up to the whites of his eyes, standing by the door of the house and not daring to ring, that he made the most alluring appeal to Madame de Renal's imagination.
As he went on reviewing his position, Julien saw that the conquest of Madame Derville, who had probably noticed the taste which Madame de Renal was manifesting for him, was out of the question.
He was thus brought back to the latter lady.
"What do I know of the character of that woman?" said Julien to himself.
"Only this: before my journey, I used to take her hand, and she used to take it away. To-day, I take my hand away, and she seizes and presses it.
A fine opportunity to pay her back all the contempt she had had for me.
God knows how many lovers she has had, probably she is only deciding in my favour by reason of the easiness of assignations."
Such, alas, is the misfortune of an excessive civilisation.
The soul of a young man of twenty, possessed of any education, is a thousand leagues away from that abandon without which love is frequently but the most tedious of duties.
"I owe it all the more to myself," went on the petty vanity of Julien, "to succeed with that woman, by reason of the fact that if I ever make a fortune, and I am reproached by anyone with my menial position as a tutor, I shall then be able to give out that it was love which got me the post."
Julien again took his hand away from Madame de Renal, and then took her hand again and pressed it.
As they went back to the drawing-room about midnight, Madame de Renal said to him in a whisper.
"You are leaving us, you are going?"
Julien answered with a sigh.
"I absolutely must leave, for I love you passionately. It is wrong ... how wrong indeed for a young priest?"
Madame de Renal leant upon his arm, and with so much abandon that her cheek felt the warmth of Julien's.
The nights of these two persons were quite different.
Madame de Renal was exalted by the ecstacies of the highest moral pleasure.
A coquettish young girl, who loves early in life, gets habituated to the trouble of love, and when she reaches the age of real passion, finds the charm of novelty lacking.
As Madame de Renal had never read any novels, all the refinements of her happiness were new to her.
No mournful truth came to chill her, not even the spectre of the future.
She imagined herself as happy in ten years' time as she was at the present moment.
Even the idea of virtue and of her sworn fidelity to M. de Renal, which had agitated her some days past, now presented itself in vain, and was sent about its business like an importunate visitor.
"I will never grant anything to Julien," said Madame de Renal; "we will live in the future like we have been living for the last month.
He shall be a friend." _____
CHAPTER XIV
THE ENGLISH SCISSORS _____
A young girl of sixteen had a pink complexion, and yet used red rouge.—Polidori. _____
Fouque'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 Renal 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 Fouque, 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 Renal 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 nattering 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 Renal 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.