The Red and the Black (79 page)

'I don't want to play a nasty trick on poor Father ChasBernard by
summoning him here,' he said to Fouqué. 'It'd put him off his dinner
for three days. But try to find me a Jansenist who's a friend of M.
Pirard and impervious to intrigue.'

Fouqué was waiting impatiently for this opening. Julien acquitted
himself with propriety of everything that is owed to public
opinion--in the provinces. Thanks to the Abbé de Frilair, and despite
his bad choice of confessor, Julien in his cell was the
protégé
of the Congregation; if he had handled things better, he might have
engineered his escape. But the bad air in the cell was having its
effect, and his mental powers were dwindling. This increased his
happiness at M
^me
de Rênal's return.

'My first duty is to you,' she said, kissing him. 'I ran away from Verrières...'

Julien had no petty pride where she was concerned, and he recounted
all his moments of weakness to her. She showed him all her kindness
and charm.

That evening, as soon as
she had left his prison, she summoned to her aunt's house the priest
who had latched on to Julien like a predator; as he wished for nothing
better than to gain credit with young women belonging to high society
in Besançon, M
^me
de Rênal easily persuaded him to go and make a novena
^*
at Bray-le-Haut Abbey.

No words could express the wild excesses of Julien's love.

By paying in gold, and using and abusing the credit of her aunt, who was a devout woman with wealth and a good name, M
^me
de Rênal obtained leave to see him twice a day.

News of this fanned Mathilde's jealousy to a pitch of mad frenzy. M.
de Frilair had admitted to her that his considerable credit simply did
not extend to flouting propriety to the point of getting permission
for her to see her friend more than once a day. Mathilde had M
^me
de Rênal followed to discover her every movement. M. de Frilair was
exhausting all the resources of a very crafty mind in order to prove
to Mathilde that Julien was unworthy of her.

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In the midst of all these torments, she only loved him the more, and almost every day she made a hideous scene.

Julien wanted at all costs to behave like a gentleman right to the
last with this poor girl he had so strangely compromised; but at every
moment his frenzied love for M
^me
de Rênal got the better
of him. When bad arguments failed to persuade Mathilde of the
innocence of her rival's visits, he said to himself: the end of the
drama must be very near now; I can be excused for not being better at
dissembling.

M
^lle
de La
Mole learned of the death of the Marquis de Croisenois. M. de Thaler
with all his wealth had taken the liberty of making some disagreeable
remarks about Mathilde's disappearance. M. de Croisenois went and
begged him to retract them; M. de Thaler showed him some anonymous
letters addressed to himself, which were full of details put together
with such skill that it was impossible for the poor marquis not to
glimpse the truth.

M. de Thaler took
the liberty of making some jokes quite lacking in subtlety. Mad with
anger and misery, M. de Croisenois demanded so much by way of
reparations that the millionaire preferred a duel. Stupidity
triumphed, and one of Paris's most likeable young men met his death
before reaching twenty-four.

This death had a strange and unhealthy effect on Julien's weakened spirit.

'Poor Croisenois', he said to Mathilde, 'was really most reasonable,
and behaved like a gentleman towards us; when you were acting so
rashly in your mother's salon, he ought to have hated me and picked a
quarrel; for hatred bred of scorn is usually ferocious.'

M. de Croisenois's death altered all Julien's ideas about Mathilde's
future; he spent several days trying to prove to her that she ought to
accept the hand of M. de Luz. 'He's a shy man, and not too
jesuitical,' he said, 'and he'll no doubt throw in his chance with the
rest. His is a darker and more persistent ambition than poor
Croisenois's, and with no duchy in the family, he won't make any
difficulties about marrying Julien Sorel's widow.'

'A widow who despises grand passions at that,' Mathilde

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retorted coldly, 'for she's lived long enough to see her lover prefer
another woman to her after six months, and a woman who's the origin
of all their suffering.'

'You're being unfair: M
^me
de Rênal's visits will supply the barrister from Paris with some
striking lines for my appeal; he'll depict the murderer honoured by
the attentions of his victim. This may have some effect, and perhaps
one day you'll see me as the subject of some melodrama, etc. etc.'

