Any allusion to that mineral, he was accustomed to say, is always a prelude to some demand made upon my purse.
But this was something more than a mere money matter. His suspicions were increased.
The air of happiness which animated his family during his absence was not calculated to smooth matters over with a man who was a prey to so touchy a vanity.
"Yes, yes," he said, as his wife started to praise to him the combined grace and cleverness of the way in which Julien gave ideas to his pupils.
"I know, he renders me hateful to my own children. It is easy enough for him to make himself a hundred times more loveable to them than I am myself, though after all, I am the master.
In this century everything tends to make legitimate authority unpopular.
Poor France!"
Madame de Renal had not stopped to examine the fine shades of the welcome which her husband gave her.
She had just caught a glimpse of the possibility of spending twelve hours with Julien.
She had a lot of purchases to make in the town and declared that she positively insisted in going to dine at the tavern. She stuck to her idea in spite of all her husband's protests and remonstrances.
The children were delighted with the mere word tavern, which our modern prudery denounces with so much gusto.
M. de Renal left his wife in the first draper's shop which she entered and went to pay some visits.
He came back more morose than he had been in the morning. He was convinced that the whole town was busy with himself and Julien.
As a matter of fact no one had yet given him any inkling as to the more offensive part of the public gossip.
Those items which had been repeated to M. the mayor dealt exclusively with the question of whether Julien would remain with him with six hundred francs, or would accept the eight hundred francs offered by M. the director of the workhouse.
The director, when he met M. de Renal in society, gave him the cold shoulder.
These tactics were not without cleverness. There is no impulsiveness in the provinces. Sensations are so rare there that they are never allowed to be wasted.
M. le Valenod was what is called a hundred miles from Paris a faraud; that means a coarse imprudent type of man.
His triumphant existence since 1815 had consolidated his natural qualities.
He reigned, so to say, in Verrieres subject to the orders of M. de Renal; but as he was much more energetic, was ashamed of nothing, had a finger in everything, and was always going about writing and speaking, and was oblivious of all snubs, he had, although without any personal pretensions, eventually come to equal the mayor in reputation in the eyes of the ecclesiastical authorities.
M. Valenod had, as it were, said to the local tradesmen
"Give me the two biggest fools among your number;" to the men of law
"Show me the two greatest dunces;" to the sanitary officials
"Point out to me the two biggest charlatans."
When he had thus collected the most impudent members of each separate calling, he had practically said to them,
"Let us reign together."
The manners of those people were offensive to M. de Renal.
The coarseness of Valenod took offence at nothing, not even the frequency with which the little abbe Maslon would give the lie to him in public.
But in the middle of all this prosperity M. Valenod found it necessary to reassure himself by a number of petty acts of insolence on the score of the crude truths which he well realised that everybody was justified in addressing to him.
His activity had redoubled since the fears which the visit of M. Appert had left him.
He had made three journeys to Besancon. He wrote several letters by each courier; he sent others by unknown men who came to his house at nightfall.
Perhaps he had been wrong in securing the dismissal of the old cure Chelan. For this piece of vindictiveness had resulted in his being considered an extremely malicious man by several pious women of good birth.
Besides, the rendering of this service had placed him in absolute dependence on M. the Grand Vicar de Frilair from whom he received some strange commissions.
He had reached this point in his intrigues when he had yielded to the pleasure of writing an anonymous letter, and thus increasing his embarrassment.
His wife declared to him that she wanted to have Julien in her house; her vanity was intoxicated with the idea.
Such being his position M. Valenod imagined in advance a decisive scene with his old colleague M. de Renal.
The latter might address to him some harsh words, which he would not mind much; but he might write to Besancon and even to Paris.
Some minister's cousin might suddenly fall down on Verrieres and take over the workhouse.
Valenod thought of coming to terms with the Liberals. It was for that purpose that several of them had been invited to the dinner when Julien was present.
He would have obtained powerful support against the mayor but the elections might supervene, and it was only too evident that the directorship of the workhouse was inconsistent with voting on the wrong side.
Madame de Renal had made a shrewd guess at this intrigue, and while she explained it to Julien as he gave her his arm to pass from one shop to another, they found themselves gradually taken as far as the Cours de la Fidelite where they spent several hours nearly as tranquil as those at Vergy.
At the same time M. Valenod was trying to put off a definite crisis with his old patron by himself assuming the aggressive.
These tactics succeeded on this particular day, but aggravated the mayor's bad temper.
Never has vanity at close grips with all the harshness and meanness of a pettifogging love of money reduced a man to a more sorry condition than that of M. de Renal when he entered the tavern.
The children, on the other hand, had never been more joyful and more merry.
This contrast put the finishing touch on his pique.
"So far as I can see I am not wanted in my family," he said as he entered in a tone which he meant to be impressive.
For answer, his wife took him on one side and declared that it was essential to send Julien away.
The hours of happiness which she had just enjoyed had given her again the ease and firmness of demeanour necessary to follow out the plan of campaign which she had been hatching for a fortnight.
The finishing touch to the trouble of the poor mayor of Verrieres was the fact that he knew that they joked publicly in the town about his love for cash.