The Red and the Black (77 page)

mad woman. . . Well, two mornings from now, I'm fighting a duel with a
man known for his imperturbability and his remarkable skill. . .
'Quite remarkable,' said the Mephistophelian voice; 'he never misses.'

Oh well, so be it! Fair enough. ( Mathilde was continuing to be eloquent.) No, by God, he said to himself, I shan't appeal.

Once this resolve was made, he fell to musing. . . The postman on his
round will bring the newspaper at six o'clock as usual; at eight,
after M. de Rênal has read it, Elisa will come tiptoeing in to put it
on her bed. Later she'll wake up: suddenly, as she reads, she'll be
overcome with emotion; her pretty hand will tremble; she'll read as
far as these words. . .
At five past ten he had ceased to exist
.

She'll weep bitterly, I know her; it won't make any difference that I
tried to murder her, everything will be forgotten. And the person
whose life I tried to take will be the only one to weep sincerely at
my death.

Ah! how's that for an
antithesis! he thought, and for a good quarter of an hour while
Mathilde continued to make a scene at him, his thoughts dwelled
entirely on M
^me
de Rênal. In spite of himself, and though
he often replied to what Mathilde was saying to him, he could not get
his mind away from the memory of the bedroom in Verrières. He could
see the
Besançon Gazette
on the orange taffeta quilt. He could see that white hand clutching it convulsively; he could see M
^me
de Rênal weeping. . . He followed the trace of each tear down that charming face.

As M
^lle
de La Mole was unable to get Julien to agree to anything, she called
in his counsel. Fortunately he had been an army captain during the
Italian campaign of 1796, when he had fought alongside Manuel.
^*

For form's sake he argued against the condemned man's resolve.
Julien, wanting to treat him with respect, spelled out all his reasons
to him.

'Upon my word, a man is
entitled to think as you do,' said M. Félix Vaneau to him in the end
(that was the barrister's name). 'But you have three full days to
appeal, and it is my duty to come back every day. If a volcano opened
up under

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the prison in the next two months, you would be saved. You may die of illness,' he said, looking at Julien.

Julien shook him by the hand. 'Thank you kindly, you're a good fellow. I shall think about all this.'

And when Mathilde at last left with the barrister, he felt much more warmly disposed towards the barrister than to her.

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AN hour later, he was woken from a deep sleep by the sensation of tears running over his hand.

Ah! it's Mathilde again, he thought, only half-awake. She's come, as
theory prescribes, to attack my resolve with tender sentiments. Weary
at the prospect of this new scene in the pathetic mode, he did not
open his eyes. Belphégor's lines
^*
as he flees his wife flashed into his mind.

He heard a strange sigh; he opened his eyes: it was M
^me
de Rênal.

'Darling! I'm seeing you again before I die, is it an illusion?' he exclaimed, throwing himself at her feet.

'But forgive me, madam, I'm nothing but a murderer in your eyes,' he said the very next moment, coming to his senses.

'Sir . . . I have come to beseech you to appeal, I know that you are
unwilling to. . .' Her sobs were choking her; she was unable to speak.

'Deign to forgive me.'

'If you want me to forgive you, my love,' she said, rising and
flinging herself into his arms, 'appeal at once against your
sentence.'

Julien was smothering her in kisses. 'Will you come and see me every day during those two months?'

'I swear to you I will. Every day, unless my husband forbids it.'

'I'll sign!' Julien exclaimed. 'Oh heavens! you forgive me! Is it possible!'

He clasped her in his arms; he was out of his mind. She gave a little cry.

'It's nothing,' she said, 'you hurt me.'

'Your shoulder!' Julien exclaimed, bursting into tears. He moved back
a little, and covered her hand with burning kisses. 'Who could have
foretold this the last time I saw you, in your room in Verrières?'

'Who could have foretold then that I would send M. de la Mole that vile letter?'

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'I want you to know that I've always loved you, that you are the only one I've loved.'

'Can that really be!' exclaimed M
^me
de Rênal, delighted in her turn. She leaned against Julien who was at her knees, and for a long time they wept in silence.

At no time in his life had Julien experienced a moment like this.

Much later, when they were able to speak:

'What about that young woman M
^me
Michelet,' said M
^me
de Rênal, 'or rather that M
^lle
de La Mole, for in all honesty I'm beginning to believe this strange romance!'

