Will that be enough for you?"
Some time afterwards, Julien received a letter in an unknown writing, and bearing the Chelon postmark. He found in it a draft on a Besancon merchant, and instructions to present himself at Paris without delay.
The letter was signed in a fictitious name, but Julien had felt a thrill in opening it. A leaf of a tree had fallen down at his feet. It was the agreed signal between himself and the abbe Pirard.
Within an hour's time, Julien was summoned to the Bishop's Palace, where he found himself welcomed with a quite paternal benevolence.
My lord quoted Horace and at the same time complimented him very adroitly on the exalted destiny which awaited him in Paris in such a way as to elicit an explanation by way of thanks.
Julien was unable to say anything, simply because he did not know anything, and my Lord showed him much consideration.
One of the little priests in the bishopric wrote to the mayor, who hastened to bring in person a signed passport, where the name of the traveller had been left in blank.
Before midnight of the same evening, Julien was at Fouque's. His friend's shrewd mind was more astonished than pleased with the future which seemed to await his friend.
"You will finish up," said that Liberal voter, "with a place in the Government, which will compel you to take some step which will be calumniated.
It will only be by your own disgrace that I shall have news of you.
Remember that, even from the financial standpoint, it is better to earn a hundred louis in a good timber business, of which one is his own master, than to receive four thousand francs from a Government, even though it were that of King Solomon."
Julien saw nothing in this except the pettiness of spirit of a country bourgeois.
At last he was going to make an appearance in the theatre of great events.
Everything was over-shadowed in his eyes by the happiness of going to Paris, which he imagined to be populated by people of intellect, full of intrigues and full of hypocrisy, but as polite as the Bishop of Besancon and the Bishop of Agde.
He represented to his friend that he was deprived of any free choice in the matter by the abbe Pirard's letter.'
The following day he arrived at Verrieres about noon. He felt the happiest of men for he counted on seeing Madame de Renal again.
He went first to his protector the good abbe Chelan.
He met with a severe welcome.
"Do you think you are under any obligation to me?" said M. Chelan to him, without answering his greeting.
"You will take breakfast with me. During that time I will have a horse hired for you and you will leave Verrieres without seeing anyone."
"Hearing is obeying," answered Julien with a demeanour smacking of the seminary, and the only questions now discussed were theology and classical Latin.
He mounted his horse, rode a league, and then perceiving a wood and not seeing any one who could notice him enter, he plunged into it.
At sunset, he sent away the horse. Later, he entered the cottage of a peasant, who consented to sell him a ladder and to follow him with it to the little wood which commands the Cours de la Fidelite at Verrieres.
"I have been following a poor mutineer of a conscript ... or a smuggler," said the peasant as he took leave of him, "but what does it matter?
My ladder has been well paid for, and I myself have done a thing or two in that line."
The night was very black.
Towards one o'clock in the morning, Julien, laden with his ladder, entered Verrieres.
He descended as soon as he could into the bed of the stream, which is banked within two walls, and traverses M. de Renal's magnificent gardens at a depth of ten feet.
Julien easily climbed up the ladder.
"How will the watch dogs welcome me," he thought.
"It all turns on that."
The dogs barked and galloped towards him, but he whistled softly and they came and caressed him.
Then climbing from terrace to terrace he easily managed, although all the grills were shut, to get as far as the window of Madame de Renal's bedroom which, on the garden side, was only eight or six feet above the ground.
There was a little heart shaped opening in the shutters which Julien knew well.
To his great disappointment, this little opening was not illuminated by the flare of a little night-light inside.
"Good God," he said to himself.
"This room is not occupied by Madame de Renal.
Where can she be sleeping?
The family must be at Verrieres since I have found the dogs here, but I might meet M. de Renal himself, or even a stranger in this room without a light, and then what a scandal!"
The most prudent course was to retreat, but this idea horrified Julien.
"If it's a stranger, I will run away for all I'm worth, and leave my ladder behind me, but if it is she, what a welcome awaits me!
I can well imagine that she has fallen into a mood of penitence and the most exalted piety, but after all, she still has some remembrance of me, since she has written to me."
This bit of reasoning decided him.
With a beating heart, but resolved none the less to see her or perish in the attempt, he threw some little pebbles against the shutter. No answer.
He leaned his long ladder beside the window, and himself knocked on the shutter, at first softly, and then more strongly.
"However dark it is, they may still shoot me," thought Julien.
This idea made the mad adventure simply a question of bravery.
"This room is not being slept in to-night," he thought, "or whatever person might be there would have woken up by now. So far as it is concerned, therefore, no further precautions are needed. I must only try not to be heard by the persons sleeping in the other rooms."
He descended, placed his ladder against one of the shutters, climbed up again, and placing his hand through the heart-shaped opening, was fortunate enough to find pretty quickly the wire which is attached to the hook which closed the shutter.
He pulled this wire. It was with an ineffable joy that he felt that the shutter was no longer held back, and yielded to his effort.