The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830

my despair and my repentance would have been taken for a craven fear of death by the Valenods and all the patricians of the locality. They are so proud, are those feeble spirits, whom their pecuniary position puts above temptation! 'You see what it is to be born a carpenter's son,' M. de Moirod and de Cholin doubtless said after having condemned me to death! 'A man can learn to be learned and clever, but the qualities of the heart--the qualities of the heart cannot be learnt.' Even in the case of this poor Mathilde, who is crying now, or rather, who cannot cry," he said to himself, as he looked at her red eyes.... And he clasped her in his arms: the sight of a genuine grief made him forget the sequence of his logic.... "She has perhaps cried all the night," he said to himself, "but how ashamed she will be of this memory on some future day! She will regard herself as having been led astray in her first youth by a plebeian's low view of life.... Le Croisenois is weak enough to marry her, and upon my word, he will do well to do so. She will make him play a part." "Du droit qu'un esprit ferme et vaste en ses desseins A sur l'esprit grossier des vulgaires humaines." "Ah! that's really humorous; since I have been doomed to die, all the verses I ever knew in my life are coming back into my memory. It must be a sign of demoralisation." Mathilde kept on repeating in a choked voice: "He is there in the next room." At last he paid attention to what she was saying. "Her voice is weak," he thought, "but all the imperiousness of her character comes out in her intonation. She lowers her voice in order to avoid getting angry." "And who is there?" he said, gently. "The advocate, to get you to sign your appeal." "I shall not appeal." "What! you will not appeal," she said, getting up, with her eyes sparkling with rage. "And why, if you please?" "Because I feel at the present time that I have the courage to die without giving people occasion to laugh too much at my expense. And who will guarantee that I shall be in so sound a frame of mind in two months' time, after living for a long time in this damp cell? I foresee interviews with the priests, with my father. I can imagine nothing more unpleasant. Let's die." This unexpected opposition awakened all the haughtiness of Mathilde's character. She had not managed to see the abbé de Frilair before the time when visitors were admitted to the cells in the Besançon prison. Her fury vented itself on Julien. She adored him, and nevertheless she exhibited for a good quarter of an hour in her invective against his, Julien's, character, and her regret at having ever loved him, the same haughty soul which had formerly overwhelmed him with such cutting insults in the library of the Hôtel de la Mole. "In justice to the glory of your stock, Heaven should have had you born a man," he said to her. "But as for myself," he thought, "I should be very foolish to go on living for two more months in this disgusting place, to serve as a butt for all the infamous humiliations which the patrician party can devise,[2] and having the outburst of this mad woman for my only consolation.... Well, the morning after to-morrow I shall fight a duel with a man known for his self-possession and his remarkable skill ... his very remarkable skill," said the Mephistophelian part of him; "he never makes a miss. Well, so be it--good." (Mathilde continued to wax eloquent). "No, not for a minute," he said to himself, "I shall not appeal." Having made this resolution, he fell into meditation.... "The courier will bring the paper at six o'clock as usual, as he passes; at eight o'clock, after M. de Rênal has finished reading it, Elisa will go on tiptoe and place it on her bed. Later on she will wake up; suddenly, as she reads it she will become troubled; her pretty hands will tremble; she will go on reading down to these words: _At five minutes past ten he had ceased to exist_. "She will shed hot tears, I know her; it will matter nothing that I tried to assassinate her--all will be forgotten, and the person whose life I wished to take will be the only one who will sincerely lament my death. "Ah, that's a good paradox," he thought, and he thought about nothing except madame de Rênal during the good quarter of an hour which the scene Mathilde was making still lasted. In spite of himself, and though he made frequent answers to what Mathilde was saying, he could not take his mind away from the thought of the bedroom at Verrières. He saw the Besançon Gazette on the counterpane of orange taffeta; he saw that white hand clutching at it convulsively. He saw madame de Rênal cry.... He followed the path of every tear over her charming face. Mademoiselle de la Mole, being unable to get anything out of Julien, asked the advocate to come in. Fortunately, he was an old captain of the Italian army of 1796, where he had been a comrade of Manuel. He opposed the condemned man's resolution as a matter of form. Wishing to treat him with respect, Julien explained all his reasons. "Upon my word, I can understand a man taking the view you do," said M. Felix Vaneau (that was the advocate's name) to him at last. "But you have three full days in which to appeal, and it is my duty to come back every day. If a volcano were to open under the prison between now and two months' time you would be saved. You might die of illness," he said, looking at Julien. Julien pressed his hand--"I thank you, you are a good fellow. I will think it over." And when Mathilde eventually left with the advocate, he felt much more affection for the advocate than for her. [1] There is no heading to this and the following chapters in the original.