21 Stendhal frequently used this biblical reference to describe a moment of awakening.
remorse which heightened their intensity, it was the notion of duty that gripped his attention. He was afraid of frightful remorse and of perpetual scorn, should he discard the ideal model he was intending to follow. In short, it was exactly what made Julien a superior being which kept him from enjoying the happiness that had come his way. He was like a young girl of sixteen, with a magnificent complexion, who before she goes to a ball is foolish enough to daub herself with rouge. Mortally afraid that Julien might indeed come as promised, Madame de Rênal had been in the clutch of cruel anxiety. Julien's tears and his despair profoundly upset her. Even when there was nothing left to refuse him, she pushed Julien away, her indignation very real, and then threw herself into his arms. There was no reason or consistency in her behavior. She saw herself damned for all eternity, and tried to hide hell's images from her eyes by endlessly caressing him. In a word, our hero's happiness was complete, not excluding even the burning response he had elicited from the woman—had he been able to enjoy it. Even Julien's departure did not stop the ecstasies that, in spite of herself, were shaking her, or the battles with remorse that tore her apart. "My God! Happiness—love—that's all there is to it?" This was Julien's first thought, as he came back to his room. He was in that state of shock and restless uncertainty into which souls fall, having just attained what they've so long craved. A soul accustomed to desiring now has nothing left to desire, but has not as yet acquired memories. Like a soldier newly returned from military review, Julien was busily examining all the details of his conduct. "Was there anything lacking, anything I owed it to myself to do? Did I play my role to the fullest?" And what role was that? Why, that of a man in the habit of brilliant performances with women. He turned his lip to hers, and with his hand Called back the tangles of her wandering hair. —Byron, Don Juan, Canto 1, Stanza 170 Luckily for Julien's glory, Madame de Rênal had been deeply upset, deeply astonished, to realize that the man who, in a flash, had become the whole world to her, was an idiot. As she was persuading him to leave, seeing dawn was near: "Oh God!" she said. "If my husband's heard anything, I'm lost." Having had the opportunity to prepare a few choice phrases, Julien called this one to mind: "Would you regret your life?" "Ah, very much, right at the moment. But I wouldn't regret having known you." Julien thought it better suited his dignity to leave her in broad daylight, with an infinite recklessness. The perpetual care he lavished on even the most minor aspects of his life, while indulging himself in the craziness of appearing to be an experienced man of the world, had a single advantage: when next he saw Madame de Rênal, at lunch, his conduct was a masterpiece of prudence. As for her, she was unable to look at him without blushing to her eyelids, but neither could she live for a second without looking at him. She was aware of the problem, and redoubled her efforts to conceal it. Julien looked at her once and once only. At first, Madame de Rênal was grateful for his prudence. Soon, seeing that this single glance would not be repeated, she was alarmed: "Doesn't he love me anymore?" she said to herself. "Alas, I'm surely too old for him. I'm ten years his senior."
