Part 2 Chapter 44
The Shadow of the GuillotineAs soon as he had gone, Julien began to weep copiously, at the thoughtof dying. After a while he said to himself that, if Madame de Renal hadbeen at Besancon, he would have confessed his weakness to her… .
At the moment when he most regretted the absence of that belovedwoman, he heard Mathilde's step.
'The worst drawback of a prison,' he thought, 'is that one can neverclose one's door.' All that Mathilde had to say served only to irritate him.
She informed him that, on the day of the trial, M. de Valenod, havingin his pocket his appointment as Prefect, had ventured to defy M. de Frilair and indulge himself in the pleasure of condemning Julien to death.
'"Whatever induced your friend," M. de Frilair said to me just now, "togo and arouse and attack the petty vanity of that middle-class aristocracy? Why speak of caste? He showed them what they ought to do intheir own political interest: the fools had never thought of it, and wereready to cry. This caste interest blinded their eyes to the horror of condemning a man to death. You must admit that M. Sorel shows great inexperience. If we do not succeed in saving him by an appeal to clemency,his death will be a sort of suicide … "'
Mathilde did not, of course, mention to Julien a thing which she herself did not yet suspect; namely, that the Abbe de Frilair, seeing Julien irremediably lost, thought that it would serve his own ambition to aspireto become his successor.
Almost out of his mind with helpless rage and vexation: 'Go and heara mass for me,' he said to Mathilde, 'and leave me a moment's peace.'
Mathilde, who was extremely jealous already at Madame de Renal's visits and had just heard of her departure, realised the cause of Julien's illhumour and burst into tears.
Her grief was genuine, Julien saw this and was all the more irritated.
He felt a compelling need of solitude, and how was he to secure it?
Finally Mathilde, having tried every argument to soften him, left himto himself, but almost at that moment Fouque appeared.
'I want to be alone,' he said to this faithful friend. And, as he saw himhesitate: 'I am composing a memorial for my appeal to clemency … butanyhow … do me a favour, never to speak to me of death. If I want anyspecial services on the day, let me be the first to mention them.'
When Julien had at length secured solitude, he found himself morecrushed and more of a coward than before. What little strength remainedto his enfeebled spirit had been used up in the effort to conceal his condition from Mademoiselle de La Mole and Fouque.
Towards evening, a comforting thought came to him:
'If this morning, at the moment when death seemed so ugly, I hadbeen warned to prepare for execution, the eye of the public would have beenthe incentive to glory; my gait might perhaps have been a little heavy, likethat of a timid fop on entering a drawing-room. A few perspicaciouspeople, if there be any such among these provincials, might haveguessed my weakness … but no one would have seen it.'
And he felt himself relieved of part of his load of misery. 'I am a coward at this moment,' he chanted to himself, 'but no one will know of it.'
An almost more disagreeable incident was in store for him on the morrow. For a long time past, his father had been threatening a visit; thatmorning, before Julien was awake, the white-haired old carpenter appeared in his cell.
Julien felt utterly weak, he expected the most unpleasant reproaches.
To complete his painful sensation, that morning he felt a keen remorse atnot loving his father.
'Chance has placed us together on this earth,' he said to himself whilethe turnkey was making the cell a little tidy, 'and we have done one another almost all the harm imaginable. He comes in the hour of my deathto deal me his final blow.'
The old man's severe reproaches began as soon as they were leftwithout a witness.
Julien could not restrain his tears. 'What unworthy weakness!' he saidto himself angrily. 'He will go about everywhere exaggerating my wantof courage; what a triumph for Valenod and for all the dull hypocriteswho reign at Verrieres! They are very great people in France, they combine all the social advantages. Until now I could at least say to myself:
They receive money, it is true, all the honours are heaped upon them,but I have nobility at heart.
'And here is a witness whom they will all believe, and who will assurethe whole of Verrieres, exaggerating the facts, that I have been weak inthe face of death! I shall be said to have turned coward in this trial whichthey can all understand!'
Julien was almost in despair. He did not know how to get rid of hisfather. And to make-believe in such a way as to deceive this sharp-wittedold man was, for the moment, utterly beyond his power.
His mind ran swiftly over all the possible ways of escape. 'I have savedmoney!' he exclaimed suddenly.
This inspired utterance altered the old man's expression and Julien'sown position.
