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in a manner which astonished even M. de
Rênal.
    'I am here, young gentlemen,'
he said to them as he wound up his address, 'to teach you Latin. You
know what it means to say your lessons. Here is the Holy Bible,' he
went on, showing them a pocket-sized volume bound in black. 'More
specifically it is the story of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the part we
call the New Testament. I shall often have you say your lessons, so
now you take me through mine.'
    Adolphe, the eldest of the three children, had taken the book.
    'Open it up--at random,' Julien continued, 'and give me the first
word of any verse. I shall recite the Holy Book, which we all must
live by, word for word until you stop me.'
    Adolphe opened the book and read out a word, and Julien recited the
whole page as fluently as if he had been speaking his native tongue.
M. de Rênal gazed at his wife in triumph. The children, seeing their
parents' astonishment, were looking on wide-eyed. A servant came to
the drawing-room door, and still Julien went on speaking Latin. The
servant stood stockstill at first, and then vanished. Soon the
mistress's chambermaid and the cook appeared at the door; by then
Adolphe had already opened the book in eight different places, and
Julien was still reciting with the same fluency.
    'Bless my soul! there's a fine young priest for you!' exclaimed the cook, who was a good-hearted and very pious girl.
    M. de Rênal's self-esteem was bothering him. Far from thinking of
putting the tutor to the test, he was wholly engrossed in racking his
brains for a few words of Latin. He eventually managed to bring out a
line of Horace. Julien's only Latin was the Bible. He replied with a
frown: 'The sacred
    -35-

ministry which is my calling forbids me to read so profane a poet.'
    M. de Rênal quoted a fair number of lines purportedly from Horace. He
told his children all about Horace, but the children were so struck
with admiration that they scarcely paid any attention to what he was
saying. They were gazing at Julien.
    As the servants were still at the door, Julien thought it right to prolong the ordeal.
    'Now,' he said to the youngest of the children, ' Master Stanislas-Xavier must also give me a passage from the Holy Book.'
    Little Stanislas, bursting with pride, read out the first word of a
verse as best he could, and Julien recited the whole page. To complete
M. de Rênal's triumph, while Julien was in the midst of reciting, in
came M. Valenod, the owner of the fine Normandy cobs, and M. Charcot
de Maugiron, the subprefect * of the district. This scene earned Julien his title of sir: even the servants did not dare withhold it from him.
    That evening the whole of Verrières flocked to M. de Rênal's house to
see the wonder. Julien replied to everyone in gloomy tones which
discouraged familiarity. His fame spread so fast through the town that
a few days later M. de Rênal, fearful of losing him to someone else,
invited him to sign an undertaking for two years.
    'No, sir,' replied Julien coldly, 'if you wanted to dismiss me, I
should be obliged to leave. An undertaking which is binding on me
without putting you under any obligation is not equitable, and I
cannot accept it.'
    Julien handled
matters so skilfully that less than a month after his arrival in the
house, he was even respected by M. de Rênal himself. As the priest was
on bad terms with both M. de Rênal and M. Valenod, there was no one
to betray Julien's former passion for Napoleon, and he never spoke of
him but with horror.
    -36-

CHAPTER 7
Elective affinities *
Their only way of touching a heart is to wound it. MODERN AUTHOR
    THE children adored him, but he did not like them at all: his mind
was on other things. Whatever the little rascals did, he never lost
his patience. He was a good tutor to them--cold, fair, imperturbable
and yet much loved, because his arrival had somehow dispelled the
boredom in the house. For his part he felt nothing but hatred and