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

by Stendhal

  He was proclaiming in a loud voice that he was going to spend all day and night outside the prison gate: 'God has sent me to touch the heart of this latterday apostate. . .' * And the common people, always curious about any spectacle, were beginning to gather round.

  'Yes, my brothers,' he said to them, 'I shall spend the day here, and the night, and every following day and night likewise. The Holy Spirit has spoken to me; I have a mission from on high, I am the one who must save young Sorel's soul. Join me in prayer,' etc. etc.

  Julien lived in dread of scandal and anything that might draw attention to him. He considered there and then seizing the opportunity to escape from the world unnoticed; but he had some hope of seeing Mme de Rênal again, and he was madly in love.

  The prison gate was in one of the busiest streets. The idea of this mud-spattered priest drumming up a crowd and a scandal tortured his innermost being--And without a doubt he's repeating my name time and time again! This moment was more painful to him than death.

  Once or twice at hourly intervals he summoned a warder who was devoted to him and sent him off to see if the priest was still at the prison gate.

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  'Sir, he's down on both knees in the mud,' the warder told him every time. 'He's praying out loud and saying litanies for your soul . . .' Impertinent fellow! thought Julien. At that moment he did indeed hear a dull murmur; it was the crowd joining in the litanies. As a final onslaught on his patience, he saw the warder himself move his lips as he repeated the Latin words. 'They're beginning to say', added the warder, 'that you must have a heart of stone to refuse the help of this holy man.'

  'Oh my country! How barbarous you still are!' Julien exclaimed beside himself with anger. And he continued his reflections out loud, paying no attention to the warder's presence.

  'That fellow wants an article in the newspaper, and he's sure to get it.

  'Ah! cursed provincials! In Paris I wouldn't be subjected to all these vexations. People there are more adept at charlatanism.

  'Show in this holy priest,' he said at last to the warder, and the sweat was streaming down his forehead. The warder crossed himself and went out in great delight.

  The holy priest turned out to be horribly ugly, and even more horribly spattered in mud. The cold rain falling outside heightened the gloom and dankness of the cell. The priest tried to embrace Julien, and began to get sentimental as he talked to him. The most vile hypocrisy was only too apparent; Julien had never been so angry in all his life.

  A quarter of an hour after the priest had come in, Julien found himself a complete coward. For the first time death struck him as horrendous. He thought of the state of putrefaction his body would be in two days after the execution, etc. etc.

  He was about to betray himself by some sign of weakness, or fling himself at the priest and strangle him with his chain, when he had the idea of begging the holy man to go and say a Mass for him--a proper Mass worth forty francs--that very same day.

  Now as it was almost noon, * the priest made off in haste.

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  CHAPTER 44

  As soon as he had left, Julien wept bitterly, and wept at having to die. Gradually he admitted to himself that if Mme de Rênal had been in Besançon, he would have confessed his weakness to her...

  At the point where he was most regretting the absence of the woman he adored, he heard Mathilde's footsteps.

  The worst thing about prison, he thought, is not being able to shut your door. Everything Mathilde told him only served to exasperate him.

  She informed him that on the day of the trial, M. de Valenod, with his appointment as prefect in his pocket, had dared to flout M. de Frilair and indulge in the pleasure of condemning Julien to death.

  '"Whatever came over your friend," M. de Frilair has just said to me, "to go and rouse and attack the petty vanity of this bourgeois aristocracy! Why speak of caste? He showed them what they had to do in their own political interest: these ninnies hadn't thought of it, and were ready to weep. This 'caste solidarity' served to obscure from their gaze the horror of condemning to death. It must be admitted that M. Sorel is very new to politics. If we don't succeed in saving him by an appeal for pardon, his death will be a kind of suicide..."'

  Mathilde was scarcely in a position to tell Julien something she did not as yet suspect: that the Abbé de Frilair, seeing there was no hope for Julien, thought it would serve his own ambition if he aspired to become his successor.

  Almost beside himself with impotent rage and annoyance, Julien said to Mathilde: 'Go and hear a Mass for me, and leave me in peace for a while.' Mathilde, who was already highly jealous of Mme de Rênal's visits, and had just learned of her departure, understood the reason for Julien's bad temper and burst into tears.

  Her distress was genuine; Julien could see this, and it only made him more exasperated. He had an overriding need for solitude, and how was he to procure it?

  At length, having tried all forms of reasoning to touch his

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  emotions, Mathilde left him alone, but at almost the same moment Fouqué appeared.

  'I need to be alone,' he said to this faithful friend... And on seeing him hesitate: 'I'm drafting a statement for my appeal for pardon... as far as other things go... do me a favour, don't ever speak to me about death. If I need you to do anything particular for me on the day, leave it up to me to raise the matter.'

  When Julien had at last procured solitude, he found he was more burdened and more cowardly than before. The little strength remaining in this weakened spirit had been exhaused in concealing his state from Mlle de La Mole and Fouqué.

  Towards evening he took comfort in this thought:

  If this morning, at the moment when death seemed so hideous to me, they had come to announce that it was time for the execution, the eye of the public would have been a spur to glory, maybe my walk would have had something stiff about it, like that of a nervous fop stepping into a salon. One or two perceptive people, if such exist among these provincials, might have been able to guess my weakness... but no one would have seen it.

