Part 43
This cruel separation had begun the day badly for Julien. He was warned, two or three hours later, that a certain scheming priest, who had nevertheless been unable to push his way in among the Jesuits of Besançon, had established himself since morning outside the prison gate, in the street. It was raining heavily, and there this man claimed to be playing the martyr. Julien was out of sorts; this foolishness touched him deeply.
In the morning he had already refused the priest's visit, but the man had taken it into his head to confess Julien and to make a name for himself among the young women of Besançon, by all the confidences he would claim to have received from him.
He declared aloud that he was going to spend the day and the night at the prison gate:
"God sends me to touch the heart of this other apostate..."
And the common people, always curious for a scene, began to gather in a crowd.
"Yes, my brothers," he said to them, "I shall remain here the day, the night, as well as all the days, and all the nights that follow. The Holy Spirit has spoken to me, I have a mission from on high; it is I who must save the soul of the young Sorel. Join your prayers to mine, etc., etc."
Julien had a horror of scandal and of all that might draw attention to him. He thought of seizing the moment to escape from the world incognito; but he had some hope of seeing Mme de Rênal again, and he was madly in love.
The prison gate was situated in one of the most frequented streets. The idea of this mud-splattered priest, causing a crowd and a scandal, tortured his soul. And, no doubt, at every instant he repeats my name! This moment was more painful than death.
He called, two or three times, at an hour's interval, a turnkey who was devoted to him, to send him to see if the priest was still at the prison gate.
"Sir, he is on both knees in the mud," the turnkey always said to him, "he is praying aloud and saying litanies for your soul..."
The impertinent fellow! thought Julien. At this moment, indeed, he heard a dull murmur; it was the people answering the litanies. To complete his impatience, he saw the turnkey himself moving his lips in repeating the Latin words.
"They are beginning to say," added the turnkey, "that you must have a very hardened heart to refuse the help of this holy man."
O my country! how barbarous you still are! cried Julien, drunk with anger. And he continued his reasoning aloud and without thinking of the turnkey's presence.
This man wants an article in the newspaper, and there he is sure to get it.
Ah, cursed provincials! in Paris, I should not be subjected to all these vexations. There they are more skilled in charlatanism.
"Bring in this holy priest," he finally said to the turnkey, and the sweat poured in great streams on his forehead.
The turnkey made the sign of the cross and went out quite joyful.
This holy priest turned out to be horribly ugly, and he was even more mud-splattered. The cold rain that was falling increased the darkness and dampness of the dungeon. The priest wanted to embrace Julien, and began to grow tender in speaking to him. The basest hypocrisy was too evident; never in his life had Julien been so angry.
A quarter of an hour after the priest's entrance, Julien found himself quite a coward. For the first time, death appeared horrible to him. He thought of the state of putrefaction his body would be in two days after the execution, etc., etc.
He was about to betray himself by some sign of weakness or to throw himself on the priest and strangle him with his chain, when he had the idea of asking the holy man to go say a good mass of forty francs for him, that very day.
Now, it was near noon, the priest decamped.
CHAPTER XLIV
As soon as he was out, Julien wept much and wept for dying. Little by little he told himself that, if Mme de Rênal had been in Besançon, he would have confessed his weakness to her...
At the moment when he most regretted the absence of this adored woman, he heard Mathilde's step.
The worst misfortune in prison, he thought, is not being able to lock one's door. All that Mathilde said to him only irritated him.
She told him that, on the day of the trial, M. de Valenod having in his pocket his appointment as prefect, had dared to mock M. de Frilair and give himself the pleasure of condemning him to death.
"What an idea your friend had," M. de Frilair has just said to me, "of going to awaken and attack the little vanity of this bourgeois aristocracy! Why speak of caste? He pointed out to them what they should do in their political interest: these nincompoops were not thinking of it and were ready to weep. This interest of caste came to mask from their eyes the horror of condemning to death. One must admit that M. Sorel is quite new to affairs. If we do not manage to save him by the appeal for clemency, his death will be a sort of suicide..."
Mathilde did not fail to tell Julien what she did not yet suspect: that the abbé de Frilair, seeing Julien lost, believed it useful to his ambition to aspire to become his successor.
Almost beside himself with helpless anger and annoyance:
"Go listen to a mass for me," he said to Mathilde, "and leave me a moment of peace."
Mathilde, already quite jealous of Mme de Rênal's visits, and who had just learned of her departure, understood the cause of Julien's ill humor, and burst into tears.
Her grief was real, Julien saw it and was only the more irritated. He had an imperious need of solitude, and how to procure it?
At last, Mathilde, after trying all manner of arguments to soften him, left him alone, but almost at the same instant Fouqué appeared.
"I need to be alone," he said to this faithful friend...
