The Red and the Black
Page 58
Madame de Rênal was responsible for the other episode which affected Julien in quite another way. Some intriguing woman friend or other had managed to persuade this naïve and timid soul that it was her duty to leave for St. Cloud, and go and throw herself at the feet of King Charles X.
She had made the sacrifice of separating from Julien, and after a strain as great as that, she no longer thought anything of the unpleasantness of making an exhibition of herself, though in former times she would have thought that worse than death.
“I will go to the King. I will confess freely that you are my lover. The life of a man, and of a man like Julien, too, ought to prevail over every consideration. I will tell him that it was because of jealousy that you made an attempt upon my life. There are numerous instances of poor young people who have been saved in such a case by the clemency of the jury or of the King.”
“I will leave off seeing you; I will shut myself up in my prison,” exclaimed Julien, “and you can be quite certain that if you do not promise me to take no step which will make a public exhibition of us both, I will kill myself in despair the day afterwards. This idea of going to Paris is not your own. Tell me the name of the intriguing woman who suggested it to you.
“Let us be happy during the small number of days of this short life. Let us hide our existence; my crime was only too self-evident. Mademoiselle de la Mole enjoys all possible influence of Paris. Take it from me that she has done all that is humanly possible. Here in the provinces I have all the men of wealth and prestige against me. Your conduct will still further aggravate those rich and essentially moderate people to whom life comes so easy.... Let us not give the Maslons, the Valenods, and the thousand other people who are worth more than they, anything to laugh about.”
Julien came to find the bad air of the cell unbearable. Fortunately, nature was rejoicing in a fine sunshine on the day when they announced to him that he would have to die, and he was in a courageous vein. He found walking in the open air as delicious a sensation as the navigator, who has been at sea for a long time, finds walking on the ground. “Come on, everything is going all right,” he said to himself. “I am not lacking in courage.”
His head had never looked so poetical as at that moment when it was on the point of falling. The sweet minutes which he had formerly spent in the woods of Vergy crowded back upon his mind with extreme force.
Everything went off simply, decorously, and without any affectation on his part.
Two days before he had said to Fouqué: “I cannot guarantee not to show some emotion. This dense, squalid cell gives me fits of fever in which I do not recognise myself, but fear?—no! I shall not be seen to flinch.”
He had made his arrangements in advance for Fouqué to take Mathilde and Madame de Rênal away on the morning of his last day.
“Drive them away in the same carriage,” he had said. “Do you see that the posthorses do not leave off galloping. They will either fall into each other’s arms, or manifest towards each other a mortal hatred. In either case the poor women will have something to distract them a little from their awful grief.”
Julien had made Madame de Rênal swear that she would live to look after Mathilde’s son.
“Who knows? Perhaps we have still some sensations after our death,” he had said one day to Fouqué. “I should like to rest, for rest is the right word, in that little grotto in the great mountain which dominates Verrières. Many a time, as I have told you, I have spent the night alone in that grotto, and as my gaze would plunge far and wide over the richest provinces of France, ambition would inflame my heart. In those days it was my passion.... Anyway, I hold that grotto dear, and one cannot dispute that its situation might well arouse the desires of the philosopher’s soul . . . Well, you know! those good priests of Besançon will make money out of everything. If you know how to manage it, they will sell you my mortal remains.”
Fouqué succeeded in this melancholy business. He was passing the night alone in his room by his friend’s body when, to his great surprise, he saw Mathilde come in. A few hours before, he had left her ten leagues from Besançon. Her face and eyes looked distraught.
“I want to see him,” she said.
Fouqué had not the courage either to speak or get up. He pointed with his finger to a big blue cloak on the floor; there was wrapped in it all that remained of Julien.
She threw herself on her knees. The memory of Boniface de la Mole, and of Marguerite of Navarre gave her, no doubt, a superhuman courage. Her trembling hands undid the cloak. Fouqué turned away his eyes.
He heard Mathilde walking feverishly about the room. She lit several candles. When Fouqué could bring himself to look at her, she had placed Julien’s head on a little marble table in front of her, and was kissing it on the forehead.