'How ought I to dispose of it?' he continued, with more calm: the effectproduced by his words had rid him of all sense of inferiority.
The old carpenter was burning with a desire not to allow any of thismoney to escape, a part of which Julien seemed to wish to leave to hisbrothers. He spoke at great length and with heat. Julien managed totease him.
'Well, the Lord has given me inspiration for making my testament. Ishall give a thousand francs to each of my brothers, and the remainder toyou.'
'Very good,' said the old man, 'that remainder is my due; but sinceGod has been graciously pleased to touch your heart, if you wish to dielike a good Christian, you ought first to pay your debts. There is still thecost of your maintenance and education, which I advanced, and whichyou have forgotten … '
'So that is a father's love!' Julien repeated to himself with despair in hisheart, when at length he was alone. Soon the gaoler appeared.
'Sir, after a visit from the family, I always bring my lodgers a bottle ofgood champagne. It is a trifle dear, six francs the bottle, but it rejoices theheart.'
'Bring three glasses,' Julien told him with boyish glee, 'and send in twoof the prisoners whom I hear walking in the corridor.'
The gaoler brought him in two gaolbirds who had repeated their offence and were waiting to be sent back to penal servitude. They were a merry pair of scoundrels and really quite remarkable for cunning, courage and coolness.
'If you give me twenty francs,' one of them said to Julien, 'I will tellyou the whole story of my life. It is as good as a play.'
'But you will tell me lies?' said Julien.
'Not at all,' was the answer; 'my friend here, who wants my twentyfrancs, will give me away if I don't tell the truth.'
His history was abominable. It revealed a courageous heart, in whichthere survived but a single passion, the lust for money.
After they had left him, Julien was no longer the same man. All his anger with himself had vanished. The piercing grief, envenomed by cowardice, to which he had been a prey since the departure of Madame deRenal, had turned to melancholy.
'If I had only been less taken in by appearance,' he told himself, 'Ishould have seen that the drawing-rooms of Paris are inhabited by honest people like my father, or by able rascals like these gaolbirds. They areright, the men in the drawing-rooms never rise in the morning with thatpoignant thought: "How am I to dine today?" And they boast of theirprobity! And, when summoned to a jury, they proudly condemn theman who has stolen a silver fork because he felt faint with hunger!
'But when there is a Court, when it is a question of securing or losing aPortfolio, my honest men of the drawing-rooms fall into crimes preciselysimilar to those which the want of food has inspired in this pair ofgaolbirds …'There is no such thing as natural law: the expression is merely a hoarypiece of stupidity well worthy of the Advocate-General who hunted medown the other day, and whose ancestor was made rich by one of LouisXIV's confiscations. There is no law, save when there is a statute to prevent one from doing something, on pain of punishment. Before the statute, there is nothing natural save the strength of the lion, or the wants ofthe creature who suffers from hunger, or cold; in a word, necessity …No, the men whom we honour are merely rascals who have had thegood fortune not to be caught red-handed. The accuser whom societysets at my heels has been made rich by a scandalous injustice … I havecommitted a murderous assault, and I am rightly condemned, but, shortof murder only, the Valenod who condemned me is a hundred timesmore injurious to society.
'Ah, well,' Julien added sorrowfully, but without anger, 'for all his avarice, my father is worth more than any of those men. He has neverloved me. I am now going to fill his cup to overflowing, in dishonouringhim by a shameful death. That fear of being in want of money, that exaggerated view of the wickedness of mankind which we call avarice, makeshim see a prodigious source of consolation and security in a sum of threeor four hundred louis which I may leave to him. On Sunday afternoonshe will display his gold to all his envious neighbours in Verrieres. "Tothis tune," his glance will say to them, "which of you would not becharmed to have a son guillotined?"'
This philosophy might be true, but it was of a nature to make a manlong for death. In this way passed five endless days. He was polite andgentle to Mathilde, whom he saw to be exasperated by the most violentjealousy. One evening Julien thought seriously of taking his life. His spirit was exhausted by the profound dejection into which the departure ofMadame de Renal had cast him. Nothing pleased him any more, either inreal life or in imagination. Want of exercise was beginning to affect hishealth and to give him the weak and excitable character of a young German student. He was losing that manly pride which repels with a forcible oath certain degrading ideas by which the miserable are assailed.
