My God, give me mediocrity.âMirabeau
His mind was engrossed; he only half answered the eager tenderness that she showed to him. He remained gloomy and taciturn. He had never seemed so great and so adorable in Mathilde's eyes. She was apprehensive of some subtle twist of his pride which would spoil the whole situation.
She saw the Abbé Pirard come to the hôtel nearly every morning. Might not Julien have divined something of her father's intentions through him? Might not the marquis himself have written to him in a momentary caprice? What was the explanation of Julien's stern manner following on so great a happiness? She did not dare to question.
She did not dareâsheâMathilde! From that moment her feelings for Julien contained a certain vague and unexpected element which was almost panic. This arid soul experienced all the passion possible in an individual who has been brought up amid that excessive civilisation which Paris so much admires.
Early on the following day Julien was at the house of the Abbé Pirard. Some post-horses were arriving in the courtyard with a dilapidated chaise which had been hired at a neighbouring station.
“A vehicle like that is out of fashion,” said the stern Abbé to him morosely. “Here are twenty thousand francs which M. de la Mole makes you a gift of. He insists on your spending them within a year, but at the same time wants you to try to look as little ridiculous as possible.” (The priest regarded flinging away so substantial a sum on a young man as simply an opportunity for sin).
“The marquis adds this: âM. Julien de la Vernaye will have received this money from his father, whom it is needless to call by any other name. M. de la Vernaye will perhaps think it proper to give a present to M. Sorel, a carpenter of Verrières, who cared for him in his childhood....' I can undertake that commission,” added the Abbé. “I have at last prevailed upon M. de la Mole to come to a settlement with that Jesuit, the Abbé de Frilair. His influence is unquestionably too much for us. The complete recognition of your high birth on the part of this man, who is in fact the governor of Bââwill be one of the unwritten terms of the arrangement.” Julien could no longer control his ecstasy. He embraced the Abbé. He saw himself recognised.
“For shame,” said M. Pirard, pushing him away. “What is the meaning of this worldly vanity? As for Sorel and his sons, I will offer them in my own name a yearly allowance of five hundred francs, which will be paid to each of them as long as I am satisfied with them.”
Julien was already cold and haughty. He expressed his thanks, but in the vaguest terms which bound him to nothing. “Could it be possible,” he said to himself, “that I am the natural son of some great nobleman who was exiled to our mountains by the terrible Napoleon?” This idea seemed less and less improbable every minute. . . . . “My hatred of my father would be a proof of this..... In that case, I should not be an unnatural monster after all.”
A few days after this soliloquy the Fifteenth Regiment of Hussars, which was one of the most brilliant in the army, was being reviewed on the parade ground of Strasbourg. M. the Chevalier de La Vernaye sat the finest horse in Alsace, which had cost him six thousand francs. He was received as a lieutenant, though he had never been sub-lieutenant except on the rolls of a regiment of which he had never heard.
His impassive manner, his stern and almost malicious eyes, his pallor, and his invariable self-possession, founded his reputation from the very first day. Shortly afterwards his perfect and calculated politeness, and his skill at shooting and fencing, of which, though without any undue ostentation, he made his comrades aware, did away with all idea of making fun of him openly. After hesitating for five or six days, the public opinion of the regiment declared itself in his favour. “This young man has everything,” said the facetious old officers, “except youth.”
Julien wrote from Strasbourg to the old curé of Verrières, M. Chélan, who was now verging on extreme old age.
“You will have learnt, with a joy of which I have no doubt, of the events which have induced my family to enrich me. Here are five hundred francs which I request you to distribute quietly, and without any mention of my name, among those unfortunate ones who are now poor as I myself was once, and whom you will doubtless help as you once helped me.”
Julien was intoxicated with ambition, and not with vanity. He nevertheless devoted a great part of his time to attending to his external appearance. His horses, his uniform, his orderlies' liveries, were all kept with a correctness which would have done credit to the punctiliousness of a great English nobleman. He had scarcely been made a lieutenant as a matter of favour (and that only two days ago) than he began to calculate that if he was to become commander-in-chief at thirty, like all the great generals, then he must be more than a lieutenant at twenty-three at the latest. He thought about nothing except fame and his son.