Mathilde followed her lover to the tomb which he had chosen. A great number of priests convoyed the bier, and, alone in her draped carriage, without anyone knowing it, she carried on her knees the head of the man whom she had loved so much.
When they arrived in this way at the most elevated peak of the high mountains of the Jura, twenty priests celebrated the service of the dead in the middle of the night in this little grotto, which was magnificently illuminated by a countless number of wax candles. Attracted by this strange and singular ceremony, all the inhabitants of the little mountain villages which the funeral had passed through, followed it.
Mathilde appeared in their midst in long mourning garments, and had several thousands of five-franc pieces thrown to them at the end of the service.
When she was left alone with Fouqué, she insisted on burying her lover’s head with her own hands. Fouqué nearly went mad with grief.
Mathilde took care that this wild grotto should be decorated with marble monuments that had been sculpted in Italy at great expense.
Madame de Rênal kept her promise. She did not try to make any attempt upon her life; but she died embracing her children, three days after Julien.
THE END.
The inconvenience of the reign of public opinion is that though, of course, it secures liberty, it meddles with what it has nothing to do with—private life, for example. Hence the gloominess of America and England. In order to avoid infringing on private life, the author has invented a little town—Verrières, and when he had need of a bishop, a jury, an assize court, he placed all this in Besançon, where he has never been.
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FLATLAND: A ROMANCE OF MANY DIMENSIONS, Edwin A. Abbott. 96pp. 27263-X
SHORT STORIES, Louisa May Alcott. 64pp. 29063-8
WINESBURG, OHIO, Sherwood Anderson. 160pp. 28269-4
PERSUASION, Jane Austen. 224pp. 29555-9
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, Jane Austen. 272pp. 28473-5
SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, Jane Austen. 272pp. 29049-2
LOOKING BACKWARD, Edward Bellamy. 160pp. 29038-7
BEOWULF, Beowulf (trans. by R. K. Gordon). 64pp. 27264-8
CIVIL WAR STORIES, Ambrose Bierce. 128pp. 28038-1
“THE MOONLIT ROAD” AND OTHER GHOST AND HORROR STORIES, Ambrose Bierce (John Grafton, ed.) 96pp. 40056-5
WUTHERING HEIGHTS, Emily Brontë. 256pp. 29256-8
THE THIRTY-NINE STEPS, John Buchan. 96pp. 28201-5
TARZAN OF THE APES, Edgar Rice Burroughs. 224pp. (Not available in Europe or United Kingdom.) 29570-2
ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND, Lewis Carroll. 96pp. 27543-4
THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS, Lewis Carroll. 128pp. 40878-7
MY ÁNTONIA, Willa Cather. 176pp. 28240-6
O PIONEERS!, Willa Cather. 128pp. 27785-2
PAUL’S CASE AND OTHER STORIES, Willa Cather. 64pp. 29057-3
FIVE GREAT SHORT STORIES, Anton Chekhov. 96pp. 26463-7
TALES OF CONJURE AND THE COLOR LINE, Charles Waddell Chesnutt. 128pp. 40426-9
FAVORITE FATHER BROWN STORIES, G. K. Chesterton. 96pp. 27545-0
THE AWAKENING, Kate Chopin. 128pp. 27786-0
A PA
IR OF SILK STOCKINGS AND OTHER STORIES, Kate Chopin. 64pp. 29264-9
HEART OF DARKNESS, Joseph Conrad. 80pp. 26464-5
LORD JIM, Joseph Conrad. 256pp. 40650-4
THE SECRET SHARER AND OTHER STORIES, Joseph Conrad. 128pp. 27546-9
THE “LITTLE REGIMENT” AND OTHER CIVIL WAR STORIES, Stephen Crane. 80pp. 29557-5
THE OPEN BOAT AND OTHER STORIES, Stephen Crane. 128pp. 27547-7
THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE, Stephen Crane. 112pp. 26465-3
