"What was she doing there?"
"Stealing some sweets or else spying on us," said Madame de Renal with complete indifference, "but luckily I found a pie and a big loaf of bread."
"But what have you got there?" said Julien pointing to the pockets of her apron.
Madame de Renal had forgotten that they had been filled with bread since dinner.
Julien clasped her in his arms with the most lively passion. She had never seemed to him so beautiful.
"I could not meet a woman of greater character even at Paris," he said confusedly to himself.
She combined all the clumsiness of a woman who was but little accustomed to paying attentions of this kind, with all the genuine courage of a person who is only afraid of dangers of quite a different sphere and quite a different kind of awfulness.
While Julien was enjoying his supper with a hearty appetite and his sweetheart was rallying him on the simplicity of the meal, the door of the room was suddenly shaken violently.
It was M. de Renal.
"Why have you shut yourself in?" he cried to her.
Julien had only just time to slip under the sofa.
On any ordinary day Madame de Renal would have been upset by this question which was put with true conjugal harshness; but she realised that M. de Renal had only to bend down a little to notice Julien, for M. de Renal had flung himself into the chair opposite the sofa which Julien had been sitting in one moment before.
Her headache served as an excuse for everything.
While her husband on his side went into a long-winded account of the billiards pool which he had won at Casino, "yes, to be sure a nineteen franc pool," he added. She noticed Julien's hat on a chair three paces in front of them.
Her self-possession became twice as great, she began to undress, and rapidly passing one minute behind her husband threw her dress over the chair with the hat on it.
At last M. de Renal left.
She begged Julien to start over again his account of his life at the Seminary.
"I was not listening to you yesterday all the time you were speaking, I was only thinking of prevailing on myself to send you away."
She was the personification of indiscretion.
They talked very loud and about two o'clock in the morning they were interrupted by a violent knock at the door.
It was M. de Renal again.
"Open quickly, there are thieves in the house!" he said.
"Saint Jean found their ladder this morning."
"This is the end of everything," cried Madame de Renal, throwing herself into Julien's arms.
"He will kill both of us, he doesn't believe there are any thieves.
I will die in your arms, and be more happy in my death than I ever was in my life."
She made no attempt to answer her husband who was beginning to lose his temper, but started kissing Julien passionately.
"Save Stanislas's mother," he said to her with an imperious look.
"I will jump down into the courtyard through the lavatory window, and escape in the garden; the dogs have recognised me.
Make my clothes into a parcel and throw them into the garden as soon as you can.
In the meanwhile let him break the door down.
But above all, no confession, I forbid you to confess, it is better that he should suspect rather than be certain."
"You will kill yourself as you jump!" was her only answer and her only anxiety.
She went with him to the lavatory window; she then took sufficient time to hide his clothes.
She finally opened the door to her husband who was boiling with rage.
He looked in the room and in the lavatory without saying a word and disappeared.
Julien's clothes were thrown down to him; he seized them and ran rapidly towards the bottom of the garden in the direction of the Doubs.
As he was running he heard a bullet whistle past him, and heard at the same time the report of a gun.
"It is not M. de Renal," he thought, "he's far too bad a shot."
The dogs ran silently at his side, the second shot apparently broke the paw of one dog, for he began to whine piteously.
Julien jumped the wall of the terrace, did fifty paces under cover, and began to fly in another direction.
He heard voices calling and had a distinct view of his enemy the servant firing a gun; a farmer also began to shoot away from the other side of the garden. Julien had already reached the bank of the Doubs where he dressed himself.
An hour later he was a league from Verrieres on the Geneva road.
"If they had suspicions," thought Julien, "they will look for me on the Paris road." _____
CHAPTER XXXI
THE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY _____
O rus quando ego te aspiciam?—Horace _____
"You've no doubt come to wait for the Paris mail, Monsieur," said the host of an inn where he had stopped to breakfast.
"To-day or to-morrow, it matters little," said Julien.
The mail arrived while he was still posing as indifferent.