Part 40

His thoughts did not dwell any longer on that line of reasoning. The trial, the tedium of appearing in public to defend himself—he regarded all that as minor inconveniences, tiresome ceremonies to which it would be time enough to give thought on the very day. The moment of death scarcely stopped him any more: I shall think of it after the trial. Life was not wearisome to him; he viewed all things under a new aspect; he had no further ambition. He seldom thought of Mlle de La Mole. His remorse occupied him greatly and often presented to him the image of Mme de Rênal, especially during the silence of the nights, broken only, in that lofty dungeon, by the cry of the screech-owl!

He thanked heaven for not having wounded her mortally. Strange thing! he said to himself, I believed that by her letter to M. de La Mole she had destroyed forever my future happiness, and less than fifteen days after the date of that letter, I no longer think of all that then absorbed me... Two or three thousand livres of income to live quietly in a mountainous country like Vergy... I was happy then... I did not know my happiness!

At other moments, he started up from his chair. If I had wounded Mme de Rênal mortally, I should have killed myself... I need that certainty, not to be hateful to myself.

Kill myself! there is the great question, he said to himself. These judges so wedded to form, so bent on hounding the poor accused, who would hang the best of citizens to pin a cross upon their breast... I should escape their dominion, their insults in bad French, which the departmental newspaper will call eloquence...

I may live five or six weeks more, more or less... Kill myself! faith, no, said he after some days; Napoleon lived...

Besides, life is pleasant to me; this abode is quiet; I have no bores here, he added, laughing, and set about making a list of the books he wished to have sent from Paris.

CHAPTER XXXVII

A DUNGEON

The tomb of a friend.

STERNE.

He heard a great noise in the corridor; it was not the hour at which they came up to his prison; the screech-owl flew off crying, the door opened, and the venerable curé Chélan, trembling all over and cane in hand, threw himself into his arms.

--Ah! great God! is it possible, my child... Monster! should I say.

And the good old man could add not another word. Julien feared he might fall. He was obliged to lead him to a chair. The hand of time had weighed heavy upon this man once so energetic. He seemed to Julien no more than the shadow of himself.

When he had recovered his breath:

--Only the day before yesterday I received your letter from Strasbourg, with your five hundred francs for the poor of Verrières; it was brought to me in the mountains, at Liveru, where I am retired with my nephew Jean. Yesterday, I learn the catastrophe... O heaven! is it possible!

And the old man wept no more; he looked bereft of thought, and added mechanically:

--You will have need of your five hundred francs; I bring them back to you.

--I have need to see you, my father, cried Julien, touched. I have money to spare.

But he could obtain no sensible reply. From time to time M. Chélan shed a few tears which stole silently down his cheek; then he looked at Julien, and was as one dazed to see him take his hands and carry them to his lips. That countenance once so lively, and painting with such energy the noblest sentiments, had lost its air of apathy no more. A sort of peasant soon came for the old man.

--You must not tire him nor make him talk too much, said he to Julien, who understood that this was the nephew.

This appearance left Julien plunged in a cruel unhappiness that kept tears away. All seemed sad to him and without consolation; he felt his heart frozen in his breast.

This moment was the most cruel he had known since the crime. He had just seen death, and in all its ugliness. All the illusions of greatness of soul and generosity had dispersed like a cloud before the storm.

This dreadful state lasted several hours. After moral poisoning, physical remedies are needed, and Champagne. Julien would have esteemed himself a coward for having recourse to them. Toward the end of a horrible day, spent entirely in walking up and down his narrow dungeon: How mad I am! he cried. It is precisely in the case where I should die like another, that the sight of that poor old man ought to have cast me into this dreadful sadness; but a speedy death, in the flower of my years, preserves me precisely from that sad decrepitude.

Whatever reasoning he made to himself, Julien found himself touched like a pusillanimous being, and consequently unhappy, by this visit.

There was no longer anything harsh and grandiose in him, no Roman virtue; death appeared to him at a greater height, and as a thing less easy.

That shall be my thermometer, said he. This evening, I am ten degrees below the courage that brings me level with the guillotine. This morning, I had that courage. For the rest, what matters it? provided it returns to me at the necessary moment. This idea of a thermometer amused him, and at last succeeded in distracting him.

The next day on waking, he was ashamed of the day before. My happiness, my tranquillity are at stake. He resolved almost to write to the procureur général, to ask that no one be admitted to him. And Fouqué? he thought. If he can bring himself to come to Besançon, what would not be his grief!

It was perhaps two months since he had thought of Fouqué. I was a great fool at Strasbourg, my thought went no further than the collar of my coat. The memory of Fouqué occupied him much and left him more touched. He walked with agitation. Here I am decidedly twenty degrees below the level of death... If this weakness increases, it will be better to kill myself. What joy for the abbés Maslon and the Valenod, if I die like a clown!