And as he saw him hesitate:
"I am composing a memoir for my appeal for clemency... besides... do me a favor, never speak to me of death. If I need some particular services that day, let me speak to you of it first."
When Julien had finally procured solitude, he found himself more overwhelmed and more cowardly than before. The little strength left to this weakened soul had been exhausted in disguising his state from Mlle de La Mole and from Fouqué.
Toward evening, an idea consoled him:
If this morning, at a moment when death seemed so ugly to me, I had been warned for the execution, the eye of the public would have been a goad of glory; perhaps my bearing would have had something stiff, like that of a timid fop entering a salon. A few clear-sighted people, if there are any among these provincials, might have guessed my weakness... but no one would have seen it.
And he felt delivered from part of his misfortune. I am a coward at this moment, he repeated to himself, singing, but no one will know it.
An almost still more disagreeable event awaited him for the next day. For a long time, his father had announced his visit; that day, before Julien's awakening, the white-haired old carpenter appeared in his dungeon.
Julien felt weak; he expected the most unpleasant reproaches. To complete his painful sensation, that morning he felt keenly the remorse of not loving his father.
Chance has placed us near each other on earth, he said to himself while the turnkey was arranging the dungeon a little, and we have done each other about all the possible harm. He comes at the moment of my death to give me the final blow.
The old man's severe reproaches began as soon as they were without witness.
Julien could not hold back his tears. What unworthy weakness! he said to himself in rage. He will go everywhere exaggerating my lack of courage; what a triumph for the Valenod and for all the base hypocrites who rule in Verrières! They are mighty in France, they unite all social advantages. Until now I could at least tell myself: They receive money, it is true, all honors accumulate on them, but I have the nobility of heart.
And here is a witness whom all will believe, and who will certify to all Verrières, and exaggerating it, that I was weak before death! I shall have been a coward in this trial that all understand!
Julien was near despair. He did not know how to send his father away. And to feign so as to deceive this clear-sighted old man seemed to him at that moment quite beyond his strength.
His mind rapidly ran through all possibilities.
"I have made some savings!" he suddenly cried.
This stroke of genius changed the old man's expression and Julien's position.
"How am I to dispose of it?" continued Julien, more tranquil; the effect produced had removed all feeling of inferiority.
The old carpenter burned with the desire not to let slip this money, of which it seemed Julien wanted to leave a part to his brothers. He spoke long and with heat. Julien could be mocking.
"Well! the Lord has inspired me for my will. I shall give a thousand francs to each of my brothers and the rest to you."
"Very well," said the old man, "this remainder is due me; but since God has granted you the grace of touching your heart, if you wish to die a good Christian, it is fitting to pay your debts. There are still the costs of your food and education that I advanced, and of which you do not think..."
So much for fatherly love! Julien repeated to himself, his soul wounded, when at last he was alone. Soon the jailer appeared.
"Sir, after the visit of the great relations, I always bring my guests a bottle of good Champagne wine. It is a bit dear, six francs the bottle, but it gladdens the heart."
"Bring three glasses," Julien said to him with a child's eagerness, "and send in two of the prisoners I hear walking in the corridor."
The jailer brought him two galley-slaves fallen into recidivism and preparing to return to the hulks. They were very gay scoundrels and truly remarkable for finesse, courage, and coolness.
"If you give me twenty francs," one of them said to Julien, "I will tell you my life in detail. It is prime stuff."
"But you will lie to me?" said Julien.
"Not at all," he answered, "my friend here, who is jealous of my twenty francs, will denounce me if I speak false."
His story was abominable. It showed a courageous heart, where there was no longer but one passion, that of money.
After their departure, Julien was no longer the same man. All his anger against himself had disappeared. The atrocious pain, envenomed by pusillanimity, in which he had been prey since Mme de Rênal's departure, had turned into melancholy.
The less dupe of appearances I should have been, he told himself, the more I should have seen that the salons of Paris are peopled with honest men such as my father, or with clever knaves such as these galley-slaves. They are right; never do salon men rise in the morning with that poignant thought: How shall I dine? And they praise their probity! and, called to the jury, they proudly condemn the man who stole a silver place-setting because he felt faint from hunger!
But is there a court, is it a matter of losing or gaining a portfolio, my honest salon men fall into crimes exactly like those that the need to dine inspired in these two galley-slaves...
There is no natural right, that word is but an ancient silliness well worthy of the attorney-general who hunted me down the other day, and whose grandfather was enriched by a confiscation of Louis XIV. There is right only when there is a law forbidding such a thing under pain of punishment. Before the law there is nothing natural but the strength of the lion, or the need of the being who is hungry, who is cold, need in a word... No, the men who are honored are only rogues who had the good fortune not to be caught in flagrante delicto. The accuser that society launches after me was enriched by an infamy... I committed a murder and I am justly condemned; but, this single action apart, the Valenod who condemned me is a hundred times more harmful to society.
