Part 42

Up to that point he had felt penetrated by an unmitigated contempt for all the men present at the trial. The flat eloquence of the crown attorney increased this feeling of disgust. But little by little Julien's dryness of soul disappeared before the marks of interest of which he was evidently the object.

He was pleased with his lawyer's firm bearing.

"No fine phrases," he said to him in a low voice as he was about to speak.

"All the emphasis stolen from Bossuet, which they paraded against you, has served you," said the lawyer.

Indeed, he had scarcely spoken for five minutes before almost all the women had their handkerchiefs out. The lawyer, encouraged, addressed some extremely forceful remarks to the jury. Julien trembled; he felt himself on the verge of shedding tears. Great God! what will my enemies say?

He was about to yield to the tenderness that was overcoming him, when, fortunately for him, he caught an insolent glance from the Baron de Valenod.

"That dunce's eyes are blazing," he said to himself; "what a triumph for that base soul! If my crime had brought about only this one circumstance, I ought to curse it. God knows what he will say of me, on winter evenings, to Mme de Rênal!"

This idea erased all others. Shortly after, Julien was recalled to himself by the signs of assent from the public. The lawyer had just finished his plea. Julien remembered that it was proper to shake his hand. Time had passed quickly.

Refreshments were brought to the lawyer and the accused. It was only then that Julien was struck by a circumstance: not a single woman had left the courtroom to go and dine.

"Upon my word, I am dying of hunger," said the lawyer; "and you?"

"So am I," replied Julien.

"Look, there is the prefect's wife also receiving her dinner," said the lawyer, pointing to the little balcony. "Courage, all is going well."

The session resumed. As the president was making his summary, midnight struck. The president was obliged to break off, amid the silence of universal anxiety; the sounding of the clock bell filled the hall.

"There begins the last of my days," thought Julien. Soon he felt inflamed by the idea of duty. He had until then mastered his emotion, and kept his resolution to say nothing; but when the president of the assizes asked him if he had anything to add, he rose. He saw before him the eyes of Mme Derville, which, in the lamplight, seemed to him very bright. "Is she perhaps weeping?" he thought.

"Gentlemen of the jury,

"The horror of contempt, which I thought I could defy at the moment of death, makes me speak. Gentlemen, I have not the honor of belonging to your class; you see in me a peasant who has rebelled against the lowliness of his fortune.

"I ask no mercy of you," continued Julien, steadying his voice. "I am under no illusion; death awaits me: it will be just. I could attempt the life of the woman most worthy of all respect, of all homage. Mme de Rênal had been to me like a mother. My crime is atrocious, and it was premeditated. I therefore deserve death, gentlemen of the jury. Even were I less guilty, I see men who, without stopping at what my youth may merit in pity, will wish to punish in me and forever discourage that class of young men who, born in an inferior rank and in some sort oppressed by poverty, have the happiness of acquiring a good education, and the boldness to mix with what the pride of the rich calls society.

"That is my crime, gentlemen, and it will be punished with so much the more severity in that, in fact, I am not judged by my peers. I see upon the jury benches no enriched peasant, but only indignant bourgeois..."

For twenty minutes Julien spoke in this vein; he said all that was on his heart; the crown attorney, who aspired to the favors of the aristocracy, was bouncing in his seat; but despite the somewhat abstract turn Julien had given the discussion, all the women melted into tears. Mme Derville herself had her handkerchief to her eyes. Before finishing, Julien returned to the premeditation, to his repentance, to the respect, to the boundless filial adoration that, in happier times, he had felt for Mme de Rênal... Mme Derville gave a cry and fainted.

One o'clock was striking as the jury withdrew to their chamber. No woman had left her seat; several men had tears in their eyes. Conversation was at first very lively, but little by little, as the jury's decision was slow in coming, general fatigue began to cast calm over the assembly. This moment was solemn; the lights shone less brightly. Julien, very tired, heard discussed near him the question whether this delay was of good or bad omen. He saw with pleasure that all wishes were for him; the jury did not return, and yet no woman left the hall.

As two o'clock had just struck, a great commotion was heard. The small door of the jury chamber opened. The Baron de Valenod advanced with a grave and theatrical step; he was followed by all the jurors. He coughed, then declared that, in his soul and conscience, the unanimous finding of the jury was that Julien Sorel was guilty of murder, and of murder with premeditation: this finding entailed the death penalty; it was pronounced an instant later. Julien looked at his watch, and remembered M. de Lavalette; it was a quarter past two. "Today is Friday," he thought.

"Yes, but this day is happy for the Valenod who condemns me... I am too closely watched for Mathilde to be able to save me as Mme de Lavalette did. So, in three days, at this same hour, I shall know where I stand regarding the _great perhaps_."