'It's only true on the face of it,' Julien replied. 'She's my wife, but she isn't my beloved.'

By means of countless interruptions on both sides, they managed with
great difficulty to tell each other what they did not know. The letter
sent to M de la Mole had been written by the young priest who was M
^me
de Rênal's confessor, and then copied out by her.

'What a dreadful thing I was forced to do by religion!' she said.
'And what's more, I toned down the most appalling passages in the
letter. . .'

Julien's demonstrations
of ecstasy and his evident happiness proved to her how completely he
forgave her. Never before had he been so wild with love.

'And yet I think of myself as pious,' she said to him as the
conversation continued. 'I believe sincerely in God; I believe
equally, and I even have proof of it, that the sin I'm committing is
appalling, and as soon as I see you, even after you've fired two shots
at me. . .' At this point, despite her resistance, Julien smothered
her with kisses.

'Don't do that,' she
went on, 'I want to discuss everything with you for fear of
forgetting it. . . As soon as I see you, all my obligations disappear,
and I become nothing but love for you, or rather the word love is too
weak. I feel for you what I should feel exclusively for God: a
mixture of respect, love and obedience. In all honesty I don't know
what you inspire in me. If you told me to stab the gaoler, the crime
would be committed before I had time to think. Explain that to me
lucidly before I leave you: I want to see clearly into my heart;

-511-

or in two months' time we must part. . . Talking of which, are we to part?' she asked him, smiling.

'I shall retract my word,' Julien exclaimed rising to his feet; 'I
shall not appeal against the death sentence, if by poison, knife,
pistol, charcoal
^*
or any other means whatsoever you try to end or interfere with your life.'

A sudden change came over M
^me
de Rênal's face; the most intense tenderness faded into deep musing.

'What if we were to die right away?' she said to him at length.

'Who knows what awaits us in the next world?' Julien replied.
'Perhaps torments, perhaps nothing at all. Can't we spend two months
together in a delightful way? Two months is a good many days. I shall
never have been so happy!'

'You'll
never have been so happy!' 'Never,' Julien repeated in delight, 'and
I'm speaking to you just as I speak to myself. God keep me from
exaggerating.'

'Speaking to me like that is as good as an order,' she said with a timid and melancholy smile.

'Well then! you are to swear, by the love you feel for me, not to
make any attempt on your life by direct or indirect means. . .
Consider', he went on, 'that you have to live for my son, whom
Mathilde will abandon to servants as soon as she becomes Marquise de
Croisenois.'

'I swear,' she replied
coldly, 'but I want to take your appeal away with me, written and
signed by your own hand. I shall go in person to the public
prosecutor.'

'Be careful, you'll
compromise yourself.' 'Now that I've taken the step of coming to see
you in your prison, I shall for ever after be the heroine of idle
tales in Besanqon, and the whole of the Franche-Comté,' she said with
a deeply sorrowful look. 'The bounds of strict propriety have been
overstepped. . . I'm a woman who's lost her honour; it's true that I
did it for you. . .'

Her voice was so
sad that Julien kissed her with a happiness that was quite new to
him. This was no longer the intoxication of love, it was extreme
gratitude. He had just perceived, for the very first time, the full
extent of the sacrifice she had made for him.

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Some charitable soul informed M. de Rênal, no doubt, of the lengthy
visits his wife was making to Julien's prison; for when three days
were up he sent his carriage for her, with the express order to return
forthwith to Verrières.

This cruel
separation had been a bad start to Julien's day. He was informed two
or three hours later that a certain priest given to intrigue, who had
none the less failed to make any headway among the Jesuits in
Besançon, had posted himself that morning outside the prison gate, in
the street. It was raining hard, and out there this man had set
himself up to play the martyr. Julien was out of sorts; this bit of
stupidity touched him deeply.

He
had already refused a visit from his priest in the morning, but the
man had taken it into his head to receive Julien's confession and then
win notoriety among the young women in Besançon with all the secrets
he would claim to have been told.

He
was proclaiming in a loud voice that he was going to spend all day and
night outside the prison gate: 'God has sent me to touch the heart of
this latterday apostate. . .'
^*
And the common people, always curious about any spectacle, were beginning to gather round.

