by Stendhal
He was in the throes of the most unbridled ambition when he was surprised by a young footman from the Hôtel de La Mole, who arrived with a despatch.
'All is lost,' wrote Mathilde:
Come as quickly as possible, sacrifice everything, desert if need be. Immediately on arrival, wait for me in a cab near the little gate into the garden, outside n˚ ----- in ----- street. I shall come out and speak to you; maybe I shall be able to slip you into the garden. All is lost, and, I fear, irredeemably so; count on me, you will find me devoted and steadfast. I love you.
In a matter of moments Julien obtained leave from the colonel and left Strasburg at full gallop; but the terrible anxiety devouring him did not allow him to continue this form of travel beyond Metz. He flung himself into a post-chaise; and it was with almost unbelievable speed that he arrived at the spot indicated to him, near the little gate into the garden of the Hôtel de La Mole. The gate opened, and at the same instant Mathilde, forgetting all self-respect, flung herself into his arms. Fortunately it was only five o'clock in the morning and the street was still deserted.
'All is lost; my father, fearing my tears, went off during the night on Thursday. Where to? No one knows. Here's his letter; read it.' And she stepped up into the cab with Julien.
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I could have forgiven everything, except the scheme to seduce you because you are rich. There, wretched daughter, you have the terrible truth. I give you my word of honour that I shall never consent to any marriage with this man. I shall guarantee him an income of ten thousand pounds if he is willing to live a long way off, outside the frontiers of France, or better still in America. Read the letter I have just received in response to the enquiries I had made. The impudent wretch had urged me himself to write to Mme de Rênal. I shall never read a word from you on the subject of this man. I am filled with loathing for Paris and yourself. I urge you to shroud the impending event in the deepest secrecy. Renounce in all sincerity a worthless man, and you will find a father once more.
'Where is the letter from Mme de Rênal?' Julien asked coldly.
'Here it is. I didn't want to show it to you, darling, until you'd been prepared for it.'
LETTER
What I owe to the sacred cause of religion and morality forces me, sir, into the painful course of action that I am carrying out in writing to you now; a precept which cannot err orders me to do injury to my neighbour at this moment, but in order to avoid a greater scandal. The suffering which this causes me must be overcome by my sense of duty. I'm afraid, sir, the conduct of the person about whom you ask me to tell you the whole truth may well have struck an outsider as puzzling or perhaps even perfectly decent. This individual may have thought fit to conceal or disguise part of the real situation--prudence dictated this as well as religion. But his conduct, which you desire to be acquainted with, has in fact been extremely blameworthy, much more so than I can ever express. Being poor and grasping, this man used the most consummate hypocrisy, and resorted to the seduction of a weak and unhappy woman in his attempt to acquire status and to turn himself into a somebody. It is part of my painful duty to add that I have no choice but to believe that M. J-- has no religious principles. In all conscience, I am obliged to think that one of his means of getting on in a household is to try to seduce the woman who wields most influence. Concealed beneath an appearance of disinterestedness and shrouded in phrases taken from novels, his one and only great aim is to succeed in gaining control over the master of the house and his fortune. He leaves behind him a trail of suffering and eternal regrets, etc., etc., etc.
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This letter was extremely long and half-obliterated by tears, and it was indeed in Mme de Rênal's hand; it was even written with more care than usual.
'I cannot blame M. de La Mole,' Julien said when he had finished it; he is fair-minded and prudent. What father would want to give his beloved daughter to such a man! Farewell!'
Julien leaped down out of the cab and ran to his post-chaise, which was stopped at the end of the street. Mathilde, whom he seemed to have forgotten, went after him for a few steps; but the stares of the shopkeepers who came out into their doorways, and who all knew her, forced her to go back in haste into the garden.
Julien had set off for Verrières. On this swift journey he was unable to write to Mathilde as he was planning; his hand only made an illegible scrawl on the paper.
He arrived in Verrières on a Sunday morning. He sought out the local gunsmith, who complimented him profusely on his recent fortune. It was the latest local news.
Julien had great difficulty in getting him to understand that he wanted a pair of pistols. At his request the gunsmith loaded the pistols.
The three chimes were being sounded on the church bells; in villages throughout France this is the well-known signal which, after the various peals of the morning, announces the immediate start of Mass.
Julien made his way into the new church in Verrières. All the high windows in the building were draped with crimson hangings. Julien found himself a few paces behind Mme de Rênal's pew. It seemed to him that she was praying fervently. The sight of this woman who had loved him so much made Julien's arm tremble to such an extent that he was unable at first to carry out his design. I can't do it, he told himself; physically, I just can't do it.
At that moment the young priest who was officiating at the Mass rang the bell for the Elevation. Mme de Rênal lowered her head, which became almost completely hidden for an instant behind the folds of her shawl. Julien no longer recognized her so clearly; he fired a shot at her and missed; he fired a second shot: she fell.
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CHAPTER 36
Sorry details
Do not expect any weakness on my part. I have taken my revenge. I have deserved death and here I am. Pray for my soul.
