The Red and the Black (50 page)

He heard a loud noise in the corridor. It was not the time when the gaoler usually came up to his prison. The osprey flew away with a shriek. The door opened, and the venerable curé Chélan threw himself into his arms. He was trembling all over and had his stick in his hands.

“Great God! Is it possible, my child—I ought to say monster?”

The good old man could not add a single word. Julien was afraid he would fall down. He was obliged to lead him to a chair. The hand of time lay heavy on this man who had once been so active. He seemed to Julien the mere shadow of his former self.

When he had regained his breath, he said, “It was only the day before yesterday that I received your letter from Strasbourg with your five hundred francs for the poor of Verrières. They brought it to me in the mountains at Liveru where I am living in retirement with my nephew Jean. Yesterday I learnt of the catastrophe . . . Heavens, is it possible?” And the old man left off weeping. He did not seem to have any ideas left, but added mechanically, “You will have need of your five hundred francs, I will bring them back to you.”

“I need to see you, my father,” exclaimed Julien, really touched. “I have money, anyway.”

But he could not obtain any coherent answer. From time to time, M. Chélan shed some tears which coursed silently down his cheeks. He then looked at Julien, and was quite dazed when he saw him kiss his hands and carry them to his lips. That face which had once been so vivid, and which had once portrayed with such vigour the most noble emotions was now sunk in a perpetual apathy. A kind of peasant came soon to fetch the old man. “You must not fatigue him,” he said to Julien, who understood that he was the nephew. This visit left Julien plunged in a cruel unhappiness which found no vent in tears. Everything seemed to him gloomy and disconsolate. He felt his heart frozen in his bosom.

This moment was the cruellest which he had experienced since the crime. He had just seen death and seen it in all its ugliness. All his illusions about greatness of soul and nobility of character had been dissipated like a cloud before the hurricane.

This awful plight lasted several hours. After moral poisoning, physical remedies and champagne are necessary. Julien would have considered himself a coward to have resorted to them. “What a fool I am,” he exclaimed, towards the end of the horrible day that he had spent entirely in walking up and down his narrow turret. “It's only, if I had been going to die like anybody else, that the sight of that poor old man would have had any right to have thrown me into this awful fit of sadness: but a rapid death in the flower of my age simply puts me beyond the reach of such awful senility.”

In spite of all his argumentation, Julien felt as touched as any weak-minded person would have been, and consequently felt unhappy as the result of the visit. He no longer had any element of rugged greatness, or any Roman virtue. Death appeared to him at a great height and seemed a less easy proposition.

“This is what I shall take for my thermometer,” he said to himself. “To-night I am ten degrees below the courage requisite for guillotine-point level. I had that courage this morning. Anyway, what does it matter so long as it comes back to me at the necessary moment?” This thermometer idea amused him and finally managed to distract him.

When he woke up the next day he was ashamed of the previous day. “My happiness and peace of mind are at stake.” He almost made up his mind to write to the Procureur-General to request that no one should be admitted to see him. “And how about Fouqué,” he thought? “If he takes it upon himself to come to Besançon, his grief will be immense.” It had perhaps been two months since he had given Fouqué a thought. “I was a great fool at Strasbourg. My thoughts did not go beyond my coat-collar. He was much engrossed by the memory of Fouqué, which left him more and more touched. He walked nervously about. Here I am, clearly twenty degrees below death point . . . If this weakness increases, it will be better for me to kill myself. What joy for the Abbé Maslon, and the Valenods, if I die like an usher.”

Fouqué arrived. The good, simple man was distracted by grief. His one idea, so far as he had any at all, was to sell all he possessed in order to bribe the gaoler and secure Julien's escape. He talked to him at length of M. de Lavalette's escape.

“You pain me,” Julien said to him. “M. de Lavalette was innocent—I am guilty. Though you did not mean to, you made me think of the difference. . . .”

“But is it true? What? were you going to sell all you possessed?” said Julien, suddenly becoming mistrustful and observant.

Fouqué was delighted at seeing his friend answer his obsessing idea, and detailed at length, and within a hundred francs, what he would get for each of his properties.

“What a sublime effort for a small country land-owner,” thought Julien. “He is ready to sacrifice for me the fruits of all the economies, and all the little semi-swindling tricks which I used to be ashamed of when I saw him practice them.”

“None of the handsome young people whom I saw in the Hôtel de la Mole, and who read René, would have any of his ridiculous weaknesses; but, except those who are very young and who have also inherited riches and are ignorant of the value of money, which of all those handsome Parisians would be capable of such a sacrifice?”