MOLL FLANDERS, Daniel Defoe. 256pp. 29093-X
ROBINSON CRUSOE, Daniel Defoe. 288pp. 40427-7
A CHRISTMAS CAROL, Charles Dickens. 80pp. 26865-9
THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH AND OTHER CHRISTMAS STORIES, Charles Dickens. 128pp. 28039-X
A TALE OF TWO CITIES, Charles Dickens. 304pp. 40651-2
THE DOUBLE, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. 128pp. 29572-9
THE GAMBLER, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. 112pp. 29081-6
NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. 96pp. 27053-X
THE ADVENTURE OF THE DANCING MEN AND OTHER STORIES, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 80pp. 29558-3
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, Arthur Conan Doyle. 128pp. 28214-7
THE LOST WORLD, Arthur Conan Doyle. 176pp. 40060-3
A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR, Daniel Defoe. 192pp. 41919-3
SIX GREAT SHERLOCK HOLMES STORIES, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. 112pp. 27055-6
SHORT STORIES, Theodore Dreiser. 112pp. 28215-5
SILAS MARNER, George Eliot. 160pp. 29246-0
JOSEPH ANDREWS, Henry Fielding. 288pp. 41588-0
THIS SIDE OF PARADISE, F. Scott Fitzgerald. 208pp. 28999-0
“THE DIAMOND AS BIG AS THE RITZ” AND OTHER STORIES, F. Scott Fitzgerald. 29991-0
MADAME BOVARY, Gustave Flaubert. 256pp. 29257-6
THE REVOLT OF “MOTHER” AND OTHER STORIES, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. 128pp. 40428-5
A ROOM WITH A VIEW, E. M. Forster. 176pp. (Available in U.S. only.) 28467-0
WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD, E. M. Forster. 128pp. (Available in U.S. only.) 27791-7
THE IMMORALIST, André Gide. 112pp. (Available in U.S. only.) 29237-1
HERLAND, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. 128pp. 40429-3
“THE YELLOW WALLPAPER” AND OTHER STORIES, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. 80pp. 29857-4
THE OVERCOAT AND OTHER STORIES, Nikolai Gogol. 112pp. 27057-2
CHELKASH AND OTHER STORIES, Maxim Gorky. 64pp. 40652-0
GREAT GHOST STORIES, John Grafton (ed.). 112pp. 27270-2
DETECTION BY GASLIGHT, Douglas G. Greene (ed.). 272pp. 29928-7
THE MABINOGION, Lady Charlotte E. Guest. 192pp. 29541-9
“THE FIDDLER OF THE REELS” AND OTHER SHORT STORIES, Thomas Hardy. 80pp. 29960-0
THE LUCK OF ROARING CAMP AND OTHER STORIES, Bret Harte. 96pp. 27271-0
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES, Nathaniel Hawthorne. 272pp. 40882-5
THE SCARLET LETTER, Nathaniel Hawthorne. 192pp. 28048-9
YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN AND OTHER STORIES, Nathaniel Hawthorne. 128pp. 27060-2
THE GIFT OF THE MAGI AND OTHER SHORT STORIES, O. Henry. 96pp. 27061-0
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE GOLDEN POT, E. T. A. Hoffmann. 128pp. 27806-9
THE ASPERN PAPERS, Henry James. 112pp. 41922-3
THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE AND OTHER STORIES, Henry James. 128pp. 27552-3
DAISY MILLER, Henry James. 64pp. 28773-4
THE TURN OF THE SCREW, Henry James. 96pp. 26684-2
WASHINGTON SQUARE, Henry James. 176pp. 40431-5
THE COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS, Sarah Orne Jewett. 96pp. 28196-5
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN, James Weldon Johnson. 112pp. 28512-X
DUBLINERS, James Joyce. 160pp. 26870-5
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN, James Joyce. 192pp. 28050-0
THE METAMORPHOSIS AND OTHER STORIES, Franz Kafka. 96pp. 29030-1
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING AND OTHER STORIES, Rudyard Kipling. 128pp. 28051-9
YOU KNOW ME AL, Ring Lardner. 128pp. 28513-8