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As they left the dining room for the garden, she squeezed Julien's hand. Startled by so extraordinary a sign of love, he looked at her passionately, for at lunch he had thought her wonderfully pretty, and when he'd kept his eyes lowered, he'd spent the time rehearsing her charms. His look soothed Madame de Rênal. It did not completely quiet her anxieties, but on the other hand her anxieties virtually wiped out the remorse she felt toward her husband. At lunch, her husband had noticed nothing. Not so Madame Derville, who believed her friend was on the point of succumbing. All through the day, her resolute and mordant friendship did not hold back, but spoke words of wisdom to Madame de Rênal, determined to show her, and in hideous colors, the dangers she was running. Madame de Rênal was burning to be alone with Julien; she wanted to ask him if he still loved her. For all the unchangeable sweetness of her nature, more than once she came close to telling Madame Derville exactly how anxious she was. In the garden that evening, Madame Derville managed things so well that she located herself between Madame de Rênal and Julien. Madame de Rênal, who'd been indulging in delightful anticipation of squeezing Julien's hand, and bringing it to her lips, could not so much as speak a word to him. Disappointment made her even more upset. Remorse began devouring her. She'd scolded Julien so harshly for his reckless visit, the night before, that she worried he would not come this night. She left the garden early, and settled herself in her room. But unable to bear her impatience, she went and put her ear to Julien's door. Despite the uncertainty and passion gnawing at her, she did not dare go in. That seemed to her the most degrading thing anyone could do (as the provincial proverb puts it). The servants were not all in bed. Prudence finally forced her to go back to her room. Two hours of waiting were, for her, two centuries of torture. But Julien was so faithful to what he called his duty that he'd never have failed to carry out the plan he'd formulated, point by careful point. Just as one o'clock was sounding, he made a stealthy escape from his room, sure that Monsieur de Rênal was deeply asleep, and came to Madame de Rênal. He found real pleasure in her love that day, since he was less concerned with the role he was supposed to be playing. He had eyes to see with, and ears that heard. What Madame de Rênal told him about her age helped put him at his ease. "Alas, I'm ten years older than you! How can you love me!" she repeated rather senselessly, and because it weighed on her. Julien had not thought of this misfortune, but he saw it was real, and forgot virtually all his fear of being laughed at. His stupid notion of being seen as an inferior lover, because of his inferior birth, also disappeared. And as Julien's ecstasy reassured his timid mistress, she began to recover both happiness and her capacity for thinking more clearly about her lover. Luckily, he had almost entirely lost, that night, the false assumption that had transmuted their rendezvous the night before into a victory rather than a delight. Had she been aware of his careful role-playing, that mournful discovery would have forever destroyed for her every possibility of happiness. All she could see was a faintly wistful effect caused by the disproportion in their ages. Although Madame de Rênal had paid no attention to speculation about love, it happens that differences in age, next to differences in wealth, are one of the great themes of provincial wit, whenever the conversation turns to matters of love. Nor was it more than a few days before Julien, restored by the ardor natural to his age, became a wildly passionate lover.
"I must admit," he told himself, "that hers is a soul of angelic goodness—and how could she be any prettier?" His notion of playing a role had very nearly vanished. In a moment of abandon, he had confessed to her all his anxieties. This intimate avowal carried to its very fullest the passion he had inspired. "So I've never actually had a lucky rival!" she said to herself, delighted. She was brave enough to ask about the picture, so important to him; he swore that the painting had portrayed a man. When Madame de Rênal was calm enough for reflection, she was no longer astonished that such happiness existed, and that she had ever doubted it. "Ah," she said to herself, "if only I had known Julien ten years ago, when I could still pass as pretty!" Julien had no such thoughts. Ambition was still his central passion: that was indeed his pleasure in possessing—he, such a poor creature, so unlucky, so despised—a woman as aristocratic as she was beautiful. His adoration of her, his ecstasies at the sight of his beloved's charms, finally reassured her, at least a little, about the difference in their ages. Had she possessed some of the sophistication a woman of thirty has long since come to enjoy, in any of the world's more civilized countries, she would have been quiveringly concerned about the durability of a love that apparently thrived only on astonishment and the raptures of vanity. When he forgot ambition, briefly, Julien was extravagantly pleased even by Madame de Rênal's hats and by her dresses. He could not get enough of the pleasures he took in her perfume. He opened her glass cabinet and spent hours on end admiring the beauty as well as the placement of everything he found. His beloved, leaning against him, watched him as he