He thanked heaven that he had not inflicted a mortal wound. “Astonishing,” he said to himself, “I thought that she had destroyed my future happiness for ever by her letter to M. de la Mole, and here am I, less than a fortnight after the date of that letter, not giving a single thought to all the things that engrossed me then. An income of two or three thousand francs, on which to live quietly in a mountain district, like Vergy.... I was happy then.... I did not realise my happiness.”
At other moments he would jump up from his chair. “If I had mortally wounded madame de Rênal, I would have killed myself.... I need to feel certain of that so as not to horrify myself.”
“Kill myself? That’s the great question,” he said to himself. “Oh, those judges, those fiends of red tape, who would hang their best citizen in order to win the cross.... At any rate, I should escape from their control and from the bad French of their insults, which the local paper will call eloquence.”
“I still have five or six weeks, more or less to live.... Kill myself. No, not for a minute,” he said to himself after some days, “Napoleon went on living.”
“Besides, I find life pleasant, this place is quiet, I am not troubled with bores,” he added with a smile, and he began to make out a list of the books which he wanted to order from Paris.
[1]Stendhal’s bad spelling is here reproduced.
[1]Stendhal’s bad spelling is here reproduced.
The tomb of a friend.—Sterne.
He heard a loud noise in the corridor. It was not the time when the gaoler usually came up to his prison. The osprey flew away with a shriek. The door opened, and the venerable curé Chélan threw himself into his arms. He was trembling all over and had his stick in his hands.
“Great God! Is it possible, my child—I ought to say monster?”
The good old man could not add a single word. Julien was afraid he would fall down. He was obliged to lead him to a chair. The hand of time lay heavy on this man who had once been so active. He seemed to Julien the mere shadow of his former self.
When he had regained his breath, he said, “It was only the day before yesterday that I received your letter from Strasbourg with your five hundred francs for the poor of Verrières. They brought it to me in the mountains at Liveru where I am living in retirement with my nephew Jean. Yesterday I learnt of the catastrophe.... Heavens, is it possible?” And the old man left off weeping. He did not seem to have any ideas left, but added mechanically, “You will have need of your five hundred francs, I will bring them back to you.”
“I need to see you, my father,” exclaimed Julien, really touched. “I have money, anyway.”
But he could not obtain any coherent answer. From time to time, M. Chélan shed some tears which coursed silently down his cheeks. He then looked at Julien, and was quite dazed when he saw him kiss his hands and carry them to his lips. That face which had once been so vivid, and which had once portrayed with such vigour the most noble emotions was now sunk in a perpetual apathy. A kind of peasant came soon to fetch the old man. “You must not fatigue him,” he said to Julien, who understood that he was the nephew. This visit left Julien plunged in a cruel unhappiness which found no vent in tears. Everything seemed to him gloomy and disconsolate. He felt his heart frozen in his bosom.
This moment was the cruellest which he had experienced since the crime. He had just seen death and seen it in all its ugliness. All his illusions about greatness of soul and nobility of character had been dissipated like a cloud before the hurricane.
This awful plight lasted several hours. After moral poisoning, physical remedies and champagne are necessary. Julien would have considered himself a coward to have resorted to them. “What a fool I am,” he exclaimed, towards the end of the horrible day that he had spent entirely in walking up and down his narrow turret. “It’s only, if I had been going to die like anybody else, that the sight of that poor old man would have had any right to have thrown me into this awful fit of sadness: but a rapid death in the flower of my age simply puts me beyond the reach of such awful senility.”
In spite of all his argumentation, Julien felt as touched as any weak-minded person would have been, and consequently felt unhappy as the result of the visit. He no longer had any element of rugged greatness, or any Roman virtue. Death appeared to him at a great height and seemed a less easy proposition.
“This is what I shall take for my thermometer,” he said to himself. “To-night I am ten degrees below the courage requisite for guillotine-point level. I had that courage this morning. Anyway, what does it matter so long as it comes back to me at the necessary moment?” This thermometer idea amused him and finally managed to distract him.
When he woke up the next day he was ashamed of the previous day. “My happiness and peace of mind are at stake.” He almost made up his mind to write to the Procureur-General to request that no one should be admitted to see him. “And how about Fouqué,” he thought? “If he takes it upon himself to come to Besançon, his grief will be immense.” It had perhaps been two months since he had given Fouqué a thought. “I was a great fool at Strasbourg. My thoughts did not go beyond my coat-collar. He was much engrossed by the memory of Fouqué, which left him more and more touched. He walked nervously about. Here I am, clearly twenty degrees below death point.... If this weakness increases, it will be better for me to kill myself. What joy for the abbé Maslon, and the Valenods, if I die like an usher.”
Fouqué arrived. The good, simple man, was distracted by grief. His one idea, so far as he had any at all, was to sell all he possessed in order to bribe the gaoler and secure Julien’s escape. He talked to him at length of M. de Lavalette’s escape.
“You pain me,” Julien said to him. “M. de Lavalette was innocent—I am guilty. Though you did not mean to, you made me think of the difference....”
“But is it true? What? were you going to sell all you possessed?” said Julien, suddenly becoming mistrustful and observant.
Fouqué was delighted at seeing his friend answer his obsessing idea, and detailed at length, and within a hundred francs, what he would get for each of his properties.
“What a sublime effort for a small country land-owner,” thought Julien. “He is ready to sacrifice for me the fruits of all the economies, and all the little semi-swindling tricks which I used to be ashamed of when I saw him practice them.”
“None of the handsome young people whom I saw in the Hôtel de la Mole, and who read René, would have any of his ridiculous weaknesses: but, except those who are very young and who have also inherited riches and are ignorant of the value of money, which of all those handsome Parisians would be capable of such a sacrifice?”
All Fouqué’s mistakes in French and all his common gestures seemed to disappear. He threw himself into his arms. Never have the provinces in comparison with Paris received so fine a tribute. Fouqué was so delighted with the momentary enthusiasm which he read in his friend’s eyes that he took it for consent to the flight.
This view of the sublime recalled to Julien all the strength that the apparition of M. Chélan had made him lose. He was still very young; but in my view he was a fine specimen. Instead of his character passing from tenderness to cunning, as is the case with the majority of men, age would have given him that kindness of heart which is easily melted ... but what avail these vain prophecies.
The interrogations became more frequent in spite of all the efforts of Julien, who always endeavoured by his answers to shorten the whole matter.
“I killed, or at any rate, I wished to occasion death, and I did so with premeditation,” he would repeat every day. But the judge was a pedant above everything. Julien’s confessions had no effect in curtailing the interrogations. The judge’s conceit was wounded. Julien did not know that they had wanted to transfer him into an awful cell, and that it was only, thanks to Fouqué’s efforts, that he was allowed to keep his pretty room at the top of a hundred and eighty steps.
