The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830
He did not know what to find fault with in Mathilde's devotion. For
he, too, would have sacrificed all his fortune, and have exposed his
life to the greatest risks in order to save Julien. He was dumbfounded
by the quantity of gold which Mathilde flung away. During the first
days Fouqué, who had all the provincial's respect for money, was much
impressed by the sums she spent in this way.
He at last discovered that mademoiselle de la Mole's projects
frequently varied, and he was greatly relieved at finding a word with
which to express his blame for a character whom he found so exhausting.
She was changeable. There is only a step from this epithet to that of
wrong-headed, the greatest term of opprobrium known to the provinces.
"It is singular," said Julien to himself, as Mathilde was going out
of his prison one day, "that I should be so insensible at being the
object of so keen a passion! And two months ago I adored her! I have,
of course, read that the approach of death makes one lose interest
in everything, but it is awful to feel oneself ungrateful, and not
to be able to change. Am I an egoist, then?" He addressed the most
humiliating reproaches to himself on this score.
Ambition was dead in his heart; another passion had arisen from its
ashes. He called it remorse at having assassinated madame de Rênal.
As a matter of fact, he loved her to the point of distraction. He
experienced a singular happiness on these occasions when, being left
absolutely alone, and without being afraid of being interrupted, he
could surrender himself completely to the memory of the happy days
which he had once passed at Verrières, or at Vergy. The slightest
incidents of these days, which had fleeted away only too rapidly,
possessed an irresistible freshness and charm. He never gave a thought
to his Paris successes; they bored him.
These moods, which became intensified with every succeeding day, were
partly guessed by the jealous Mathilde. She realised very clearly that
she had to struggle against his love of solitude. Sometimes, with
terror in her heart, she uttered madame de Rênal's name.
She saw Julien quiver. Henceforth her passion had neither bounds nor
limit.
"If he dies, I will die after him," she said to herself in all good
faith. "What will the Paris salons say when they see a girl of my own
rank carry her adoration for a lover who is condemned to death to such
a pitch as this? For sentiments like these you must go back to the age
of the heroes. It was loves of this kind which thrilled the hearts of
the century of Charles IX. and Henri III."
In the midst of her keenest transports, when she was clasping Julien's
head against her heart, she would say to herself with horror, "What!
is this charming head doomed to fall? Well," she added, inflamed by
a not unhappy heroism, "these lips of mine, which are now pressing
against this pretty hair, will be icy cold less than twenty-four hours
afterwards."
Thoughts of the awful voluptuousness of such heroic moments gripped
her in a compelling embrace. The idea of suicide, absorbing enough
in itself, entered that haughty soul (to which, up to the present it
had been so utterly alien), and soon reigned over it with an absolute
dominion.
"No, the blood of my ancestors has not grown tepid in descending to
me," said Mathilde proudly to herself.
"I have a favour to ask of you," said her lover to her one day. "Put
your child out to nurse at Verrières. Madame de Rênal will look after
the nurse."
"Those words of yours are very harsh." And Mathilde paled.
"It is true, and I ask your pardon a thousand times," exclaimed Julien,
emerging from his reverie, and clasping her in his arms.
After having dried his tears, he reverted to his original idea, but
with greater tact. He had given a twist of melancholy philosophy to the
conversation. He talked of that future of his which was so soon going
to close. "One must admit, dear one, that passions are an accident in
life, but such accidents only occur in superior souls.... My son's
death would be in reality a happiness for your own proud family, and
all the servants will realize as much. Neglect will be the lot of that
child of shame and unhappiness. I hope that, at a time which I do not
wish to fix, but which nevertheless I am courageous enough to imagine,
you will obey my last advice: you will marry the marquis de Croisenois."
"What? Dishonoured?"
"Dishonour cannot attach to a name such as yours. You will be a widow,
and the widow of a madman--that is all. I will go further--my crime
will confer no dishonour, since it had no money motive. Perhaps when
the time comes for your marriage, some philosophic legislator will have
so far prevailed on the prejudice of his contemporaries as to have
secured the suppression of the death penalty. Then some friendly voice
will say, by way of giving an instance: 'Why, madame de la Mole's first
husband was a madman, but not a wicked man or a criminal. It was absurd
to have his head cut off.' So my memory will not be infamous in any
way--at least, after a certain time.... Your position in society, your
fortune, and, if you will allow me to say so, your genius, will make M.
de Croisenois, once he is your husband, play a part which he would have
never managed to secure unaided. He only possesses birth and bravery,
and those qualities alone, though they constituted an accomplished man
in 1729, are an anachronism a century later on, and only give rise to
unwarranted pretensions. You need other things if you are to place
yourself at the head of the youth of France."
