by Stendhal
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,7 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.
LXXIII.
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.
“Leave me alone,” she continued, “I want to argue with you, I am frightened lest I should forget . . . The very minute I see you all my duties disappear. I have nothing but love for you, dear, or rather, the word love is too weak. I feel for you what I ought only to feel for God; a mixture of respect, love, obedience . . . As a matter of fact, I don’t know what you inspire me with . . . If you were to tell me to stab the gaoler with a knife, the crime would be committed before I had given it a thought. Explain this very clearly to me before I leave you. I want to see down to the bottom of my heart; for we shall take leave of each other in two months . . . By the bye, shall we take leave of each other?” she said to him with a smile.
“I take back my words,” exclaimed Julien, getting up, “I shall not appeal from my death sentence; if you try, either by poison, knife, pistol, charcoal, or any other means whatsoever, to put an end to your life, or make any attempt upon it.”
Madame de Rênal’s expression suddenly changed. The most lively tenderness was succeeded by a mood of deep meditation.
“Supposing we were to die at once,” she said to him.
“Who knows what one will find in the other life,” answered Julien, “perhaps torment, perhaps nothing at all. Cannot we pass two delicious months together? Two months means a good many days. I shall never have been so happy.”
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�You will never have been so happy?”
“Never,” repeated Julien ecstatically, “and I am talking to you just as I should talk to myself. May God save me from exaggerating.”
“Words like that are a command,” she said with a timid melancholy smile.
“Well, you will swear by the love you have for me, to make no attempt either direct or indirect, upon your life . . . remember,” he added, “that you must live for my son, whom Mathilde will hand over to lackeys as soon as she is Marquise de Croisenois.”
“I swear,” she answered coldly, “but I want to take away your notice of appeal, drawn and signed by yourself. I will go myself to M. the procureur-general.”
“Be careful, you will compromise yourself.”
“After having taken the step of coming to see you in your prison, I shall be a heroine of local scandal for Besançon, and the whole of Franche-Comté,” she said very dejectedly. “I have crossed the bounds of austere modesty . . . I am a woman who has lost her honour; it is true that it is for your sake. . . .”
Her tone was so sad that Julien embraced her with a happiness which was quite novel to him. It was no longer the intoxication of love, it was extreme gratitude. He had just realised for the first time the full extent of the sacrifice which she had made for him.
Some charitable soul, no doubt, informed M. de Rênal of the long visits which his wife paid to Julien’s prison; for at the end of three days he sent her his carriage with the express order to return to Verrières immediately.
This cruel separation had been a bad beginning for Julien’s day. He was informed two or three hours later that a certain intriguing priest (who had, however, never managed to make any headway among the Jesuits of Besançon) had, since the morning, established himself in the street outside the prison gates. It was raining a great deal, and the man out there was pretending to play the martyr. Julien was in a weak mood, and this piece of stupidity annoyed him deeply.
In the morning, he had already refused this priest’s visit, but the man had taken it into his head to confess Julien, and to win a name for himself among the young women of Besançon by all the confidences which he would pretend to have received from him.
He declared in a loud voice that he would pass the day and the night by the prison gates. “God has sent me to touch the heart of this apostate . . .” and the lower classes, who are always curious to see a scene, began to make a crowd.
“Yes, my brothers,” he said to them, “I will pass the day here and the night, as well as all the days and all the nights which will follow. The Holy Ghost has spoken to me. I am commissioned from above; I am the man who must save the soul of young Sorel. Do you join in my prayers, etc.”
Julien had a horror of scandal, and of anything which could attract attention to him. He thought of seizing the opportunity of escaping from the world incognito; but he had some hope of seeing Madame de Rênal again, and he was desperately in love.
The prison gates were situated in one of the most populous streets. His soul was tortured by the idea of this filthy priest attracting a crowd and creating a scandal—“and doubtless he is repeating my name at every single minute!” This moment was more painful than death.
He called the turnkey who was devoted to him, and sent him two or three times at intervals of one hour to see if the priest was still by the prison gates.
“Monsieur,” said the turnkey to him on each occasion, “he is on both his knees in the mud; he is praying at the top of his voice, and saying litanies for your soul. . . .”
“The impudent fellow,” thought Julien. At this moment he actually heard a dull buzz. It was the responses of the people to the litanies. His patience was strained to the utmost when he saw the turnkey himself move his lips while he repeated the Latin words.
“They are beginning to say,” added the turnkey, “that you must have a very hardened heart to refuse the help of this holy man.”
“Oh my country, how barbarous you still are!” exclaimed Julien, beside himself with anger. And he continued his train of thought aloud, without giving a thought to the turnkey’s presence.
