When they separated at midnight, his pessimism made him think that he enjoyed Madame Derville’s contempt, and that probably he stood no better with Madame de Rênal.
Feeling in a very bad temper and very humiliated, Julien did not sleep. He was leagues away from the idea of giving up all intriguing and planning, and of living from day to day with Madame de Rênal, and of being contented like a child with the happiness brought by every day.
He racked his brains inventing clever manœuvres, which an instant afterwards he found absurd, and, to put it shortly, was very unhappy when two o’clock rang from the castle clock.
The noise woke him up like the cock’s crow woke up St. Peter. The most painful episode was now timed to begin—he had not given a thought to his impertinent proposition, since the moment when he had made it and it had been so badly received.
“I have told her that I will go to her at two o’clock,” he said to himself as he got up, “I may be inexperienced and coarse, as the son of a peasant naturally would be. Madame Derville has given me to understand as much, but at any rate, I will not be weak.”
Julien had reason to congratulate himself on his courage, for he had never put his self-control to so painful a test. As he opened his door, he was trembling to such an extent that his knees gave way under him, and he was forced to lean against the wall.
He was without shoes; he went and listened at M. de Rênal’s door, and could hear his snoring. He was disconsolate, he had no longer any excuse for not going to her room. But, Great Heaven! What was he to do there? He had no plan, and even if he had had one, he felt himself so nervous that he would have been incapable of carrying it out.
Eventually, suffering a thousand times more than if he had been walking to his death, he entered the little corridor that led to Madame de Rênal’s room. He opened the door with a trembling hand and made a frightful noise.
There was light; a night light was burning on the mantelpiece. He had not expected this new misfortune. As she saw him enter, Madame de Rênal got quickly out of bed. “Wretch,” she cried. There was a little confusion. Julien forgot his useless plans, and turned to his natural rôle. To fail to please so charming a woman appeared to him the greatest of misfortunes. His only answer to her reproaches was to throw himself at her feet while he kissed her knees. As she was speaking to him with extreme harshness, he burst into tears.
When Julien came out of Madame de Rênal’s room some hours afterwards, one could have said, adopting the conventional language of the novel, that there was nothing left to be desired. In fact, he owed to the love he had inspired, and to the unexpected impression which her alluring charms had produced upon him, a victory to which his own clumsy tactics would never have led him.