Finally, Julien felt ashamed of his secret terror. "Am I going to play the coward," he said to himself: "_To Arms!_" This phrase, repeated so often in the old Surgeon-Major's battle stories, symbolized heroism to Julien. He got up rapidly and walked to M. de Rênal's house. As soon as he saw it twenty yards in front of him he was seized, in spite of his fine resolution, with an overwhelming timidity. The iron grill was open. He thought it was magnificent. He had to go inside. Julien was not the only person whose heart was troubled by his arrival in the house. The extreme timidity of Madame de Rênal was fluttered when she thought of this stranger whose functions would necessitate his coming between her and her children. She was accustomed to seeing her sons sleep in her own room. She had shed many tears that morning, when she had seen their beds carried into the apartment intended for the tutor. It was in vain that she asked her husband to have the bed of Stanislas-Xavier, the youngest, carried back into her room. Womanly delicacy was carried in Madame de Rênal to the point of excess. She conjured up in her imagination the most disagreeable personage, who was coarse, badly groomed and encharged with the duty of scolding her children simply because he happened to know Latin, and only too ready to flog her sons for their ignorance of that barbarous language. [1] The author was sub-lieutenant in the 6th Dragoons in 1800. CHAPTER VI ENNUI Non so piú cosa son Cosa facio. MOZART (_Figaro_). Madame de Rênal was going out of the salon by the folding window which opened on to the garden with that vivacity and grace which was natural to her when she was free from human observation, when she noticed a young peasant near the entrance gate. He was still almost a child, extremely pale, and looked as though he had been crying. He was in a white shirt and had under his arm a perfectly new suit of violet frieze. The little peasant's complexion was so white and his eyes were so soft, that Madame de Rênal's somewhat romantic spirit thought at first that it might be a young girl in disguise, who had come to ask some favour of the M. the Mayor. She took pity on this poor creature, who had stopped at the entrance of the door, and who apparently did not dare to raise its hand to the bell. Madame de Rênal approached, forgetting for the moment the bitter chagrin occasioned by the tutor's arrival. Julien, who was turned towards the gate, did not see her advance. He trembled when a soft voice said quite close to his ear: "What do you want here, my child." Julien turned round sharply and was so struck by Madame de Rênal's look, full of graciousness as it was, that up to a certain point he forgot to be nervous. Overcome by her beauty he soon forgot everything, even what he had come for. Madame de Rênal repeated her question.