17 For ecus, a coin worth three francs in the nineteenth century.
Chapter Three: A Priest
eyes of a Parisian such unspoiled charm, as innocent as it was lively, might even have seemed suggestive of a sweet sensuality. Had she been told this was the sort of effect she produced, Madame de Rênal would have been deeply ashamed. She had never in her life been tempted either to flirtation or any manner of affected behavior. Monsieur Valenod, the wealthy director of the Pauper's Bureau, was said to have tried making advances to her, quite without success, which threw her virtue into high relief, for he was a tall young man, strongly built, with a florid face and great black whiskers—one of those coarse creatures, shameless and loud, that they call, in the provinces, good fellows. Madame de Rênal, terribly shy and equally moody, was above all else disturbed at Monsieur Valenod's incessant moving about, and the blaring of his voice. Her antipathy to what Verrières called pleasure had gotten her a reputation for snobbishness. No such thing had ever crossed her mind, but she'd been perfectly happy to see fewer and fewer townsfolk calling at her house. Nor should we hide the fact that, in the eyes of the town's ladies, she was an outright fool, since with not the slightest regard for proper management of her husband, she passed over the loveliest opportunities for buying beautiful hats from Paris or Besançon. But if they just let her wander about in her fine garden, she never complained. This was, in short, an artless soul who had never so much as thought of passing judgment on her husband and admitting to herself that he bored her. It seemed to her, though not in so many words, that no relationship between husband and wife could be any better. She was especially fond of Monsieur de Rênal when he spoke to her about his plans for their children, the first of whom he meant to make a soldier, the second a judge, and the third a priest. That is, she found Monsieur de Rênal less boring than any other man she knew. Nor was this marital opinion an irrational one. His Honor the Mayor of Verrières owed his reputation for wit and, above all, for good breeding to half a dozen jokes he had inherited from an uncle. Old Captain de Rênal, before the Revolution, had served in an infantry regiment commanded by the Duke d'Orléans, 18 and when he'd been in Paris had been entertained in the prince's drawing rooms. There, he had seen Madame de Montesson,19 the celebrated Madame de Genlis, and Monsieur Ducrest, who had redesigned the Royal Palace.20 These personages kept popping up, over and over, in Monsieur de Rênal's stories. But little by little this echo of events exceedingly ticklish in the telling became laborsome for him, and after a time he repeated his anecdotes about the House of Orléans only on great occasions. Besides,