All Fouqué's mistakes in French and all his common gestures seemed to disappear. He threw himself into his arms. Never have the provinces in comparison with Paris received so fine a tribute. Fouqué was so delighted with the momentary enthusiasm which he read in his friend's eyes that he took it for consent to the flight.

This view of the sublime recalled to Julien all the strength that the apparition of M. Chélan had made him lose. He was still very young; but in my view he was a fine specimen. Instead of his character passing from tenderness to cunning, as is the case with the majority of men, age would have given him that kindness of heart which is easily melted . . . . but what avail these vain prophecies?

The interrogations became more frequent in spite of all the efforts of Julien, who always endeavoured by his answers to shorten the whole matter.

“I killed, or at any rate, I wished to occasion death, and I did so with premeditation,” he would repeat every day. But the judge was a pedant above everything. Julien's confessions had no effect in curtailing the interrogations. The judge's conceit was wounded. Julien did not know that they had wanted to transfer him into an awful cell, and that it was only, thanks to Fouqué's efforts, that he was allowed to keep his pretty room at the top of a hundred and eighty steps.

M. the Abbé de Frilair was one of the important customers who entrusted Fouqué with the purveying of their firewood. The good tradesmen managed to reach the all-powerful grand vicar. M. de Frilair informed him, to his unspeakable delight, that he was so touched by Julien's good qualities, and by the services which he had formerly rendered to the seminary, that he intended to recommend him to the judges. Fouqué thought he saw a hope of saving his friend, and as he went out, bowing down to the ground, requested M. the grand vicar, to distribute a sum of ten louis in masses to entreat the acquittal of the accused.

Fouqué was making a strange mistake. M. de Frilair was very far from being a Valenod. He refused, and even tried to make the good peasant understand that he would do better to keep his money. Seeing that it was impossible to be clear without being indiscreet, he advised him to give that sum as alms for the use of the poor prisoners, who, in point of fact, were destitute of everything.

“This Julien is a singular person, his action is unintelligible,” thought M. de Frilair, “and I ought to find nothing unintelligible. Perhaps it will be possible to make a martyr of him. . . . In any case, I shall get to the bottom of the matter, and shall perhaps find an opportunity of putting fear into the heart of that Madame de Rênal who has no respect for us, and at the bottom detests me. . . . Perhaps I might be able to utilise all this as a means of a brilliant reconciliation with M. de la Mole, who has a weakness for the little seminarist.”

The settlement of the lawsuit had been signed some weeks previously, and the Abbé Pirard had left Besançon after having duly mentioned Julien's mysterious birth, on the very day when the unhappy man tried to assassinate Madame de Rênal in the church of Verrières.

There was only one disagreeable event between himself and his death which Julien anticipated. He consulted Fouqué concerning his idea of writing to M. the Procureur-General asking to be exempt from all visits. This horror at the sight of a father, above all at a moment like this, deeply shocked the honest middle-class heart of the wood merchant.

He thought he understood why so many people had a passionate hatred for his friend. He concealed his feelings out of respect for misfortune.

“In any case,” he answered coldly, “such an order for privacy would not be applied to your father.”

The doors of the turret opened very early on the following day.

“Oh! good God,” he thought, “here's my father! What an unpleasant scene!”

At the same time a woman dressed like a peasant rushed into his arms. He had difficulty in recognising her. It was Mademoiselle de la Mole.

“You wicked man! Your letter only told me where you were. As for what you call your crime, but which is really nothing more or less than a noble vengeance, which shews me all the loftiness of the heart which beats within your bosom, I only got to know of it at Verrières.”

In spite of all his prejudices against Mademoiselle de la Mole, prejudices, moreover, which he had not owned to himself quite frankly, Julien found her extremely pretty. It was impossible not to recognise both in what she had done and what she had said, a noble disinterested feeling far above the level of anything that a petty vulgar soul would have dared to do. He thought that he still loved a queen, and after a few moments said to her with a remarkable nobility both of thought and of elocution,

“I sketched out the future very clearly. After my death I intended to remarry you to M. de Croisenois, who will officially of course then marry a widow. The noble but slightly romantic soul of this charming widow, who will have been brought back to the cult of vulgar prudence by an astonishing and singular event which played in her life a part as great as it was tragic, will deign to appreciate the very real merit of the young marquis. You will resign yourself to be happy with ordinary wordly happiness, prestige, riches, high rank. But, dear Mathilde, if your arrival at Besançon is suspected, it will be a mortal blow for M. de la Mole, and that is what I shall never forgive myself. I have already caused him so much sorrow. The academician will say that he has nursed a serpent in his bosom.