'I have loved the Truth … Where is it to be found? … Everywhere hypocrisy, or at least charlatanism, even among the most virtuous, evenamong the greatest'; and his lips curled in disgust … 'No, man cannotplace any trust in man.
'Madame de ——, when she was making a collection for her poororphans, told me that some Prince had just given her ten louis; a lie. Butwhat am I saying? Napoleon at Saint-Helena! … Pure charlatanism, aproclamation in favour of the King of Rome.
'Great God! If such a man as he, at a time, too, when misfortune oughtto recall him sternly to a sense of duty, stoops to charlatanism, what isone to expect of the rest of the species?
'Where is Truth? In religion … Yes,' he added with a bitter smile of themost intense scorn, 'in the mouths of the Maslons, the Frilairs, theCastanedes … Perhaps in true Christianity, whose priests would be nomore paid than were the Apostles? But Saint Paul was paid with thepleasure of commanding, of speaking, of hearing himself spoken of …'Ah! If there were a true religion … Idiot that I am! I see a gothiccathedral, storied windows; my feeble heart imagines the priest fromthose windows … My soul would understand him, my soul has need of him. I find only a fop with greasy hair … little different, in fact, from theChevalier de Beauvoisis.
'But a true priest, a Massillon, a Fenelon… . Massillon consecratedDubois. The Memoires de Saint-Simon have spoiled Fenelon for me; butstill, a true priest … Then the tender hearts would have a meeting-placein this world … We should not remain isolated … This good priestwould speak to us of God. But what God? Not the God of the Bible, apetty despot, cruel and filled with a thirst for vengeance … but the Godof Voltaire, just, good, infinite … '
He was disturbed by all his memories of that Bible which he knew byheart … 'But how, whenever three are gathered together, how is one tobelieve in that great name of GOD, after the frightful abuse that ourpriests make of it?
'To live in isolation! … What torture! …'I am becoming foolish and unjust,' said Julien, beating his brow. 'I amisolated here in this cell; but I have not lived in isolation on this earth; Ihad always the compelling idea of duty. The duty that I had laid downfor myself, rightly or wrongly, was like the trunk of a strong tree againstwhich I leaned during the storm; I tottered, I was shaken. After all, I wasonly a man … but I was not carried away.
'It is the damp air of this cell that makes me think of isolation …'And why be a hypocrite still when I am cursing hypocrisy? It is notdeath, nor the cell, nor the damp air, it is the absence of Madame de Renal that is crushing me. If I were at Verrieres, and, in order to see her,were obliged to live for weeks on end hidden in the cellars of her house,should I complain?
'The influence of my contemporaries is too strong for me,' he saidaloud and with a bitter laugh. 'Talking alone to myself, within an inch ofdeath, I am still a hypocrite … Oh, nineteenth century!
'A hunter fires his gun in a forest, his quarry falls, he runs forward toseize it. His boot strikes an anthill two feet high, destroys the habitationof the ants, scatters the ants and their eggs to the four winds … The mostphilosophical among the ants will never understand that black, enormous, fearful body—the hunter's boot which all of a sudden has burst intotheir dwelling with incredible speed, preceded by a terrifying noise, accompanied by a flash of reddish flame …'So it is with death, life, eternity, things that would be quite simple toanyone who had organs vast enough to conceive them … 'An ephemeral fly is born at nine o'clock in the morning, on one of thelong days of summer, to die at five o'clock in the afternoon; how shouldit understand the word night?
'Grant it five hours more of existence, it sees and understands whatnight is.
'And so with myself, I am to die at three and twenty. Grant me fiveyears more of life, to live with Madame de Renal.'
Here he gave a satanic laugh. What folly to discuss these greatproblems!
'Imprimis: I am a hypocrite just as much as if there was someone in thecell to hear me.
'Item: I am forgetting to live and love, when I have so few days left oflife … Alas! Madame de Renal is absent; perhaps her husband will notallow her to come to Besancon again, and disgrace herself further.
'That is what is isolating me, that and not the absence of a just, good,all-powerful God, who is not wicked, not hungry for vengeance …'Ah! If He existed … Alas! I should fall at His feet. I have deserveddeath, I should say to him; but, great God, good God, indulgent God, restore to me her whom I love!'
The night was by now far advanced. After an hour or two of peacefulslumber, Fouque arrived.
Julien felt himself to be strong and resolute like a man who sees clearlyinto his own heart.