It was in the midst of the ecstasies of the most reinless ambition that he was surprised by the arrival of a young valet from the Hôtel de la Mole, who had come with a letter.
“All is lost,” wrote Mathilde to him: “Rush here as quickly as possible, sacrifice everything, desert if necessary. As soon as you have arrived, wait for me in a fiacre near the little garden door, near No.âââof the street ââ. I will come and speak to you: I shall perhaps be able to introduce you into the garden. All is lost, and I am afraid there is no way out; count on me; you will find me staunch and firm in adversity. I love you.”
A few minutes afterwards, Julien obtained a furlough from the colonel, and left Strasbourg at full gallop: But the awful anxiety which devoured him did not allow him to continue this method of travel beyond Metz. He flung himself into a post-chaise, and arrived with an almost incredible rapidity at the indicated spot, near the little garden door off the Hôtel de la Mole. The door opened, and Mathilde, oblivious of all human conventions, rushed into his arms. Fortunately, it was only five o'clock in the morning, and the street was still deserted.
“All is lost. My father, fearing my tears, left Thursday night. Nobody knows where for. But here is his letter: read it.” She climbed into the fiacre with Julien.
“I could forgive everything except the plan of seducing you because you are rich. That, unhappy girl, is the awful truth. I give you my word of honour that I will never consent to a marriage with that man. I will guarantee him an income of 10,000 francs if he will live far away beyond the French frontiers, or better still, in America. Read the letter which I have just received in answer to the enquiries which I have made. The impudent scoundrel had himself requested me to write to Madame de Rênal. I will never read a single line you write concerning that man. I feel a horror for both Paris and yourself. I urge you to cover what is bound to happen with the utmost secrecy. Be frank, have nothing more to do with the vile man, and you will find again the father you have lost.”
“Where is Madame de Rênal's letter?” said Julien coldly.
“Here it is. I did not want to show it to you before you were prepared for it.”
“My duties to the sacred cause of religion and morality, oblige me, Monsieur, to take the painful course which I have just done with regard to yourself: an infallible principle orders me to do harm to my neighbour at the present moment, but only in order to avoid an even greater scandal. My sentiment of duty must overcome the pain which I experience. It is only too true, Monsieur, that the conduct of the person about whom you ask me to tell you the whole truth may seem incredible or even honest. It may possibly be considered proper to hide or to disguise part of the truth: that would be in accordance with both prudence and religion. But the conduct about which you desire information has been in fact reprehensible to the last degree, and more than I can say. Poor and greedy as the man is, it is only by the aid of the most consummate hypocrisy, and by seducing a weak and unhappy woman, that he has endeavoured to make a career for himself and become someone in the world. It is part of my painful duty to add that I am obliged to believe that M. Julien has no religious principles. I am driven conscientiously to think that one of his methods of obtaining success in any household is to try to seduce the woman who commands the principal influence. His one great object, in spite of his show of disinterestedness, and his stock-in-trade of phrases out of novels, is to succeed in doing what he likes with the master of the household and his fortune. He leaves behind him unhappiness and eternal remorse, etc., etc., etc.”
This extremely long letter, which was almost blotted out by tears, was certainly in Madame de Rênal's handwriting; it was even written with more than ordinary care.
“I cannot blame M. de la Mole,” said Julien, “after he had finished it. He is just and prudent. What father would give his beloved daughter to such a man? Adieu!” Julien jumped out of the fiacre and rushed to his post-chaise, which had stopped at the end of the street. Mathilde, whom he had apparently forgotten, took a few steps as though to follow him, but the looks she received from the tradesmen, who were coming out on the thresholds of their shops, and who knew who she was, forced her to return precipitately to the garden.
Julien had left for Verrières. During that rapid journey he was unable to write to Mathilde as he had intended. His hand could only form illegible characters on the paper.
He arrived at Verrières on a Sunday morning. He entered the shop of the local gunsmith, who overwhelmed him with congratulations on his recent good fortune. It constituted the news of the locality.
Julien had much difficulty in making him understand that he wanted a pair of pistols. At his request the gunsmith loaded the pistols.
The three peals sounded; it is a well-known signal in the villages of France, and after the various ringings in the morning announces the immediate commencement of Mass.
