The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the Nineteenth Century

by Stendhal

  On the following day he was formally interrogated, after which he was left in peace for several days. His mind was at rest. Everything seemed quite straightforward to him in his case: I intended to kill, so I must be killed.

  Ms thoughts did not pursue this line of reasoning any further. The trial, the irksome necessity of appearing in public,

  -474-

  his defence--he considered all these as minor inconveniences, tedious ceremonies that it would be time enough to think about on the day itself. Nor did the moment of death give him greater pause: I'll think about it after the trial. Life was not in the least boring for him, he considered everything in a new light. He had no ambition left. He only thought occasionally about Mlle de La Mole. His remorse preoccupied him a good deal, and often confronted him with the image of Mme de Rênal, especially in the night-time stillness that was only broken, in this high keep, by the cry of the white-tailed eagle!

  He gave thanks to heaven that he hadn't wounded her to death. It's an astonishing thing! he said to himself, I thought that by writing that letter to M. de La Mole she had destroyed my future happiness for ever, and less than a fortnight from the date of that letter I'm no longer concerned about all the things that preoccupied me then... An income of two or three thousand pounds to live quietly in a mountainous spot like Vergy...I was happy then...I didn't know how happy I was!

  At other moments he leaped up from his chair. If I'd wounded Mme de Rênal to death, I would have killed myself... I need this certainty in order not to find myself repugnant.

  To kill myself... that is the great question, he reflected. These judges, who are so formalistic, so dogged in their pursuit of the poor accused, who would have the best of citizens hanged in order to fasten a medal to their coats... I should escape from their power, from their insults in bad French, * which the local newspaper will call eloquence.

  I may live for another five or six weeks, give or take a bit... Kill myself! most certainly not, he said to himself a few days later, Napoleon went on living...

  Besides, I'm finding life enjoyable; this place is quiet; I don't have any tedious visitors, he added laughing, and he began to make a note of the books he wanted to have sent from Paris.

  -475-

  CHAPTER 37 A keep The tomb of a friend STERNE *

  HE heard a loud noise in the corridor; it was not a time when people came up to his prison; the white-tailed eagle flew off with a cry, the door opened and the venerable Father Chélan, trembling all over and leaning on a stick, flung himself into his arms.

  'Ah! God Almighty! is this possible, my child... Monster! I should say.'

  And the kind old man was unable to utter another word. Julien was afraid he would collapse. He was obliged to walk him over to a chair. The hand of time had fallen heavily on this once energetic man. He struck Julien as no more than a shadow of his former self.

  When he had got his breath back: 'It was only the day before yesterday that I got your letter from Strasburg with your five hundred francs for the poor of Verrières; it was delivered to me in the mountains at Liveru where I'm living in retirement with my nephew Jean. Yesterday I learned of the catastrophe... Oh heavens! is it possible!' and the old man no longer wept, his face looked utterly vacant, and he added mechanically: 'You'll need your five hundred francs, I've brought them back for you.'

  'I need to see you, Father!' Julien exclaimed, very touched. 'I've got money to spare.'

  But he was unable to elicit any coherent response from him after that. Now and again M. Chélan shed a few tears which trickled silently down his cheeks; then he looked at Julien, and seemed somehow dazed to see him take hold of his hands and raise them to his lips. This countenance that had been so full of life before, and had so energetically portrayed the noblest of feelings could not now shake off a look of total apathy. A peasant of some description soon came to fetch the old man.

  -476-

  'He mustn't be over-tired,' he said to Julien, who gathered that this was the nephew. This apparition left Julien plunged in cruel suffering which kept tears at bay. Everything seemed irreparably gloomy to him; his heart felt like ice in his chest.

  This was the cruellest moment he had experienced since the crime. He had just seen death in all its hideousness. All illusions of spiritual grandeur and generosity had melted away like clouds before a storm.

  This terrible state lasted several hours. Someone who has been psychologically poisoned needs physical remedies and champagne. Julien would have considered himself a coward for resorting to them. Towards the end of a horrendous day when he did nothing but pace up and down his narrow tower: I'm utterly mad! he exclaimed. Only if I had to die like everyone else should the sight of this poor old man have plunged me into such terrible gloom; but a quick death in the prime of life is precisely a guarantee against this sorry decrepitude.

  Whatever arguments he put to himself, Julien found himself feeling emotional, as if he were a coward, and he was consequently upset by this visit.

  There was nothing rugged and grandiose left in him, no more Roman virtue; death appeared as way above him now, and as something less easy.

  This shall be my thermometer, he told himself. Tonight I'm ten degrees below the courage that will take me on a level path to the guillotine. I had it this morning, that sort of courage. Anyway, what does it matter! As long as it returns to me at the crucial moment. This thermometer idea amused him, and ended up by taking his mind off his plight.

  On waking the next morning he was ashamed of the previous day. My happiness, my peace of mind are at stake. He almost resolved to write to the public prosecutor to request that no one be admitted to see him. What about Fouqué? he thought. If he takes it upon himself to come to Besançon, just think how distressed he'd be!

  It was some two months now since he had last thought about Fouqué. I was a real fool at Strasburg, my thoughts didn't go beyond the collar of my suit. He was greatly preoccupied by

  -477-

  the memory of Fouqué, and it left him feeling more tender. He paced up and down in agitation. Here I am now well and truly twenty degrees below the death level... If this feebleness increases, I'll be better off killing myself. What a delight for the Father Maslons and the Valenods if I die like a menial wretch!

  Fouqué came; this unpretentious, kind man was beside himself with grief. His only idea when he had one was to sell all his possessions to bribe the gaoler and engineer Julien's escape. He talked to him at length of M. de Lavalette's escape. *

  'You're distressing me,' Julien said to him; 'M. de Lavalette was innocent, whereas I'm guilty. Without meaning to, you're rubbing in the difference...

  'But is it true! Honestly? You'd sell all your possessions?' Julien asked, suddenly becoming observant and suspicious again.

  Fouqué was delighted to see his friend responding at last to his great idea, and he gave him a lengthy account, down to the last hundred francs, of what he would make from each one of his holdings.

  What a sublime effort from a country landowner. Think what he's sacrificing for me now--all those economies, all those stingy little half-measures that made me squirm so much when I observed him engaged in them! One of those fine young men I saw at the Hôtel de La Mole, who all read René, * wouldn't have any of these absurd characteristics; but apart from the ones who are very young, and whose wealth is inherited, what's more, so they don't know the value of money, which of these fine Parisians would be capable of a sacrifice like this?

  All Fouqué's bad grammar, * all his unrefined gestures vanished: Julien flung himself into his arms. Never had the provinces, when compared with Paris, received a finer accolade. Fouqué, delighted by the momentary enthusiasm he saw in his friend's eyes, took it for consent to make a getaway.

  This vision of the sublime restored to Julien all the strength Father Chélan's sudden appearance had robbed him of. He was still very young; but in my opinion he was a fine specimen. Instead of going from tenderness to cunning, like most men,

 
; -478-

  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 Mme de Rênal who has no respect for us, and in fact loathes me... Perhaps I'll discover some way in all this of bringing

  -479-

  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 Mme 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.'

  -480-

  CHAPTER 38

  A powerful man

  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 Mlle 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 Mlle 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

  -481-

  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 Mlle 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 Mme 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

  -482-

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

  Under the obscure name of Mme 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. Mlle 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 trembl
ed 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

  -483-

  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 Mme 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.'