CHAPTER XXII
MANNERS OF PROCEDURE IN 1830 _____
Speech has been given to man to conceal his thought.
R.P. Malagrida. _____
Julien had scarcely arrived at Verrieres before he reproached himself with his injustice towards Madame de Renal.
"I should have despised her for a weakling of a woman if she had not had the strength to go through with her scene with M. de Renal.
But she has acquitted herself like a diplomatist and I sympathise with the defeat of the man who is my enemy.
There is a bourgeois prejudice in my action; my vanity is offended because M. de Renal is a man.
Men form a vast and illustrious body to which I have the honour to belong.
I am nothing but a fool."
M. Chelan had refused the magnificent apartments which the most important Liberals in the district had offered him, when his loss of his living had necessitated his leaving the parsonage.
The two rooms which he had rented were littered with his books.
Julien, wishing to show Verrieres what a priest could do, went and fetched a dozen pinewood planks from his father, carried them on his back all along the Grande-Rue, borrowed some tools from an old comrade and soon built a kind of book-case in which he arranged M. Chelan's books.
"I thought you were corrupted by the vanity of the world," said the old man to him as he cried with joy, "but this is something which well redeems all the childishness of that brilliant Guard of Honour uniform which has made you so many enemies."
M. de Renal had ordered Julien to stay at his house.
No one suspected what had taken place.
The third day after his arrival Julien saw no less a personage than M. the sub-prefect de Maugiron come all the way up the stairs to his room.
It was only after two long hours of fatuous gossip and long-winded lamentations about the wickedness of man, the lack of honesty among the people entrusted with the administration of the public funds, the dangers of his poor France, etc. etc., that Julien was at last vouchsafed a glimpse of the object of the visit.
They were already on the landing of the staircase and the poor half disgraced tutor was escorting with all proper deference the future prefect of some prosperous department, when the latter was pleased to take an interest in Julien's fortune, to praise his moderation in money matters, etc., etc.
Finally M. de Maugiron, embracing him in the most paternal way, proposed that he should leave M. de Renal and enter the household of an official who had children to educate and who, like King Philippe, thanked Heaven not so much that they had been granted to him, but for the fact that they had been born in the same neighbourhood as M. Julien.
Their tutor would enjoy a salary of 800 francs, payable not from month to month, which is not at all aristocratic, said M. de Maugiron, but quarterly and always in advance.
It was Julien's turn now. After he had been bored for an hour and a half by waiting for what he had to say, his answer was perfect and, above all, as long as a bishop's charge.
It suggested everything and yet said nothing clearly.
It showed at the same time respect for M. de Renal, veneration for the public of Verrieres and gratitude to the distinguished sub-prefect.
The sub-prefect, astonished at finding him more Jesuitical than himself, tried in vain to obtain something definite.
Julien was delighted, seized the opportunity to practise, and started his answer all over again in different language.
Never has an eloquent minister who wished to make the most of the end of a session when the Chamber really seemed desirous of waking up, said less in more words.
M. de Maugiron had scarcely left before Julien began to laugh like a madman.
In order to exploit his Jesuitical smartness, he wrote a nine-page letter to M. de Renal in which he gave him an account of all that had been said to him and humbly asked his advice.
"But the old scoundrel has not told me the name of the person who is making the offer.
It is bound to be M. Valenod who, no doubt, sees in my exile at Verrieres the result of his anonymous letter."
Having sent off his despatch and feeling as satisfied as a hunter who at six o'clock in the morning on a fine autumn day, comes out into a plain that abounds with game, he went out to go and ask advice of M. Chelan.
But before he had arrived at the good cure's, providence, wishing to shower favours upon him, threw in his path M. de Valenod, to whom he owned quite freely that his heart was torn in two; a poor lad such as he was owed an exclusive devotion to the vocation to which it had pleased Heaven to call him. But vocation was not everything in this base world.
In order to work worthily at the vine of the Lord, and to be not totally unworthy of so many worthy colleagues, it was necessary to be educated; it was necessary to spend two expensive years at the seminary of Besancon; saving consequently became an imperative necessity, and was certainly much easier with a salary of eight hundred francs paid quarterly than with six hundred francs which one received monthly.
On the other hand, did not Heaven, by placing him by the side of the young de Renals, and especially by inspiring him with a special devotion to them, seem to indicate that it was not proper to abandon that education for another one.
Julien reached such a degree of perfection in that particular kind of eloquence which has succeeded the drastic quickness of the empire, that he finished by boring himself with the sound of his own words.
On reaching home he found a valet of M. Valenod in full livery who had been looking for him all over the town, with a card inviting him to dinner for that same day.
Julien had never been in that man's house. Only a few days before he had been thinking of nothing but the means of giving him a sound thrashing without getting into trouble with the police.
Although the time of the dinner was one o'clock, Julien thought it was more deferential to present himself at half-past twelve at the office of M. the director of the workhouse.
He found him parading his importance in the middle of a lot of despatch boxes.
His large black whiskers, his enormous quantity of hair, his Greek bonnet placed across the top of his head, his immense pipe, his embroidered slippers, the big chains of gold crossed all over his breast, and the whole stock-in-trade of a provincial financier who considers himself prosperous, failed to impose on Julien in the least: They only made him think the more of the thrashing which he owed him.
He asked for the honour of being introduced to Madame Valenod. She was dressing and was unable to receive him.
By way of compensation he had the privilege of witnessing the toilet of M. the director of the workhouse.
They subsequently went into the apartment of Madame Valenod, who introduced her children to him with tears in her eyes.
This lady was one of the most important in Verrieres, had a big face like a man's, on which she had put rouge in honour of this great function.
She displayed all the maternal pathos of which she was capable.
Julien thought all the time of Madame de Renal. His distrust made him only susceptible to those associations which are called up by their opposites, but he was then affected to the verge of breaking down.
This tendency was increased by the sight of the house of the director of the workhouse. He was shown over it.
Everything in it was new and magnificent, and he was told the price of every article of furniture.
But Julien detected a certain element of sordidness, which smacked of stolen money into the bargain. Everybody in it, down to the servants, had the air of setting his face in advance against contempt.