3 books to know Napoleonic Wars. Leo Tolstoy

something of your way of looking at men and affairs.’

      ‘What is your young man’s origin?’ said the Marquis.

      ‘He is said to be the son of a carpenter in our mountains, but I am inclined to believe that he is the natural son of some rich man. I have seen him receive an anonymous or pseudonymous letter containing a bill of exchange for five hundred francs.’

      ‘Ah! It is Julien Sorel,’ said the Marquis.

      ‘How do you know his name?’ asked the astonished abbe; and, as he was blushing at his own question:

      ‘That is what I am not going to tell you,’ replied the Marquis.

      ‘Very well!’ the abbe went on, ‘you might try making him your secretary, he has energy, and judgment; in short, it is an experiment worth trying.’

      ‘Why not?’ said the Marquis; ‘but would he be the sort of man to let his palm be greased by the Prefect of Police or by anyone else, to play the spy on me? That is my only objection.’

      Receiving favourable assurances from the abbe Pirard, the Marquis produced a note for one thousand francs:

      ‘Send this to Julien Sorel for his journey; tell him to come to me.’

      ‘One can see,’ said the abbe Pirard, ‘that you live in Paris! You are unaware of the tyranny that weighs upon us poor provincials, and especially upon priests who are not on good terms with the Jesuits. They will never allow Julien Sorel to leave, they will manage to cover themselves with the cleverest excuses, they will reply that he is ill, letters will have gone astray in the post,’ etc., etc.

      ‘One of these days I shall procure a letter from the Minister to the Bishop,’ said the Marquis.

      ‘I was forgetting one thing,’ said the abbe: ‘this young man, although of quite humble birth, has a proud heart, he will be of no use to you if his pride is offended; you will only make him stupid.’

      ‘I like that,’ said the Marquis, ‘I shall make him my son’s companion, will that do?’

      Some time after this, Julien received a letter in an unknown hand and bearing the postmark of Chalons, and found a draft upon a merchant in Besancon and instructions to proceed to Paris without delay. The letter was signed with an assumed name, but as he opened it Julien trembled: a leaf from a tree had fallen out at his feet; it was the signal arranged between him and the abbe Pirard.

      Within an hour, Julien was summoned to the Bishop’s Palace, where he found himself greeted with a wholly fatherly welcome. Interspersed with quotations from Horace, Monseigneur paid him, with regard to the exalted destiny that awaited him in Paris, a number of very neat compliments, which required an explanation if he were to express his thanks. Julien could say nothing, chiefly because he knew nothing, and Monseigneur showed a high regard for him. One of the minor clergy of the Palace wrote to the Mayor who made haste to appear in person bringing a passport already signed, but with a blank space for the name of the traveller.

      Before midnight, Julien was with Fouque, whose sober mind was more astonished than delighted by the future which seemed to be in store for his friend.

      ‘The end of it will be,’ said this Liberal elector, ‘a post under Government, which will oblige you to take some action that will be pilloried in the newspapers. It will be through your disgrace that I shall have news of you. Remember that, even financially speaking, it is better to earn one hundred louis in an honest trade in timber, where you are your own master, than to receive four thousand francs from a Government, were it that of King Solomon himself.’

      Julien saw no more in this than the pettiness of a rustic mind. He was at last going to appear on the stage of great events. The good fortune of going to Paris, which he peopled in his imagination with men of intelligence, great intriguers, great hypocrites, but as courteous as the Bishop of Besancon and the Bishop of Agde, eclipsed everything else in his eyes. He represented himself to his friend as deprived of his free will by the abbe Pirard’s letter.

      Towards noon on the following day he arrived in Verrieres the happiest of men, he reckoned upon seeing Madame de Renal again. He went first of all to his original protector, the good abbe Chelan. He met with a stern reception.

      ‘Do you consider that you are under any obligation to me?’ said M. Chelan, without acknowledging his greeting. ‘You will take luncheon with me, meanwhile another horse will be hired for you, and you will leave Verrieres, without seeing anyone.’

      ‘To hear is to obey,’ replied Julien, with the prim face of a seminarist; and there was no further discussion save of theology and Latin scholarship.

      He mounted his horse, rode a league, after which, coming upon a wood, with no one to see him enter it, he hid himself there. At sunset he sent the horse back. Later on, he entered the house of a peasant, who agreed to sell him a ladder, and to go with him, carrying the ladder, to the little wood that overhung the Cours de la Fidelite, in Verrieres.

      ‘We are a poor conscript deserting — or a smuggler,’ said the peasant, as he took leave of him, ‘but what do I care? My ladder is well paid for, and I myself have had to pass some awkward moments in my life.’

      The night was very dark. About one o’clock in the morning, Julien, carrying his ladder, made his way into Verrieres. He climbed down as soon as he could into the bed of the torrent, which ran through M. de Renal’s magnificent gardens at a depth of ten feet, and confined between walls. Julien climbed up easily by his ladder. ‘What sort of greeting will the watch-dogs give me?’ he wondered. ‘That is the whole question.’ The dogs barked, and rushed towards him; but he whistled softly, and they came and fawned upon him.

      Then climbing from terrace to terrace, although all the gates were shut, he had no difficulty in arriving immediately beneath the window of Madame de Renal’s bedroom, which, on the garden side, was no more than nine or ten feet above the ground.

      There was in the shutters a small opening in the shape of a heart, which Julien knew well. To his great dismay, this little opening was not lighted by the glimmer of a nightlight within.

      ‘Great God!’ he said to himself; ‘tonight, of all nights, this room is not occupied by Madame de Renal! Where can she be sleeping? The family are at Verrieres, since I found the dogs here; but I may in this room, without a light, come upon M. de Renal himself or a stranger, and then what a scandal!’

      The most prudent course was to retire; but the idea filled Julien with horror. ‘If it is a stranger, I shall make off as fast as my legs will carry me, leaving my ladder behind; but if it is she, what sort of welcome awaits me? She is steeped in repentance and the most extreme piety, I may be sure of that; but after all, she has still some memory of me, since she has just written to me.’ With this argument he made up his mind.

      His heart trembling, but determined nevertheless to see her or to perish, he flung a handful of gravel against the shutter; no reply. He placed his ladder against the wall by the side of the window and tapped himself on the shutter, softly at first then more loudly. ‘Dark as it is, they may fire a gun at me,’ thought Julien. This thought reduced his mad undertaking to a question of physical courage.

      ‘This room is unoccupied tonight,’ he thought, ‘or else whoever it is that is sleeping here is awake by this time. So there is no need for any further precaution here; all I need think of is not making myself heard by the people who are sleeping in the other rooms.’

      He stepped down, placed his ladder against one of the shutters, climbed up again and passing his hand through the heart-shaped opening, was fortunate in finding almost at once the wire fastened to the latch that closed the shutter. He pulled this wire; it was with an unspeakable joy that he felt that the shutter was no longer closed and was yielding to his efforts. ‘I must open it little by little and let her recognise my voice.’ He opened the shutter sufficiently to pass his head through the gap, repeating in a whisper: ‘It is a friend.’

      He made certain, by applying his ear, that nothing broke the profound silence in the room.