  And he felt relieved of part of his misery. I'm a coward at this moment, he chanted over and over again to himself, but no one shall know it.

  An event that was almost more disagreeable still was awaiting him on the following day. For some time now his father had been saying he would visit him, and on that day, before Julien woke, the white-haired old carpenter appeared in his cell.

  A feeling of weakness came over Julien; he was expecting the most disagreeable of reproaches. To put the finishing touches to his wretchedness, he was experiencing an acute sense of guilt that morning at not loving his father.

  Chance has put us side by side on this earth, he said to himself while the warder was tidying up the cell, and we have caused each other just about all the hurt we could. Here he comes when I'm facing death to deliver the final blow.

  The old man's stern reproaches began as soon as they were on their own.

  -516-

  Julien was unable to restrain his tears. What unworthy weakness! he said to himself in fury. He'll go around everywhere exaggerating my lack of courage; what a triumph for the likes of Valenod and all the ingratiating hypocrites who rule Verrières! They're really powerful in France, they have all the social advantages on their side. Up till now I was at least able to say to myself: 'They get money, admittedly, and every form of honour is heaped upon them, but I am noble in spirit.'

  And now here's a witness who'll be believed by everyone, and will certify to all Verrières, with much exaggeration too, that I showed weakness in the face of death! I shall have been a coward in this ordeal that they all understand!

  Julien was on the verge of despair. He did not know how to get rid of his father. And shamming in such a way as to deceive this most perspicacious old man was at that moment quite beyond his strength.

  His mind ran rapidly over all the possibilities.

  'I've got some savings put by! he exclaimed
suddenly.

  This piece of inspiration completely altered the old man's countenance and Julien's position.

  'How should I dispose of them?' Julien went on more calmly: the effect produced had dispelled all his feelings of inferiority.

  The old carpenter was burning with a desire not to let slip this money, a share of which Julien seemed to wish to leave to his brothers. He spoke at length and with passion. Julien was able to indulge in mockery.

  'Well now! the Almighty has inspired me in the matter of my will. I shall give a thousand francs to each of my brothers and the rest to you.'

  'Very well,' said the old man, 'the rest is my due; but since God has granted you the grace of touching your heart, if you wish to die a good Christian, it's fitting that you pay your debts. There's still the cost of your food and education that I advanced you and you are forgetting...'

  'That's fatherly love for you!' Julien repeated to himself in great dismay when he was at last alone. Soon the gaoler appeared.

  'Sir, after parents have visited, I always bring my guests a

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  bottle of good champagne. It's a bit dear, six francs a bottle, but it warms the spirit.'

  'Bring in three glasses,' Julien replied with childlike eagerness, 'and show in two of the prisoners I hear walking up and down the corridor.'

  The gaoler brought him two relapsed convicts who were preparing to return to hard labour. They were cheery scoundrels who were really most remarkable for their shrewdness, their courage and their phlegm.

  'If you give me twenty francs,' said one of them to Julien, 'I'll tell you my life story in detail. It's brilliant.'

  'But won't you lie to me?'

  'That I won't,' he answered. 'My friend here, who'll be envious of my twenty francs, will denounce me if I invent anything.'

  His story was appalling. It showed a heart full of courage, but with only one passion left: money.

  After they had gone Julien was no longer the same man. All his anger at himself had disappeared. The dreadful suffering, poisoned by cowardice, which had taken hold of him since Mme de Rênal's departure, had turned to melancholy.

  As I came to be less taken in by appearances, he said to himself, I'd have seen that the Paris salons are inhabited by honest folk like my father, or cunning rascals like these convicts. They're right, men from the salons never get up in the morning with this agonizing thought: 'How am I going to get my dinner?' And they boast of their honesty! And from the ranks of the jury they proudly condemn the man who's stolen a silver spoon and fork because he felt faint with hunger.

  But if it's at Court, if it's a matter of losing or winning a ministerial portfolio, my honest salon gentlemen are reduced to exactly the same crimes as the ones those two convicts were driven to by the need to get their dinner...

  There's no such thing as natural rights: * this term is nothing but a bit of antiquated rubbish worthy of the assistant public prosecutor who was hounding me the other day, and whose ancestor was made rich by land which Louis XIV confiscated from the Protestants. * There is only a right when there is a law to forbid you doing something on pain of punishment. Before

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  the advent of laws, the only thing natural is the might of the lion or the need of the creature suffering hunger or cold, need in short... No, the people who are honoured are no more than rogues who've had the good fortune not to be caught redhanded. The accuser unleashed on me by society was made rich by an act of infamy... I attempted murder, and I'm justly condemned; but leaving aside this one action, that fellow Valenod who condemned me is a hundred times more harmful to society.

