The Red and the Black (73 page)

age would have given him a kindly disposition that is easily moved;
he would have grown out of his exaggerated mistrustfulness... But what's
the use of these idle predictions?

The interrogations became more frequent despite Julien's efforts: all
his answers tended in the direction of curtailing the case: 'I have
committed murder, or at any rate I intended to inflict death, and it
was premeditated, too,' he repeated every day. But the judge was a
stickler for form above all else. Julien's declarations did nothing to
curtail the interrogations; the judge felt wounded in his
self-esteem. Julien did not discover that there had been a move to
transfer him to a dreadful cell, and that it was thanks to Fouqué's
intervention that he was allowed to remain in his nice room a hundred
and eighty steps up the tower.

The
Abbé de Frilair was one of the important people who ordered their
stocks of firewood from Fouqué. The good merchant managed to gain an
entry to the all-powerful vicargeneral. To his unutterable delight, M.
de Frilair announced to him that he had been touched by Julien's good
qualities and the services he had performed at the seminary in the
past, and that he was planning to speak favourably to the judges on
his behalf. Fouqué glimpsed a hope of saving his friend, and on his
departure, prostrating himself before the vicar-general, he begged him
to use a sum of ten louis for saying Masses to implore the acquittal
of the accused.

Fouqué was making a
singular error of judgement. M. de Frilair was in no way a Valenod. He
refused, and even tried to insinuate to the good peasant that he
would do better to keep his money. Seeing that it was impossible to
make himself clear without being imprudent, he advised him to give
away this sum in alms, for the poor prisoners who did literally lack
everything.

This Julien is a strange
creature, his action is inexplicable, thought M. de Frilair, and
nothing should be so where I am concerned... Perhaps it will be
possible to make a martyr of him... In any event, I'll get to the
bottom of this affair, and I may even find an opportunity of giving a
good fright to that M
me
de Rênal who has no respect for us, and in fact loathes me... Perhaps I'll discover some way in all this of bringing

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about a sensational reconciliation with M. de La Mole, who has a soft spot for this little seminarist.

The settlement of the lawsuit had been signed a few weeks earlier,
and the Abbé Pirard had left Besançon again, after making a point of
mentioning Julien's mysterious birth, on the very day when the wretch
was murdering M
^me
de Rênal in the church at Verrières.

Julien saw only one unpleasant event now between him and death: a
visit from his father. He consulted Fouqué about writing to the public
prosecutor to get a dispensation from all visits. Such repugnance at
the thought of seeing your own father, and at a time like this too,
profoundly shocked the timber merchant's honest, bourgeois heart.

It gave him a sudden insight into why so many people felt passionate
hatred for his friend. Out of respect for misfortune he concealed his
feelings on the matter.

'In any event', he answered coldly, 'this privacy order wouldn't apply in the case of your father.'

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

SCHILLER

THE doors of the keep opened very early the next morning. Julien was woken with a start.

Oh Lord! he thought, here comes my father. What an unpleasant scene!

At that same moment a woman in peasant's clothes flung herself into his arms. He recognized her with difficulty: it was M
^lle
de La Mole.

'You beast, I only found out from your letter where you were. Until I
actually got to Verrières I was completely in the dark about what
you
call your crime, but is really a noble act of revenge which shows
what a lofty heart you have beating here inside your chest...'

In spite of his prejudices against M
^lle
de La Mole, which in point of fact he did not admit openly to
himself, Julien found her very attractive. How could he fail to see in
her whole way of behaving and talking a nobility and
disinterestedness beyond anything a petty and vulgar spirit could have
risen to? Once more it was a queen he loved, and after a brief pause,
he said to her with a rare nobility of diction and thought:

'The future was very vividly mapped out before my eyes. After my
death I had you getting married again to M. de Croisenois, who would
have accepted a widow. The noble but rather romantic nature of this
charming widow would have been taken by surprise and won over to the
cult of humdrum prudence by a striking and tragic event of deep
significance for her, and she would have deigned to appreciate the
very real qualities of the young marquis. You would have resigned
yourself to being happy the way other people are: esteem, wealth, high
rank... But, dear Mathilde, if anyone gets wind of your arrival in
Besançon, it will be a mortal blow for M. de

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La Mole, and that's something I shall never forgive myself. I've
caused him so much grief already! The academician will say that he
nurtured a serpent in his bosom.'

