“It is unnecessary,” she went on lowering her head, “to mention this to my husband.”
“I may not be big, Madame, but I am not mean,” answered Julien, stopping, and drawing himself up to his full height, with his eyes shining with rage, “and this is what you have not realised sufficiently. I should be lower than a menial if I were to put myself in the position of concealing from M de. Rênal anything at all having to do with my money.”
Madame de Rênal was thunderstruck.
“The Mayor,” went on Julien, “has given me on five occasions sums of thirty-six francs since I have been living in his house. I am ready to show any account-book to M. de Rênal and anyone else, even to M. Valenod who hates me.”
As the result of this outburst, Madame de Rênal remained pale and nervous, and the walk ended without either one or the other finding any pretext for renewing the conversation. Julien’s proud heart had found it more and more impossible to love Madame de Rênal.
As for her, she respected him, she admired him, and she had been scolded by him. Under the pretext of making up for the involuntary humiliation which she had caused him, she indulged in acts of the most tender solicitude. The novelty of these attentions made Madame de Rênal happy for eight days. Their effect was to appease to some extent Julien’s anger. He was far from seeing anything in them in the nature of a fancy for himself personally.
“That is just what rich people are,” he said to himself—“they snub you and then they think they can make up for everything by a few monkey tricks.”
Madame de Rênal’s heart was too full, and at the same time too innocent, for her not too tell her husband, in spite of her resolutions not to do so, about the offer she had made to Julien, and the manner in which she had been rebuffed.
“How on earth,” answered M. de Rênal, keenly piqued, “could you put up with a refusal on the part of a servant,”—and, when Madame de Rênal protested against the word “Servant,” “I am using, madam, the words of the late Prince of Condé, when he presented his Chamberlains to his new wife. ‘All these people’ he said ‘are servants.’ I have also read you this passage from the Memoirs of Besenval, a book which is indispensable on all questions of etiquette. ‘Every person, not a gentleman, who lives in your house and receives a salary is your servant.’ I’ll go and say a few words to M. Julien and give him a hundred francs.”
“Oh, my dear,” said Madame De Rênal trembling, “I hope you won’t do it before the servants!”