The Red and the Black (78 page)

emotions, Mathilde left him alone, but at almost the same moment Fouqué appeared.

'I need to be alone,' he said to this faithful friend... And on
seeing him hesitate: 'I'm drafting a statement for my appeal for
pardon... as far as other things go... do me a favour, don't ever
speak to me about death. If I need you to do anything particular for
me on the day, leave it up to me to raise the matter.'

When Julien had at last procured solitude, he found he was more
burdened and more cowardly than before. The little strength remaining
in this weakened spirit had been exhaused in concealing his state from
Mlle de La Mole and Fouqué.

Towards evening he took comfort in this thought:

If this morning, at the moment when death seemed so hideous to me,
they had come to announce that it was time for the execution,
the eye of the public would have been a spur to glory
,
maybe my walk would have had something stiff about it, like that of a
nervous fop stepping into a salon. One or two perceptive people, if
such exist among these provincials, might have been able to guess my
weakness... but no one would have
seen
it.

And he felt relieved of part of his misery. I'm a coward at this
moment, he chanted over and over again to himself, but no one shall
know it.

An event that was almost
more disagreeable still was awaiting him on the following day. For some
time now his father had been saying he would visit him, and on that
day, before Julien woke, the white-haired old carpenter appeared in
his cell.

A feeling of weakness
came over Julien; he was expecting the most disagreeable of
reproaches. To put the finishing touches to his wretchedness, he was
experiencing an acute sense of guilt that morning at not loving his
father.

Chance has put us side by
side on this earth, he said to himself while the warder was tidying up
the cell, and we have caused each other just about all the hurt we
could. Here he comes when I'm facing death to deliver the final blow.

The old man's stern reproaches began as soon as they were on their own.

-516-

Julien was unable to restrain his tears. What unworthy weakness! he
said to himself in fury. He'll go around everywhere exaggerating my lack
of courage; what a triumph for the likes of Valenod and all the
ingratiating hypocrites who rule Verrières! They're really powerful in
France, they have all the social advantages on their side. Up till
now I was at least able to say to myself: 'They get money, admittedly,
and every form of honour is heaped upon them, but I am noble in
spirit.'

And now here's a witness
who'll be believed by everyone, and will certify to all Verrières,
with much exaggeration too, that I showed weakness in the face of
death! I shall have been a coward in this ordeal that they all
understand!

Julien was on the verge
of despair. He did not know how to get rid of his father. And shamming
in such a way as to deceive this most perspicacious old man was at
that moment quite beyond his strength.

His mind ran rapidly over all the possibilities.

'I've got some savings put by
! he exclaimed suddenly.

This piece of inspiration completely altered the old man's countenance and Julien's position.

'How should I dispose of them?' Julien went on more calmly: the
effect produced had dispelled all his feelings of inferiority.

The old carpenter was burning with a desire not to let slip this
money, a share of which Julien seemed to wish to leave to his
brothers. He spoke at length and with passion. Julien was able to
indulge in mockery.

'Well now! the
Almighty has inspired me in the matter of my will. I shall give a
thousand francs to each of my brothers and the rest to you.'

'Very well,' said the old man, 'the rest is my due; but since God has
granted you the grace of touching your heart, if you wish to die a
good Christian, it's fitting that you pay your debts. There's still
the cost of your food and education that I advanced you and you are
forgetting...'

'That's fatherly love
for you!' Julien repeated to himself in great dismay when he was at
last alone. Soon the gaoler appeared.

'Sir, after parents have visited, I always bring my guests a

-517-

bottle of good champagne. It's a bit dear, six francs a bottle, but it warms the spirit.'

'Bring in three glasses,' Julien replied with childlike eagerness, 'and
show in two of the prisoners I hear walking up and down the
corridor.'

The gaoler brought him two
relapsed convicts who were preparing to return to hard labour. They
were cheery scoundrels who were really most remarkable for their
shrewdness, their courage and their phlegm.

'If you give me twenty francs,' said one of them to Julien, 'I'll tell you my life story in detail. It's
brilliant
.'

'But won't you lie to me?'

'That I won't,' he answered. 'My friend here, who'll be envious of my
twenty francs, will denounce me if I invent anything.'

His story was appalling. It showed a heart full of courage, but with only one passion left: money.

After they had gone Julien was no longer the same man. All his anger
at himself had disappeared. The dreadful suffering, poisoned by
cowardice, which had taken hold of him since Mme de Rênal's departure,
had turned to melancholy.

As I came
to be less taken in by appearances, he said to himself, I'd have seen
that the Paris salons are inhabited by honest folk like my father, or
cunning rascals like these convicts. They're right, men from the
salons never get up in the morning with this agonizing thought: 'How
am I going to get my dinner?' And they boast of their honesty! And
from the ranks of the jury they proudly condemn the man who's stolen
a silver spoon and fork because he felt faint with hunger.