SCHILLER
JULIEN stood motionless with unseeing eyes. When he came to himself a little, he observed all the faithful fleeing out of the church; the priest had left the altar. Julien began to walk away quite slowly behind a small cluster of women who were making their way out, screaming and shouting. A woman trying to get away faster than the others pushed him roughly, and he fell down. His feet had got caught in a chair knocked over by the crowd; as he was getting up, he felt himself grasped round the neck; it was a police officer in full uniform arresting him. Julien made an automatic gesture to reach for his little pistols, but a second officer was grabbing hold of him by the arms.
He was led away to the prison. They went into a room, he was handcuffed and left alone; the door was shut on him with two turns of the key; all this was carried out very fast, and he responded with indifference.
'Fancy that, it's all over,' he said out loud when he came back to this senses... 'Yes, in a fortnight's time the guillotine... or killing myself between now and then.'
His reasoning did not go beyond this; his head felt as if it were being gripped with great force. He looked to see if anyone was holding him. After a few moments he fell into a deep sleep.
Mme de Rênal was not mortally wounded. The first bullet had pierced her hat; as she was turning round, the second shot had been fired. The bullet had struck her on the shoulder, and, amazingly enough, had rebounded off the shoulder-blade, fracturing it nevertheless, and had hit a gothic pillar, chipping a huge piece of stone off it.
When, after a long and painful session dressing the wound, the surgeon, a grave man, told Mme de Rênal: 'I can vouch for
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your life as surely as I can for my own', she was deeply distressed.
For a long while now she had sincerely wished for death. Her letter to M. de La Mole, which she had been forced to write by her present confessor, had been the final blow for a creature weakened by such relentless misery. The source of her misery was Julien's absence; her name for it was remorse. Her confessor, a fervent and virtuous young priest newly arrived from Dijon, was not taken in.
To die like this, but not by my own hand, is not a sin, Mme d
e Rênal reflected. God will perhaps forgive me for rejoicing at my death. She did not dare add: and dying at Julien's hand is the summit of bliss.
As soon as she was rid of the presence of the surgeon and all her friends who had flocked to see her, she summoned Elisa her maid.
'The gaoler', she told her, blushing deeply, 'is a cruel man.
He will no doubt ill-treat him, thinking he is doing me a favour... I can't bear the thought of it. Couldn't you go to the poler, as if on your own initiative, and give him this little parcel containing a few louis? You can tell him that it's against the principles of religion for him to ill-treat him... The thing is that he mustn't go round talking about this money he's been sent.'
The incident we have just related was responsible for the humane treatment Julien received at the hands of the town poler in Verrières; it was still the same M. Noiroud, that perfect ministry official, whom we observed in such a fine state of fright at the appearance of M. Appert.
A judge presented himself at the prison.
'I caused death with premeditation,' Julien told him; 'I bought the pistols from ----- the gunsmith, and had him load them. Article 1342 of the Penal Code * is explicit; I deserve death, and I am ready for it.'
Astonished at the tenor of this reply, the judge made a point of questioning the accused repeatedly, to get him to trip himself up in his answers.
'But don't you see', Julien said to him with a smile, 'that I am declaring myself to be as guilty as you could wish? Come
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now, sir, you shall not miss the prey you are stalking. You shall have the pleasure of sentencing me. Please spare me your presence.'
There is one tedious duty left for me to carry out, Julien thought: I must write to Mlle de La Mole.
'I have taken my revenge,' he wrote to her:
Unfortunately, my name will appear in the press, and I shall not be able to escape from this world incognito. I shall die in two months' time. Vengeance was appalling, as is the pain of being separated from you. From this moment on, I forbid myself to write or utter your name. You must never speak of me, even to my son: silence is the only way to honour me. For the ordinary run of mortals, I shall be a common murderer... Allow me to speak the truth at this solemn, final moment: you will forget me. This great catastrophe, which I advise you never to speak of to any living soul, will have exhausted for several years to come all the romantic and over-adventurous yearnings I observed in your character. You were made to live with the heroes of the Middle Ages; you must show their strength of character. Let the impending event take place in secret without compromising you. You will assume a false name and confide in no one. If you are in dire need of a friend's help, I bequeath you Father Pirard.
Do not speak to anyone else, especially not people of your class: the de Luz's, the Caylus's of this world.
A year after my death, please marry M. de Croisenois; I entreat you, I order you to as your husband. Do not write to me, I should not answer you. Far less evil than lago, so it seems to me, I shall none the less echo his words: From this time forth I never will speak word. *
I shall not be observed to speak or write further; you will have had my last words together with my last acts of adoration.
J. S.
It was after sending off this letter that Julien, somewhat restored to his senses, was for the first time extremely unhappy. Each one of the hopes nurtured by his ambition had to be successively plucked from his heart by the solemn words: I am going to die. Death in itself was not horrendous in his eyes. His whole life had been nothing but a lengthy preparation for misfortune, and he had not omitted to consider the one which passes for the greatest of them all.
