The Red and the Black (51 page)

When she left the bishop's palace, Mathilde did not hesitate to despatch a courier to Madame de Fervaques. The fear of compromising herself did not stop her for a moment. She entreated her rival to obtain for M. de Frilair an autograph letter from the bishop of——. She went as far as to entreat her to come herself to Besançon with all speed. This was an heroic act on the part of a proud and jealous soul.

Acting on Fouqué's advice, she had had the discretion to refrain from mentioning the steps she had taken for Julien. Her presence troubled him enough without that. A better man when face to face with death than he had ever been during his life, he had remorse not only towards M. de la Mole, but also towards Mathilde.

“Come,” he said to himself, “there are times when I feel absent-minded and even bored by her society. She is ruining herself on my account, and this is how I reward her? Am I really a scoundrel?” This question would have bothered him but little in the days when he was ambitious. In those days he looked upon failure as the only disgrace.

His moral discomfort when with Mathilde was proportionately emphasized by the fact that he inspired her at this time with the maddest and most extraordinary passion. She talked of nothing but the strange sacrifices that she was ready to make in order to save him.

Exalted as she was by a sentiment on which she plumed herself, to the complete subordination of her pride, she would have liked not to have let a single minute of her life go by without filling it with some extraordinary act. The strangest projects, and ones involving her in the utmost danger, supplied the topics of her long interviews with Julien. The well-paid gaolers allowed her to reign over the prison. Mathilde's ideas were not limited by the sacrifice of her reputation. She would have thought nothing of making her condition known to society at large. Throwing herself on her knees before the King's carriage as it galloped along, in order to ask for Julien's pardon, and thus attracting the attention of the prince, at the risk of being crushed a thousand times over, was one of the least fantastic dreams in which this exalted and courageous imagination chose to indulge. She was certain of being admitted into the reserved portion of the park of St. Cloud, through those friends of hers who were employed at the King's court.

Julien thought himself somewhat unworthy of so much devotion. As a matter of fact, he was tired of heroism. A simple, naïve, and almost timid tenderness was what would have appealed to him, while Mathilde's haughty soul, on the other hand, always required the idea of a public and an audience.

In the midst of all her anguish and all her fears for the life of that lover whom she was unwilling to survive, she felt a secret need of astonishing the public by the extravagance of her love and the sublimity of her actions.

Julien felt irritated at not finding himself touched by all this heroism. What would he have felt if he had known of all the mad ideas with which Mathilde overwhelmed the devoted but eminently logical and limited spirit of the good Fouqué?

He did not know what to find fault with in Mathilde's devotion. For he, too, would have sacrificed all his fortune, and have exposed his life to the greatest risks in order to save Julien. He was dumbfounded by the quantity of gold which Mathilde flung away. During the first days Fouqué, who had all the provincial's respect for money, was much impressed by the sums she spent in this way.

He at last discovered that Mademoiselle de la Mole's projects frequently varied, and he was greatly relieved at finding a word with which to express his blame for a character whom he found so exhausting. She was changeable. There is only a step from this epithet to that of “wrongheaded,” the greatest term of opprobrium known to the provinces.

“It is singular,” said Julien to himself, as Mathilde was going out of his prison one day, “that I should be so insensible at being the object of so keen a passion! And two months ago I adored her! I have, of course, read that the approach of death makes one lose interest in everything, but it is awful to feel oneself ungrateful, and not to be able to change. Am I an egoist, then?” He addressed the most humiliating reproaches to himself on this score.

Ambition was dead in his heart; another passion had arisen from its ashes. He called it remorse at having assassinated Madame de Rênal.

As a matter of fact, he loved her to the point of distraction. He experienced a singular happiness on these occasions when, being left absolutely alone, and without being afraid of being interrupted, he could surrender himself completely to the memory of the happy days which he had once passed at Verrières, or at Vergy. The slightest incidents of these days, which had fleeted away only too rapidly, possessed an irresistible freshness and charm. He never gave a thought to his Paris successes; they bored him.

These moods, which became intensified with every succeeding day, were partly guessed by the jealous Mathilde. She realised very clearly that she had to struggle against his love of solitude. Sometimes, with terror in her heart, she uttered Madame de Rênal's name.

She saw Julien quiver. Henceforth her passion had neither bounds nor limit.

“If he dies, I will die after him,” she said to herself in all good faith. “What will the Paris salons say when they see a girl of my own rank carry her adoration for a lover who is condemned to death to such a pitch as this? For sentiments like these you must go back to the age of the heroes. It was loves of this kind which thrilled the hearts of the century of Charles IX. and Henri III.”

In the midst of her keenest transports, when she was clasping Julien's head against her heart, she would say to herself with horror, “What! is this charming head doomed to fall? Well,” she added, inflamed by a not unhappy heroism, “these lips of mine, which are now pressing against this pretty hair, will be icy cold less than twenty-four hours afterwards.”