'Yes, my brothers,' he said to them, 'I shall spend the day here, and
the night, and every following day and night likewise. The Holy
Spirit has spoken to me; I have a mission from on high, I am the one
who must save young Sorel's soul. Join me in prayer,' etc. etc.

Julien lived in dread of scandal and anything that might draw
attention to him. He considered there and then seizing the opportunity
to escape from the world unnoticed; but he had some hope of seeing M
^me
de Rênal again, and he was madly in love.

The prison gate was in one of the busiest streets. The idea of this
mud-spattered priest drumming up a crowd and a scandal tortured his
innermost being--And without a doubt he's repeating my name time and
time again! This moment was more painful to him than death.

Once or twice at hourly intervals he summoned a warder who was
devoted to him and sent him off to see if the priest was still at the
prison gate.

-513-

'Sir, he's down on both knees in the mud,' the warder told him every
time. 'He's praying out loud and saying litanies for your soul . . .'
Impertinent fellow! thought Julien. At that moment he did indeed hear a
dull murmur; it was the crowd joining in the litanies. As a final
onslaught on his patience, he saw the warder himself move his lips as
he repeated the Latin words. 'They're beginning to say', added the
warder, 'that you must have a heart of stone to refuse the help of
this holy man.'

'Oh my country! How
barbarous you still are!' Julien exclaimed beside himself with anger.
And he continued his reflections out loud, paying no attention to the
warder's presence.

'That fellow wants an article in the newspaper, and he's sure to get it.

'Ah! cursed provincials! In Paris I wouldn't be subjected to all
these vexations. People there are more adept at charlatanism.

'Show in this holy priest,' he said at last to the warder, and the
sweat was streaming down his forehead. The warder crossed himself and
went out in great delight.

The holy
priest turned out to be horribly ugly, and even more horribly
spattered in mud. The cold rain falling outside heightened the gloom
and dankness of the cell. The priest tried to embrace Julien, and
began to get sentimental as he talked to him. The most vile hypocrisy
was only too apparent; Julien had never been so angry in all his life.

A quarter of an hour after the
priest had come in, Julien found himself a complete coward. For the
first time death struck him as horrendous. He thought of the state of
putrefaction his body would be in two days after the execution, etc.
etc.

He was about to betray himself
by some sign of weakness, or fling himself at the priest and strangle
him with his chain, when he had the idea of begging the holy man to go
and say a Mass for him--a proper Mass worth forty francs--that very
same day.

Now as it was almost noon,
^*
the priest made off in haste.

-514-

As soon as he had left, Julien wept bitterly, and wept at having to
die. Gradually he admitted to himself that if Mme de Rênal had been in
Besançon, he would have confessed his weakness to her...

At the point where he was most regretting the absence of the woman he adored, he heard Mathilde's footsteps.

The worst thing about prison, he thought, is not being able to shut
your door. Everything Mathilde told him only served to exasperate him.

She informed him that on the day of
the trial, M. de Valenod, with his appointment as prefect in his
pocket, had dared to flout M. de Frilair and indulge in the pleasure
of condemning Julien to death.

'"Whatever came over your friend," M. de Frilair has just said to me, "to go and rouse and attack the petty vanity of this
bourgeois aristocracy
! Why speak of
caste
?
He showed them what they had to do in their own political interest:
these ninnies hadn't thought of it, and were ready to weep. This
'caste solidarity' served to obscure from their gaze the horror of
condemning to death. It must be admitted that M. Sorel is very new to
politics. If we don't succeed in saving him by an appeal for pardon,
his death will be a kind of suicide..."'

Mathilde was scarcely in a position to tell Julien something she did
not as yet suspect: that the Abbé de Frilair, seeing there was no hope
for Julien, thought it would serve his own ambition if he aspired to
become his successor.

Almost beside
himself with impotent rage and annoyance, Julien said to Mathilde: 'Go
and hear a Mass for me, and leave me in peace for a while.' Mathilde,
who was already highly jealous of Mme de Rênal's visits, and had just
learned of her departure, understood the reason for Julien's bad
temper and burst into tears.

Her
distress was genuine; Julien could see this, and it only made him more
exasperated. He had an overriding need for solitude, and how was he
to procure it?

At length, having tried all forms of reasoning to touch his

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