looked at her jewels and her frills and laces, the presents that, before a marriage, fill the wedding baskets set out on display. "I should have married a man like him!" Madame de Rênal sometimes thought. "What a burning soul! How ravishing life would be, with him!" Julien had never found himself so close to these awesome instruments of feminine artillery. "It's not possible," he said to himself, "that Paris could have anything more beautiful!" And then he could see nothing objectionable in his happiness. Quite often honest admiration, and his mistress's ecstasies, made him forget the empty theory that, early on in this relationship, had tied him into knots and made him very nearly ridiculous. There were moments when, despite his habitual hypocrisy, he discovered a wonderful sweetness in confiding to this noble lady, for whom he had so much admiration, his ignorance about all manner of society's little ways. His mistress's rank seemed to lift him equally high. As for Madame de Rênal, she found the sweetest and most moral of sensual pleasures in teaching him about this abundance of trifles—he, a young man of genius, widely regarded as someone who, one day, would go far. Even the deputy governor of the district, and Monsieur Valenod, did not hesitate to admire him; they struck her, because of that, as less stupid. Madame Derville could not have agreed, not at all. Depressed by what she thought she was seeing, and finding her wise advice hateful to a woman literally out of her mind, she left Vergy without any explanation—which, indeed, no one bothered to ask of her. Madame de Rênal shed a few tears, and soon realized that her happiness had vastly increased. With Madame Derville gone, she could spend almost the entire day alone with her lover. More and more, Julien as well gave himself up to the sweet society of his beloved, though when he spent too long alone with her Fouqué's fateful offer came to mind, upsetting him all over again. There were moments, during the first days of this new existence, when he, who had never loved, who had never been loved by anyone, took such delicious pleasure in being honest that, indeed, he very nearly confessed to Madame de Rênal the ambition which, until
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then, had been the absolute essence of his being. He would have liked to consult her about the strange attraction he felt for Fouqué's offer, but a small episode occurred which put an end to all candor. Chapter Seventeen: The First Deputy O, how this spring of love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day: Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, And by and by a cloud takes all away! —Two Gentlemen of Verona22 One evening at sunset, seated beside his beloved at the far side of the orchard, too distant for any interruption, he was daydreaming most profoundly. "Do such sweet moments," he wondered, "last forever?" Trying to find the right profession was an intense preoccupation; he regretted that great, fast-approaching misfortune that ends childhood and ruins the early years of young men without money. "Oh," he exclaimed, "God obviously sent Napoleon for the youth of France! Who can take his place? What will they do without him, those miserable ones—richer by far than me—who have precisely enough money to get themselves a good education, but not enough, at age twenty, to pay off the right people and push themselves into a career! Whatever we do," he added with a deep sigh, "this fateful, imperishable memory will forever keep us from being happy!" Suddenly he saw Madame de Rênal frowning. She took on a cold, disdainful air: that way of thinking seemed to her better suited to servants. Raised with the idea that she was extremely rich, it pleased her to assume that Julien had been, too. She loved him a thousand times more than life itself, and never gave a thought to money. Julien had no idea what she was thinking. Her frown brought him back to earth. He had enough presence of mind to be careful how he spoke, explaining to the noble lady seated so close beside him, on the grassy slope, that the words he'd just repeated were ones he'd heard on his visit to his friend, the timber merchant. This accounted for the profanity. "Well then! Don't have anything more to do with those people," said Madame de Rênal, not yet abandoning the cold look that, all of a sudden, had replaced her glances of the liveliest tenderness. Her frown, or rather the regret he felt for his own carelessness, was the first blow suffered by the illusion that had been sweeping him away. He said to himself: "She is good and sweet; her liking for me is strong; but she's been raised in the enemy camp—and they're quite right to be afraid of high-minded men with good educations, yet without the money to launch themselves on careers. What would become of them, these aristocrats, if we were allowed to fight them on equal terms! Me, for example: If I were mayor of Verrières, I'd be well meaning and honest, the way, at bottom, Monsieur de Rênal is! But how I'd sweep away Father Maslon and Monsieur Valenod, with all their thievish trickery! How justice would triumph in Verrières! It's not their ability that's stopping me. They bungle along, that's all they do." That day, Julien's happiness had been close to stability. All that was missing was for our hero to have the courage of honesty. He needed the courage to do battle, but right on the spot. Madame de Rênal had been stunned by Julien's words: upper-class people are always saying