Furious jealousy that was impossible to avenge, persistent and
hopeless misery (for even supposing Julien were saved, how was she to
win back his heart?), shame and pain at loving this faithless lover
more than ever before, had cast M
^lle
de La Mole into a
gloomy silence from which neither the zealous attentions of M. de
Frilair nor the blunt frankness of Fouqué were able to shake her.

Julien on the other hand, apart from the moments usurped by
Mathilde's presence, lived for love and had scarcely a thought for the
future. Through the strange workings of this passion in its most
extreme form, when totally devoid of sham, M
^me
de Rênal almost shared his carefree outlook and his gentle cheerfulness.

'In those early days', Julien would say to her, 'when I could have
been so happy on our walks in the woods round Vergy, an unbridled
ambition carried me off to imaginary realms. Instead of pressing to my
heart this lovely arm of yours which lay so close to my lips, I let
the future snatch me away from you. I was deep in the countless
battles I would have to fight to build a colossal fortune... No, I
should have died without knowing happiness if you hadn't come to see
me here in prison.'

Two incidents
occurred which disturbed this peaceful life of theirs. Julien's
confessor, for all his Jansenism, was not immune to an intrigue
hatched by the Jesuits, and unknowingly became their instrument.

He came to tell Julien one day that unless he wished to fall into the
dire sin of suicide, he had to take all possible steps to obtain a
pardon. Now as the clergy had a great deal of influence with the
Ministry of Justice in Paris, this offered an easy solution: Julien
must be converted with great show.

-525-

'With great show!' Julien repeated. 'Ah! I've caught you at it, you too, Father--play-acting like a missionary...'

'Your age,' the Jansenist went on gravely, 'the attractive looks
bestowed on you by Providence, the very motive for your crime, which
remains inexplicable, the heroic actions that M
^lle
de La
Mole is generously performing in your interest, everything, in short,
down to the astonishing friendship shown you by your
victim--everything has contributed to making you the hero of the young
women in Besançon. They've forgotten everything for your sake, even
politics...

'Your conversion would
strike a chord in their hearts and make a deep impression here. You
can be of major use to religion, and am I to be the one to hesitate
for the frivolous reason that the Jesuits would take the same line in a
similar instance! Thus, even in this particular case which eludes
their rapacious grasp, they could still cause harm! Let it not be
so... The tears shed as a result of your conversion will wipe out the
corrosive effect of ten editions of the impious works of Voltaire.'

'And what shall I be left with', Julien answered coldly, 'if I
despise myself? I was ambitious, I don't want to blame myself; at that
time I acted in accordance with the conventions of the day. But now
I'm living from one moment to the next. And from the way things look,
I'd make myself most unhappy if I went in for an act of cowardice...'

The other incident, which affected Julien in a quite different way, was of M
^me
de Rênal's doing. One or other of the scheming ladies among her
friends had managed to persuade this innocent and timid soul that it
was her duty to set off for Saint-Cloud, and go and prostrate herself
before King Charles X.
^*

She had determined on the sacrifice of parting from Julien, and after
so great an effort, the unpleasantness of making a spectacle of
herself, which at other times would have struck her as worse than
death, no longer meant anything to her.

'I shall go to the king, I shall admit for all to hear that you are
my lover: the life of a man, and a man like Julien, should outweigh
all other considerations. I shall say that jealousy was what made you
try to take my life. There are plenty of

-526-

examples of poor young men in this predicament saved by the humanity of the jury, or of the king...'

'I won't ever see you again, I'll have you locked out of my prison,
and sure as anything I'll kill myself out of despair the very next
day, unless you swear to me that you won't take any action that makes a
public spectacle of us both. This idea of going to Paris doesn't come
from you. Tell me the name of the little schemer who suggested it to
you...