At that moment he heard a cry and was recalled to the things of this world. The women around him were sobbing; he saw that all faces were turned toward a small tribune set in the crowning of a Gothic pillar. He learned later that Mathilde had hidden there. As the cry was not repeated, everyone turned back to look at Julien, whom the gendarmes were trying to lead across the room.

"Let us try not to give that rogue Valenod something to laugh about," thought Julien. "With what a contrite and wheedling air he pronounced the finding that entails the death penalty! whereas that poor president of the assizes, judge though he has been for many years, had a tear in his eye as he condemned me. What joy for Valenod to avenge our former rivalry over Mme de Rênal!... So I shall not see her again! It is over... A final farewell is impossible between us, I feel it... How happy I should have been to tell her all the horror I have for my crime!

"Only these words: I find myself justly condemned."

CHAPTER XLII

In bringing Julien back to prison, he had been taken into a room destined for the condemned. He, who usually noticed even the smallest circumstances, had not perceived that he was not taken back up to his dungeon. He was thinking of what he would say to Mme de Rênal, if, before the final moment, he had the happiness of seeing her. He thought she would interrupt him and wanted, with the first word, to be able to paint for her all his repentance. After such a deed, how to persuade her that I love her alone? for, after all, I wanted to kill her out of ambition or out of love for Mathilde.

As he got into bed, he found sheets of coarse linen. His eyes were opened. "Ah! I am in the cell, as a condemned man. It is just..."

"Count Altamira told me that, on the eve of his death, Danton said in his loud voice: It is strange, the verb to guillotine cannot be conjugated in all its tenses; one can say: I shall be guillotined, you will be guillotined, but one does not say: I have been guillotined."

"Why not," resumed Julien, "if there is another life?..."

"Upon my word, if I find the God of the Christians, I am lost: He is a despot, and, as such, full of ideas of vengeance; His Bible speaks only of atrocious punishments. I have never loved Him, I have never even wished to believe that one loved Him sincerely. He is without pity" (and he recalled several passages of the Bible). "He will punish me in an abominable manner..."

"But if I find the God of Fénelon! He will perhaps tell me: Much shall be forgiven thee, because thou hast loved much..."

"Have I loved much? Ah! I have loved Mme de Rênal but my conduct has been atrocious. There, as elsewhere, simple and modest merit has been abandoned for what is brilliant..."

"But also, what a prospect!... Colonel of hussars, if we had war; secretary of legation during peace, then ambassador... for soon I should have known the business... and even if I had been nothing but a fool, has the son-in-law of the Marquis de La Mole any rivalry to fear? All my follies would have been forgiven, or rather counted as merits. A man of merit and enjoying the greatest existence in Vienna or in London..."

"Not exactly, sir, guillotined in three days."

Julien laughed heartily at this sally of his mind. "Truly, man has two beings within him," he thought. "Who the devil was thinking of that malicious reflection?"

"Well, yes, my friend, guillotined in three days," he answered the interrupter. "M. de Cholin will rent a window, in partnership with the Abbé Maslon. Well, for the price of renting that window, which of these two worthy persons will cheat the other?"

This passage from Rotrou's _Wenceslas_ came back to him suddenly:

LADISLAS.

... My soul is quite ready.

THE KING, _father of Ladislas_.

The scaffold is too; carry your head there.

"Fine answer!" he thought, and fell asleep. Someone woke him in the morning by hugging him tightly.

"What, already!" said Julien, opening a haggard eye. He thought himself in the hands of the executioner.

It was Mathilde. "Fortunately, she did not understand me." This reflection restored all his composure. He found Mathilde changed as by six months of illness: truly she was unrecognizable.

"That infamous Frilair has betrayed me," she said to him, wringing her hands; fury kept her from weeping.

"Was I not fine yesterday, when I spoke?" replied Julien. "I improvised, and for the first time in my life! It is true that it is to be feared this was also the last."

At that moment Julien played upon Mathilde's character with all the composure of a skilled pianist touching a piano...

"The advantage of an illustrious birth is lacking to me, it is true," he added; "but the great soul of Mathilde has raised her lover to her level. Do you think Boniface de La Mole was any better before his judges?"

Mathilde, that day, was tender without affectation, like a poor girl living on the fifth floor; but she could not obtain from him simpler words. He was, without knowing it, repaying her the torment she had often inflicted upon him.

"No one knows the sources of the Nile," said Julien to himself; "it was not given to the eye of man to see the king of rivers in the state of a simple stream: thus no human eye shall see Julien weak at first because he is not so. But I have a heart easily moved; the most common word, if said with a true accent, can soften my voice and even bring my tears. How often have dry hearts not despised me for this failing! They thought I was begging for mercy: that is what must not be endured."