'I must admit I was hardly expecting so much cold reasoning, so much concern for the future,' said M
^lle
de La Mole, somewhat annoyed. 'My maid, who's almost as cautious as
you are, took out a passport for herself, and I came post-haste
under the name of M
^me
Michelet.'

'And was it as easy as that for Mme Michelet to reach me?'

'Ah! you're still the same superior man I singled out! First of all I
offered a hundred francs to a judge's secretary who claimed it was
impossible for me to gain entry into this keep. But once he had the
money, this honest fellow kept me waiting, raised objections--I
thought he had it in mind to rob me...' She paused.

'Well?' said Julien.

'Don't get angry, Julien dearest,' she said kissing him, 'I was
obliged to reveal my name to the secretary who took me for a working
girl from Paris who was in love with the handsome Julien... Honestly,
those were his very words. I swore to him that I was your wife, and I
shall get a permit to see you every day.'

This is total madness, Julien thought, I couldn't prevent it. After
all, M. de La Mole is such a great nobleman that public opinion will
find a way of excusing the young colonel who marries this charming
widow. My imminent death will cover it all up. And he yielded
rapturously to Mathilde's love; it was madness, it was uplifting, it
was something quite unique. She offered in all seriousness to kill
herself with him.

After this first
flood of passion, when she had feasted her eyes on Julien to her
heart's content, she was suddenly seized with burning curiosity. She
scrutinized her lover and found him far more impressive than she had
imagined. Boniface de La Mole seemed to her to have been resurrected,
only more heroic.

Mathilde went to
see the foremost barristers in the region, and insulted them by
offering them gold too crudely; but they accepted in the end.

She soon came to the view that where shady matters of great

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import were concerned, everything in Besançon depended on the Abbé de Frilair.

Under the obscure name of M
^me
Michelet, she found unsurmountable difficulties at first in getting through to the allpowerful Congregationist.
^*
But rumour spread through the town of the beauty of a young milliner
who was madly in love, and had come down from Paris to Besançon to
console the young priest Julien Sorel.

Mathilde hurried about alone on foot in the streets of Besançon; she
hoped not to be recognized. In any event, she thought it would do no
harm to her cause to make a great impression on the local populace. In
her madness she imagined starting up a popular uprising to rescue
Julien on the way to the scaffold. M
^lle
de La Mole fancied
she was wearing simple attire appropriate for a grieving woman; in
fact it was such as to catch everyone's eye.

She had become the object of everyone's attention in Besançon when,
after a week of petitioning, she obtained an audience with M. de
Frilair.

For all her courage, she
associated influential Congregationists so strongly with the idea of
inveterate and circumspect wickedness that she trembled as she rang
the door of the bishop's palace. She was scarcely capable of walking
when she had to go up the staircase leading to the first
vicar-general's apartment. The solitude of the episcopal palace sent a
chill through her spine. What if I sit down on a chair, and the chair
grabs me by the arms: I'll be gone for good. Who will my maid be
able to turn to for news of me? The captain of the gendarmerie won't
lift a finger... I'm all alone in this big town!

As soon as she glanced into the apartment, Mlle de La Mole felt
reassured. First of all, the door had been opened for her by a footman
in a most elegant livery. The room where she was asked to wait
boasted a refined and delicate luxury having nothing in common with
vulgar magnificence, and in Paris at any rate only to be found in the
best houses. No sooner did she catch sight of M. de Frilair coming
over to her with a look of smooth affability on his face then all her
fantasies about a horrendous crime vanished. She did not even detect
on his handsome face any trace of that energetic and somewhat

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uncouth virtue that Parisian society finds so antipathetic. The
half-smile flickering over the features of the priest whose power in
Besançon was absolute heralded a man of refinement, a learned prelate,
a skilled administrator. Mathilde felt she might have been in Paris.