Fouqué arrived; this simple and good man was distraught with grief. His single idea, if he had one, was to sell all his property to bribe the jailer and have Julien rescued. He spoke to him at length of the escape of M. de Lavalette.

--You pain me, said Julien to him; M. de Lavalette was innocent, I am guilty. Unwittingly, you make me think of the difference...

But, is it true? What! you would sell all your property? said Julien, suddenly becoming observant and suspicious.

Fouqué, delighted to see at last his friend respond to his dominant idea, detailed to him at length and within a hundred francs, what he would draw from each of his estates.

What a sublime effort in a provincial landowner! thought Julien. What economies, what little half-stinginesses that made me blush so when I saw him do them—he sacrifices them for me! One of those fine young men I saw at the hôtel de La Mole, and who read René, would have none of those ridiculous traits; but except those who are very young and still enriched by inheritance, and who ignore the value of money, which of those fine Parisians would be capable of such a sacrifice?

All Fouqué's faults of French, all his common gestures disappeared; he threw himself into his arms. Never did the province, compared to Paris, receive a fairer homage. Fouqué, ravished at the moment of enthusiasm he saw in his friend's eyes, took it for a consent to flight.

This sight of the sublime restored to Julien all the strength that the appearance of M. Chélan had made him lose. He was still very young; but, in my view, he was a fine plant. Instead of advancing from the tender to the cunning, as most men do, age would have given him an easy goodness, readily moved; he would have cured himself of a mad distrust... But what use are these vain predictions?

The interrogations became more frequent in spite of Julien's efforts, all whose answers tended to abridge the affair:

--I killed, or at least I meant to give death, and with premeditation, he repeated each day.

But the judge was a formalist before all. Julien's declarations in no way shortened the interrogations; the judge's self-love was piqued. Julien did not know that they had wished to transfer him to a frightful cell, and that it was thanks to Fouqué's steps that they left him his pretty chamber a hundred and eighty steps up.

M. l'abbé de Frilair was among the important men who charged Fouqué with their supply of firewood. The good merchant got through to the all-powerful grand vicar. To his unutterable delight, M. de Frilair announced to him that, touched by Julien's good qualities and the services he had formerly rendered the seminary, he counted on recommending him to the judges. Fouqué glimpsed the hope of saving his friend, and on leaving, and prostrating himself to the ground, prayed the grand vicar to distribute in masses, to implore the acquittal of the accused, a sum of ten louis.

Fouqué was strangely mistaken. M. de Frilair was no Valenod. He refused and even sought to make the good peasant understand he would do better to keep his money. Seeing that it was impossible to be clear without imprudence, he advised him to give that sum in alms to the poor prisoners, who, in fact, lacked everything.

This Julien is a singular being, his action is inexplicable, thought M. de Frilair, and nothing should be so to me... Perhaps it will be possible to make a martyr of him... In any case, I shall know the end of this affair and shall perhaps find an occasion to frighten that Mme de Rênal, who does not esteem us, and at bottom detests me... Perhaps I may meet in all this a means of a striking reconciliation with M. de La Mole, who has a weakness for this little seminarian.

The transaction on the lawsuit had been signed some weeks before, and the abbé Pirard had left Besançon, not without having spoken of Julien's mysterious birth, on the very day the unhappy man assassinated Mme de Rênal in the church at Verrières.

Julien saw but one disagreeable event between him and death: the visit of his father. He consulted Fouqué on the idea of writing to the procureur général, to be dispensed from all visits. This horror of the sight of a father, and at such a moment, struck deep into the honest and bourgeois heart of the wood-merchant.

He thought he understood why so many people hated his friend passionately. Out of respect for misfortune, he hid his way of feeling.

--In any case, he answered him coldly, this order of secrecy would not be applied to your father.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

A POWERFUL MAN

But there is so much mystery in her ways and elegance in her figure! Who can she be?

SCHILLER.

The doors of the dungeon opened very early the next day. Julien was started awake.

--Ah! good God, he thought, there is my father. What an unpleasant scene!

At the same instant, a woman dressed as a peasant flung herself into his arms, clasping him in a convulsive way; he had difficulty recognizing her. It was Mlle de La Mole.

--Wretch, I knew where you were only by your letter. What you call your crime, and which is but a noble vengeance that reveals to me all the height of the heart that beats in that breast, I learned of it only at Verrières...