M. the abbé de Frilair was one of the important customers who entrusted Fouqué with the purveying of their firewood. The good tradesmen managed to reach the all powerful grand vicar. M. de Frilair informed him, to his unspeakable delight, that he was so touched by Julien’s good qualities, and by the services which he had formerly rendered to the seminary, that he intended to recommend him to the judges. Fouqué thought he saw a hope of saving his friend, and as he went out, bowing down to the ground, requested M. the grand vicar, to distribute a sum of ten louis in masses to entreat the acquittal of the accused.
Fouqué was making a strange mistake. M. de Frilair was very far from being a Valenod. He refused, and even tried to make the good peasant understand that he would do better to keep his money. Seeing that it was impossible to be clear without being indiscreet, he advised him to give that sum as alms for the use of the poor prisoners, who, in point of fact, were destitute of everything.
“This Julien is a singular person, his action is unintelligible,” thought M. de Frilair, “and I ought to find nothing unintelligible. Perhaps it will be possible to make a martyr of him.... In any case, I shall get to the bottom of the matter, and shall perhaps find an opportunity of putting fear into the heart of that madame de Rênal who has no respect for us, and at the bottom detests me.... Perhaps I might be able to utilise all this as a means of a brilliant reconciliation with M. de la Mole, who has a weakness for the little seminarist.”
The settlement of the lawsuit had been signed some weeks previously, and the abbé Pirard had left Besançon after having duly mentioned Julien’s mysterious birth, on the very day when the unhappy man tried to assassinate madame de Rênal in the church of Verrières.
There was only one disagreeable event between himself and his death which Julien anticipated. He consulted Fouqué concerning his idea of writing to M. the Procureur-General asking to be exempt from all visits. This horror at the sight of a father, above all at a moment like this, deeply shocked the honest middle-class heart of the wood merchant.
He thought he understood why so many people had a passionate hatred for his friend. He concealed his feelings out of respect for misfortune.
“In any case,” he answered coldly, “such an order for privacy would not be applied to your father.”
But her proceedings are so mysterious and her figure is so elegant! Who can she be?—Schiller.
The doors of the turret opened very early on the following day.
“Oh! good God,” he thought, “here’s my father! What an unpleasant scene!”
At the same time a woman dressed like a peasant rushed into his arms. He had difficulty in recognising her. It was mademoiselle de la Mole.
“You wicked man! Your letter only told me where you were. As for what you call your crime, but which is really nothing more or less than a noble vengeance, which shews me all the loftiness of the heart which beats within your bosom, I only got to know of it at Verrières.”
In spite of all his prejudices against mademoiselle de la Mole, prejudices moreover which he had not owned to himself quite frankly, Julien found her extremely pretty. It was impossible not to recognise both in what she had done and what she had said, a noble disinterested feeling far above the level of anything that a petty vulgar soul would have dared to do? He thought that he still loved a queen, and after a few moments said to her with a remarkable nobility both of thought and of elocution,
“I sketched out the future very clearly. After my death I intended to remarry you to M. de Croisenois, who will officially of course then marry a widow. The noble but slightly romantic soul of this charming widow, who will have been brought back to the cult of vulgar prudence by an astonishing and singular event which played in her life a part as great as it was tragic, will deign to appreciate the very real merit of the young marquis. You will resign yourself to be happy with ordinary worldly happiness, prestige, riches, high rank. But, dear Mathilde, if your arrival at Besançon is suspected, it will be a mortal blow for M. de la Mole, and that is what I shall never forgive myself. I have already caused him so much sorrow. The academician will say that he has nursed a serpent in his bosom.
“I must confess that I little expected so much cold reason and so much solicitude for the future,” said mademoiselle de la Mole, slightly annoyed. “My maid who is almost as prudent as you are, took a passport for herself, and I posted here under the name of madam Michelet.”
“And did madame Michelet find it so easy to get to see me?”
“Ah! you are still the same superior man whom I chose to favour. I started by offering a hundred francs to one of the judge’s secretaries, who alleged at first that my admission into this turret was impossible. But once he had got the money the worthy man kept me waiting, raised objections, and I thought that he meant to rob me—” She stopped.
“Well?” said Julien.
“Do not be angry, my little Julien,” she said, kissing him. “I was obliged to tell my name to the secretary, who took me for a young working girl from Paris in love with handsome Julien. As a matter of fact those are his actual expressions. I swore to him, my dear, that I was your wife, and I shall have a permit to see you every day.”
“Nothing could be madder,” thought Julien, “but I could not help it. After all, M. de la Mole is so great a nobleman that public opinion will manage to find an excuse for the young colonel who will marry such a charming widow. My death will atone for everything;” and he abandoned himself with delight to Mathilde’s love. It was madness, it was greatness of soul, it was the most remarkable thing possible. She seriously suggested that she should kill herself with him.
After these first transports, when she had had her fill of the happiness of seeing Julien, a keen curiosity suddenly invaded her soul. She began to scrutinize her lover, and found him considerably above the plane which she had anticipated. Boniface de La Mole seemed to be brought to life again, but on a more heroic scale.
Mathilde saw the first advocates of the locality, and offended them by offering gold too crudely, but they finished by accepting.
She promptly came to the conclusion that so far as dubious and far reaching intrigues were concerned, everything depended at Besançon on M. the abbé de Frilair.
She found at first overwhelming difficulties in obtaining an interview with the all-powerful leader of the congregation under the obscure name of madame Michelet. But the rumour of the beauty of a young dressmaker, who was madly in love, and had come from Paris to Besançon to console the young abbé Julien Sorel, spread over the town.
Mathilde walked about the Besançon streets alone: she hoped not to be recognised. In any case, she thought it would be of some use to her cause if she produced a great impression on the people. She thought, in her madness, of making them rebel in order to save Julien as he walked to his death. Mademoiselle de la Mole thought she was dressed simply and in a way suitable to a woman in mourning, she was dressed in fact in such a way as to attract every one’s attention.
She was the object of everyone’s notice at Besançon when she obtained an audience of M. de Frilair after a week spent in soliciting it.
In spite of all her courage, the idea of an influential leader of the congregation, and the idea of deep and calculating criminality, were so associated with each other in her mind, that she trembled as she rang the bell at the door of the bishop’s palace. She could scarcely walk when she had to go up the staircase, which led to the apartment of the first grand Vicar. The solitude of the episcopal palace chilled her. “I might sit down in an armchair, and the armchair might grip my arms: I should then disappear. Whom could my maid ask for? The captain of the gendarmerie will take care to do nothing. I am isolated in this great town.”
After her first look at the apartment, mademoiselle de la Mole felt reassured. In the first place, the lackey who had opened the door to her had on a very elegant livery. The salon in which she was asked to wait displayed that refined and delicate luxury which differs so much from crude magnificence, and which is only found in the best houses in Paris. As soon as she noticed M. de Frilair coming towards her with quite a paternal air, all her ideas of his criminality disappeared. She did not even find on his handsome face the impress of that drastic and somewhat savage courage which is so anti-pathetic to Paris society. The half-smile which animated the features of the priest, who was all-powerful at Besançon, betokened the well-bred man, the learned prelate, the clever administrator. Mathilde felt herself at Paris.
