Minor EventsThen there were sighs, the deeper for suppression, And stolenglances, sweeter for the theft, And burning blushes, though for notransgression.

　　Don Juan, I. 74The angelic sweetness which Madame de Renal derived from her owncharacter as well as from her present happiness was interrupted onlywhen she happened to think of her maid Elisa. This young woman received a legacy, went to make her confession to the cure Chelan, and revealed to him her intention to marry Julien. The cure was genuinely delighted at his friend's good fortune; but his surprise was great when Julien informed him with a resolute air that Miss Elisa's offer could not beaccepted.

　　'Pay good heed, my son, to what is taking place in your heart,' said thecure, frowning; 'I congratulate you on your vocation, if it is to it alonethat must be ascribed your scorn of a more than adequate provision. Forfifty-six years and more have I been cure at Verrieres, and yet, so far asone can see, I am going to be deprived. This distresses me, albeit I havean income of eight hundred livres. I tell you of this detail in order thatyou may not be under any illusion as to what is in store for you in thepriestly calling. If you think of paying court to the men in power, youreternal ruin is assured. You may make your fortune, but you will have toinjure the poor and needy, flatter the Sub-Prefect, the Mayor, the important person, and minister to his passions: such conduct, which in theworld is called the art of life, may, in a layman, be not wholly incompatible with salvation; but in our calling, we have to choose; we must makeour fortune either in this world or in the next, there is no middle way.

　　Go, my dear friend, reflect, and come back in three days' time with a definite answer. I am sorry to see underlying your character, a smoulderingardour which does not suggest to my mind the moderation and complete renunciation of earthly advantages necessary in a priest; I augur wellfrom your intelligence; but, allow me to tell you,' the good cure went on,with tears in his eyes, 'in the calling of a priest, I shall tremble for yoursalvation.'

　　Julien was ashamed of his emotion; for the first time in his life, he sawhimself loved; he wept for joy, and went to hide his tears in the greatwoods above Verrieres.

　　'Why am I in this state?' he asked himself at length; 'I feel that I wouldgive my life a hundred times over for that good Father Chelan, and yethe has just proved to me that I am no better than a fool. It is he above allthat I have to deceive, and he sees through me. That secret ardour ofwhich he speaks is my plan for making my fortune. He thinks me unfitto be a priest, at the very moment when I imagined that the sacrifice ofan income of fifty louis was going to give him the most exalted idea ofmy piety and my vocation.

　　'For the future,' Julien continued, 'I shall rely only upon those elementsof my character which I have tested. Who would ever have said that Ishould find pleasure in shedding tears? That I should love the man whoproves to me that I am nothing more than a fool?'

　　Three days later, Julien had found the pretext with which he shouldhave armed himself from the first; this pretext was a calumny, but whatof that? He admitted to the cure, after much hesitation, that a reasonwhich he could not explain to him, because to reveal it would injure athird party, had dissuaded him from the first from the projected marriage. This was tantamount to an indictment of Elisa's conduct. M.

　　Chelan detected in his manner a fire that was wholly mundane, and verydifferent from that which should have inspired a young Levite.

　　'My friend,' he appealed to him again, 'be an honest yeoman, educatedand respected, rather than a priest without a vocation.'

　　Julien replied to these fresh remonstrances extremely well, so far aswords went; he hit upon the expressions which a fervent young seminarist would have employed; but the tone in which he uttered them, the ill-concealed fire that smouldered in his eyes alarmed M. Chelan.

　　We need not augur ill for Julien's future; he hit upon the correct formof words of a cunning and prudent hypocrisy. That is not bad at his age.

　　As for his tone and gestures, he lived among country folk; he had beendebarred from seeing the great models. In the sequel, no sooner had hebeen permitted to mix with these gentlemen than he became admirableas well in gesture as in speech.

　　 Madame de Renal was surprised that her maid's newly acquired fortune had not made the girl more happy; she saw her going incessantly tothe cure's, and returning with tears in her eyes; finally Elisa spoke to hermistress of her marriage.

　　Madame de Renal believed herself to have fallen ill; a sort of fever prevented her enjoying any sleep; she was alive only when she had hermaid or Julien before her eyes. She could think of nothing but them andthe happiness they would find in their married life. The poverty of thesmall house in which people would be obliged to live, with an income offifty louis, portrayed itself to her in enchanting colours. Julien might verywell become a lawyer at Bray, the Sub-Prefecture two leagues from Verrieres; in that event she would see something of him.

　　Madame de Renal sincerely believed that she was going mad; she saidso to her husband, and finally did fall ill. That evening, as her maid waswaiting upon her, she noticed that the girl was crying. She loathed Elisaat that moment, and had spoken sharply to her; she begged the girl's pardon. Elisa's tears increased; she said that if her mistress would allow it,she would tell her the whole tale of her distress.

　　'Speak,' replied Madame de Renal.

　　'Well, the fact is, Ma'am, he won't have me; wicked people must havespoken evil of me to him, and he believes them.'

　　'Who won't have you?' said Madame de Renal, scarcely able tobreathe.

　　'And who could it be, Ma'am, but M. Julien?' the maid replied throughher sobs. 'His Reverence has failed to overcome his resistance; for HisReverence considers that he ought not to refuse a decent girl, just because she has been a lady's maid. After all, M. Julien's own father is nobetter than a carpenter; and he himself, how was he earning his livingbefore he came to Madame's?'

　　Madame de Renal had ceased to listen; surfeit of happiness had almostdeprived her of the use of her reason. She made the girl repeat to herseveral times the assurance that Julien had refused in a positive manner,which would not permit of his coming to a more reasonable decisionlater on.

　　'I wish to make a final effort,' she said to her maid. 'I shall speak to M.

　　Julien.'

　　 Next day after luncheon, Madame de Renal gave herself the exquisitesensation of pleading her rival's cause, and of seeing Elisa's hand andfortune persistently refused for an hour on end.

　　Little by little Julien abandoned his attitude of studied reserve, andended by making spirited answers to the sound arguments advanced byMadame de Renal. She could not hold out against the torrent of happiness which now poured into her heart after all those days of despair. Shefound herself really ill. When she had come to herself, and was comfortably settled in her own room, she asked to be left alone. She was in astate of profound astonishment.

　　'Can I be in love with Julien?' she asked herself at length.

　　This discovery, which at any other time would have filled her with remorse and with a profound agitation, was no more to her than a singularspectacle, but one that left her indifferent. Her heart, exhausted by allthat she had just undergone, had no sensibility left to place at the serviceof her passions.

　　Madame de Renal tried to work, and fell into a deep sleep; when sheawoke, she was less alarmed than she should have been. She was toohappy to be able to take anything amiss. Artless and innocent as she was,this honest provincial had never tormented her soul in an attempt towring from it some little sensibility to some novel shade of sentiment ordistress. Entirely absorbed, before Julien came, in that mass of workwhich, outside Paris, is the lot of a good wife and mother, Madame deRenal thought about the passions, as we think about the lottery: a certaindisappointment and a happiness sought by fools alone.

　　The dinner bell rang; Madam............