“I must confess that I little expected so much cold reason and so much solicitude for the future,” said Mademoiselle de la Mole, slightly annoyed. “My maid, who is almost as prudent as you are, took a passport for herself, and I posted here under the name of Madame Michelet.”

“And did Madame Michelet find it so easy to get to see me?”

“Ah! you are still the same superior man whom I chose to favour. I started by offering a hundred francs to one of the judge's secretaries, who alleged at first that my admission into this turret was impossible. But once he had got the money the worthy man kept me waiting, raised objections, and I thought that he meant to rob me—” She stopped.

“Well?” said Julien.

“Do not be angry, my little Julien,” she said, kissing him. “I was obliged to tell my name to the secretary, who took me for a young working girl from Paris in love with handsome Julien. As a matter of fact those are his actual expressions. I swore to him, my dear, that I was your wife, and I shall have a permit to see you every day.”

“Nothing could be madder,” thought Julien, “but I could not help it. After all, M. de la Mole is so great a nobleman that public opinion will manage to find an excuse for the young colonel who will marry such a charming widow. My death will atone for everything;” and he abandoned himself with delight to Mathilde's love. It was madness, it was greatness of soul, it was the most remarkable thing possible. She seriously suggested that she should kill herself with him.

After these first transports, when she had had her fill of the happiness of seeing Julien, a keen curiosity suddenly invaded her soul. She began to scrutinize her lover, and found him considerably above the plane which she had anticipated. Boniface de la Mole seemed to be brought to life again, but on a more heroic scale.

Mathilde saw the first advocates of the locality, and offended them by offering gold too crudely, but they finished by accepting.

She promptly came to the conclusion that so far as dubious and far reaching intrigues were concerned, everything depended at Besançon on M. the Abbé de Frilair.

She found at first overwhelming difficulties in obtaining an interview with the all-powerful leader of the congregation under the obscure name of Madame Michelet. But the rumour of the beauty of a young dressmaker, who was madly in love, and had come from Paris to Besançon to console the young Abbé Julien Sorel, spread over the town.

Mathilde walked about the Besançon streets alone: she hoped not to be recognised. In any case, she thought it would be of some use to her cause if she produced a great impression on the people. She thought, in her madness, of making them rebel in order to save Julien as he walked to his death. Mademoiselle de la Mole thought she was dressed simply and in a way suitable to a woman in mourning; she was dressed in fact in such a way as to attract every one's attention.

She was the object of everyone's notice at Besançon when she obtained an audience of M. de Frilair after a week spent in soliciting it.

In spite of all her courage, the idea of an influential leader of the congregation, and the idea of deep and calculating criminality, were so associated with each other in her mind, that she trembled as she rang the bell at the door of the bishop's palace. She could scarcely walk when she had to go up the staircase, which led to the apartment of the first grand Vicar. The solitude of the episcopal palace chilled her. “I might sit down in an armchair, and the armchair might grip my arms: I should then disappear. Whom could my maid ask for? The captain of the gendarmerie will take care to do nothing. I am isolated in this great town.”

After her first look at the apartment, Mademoiselle de la Mole felt reassured. In the first place, the lackey who had opened the door to her had on a very elegant livery. The salon in which she was asked to wait displayed that refined and delicate luxury which differs so much from crude magnificence, and which is only found in the best houses in Paris. As soon as she noticed M. de Frilair coming towards her with quite a paternal air, all her ideas of his criminality disappeared. She did not even find on his handsome face the impress of that drastic and somewhat savage courage which is so antipathetic to Paris society. The half-smile which animated the features of the priest, who was all-powerful at Besançon, betokened the well-bred man, the learned prelate, the clever administrator. Mathilde felt herself at Paris.

It was the work of a few minutes for M. de Frilair to induce Mathilde to confess to him that she was the daughter of his powerful opponent, the Marquis de la Mole.

“As a matter of fact, I am not Madame Michelet,” she said, reassuming all the haughtiness of her natural demeanour, “and this confession costs me but little since I have come to consult you, Monsieur, on the possibility of procuring the escape of M. de la Vernaye. Moreover, he is only guilty of a piece of folly; the woman whom he shot at is well; and, in the second place, I can put down fifty thousand francs straight away for the purpose of bribing the officials, and pledge myself for twice that sum. Finally, my gratitude and the gratitude of my family will be ready to do absolutely anything for the man who has saved M. de la Vernaye.”

M. de Frilair seemed astonished at the name. Mathilde shewed him several letters from the Minister of War, addressed to M. Julien Sorel de la Vernaye.