Despite his prejudices against Mlle de La Mole, which besides he did not clearly avow to himself, Julien found her very pretty. How not to see, in all this manner of acting and speaking, a noble sentiment, disinterested, far above all that a small and vulgar soul would have dared? He believed again that he loved a queen, and after some instants, it was with a rare nobility of elocution and thought that he said to her:

--The future presented itself to my eyes quite clearly. After my death, I was marrying you to M. de Croisenois, who would have married a widow. The noble but somewhat romantic soul of that charming widow, astonished and converted to the cult of vulgar prudence by a singular, tragic and grand event for her, would have deigned to comprehend the very real merit of the young marquis. You would have resigned yourself to being happy with the happiness of all: consideration, riches, high rank... But, dear Mathilde, your arrival at Besançon, if it is suspected, will be a mortal blow to M. de La Mole, and that is what I shall never forgive myself. I have already caused him so much grief! The academician will say that he warmed a serpent in his bosom.

--I confess I expected little such cold reason, such care for the future, said Mlle de La Mole, half-angered. My maid, almost as prudent as you, took a passport for herself, and it is under the name of Mme Michelet that I have come post-haste.

--And Mme Michelet could arrive as easily as this to me?

--Ah! you are still the superior man, the one I distinguished! First, I offered a hundred francs to a clerk of the judge, who pretended that my entry into this dungeon was impossible. But the money received, this honest man made me wait, raised objections, I thought he was thinking of robbing me...

She stopped.

--Well? said Julien.

--Do not be angry, my little Julien, said she, kissing him, I was obliged to tell my name to that clerk, who took me for a young workwoman from Paris in love with the handsome Julien... In truth, those are his terms. I swore to him I was your wife, and I shall have a permission to see you every day.

The madness is complete, thought Julien; I could not prevent it. After all, M. de La Mole is so great a lord, that opinion will readily find an excuse for the young colonel who marries that charming widow. My approaching death will cover all; and he gave himself up with delight to Mathilde's love; it was madness, greatness of soul, all that is most singular. She seriously proposed to him to kill herself with him.

After these first transports, and when she had sated herself with the happiness of seeing Julien, a lively curiosity suddenly seized her soul. She examined her lover, whom she found far above what she had imagined. Boniface de La Mole seemed to her resurrected, but more heroic.

Mathilde saw the first lawyers of the country, whom she offended by offering them gold too crudely; but they ended by accepting.

She rapidly arrived at the idea that, in matters doubtful and of high import, everything at Besançon depended on M. l'abbé de Frilair.

Under the obscure name of Mme Michelet, she at first found insurmountable difficulties in reaching the all-powerful congregantist. But the rumor of the beauty of a young milliner, mad with love, and come from Paris to Besançon to console the young abbé Julien Sorel, spread through the town.

Mathilde ran alone on foot through the streets of Besançon; she hoped not to be recognized. In any case, she did not think it useless to her cause to produce a great impression on the people. Her madness thought to stir them up to save Julien marching to death. Mlle de La Mole believed herself simply dressed and as befits a woman in grief; she was so in a way to draw all eyes.

She was the object of everyone's attention at Besançon when, after eight days of solicitation, she obtained an audience with M. de Frilair.

However great her courage, the ideas of influential congregantist and of profound and prudent wickedness were so linked in her mind, that she trembled as she rang at the door of the bishop's palace. She could scarcely walk, when she had to mount the staircase leading to the apartment of the first grand vicar. The solitude of the episcopal palace gave her cold. I may sit on a chair, and that chair seize my arms, I shall have disappeared. Of whom will my maid be able to ask for me? The captain of gendarmes will take good care not to act... I am isolated in this great city!

At her first glance into the apartment, Mlle de La Mole was reassured. First, it was a very elegant livery footman who opened to her. The salon where she was made to wait displayed that fine and delicate luxury, so different from gross magnificence, and which is found in Paris only in the best houses. As soon as she caught sight of M. de Frilair coming toward her with a paternal air, all ideas of atrocious crime disappeared. She did not even find on that handsome face the imprint of that energetic and somewhat savage virtue so antipathetic to Parisian society. The half-smile animating the features of the priest, who disposed of all at Besançon, announced the man of good company, the instructed prelate, the able administrator. Mathilde believed herself in Paris.

It took but a few instants for M. de Frilair to lead Mathilde to confess to him that she was the daughter of his powerful adversary, the marquis de La Mole.

--I am not in fact Mme Michelet, said she, resuming all the height of her bearing, and this avowal costs me little, for I come to consult you, sir, on the possibility of procuring the escape of M. de La Vernaye. First, he is guilty only of a thoughtless act; the woman at whom he fired is doing well. In the second place, to seduce the subordinates, I can hand over on the spot fifty thousand francs, and engage for double. Finally, my gratitude and that of my family will find nothing impossible for whoever shall have saved M. de La Vernaye.

M. de Frilair seemed astonished at that name. Mathilde showed him several letters from the minister of war, addressed to M. Julien Sorel de La Vernaye.

