"You are one of the most distinguished gentlemen in the province," replied Madame de Renal emphatically.
"If the king were free and could give birth its proper due, you would no doubt figure in the Chamber of Peers, etc.
And being in this magnificent position, you yet wish to give the envious a fact to take hold of."
"To speak about this anonymous letter to M. Valenod is equivalent to proclaiming over the whole of Verrieres, nay, over the whole of Besancon, over the whole province that this little bourgeois who has been admitted perhaps imprudently to intimacy with a Renal, has managed to offend him.
At the time when those letters which you have just taken prove that I have reciprocated M. Valenod's love, you ought to kill me. I should have deserved it a hundred times over, but not to show him your anger.
Remember that all our neighbours are only waiting for an excuse to revenge themselves for your superiority. Remember that in 1816 you had a hand in certain arrests.
"I think that you show neither consideration nor love for me," exclaimed M. de Renal with all the bitterness evoked by such a memory, "and I was not made a peer."
"I am thinking, my dear," resumed Madame de Renal with a smile, "that I shall be richer than you are, that I have been your companion for twelve years, and that by virtue of those qualifications I am entitled to have a voice in the council and, above all, in to-day's business.
If you prefer M. Julien to me," she added, with a touch of temper which was but thinly disguised, "I am ready to go and pass a winter with my aunt."
These words proved a lucky shot.
They possessed a firmness which endeavoured to clothe itself with courtesy.
It decided M. de Renal, but following the provincial custom, he still thought for a long time, and went again over all his arguments; his wife let him speak.
There was still a touch of anger in his intonation.
Finally two hours of futile rant exhausted the strength of a man who had been subject during the whole night to a continuous fit of anger.
He determined on the line of conduct he was going to follow with regard to M. Valenod, Julien and even Elisa.
Madame de Renal was on the point once or twice during this great scene of feeling some sympathy for the very real unhappiness of the man who had been so dear to her for twelve years.
But true passions are selfish.
Besides she was expecting him every instant to mention the anonymous letter which he had received the day before and he did not mention it.
In order to feel quite safe, Madame de Renal wanted to know the ideas which the letter had succeeding in suggesting to the man on whom her fate depended, for, in the provinces the husbands are the masters of public opinion.
A husband who complains covers himself with ridicule, an inconvenience which becomes no less dangerous in France with each succeeding year; but if he refuses to provide his wife with money, she falls to the status of a labouring woman at fifteen sous a day, while the virtuous souls have scruples about employing her.
An odalisque in the seraglio can love the Sultan with all her might. He is all-powerful and she has no hope of stealing his authority by a series of little subtleties.
The master's vengeance is terrible and bloody but martial and generous; a dagger thrust finishes everything.
But it is by stabbing her with public contempt that a nineteenth-century husband kills his wife. It is by shutting against her the doors of all the drawing-rooms.
When Madame de Renal returned to her room, her feeling of danger was vividly awakened. She was shocked by the disorder in which she found it.
The locks of all the pretty little boxes had been broken. Many planks in the floor had been lifted up.
"He would have no pity on me," she said to herself.
"To think of his spoiling like this, this coloured wood floor which he likes so much; he gets red with rage whenever one of his children comes into it with wet shoes, and now it is spoilt for ever."
The spectacle of this violence immediately banished the last scruples which she was entertaining with respect to that victory which she had won only too rapidly.
Julien came back with the children a little before the dinner-bell.
Madame de Renal said to him very drily at dessert when the servant had left the room:
"You have told me about your wish to go and spend a fortnight at Verrieres. M. de Renal is kind enough to give you a holiday.
You can leave as soon as you like, but the childrens' exercises will be sent to you every day so that they do not waste their time."
"I shall certainly not allow you more than a week," said M. de Renal in a very bitter tone.
Julien thought his visage betrayed the anxiety of a man who was seriously harassed.
"He has not yet decided what line to take," he said to his love during a moment when they were alone together in the drawing-room.
Madame de Renal rapidly recounted to him all she had done since the morning.
"The details are for to-night," she added with a smile.
"Feminine perversity," thought Julien,
"What can be the pleasure, what can be the instinct which induces them to deceive us."
"I think you are both enlightened and at the same time blinded by your love," he said to her with some coldness. "Your conduct to-day has been admirable, but is it prudent for us to try and see each other to-night?
This house is paved with enemies.
Just think of Elisa's passionate hatred for me."
"That hate is very like the passionate indifference which you no doubt have for me."
"Even if I were indifferent I ought to save you from the peril in which I have plunged you.
If chance so wills it that M. de Renal should speak to Elisa, she can acquaint him with everything in a single word.
What is to prevent him from hiding near my room fully armed?"
"What, not even courage?" said Madame de Renal, with all the haughtiness of a scion of nobility.
"I will never demean myself to speak about my courage," said Julien, coldly, "it would be mean to do so.
Let the world judge by the facts.
But," he added, taking her hand, "you have no idea how devoted I am to you and how over-joyed I am of being able to say good-bye to you before this cruel separation." _____