The Red and the Black (76 page)

himself; what a triumph for a base mind like his! If my crime had
only had this one result, I ought to curse it. God knows what he'll
say about me to M
^me
de Rênal!

This idea dispelled all others. Shortly afterwards Julien was called
back to reality by signs of assent from the public. His counsel had
just finished his speech. Julien remembered that it was the done thing
to shake him by the hand. Time had flown by.

Refreshments were brought to the barrister and the accused. Only then
was Julien struck by something: no woman had left the courtroom to go
to dinner.

'I must say, I'm absolutely starving,' said the barrister, 'what about you?'

'I am too,' Julien replied.

'Do you see, there's the prefect's wife getting her dinner too,' the
barrister said to him, pointing out the little gallery. 'Keep up your
spirits, everything's going well.' The hearing resumed.

As the judge was summing up, midnight struck. He was obliged to break
off his speech; in the midst of the silence fraught with tension
everywhere, the resounding chime of the clock filled the courtroom.

This is my last day starting now, Julien thought. Soon he felt
himself fired by the idea of duty. He had controlled his emotion up
until then, and kept his resolve not to speak; but when the presiding
judge asked him if he had anything to add, he rose to his feet. He
could see straight across into M
^me
Derville's eyes, and
under the lights they seemed to him to be glistening. Could she be
crying, by any chance? he wondered.

'Gentlemen of the jury,

My horror of scorn, which I thought I could face at the moment of
death, compels me to speak. Gentlemen, I do not have the honour of
belonging to your class, you see in me a peasant who has rebelled
against his lowly lot.

'I am not
asking you for any mercy,' Julien went on in a firmer voice. 'I have
no illusions, death awaits me: it will be a just death. I was capable
of attempting to kill the woman most worthy of everyone's respect and
everyone's esteem. M
^me
de Rênal had been like a mother to me. My crime is appalling,

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and it was
premeditated
.
I therefore deserve to die, gentlemen of the jury. But if I were less
guilty, I see around me men who have no time for any pity that my
youth might deserve, and who will wish to punish in me and for ever
discourage this generation of young men who, being born into an
inferior class and in some sense ground down by poverty, have the good
fortune to get themselves a decent education, and the audacity to
mingle in what the rich in their arrogance call society.

'That is my crime, gentlemen, and it will be punished all the more
severely as I am not being tried by my peers. I do not see on the
jury's benches any peasant who has grown rich, but only outraged
members of the bourgeoisie...'

For
twenty minutes Julien spoke in this vein, he unburdened himself of
everything he had bottled up; the assistant public prosecutor, who was
aspiring to favours from the aristocracy, was fuming on his bench;
but in spite of the rather abstract terms in which Julien had couched
his arguments, all the women were giving way to tears. M
^me
Derville herself had her handkerchief over her eyes. Before winding
up, Julien turned once more to premeditation, to his repentance, and
to the respect and boundless filial devotion that in happier times he
had felt for M
^me
de Rênal... M
^me
Derville uttered a cry and fainted.

One o'clock was striking as the jury withdrew into their room. No
woman had forsaken her seat; a number of men had tears in their eyes.
Talk was very animated to start with, but gradually, as the jury's
decision was long in coming, universal fatigue began to bring calm to
the assembly. It was a solemn moment; the lamps cast a dimmer fight.
Julien, who was very tired, heard people near him discussing whether
this delay was a good or a bad sign. He saw with pleasure that
everyone was on his side; there was no sign of the jury returning, and
still no woman left the courtroom.

As two o'clock finished striking, a great stir was heard. The little
door of the jury's room opened. Baron de Valenod came forward with a
grave, theatrical step followed by all the members of the jury. He
coughed, then declared that upon his soul and conscience the unanimous
verdict of the jury was that Julien Sorel was guilty of murder, and
of murder with pre-

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meditation: this verdict carried the death penalty; the sentence was
read out a moment later. Julien looked at his watch and remembered M.
de Lavalette:
^*
it was a quarter past two. Today is Friday, he thought.

Yes, but it's a happy day for our Valenod, who has sentenced me...
I'm too closely guarded for Mathilde to be able to rescue me as M
^me
de Lavalette did... So, three days from now, at this same time, I shall know what there is to know about the
great question-mark
.