SELECTED SHORT STORIES, D. H. Lawrence. 128pp. 27794-1
GREEN TEA AND OTHER GHOST STORIES, J. Sheridan LeFanu. 96pp. 27795-X
THE CALL OF THE WILD, Jack London. 64pp. 26472-6
FIVE GREAT SHORT STORIES, Jack London. 96pp. 27063-7
THE SEA-WOLF, Jack London. 248pp. 41108-7
WHITE FANG, Jack London. 160pp. 26968-X
DEATH IN VENICE, Thomas Mann. 96pp. (Available in U.S. only.) 28714-9
IN A GERMAN PENSION: 13 Stories, Katherine Mansfield. 112pp. 28719-X
THE NECKLACE AND OTHER SHORT STORIES, Guy de Maupassant. 128pp. 27064-5
BARTLEBY AND BENITO CERENO, Herman Melville. 112pp. 26473-4
THE OIL JAR AND OTHER STORIES, Luigi Pirandello. 96pp. 28459-X
THE GOLD-BUG AND OTHER TALES, Edgar Allan Poe. 128pp. 26875-6
TALES OF TERROR AND DETECTION, Edgar Allan Poe. 96pp. 28744-0
THE QUEEN OF SPADES AND OTHER STORIES, Alexander Pushkin. 128pp. 28054-3
THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN FARM, Olive Schreiner. 256pp. 40165-0
FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley. 176pp. 28211-2
THE JUNGLE, Upton Sinclair. 320pp. (Available in U.S. only.) 41923-1
THREE LIVES, Gertrude Stein. 176pp. (Available in U.S. only.) 28059-4
THE BODY SNATCHER AND OTHER TALES, Robert Louis Stevenson. 80pp. 41924-X
THE STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, Robert Louis Stevenson. 64pp. 26688-5
TREASURE ISLAND, Robert Louis Stevenson. 160pp. 27559-0
GULLIVER’S TRAVELS, Jonathan Swift. 240pp. 29273-8
THE KREUTZER SONATA AND OTHER SHORT STORIES, Leo Tolstoy. 144pp. 27805-0
THE WARDEN, Anthony Trollope. 176pp. 40076-X
FIRST LOVE AND DIARY OF A SUPERFLUOUS MAN, Ivan Turgenev. 96pp. 28775-0
FATHERS AND SONS, Ivan Turgenev. 176pp. 40073-5
ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, Mark Twain. 224pp. 28061-6
THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER, Mark Twain. 192pp. 40077-8
THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER AND OTHER STORIES, Mark Twain. 128pp. 27069-6
HUMOROUS STORIES AND SKETCHES, Mark Twain. 80pp. 29279-7
AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS, Jules Verne. 160pp. 41111-7
CANDIDE, Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet). 112pp. 26689-3
GREAT SHORT STORIES BY AMERICAN WOMEN, Candace Ward (ed.). 192pp. 28776-9
“THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND” AND OTHER SCIENCE-FICTION STORIES, H. G. Wells. 160pp. (Not available in Europe or United Kingdom.) 29569-9
THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU, H. G. Wells. 112pp. (Not available in Europe or United Kingdom.) 29027-1
THE INVISIBLE MAN, H. G. Wells. 112pp. (Not available in Europe or United Kingdom.) 27071-8
THE TIME MACHINE, H. G. Wells. 80pp. (Not available in Europe or United Kingdom.) 28472-7
THE WAR OF THE WORLDS, H. G. Wells. 160pp. (Not available in Europe or United Kingdom.) 29506-0
ETHAN FROME, Edith Wharton. 96pp. 26690-7
SHORT STORIES, Edith Wharton. 128pp. 28235-X
THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, Edith Wharton. 288pp. 29803-5
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, Oscar Wilde. 192pp. 27807-7
JACOB’S ROOM, Virginia Woolf. 144pp. (Not available in Europe or United Kingdom.) 40109-X
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1 Historically true.
2 The author was sub-lieutenant in the 6th Dragoons in 1800.
3 C’est pigeon qui vole. A reference to a contemporary animal game with a pun on the word “vole.”
> 4 Celebrated conjuror.
5 Stendhal’s bad spelling is here reproduced.
6 There is no heading to this and the following chapters in the original.– TRANSL.
7 The speaker is a Jacobin.