  So then! Julien went on sadly but without anger, my father, for all his avarice, is a better man than all of these. He's never loved me. And now it's the last straw when I go and dishonour him through my ignominious death. What is known as avarice--this fear of going short of money, this exaggerated view of the malevolence of mankind--makes him see a prodigious source of comfort and security in a sum of three or four hundred louis that I may be leaving him. One Sunday after dinner he'll show his gold to all the people in Verrières who envy him. 'At this price', his expression will say to them, 'which one of you would not be delighted to have a son guillotined?'

  This philosophy might well be sound, but it was of a kind to make him wish for death. Five long days went by like this. He was polite and gentle with Mathilde, who, he could see, was driven to distraction by the most acute jealousy. One evening Julien thought seriously about taking his own life. His spirit was sapped by the deep misery he had been plunged into by Mme de Rênal's departure. Nothing appealed to him any more, either in real life or in the realms of imagination. Lack of exercise was beginning to impair his health and make his character weak and over-intense like some young German student's. He was losing that manly detachment which rebuffs with a forceful oath certain ill-becoming thoughts that besiege the minds of the unfortunate.

  I love truth... Where is it?... Hypocrisy everywhere, or at any rate charlatanism, even among those of greatest virtue, even among the really great. And his lips pursed in disgust... No! man can't trust man.

  Mme de -----, who was collecting for her poor orphans, told

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  me that Prince So-and-So had just given ten louis--a lie. But what am I saying? Napoleon on St Helena!... Pure charlatanism, a proclamation in favour of the King of Rome. *

  For Christ's sake! if a man like that, and what's more at a time when misfortune should recall him sternly to his duty, descends into charlatanism, what can you expect from the rest of the species?...

  Where is truth? In religion... Yes, he added with the bitter smile of utmost scorn, in the mouths of the Maslons, the Frilairs and the Castanèdes of this world... Maybe in true Christianity, where priests would be given no more pay than the apostles got?... But St Paul's pay was the pleasure of giving commands, of speaking and being spoken of...

  Ah! if there were a true religion... Poor fool that I am! I see a gothic cathedral, and ancient stained-glass windows; my feeble heart conjures up a picture of the priest who is the keeper of these windows... My soul would understand him, my soul needs him... All I find is a fop with dirty hair... minus the charm, a Chevalier de Beauvoisis.

  But a real priest, a Massillon, a Fénelon... Massillon consecrated Dubois. * Saint-Simon's Memoirs have spoilt Fénelon for me... But I mean a real priest... Then tender souls would have a meeting-point in this world... We wouldn't be isolated... This good priest would talk to us about God. But which God? Not the one in the Bible, a cruel little despot thirsting after vengeance... no, Voltaire's God, righteous, good, infinite...

  He was disturbed by all the memories of this Bible that he knew by heart... But how, when two or three are gathered together, can you believe in the great name of GOD, after the terrible abuse made of it by our priests?

  To live in isolation!... What torment!...

  I'm going mad, and starting to be unfair, Julien said to himself, striking his forehead. I'm isolated here in this cell, but I didn't live in isolation on earth, I had a strong sense of duty. The duty I had prescribed for myself, for right or for wrong... was like a solid tree-trunk I leaned against during the storm; I swayed, I was buffeted. After all, I was only a man... But I wasn't swept away.

  -520-

  It's the dank air in this cell which makes me think of isolation...And why go on being a hypocrite while cursing hypocrisy? It isn't death, or the cell, or the dank air that are getting me down, it's the absence of Mme de Rênal! If in Verrières I were obliged, in order to see her, to live for weeks on end hidden in the cellars of the house, would I complain?'The influence of my contemporaries is getting the better of me,' he said out loud, with a bitter smile. 'Talking to myself only days away from death, I'm still a hypocrite... O nineteenth century!'...A huntsman fires a shot in the forest, his prey falls to the ground, he rushes forward to seize it. His shoe strikes an anthill two foot high and destroys the ants' home, scattering ants and their eggs far
and wide... The most philosophically inclined among the ants will never be able to understand this huge and terrible black object--the huntsman's boot--which has suddenly broken into their dwelling with incredible speed, in the wake of a dreadful noise accompanied by a shower of red sparks......That's what death, life and eternity are like--very simple things for anyone with sensory organs on a scale to apprehend them...A mayfly hatches at nine o'clock in the morning in high summer, and dies at five in the evening; how should it understand the word night?Give it five more hours of existence, and it will see and understand what night is.That's what I am like, I shall die at twenty-three. Give me five more years, to live with Mme de Rênal.And he began to laugh like Mephistopheles. What madness to debate these great questions! I'm being hypocritical as though there were someone there to listen to me.

  I'm forgetting to live and to love, when there are so few days left for me to live... Alas! Mme de Rênal isn't here; maybe her husband won't let her come back to Besançon, any more and continue to dishonour herself.

  This is what's causing my isolation, not the absence of a

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  righteous good, all-powerful God who isn't cruel and thirsting for vengeance.

  Ah! if he existed... Alas! I'd fall at his feet. 'I have deserved death,' I'd say to him; 'but Almighty God, bountiful God, merciful God, give me back the woman I love!'

  Night was well advanced by then. After Julien had slept peacefully for an hour or two, Fouqué arrived.

  Julien felt strong and resolute like a man who can see clearly into the depths of his soul.

  -522-