At that moment he heard a cry and was brought back to the affairs of
this world. The women around him were sobbing; he saw that all faces
were turned towards a little balcony carved into the top of a gothic
pilaster. He learned later that Mathilde had concealed herself there.
As the cry was not repeated, everyone turned back to look at Julien
again, whom the officers were trying to get out through the crowd.

Let's try not to give this scoundrel Valenod any grounds for
laughter, thought Julien. What a contrite and hypocritical expression
he had when he pronounced the verdict that carries the death penalty!
Whereas that poor president of the assizes, for all his years of being
a judge, had tears in his eyes as he sentenced me. What a thrill for
our Valenod to get his revenge for our old rivalry over M
^me
de Rênal!... So I'll never see her again! It's all over... A last
farewell is impossible between us, I feel it in my bones... How happy
I'd have been to tell her what repugnance I feel for my crime!

Just these words: 'I consider myself justly condemned.'

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WHEN Julien had been taken back to prison, he had been put in a room reserved for those under sentence of death.

Although he was someone who usually noticed the minutest detail, he
had failed to observe that they were not taking him back up to his
tower. He was imagining what he would say to M
^me
de Rênal
if he had the good fortune to see her before the last moment. He
thought she would interrupt him, and he wanted to be able in his
opening words to convey to her just how much he repented. After such
an action, how can I persuade her that I love no one but her? For
after all, I tried to kill her out of ambition, or love for Mathilde.

As he got into bed he discovered that the sheets were made of a
coarse material. The scales fell from his eyes. Ah! I'm in a cell, he
said to himself, because I've been condemned to death. That's only
right.

Count Altamira told me that Danton, on the eve of his death, declared in his loud voice: 'It's odd, the verb
to guillotine
can't be conjugated in all its tenses; you can certainly say: I
shall be guillotined, you shall be guillotined, but no one says: I
have been guillotined.'

Why not,
Julien continued, if there is an afterlife? . . . Count upon it, if I
find the Christians' God, I'm done for: he's a despot, and as such,
he's full of thoughts of vengeance; his Bible talks of nothing but
dreadful punishments. I've never loved him; I've never even wanted to
believe that anyone could love him sincerely. He's merciless (and
Julien recalled several passages from the Bible). He'll punish me
quite abominably . . .

But what if I find Fénelon's
^*
God! Maybe he'll say to me: 'Much shall be forgiven thee, for thou hast loved much . . .'
^*
Have I loved much? Ah! I loved M
^me
de Rênal, but I behaved appallingly. There, as elsewhere, simple and
unassuming worth was abandoned for glittering show . . .

But then again, what a prospect!. . . Colonel in the Hussars, if we
were at war; secretary of a legation in peacetime; then ambassador. . .
for I'd soon have become familiar with international affairs. . . , and
even if I'd been a mere fool, does the

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Marquis de la Mole's son-in-law have any rivalry to fear? All my
follies would have been forgiven, or rather considered to be
qualities. A man of quality, enjoying the grandest of lifestyles in
Vienna or London. . .

'Not exactly,
sir, guillotined in three days' time.' Julien laughed heartily at this
quip from his intellect. In all truth, man has two selves in him, he
thought. Who the devil was it thinking up that sly comment?

'Yes, I grant you! good fellow, guillotined in three days' time,' he
replied to the interrupter. ' M. de Cholin will hire a window, going
halves with Father Maslon. Well now, which of these two worthies will
be robbing the other over the cost of hiring this window?

This passage from Rotrou
Venceslas
suddenly came back to him.

LADISLAS. . . . My soul is all prepared.

THE KING,
Ladislas's father
. The scaffold likewise; thither bear your head.

A fine answer! he thought, and fell asleep. He was woken in the morning by someone embracing him tightly.

What, already! said Julien, opening a wild eye. He thought he was in the executioner's hands.

It was Mathilde. Luckily she didn't understand me. This reflection
restored all his composure. He found Mathilde changed as if by six
months of illness: she was genuinely unrecognizable.

'That unspeakable Frilair has betrayed me,' she said to him, wringing her hands; fury prevented her from crying.