--You see, sir, that my father was taking charge of his fortune. It is quite simple, I married him in secret; my father desired that he be a superior officer, before declaring this somewhat singular marriage for a La Mole.

Mathilde remarked that the expression of kindness and a gentle gaiety was rapidly vanishing, as M. de Frilair arrived at important discoveries. A finesse mingled with deep falsity painted itself on his face.

The abbé had doubts; he reread slowly the official documents.

What advantage can I draw from these strange confidences? he said to himself. Here I am all at once in intimate relation with a friend of the celebrated maréchale de Fervaques, all-powerful niece of Mgr the bishop of ***, through whom one becomes bishop in France.

What I regarded as remote in the future presents itself abruptly. This may lead me to the goal of all my wishes.

At first Mathilde was frightened by the rapid change in the physiognomy of this so powerful man, with whom she found herself alone in a retired apartment. But what! she said to herself soon, would not the worst chance have been to make no impression on the cold egoism of a priest sated with power and enjoyments?

Dazzled by this rapid and unforeseen path opening before his eyes to reach the episcopate, astonished at Mathilde's genius, for an instant M. de Frilair was off his guard. Mlle de La Mole saw him almost at her feet, ambitious and eager to the point of nervous trembling.

All is clear, she thought; nothing will be impossible here to the friend of Mme de Fervaques. Despite a still very painful sentiment of jealousy, she had the courage to explain that Julien was the intimate friend of the maréchale, and met almost every day at her house Mgr the bishop of ***.

--When one would draw by lot four or five times in succession a list of thirty-six jurors among the notable inhabitants of this department, said the grand vicar with the harsh glance of ambition and emphasizing the words, I should consider myself very unlucky, if, in each list, I did not count eight or ten friends and the most intelligent of the band. Almost always, I should have the majority, more than she herself to condemn; see, mademoiselle, with what great ease I can bring about an acquittal...

The abbé stopped short, as if astonished at the sound of his words; he was avowing things one never says to the profane.

But, in his turn, he struck Mathilde with stupor, when he told her that what astonished and interested above all the society of Besançon in the strange adventure of Julien, was that he had formerly inspired a great passion in Mme de Rênal, and long shared it. M. de Frilair easily perceived the extreme trouble his tale produced.

I have my revenge! he thought. At last, here is a means of leading this so decided little person; I trembled at not succeeding. The distinguished air and not easy to lead redoubled in his eyes the charm of the rare beauty he saw almost suppliant before him. He recovered all his presence of mind, and did not hesitate to turn the dagger in her heart.

--I should not be surprised, after all, said he to her with a light air, when we learn that it is from jealousy that M. Sorel fired two pistol-shots at that once so beloved woman. She is far from lacking attractions, and of late she saw very often a certain abbé Marquinot of Dijon, a sort of Jansenist without morals, as they all are.

M. de Frilair tortured at leisure and with voluptuousness the heart of this pretty girl, whose secret he had surprised.

--Why, said he, fixing ardent eyes on Mathilde, would M. Sorel have chosen the church, if not because, precisely at that moment, his rival was celebrating mass there? Everyone allows infinite wit, and still more prudence, to the happy man you protect. What more simple than to hide in the gardens of M. de Rênal which he knows so well? There, with the near certainty of being neither seen, nor taken, nor suspected, he could give death to the woman of whom he was jealous.

This reasoning, so just in appearance, finished throwing Mathilde beside herself. That haughty soul, but saturated with all that dry prudence which passes in high society for faithfully painting the human heart, was not made to understand quickly the happiness of scorning all prudence, which can be so keen for an ardent soul. In the high classes of Parisian society, where Mathilde had lived, passion can but very rarely strip itself of prudence, and it is from the fifth floor that one throws oneself from the window.

At last, the abbé de Frilair was sure of his sway. He let Mathilde understand (no doubt he lied) that he could dispose at will of the public ministry, charged with sustaining the accusation against Julien.

After fate should have designated the thirty-six jurors of the session, he would make a direct and personal step toward at least thirty jurors.

If Mathilde had not seemed so pretty to M. de Frilair, he would not have spoken to her so clearly until the fifth or sixth interview.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE INTRIGUE

Castres 1676.--A brother has just assassinated his sister in the house next to mine; this gentleman was already guilty of a murder. His father, by secretly distributing five hundred écus to the councillors, saved his life.

LOCKE, Voyage en France.

On leaving the bishop's palace, Mathilde did not hesitate to send a courier to Mme de Fervaques; the fear of compromising herself did not stop her a second. She conjured her rival to obtain a letter for M. de Frilair written entirely in the hand of Mgr the bishop of ***. She went so far as to beg her to hasten herself to Besançon. This was heroic in a jealous and proud soul.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”