“You see, Monsieur, that my father took upon himself the responsibility of his career. I married him secretly, my father was desirous that he should be a superior officer before the notification of this marriage, which, after all, is somewhat singular for a de la Mole.”

Mathilde noticed that M. de Frilair's expression of goodwill and mild cheerfulness was rapidly vanishing in proportion as he made certain important discoveries. His face exhibited a subtlety tinged with deep perfidiousness; the Abbé had doubts, he was slowly re-reading the official documents.

“What can I get out of these strange confidences?” he said to himself. “Here I am suddenly thrown into intimate relations with a friend of the celebrated Maréchale de Fervaques, who is the all-powerful niece of my lord, bishop of——who can make one a bishop of France. What I looked upon as an extremely distant possibility presents itself unexpectedly. This may lead me to the goal of all my hopes.”

Mathilde was at first alarmed by the sudden change in the expression of this powerful man, with whom she was alone in a secluded room. “But come,” she said to herself soon afterwards. “Would it not have been more unfortunate if I had made no impression at all on the cold egoism of a priest who was already sated with power and enjoyment?”

Dazzled at the sight of this rapid and unexpected path of reaching the episcopate which now disclosed itself to him, and astonished as he was by Mathilde's genius, M. de Frilair ceased for a moment to be on his guard. Mademoiselle de la Mole saw him almost at her feet, tingling with ambition, and trembling nervously.

“Everything is cleared up,” she thought. “Madame de Fervaques' friend will find nothing impossible in this town.” In spite of a sentiment of still painful jealousy she had sufficient courage to explain that Julien was the intimate friend of the maréchale, and met my lord the bishop of——nearly every day.

“If you were to draw by ballot four or five times in succession a list of thirty-six jurymen from out the principal inhabitants of this department,” said the grand Vicar, emphasizing his words, and with a hard, ambitious expression in his eyes, “I should not feel inclined to congratulate myself, if I could not reckon on eight or ten friends who would be the most intelligent of the lot in each list. I can always manage in nearly every case to get more than a sufficient majority to secure a condemnation. So you see, Mademoiselle, how easy it is for me to secure a conviction.” The abbé stopped short as though astonished by the sound of his own words; he was admitting things which are never said to the profane. But he in his turn dumbfounded Mathilde when he informed her that the special feature in Julien's strange adventure which astonished and interested Besançon society, was that he had formerly inspired Madame de Rênal with a grand passion and reciprocated it for a long time. M. de Frilair had no difficulty in perceiving the extreme trouble which his story produced.

“I have my revenge,” he thought. “After all, it's a way of managing this decided young person. I was afraid that I should not succeed.” Her distinguished and intractable appearance intensified in his eyes the charm of the rare beauty whom he now saw practically entreating him. He regained all his self-possession—and he did not hesitate to move the dagger about in her heart.

“I should not be at all surprised,” he said to her lightly, “if we were to learn that it was owing to jealousy that M. Sorel fired two pistol shots at the woman he once loved so much. Of course she must have consoled herself, and for some time she has been seeing extremely frequently a certain Abbé Marquinot of Dijon, a kind of Jansenist, and as immoral as all Jansenists are.”

M. de Frilair experienced the voluptuous pleasure of torturing at his leisure the heart of this beautiful girl whose weakness he had surprised.

“Why,” he added, as he fixed his ardent eyes upon Mathilde, “should M. Sorel have chosen the church, if it were not for the reason that his rival was celebrating mass in it at that very moment? Everyone attributes an infinite amount of intelligence and an even greater amount of prudence to the fortunate man who is the object of your interest. What would have been simpler than to hide himself in the garden of M. de Rênal which he knows so well? Once there he could put the woman of whom he was jealous to death with the practical certainty of being neither seen, caught, nor suspected.”

This apparently sound train of reasoning eventually made Mathilde lose all self-possession. Her haughty soul, steeped in all that arid prudence, which passes in high society for the true psychology of the human heart, was not of the type to be at all quick in appreciating that joy of scorning all prudence, which an ardent soul can find so keen. In the high classes of Paris society in which Mathilde had lived, it is only rarely that passion can divest itself of prudence, and people always make a point of throwing themselves out of windows from the fifth storey.

At last the Abbé de Frilair was sure of his power over her. He gave Mathilde to understand (and he was doubtless lying) that he could do what he liked with the public official who was entrusted with the conduct of Julien's prosecution.

After the thirty-six jurymen for the sessions had been chosen by ballot, he would approach at least thirty jurymen directly and personally.

If M. de Frilair had not thought Mathilde so pretty, he would not have spoken so clearly before the fifth or sixth interview.