The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830
and you will confide in no one. If you absolutely need a
friend's help, I bequeath the abbé Pirard to you.
"Do not talk to anyone else, particularly to the people
of your own class--the de Luz's, the Caylus's.
"A year after my death, marry M. de Croisenois; I
command you as your husband. Do not write to me at all,
I shall not answer. Though in my view, much less wicked
than Iago, I am going to say, like him: 'From this time
forth, I never will speack word.'[1]
"I shall never be seen to speak or write again. You will
have received my final words and my final expressions of
adoration.
"J. S."
It was only after he had despatched this letter and had recovered
himself a little, that Julien felt for the first time extremely
unhappy. Those momentous words, I shall die, meant the successive
tearing out of his heart of each individual hope and ambition.
Death, in itself, was not horrible in his eyes. His whole life had
been nothing but a long preparation for unhappiness, and he had
made a point of not losing sight of what is considered the greatest
unhappiness of all.
"Come then," he said to himself; "if I had to fight a duel in a couple
of months, with an expert duellist, should I be weak enough to think
about it incessantly with panic in my soul?"
He passed more than an hour in trying to analyze himself thoroughly on
this score.
When he saw clear in his own soul, and the truth appeared before his
eyes with as much definiteness as one of the pillars of his prison, he
thought about remorse.
"Why should I have any? I have been atrociously injured; I have
killed--I deserve death, but that is all. I die after having squared my
account with humanity. I do not leave any obligation unfulfilled. I owe
nothing to anybody; there is nothing shameful about my death, except
the instrument of it; that alone, it is true, is simply sufficient to
disgrace me in the eyes of the bourgeois of Verrières; but from the
intellectual standpoint, what could be more contemptible than they? I
have one means of winning their consideration; by flinging pieces of
gold to the people as I go to the scaffold. If my memory is linked with
the idea of gold, they will always look upon it as resplendent."
After this chain of reasoning, which after a minute's reflection seemed
to him self-evident, Julien said to himself, "I have nothing left to do
in the world," and fell into a deep sleep.
About 9 o'clock in the evening the gaoler woke him up as he brought in
his supper.
"What are they saying in Verrières?"
"M. Julien, the oath which I took before the crucifix in the 'Royal
Courtyard,' on the day when I was installed in my place, obliges me to
silence."
He was silent, but remained. Julien was amused by the sight of this
vulgar hypocrisy. I must make him, he thought, wait a long time for the
five francs which he wants to sell his conscience for.
When the gaoler saw him finish his meal without making any attempt to
corrupt him, he said in a soft and perfidious voice:
"The affection which I have for you, M. Julien, compels me to speak.
Although they say that it is contrary to the interests of justice,
because it may assist you in preparing your defence. M. Julien you are
a good fellow at heart, and you will be very glad to learn that madame
de Rênal is better."
"What! she is not dead?" exclaimed Julien, beside himself.
"What, you know nothing?" said the gaoler, with a stupid air which soon
turned into exultant cupidity. "It would be very proper, monsieur, for
you to give something to the surgeon, who, so far as law and justice
go, ought not to have spoken. But in order to please you, monsieur, I
went to him, and he told me everything."
"Anyway, the wound is not mortal," said Julien to him impatiently, "you
answer for it on your life?"
The gaoler, who was a giant six feet tall, was frightened and retired
towards the door. Julien saw that he was adopting bad tactics for
getting at the truth. He sat down again and flung a napoleon to M.
Noiraud.
As the man's story proved to Julien more and more conclusively that
madame de Rênal's wound was not mortal, he felt himself overcome by
tears. "Leave me," he said brusquely.
The gaoler obeyed. Scarcely had the door shut, than Julien exclaimed:
"Great God, she is not dead," and he fell on his knees, shedding hot
tears.
In this supreme moment he was a believer. What mattered the hypocrisies
of the priests? Could they abate one whit of the truth and sublimity of
the idea of God?
It was only then that Julien began to repent of the crime that he had
committed. By a coincidence, which prevented him falling into despair,
it was only at the present moment that the condition of physical
irritation and semi-madness, in which he had been plunged since his
departure from Paris for Verrières came to an end.
His tears had a generous source. He had no doubt about the condemnation
which awaited him.
"So she will live," he said to himself. "She will live to forgive me
and love me."
Very late the next morning the gaoler woke him up and said, "You must
have a famous spirit, M. Julien. I have come in twice, but I did not
want to wake you up. Here are two bottles of excellent wine which our
curé, M. Maslon, has sent you."
"What, is that scoundrel still here?" said Julien.
"Yes, monsieur," said the gaoler, lowering his voice. "But do not talk
so loud, it may do you harm."
Julien laughed heartily.
"At the stage I have reached, my friend, you alone can do me harm in
the event of your ceasing to be kind and tender. You will be well
paid," said Julien, changing his tone and reverting to his imperious
manner. This manner was immediately justified by the gift of a piece of
money.