“The man wants an article in the paper about him, and that’s a way in which he will certainly get it.
“Oh you cursed provincials! At Paris I should not be subjected to all these annoyances. There they are more skilled in their charlatanism.
“Show in the holy priest,” he said at last to the turnkey, and great streams of sweat flowed down his forehead. The turnkey made the sign of the cross and went out rejoicing.
The holy priest turned out to be very ugly; he was even dirtier than he was ugly. The cold rain intensified the obscurity and dampness of the cell. The priest wanted to embrace Julien, and began to wax pathetic as he spoke to him. The basest hypocrisy was only too palpable; Julien had never been so angry in his whole life.
A quarter of an hour after the priest had come in, Julien felt an absolute coward. Death appeared horrible to him for the first time. He began to think about the state of decomposition which his body would be in two days after the execution, etc., etc.
He was on the point of betraying himself by some sign of weakness or throwing himself on the priest and strangling him with his chain, when it occurred to him to beg the holy man to go and say a good forty franc mass for him on that very day.
It was twelve o’clock, so the priest took himself off.
LXXIV
As soon as he had gone out Julien wept desperately and for a long time. He gradually admitted to himself that if Madame de Rênal had been at Besançon he would have confessed his weakness to her. The moment when he was regretting the absence of this beloved woman he heard Mathilde’s step.
“The worst evil of being in prison,” he thought, “is one’s inability to close one’s door.” All Mathilde said only irritated him.
She told him that M. de Valenod had had his nomination to the prefectship in his pocket on the day of his trial, and had consequently dared to defy M. de Frilair and give himself the pleasure of condemning him to death.
“Why did your friend take it into his head,” M. de Frilair just said to me, “to awaken and attack the petty vanity of that bourgeois aristocracy? Why talk about caste? He pointed out to them what they ought to do in their own political interest; the fools had not been giving it a thought and were quite ready to weep. That caste interest intervened and blinded their eyes to the horror of condemning a man to death. One must admit that M. Sorel is very inexperienced. If we do not succeed in saving him by a petition for a reprieve, his death will be a kind of suicide.”
Mathilde was careful not to tell Julien a matter concerning which she had now no longer any doubts; it was that the Abbé de Frilair, seeing that Julien was ruined, had thought that it would further his ambitious projects to try and become his successor.
“Go and listen to a mass for me,” he said to Mathilde, almost beside himself with vexation and impotent rage, “and leave me a moment in peace.” Mathilde, who was already very jealous of Madame de Rênal’s visits and who had just learned of her departure, realised the cause of Julien’s bad temper and burst into tears.
Her grief was real; Julien saw this and was only the more irritated. He had a crying need of solitude, and how was he to get it?
Eventually Mathilde, after having tried to melt him by every possible argument, left him alone. But almost at the same moment, Fouqué presented himself.
“I need to be alone,” he said to this faithful friend, and as he saw him hesitate: “I am composing a memorial for my petition for pardon . . . . one thing more . . . . do me a favour, and never speak to me about death. If I have need of any special services on that day, let me be the first to speak to you about it.”
When Julien had eventually procured solitude, he found himself more prostrate and more cowardly than he had been before. The little force which this enfeebled soul still possessed had all been spent in concealing his condition from Mademoiselle de la Mole.
Towards the evening h
e found consolation in this idea.
“If at the very moment this morning, when death seemed so ugly to me, I had been given notice of my execution, the public eye would have acted as a spur to glory; my demeanour would perhaps have had a certain stiffness about it, like a nervous fop entering a salon. A few penetrating people, if there are any amongst these provincials, might have managed to divine my weakness . . . . But no one would have seen it.”
And he felt relieved of part of his unhappiness. “I am a coward at this very moment,” he sang to himself, “but no one will know it.”
An even more unpleasant episode awaited him on the following day. His father had been announcing that he would come and see him for some time past: the old white-haired carpenter appeared in Julien’s cell before he woke up.
Julien felt weak, he was anticipating the most unpleasant reproaches. His painful emotion was intensified by the fact that on this particular morning he felt a keen remorse for not loving his father.
“Chance placed us next to each other in the world,” he said to himself, while the turnkey was putting the cell a little in order, “and we have practically done each other all the harm we possibly could. He has come to administer the final blow at the moment of my death.”
As soon as they were without witnesses, the old man commenced his stern reproaches.
Julien could not restrain his tears. “What an unworthy weakness,” he said to himself querulously. “He will go about everywhere exaggerating my lack of courage; what a triumph for Valenod, and for all the fatuous hypocrites who rule in Verrières! They are very great in France, they combine all the social advantages. But hitherto, I could at any rate say to myself, it is true they are in receipt of money, and all the honours lavished on them; but I have a noble heart.