But if it's at Court, if it's a matter of losing or winning a
ministerial portfolio, my honest salon gentlemen are reduced to
exactly the same crimes as the ones those two convicts were driven to
by the need to get their dinner...

There's no such thing as
natural rights
:
*
this term is nothing but a bit of antiquated rubbish worthy of the
assistant public prosecutor who was hounding me the other day, and
whose ancestor was made rich by land which Louis XIV confiscated
from the Protestants.
*
There is only a
right
when there is a law to forbid you doing something on pain of punishment. Before

-518-

the advent of laws, the only thing
natural
is the might of the lion or the need of the creature suffering hunger or cold,
need
in short... No, the people who are honoured are no more than rogues
who've had the good fortune not to be caught redhanded. The accuser
unleashed on me by society was made rich by an act of infamy... I
attempted murder, and I'm justly condemned; but leaving aside this one
action, that fellow Valenod who condemned me is a hundred times more
harmful to society.

So then! Julien
went on sadly but without anger, my father, for all his avarice, is a
better man than all of these. He's never loved me. And now it's the
last straw when I go and dishonour him through my ignominious death.
What is known as
avarice
--this fear of going short of money, this
exaggerated view of the malevolence of mankind--makes him see a
prodigious source of comfort and security in a sum of three or four
hundred louis that I may be leaving him. One Sunday after dinner he'll
show his gold to all the people in Verrières who envy him. 'At this
price', his expression will say to them, 'which one of you would not
be delighted to have a son guillotined?'

This philosophy might well be sound, but it was of a kind to make him
wish for death. Five long days went by like this. He was polite and
gentle with Mathilde, who, he could see, was driven to distraction by
the most acute jealousy. One evening Julien thought seriously about
taking his own life. His spirit was sapped by the deep misery he had
been plunged into by Mme de Rênal's departure. Nothing appealed to him
any more, either in real life or in the realms of imagination. Lack
of exercise was beginning to impair his health and make his character
weak and over-intense like some young German student's. He was losing
that manly detachment which rebuffs with a forceful oath certain
ill-becoming thoughts that besiege the minds of the unfortunate.

I love truth... Where is it?... Hypocrisy everywhere, or at any rate
charlatanism, even among those of greatest virtue, even among the
really great. And his lips pursed in disgust... No! man can't trust
man.

Mme de -----, who was collecting for her poor orphans, told

-519-

me that Prince So-and-So had just given ten louis--a lie. But what am
I saying? Napoleon on St Helena!... Pure charlatanism, a proclamation
in favour of the King of Rome.
*

For Christ's sake! if a man like that, and what's more at a time when
misfortune should recall him sternly to his duty, descends into
charlatanism, what can you expect from the rest of the species?...

Where is truth? In religion... Yes, he added with the bitter smile of
utmost scorn, in the mouths of the Maslons, the Frilairs and the
Castanèdes of this world... Maybe in true Christianity, where priests
would be given no more pay than the apostles got?... But St Paul's pay
was the pleasure of giving commands, of speaking and being spoken
of...

Ah! if there were a true
religion... Poor fool that I am! I see a gothic cathedral, and ancient
stained-glass windows; my feeble heart conjures up a picture of the
priest who is the keeper of these windows... My soul would understand
him, my soul needs him... All I find is a fop with dirty hair... minus
the charm, a Chevalier de Beauvoisis.

But a real priest, a Massillon, a Fénelon... Massillon consecrated Dubois.
*
Saint-Simon's
Memoirs
have spoilt Fénelon for me... But I mean a real priest... Then tender
souls would have a meeting-point in this world... We wouldn't be
isolated... This good priest would talk to us about God. But which
God? Not the one in the Bible, a cruel little despot thirsting after
vengeance... no, Voltaire's God, righteous, good, infinite...

He was disturbed by all the memories of this Bible that he knew by heart... But how, when
two or three are gathered together
, can you believe in the great name of GOD, after the terrible abuse made of it by our priests?

To live in isolation!... What torment!...

I'm going mad, and starting to be unfair, Julien said to himself,
striking his forehead. I'm isolated here in this cell, but I didn't
live in isolation
on earth, I had a strong sense of duty. The duty I had prescribed for
myself, for right or for wrong... was like a solid tree-trunk I
leaned against during the storm; I swayed, I was buffeted. After all, I
was only a man... But I wasn't swept away.

-520-

This is what's causing my isolation, not the absence of a

-521-

righteous good, all-powerful God who isn't cruel and thirsting for vengeance.

Ah! if he existed... Alas! I'd fall at his feet. 'I have deserved
death,' I'd say to him; 'but Almighty God, bountiful God, merciful
God, give me back the woman I love!'

Night was well advanced by then. After Julien had slept peacefully for an hour or two, Fouqué arrived.

Julien felt strong and resolute like a man who can see clearly into the depths of his soul.

-522-