Thoughts of the awful voluptuousness of such heroic moments gripped her in a compelling embrace. The idea of suicide, absorbing enough in itself, entered that haughty soul (to which, up to the present it had been so utterly alien), and soon reigned over it with an absolute dominion.

“No, the blood of my ancestors has not grown tepid in descending to me,” said Mathilde proudly to herself.

“I have a favour to ask of you,” said her lover to her one day. “Put your child out to nurse at Verrières. Madame de Rênal will look after the nurse.”

“Those words of yours are very harsh.” And Mathilde paled.

“It is true, and I ask your pardon a thousand times,” exclaimed Julien, emerging from his reverie, and clasping her in his arms.

After having dried his tears, he reverted to his original idea, but with greater tact. He had given a twist of melancholy philosophy to the conversation. He talked of that future of his which was so soon going to close. “One must admit, dear one, that passions are an accident in life, but such accidents only occur in superior souls.... My son's death would be in reality a happiness for your own proud family, and all the servants will realize as much. Neglect will be the lot of that child of shame and unhappiness. I hope that, at a time which I do not wish to fix, but which nevertheless I am courageous enough to imagine, you will obey my last advice: you will marry the Marquis de Croisenois.”

“What? Dishonoured?”

“Dishonour cannot attach to a name such as yours. You will be a widow, and the widow of a madman—that is all. I will go further—my crime will confer no dishonour, since it had no money motive. Perhaps when the time comes for your marriage, some philosophic legislator will have so far prevailed on the prejudice of his contemporaries as to have secured the suppression of the death penalty. Then some friendly voice will say, by way of giving an instance: ‘Why, Madame de la Mole's first husband was a madman, but not a wicked man or a criminal. It was absurd to have his head cut off.' So my memory will not be infamous in any way—at least, after a certain time.... Your position in society, your fortune, and, if you will allow me to say so, your genius, will make M. de Croisenois, once he is your husband, play a part which he would have never managed to secure unaided. He only possesses birth and bravery, and those qualities alone, though they constituted an accomplished man in 1729, are an anachronism a century later on, and only give rise to unwarranted pretensions. You need other things if you are to place yourself at the head of the youth of France.

“You will take all the help of your firm and enterprising character to the political party which you will make your husband join. You may be able to be a successor to the Chevreuses and the Longuevilles of the Fronde—but then, dear one, the divine fire which animates you at present will have grown a little tepid. Allow me to tell you,” he added, “after many other preparatory phrases, that in fifteen years' time you will look upon the love you once had for me as a madness, which though excusable, was a piece of madness all the same.”

He stopped suddenly and became meditative. He found himself again confronted with the idea which shocked Mathilde so much: “In fifteen years, Madame de Rênal will adore my son and you will have forgotten him.”

This conversation was interrupted by an interrogation followed by a conference with the advocate entrusted with the defence. These moments were the only absolutely unpleasant ones in a life made up of nonchalance and tender reveries.

“There is murder, and murder with premeditation,” said Julien to the judge as he had done to the advocate, “I am sorry, gentlemen,” he added with a smile, “that this reduces your functions to a very small compass.”

“After all,” said Julien to himself, when he had managed to rid himself of those two persons, “I must really be brave, and apparently braver than those two men. They regard that duel with an unfortunate determination, which I can only seriously bother myself about on the actual day, as the greatest of evils and the arch-terror.”

“The fact is that I have known a much greater unhappiness,” continued Julien, as he went on philosophising with himself. “I suffered far more acutely during my first journey to Strasbourg, when I thought I was abandoned by Mathilde—and to think that I desired so passionately that same perfect intimacy which to-day leaves me so cold—as a matter of fact I am more happy alone than when that handsome girl shares my solitude.”

The advocate, who was a red-tape pedant, thought him mad, and believed, with the public, that it was jealousy which had led him to take up the pistol. He ventured one day to give Julien to understand that this contention, whether true or false, would be an excellent way of pleading. But the accused man became in a single minute a passionate and drastic individual.

“As you value your life, Monsieur,” exclaimed Julien, quite beside himself, “mind you never put forward such an abominable lie.” The cautious advocate was for a moment afraid of being assassinated.

He was preparing his case because the decisive moment was drawing near. The only topic of conversation in Besançon, and all the department, was the cause celebre. Julien did not know of this circumstance. He had requested his friends never to talk to him about that kind of thing.

On this particular day, Fouqué and Mathilde had tried to inform him of certain rumours which in their view were calculated to give hope. Julien had stopped them at the very first word.

“Leave me my ideal life. Your pettifogging troubles and details of practical life all more or less jar on me and bring me down from my heaven. One dies as best one can; but I wish to choose my own way of thinking about death. What do I care for other people? My relations with other people will be sharply cut short. Be kind enough not to talk to me any more about those people. Seeing the judge and the advocate is more than enough.”