Julien entered the new church of Verrières. All the lofty windows of the building were veiled with crimson curtains. Julien found himself some spaces behind the pew of Madame de Rênal. It seemed to him that she was praying fervently. The sight of the woman whom he had loved so much made Julien's arm tremble so violently that he was at first unable to execute his project. “I cannot,” he said to himself. “It is a physical impossibility.”
At this moment the young priest, who was officiating at the Mass, rang the bell for the elevation of the host. Madame de Rênal lowered her head, which, for a moment became entirely hidden by the folds of her shawl. Julien did not see her features so distinctly: he aimed a pistol shot at her, and missed her: he aimed a second shot, she fell.
Do not expect any weakness on my part. I have avenged myself. I have deserved death, and here I am. Pray for my soul.âSchiller
Julien remained motionless. He saw nothing more. When he recovered himself a little he noticed all the faithful rushing from the church. The priest had left the altar. Julien started fairly slowly to follow some women who were going away with loud screams. A woman who was trying to get away more quickly than the others, pushed him roughly. He fell. His feet got entangled with a chair, knocked over by the crowd; when he got up, he felt his neck gripped. A gendarme, in full uniform, was arresting him. Julien tried mechanically to have recourse to his little pistol; but a second gendarme pinioned his arms.
He was taken to the prison. They went into a room where irons were put on his hands. He was left alone. The door was doubly locked on him. All this was done very quickly, and he scarcely appreciated it at all.
“Yes, upon my word, all is over,” he said aloud as he recovered himself. “Yes, the guillotine in a fortnight . . . or killing myself here.”
His reasoning did not go any further. His head felt as though it had been seized in some violent grip. He looked round to see if anyone was holding him. After some moments he fell into a deep sleep.
Madame de Rênal was not mortally wounded. The first bullet had pierced her hat. The second had been fired as she was turning round. The bullet had struck her on the shoulder, and, astonishing to relate, had ricocheted off the shoulder bone (which it had, however, broken) against a gothic pillar, from which it had loosened an enormous splinter of stone.
When, after a long and painful bandaging, the solemn surgeon said to Madame de Rênal, “I answer for your life as I would for my own,” she was profoundly grieved.
She had been sincerely desirous of death for a long time. The letter which she had written to M. de la Mole in accordance with the injunctions of her present confessor, had proved the final blow to a creature already weakened by an only too permanent unhappiness. This unhappiness was caused by Julien's absence; but she, for her own part, called it remorse. Her director, a young ecclesiastic, who was both virtuous and enthusiastic, and had recently come to Dijon, made no mistake as to its nature.
“Dying in this way, though not by my own hand, is very far from being a sin,” thought Madame de Rênal. “God will perhaps forgive me for rejoicing over my death.” She did not dare to add, “and dying by Julien's hand puts the last touch on my happiness.”
She had scarcely been rid of the presence of the surgeon and of all the crowd of friends that had rushed to see her, than she called her maid, Elisa. “The gaoler,” she said to her with a violent blush, “is a cruel man. He will doubtless ill-treat him, thinking to please me by doing so . . . I cannot bear that idea. Could you not go, as though on your own account, and give the gaoler this little packet which contains some louis. You will tell him that religion forbids him to treat him badly, above all, he must not go and speak about the sending of this money.”
It was this circumstance, which we have just mentioned, that Julien had to thank for the humanity of the gaoler of Verrières. It was still the same M. Nolraud, that ideal official, whom he remembered as being so finely alarmed by M. Appert's presence.
A judge appeared in the prison. “I occasioned death by premeditation,” said Julien to him. “I bought the pistols and had them loaded at so-and-so's, a gunsmith. Article 1342 of the penal code is clear. I deserve death, and I expect it.” Astonished at this kind of answer, the judge started to multiply his questions, with a view of the accused contradicting himself in his answers.
“Don't you see,” said Julien to him with a smile, “that I am making myself out as guilty as you can possibly desire? Go away, Monsieur, you will not fail to catch the quarry you are pursuing. You will have the pleasure to condemn me. Spare me your presence.”