Just imagine! he said to himself-. if in sixty days' time I had to fight a duel with a man of great skill at arms, would I be so
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feeble as to think about it constantly, and with terror in my soul?
He spent more than an hour trying to study himself thoroughly in his new light.
When he had seen clearly into the depths of his soul, and the truth appeared before his eyes as distinctly as one of the pillars of his prison, he turned his thoughts to remorse.
Why should I feel any? I was atrociously wronged; I committed murder, I deserve death, but that's all there is to it. I'm going to die after settling my account with the human race. I'm not leaving any unfulfilled obligations behind me, I don't owe anything to anyone; the only shameful feature of my death is the instrument of it: that alone; it's true, is amply sufficient to shame me in the eyes of the bourgeois citizens of Verrières; but from an intellectual point of view, what could be more despicable! One means remains open to me to win esteem in their eyes: flinging gold coins to the people as I walk to the scaffold. Associated with the idea of gold, I shall remain a resplendent memory for them.
After following this line of reasoning, which a minute later struck him as self-evident, Julien said to himself. I have nothing left to do on earth, and he fell into a deep sleep.
At about nine o'clock in the evening the gaoler woke him up by bringing him supper.
'What are they saying in Verrières?'
'Monsieur Julien, the oath I swore before the crucifix at the crown courthouse, the day I was invested with my office, obliges me to keep silence.'
He said nothing, but went on standing there. The sight of this vulgar hypocrisy amused Julien. I must make him wait a good long time, he thought, for the five francs he wants for selling me his conscience.
When the gaoler saw the meal coming to an end with no attempt being made to win him over:
'The friendship I feel for you, Monsieur Julien,' he said with a gentle, contrived expression, 'obliges me to speak; though they say it's against the interests of justice, because it may help you prepare your fence... Monsieur Julien, who is
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good at heart, will be very glad to learn from me that Mme de Rênal is getting better.'
'What! isn't she dead!' Julien exclaimed, quite beside himself.
'What! you knew nothing about it!' said the poler with a dumbfounded expression which soon became one of happy greed. 'It'll be only right and proper for Sir to give something to the surgeon who, according to the law and to justice, shouldn't have spoken. But to please Sir, I went to his house, and he told me everything...'
'Yes, yes, so the wound isn't mortal,' Julien said impatiently, 'd'you vouch for it with your life, you wretch?'
The gaoler, a giant six foot high, took fright and retreated towards the door. Julien saw that he was going about it the wrong way to get at the truth, he sat down again and tossed M. Noiroud a gold napoléon.
As Julien gradually became convinced by the man's story that Mme de Rênal's wound was not mortal, he felt himself giving way to tears.
'Leave the room!' he said brusquely.
The gaoler obeyed. As soon as the door was shut: 'Oh God! she isn't dead!' Julien exclaimed; and he fell on his knees in floods of tears.
In that solemn moment, he was a believer. What do priests and their hypocrisies matter? Can they in any way detract from the truth and the sublimeness of the idea of God?
Only then did Julien begin to repent the crime he had committed. By a coincidence which saved him from despair, that moment had also brought an end at last to the state of physical tension and near madness in which he had been engulfed since leaving Paris for Verrières.
His tears flowed from a generous source; he was in no doubt about the conviction awaiting him.
So she will live! he said to himself... She will live to forgive and to love me...
Very late the next morning when the gaoler woke him up:
'That must be a really stout heart you've got there, Monsieur Julien,' the man said to him. 'I came in twice and didn't want
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to wake you. Here are two bottles of excellent wine sent you by M. Maslon our priest.'
'Maslon? is that rogue still here?' Julien asked.
'Yes, sir,' the gaoler r
eplied lowering his voice, 'but don't talk so loud, it could turn out badly for you.'
Julien laughed heartily.
'At the stage I've reached, good fellow, you're the only one who could harm me if you stopped being kind and humane... You will be well paid,' Julien said, interrupting himself and resuming his imperious manner. This manner was instantly justified by the gift of a coin.
M. Noiroud again recounted--in the greatest detail, what's more--everything he had found out about Mme de Rênal; but he did not mention Mlle Elisa's visit.
The man was base and servile in the extreme. An idea flashed across Julien's mind: This hideous giant of a fellow can only earn three or four hundred francs, for his prison doesn't get much custom; I can guarantee him ten thousand francs if he's willing to escape to Switzerland with me... The difficulty will be to persuade him of my good faith. The idea of the lengthy discussion he would have to have with such a vile creature filled Julien with disgust, and he turned his thoughts elsewhere.
By evening the moment had passed. A post-chaise came to fetch him at midnight. He was thoroughly satisfied with the police officers who accompanied him on his journey. The next morning, when he arrived at the prison in Besançon, the authorities were good enough to house him in the upper storey of a gothic keep. He judged the architecture to date from the beginning of the fourteenth century; he admired its gracefulness and striking elegance. Through a narrow gap between two walls on the far side of a long courtyard, a magnificent view could be glimpsed.