Well! added Julien sadly, but without anger despite his avarice, my father is worth more than all those men. He never loved me. I come to fill the measure by dishonoring him with an infamous death. This fear of lacking money, this exaggerated view of the wickedness of men called avarice, makes him see a prodigious motive of consolation and security in a sum of three or four hundred louis that I can leave him. One Sunday after dinner, he will show his gold to all his envious ones in Verrières. At this price, his look will say to them, which of you would not be charmed to have a guillotined son?
This philosophy might be true, but it was of a nature to make one wish for death. Thus passed five long days. He was polite and gentle toward Mathilde, whom he saw exasperated by the liveliest jealousy. One evening Julien was seriously thinking of killing himself. His soul was unnerved by the deep unhappiness into which Mme de Rênal's departure had thrown him. Nothing pleased him anymore, neither in real life nor in imagination. Lack of exercise was beginning to impair his health and give him the exalted and weak character of a young German student. He was losing that manly pride which repels with an energetic oath certain unsuitable ideas with which the souls of the unfortunate are assailed.
I loved the truth... Where is it?... Everywhere hypocrisy or at least charlatanism, even among the most virtuous, even among the greatest; and his lips took the expression of disgust... No, man cannot trust man.
Mme de *** making a collection for her poor orphans, told me such and such a prince had just given ten louis; a lie. But what am I saying? Napoleon at Saint Helena!... Pure charlatanism, proclamation in favor of the king of Rome.
Great God! if such a man, and still when misfortune must severely recall him to duty, lowers himself to charlatanism, what to expect from the rest of the species?
...Where is the truth? In religion... Yes, he added with the bitter smile of the utmost contempt, in the mouth of the Maslon, the Frilair, the Castanède... Perhaps in true Christianity, whose priests would not be better paid than the apostles were... But Saint Paul was paid by the pleasure of commanding, of speaking, of making himself spoken of...
Ah! if there were a true religion... Fool that I am! I see a Gothic cathedral, venerable stained glass; my weak heart figures the priest of those windows... My soul would understand him, my soul needs it... I find only a fop with dirty hair... apart from the graces, a chevalier de Beauvoisis.
But a true priest, a Massillon, a Fénelon... Massillon anointed Dubois. Saint-Simon's Memoirs spoiled Fénelon for me; but after all a true priest... Then tender souls would have a point of union in the world... We should not be isolated... That good priest would speak to us of God. But what God? Not that of the Bible, little cruel despot full of the thirst for revenge... but the God of Voltaire, just, good, infinite...
He was agitated by all the memories of that Bible he knew by heart... But how, as soon as we are three together, believe in that great name GOD, after the frightful abuse our priests make of it?
To live isolated!... What a torment!
...I am going mad and unjust, Julien said to himself, striking his forehead. I am isolated here in this dungeon, but I have not lived isolated on earth; I had the powerful idea of duty. The duty I prescribed myself, rightly or wrongly... has been like the trunk of a solid tree on which I leaned during the storm; I wavered, I was shaken. After all, I was but a man... but I was not swept away.
It is the damp air of this dungeon that makes me think of isolation...
And why still be a hypocrite in cursing hypocrisy? It is neither death, nor the dungeon, nor the damp air, it is the absence of Mme de Rênal that overwhelms me. If, at Verrières, to see her, I were obliged to live whole weeks, hidden in the cellars of her house, would I complain?
The influence of my contemporaries prevails, he said aloud and with a bitter laugh. Speaking alone with myself, two steps from death, I am still a hypocrite... O nineteenth century!
...A hunter fires a gunshot in a forest, his prey falls, he leaps to seize it. His shoe strikes an ant-hill two feet high, destroys the ants' dwelling, scatters the ants and their eggs far and wide... The most philosophical among the ants will never be able to understand that black body, immense, frightful: the hunter's boot, which suddenly penetrated their home, with incredible rapidity, and preceded by a dreadful noise, accompanied by bursts of reddish fire.
...Thus death, life, eternity, things quite simple for whoever would have organs vast enough to conceive them...
An ephemeral fly is born at nine in the morning in the bright days of summer, to die at five in the evening; how would it understand the word night?
Give it five hours more of existence, it sees and understands what night is.
Thus I, I shall die at twenty-three. Give me five years more of life, to live with Mme de Rênal...
He began to laugh like Mephistopheles. What madness to discuss these great problems!
1. I am a hypocrite as if there were someone there to listen to me.
2. I forget to live and to love, when I have so few days left to live... Alas! Mme de Rênal is absent; perhaps her husband will no longer let her return to Besançon, and continue to dishonor himself.
