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134 which he was rivetting on her that Julien had surmised rightly.

"What a genius he is to be so brilliantly diplomatic instead of succumbing to so real a misfortune," she thought. "He will go very far in the future! Alas, his successes will only make him forget me."

This little act of admiration for the man whom she adored quite cured her of her trouble.

She congratulated herself on her tactics. "I have not been unworthy of Julien," she said to herself with a sweet and secret pleasure.

M. de Rênal kept examining the second anonymous letter which the reader may remember was composed of printed words glued on to a paper verging on blue. He did not say a word for fear of giving himself away. "They still make fun of me in every possible way," said M. de Renal to himself, overwhelmed with exhaustion. "Still more new insults to examine and all the time on accouutaccount [sic] of my wife." He was on the point of heaping on her the coarsest insults He was barely checked by the prospects of the Besançon legacy. Consumed by the need of venting his feelings on something, he crumpled up the paper of the second anonymous letter and began to walk about with huge strides. He needed to get away from his wife. A few moments afterwards he came back to her in a quieter frame of mind.

"The thing is to take some definite line and send Julien away," she said immediately, "after all it is only a labourer's son. You will compensate him by a few crowns and besides he is clever and will easily manage to find a place, with M. Valenod for example, or with the sub-prefect De Maugiron who both have children. In that way you will not be doing him any wrong.…"

"There you go talking like the fool that you are," exclaimed M. de Rênal in a terrible voice. "How can one hope that a woman will show any good sense? You never bother yourself about common sense. How can you ever get to know anything? Your indifference and your idleness give you no energy except for hunting those miserable butterflies, which we are unfortunate to have in our houses."

Madame de Rênal let him speak and he spoke for a long time. He was working off his anger, to use the local expression.