Julien remained motionless.
She left him at a rapid pace without looking at him.
From the moment that M. de Renal had opened the anonymous letter his life had been awful.
He had not been so agitated since a duel which he had just missed having in 1816, and to do him justice, the prospect of receiving a bullet would have made him less unhappy. He scrutinised the letter from every standpoint.
"Is that not a woman's handwriting?" he said to himself.
In that case, what woman had written it?
He reviewed all those whom he knew at Verrieres without being able to fix his suspicions on any one.
Could a man have dictated that letter?
Who was that man?
Equal uncertainty on this point. The majority of his acquaintances were jealous of him, and, no doubt, hated him.
"I must consult my wife," he said to himself through habit, as he got up from the arm-chair in which he had collapsed.
"Great God!" he said aloud before he got up, striking his head, "it is she above all of whom I must be distrustful.
At the present moment she is my enemy," and tears came into his eyes through sheer anger.
By a poetic justice for that hardness of heart which constitutes the provincial idea of shrewdness, the two men whom M. de Renal feared the most at the present moment were his two most intimate friends.
"I have ten friends perhaps after those," and he passed them in review, gauging the degree of consolation which he could get from each one.
"All of them, all of them," he exclaimed in a rage, "will derive the most supreme pleasure from my awful experience."
As luck would have it, he thought himself envied, and not without reason.
Apart from his superb town mansion in which the king of —— had recently spent the night, and thus conferred on it an enduring honour, he had decorated his chateau at Vergy extremely well.
The facade was painted white and the windows adorned with fine green shutters.
He was consoled for a moment by the thought of this magnificence.
The fact was that this chateau was seen from three or four leagues off, to the great prejudice of all the country houses or so-called chateaux of the neighbourhood, which had been left in the humble grey colour given them by time.
There was one of his friends on whose pity and whose tears M. de Renal could count, the churchwarden of the parish; but he was an idiot who cried at everything.
This man, however, was his only resource.
"What unhappiness is comparable to mine," he exclaimed with rage.
"What isolation!"
"Is it possible?" said this truly pitiable man to himself.
"Is it possible that I have no friend in my misfortune of whom I can ask advice? for my mind is wandering, I feel it.
Oh, Falcoz! oh, Ducros!" he exclaimed with bitterness.
Those were the names of two friends of his childhood whom he had dropped owing to his snobbery in 1814.
They were not noble, and he had wished to change the footing of equality on which they had been living with him since their childhood.
One of them, Falcoz, a paper-merchant of Verrieres, and a man of intellect and spirit, had bought a printing press in the chief town of the department and undertaken the production of a journal.
The priestly congregation had resolved to ruin him; his journal had been condemned, and he had been deprived of his printer's diploma.
In these sad circumstances he ventured to write to M. de Renal for the first time for ten years.
The mayor of Verrieres thought it his duty to answer in the old Roman style:
"If the King's Minister were to do me the honour of consulting me, I should say to him, ruin ruthlessly all the provincial printers, and make printing a monopoly like tobacco."
M. de Renal was horrified to remember the terms of this letter to an intimate friend whom all Verrieres had once admired,
"Who would have said that I, with my rank, my fortune, my decorations, would ever come to regret it?"
It was in these transports of rage, directed now against himself, now against all his surroundings, that he passed an awful night; but, fortunately, it never occurred to him to spy on his wife.
"I am accustomed to Louise," he said to himself, "she knows all my affairs.
If I were free to marry to-morrow, I should not find anyone to take her place."
Then he began to plume himself on the idea that his wife was innocent. This point of view did not require any manifestation of character, and suited him much better. "How many calumniated women has one not seen?"
"But," he suddenly exclaimed, as he walked about feverishly, "shall I put up with her making a fool of me with her lover as though I were a man of no account, some mere ragamuffin?
Is all Verrieres to make merry over my complaisance?
What have they not said about Charmier (he was a husband in the district who was notoriously deceived)?
Was there not a smile on every lip at the mention of his name?
He is a good advocate, but whoever said anything about his talent for speaking?
'Oh, Charmier,' they say,
'Bernard's Charmier,' he is thus designated by the name of the man who disgraces him."
"I have no daughter, thank heaven," M. de Renal would say at other times, "and the way in which I am going to punish the mother will consequently not be so harmful to my children's household. I could surprise this little peasant with my wife and kill them both; in that case the tragedy of the situation would perhaps do away with the grotesque element."
This idea appealed to him. He followed it up in all its details.