This is what isolates me, and not the absence of a just, almighty God, not wicked, not greedy for revenge...
Ah! if he existed... alas! I should fall at his feet: I have deserved death, I should say to him; but, great God, good God, indulgent God, give me back her I love!
The night was then far advanced. After an hour or two of peaceful sleep, Fouqué arrived.
Julien felt strong and resolved like a man who sees clearly into his soul.
CHAPTER XLV
"I do not want to play the poor abbé Chas-Bernard the bad trick of having him called," he said to Fouqué; "he would not dine for three days. But try to find me a Jansenist, friend of M. Pirard and inaccessible to intrigue."
Fouqué awaited this opening with impatience. Julien acquitted himself with decency of all that one owes to opinion, in the provinces. Thanks to M. l'abbé de Frilair, and despite the poor choice of his confessor, Julien was in his dungeon the protégé of the congregation; with more conduct, he might have escaped. But the bad air of the dungeon producing its effect, his reason diminished. He was only the happier, at Mme de Rênal's return.
"My first duty is toward you," she said to him, embracing him; "I ran away from Verrières..."
Julien had no petty self-esteem toward himself; he told her all his weaknesses. She was good and charming to him.
That evening, scarcely out of prison, she sent for at her aunt's the priest who had attached himself to Julien as to a prey; as he wanted only to put himself in credit with the young women of high society in Besançon, Mme de Rênal easily engaged him to go make a novena at the abbey of Bray-le-Haut.
No words can render the excess and the folly of Julien's love.
By dint of gold, and using and abusing the credit of her aunt, a celebrated and rich devotee, Mme de Rênal obtained to see him twice a day.
At this news, Mathilde's jealousy rose to distraction. M. de Frilair had confessed to her that all his credit did not extend to braving all conventions to the point of permitting her to see her friend more than once a day. Mathilde had Mme de Rênal followed so as to know her slightest moves. M. de Frilair exhausted all the resources of a very adroit mind to prove to her that Julien was unworthy of her.
In the midst of all these torments, she only loved him the more, and, almost every day, made him a horrible scene.
Julien wanted at all costs to be an honest man to the end toward this poor young girl whom he had so strangely compromised; but, every instant the frenzied love he had for Mme de Rênal prevailed. When, by bad reasons, he could not manage to persuade Mathilde of the innocence of her rival's visits:
"Henceforth, the end of the drama must be near," he told himself; "it is an excuse for me if I do not know how to dissimulate better."
Mlle de La Mole learned of the death of the marquis de Croisenois. M. de Thaler, that very rich man, had permitted himself disagreeable remarks on Mathilde's disappearance.
M. de Croisenois went to ask him to retract them: M. de Thaler showed him anonymous letters addressed to him, and full of details brought together with such art that the poor marquis could not but glimpse the truth.
M. de Thaler permitted himself jokes devoid of finesse. Drunk with anger and unhappiness, M. de Croisenois demanded such strong reparations that the millionaire preferred a duel. Folly triumphed, and one of the men of Paris most worthy of being loved found death at less than twenty-four years.
This death made a strange and morbid impression on the weakened soul of Julien.
"Poor Croisenois," he said to Mathilde, "was really quite reasonable and quite an honest man toward us; he should have hated me at the time of your imprudences in your mother's salon, and picked a quarrel with me; for the hatred that succeeds contempt is ordinarily furious..."
The death of M. de Croisenois changed all Julien's ideas on Mathilde's future; he employed several days to prove to her that she must accept the hand of M. de Luz. He is a timid man, not too Jesuitical, he told her, and who, no doubt, will put himself forward. Of a darker and more sustained ambition than poor Croisenois, and with no duchy in his family, he will make no difficulty of marrying the widow of Julien Sorel.
"And a widow who despises great passions," coldly replied Mathilde; "for she has lived enough to see, after six months, her lover prefer another woman to her, and a woman the origin of all their misfortunes."
"You are unjust; Mme de Rênal's visits will furnish singular phrases to the Paris attorney charged with my appeal for clemency; he will paint the murderer honored with the care of his victim. That may have effect, and perhaps, one day, you will see me the subject of some melodrama, etc., etc."
A furious jealousy impossible to avenge, the continuity of a hopeless misfortune (for, even supposing Julien saved, how regain his heart?) the shame and the pain of loving more than ever this unfaithful lover, had thrown Mlle de La Mole into a morose silence, from which neither M. de Frilair's eager cares, nor Fouqué's blunt frankness, could draw her out.
For Julien, except in the moments stolen by Mathilde's presence, he lived of love and without almost thinking of the future. By a strange effect of this passion, when it is extreme and without any feigning, Mme de Rênal shared almost his carelessness and his sweet gaiety.
“Stories of the world, in your language.”