'Wasn't I fine yesterday when I made my speech?' replied Julien. 'I
was improvising, and for the first time in my life too! It's true
there's every fear that it may also be the last!'

At that moment Julien was playing upon Mathilde's character with all
the composure of a skilled pianist running his fingers over a piano . .
. 'I lack the advantage of an illustrious birth, it's true,' he went
on, 'but Mathilde's great spirit has raised her lover to her height.
Do you believe that Boniface de la Mole cut a better figure in front
of his judges?'

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Mathilde was tender, that day, without affectation, like a poor girl
living somewhere up on the fifth floor; but she was unable to get any
simpler words out of him. Without knowing it, he was paying her back
the torment that she had often inflicted on him.

No one knows the source of the Nile, Julien said to himself. It
hasn't been granted to mortal eyes to see the king of rivers in the
state of a simple stream: thus no human eye shall see Julien weak,
first and foremost because he isn't. But my heart is easily touched;
the most ordinary of words, said in tones of sincerity, can fill my
voice with emotion and even make my tears flow. How often have I been
despised by the stonyhearted for this failing! They thought I was
imploring them:
that
is what's intolerable.

They say that at the foot of the scaffold Danton was moved by the
memory of his wife; but Danton had given strength to a nation of
frivolous young upstarts, and prevented the enemy from reaching Paris .
. .
^*
I'm the only one who knows what I might have done . . . For everyone else, I'm nothing more than a QUESTION-MARK.

If M
^me
de Rênal were here, in my cell, instead of Mathilde, would I have
been able to answer for myself? The excess of my despair and my
repentance would have been interpreted by the likes of Valenod and all
the patricians in the neighbourhood as a base fear of death; they're
so proud, these weak characters who are kept above temptations by
their financial situation! 'You see what it means', M. de Moirod and
M. de Cholin would have said, having just sentenced me to death, 'to
be born a carpenter's son! A man may become learned and skilful--but
his feelings!. . . Decent feelings can't be acquired.' Even with poor
Mathilde here, who's crying now, or rather who can't cry any more, he
said looking at her red eyes. . . and he clasped her in his arms: the
sight of genuine sorrow made him forget his syllogism . . . She's
been crying all night, maybe, he thought; but one day how ashamed
she'll be of this memory! She'll regard herself as having been led
astray, in her early youth, by the base attitudes of a plebeian. . .
Friend Croisenois is feeble enough to marry her, and damn it all,
he'll do the right thing. She'll cast him in a role,

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By virtue of that right Which a strong mind, ambitious beyond bound Wields o'er the grosser minds of common men.
^*

Come on! this is comic: ever since I've been facing death, all the
lines of verse I've ever known in my life have been coming back to me.
It must be a sign of decadence. . .

Mathilde was repeating to him in a listless voice: 'He's there in the
next room.' At last he paid attention to these words. Her voice is
feeble, he thought, but her imperious character is still all there in
her tone. She's talking quietly so as not to get angry.

'Who's there, then?' he asked her gently. 'Your counsel, to get you to sign your appeal.' 'I shan't appeal.'

'What do you mean, you won't appeal?' she said getting up, her eyes blazing with anger, 'And why not, may I ask?'

'Because at this moment I feel the strength in me to die without
letting people laugh too much at my expense. Who can guarantee that in
two months' time, after a long stay in this dank cell, I shall be in
an equally good frame of mind? I foresee meetings with priests, with
my father. . . Nothing in the world can possibly be as unpleasant for
me. Why not die!'

This unexpected
vexation revived all the haughty side of Mathilde's character. She had
been unable to see the Abbé de Frilair before the cells in the
Besançon prison were opened to visitors; her fury fell on Julien. She
adored him, and for a good quarter of an hour he was again confronted,
in her imprecations against his character, in her regrets at having
loved him, with the full force of that arrogant spirit which had
heaped such poignant insults on him on that earlier occasion in the
library of the Hôtel de la Mole.

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

But as far as I'm concerned, he thought, I'd be a real fool to spend
two months more in this revolting place, a target for all the most
vile and humiliating fabrications of the patrician faction,
¹
--and my only solace being the imprecations of this

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