“I have an irksome duty to perform,” thought Julien. “I must write to Mademoiselle de la Mole:â
“I have avenged myself,” he said to her. “Unfortunately, my name will appear in the papers, and I shall not be able to escape from the world incognito. I shall die in two months' time. My revenge was ghastly, like the pain of being separated from you. From this moment I forbid myself to write or pronounce your name. Never speak of me even to my son; silence is the only way of honouring me. To the ordinary commonplace man, I shall represent a common assassin. Allow me the luxury of the truth at this supreme moment; you will forget me. This great catastrophe of which I advise you not to say a single word to a single living person, will exhaust, for several years to come, all that romantic and unduly adventurous element which I have detected in your character. You were intended by nature to live among the heroes of the middle ages; exhibit their firm character. Let what has to happen take place in secret and without your being compromised. You will assume a false name, and you will confide in no one. If you absolutely need a friend's help, I bequeath the Abbé Pirard to you.
Do not talk to anyone else, particularly to the people of your own classâthe de Luz's, the Caylus's.
A year after my death, marry M. de Croisenois; I command you as your husband. Do not write to me at all, I shall not answer. Though in my view, much less wicked than Iago, I am going to say, like him: âFrom this time forth, I never will speack word.'
5
I shall never be seen to speak or write again. You will have received my final words and my final expressions of adoration.
J. S.”
It was only after he had despatched this letter and had recovered himself a little, that Julien felt for the first time extremely unhappy. Those momentous words, I shall die, meant the successive tearing out of his heart of each individual hope and ambition. Death, in itself, was not horrible in his eyes. His whole life had been nothing but a long preparation for unhappiness, and he had made a point of not losing sight of what is considered the greatest unhappiness of all.
“Come then,” he said to himself; “if I had to fight a duel in a couple of months, with an expert duellist, should I be weak enough to think about it incessantly with panic in my soul?”
He passed more than an hour in trying to analyze himself thoroughly on this score.
When he saw clear in his own soul, and the truth appeared before his eyes with as much definiteness as one of the pillars of his prison, he thought about remorse.
“Why should I have any? I have been atrociously injured; I have killedâI deserve death, but that is all. I die after having squared my account with humanity. I do not leave any obligation unfulfilled. I owe nothing to anybody; there is nothing shameful about my death, except the instrument of it; that alone, it is true, is simply sufficient to disgrace me in the eyes of the bourgeois of Verrières; but from the intellectual standpoint, what could be more contemptible than they? I have one means of winning their consideration; by flinging pieces of gold to the people as I go to the scaffold. If my memory is linked with the idea of gold, they will always look upon it as resplendent.”
After this chain of reasoning, which after a minute's reflection seemed to him self-evident, Julien said to himself, “I have nothing left to do in the world,” and fell into a deep sleep.
About 9 o'clock in the evening the gaoler woke him up as he brought in his supper.
“What are they saying in Verrières?”
“M. Julien, the oath which I took before the crucifix in the âRoyal Courtyard,' on the day when I was installed in my place, obliges me to silence.”
He was silent, but remained. Julien was amused by the sight of this vulgar hypocrisy. I must make him, he thought, wait a long time for the five francs which he wants to sell his conscience for.
When the gaoler saw him finish his meal without making any attempt to corrupt him, he said in a soft and perfidious voice:
“The affection which I have for you, M. Julien, compels me to speak. Although they say that it is contrary to the interests of justice, because it may assist you in preparing your defence. M. Julien you are a good fellow at heart, and you will be very glad to learn that Madame de Rênal is better.”
“What! she is not dead?” exclaimed Julien, beside himself.
“What, you know nothing?” said the gaoler, with a stupid air which soon turned into exultant cupidity. “It would be very proper, Monsieur, for you to give something to the surgeon, who, so far as law and justice go, ought not to have spoken. But in order to please you, Monsieur, I went to him, and he told me everything.”
“Anyway, the wound is not mortal,” said Julien to him impatiently, “you answer for it on your life?”
The gaoler, who was a giant six feet tall, was frightened and retired towards the door. Julien saw that he was adopting bad tactics for getting at the truth. He sat down again and flung a napoleon to M. Noiraud.