It was the work of a few minutes for M. de Frilair to induce Mathilde to confess to him that she was the daughter of his powerful opponent, the marquis de la Mole.
“As a matter of fact, I am not Madame Michelet,” she said, reassuming all the haughtiness of her natural demeanour, “and this confession costs me but little since I have come to consult you, monsieur, on the possibility of procuring the escape of M. de la Vernaye. Moreover, he is only guilty of a piece of folly; the woman whom he shot at is well; and, in the second place, I can put down fifty-thousand francs straight away for the purpose of bribing the officials, and pledge myself for twice that sum. Finally, my gratitude and the gratitude of my family will be ready to do absolutely anything for the man who has saved M. de la Vernaye.”
M. de Frilair seemed astonished at the name. Mathilde shewed him several letters from the Minister of War, addressed to M. Julien Sorel de la Vernaye.
“You see, monsieur, that my father took upon himself the responsibility of his career. I married him secretly, my father was desirous that he should be a superior officer before the notification of this marriage, which, after all, is somewhat singular for a de la Mole.”
Mathilde noticed that M. de Frilair’s expression of goodwill and mild cheerfulness was rapidly vanishing in proportion as he made certain important discoveries. His face exhibited a subtlety tinged with deep perfidiousness, the abbé had doubts, he was slowly re-reading the official documents.
“What can I get out of these strange confidences?” he said to himself. “Here I am suddenly thrown into intimate relations with a friend of the celebrated maréchale de Fervaques, who is the all-powerful niece of my lord, bishop of —— who can make one a bishop of France. What I looked upon as an extremely distant possibility presents itself unexpectedly. This may lead me to the goal of all my hopes.”
Mathilde was at first alarmed by the sudden change in the expression of this powerful man, with whom she was alone in a secluded room. “But come,” she said to herself soon afterwards. “Would it not have been more unfortunate if I had made no impression at all on the cold egoism of a priest who was already sated with power and enjoyment?”
Dazzled at the sight of this rapid and unexpected path of reaching the episcopate which now disclosed itself to him, and astonished as he was by Mathilde’s genius, M. de Frilair ceased for a moment to be on his guard. Mademoiselle de la Mole saw him almost at her feet, tingling with ambition, and trembling nervously.
“Everything is cleared up,” she thought. “Madame de Fervaques’ friend will find nothing impossible in this town.” In spite of a sentiment of still painful jealousy she had sufficient courage to explain that Julien was the intimate friend of the maréchale, and met my lord the bishop of —— nearly every day.
“If you were to draw by ballot four or five times in succession a list of thirty-six jurymen from out the principal inhabitants of this department,” said the grand Vicar, emphasizing his words, and with a hard, ambitious expression in his eyes, “I should not feel inclined to congratulate myself, if I could not reckon on eight or ten friends who would be the most intelligent of the lot in each list. I can always manage in nearly every case to get more than a sufficient majority to secure a condemnation, so you see, mademoiselle, how easy it is for me to secure a conviction.” The abbé stopped short as though astonished by the sound of his own words; he was admitting things which are never said to the profane. But he in his turn dumbfounded Mathilde when he informed her that the special feature in Julien’s strange adventure which astonished and interested Besançon society, was that he had formerly inspired Madame de Rênal with a grand passion and reciprocated it for a long time. M. de Frilair had no difficulty in perceiving the extreme trouble which his story produced.
“I have my revenge,” he thought. “After all it’s a way of managing this decided young person. I was afraid that I should not succeed.” Her distinguished and intractable appearance intensified in his eyes the charm of the rare beauty whom he now saw practically entreating him. He regained all his self-possession—and he did not hesitate to move the dagger about in her heart.
“I should not be at all surprised,” he said to her lightly, “if we were to learn that it was owing to jealousy that M. Sorel fired two pistol shots at the woman he once loved so much. Of course she must have consoled herself and for some time she has been seeing extremely frequently a certain abbé Marquinot of Dijon, a kind of Jansenist, and as immoral as all Jansenists are.”
M. de Frilair experienced the voluptuous pleasure of torturing at his leisure the heart of this beautiful girl whose weakness he had surprised.
“Why,” he added, as he fixed his ardent eyes upon Mathilde, “should M. Sorel have chosen the church, if it were not for the reason that his rival was celebrating mass in it at that very moment? Everyone attributes an infinite amount of intelligence and an even greater amount of prudence to the fortunate man who is the object of your interest. What would have been simpler than to hide himself in the garden of M. de Rênal which he knows so well. Once there he could put the woman of whom he was jealous to death with the practical certainty of being neither seen, caught, nor suspected.”
This apparently sound train of reasoning eventually made Mathilde loose all self-possession. Her haughty soul steeped in all that arid prudence, which passes in high society for the true psychology of the human heart, was not of the type to be at all quick in appreciating that joy of scorning all prudence, which an ardent soul can find so keen. In the high classes of Paris society in which Mathilde had lived, it is only rarely that passion can divest itself of prudence, and people always make a point of throwing themselves out of windows from the fifth storey.
At last the abbé de Frilair was sure of his power over her. He gave Mathilde to understand (and he was doubtless lying) that he could do what he liked with the public official who was entrusted with the conduct of Julien’s prosecution. After the thirty-six jurymen for the sessions had been chosen by ballot, he would approach at least thirty jurymen directly and personally.
If M. de Frilair had not thought Mathilde so pretty, he would not have spoken so clearly before the fifth or sixth interview.
Castres 1676—A brother has just murdered his sister in the house next to mine. This gentleman had already been guilty of one murder. His father saved his life by causing five-hundred crowns to be distributed among the councillors.—Locke: Journey in France.
Castres 1676—A brother has just murdered his sister in the house next to mine. This gentleman had already been guilty of one murder. His father saved his life by causing five-hundred crowns to be distributed among the councillors.—Locke: Journey in France.
When she left the bishop’s palace, Mathilde did not hesitate to despatch a courier to madame de Fervaques. The fear of compromising herself did not stop her for a moment. She entreated her rival to obtain for M. de Frilair an autograph letter from the bishop of ——. She went as far as to entreat her to come herself to Besançon with all speed. This was an heroic act on the part of a proud and jealous soul.
Acting on Fouqué’s advice, she had had the discretion to refrain from mentioning the steps she had taken for Julien. Her presence troubled him enough without that. A better man when face to face with death than he had ever been during his life, he had remorse not only towards M. de la Mole, but also towards Mathilde.
“Come,” he said to himself, “there are times when I feel absent-minded and even bored by her society. She is ruining herself on my account, and this is how I reward her. Am I really a scoundrel?” This question would have bothered him but little in the days when he was ambitious. In those days he looked upon failure as the only disgrace.
His moral discomfort when with Mathilde was proportionately emphasized by the fact that he inspired her at this time with the maddest and most extraordinary passion. She talked of nothing but the strange sacrifices that she was ready to make in order to save him.