"It is said that the memory of his wife moved Danton at the foot of the scaffold; but Danton had given strength to a nation of fops, and kept the enemy from reaching Paris... I alone know what I could have done... To others, I am at most but a PERHAPS."

"If Mme de Rênal were here, in my cell, instead of Mathilde, could I have answered for myself? The excess of my despair and my repentance would have passed, in the eyes of Valenod and all the patricians of the country, for the ignoble fear of death; they are so proud, those weak hearts whom their pecuniary position places above temptations! See what it is, would have said MM. de Moirod and de Cholin, who have just condemned me to death, to be born son of a carpenter! One may become learned, clever, but the heart!... the heart is not taught."

"Even with this poor Mathilde, who weeps now, or rather who can weep no more," said he, looking at her red eyes... and he pressed her in his arms; the sight of true grief made him forget his syllogism... "She has perhaps wept all night," he said to himself; "but one day, what shame this memory will not cause her! She will see herself as having been led astray, in her first youth, by the low ways of thinking of a plebeian... Croisenois is weak enough to marry her, and, upon my word, he will do well. She will make him play a role."

_By the right a firm and far-reaching mind has_ _Over the gross mind of common men._

"Ah, here is something amusing: since I am to die, all the verses I have ever known in my life come back to my memory. That will be a sign of decline..."

Mathilde repeated to him in a faint voice:

"He is there, in the next room."

At last he paid attention to these words. "Her voice is weak," he thought; "but all that imperious character is still in her accent. She lowers her voice so as not to get angry."

"And who is there?" he said to her in a gentle tone.

"The lawyer, to have you sign your appeal."

"I shall not appeal."

"How! you will not appeal?" said she, rising and her eyes sparkling with anger. "And why, if you please?"

"Because, at this moment, I feel the courage to die without making too much sport at my expense. And who tells me that in two months, after a long stay in this damp cell, I shall be as well disposed? I foresee interviews with priests, with my father... Nothing in the world could be as disagreeable to me. Let us die."

This unforeseen contradiction awakened all the haughty part of Mathilde's character. She had not been able to see the Abbé de Frilair before the hour when the cells of the Besançon prison are opened; her fury fell upon Julien. She adored him, and for a good quarter of an hour he found again, in her imprecations against his character, against her having loved him, all that haughty soul which formerly had overwhelmed him with such poignant insults, in the library of the Hôtel de La Mole.

"Heaven owed it to the glory of your race to make you born a man," he said to her.

"But as for me," he thought, "I should be a fool indeed to live another two months in this loathsome abode, exposed to all that the patrician faction can invent of infamous and humiliating[*], and having for sole consolation the imprecations of this madwoman... Well, the day after tomorrow at dawn, I fight a duel with a man known for his coolness and remarkable skill... Remarkably skilled," said the Mephistophelean party; "he never misses his blow."

[*] It is a Jacobin who speaks.

"Well, so be it (Mathilde continued to be eloquent). By Jove no," said he to himself; "I shall not appeal."

This resolution taken, he fell into reverie... The courier, passing, will bring the newspaper at six o'clock as usual; at eight, after M. de Rênal has read it, Élisa, walking on tiptoe, will come to lay it on his bed. Later she will wake; suddenly, as she reads, she will be troubled, her pretty hand will tremble; she will read to these words... At ten minutes past ten he had ceased to exist.

"She will weep hot tears; I know her; in vain I tried to assassinate her, all will be forgotten. And the person whose life I tried to take will be the only one who sincerely weeps my death."

"Ah, this is an antithesis!" he thought; and, during the good quarter of an hour that Mathilde's scene with him still lasted, he thought only of Mme de Rênal. In spite of himself, and though often answering what Mathilde said to him, he could not detach his soul from the memory of the bedroom at Verrières. He saw the Besançon gazette on the orange-taffeta counterpane. He saw that very white hand clutching it with a convulsive movement; he saw Mme de Rênal weep... He followed the path of each tear on that charming face.

Mlle de La Mole, able to obtain nothing from Julien, had the lawyer brought in. He was happily an old captain of the army of Italy, of 1796, where he had been a comrade of Manuel.

For form's sake, he argued against the condemned man's resolution. Julien, wishing to treat him with esteem, set out all his reasons to him.

"Upon my word, one may think as you do," the lawyer finally said to him; "but you have three full days to appeal, and it is my duty to come back every day. If a volcano were to open under the prison, within two months you would be saved. You might die of illness," he said, looking at Julien.

Julien shook his hand.

"I thank you, you are a brave man. I shall think of that."

And when Mathilde finally left with the lawyer, he felt much more friendship for the lawyer than for her.

