I
The little town of P.... is built on a hill. At the foot of the old ramparts runs a deep brook, the Chanteclair, doubtless so named from the crystalline sound of its limpid waters. When one arrives by the Versailles road, one crosses the Chanteclair at the south gate of the city, over a stone bridge with a single arch, of which the broad parapets, low and rounded, serve as benches for all the old people of the suburbs. Opposite, rises Beau-Soleil Street, at the end of which is a silent square, Quatre-Femmes, paved with huge cobbles and invaded by a thickset weed which makes it green as a meadow. The houses sleep. Every half hour, the dragging step of a passer-by starts a dog barking behind a stable-door, and the one excitement in the square is the regular appearance, twice a day, of officers who go to their table d'hôte in Beau-Soleil Street.
In the house of a gardener, to the left, lived Julien Michon. The gardener had rented him a large room, on the first floor; and, as the landlord occupied the other side of the house, facing his garden, Julien was left to himself. Having his own private entrance and stairway, he already lived, although only twenty-five years of age, like a retired bourgeois of small means.
The young man had lost his father and his mother while very young. An uncle had sent the child to a boarding-school. Then, the uncle died, and Julien had been filling a position as clerk in the post-office for the past five years. His salary was fifteen hundred francs, without any hope of ever getting more. But he could economize on that, and he did not imagine a larger or a happier life than his.
Tall, strong, bony, Julien had large hands that seemed in his way.
He felt himself to be ugly, with his square head left in a sketchy state as if roughly modeled by an indifferent sculptor. And that made him timid, especially in the presence of young women. His awkwardness engendered a startled attitude of mind, and a morbid desire for mediocrity and seclusion. He seemed resigned to grow old thus, without a comrade, without a love affair, with his tastes of a cloistered monk.
And that life did not weigh heavily upon his broad shoulders. Julien was very happy. He had a calm, transparent soul. His daily existence, with its fixed rules, was serenity itself. In the morning, he went to his office, peacefully took up the work left off the preceding day; then lunched on a small loaf, and continued his work. Afterwards, he dined, he went to bed and slept. The next day, the sun brought with it the same routine.
On holidays, he would go off on a tramp all alone, happily reeling off the miles, and returning broken with fatigue.
He had never been seen in the company of a petticoat, in the evenings on the ramparts. The working girls of P...., sharp-tongued wantons, had ended by leaving him alone, after seeing him, on several occasions, stand before them almost suffocated from embarrassment, and taking their laughs of encouragement for mockery.
Julien's paradise, the one place where he breathed freely, was his room. There only, he felt sheltered from the world. There, he straightened up; he laughed to himself; and, when he caught sight of himself in the mirror, he was surprised to find himself so young.