Free The Red and the Black by Stendhal, Horace B. Samuel

this to my husband.”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œThe 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.
    â€œThat 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 to 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.
    â€œHow 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.”
    â€œOh, my dear,” said Madame de Rênal trembling, “I hope you won’t do it before the servants!”
    â€œYes, they might be jealous and rightly so,” said her husband as he took his leave, thinking of the greatness of the sum.
    Madame de Rênal fell on a chair almost fainting in her anguish. He is going to humiliate Julien, and it is my fault! She felt an abhorrence for her husband and hid her face in her hands. She resolved that henceforth she would never make any more confidences.
    When she saw Julien again she was trembling all over. Her chest was so cramped that she could not succeed in pronouncing a single word. In her embarrassment she took his hands and pressed them.
    â€œWell, my friend,” she said to him at last, “are you satisfied with my husband?”
    â€œHow could I be otherwise,” answered Julien, with a bitter smile, “he has given me a hundred francs.”
    Madame de Rênal looked at him doubtfully.
    â€œGive me your arm,” she said at last, with a courageous intonation that Julien had not heard before.
    She dared to go as far as the shop of the bookseller of Verrières, in spite of his awful reputation for Liberalism. In the shop she chose ten louis worth of books for a present for her sons. But these books were those which she knew Julien was wanting. She insisted on each child writing his name then and there in the bookseller’s shop in