CHAPTER LXXII[1]

When Julien was taken back to prison he had been taken into a room

intended for those who were condemned to death. Although a man who in

the usual way would notice the most petty details, he had quite failed

to observe that he had not been taken up to his turret. He was thinking

of what he would say to madame de Rênal if he had the happiness of

seeing her before the final moment. He thought that she would break

into what he was saying and was anxious to be able to express his

absolute repentance with his very first words. "How can I convince her

that I love her alone after committing an action like that? For after

all, it was either out of ambition, or out of love for Mathilde, that I

wanted to kill her."

As he went to bed, he came across sheets of a rough coarse material.

"Ah! I am in the condemned cell, he said to himself. That is right.

"Comte Altamira used to tell me that Danton, on the eve of his death,

would say in his loud voice: 'it is singular but you cannot conjugate

the verb guillotine in all its tenses: of course you can say, I shall

be guillotined, thou shalt be guillotined, but you don't say, I have

been guillotined.'

"Why not?" went on Julien, "if there is another life.... Upon my word,

it will be all up with me if I find the God of the Christians there: He

is a tyrant, and as such, he is full of ideas of vengeance: his Bible

speaks of nothing but atrocious punishment. I never liked him--I could

never get myself to believe that anyone really liked him. He has no

pity (and he remembered several passages in the Bible) he will punish

me atrociously.

"But supposing I find Fénelon's God: He will perhaps say to me: 'Much

forgiveness will be vouchsafed to thee, inasmuch as thou hast loved

much.'

"Have I loved much? Ah! I loved madame de Rênal, but my conduct has

been atrocious. In that, as in other cases, simple modest merit was

abandoned for the sake of what was brilliant.

"But still, what fine prospects? Colonel of Hussars, if we had had a

war: secretary of a legation during peace: then ambassador ... for

I should soon have picked up politics ... and even if I had been an

idiot, would the marquis de la Mole's son-in-law have had any rivalry

to fear? All my stupidities have been forgiven, or rather, counted

as merits. A man of merit, then, and living in the grandest style at

Vienna or London.

"Not exactly, monsieur. Guillotined in three days' time."

Julien laughed heartily at this sally of his wit. "As a matter of fact,

man has two beings within him, he thought. Who the devil can have

thought of such a sinister notion?"

"Well, yes, my friend: guillotined in three days," he answered the

interruptor. "M. de Cholin will hire a window and share the expense

with the abbé Maslon. Well, which of those two worthy personages

will rob the other over the price paid for hiring that window?" The

following passage from Rotrou's "Venceslas" suddenly came back into his

mind:--

LADISLAS

.................Mon âme est toute prête.

THE KING, _father of Ladislas_.

L'échafaud l'est aussi: portez-y-votre tête.

"A good repartee" he thought, as he went to sleep. He was awakened in

the morning by someone catching hold of him violently.

"What! already," said Julien, opening his haggard eyes. He thought he

was already in the executioner's hands.

It was Mathilde. "Luckily, she has not understood me." This reflection

restored all his self possession. He found Mathilde as changed as

though she had gone through a six months' illness: she was really not

recognisable.

"That infamous Frilair has betrayed me," she said to him, wringing her

hands. Her fury prevented her from crying.

"Was I not fine when I made my speech yesterday?" answered Julien. "I

was improvising for the first time in my life! It is true that it is to

be feared that it will also be the last."

At this moment, Julien was playing on Mathilde's character with all

the self-possession of a clever pianist, whose fingers are on the

instrument.... "It is true," he added, "that I lack the advantage of a

distinguished birth, but Mathilde's great soul has lifted her lover up

to her own level. Do you think that Boniface de la Mole would have cut

a better figure before his judges?"

On this particular day, Mathilde was as unaffectedly tender as a poor

girl living in a fifth storey. But she failed to extract from him any

simpler remark. He was paying her back without knowing it for all the

torture she had frequently inflicted on him.

"The sources of the Nile are unknown," said Julien to himself: "it has

not been vouchsafed to the human eye to see the king of rivers as a

simple brook: similarly, no human eye shall see Julien weak. In the

first place because he is not so. But I have a heart which it is easy

to touch. The most commonplace words, if said in a genuine tone, can

make my voice broken and even cause me to shed tears. How often have

frigid characters not despised me for this weakness. They thought that

I was asking a favour: that is what I cannot put up with.

"It is said that when at the foot of the scaffold, Danton was affected

by the thought of his wife: but Danton had given strength to a nation

of coxcombs and prevented the enemy from reaching Paris.... I alone

know what I should have been able to do.... I represent to the others

at the very outside, simply A PERHAPS.

"If madame de Rênal had been here in my cell instead of Mathilde,

should I have been able to have answered for myself? The extremity of

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.