Julien Dumont was just about the age of Annette, between twenty-nine and thirty years old. Of middling height, with a slight stoop, a rather sad face and one that would have been unattractive without the fine, brown, gentle, serious eyes that were humbly caressing when one overcame their shyness, a bony forehead, with a depression in the middle, a big nose, pronounced cheek-bones, a short black beard, an affectionate mouth that was concealed under a very long moustache—it was Julien's almost invariable habit to conceal whatever was least ugly about him—the dull, old-ivory complexion of a man who has been nourished more by books than by sunlight. A face that lacked neither intelligence nor goodness, but was rather depressed and languid, a face that life and the passions had not yet marked. In his whole appearance there was something walled-in, something despondent.
He was more ingenuous and inexperienced than Annette, who was still a good deal so herself. For, in spite of her brief experience, an experience that had been more violent than extensive, she did not know very much about the world of love. It is true that the intuition she owed to her father and her talks with Sylvie, which sometimes quite equalled those of the Queen of Navarre, had not left her ignorant of anything. But the lesson is badly learned which the heart has not studied at its own expense. Words are not of the same stuff as reality. And one sometimes fails to recognize what one has read about when one meets it in life. Annette, who had been well taught, had almost everything to learn. Julien had to learn everything.
He had lived without love. We hesitate in France to speak of "innocents" of this kind: they provoke the easy pleasantries of an intelligent race that does not vary to any great extent in the forms of its wit. There are many of these innocents. Whether it is the result of religious scruples, or moral puritanism, or a deep-seated and sometimes unwholesome timidity, or (and this is most frequently the case) an overwhelming burden of work that absorbs their years of youth, a life of poverty, toil, a repugnance for vulgar love affairs, a respect for the future, for the one who is coming (who is not coming)—in every case, no doubt, a certain cold-bloodedness lies at the bottom of their attitude. The Nordic heart is slow to awaken, though this may mean, not that the passions are going to lack force in the future, but merely that they are gathering and being held in reserve. There are many of these innocents, and the happy young people about them pay no attention to them. Innocents are left empty-handed; they are left out of everything. Julien knew scarcely anything about life except through his intelligence.
The child of a bourgeois family, poor, laborious, which included only his two parents, the father an obscure professor who had worked himself to death, the mother devoted to her son, who returned the devotion, deeply religious, a practising Catholic, a believer, with liberal ideas, an unbroken, monotonous life of labor, coldly illumined by the severe joy of conscience and habit, with no interest in politics, a distaste for every sort of public activity, a profound love of the hidden, inner, domestic life, he was a truly honest, modest soul, with a sense of the value of the strong, humble virtues. And deep down in his heart was a flower of poetry.
He was an assistant teacher of science at a lycée. He had known Annette years before at the University, when they were twenty. From the very first he had been attracted by her. But Annette, who was rich at that time, popular, radiant with youth and happy egoism, carelessly distant, intimidated Julien. Her bolder companions assumed with her the place that he would have liked to take. He envied them, but he did not try to rival them; he considered himself inferior, ugly, awkward, ill-dressed; he was unable to express himself and gave a false idea of his intelligence and his sincerity. The sense of his physical uncouthness paralysed him all the more because he was susceptible to beauty, and Annette inspired in him an unexpressed emotion. For he thought her beautiful; unlike his companions who paid court to her, he did not have a sufficiently free mind to observe cavalierly the imperfections that accompanied her attractions, the strongly marked eyebrows, the prominent eyes, the short nose. He did not see these details. But he alone of all these young men grasped the harmony of this living form, he alone understood it; for, although most people stop at the mere external pattern, every form expresses an inner meaning. Julien did not separate in his own mind Annette's eyes, her forehead, her heavy eyebrows from her energy of character and vigorous mentality. He saw her from a distance, simply, summarily; but he saw her truly, more truly, at this first glance, than when he came nearer and tried to know her better. He was one of those far-sighted spirits that are embarrassed at close range. Sometimes they have genius and stumble at every step.
Julien and Annette happened to meet again one morning in the great windowed hall on the first floor of the Library of Sainte-Geneviève. It was nearly ten years since they had seen each other, and Julien had prudently avoided thinking of the image that rose before him to-day. He lifted his eyes from his book. On the other side of the table, a few steps away, he caught sight of her reading. Over her beautiful auburn hair was a fur toque; her cloak was thrown back from her shoulders. (It was still winter, though Easter was approaching; and the hall, into which the icy air of the square filtered through the great windows, was never warm enough. Julien had kept his own coat-collar turned up, but she, with her neck exposed, did not feel the cold.) With one elbow on the table and her chin resting on the back of her hand, she had the familiar attitude which he had seen so long ago, her brow bending forward, her blond eyebrows knit, and the eyes running down the page, while she nibbled the end of her pencil. He felt again as he had felt at twenty. But it did not occur to him to get up and speak to her.
In spite of the ardor with which she had applied herself to reading, as she applied herself to everything, Annette's mind was still pursuing more than one single thought. The ideas she had come to find in a book, and that really attracted her, rarely presented themselves without a procession of images which had very little in common among themselves. She drove them away; but, as moment followed moment, the indiscreet images came back and knocked at the door. The most intellectual woman never completely forgets herself in what she is reading; the current within her is too strong. Annette interrupted her reading to open the flood-gate for a moment.
As she thus stopped, casting about her a rather troubled glance, her eye encountered that of Julien: it was fixed upon her. The image of Julien seemed to her a part of what was passing through her mind. Then, suddenly awakening—as when, in the morning, on her pillow, she found herself all at once in the midst of life—she rose gaily and stretched out her hand to him across the table.
Julien, who was embarrassed, awkwardly went over and sat down beside her. They began to talk. Julien said little. He was stunned by this unexpected pleasure. Annette took everything into her own hands. She was delighted; a happy past reappeared before her. Julien played a very minor part in this: he was a mere link in the chain, and as the figures of the dance unfolded Julien was soon far away. But he thought he still saw himself in Annette's laughing eyes, and in his confusion he scarcely knew what he was saying to her in reply. He did his best (the clumsy soul!) to conceal the admiration she aroused in him. She still seemed beautiful to him, more beautiful than ever, but closer, more human, somehow new. . . . In what way? He knew nothing about her; the last thing he had heard was the death of her father six years before. He lived a solitary life; the gossip of Paris never reached him. . . . He asked if Annette was still living in the Boulogne house.
"What, don't you know? It's a long time since I moved away from there. Yes, they put me out of it."