Exalted as she was by a sentiment on which she plumed herself, to the complete subordination of her pride, she would have liked not to have let a single minute of her life go by without filling it with some extraordinary act. The strangest projects, and ones involving her in the utmost danger, supplied the topics of her long interviews with Julien. The well-paid gaolers allowed her to reign over the prison. Mathilde’s ideas were not limited by the sacrifice of her reputation. She would have thought nothing of making her condition known to society at large. Throwing herself on her knees before the king’s carriage as it galloped along, in order to ask for Julien’s pardon, and thus attracting the attention of the prince, at the risk of being crushed a thousand times over, was one of the least fantastic dreams in which this exalted and courageous imagination chose to indulge. She was certain of being admitted into the reserved portion of the park of St. Cloud, through those friends of hers who were employed at the king’s court.
Julien thought himself somewhat unworthy of so much devotion. As a matter of fact, he was tired of heroism. A simple, naïve, and almost timid tenderness was what would have appealed to him, while Mathilde’s haughty soul, on the other hand, always required the idea of a public and an audience.
In the midst of all her anguish and all her fears for the life of that lover whom she was unwilling to survive, she felt a secret need of astonishing the public by the extravagance of her love and the sublimity of her actions.
Julien felt irritated at not finding himself touched by all this heroism. What would he have felt if he had known of all the mad ideas with which Mathilde overwhelmed the devoted but eminently logical and limited spirit of the good Fouqué?
He did not know what to find fault with in Mathilde’s devotion. For he, too, would have sacrificed all his fortune, and have exposed his life to the greatest risks in order to save Julien. He was dumbfounded by the quantity of gold which Mathilde flung away. During the first days Fouqué, who had all the provincial’s respect for money, was much impressed by the sums she spent in this way.
He at last discovered that mademoiselle de la Mole’s projects frequently varied, and he was greatly relieved at finding a word with which to express his blame for a character whom he found so exhausting. She was changeable. There is only a step from this epithet to that of wrong-headed, the greatest term of opprobrium known to the provinces.
“It is singular,” said Julien to himself, as Mathilde was going out of his prison one day, “that I should be so insensible at being the object of so keen a passion! And two months ago I adored her! I have, of course, read that the approach of death makes one lose interest in everything, but it is awful to feel oneself ungrateful, and not to be able to change. Am I an egoist, then?” He addressed the most humiliating reproaches to himself on this score.
Ambition was dead in his heart; another passion had arisen from its ashes. He called it remorse at having assassinated madame de Rênal.
As a matter of fact, he loved her to the point of distraction. He experienced a singular happiness on these occasions when, being left absolutely alone, and without being afraid of being interrupted, he could surrender himself completely to the memory of the happy days which he had once passed at Verrières, or at Vergy. The slightest incidents of these days, which had fleeted away only too rapidly, possessed an irresistible freshness and charm. He never gave a thought to his Paris successes; they bored him.
These moods, which became intensified with every succeeding day, were partly guessed by the jealous Mathilde. She realised very clearly that she had to struggle against his love of solitude. Sometimes, with terror in her heart, she uttered madame de Rênal’s name.
She saw Julien quiver. Henceforth her passion had neither bounds nor limit.
“If he dies, I will die after him,” she said to herself in all good faith. “What will the Paris salons say when they see a girl of my own rank carry her adoration for a lover who is condemned to death to such a pitch as this? For sentiments like these you must go back to the age of the heroes. It was loves of this kind which thrilled the hearts of the century of Charles IX. and Henri III.”
In the midst of her keenest transports, when she was clasping Julien’s head against her heart, she would say to herself with horror, “What! is this charming head doomed to fall? Well,” she added, inflamed by a not unhappy heroism, “these lips of mine, which are now pressing against this pretty hair, will be icy cold less than twenty-four hours afterwards.”
Thoughts of the awful voluptuousness of such heroic moments gripped her in a compelling embrace. The idea of suicide, absorbing enough in itself, entered that haughty soul (to which, up to the present it had been so utterly alien), and soon reigned over it with an absolute dominion.
“No, the blood of my ancestors has not grown tepid in descending to me,” said Mathilde proudly to herself.
“I have a favour to ask of you,” said her lover to her one day. “Put your child out to nurse at Verrières. Madame de Rênal will look after the nurse.”
“Those words of yours are very harsh.” And Mathilde paled.
“It is true, and I ask your pardon a thousand times,” exclaimed Julien, emerging from his reverie, and clasping her in his arms.
After having dried his tears, he reverted to his original idea, but with greater tact. He had given a twist of melancholy philosophy to the conversation. He talked of that future of his which was so soon going to close. “One must admit, dear one, that passions are an accident in life, but such accidents only occur in superior souls.... My son’s death would be in reality a happiness for your own proud family, and all the servants will realize as much. Neglect will be the lot of that child of shame and unhappiness. I hope that, at a time which I do not wish to fix, but which nevertheless I am courageous enough to imagine, you will obey my last advice: you will marry the marquis de Croisenois.”
“What? Dishonoured?”
“Dishonour cannot attach to a name such as yours. You will be a widow, and the widow of a madman—that is all. I will go further—my crime will confer no dishonour, since it had no money motive. Perhaps when the time comes for your marriage, some philosophic legislator will have so far prevailed on the prejudice of his contemporaries as to have secured the suppression of the death penalty. Then some friendly voice will say, by way of giving an instance: ‘Why, madame de la Mole’s first husband was a madman, but not a wicked man or a criminal. It was absurd to have his head cut off.’ So my memory will not be infamous in any way—at least, after a certain time.... Your position in society, your fortune, and, if you will allow me to say so, your genius, will make M. de Croisenois, once he is your husband, play a part which he would have never managed to secure unaided. He only possesses birth and bravery, and those qualities alone, though they constituted an accomplished man in 1729, are an anachronism a century later on, and only give rise to unwarranted pretensions. You need other things if you are to place yourself at the head of the youth of France.”
“You will take all the help of your firm and enterprising character to the political party which you will make your husband join. You may be able to be a successor to the Chevreuses and the Longuevilles of the Fronde—but then, dear one, the divine fire which animates you at present will have grown a little tepid. Allow me to tell you,” he added, “after many other preparatory phrases, that in fifteen years’ time you will look upon the love you once had for me as a madness, which though excusable, was a piece of madness all the same.”
He stopped suddenly and became meditative. He found himself again confronted with the idea which shocked Mathilde so much: “In fifteen years, madame de Rênal will adore my son and you will have forgotten him.”
It is because I was foolish then that I am wise to-day. Oh thou philosopher who seest nothing except the actual instant. How short-sighted are thy views! Thine eye is not adapted to follow the subterranean work of the passions.—M. Goethe.
It is because I was foolish then that I am wise to-day. Oh thou philosopher who seest nothing except the actual instant. How short-sighted are thy views! Thine eye is not adapted to follow the subterranean work of the passions.—M. Goethe.
This conversation was interrupted by an interrogation followed by a conference with the advocate entrusted with the defence. These moments were the only absolutely unpleasant ones in a life made up of nonchalance and tender reveries.