"You will take all the help of your firm and enterprising character
to the political party which you will make your husband join. You may
be able to be a successor to the Chevreuses and the Longuevilles of
the Fronde--but then, dear one, the divine fire which animates you
at present will have grown a little tepid. Allow me to tell you," he
added, "after many other preparatory phrases, that in fifteen years'
time you will look upon the love you once had for me as a madness,
which though excusable, was a piece of madness all the same."
He stopped suddenly and became meditative. He found himself again
confronted with the idea which shocked Mathilde so much: "In fifteen
years, madame de Rênal will adore my son and you will have forgotten
him."
CHAPTER LXX
TRANQUILITY
It is because I was foolish then that I am wise to-day.
Oh thou philosopher who seest nothing except the actual
instant. How short-sighted are thy views! Thine eye
is not adapted to follow the subterranean work of the
passions.--_M. Goethe_.
This conversation was interrupted by an interrogation followed by
a conference with the advocate entrusted with the defence. These
moments were the only absolutely unpleasant ones in a life made up of
nonchalance and tender reveries.
"There is murder, and murder with premeditation," said Julien to the
judge as he had done to the advocate, "I am sorry, gentlemen, he added
with a smile, that this reduces your functions to a very small compass."
"After all," said Julien to himself, when he had managed to rid
himself of those two persons, "I must really be brave, and apparently
braver than those two men. They regard that duel with an unfortunate
termination, which I can only seriously bother myself about on the
actual day, as the greatest of evils and the arch-terror."
"The fact is that I have known a much greater unhappiness," continued
Julien, as he went on philosophising with himself. "I suffered far
more acutely during my first journey to Strasbourg, when I thought I
was abandoned by Mathilde--and to think that I desired so passionately
that same perfect intimacy which to-day leaves me so cold--as a matter
of fact I am more happy alone than when that handsome girl shares my
solitude."
The advocate, who was a red-tape pedant, thought him mad, and believed,
with the public, that it was jealousy which had lead him to take up
the pistol. He ventured one day to give Julien to understand that
this contention, whether true or false, would be an excellent way of
pleading. But the accused man became in a single minute a passionate
and drastic individual.
"As you value your life, monsieur," exclaimed Julien, quite beside
himself, "mind you never put forward such an abominable lie." The
cautious advocate was for a moment afraid of being assassinated.
He was preparing his case because the decisive moment was drawing near.
The only topic of conversation in Besançon, and all the department, was
the _cause célèbre_. Julien did not know of this circumstance. He had
requested his friends never to talk to him about that kind of thing.
On this particular day, Fouqué and Mathilde had tried to inform him
of certain rumours which in their view were calculated to give hope.
Julien had stopped them at the very first word.
"Leave me my ideal life. Your pettifogging troubles and details of
practical life all more or less jar on me and bring me down from my
heaven. One dies as best one can: but I wish to chose my own way of
thinking about death. What do I care for other people? My relations
with other people will be sharply cut short. Be kind enough not to talk
to me any more about those people. Seeing the judge and the advocate is
more than enough."
"As a matter of fact," he said to himself, "it seems that I am fated
to die dreaming. An obscure creature like myself, who is certain to be
forgotten within a fortnight, would be very silly, one must admit, to
go and play a part. It is nevertheless singular that I never knew so
much about the art of enjoying life, as since I have seen its end so
near me."
He passed his last day in promenading upon the narrow terrace at the
top of the turret, smoking some excellent cigars which Mathilde had
had fetched from Holland by a courier. He had no suspicion that his
appearance was waited for each day by all the telescopes in the town.
His thoughts were at Vergy. He never spoke to Fouqué about madame de
Rênal, but his friend told him two or three times that she was rapidly
recovering, and these words reverberated in his heart.
While Julien's soul was nearly all the time wholly in the realm
of ideas, Mathilde, who, as befits an aristocratic spirit, had
occupied herself with concrete things, had managed to make the
direct and intimate correspondence between madame de Fervaques and
M. de Frilair progress so far that the great word bishopric had been
already pronounced. The venerable prelate, who was entrusted with the
distribution of the benefices, added in a postscript to one of his
niece's letters, "This poor Sorel is only a lunatic. I hope he will be
restored to us."
At the sight of these lines, M. de Frilair felt transported. He had no
doubts about saving Julien.
"But for this Jacobin law which has ordered the formation of an
unending panel of jurymen, and which has no other real object, except
to deprive well-born people of all their influence," he said to
Mathilde on the eve of the balloting for the thirty-six jurymen of the
session, "I would have answered for the verdict. I certainly managed to
get the curé N---- acquitted."
When the names were selected by ballot on the following day, M. de
Frilair experienced a genuine pleasure in finding that they contained
five members of the Besançon congregation and that amongst those who
were strangers to the town were the names of MM. Valenod, de Moirod,
de Cholin. I can answer for these eight jurymen he said to Mathilde.
The first five are mere machines, Valenod is my agent: Moirod owes me
everything: de Cholin is an imbecile who is frightened of everything.
The journal published the names of the jurymen throughout the