M. Noiraud related again, with the greatest detail, everything he
had learnt about madame de Rênal, but he did not make any mention of
mademoiselle Elisa's visit.
The man was as base and servile as it was possible to be. An idea
crossed Julien's mind. "This kind of misshapen giant cannot earn more
than three or four hundred francs, for his prison is not at all full.
I can guarantee him ten thousand francs, if he will escape with me
to Switzerland. The difficulty will be in persuading him of my good
faith." The idea of the long conversation he would need to have with so
vile a person filled Julien with disgust. He thought of something else.
In the evening the time had passed. A post-chaise had come to pick him
up at midnight. He was very pleased with his travelling companions, the
gendarmes. When he arrived at the prison of Besançon in the morning
they were kind enough to place him in the upper storey of a Gothic
turret. He judged the architecture to be of the beginning of the
fourteenth century. He admired its fascinating grace and lightness.
Through a narrow space between two walls, beyond the deep court, there
opened a superb vista.
On the following day there was an interrogation, after which he was
left in peace for several days. His soul was calm. He found his affair
a perfectly simple one. "I meant to kill. I deserve to be killed."
His thoughts did not linger any further over this line of reasoning.
As for the sentence, the disagreeableness of appearing in public,
the defence, he considered all this as slight embarrassment, irksome
formalities, which it would be time enough to consider on the actual
day. The actual moment of death did not seize hold of his mind either.
"I will think about it after the sentence." Life was no longer boring,
he was envisaging everything from a new point of view, he had no longer
any ambition. He rarely thought about mademoiselle de la Mole. His
passion of remorse engrossed him a great deal, and often conjured up
the image of madame de Rênal, particularly during the silence of the
night, which in this high turret was only disturbed by the song of the
osprey.
He thanked heaven that he had not inflicted a mortal wound.
"Astonishing," he said to himself, "I thought that she had destroyed my
future happiness for ever by her letter to M. de la Mole, and here am
I, less than a fortnight after the date of that letter, not giving a
single thought to all the things that engrossed me then. An income of
two or three thousand francs, on which to live quietly in a mountain
district, like Vergy.... I was happy then.... I did not realise my
happiness."
At other moments he would jump up from his chair. "If I had mortally
wounded madame de Rênal, I would have killed myself.... I need to feel
certain of that so as not to horrify myself."
"Kill myself? That's the great question," he said to himself. "Oh,
those judges, those fiends of red tape, who would hang their best
citizen in order to win the cross.... At any rate, I should escape from
their control and from the bad French of their insults, which the local
paper will call eloquence."
"I still have five or six weeks, more or less to live.... Kill myself.
No, not for a minute," he said to himself after some days, "Napoleon
went on living."
"Besides, I find life pleasant, this place is quiet, I am not troubled
with bores," he added with a smile, and he began to make out a list of
the books which he wanted to order from Paris.
[1] Stendhal's bad spelling is here reproduced.
CHAPTER LXVII
A TURRET
The tomb of a friend.--_Sterne_.
He heard a loud noise in the corridor. It was not the time when the
gaoler usually came up to his prison. The osprey flew away with a
shriek. The door opened, and the venerable curé Chélan threw himself
into his arms. He was trembling all over and had his stick in his hands.
"Great God! Is it possible, my child--I ought to say monster?"
The good old man could not add a single word. Julien was afraid he
would fall down. He was obliged to lead him to a chair. The hand of
time lay heavy on this man who had once been so active. He seemed to
Julien the mere shadow of his former self.
When he had regained his breath, he said, "It was only the day before
yesterday that I received your letter from Strasbourg with your five
hundred francs for the poor of Verrières. They brought it to me in
the mountains at Liveru where I am living in retirement with my
nephew Jean. Yesterday I learnt of the catastrophe.... Heavens, is it
possible?" And the old man left off weeping. He did not seem to have
any ideas left, but added mechanically, "You will have need of your
five hundred francs, I will bring them back to you."
"I need to see you, my father," exclaimed Julien, really touched. "I
have money, anyway."
But he could not obtain any coherent answer. From time to time, M.
Chélan shed some tears which coursed silently down his cheeks. He then
looked at Julien, and was quite dazed when he saw him kiss his hands
and carry them to his lips. That face which had once been so vivid,
and which had once portrayed with such vigour the most noble emotions
was now sunk in a perpetual apathy. A kind of peasant came soon to
fetch the old man. "You must not fatigue him," he said to Julien, who
understood that he was the nephew. This visit left Julien plunged in a
cruel unhappiness which found no vent in tears. Everything seemed to
him gloomy and disconsolate. He felt his heart frozen in his bosom.
This moment was the cruellest which he had experienced since the
crime. He had just seen death and seen it in all its ugliness. All his
illusions about greatness of soul and nobility of character had been
dissipated like a cloud before the hurricane.
This awful plight lasted several hours. After moral poisoning, physical
remedies and champagne are necessary. Julien would have considered