“There is murder, and murder with premeditation,” said Julien to the judge as he had done to the advocate, “I am sorry, gentlemen, he added with a smile, that this reduces your functions to a very small compass.”
“After all,” said Julien to himself, when he had managed to rid himself of those two persons, “I must really be brave, and apparently braver than those two men. They regard that duel with an unfortunate termination, which I can only seriously bother myself about on the actual day, as the greatest of evils and the arch-terror.”
“The fact is that I have known a much greater unhappiness,” continued Julien, as he went on philosophising with himself. “I suffered far more acutely during my first journey to Strasbourg, when I thought I was abandoned by Mathilde—and to think that I desired so passionately that same perfect intimacy which to-day leaves me so cold—as a matter of fact I am more happy alone than when that handsome girl shares my solitude.”
The advocate, who was a red-tape pedant, thought him mad, and believed, with the public, that it was jealousy which had lead him to take up the pistol. He ventured one day to give Julien to understand that this contention, whether true or false, would be an excellent way of pleading. But the accused man became in a single minute a passionate and drastic individual.
“As you value your life, monsieur,” exclaimed Julien, quite beside himself, “mind you never put forward such an abominable lie.” The cautious advocate was for a moment afraid of being assassinated.
He was preparing his case because the decisive moment was drawing near. The only topic of conversation in Besançon, and all the department, was thecause célèbre. Julien did not know of this circumstance. He had requested his friends never to talk to him about that kind of thing.
On this particular day, Fouqué and Mathilde had tried to inform him of certain rumours which in their view were calculated to give hope. Julien had stopped them at the very first word.
“Leave me my ideal life. Your pettifogging troubles and details of practical life all more or less jar on me and bring me down from my heaven. One dies as best one can: but I wish to chose my own way of thinking about death. What do I care for other people? My relations with other people will be sharply cut short. Be kind enough not to talk to me any more about those people. Seeing the judge and the advocate is more than enough.”
“As a matter of fact,” he said to himself, “it seems that I am fated to die dreaming. An obscure creature like myself, who is certain to be forgotten within a fortnight, would be very silly, one must admit, to go and play a part. It is nevertheless singular that I never knew so much about the art of enjoying life, as since I have seen its end so near me.”
He passed his last day in promenading upon the narrow terrace at the top of the turret, smoking some excellent cigars which Mathilde had had fetched from Holland by a courier. He had no suspicion that his appearance was waited for each day by all the telescopes in the town. His thoughts were at Vergy. He never spoke to Fouqué about madame de Rênal, but his friend told him two or three times that she was rapidly recovering, and these words reverberated in his heart.
While Julien’s soul was nearly all the time wholly in the realm of ideas, Mathilde, who, as befits an aristocratic spirit, had occupied herself with concrete things, had managed to make the direct and intimate correspondence between madame de Fervaques and M. de Frilair progress so far that the great word bishopric had been already pronounced. The venerable prelate, who was entrusted with the distribution of the benefices, added in a postscript to one of his niece’s letters, “This poor Sorel is only a lunatic. I hope he will be restored to us.”
At the sight of these lines, M. de Frilair felt transported. He had no doubts about saving Julien.
“But for this Jacobin law which has ordered the formation of an unending panel of jurymen, and which has no other real object, except to deprive well-born people of all their influence,” he said to Mathilde on the eve of the balloting for the thirty-six jurymen of the session, “I would have answered for the verdict. I certainly managed to get the curé N—— acquitted.”
When the names were selected by ballot on the following day, M. de Frilair experienced a genuine pleasure in finding that they contained five members of the Besançon congregation and that amongst those who were strangers to the town were the names of MM. Valenod, de Moirod, de Cholin. I can answer for these eight jurymen he said to Mathilde. The first five are mere machines, Valenod is my agent: Moirod owes me everything: de Cholin is an imbecile who is frightened of everything.
The journal published the names of the jurymen throughout the department, and to her husband’s unspeakable terror, madame de Rênal wished to go to Besançon. All that M. de Rênal could prevail on her to promise was that she would not leave her bed so as to avoid the unpleasantness of being called to give evidence. “You do not understand my position,” said the former mayor of Verrières. “I am now said to be disloyal and a Liberal. No doubt that scoundrel Valenod and M. de Frilair will get the procureur-general and the judges to do all they can to cause me unpleasantness.”
Madame de Rênal found no difficulty in yielding to her husband’s orders. “If I appear at the assize court,” she said to herself, “I should seem as if I were asking for vengeance.” In spite of all the promises she had made to the director of her conscience and to her husband that she would be discreet, she had scarcely arrived at Besançon before she wrote with her own hand to each of the thirty-six jurymen:—
“I shall not appear on the day of the trial, monsieur, because my presence might be prejudicial to M. Sorel’s case. I only desire one thing in the world, and that I desire passionately—for him to be saved. Have no doubt about it, the awful idea that I am the cause of an innocent man being led to his death would poison the rest of my life and would no doubt curtail it. How can you condemn him to death while I continue to live? No, there is no doubt about it, society has no right to take away a man’s life, and above all, the life of a being like Julien Sorel. Everyone at Verrières knew that there were moments when he was quite distracted. This poor young man has some powerful enemies, but even among his enemies, (and how many has he not got?) who is there who casts any doubt on his admirable talents and his deep knowledge? The man whom you are going to try, monsieur, is not an ordinary person. For a period of nearly eighteen months we all knew him as a devout and well behaved student. Two or three times in the year he was seized by fits of melancholy that went to the point of distraction. The whole town of Verrières, all our neighbours at Vergy, where we live in the fine weather, my whole family, and monsieur the sub-prefect himself will render justice to his exemplary piety. He knows all the Holy Bible by heart. Would a blasphemer have spent years of study in learning the Sacred Book. My sons will have the honour of presenting you with this letter, they are children. Be good enough to question them, monsieur, they will give you all the details concerning this poor young man which are necessary to convince you of how barbarous it would be to condemn him. Far from revenging me, you would be putting me to death.
“What can his enemies argue against this? The wound, which was the result of one of those moments of madness, which my children themselves used to remark in their tutor, is so little dangerous than in less than two months it has allowed me to take the post from Verrières to Besançon. If I learn, monsieur, that you show the slightest hesitation in releasing so innocent a person from the barbarity of the law, I will leave my bed, where I am only kept by my husband’s express orders, and I will go and throw myself at your feet. Bring in a verdict, monsieur, that the premeditation has not been made out, and you will not have an innocent man’s blood on your head, etc.”
The country will remember this celebrated case for a long time. The interest in the accused amounted to an agitation. The reason was that his crime was astonishing, and yet not atrocious. Even if it had been, this young man was so handsome. His brilliant career, that came to an end so early in his life, intensified the pathos. “Will they condemn him?” the women asked of the men of their acquaintance, and they could be seen to grow pale as they waited for the answer.—Sainte Beuve.