As the man's story proved to Julien more and more conclusively that Madame de Rênal's wound was not mortal, he felt himself overcome by tears. “Leave me,” he said brusquely.
The gaoler obeyed. Scarcely had the door shut, than Julien exclaimed: “Great God, she is not dead,” and he fell on his knees, shedding hot tears.
In this supreme moment he was a believer. What mattered the hypocrisies of the priests? Could they abate one whit of the truth and sublimity of the idea of God?
It was only then that Julien began to repent of the crime that he had committed. By a coincidence, which prevented him falling into despair, it was only at the present moment that the condition of physical irritation and semi-madness, in which he had been plunged since his departure from Paris for Verrières, came to an end.
His tears had a generous source. He had no doubt about the condemnation which awaited him.
“So she will live,” he said to himself. “She will live to forgive me and love me.”
Very late the next morning the gaoler woke him up and said, “You must have a famous spirit, M. Julien. I have come in twice, but I did not want to wake you up. Here are two bottles of excellent wine which our curé, M. Maslon, has sent you.”
“What, is that scoundrel still here?” said Julien.
“Yes, Monsieur,” said the gaoler, lowering his voice. “But do not talk so loud, it may do you harm.”
Julien laughed heartily.
“At the stage I have reached, my friend, you alone can do me harm in the event of your ceasing to be kind and tender. You will be well paid,” said Julien, changing his tone and reverting to his imperious manner. This manner was immediately justified by the gift of a piece of money.
M. Noiraud related again, with the greatest detail, everything he had learnt about Madame de Rênal, but he did not make any mention of Mademoiselle Elisa's visit.
The man was as base and servile as it was possible to be. An idea crossed Julien's mind. “This kind of misshapen giant cannot earn more than three or four hundred francs, for his prison is not at all full. I can guarantee him ten thousand francs, if he will escape with me to Switzerland. The difficulty will be in persuading him of my good faith.” The idea of the long conversation he would need to have with so vile a person filled Julien with disgust. He thought of something else.
In the evening the time had passed. A post-chaise had come to pick him up at midnight. He was very pleased with his travelling companions, the gendarmes. When he arrived at the prison of Besançon in the morning they were kind enough to place him in the upper storey of a Gothic turret. He judged the architecture to be of the beginning of the fourteenth century. He admired its fascinating grace and lightness. Through a narrow space between two walls, beyond the deep court, there opened a superb vista.
On the following day there was an interrogation, after which he was left in peace for several days. His soul was calm. He found his affair a perfectly simple one. “I meant to kill. I deserve to be killed.”
His thoughts did not linger any further over this line of reasoning. As for the sentence, the disagreeableness of appearing in public, the defence, he considered all this as slight embarrassment, irksome formalities, which it would be time enough to consider on the actual day. The actual moment of death did not seize hold of his mind either. “I will think about it after the sentence.” Life was no longer boring, he was envisaging everything from a new point of view, he had no longer any ambition. He rarely thought about Mademoiselle de la Mole. His passion of remorse engrossed him a great deal, and often conjured up the image of Madame de Rênal, particularly during the silence of the night, which in this high turret was only disturbed by the song of the osprey.
He thanked heaven that he had not inflicted a mortal wound. “Astonishing,” he said to himself, “I thought that she had destroyed my future happiness for ever by her letter to M. de la Mole, and here am I, less than a fortnight after the date of that letter, not giving a single thought to all the things that engrossed me then. An income of two or three thousand francs, on which to live quietly in a mountain district, like Vergy . . . I was happy then . . . I did not realise my happiness.”
At other moments he would jump up from his chair. “If I had mortally wounded Madame de Rênal, I would have killed myself... I need to feel certain of that so as not to horrify myself.”
“Kill myself? That's the great question,” he said to himself. “Oh, those judges, those fiends of red tape, who would hang their best citizen in order to win the cross . . . At any rate, I should escape from their control and from the bad French of their insults, which the local paper will call eloquence.”
“I still have five or six weeks, more or less, to live . . . Kill myself? No, not for a minute,” he said to himself after some days, “Napoleon went on living.”
“Besides, I find life pleasant, this place is quiet, I am not troubled with bores,” he added with a smile, and he began to make out a list of the books which he wanted to order from Paris.