“As a matter of fact,” he said to himself, “it seems that I am fated to die dreaming. An obscure creature like myself, who is certain to be forgotten within a fortnight, would be very silly, one must admit, to go and play a part. It is nevertheless singular that I never knew so much about the art of enjoying life, as since I have seen its end so near me.”

He passed his last day in promenading upon the narrow terrace at the top of the turret, smoking some excellent cigars which Mathilde had had fetched from Holland by a courier. He had no suspicion that his appearance was waited for each day by all the telescopes in the town. His thoughts were at Vergy. He never spoke to Fouqué about Madame de Rênal, but his friend told him two or three times that she was rapidly recovering, and these words reverberated in his heart.

While Julien's soul was nearly all the time wholly in the realm of ideas, Mathilde, who, as befits an aristocratic spirit, had occupied herself with concrete things, had managed to make the direct and intimate correspondence between Madame de Fervaques and M. de Frilair progress so far that the great word “bishopric” had been already pronounced. The venerable prelate, who was entrusted with the distribution of the benefices, added in a postscript to one of his niece's letters, “This poor Sorel is only a lunatic. I hope he will be restored to us.”

At the sight of these lines, M. de Frilair felt transported. He had no doubts about saving Julien.

“But for this Jacobin law which has ordered the formation of an unending panel of jurymen, and which has no other real object, except to deprive well-born people of all their influence,” he said to Mathilde on the eve of the balloting for the thirty-six jurymen of the session, “I would have answered for the verdict. I certainly managed to get the curé N——acquitted.”

When the names were selected by ballot on the following day, M. de Frilair experienced a genuine pleasure in finding that they contained five members of the Besançon congregation and that amongst those who were strangers to the town were the names of M.M. Valenod, de Moirod, de Cholin. I can answer for these eight jurymen he said to Mathilde. The first five are mere machines, Valenod is my agent; Moirod owes me everything; de Cholin is an imbecile who is frightened of everything.

The journal published the names of the jurymen throughout the department, and to her husband's unspeakable terror, Madame de Rênal wished to go to Besançon. All that M. de Rênal could prevail on her to promise was that she would not leave her bed so as to avoid the unpleasantness of being called to give evidence. “You do not understand my position,” said the former mayor of Verrières. “I am now said to be disloyal and a Liberal. No doubt that scoundrel Valenod and M. de Frilair will get the procureur-general and the judges to do all they can to cause me unpleasantness.”

Madame de Rênal found no difficulty in yielding to her husband's orders. “If I appear at the assize court,” she said to herself, “I should seem as if I were asking for vengeance.” In spite of all the promises she had made to the director of her conscience and to her husband that she would be discreet, she had scarcely arrived at Besançon before she wrote with her own hand to each of the thirty-six jurymen:—

“I shall not appear on the day of the trial, Monsieur, because my presence might be prejudicial to M. Sorel's case. I only desire one thing in the world, and that I desire passionately—for him to be saved. Have no doubt about it, the awful idea that I am the cause of an innocent man being led to his death would poison the rest of my life and would no doubt curtail it. How can you condemn him to death while I continue to live? No, there is no doubt about it, society has no right to take away a man's life, and above all, the life of a being like Julien Sorel. Everyone at Verrières knew that there were moments when he was quite distracted. This poor young man has some powerful enemies, but even among his enemies, (and how many has he not got?) who is there who casts any doubt on his admirable talents and his deep knowledge? The man whom you are going to try, Monsieur, is not an ordinary person. For a period of nearly eighteen months we all knew him as a devout and well-behaved student. Two or three times in the year he was seized by fits of melancholy that went to the point of distraction. The whole town of Verrières, all our neighbours at Vergy, where we live in the fine weather, my whole family, and monsieur the sub-prefect himself will render justice to his exemplary piety. He knows all the Holy Bible by heart. Would a blasphemer have spent years of study in learning the Sacred Book? My sons will have the honour of presenting you with this letter; they are children. Be good enough to question them, Monsieur, they will give you all the details concerning this poor young man which are necessary to convince you of how barbarous it would be to condemn him. Far from revenging me, you would be putting me to death.

“What can his enemies argue against this? The wound, which was the result of one of those moments of madness, which my children themselves used to remark in their tutor, is so little dangerous that in less than two months it has allowed me to take the post from Verrières to Besançon. If I learn, Monsieur, that you show the slightest hesitation in releasing so innocent a person from the barbarity of the law, I will leave my bed, where I am only kept by my husband's express orders, and I will go and throw myself at your feet. Bring in a verdict, Monsieur, that the premeditation has not been made out, and you will not have an innocent man's blood on your head, etc.”