The Red and the Black (53 page)

“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 interrupter. “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 Routrou's “Venceslas” suddenly came back into his mind:—

“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.

“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,
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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.

When he was deep asleep an hour afterwards, he was woken up by feeling tears flow over his hand. “Oh, it is Mathilde again,” he thought, only half awake. “She has come again, faithful to her tactics of attacking my resolution by her sentimentalism.” Bored by the prospect of this new scene of hackneyed pathos he did not open his eyes. The verses of Belphégor, as he ran away from his wife, came into his mind. He heard a strange sigh. He opened his eyes. It was Madame de Rênal.”

“Ah, so I see you again before I die, or is it an illusion?” he exclaimed as he threw himself at her feet.

“But, forgive me, Madame, you must look upon me as a mere murderer,” he said, immediately, as he recovered himself.

“Monsieur, I have come to entreat you to appeal; I know you do not want to . . . .” her sobs choked her; she was unable to speak.

“Deign to forgive me.”

“If you want me to forgive you,” she said to him, getting up and throwing herself into his arms, “appeal immediately against your death sentence.”

Julien covered her with kisses.

“Will you come and see me every day during those two months?”

“I swear it—every day, unless my husband forbids me.”

“I will sign it,” exclaimed Julien.

“What! you really forgive me! Is it possible?”

He clasped her in his arms; he was mad. She gave a little cry.

“It is nothing,” she said to him. “You hurt me.”

“Your shoulder,” exclaimed Julien, bursting into tears. He drew back a little, and covered her hands with kisses of fire. “Who could have prophesied this, dear, the last time I saw you in your room at Verrières?”

“Who could have prophesied then that I should write that infamous letter to M. de la Mole?”

“Know that I have always loved you, and that I have never loved anyone but you.”

“Is it possible?” cried Madame de Rênal, who was delighted in her turn. She leant on Julien, who was on his knees, and they cried silently for a long time.

Julien had never experienced moments like this at any period of his whole life.

“And how about that young Madame Michelet?” said Madame de Rênal, a long time afterwards when they were able to speak. “Or rather, that Mademoiselle de la Mole? for I am really beginning to believe in that strange romance.”

“It is only superficially true,” answered Julien. “She is my wife, but she is not my mistress.”

After interrupting each other a hundred times over, they managed with great difficulty to explain to each other what they did not know. The letter written to M. de la Mole had been drafted by the young priest who directed Madame de Rênal's conscience, and had been subsequently copied by her,—“What a horrible thing religion has made me do,” she said to him, “and even so I softened the most awful passages in the letter.”

Julien's ecstatic happiness proved the fulness of her forgiveness. He had never been so mad with love.

“And yet I regard myself as devout,” Madame de Rênal went on to say to him in the ensuing conversation. “I believe sincerely in God! I equally believe, and I even have full proof of it, that the crime which I am committing is an awful one, and yet the very minute I see you, even after you have fired two pistol shots at me—” and at this point, in spite of her resistance, Julien covered her with kisses.