The country will remember this celebrated case for a long time. The interest in the accused amounted to an agitation. The reason was that his crime was astonishing, and yet not atrocious. Even if it had been, this young man was so handsome. His brilliant career, that came to an end so early in his life, intensified the pathos. “Will they condemn him?” the women asked of the men of their acquaintance, and they could be seen to grow pale as they waited for the answer.—Sainte Beuve.
The day that madame de Rênal and Mathilde feared so much arrived at last.
Their terror was intensified by the strange appearance of the town, which had its emotional effect even upon Fouqué’s sturdy soul. All the province had rushed to Besançon to see the trial of this romantic case.
There had been no room left in the inns for some days. M. the president of the assizes, was besieged by requests for tickets; all the ladies in the town wanted to be present at the trial. Julien’s portrait was hawked about the streets, etc., etc.
Mathilde was keeping in reserve for this supreme moment a complete autograph letter from my lord, bishop of ——. This prelate, who governed the Church of France and created its bishops, was good enough to ask for Julien’s acquittal. On the eve of the trial, Mathilde took this letter to the all-powerful grand vicar.
When she was going away in tears at the end of the interview, M. de Frilair at last emerged from his diplomatic reserve and almost shewed some emotion himself. “I will be responsible for the jury’s verdict,” he said to her. “Out of the twelve persons charged with the investigation of whether your friend’s crime is made out, and above all, whether there was premeditation, I can count six friends who are devoted to my fortunes, and I have given them to understand that they have it in their power to promote me to the episcopate. Baron Valenod, whom I have made mayor of Verrières, can do just as he likes with two of his officials, MM. de Moirod, and de Cholin. As a matter of fact, fate has given us for this business two jurymen of extremely loose views; but, although ultra-Liberals, they are faithful to my orders on great occasions, and I have requested them to vote like M. Valenod. I have learnt that a sixth juryman, a manufacturer, who is immensely rich, and a garrulous Liberal into the bargain, has secret aspirations for a contract with the War Office, and doubtless he would not like to displease me. I have had him told that M. de Valenod knows my final injunctions.”
“And who is this M. Valenod?” said Mathilde, anxiously.
“If you knew him, you could not doubt our success. He is an audacious speaker, coarse, impudent, with a natural gift for managing fools. 1814 saw him in low water, and I am going to make a prefect of him. He is capable of beating the other jurymen if they do not vote his way.”
Mathilde felt a little reassured.
Another discussion awaited her in the evening. To avoid the prolongation of an unpleasant scene, the result of which, in his view, was absolutely certain, Julien had resolved not to make a speech.
“My advocate will speak,” he said to Mathilde. “I shall figure too long anyway as a laughing-stock to all my enemies. These provincials have been shocked by the rapidity of my success, for which I have to thank you, and believe me, there is not one of them who does not desire my conviction, though he would be quite ready to cry like an idiot when I am taken to my death.”
“They desire to see you humiliated. That is only too true,” answered Mathilde, “but I do not think they are at all cruel. My presence at Besançon, and the sight of my sufferings have interested all the women; your handsome face will do the rest. If you say a few words to your judges, the whole audience will be on your side, etc., etc.”
At nine o’clock on the following day, when Julien left his prison for the great hall of the Palais de Justice, the gendarmes had much difficulty in driving away the immense crowd that was packed in the courtyard. Julien had slept well. He was very calm, and experienced no other sentiment except a sense of philosophic pity towards that crowd of jealous creatures who were going to applaud his death sentence, though without cruelty. He was very surprised when, having been detained in the middle of the crowd more than a quarter of an hour, he was obliged to admit that his presence affected the public with a tender pity. He did not hear a single unpleasant remark. “These provincials are less evil than I thought,” he said to himself.
As he entered the courtroom, he was struck by the elegance of the architecture. It was real Gothic, with a number of pretty little columns hewn out of stone with the utmost care. He thought himself in England.
But his attention was soon engrossed by twelve or fifteen pretty women, who sat exactly opposite the prisoner’s seat and filled the three balconies above the judges and the jury. As he turned round towards the public, he saw that the circular gallery that dominated the amphitheatre was filled with women, the majority were young and seemed very pretty, their eyes were shining and full of interest. The crowd was enormous throughout the rest of the room. People were knocking against the door, and the janitors could not obtain silence.
When all the eyes that were looking for Julien observed where he was, and saw him occupying the slightly raised place which is reserved for the prisoner, he was greeted by a murmur of astonishment and tender interest.
You would have taken him for under twenty on this day. He was dressed very simply, but with a perfect grace. His hair and his forehead were charming. Mathilde had insisted on officiating personally at his toilette. Julien’s pallor was extreme. Scarcely was he seated in this place than he heard people say all over the room, “Great heavens! how young he is!... But he’s quite a child!... He is much better than his portrait.”
“Prisoner,” said the gendarme who was sitting on his right, “do you see those six ladies in that balcony?” The gendarme pointed out a little gallery that jutted out over the amphitheatre where the jury were placed. “That’s madame, the prefect’s wife,” continued the gendarme. “Next to her, madame the marquise de M——. She likes you well: I have heard her speak to the judge of first instance. Next to her is madame Derville.”
“Madame Derville!” exclaimed Julien, and a vivid blush spread over his forehead. “When she leaves here,” he thought, “she will write to madame de Rênal.” He was ignorant of madame de Rênal’s arrival at Besançon. The witnesses were quickly heard. After the first words of the opening of the prosecution by the advocate-general, two of the ladies in the little balcony just opposite Julien burst into tears. Julien noticed that madame Derville did not break down at all. He remarked, however, that she was very red.
The advocate-general was indulging in melodrama in bad French over the barbarity of the crime that had been perpetrated. Julien noticed that madame Derville’s neighbours seemed to manifest a keen disapproval. Several jurors, who were apparently acquainted with the ladies, spoke to them and seemed to reassure them. “So far as it goes, that is certainly a good omen,” thought Julien.
Up to the present, he had felt himself steeped in an unadulterated contempt for all the persons who were present at the trial. This sentiment of disgust was intensified by the stale eloquence of the advocate-general. But the coldness of Julien’s soul gradually disappeared before the marks of interest of which he was evidently the object.
He was satisfied with the sturdy demeanour of his advocate. “No phrases,” he said to him in a whisper, as he was about to commence his speech.
“All the bombast which our opponent has stolen from Bossuet and lavished upon you,” said the advocate, “has done you good.”
As a matter of fact, he had scarcely spoken for five minutes before practically all the women had their handkerchiefs in their hands. The advocate was encouraged, and addressed some extremely strong remarks to the jury. Julien shuddered. He felt on the point of breaking into tears. “My God,” he thought, “what would my enemies say?”
He was on the point of succumbing to the emotion which was overcoming him, when, luckily for him, he surprised an insolent look from M. the baron de Valenod.
“That rogue’s eyes are gleaming,” he said to himself “What a triumph for that base soul! If my crime had only produced this one result, it would be my duty to curse it. God knows what he will say about it to madame de Rênal.”