It took M. de Frilair but few moments to get Mathilde to confess that
she was the daughter of his powerful adversary the Marquis de la
Mole.

'I am indeed not M
^me
Michelet,' she said, reverting fully to her superior manner, 'and
this revelation costs me very little, since I have come to consult
you, sir, about the possibility of procuring the escape of M. de La
Vernaye. In the first place he's only guilty of an act of momentary
folly; the woman he shot is making a good recovery. Secondly, to bribe
the lower orders, I can hand over fifty thousand francs right away,
and pledge myself to produce double that amount. Finally, my
gratitude and that of my family will leave nothing undone to repay
someone who has saved M. de la Vernaye.'

M. de Frilair seemed astonished at this name. Mathilde showed him
several letters from the Ministry of War addressed to M. Julien Sorel
de la Vernaye.

'As you see, sir, my
father had assumed responsibility for his fortune. I married him in
secret, and my father wished him to be a high-ranking officer before
announcing a marriage that is somewhat unusual for a La Mole.'

Mathilde noticed that M. de Frilair's expression of kindness and
gentle gaiety faded rapidly as he made important discoveries. A look of
cunning mingled with profound insincerity came over his face.

The priest was having doubts; he slowly reread the official documents.

What advantage can I derive from these strange confessions? he
wondered. Here I am all of a sudden on intimate terms with a friend of
the famous Maréchale de Fervaques, the allpowerful niece of Monsignor
the Bishop of -----,
^*
through whose offices one becomes a bishop in France. What I saw as
belonging to the remote future is unexpectedly in the offing. This
opportunity may bring me to the culmination of all my desires.

-484-

At first Mathilde was alarmed by the sudden change that had come over
the features of this all-powerful man with whom she found herself
alone in a remote apartment. But what of it! she said to herself in a
little while, wouldn't the worst outcome have been to make no
impression at all on the cold egoism of a priest sated with power and
pleasure?

Dazzled by the rapid route
to a bishopric that unexpectedly opened up before his eyes, and
astonished at Mathilde's talents, M. de Frilair dropped his guard for a
moment. M
^lle
de La Mole almost had him at her feet, ambitious and keen to the point of trembling with nerves.

Everything is becoming clear, she thought, nothing will be impossible here for a friend of M
^me
de Fervaques. In spite of a feeling of jealousy that was still very
painful, she summoned up the courage to explain that Julien was a
close friend of the maréchale's, and encountered Monsignor the Bishop
of ----almost daily at her house.

'If
a list of thirty-six jurors were to be drawn by lot four or five
times in succession from among the worthy inhabitants of this
département,' said the vicar-general with a steely glint of ambition
in his eyes and deliberate emphasis on each word, 'I should consider
myself most unlucky if in each list I didn't get nine or ten friends,
and the most intelligent of the bunch too. I should almost always have
a majority, indeed more than that, even for a verdict of guilty; so
you see, mademoiselle, it will be an easy matter for me to obtain an
acquittal...'

The priest broke off
suddenly, as if amazed at the sound of his own voice; he was confiding
things that are never said to the profane.

But it was his turn to strike Mathilde speechless when he informed
her that what most astonished and intrigued Besançon society about
Julien's strange adventure was that he had once inspired a great
passion in M
^me
de Rênal, and had shared it for a
considerable while. M. de Frilair easily perceived the deep turmoil
produced by his story.

I've got my
revenge! he thought. Here at last is a way of manipulating this most
determined little lady; I was in fear and trembling of failure. Her
aristocratic and headstrong manner made him doubly sensitive to the
rare beauty he

-485-