by Stendhal
“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 forever that class of young man who, though born in an inferior class, and to some extent oppressed by poverty, have nonetheless 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 re
spect 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 luck 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 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.”
LXXII6
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:—
LADISLAS
• • • • • • • Mon âme est toute prête.
The King, father of Ladislas.
L’echafaud 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 fe
ar 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 desseins
A 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.”