This idea effaced all others. Shortly afterwards Julien was brought back to reality by the public’s manifestation of applause. The advocate had just finished his speech. Julien remembered that it was good form to shake hands with him. The time had passed rapidly.
They brought in refreshments for the advocate and the prisoner. It was only then that Julien was struck by the fact that none of the women had left the audience to go and get dinner.
“Upon my word, I am dying of hunger,” said the advocate. “And you?”
“I, too,” answered Julien.
“See, there’s madame, the prefect’s wife, who is also getting her dinner,” said the advocate, as he pointed out the little balcony. “Keep up your courage; everything is going all right.” The court sat again.
Midnight struck as the president was summing up. The president was obliged to pause in his remarks. Amid the silence and the anxiety of all present, the reverberation of the clock filled the hall.
“So my last day is now beginning,” thought Julien. He soon felt inflamed by the idea of his duty. Up to the present he had controlled his emotion and had kept his resolution not to speak. When the president of the assizes asked him if he had anything to add, he got up. He saw in front of him the eyes of madame Derville, which seemed very brilliant in the artificial light. “Can she by any chance be crying?” he thought.
“Gentlemen of the jury!
“I am induced to speak by my fear of that contempt which I thought, at the very moment of my death, I should be able to defy. Gentlemen, I have not the honour of belonging to your class. You behold in me a peasant who has rebelled against the meanness of his fortune.
“I do not ask you for any pardon,” continued Julien, with a firmer note in his voice. “I am under no illusions. Death awaits me; it will be just. I have brought myself to make an attempt on the life of the woman who is most worthy of all reverence and all respect. Madame de Rênal was a mother to me. My crime was atrocious, and it was premeditated. Consequently, I have deserved death, gentlemen of the jury. But even if I were not so guilty, I see among you men who, without a thought for any pity that may be due to my youth, would like to use me as a means for punishing and discouraging for ever that class of young man who, though born in an inferior class, and to some extent oppressed by poverty, have none the less been fortunate enough to obtain a good education, and bold enough to mix with what the pride of the rich calls Society.
“That is my crime, gentlemen, and it will be punished with even more severity, inasmuch as, in fact, I am very far from being judged by my peers. I do not see on the jury benches any peasant who has made money, but only indignant bourgeois....”
Julien talked in this strain for twenty minutes. He said everything he had on his mind. The advocate-general, who aspired to the favours of the aristocracy, writhed in his seat. But in spite of the somewhat abstract turn which Julien had given to his speech, all the women burst out into tears. Even madame Derville put her handkerchief to her eyes. Before finishing, Julien alluded again to the fact of his premeditation, to his repentance, and to the respect and unbounded filial admiration which, in happier days, he had entertained for madame de Rênal.... Madame Derville gave a cry and fainted.
One o’clock was striking when the jury retired to their room. None of the women had left their places; several men had tears in their eyes. The conversations were at first very animated, but, as there was a delay in the verdict of the jury, their general fatigue gradually began to invest the gathering with an atmosphere of calm. It was a solemn moment; the lights grew less brilliant. Julien, who was very tired, heard people around him debating the question of whether this delay was a good or a bad omen. He was pleased to see that all the wishes were for him. The jury did not come back, and yet not a woman left the court.
When two o’clock had struck, a great movement was heard. The little door of the jury room opened. M. the baron de Valenod advanced with a slow and melodramatic step. He was followed by all the jurors. He coughed, and then declared on his soul and conscience that the jury’s unanimous verdict was that Julien Sorel was guilty of murder, and of murder with premeditation. This verdict involved the death penalty, which was pronounced a moment afterwards. Julien looked at his watch, and remembered M. de Lavalette. It was a quarter past two. “To-day is Friday,” he thought.
“Yes, but this day is lucky for the Valenod who has got me convicted.... I am watched too well for Mathilde to manage to save me like madame de Lavalette saved her husband.... So in three days’ time, at this very hour, I shall know what view to take about the great perhaps.”
At this moment he heard a cry and was called back to the things of this world. The women around him were sobbing: he saw that all faces were turned towards a little gallery built into the crowning of a Gothic pilaster. He knew later that Mathilde had concealed herself there. As the cry was not repeated, everybody began to look at Julien again, as the gendarmes were trying to get him through the crowd.
“Let us try not to give that villain Valenod any chance of laughing at me,” thought Julien. “With what a contrite sycophantic expression he pronounced the verdict which entails the death penalty, while that poor president of the assizes, although he has been a judge for years and years, had tears in his eyes as he sentenced me. What a joy the Valenod must find in revenging himself for our former rivalry for madame de Rênal’s favors! ... So I shall never see her again! The thing is finished.... A last good-bye between us is impossible—I feel it.... How happy I should have been to have told her all the horror I feel for my crime!
“Mere words. I consider myself justly convicted.”
When Julien was taken back to prison he had been taken into a room intended for those who were condemned to death. Although a man who in the usual way would notice the most petty details, he had quite failed to observe that he had not been taken up to his turret. He was thinking of what he would say to madame de Rênal if he had the happiness of seeing her before the final moment. He thought that she would break into what he was saying and was anxious to be able to express his absolute repentance with his very first words. “How can I convince her that I love her alone after committing an action like that? For after all, it was either out of ambition, or out of love for Mathilde, that I wanted to kill her.”
As he went to bed, he came across sheets of a rough coarse material. “Ah! I am in the condemned cell, he said to himself. That is right.
“Comte Altamira used to tell me that Danton, on the eve of his death, would say in his loud voice: ‘it is singular but you cannot conjugate the verb guillotine in all its tenses: of course you can say, I shall be guillotined, thou shalt be guillotined, but you don’t say, I have been guillotined.’
“Why not?” went on Julien, “if there is another life.... Upon my word, it will be all up with me if I find the God of the Christians there: He is a tyrant, and as such, he is full of ideas of vengeance: his Bible speaks of nothing but atrocious punishment. I never liked him—I could never get myself to believe that anyone really liked him. He has no pity (and he remembered several passages in the Bible) he will punish me atrociously.
“But supposing I find Fénelon’s God: He will perhaps say to me: ‘Much forgiveness will be vouchsafed to thee, inasmuch as thou hast loved much.’
“Have I loved much? Ah! I loved madame de Rênal, but my conduct has been atrocious. In that, as in other cases, simple modest merit was abandoned for the sake of what was brilliant.
“But still, what fine prospects? Colonel of Hussars, if we had had a war: secretary of a legation during peace: then ambassador ... for I should soon have picked up politics ... and even if I had been an idiot, would the marquis de la Mole’s son-in-law have had any rivalry to fear? All my stupidities have been forgiven, or rather, counted as merits. A man of merit, then, and living in the grandest style at Vienna or London.
“Not exactly, monsieur. Guillotined in three days’ time.”
Julien laughed heartily at this sally of his wit. “As a matter of fact, man has two beings within him, he thought. Who the devil can have thought of such a sinister notion?”
