He is a sly fox."
Julien remained profoundly humiliated by the misfortune of not having known what answer to make to Madame de Renal.
"A man like I am ought to make up for this check!" and seizing the moment when they were passing from one room to another, he thought it was his duty to give Madame de Renal a kiss.
Nothing could have been less tactful, nothing less agreeable, and nothing more imprudent both for him and for her.
They were within an inch of being noticed.
Madame de Renal thought him mad.
She was frightened, and above all, shocked.
This stupidity reminded her of M. Valenod.
"What would happen to me," she said to herself, "if I were alone with him?"
All her virtue returned, because her love was waning.
She so arranged it that one of her children always remained with her.
Julien found the day very tedious, and passed it entirely in clumsily putting into operation his plan of seduction.
He did not look at Madame de Renal on a single occasion without that look having a reason, but nevertheless he was not sufficiently stupid to fail to see that he was not succeeding at all in being amiable, and was succeeding even less in being fascinating.
Madame de Renal did not recover from her astonishment at finding him so awkward and at the same time so bold.
"It is the timidity of love in men of intellect," she said to herself with an inexpressible joy.
"Could it be possible that he had never been loved by my rival?"
After breakfast Madame de Renal went back to the drawing-room to receive the visit of M. Charcot de Maugiron, the sub-prefect of Bray.
She was working at a little frame of fancy-work some distance from the ground.
Madame Derville was at her side; that was how she was placed when our hero thought it suitable to advance his boot in the full light and press the pretty foot of Madame de Renal, whose open-work stockings, and pretty Paris shoe were evidently attracting the looks of the gallant sub-prefect.
Madame de Renal was very much afraid, and let fall her scissors, her ball of wool and her needles, so that Julien's movement could be passed for a clumsy effort, intended to prevent the fall of the scissors, which presumably he had seen slide.
Fortunately, these little scissors of English steel were broken, and Madame de Renal did not spare her regrets that Julien had not succeeded in getting nearer to her.
"You noticed them falling before I did—you could have prevented it, instead, all your zealousness only succeeding in giving me a very big kick."
All this took in the sub-perfect, but not Madame Derville.
"That pretty boy has very silly manners," she thought. The social code of a provincial capital never forgives this kind of lapse.
Madame de Renal found an opportunity of saying to Julien,
"Be prudent, I order you."
Julien appreciated his own clumsiness. He was upset.
He deliberated with himself for a long time, in order to ascertain whether or not he ought to be angry at the expression
"I order you."
He was silly enough to think she might have said "I order you," if it were some question concerning the children's education, but in answering my love she puts me on an equality.
It is impossible to love without equality ... and all his mind ran riot in making common-places on equality.
He angrily repeated to himself that verse of Corneille which Madame Derville had taught him some days before.
"L'amour
les egalites, et ne les cherche pas."
Julien who had never had a mistress in his whole life, but yet insisted on playing the role of a Don Juan, made a shocking fool of himself all day.
He had only one sensible idea. Bored with himself and Madame de Renal, he viewed with apprehension the advance of the evening when he would have to sit by her side in the darkness of the garden. He told M. de Renal that he was going to Verrieres to see the cure. He left after dinner, and only came back in the night.
At Verrieres Julien found M. Chelan occupied in moving. He had just been deprived of his living; the curate Maslon was replacing him.
Julien helped the good cure, and it occurred to him to write to Fouque that the irresistible mission which he felt for the holy ministry had previously prevented him from accepting his kind offer, but that he had just seen an instance of injustice, and that perhaps it would be safer not to enter into Holy Orders.
Julien congratulated himself on his subtlety in exploiting the dismissal of the cure of Verrieres so as to leave himself a loop-hole for returning to commerce in the event of a gloomy prudence routing the spirit of heroism from his mind. _____
CHAPTER XV
THE COCK'S SONG _____
Amour en latin faict amour;
Or done provient d'amour la mart,
Et, par avant, souley qui moreq,
Deuil, plours, pieges, forfailz, remord.
BLASON D'AMOUR. _____
If Julien had possessed a little of that adroitness on which he so gratuitously plumed himself, he could have congratulated himself the following day on the effect produced by his journey to Verrieres.
His absence had caused his clumsiness to be forgotten.
But on that day also he was rather sulky. He had a ludicrous idea in the evening, and with singular courage he communicated it to Madame de Renal. They had scarcely sat down in the garden before Julien brought his mouth near Madame de Renal's ear without waiting till it was sufficiently dark and at the risk of compromising her terribly, said to her,
"Madame, to-night, at two o'clock, I shall go into your room, I must tell you something."