'Let's be happy for the small
number of days left in this short life. Let's hide ourselves away; my
crime is only too patent. M
^lle
de La Mole has unlimited
credit in Paris; believe me, she's doing what is humanly possible.
Here in the provinces I have everyone rich and respected lined up
against me. Your action would antagonize even further these rich and
essentially conventional people, who have life so easy... Don't let
us become a laughing-stock for the Maslons, the Valenods and countless
other worthier folk.'

The bad air in
the cell was becoming unbearable to Julien. By good fortune, on the
day he was told that he had to die, the countryside was rejoicing in
bright sunshine, and Julien was in courageous vein. Stepping out in
the fresh air was a delicious sensation for him, like a walk on land
for the sailor who has spent long at sea. Here we go, everything's all
right, he told himself, I'm not lacking in courage.

Never had his head looked so poetic as at the moment it was due to
fall. The sweetest moments he had experienced in those early days in
the woods in Vergy crowded back into his mind with great vigour.

Everything happened simply, appropriately, and with no affectation on his part.

Two days earlier he had said to Fouqué:

'As far as emotion goes, I can't answer for it; this cell is so ugly,
so dank, it brings on attacks of fever in which I no longer recognize
myself. But fear--never! I shan't be seen to turn pale.'

He had seen to it in advance that on the morning of the last day, Fouqué would take Mathilde and M
^me
de Rênal away.

'Take them off in the same carriage,' he had instructed him. 'See to
it that the post horses keep up a steady gallop. They'll

-527-

fall into each other's arms, or else will show each other mortal
hatred. In either case, the poor women will have their minds taken off
their appalling grief for a while.'

Julien had extracted a solemn promise from M
^me
de Rênal that she would five in order to look after Mathilde's son.

'Who knows? Perhaps we go on having sensations after our death,' were
his words to Fouqué one day. 'I'd rather like to rest, and rest is
the word for it, in that little grotto in the high mountain
overlooking Verrières. On several occasions, as I've told you, when I
had withdrawn for the night into that grotto, and was gazing down into
the distance over the richest provinces in France, my heart was fired
with ambition; at that time it was my passion... Anyway, this grotto
means a great deal to me, and no one would deny that its situation is
most attractive to a philosopher's soul... Now then! these good
Congregationists in Besançon make money out of everything; if you go
about it right, they'll sell you my remains...'

Fouqué succeeded in this sad bargain. He was spending the night alone
in his room beside the body of his friend, when to his great surprise
he saw Mathilde at the door. Only a few hours before he had left her
ten leagues away from Besançon. She had a wild look in her eyes.

'I want to see him,' she said.

Fouqué did not have the strength to speak or get up. He pointed at a
large blue coat there on the floor; it enveloped what remained of
Julien.

She flung herself on her
knees. The memory of Boniface de La Mole and Marguerite de Navarre
must have given her superhuman courage. Her trembling hands opened the
coat. Fouqué looked away.

He heard
Mathilde walking hurriedly about the room. She was lighting a number
of candies. When Fouqué had the strength to look at her, she had
placed Julien's head on a little marble table in front of her, and she
was kissing his forehead...

Mathilde
followed her lover all the way to the tomb he had chosen for himself.
A large number of priests escorted the bier, and, unknown to anyone,
alone in her black-draped carriage, she carried on her lap the head of
the man she had loved so much.

-528-

Having made their way like this almost to the summit of one of the
highest mountains in the Jura, in the middle of the night, twenty
priests celebrated a Mass for the dead in the little grotto
magnificently lit by an infinite array of candles. All the inhabitants
of the little mountain villages along the path of the procession had
followed on behind, drawn to it by the striking character of this
strange ceremony.

Mathilde made her
appearance in the midst of them, wearing long mourning attire, and at
the end of the service she had several thousand five-franc coins flung
to the crowd.

Left alone with
Fouqué, she insisted on burying the head of her lover with her own
hands. It almost drove Fouqué out of his mind with grief.

Through Mathilde's good offices the wild grotto was adorned with marbles sculpted at great expense in Italy.

M
^me
de Rênal was faithful to her promise. She did not seek in any way at
all to take her own life; but three days after Julien, she died with
her children in her arms.

THE END
¹

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