“Well, yes, my friend: guillotined in three days,” he answered the interruptor. “M. de Cholin will hire a window and share the expense with the abbé Maslon. Well, which of those two worthy personages will rob the other over the price paid for hiring that window?” The following passage from Rotrou’s “Venceslas” suddenly came back into his mind:—
LADISLAS.................Mon âme est toute prête.THE KING,father of Ladislas.L’échafaud l’est aussi: portez-y-votre tête.
“A good repartee” he thought, as he went to sleep. He was awakened in the morning by someone catching hold of him violently.
“What! already,” said Julien, opening his haggard eyes. He thought he was already in the executioner’s hands.
It was Mathilde. “Luckily, she has not understood me.” This reflection restored all his self possession. He found Mathilde as changed as though she had gone through a six months’ illness: she was really not recognisable.
“That infamous Frilair has betrayed me,” she said to him, wringing her hands. Her fury prevented her from crying.
“Was I not fine when I made my speech yesterday?” answered Julien. “I was improvising for the first time in my life! It is true that it is to be feared that it will also be the last.”
At this moment, Julien was playing on Mathilde’s character with all the self-possession of a clever pianist, whose fingers are on the instrument.... “It is true,” he added, “that I lack the advantage of a distinguished birth, but Mathilde’s great soul has lifted her lover up to her own level. Do you think that Boniface de la Mole would have cut a better figure before his judges?”
On this particular day, Mathilde was as unaffectedly tender as a poor girl living in a fifth storey. But she failed to extract from him any simpler remark. He was paying her back without knowing it for all the torture she had frequently inflicted on him.
“The sources of the Nile are unknown,” said Julien to himself: “it has not been vouchsafed to the human eye to see the king of rivers as a simple brook: similarly, no human eye shall see Julien weak. In the first place because he is not so. But I have a heart which it is easy to touch. The most commonplace words, if said in a genuine tone, can make my voice broken and even cause me to shed tears. How often have frigid characters not despised me for this weakness. They thought that I was asking a favour: that is what I cannot put up with.
“It is said that when at the foot of the scaffold, Danton was affected by the thought of his wife: but Danton had given strength to a nation of coxcombs and prevented the enemy from reaching Paris.... I alone know what I should have been able to do.... I represent to the others at the very outside, simply A PERHAPS.
“If madame de Rênal had been here in my cell instead of Mathilde, should I have been able to have answered for myself? The extremity of my despair and my repentance would have been taken for a craven fear of death by the Valenods and all the patricians of the locality. They are so proud, are those feeble spirits, whom their pecuniary position puts above temptation! ‘You see what it is to be born a carpenter’s son,’ M. de Moirod and de Cholin doubtless said after having condemned me to death! ‘A man can learn to be learned and clever, but the qualities of the heart—the qualities of the heart cannot be learnt.’ Even in the case of this poor Mathilde, who is crying now, or rather, who cannot cry,” he said to himself, as he looked at her red eyes.... And he clasped her in his arms: the sight of a genuine grief made him forget the sequence of his logic.... “She has perhaps cried all the night,” he said to himself, “but how ashamed she will be of this memory on some future day! She will regard herself as having been led astray in her first youth by a plebeian’s low view of life.... Le Croisenois is weak enough to marry her, and upon my word, he will do well to do so. She will make him play a part.”
“Du droit qu’un esprit ferme et vaste en ses desseinsA sur l’esprit grossier des vulgaires humaines.”
“Ah! that’s really humorous; since I have been doomed to die, all the verses I ever knew in my life are coming back into my memory. It must be a sign of demoralisation.”
Mathilde kept on repeating in a choked voice: “He is there in the next room.” At last he paid attention to what she was saying. “Her voice is weak,” he thought, “but all the imperiousness of her character comes out in her intonation. She lowers her voice in order to avoid getting angry.”
“And who is there?” he said, gently.
“The advocate, to get you to sign your appeal.”
“I shall not appeal.”
“What! you will not appeal,” she said, getting up, with her eyes sparkling with rage. “And why, if you please?”
“Because I feel at the present time that I have the courage to die without giving people occasion to laugh too much at my expense. And who will guarantee that I shall be in so sound a frame of mind in two months’ time, after living for a long time in this damp cell? I foresee interviews with the priests, with my father. I can imagine nothing more unpleasant. Let’s die.”
This unexpected opposition awakened all the haughtiness of Mathilde’s character. She had not managed to see the abbé de Frilair before the time when visitors were admitted to the cells in the Besançon prison. Her fury vented itself on Julien. She adored him, and nevertheless she exhibited for a good quarter of an hour in her invective against his, Julien’s, character, and her regret at having ever loved him, the same haughty soul which had formerly overwhelmed him with such cutting insults in the library of the Hôtel de la Mole.
“In justice to the glory of your stock, Heaven should have had you born a man,” he said to her.
“But as for myself,” he thought, “I should be very foolish to go on living for two more months in this disgusting place, to serve as a butt for all the infamous humiliations which the patrician party can devise,[2]and having the outburst of this mad woman for my only consolation.... Well, the morning after to-morrow I shall fight a duel with a man known for his self-possession and his remarkable skill ... his very remarkable skill,” said the Mephistophelian part of him; “he never makes a miss. Well, so be it—good.” (Mathilde continued to wax eloquent). “No, not for a minute,” he said to himself, “I shall not appeal.”
Having made this resolution, he fell into meditation....
“The courier will bring the paper at six o’clock as usual, as he passes; at eight o’clock, after M. de Rênal has finished reading it, Elisa will go on tiptoe and place it on her bed. Later on she will wake up; suddenly, as she reads it she will become troubled; her pretty hands will tremble; she will go on reading down to these words:At five minutes past ten he had ceased to exist.
“She will shed hot tears, I know her; it will matter nothing that I tried to assassinate her—all will be forgotten, and the person whose life I wished to take will be the only one who will sincerely lament my death.
“Ah, that’s a good paradox,” he thought, and he thought about nothing except madame de Rênal during the good quarter of an hour which the scene Mathilde was making still lasted. In spite of himself, and though he made frequent answers to what Mathilde was saying, he could not take his mind away from the thought of the bedroom at Verrières. He saw the Besançon Gazette on the counterpane of orange taffeta; he saw that white hand clutching at it convulsively. He saw madame de Rênal cry.... He followed the path of every tear over her charming face.
Mademoiselle de la Mole, being unable to get anything out of Julien, asked the advocate to come in. Fortunately, he was an old captain of the Italian army of 1796, where he had been a comrade of Manuel.
He opposed the condemned man’s resolution as a matter of form. Wishing to treat him with respect, Julien explained all his reasons.
“Upon my word, I can understand a man taking the view you do,” said M. Felix Vaneau (that was the advocate’s name) to him at last. “But you have three full days in which to appeal, and it is my duty to come back every day. If a volcano were to open under the prison between now and two months’ time you would be saved. You might die of illness,” he said, looking at Julien.
Julien pressed his hand—“I thank you, you are a good fellow. I will think it over.”
And when Mathilde eventually left with the advocate, he felt much more affection for the advocate than for her.