CHAPTER XLIII

An hour later, as he slept profoundly, he was woken by tears he felt flowing on his hand. "Ah! it is Mathilde again," he thought, half awake. "She comes, faithful to the theory, to attack my resolution through tender feelings." Annoyed at the prospect of this new scene in the pathetic vein, he did not open his eyes. The verses of Belphégor fleeing his wife came back to his mind.

He heard a singular sigh; he opened his eyes: it was Mme de Rênal.

"Ah! I see you again before dying, is it an illusion?" he cried, throwing himself at her feet.

"But pardon, madam, I am but an assassin in your eyes," he said at once, coming to himself.

"Monsieur... I come to beg you to appeal; I know you do not wish to..." Her sobs choked her; she could not speak.

"Deign to forgive me."

"If you wish me to forgive you," she said, rising and throwing herself into his arms, "appeal at once from your death sentence."

Julien covered her with kisses.

"Will you come see me every day during these two months?"

"I swear it to you. Every day, unless my husband forbids it."

"I sign!" cried Julien. "What! you forgive me! is it possible!"

He pressed her in his arms; he was mad. She gave a little cry.

"It is nothing," she said; "you hurt me."

"Your shoulder," cried Julien, melting into tears. He drew back a little, and covered her hand with fiery kisses. "Who would have told me, the last time I saw you, in your room at Verrières?..."

"Who would have told me then that I should write that infamous letter to M. de La Mole?..."

"Know that I have always loved you, that I have loved none but you."

"Is it truly possible!" cried Mme de Rênal, enraptured in her turn.

She leaned on Julien, who was at her knees, and for a long time they wept in silence.

At no period of his life had Julien found a like moment.

Much later, when they could speak:

"And that young Mme Michelet," said Mme de Rênal, "or rather that Mlle de La Mole, for I am beginning in truth to believe this strange tale."

"It is true only in appearance," replied Julien; "she is my wife, but she is not my mistress..."

Interrupting each other a hundred times, they with great difficulty told each other what they had not known. The letter written to M. de La Mole had been composed by the young priest who directed Mme de Rênal's conscience, and then copied by her.

"What horror religion made me commit!" she said to him; "and yet I softened the most frightful passages of that letter..."

Julien's transports and happiness proved to her how fully he forgave her. Never had he been so mad with love.

"Yet I believe myself pious," Mme de Rênal said later in the conversation; "I sincerely believe in God; I equally believe, and indeed it is proved to me, that the crime I commit is awful, and as soon as I see you, even after you have fired two pistol shots at me..."

And here, in spite of herself, Julien covered her with kisses.

"Leave me," she continued; "I wish to reason with you, lest I forget it... As soon as I see you, all duties vanish; I am nothing but love for you, or rather, the word love is too weak. I feel for you what I should feel solely for God: a mixture of respect, of love, of obedience... Truly, I know not what you inspire in me. You would tell me to stab the jailer, and the crime would be committed before I had thought of it. Explain this to me clearly before I leave you; I wish to see clearly into my heart; for in two months we part... By the way, shall we part?" she said, smiling.

"I withdraw my word!" cried Julien, rising; "I shall not appeal the death sentence if, by poison, knife, pistol, charcoal, or any other means whatsoever, you seek to end or hinder your life."

Mme de Rênal's countenance changed suddenly; the liveliest tenderness gave way to deep reverie.

"If we were to die at once?" she said at last.

"Who knows what one finds in the other life?" replied Julien; "perhaps torments, perhaps nothing at all. Can we not spend two months together in a delicious manner? Two months is many days. Never shall I have been so happy."

"Never shall you have been so happy!"

"Never," repeated Julien, enraptured; "and I speak to you as I speak to myself. God keep me from exaggerating."

"It is to command me to speak thus," she said with a timid and melancholy smile.

"Well! you swear, upon the love you have for me, not to attempt your life by any direct or indirect means... remember," he added, "you must live for my son, whom Mathilde will abandon to lackeys as soon as she is Marquise de Croisenois."

"I swear," she replied coldly; "but I wish to carry away your appeal, written and signed by your hand. I shall go myself to the prosecutor general."

"Take care, you are compromising yourself."

"After the step of having come to see you in your prison, I am, for Besançon and all Franche-Comté, forever a heroine of anecdote," she said with a deeply afflicted air. "The bounds of austere modesty are crossed... I am a woman lost to honor; it is true that it is for you..."

Her accent was so sad that Julien kissed her with a happiness new to him. It was no longer the intoxication of love, it was extreme gratitude. He had just perceived, for the first time, the full extent of the sacrifice she had made for him.

Some charitable soul no doubt informed M. de Rênal of the long visits his wife was paying to Julien's prison; for, at the end of three days, he sent his carriage, with the express order to return at once to Verrières.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”