--TRANSL. [2] The speaker is a Jacobin. CHAPTER LXXIII When he was deep asleep an hour afterwards, he was woken up by feeling tears flow over his hand. "Oh, it is Mathilde again," he thought, only half awake. "She has come again, faithful to her tactics of attacking my resolution by her sentimentalism." Bored by the prospect of this new scene of hackneyed pathos he did not open his eyes. The verses of Belphgor, as he ran away from his wife, came into his mind. He heard a strange sigh. He opened his eyes. It was madame de Rênal. "Ah, so I see you again before I die, or is it an illusion," he exclaimed as he threw himself at her feet. "But, forgive me, madame, you must look upon me as a mere murderer," he said, immediately, as he recovered himself. "Monsieur, I have come to entreat you to appeal; I know you do not want to...." her sobs choked her; she was unable to speak. "Deign to forgive me." "If you want me to forgive you," she said to him, getting up and throwing herself into his arms, "appeal immediately against your death sentence." Julien covered her with kisses. "Will you come and see me every day during those two months?" "I swear it--every day, unless my husband forbids me." "I will sign it," exclaimed Julien. "What! you really forgive me! Is it possible?" He clasped her in his arms; he was mad. She gave a little cry. "It is nothing," she said to him. "You hurt me." "Your shoulder," exclaimed Julien, bursting into tears. He drew back a little, and covered her hands with kisses of fire. "Who could have prophesied this, dear, the last time I saw you in your room at Verrières?" "Who could have prophesied then that I should write that infamous letter to M. de la Mole?" "Know that I have always loved you, and that I have never loved anyone but you." "Is it possible?" cried Madame de Rênal, who was delighted in her turn. She leant on Julien, who was on his knees, and they cried silently for a long time. Julien had never experienced moments like this at any period of his whole life. "And how about that young madame Michelet?" said Madame de Rênal, a long time afterwards when they were able to speak. "Or rather, that mademoiselle de la Mole? for I am really beginning to believe in that strange romance." "It is only superficially true," answered Julien. "She is my wife, but she is not my mistress." After interrupting each other a hundred times over, they managed with great difficulty to explain to each other what they did not know. The letter written to M. de la Mole had been drafted by the young priest who directed Madame de Rênal's conscience, and had been subsequently copied by her, "What a horrible thing religion has made me do," she said to him, "and even so I softened the most awful passages in the letter." Julien's ecstatic happiness proved the fulness of her forgiveness. He had never been so mad with love. "And yet I regard myself as devout," madame de Rênal went on to say to him in the ensuing conversation. "I believe sincerely in God! I equally believe, and I even have full proof of it, that the crime which I am committing is an awful one, and yet the very minute I see you, even after you have fired two pistol shots at me--" and at this point, in spite of her resistance, Julien covered her with kisses. "Leave me alone," she continued, "I want to argue with you, I am frightened lest I should forget.... The very minute I see you all my duties disappear. I have nothing but love for you, dear, or rather, the word love is too weak. I feel for you what I ought only to feel for God; a mixture of respect, love, obedience.... As a matter of fact, I don't know what you inspire me with.... If you were to tell me to stab the gaoler with a knife, the crime would be committed before I had given it a thought. Explain this very clearly to me before I leave you. I want to see down to the bottom of my heart; for we shall take leave of each other in two months.... By the bye, shall we take leave of each other?" she said to him with a smile. "I take back my words," exclaimed Julien, getting up, "I shall not appeal from my death sentence, if you try, either by poison, knife, pistol, charcoal, or any other means whatsoever, to put an end to your life, or make any attempt upon it." Madame de Rênal's expression suddenly changed. The most lively tenderness was succeeded by a mood of deep meditation. "Supposing we were to die at once," she said to him. "Who knows what one will find in the other life," answered Julien, "perhaps torment, perhaps nothing at all. Cannot we pass two delicious months together? Two months means a good many days. I shall never have been so happy." "You will never have been so happy?" "Never," repeated Julien ecstatically, "and I am talking to you just as I should talk to myself. May God save me from exaggerating." "Words like that are a command," she said with a timid melancholy smile. "Well, you will swear by the love you have for me, to make no attempt either direct or indirect, upon your life ... remember," he added, "that you must live for my son, whom Mathilde will hand over to lackeys as soon as she is marquise de Croisenois." "I swear," she answered coldly, "but I want to take away your notice of appeal, drawn and signed by yourself. I will go myself to M. the procureur-general." "Be careful, you will compromise yourself." "After having taken the step of coming to see you in your prison, I shall be a heroine of local scandal for Besançon, and the whole of Franche-Comté," she said very dejectedly. "I have crossed the bounds of austere modesty.... I am a woman who has lost her honour; it is true that it is for your sake...." Her tone was so sad that Julien embraced her with a happiness which was quite novel to him. It was no longer the intoxication of love, it was extreme gratitude. He had just realised for the first time the full extent of the sacrifice which she had made for him. Some charitable soul, no doubt informed M. de Rênal of the long visits