finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Red and the Black/section_21_part_0.txt
The Red and the Black.part 2.chapters 43-45
chapters 43-45
{"name": "Chapters 43-45", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201128052739/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/the-red-and-the-black/summary-and-analysis/part-2-chapters-4345", "summary": "Julien is overjoyed by a visit from Mme. de Renal. He agrees to appeal if she will visit him every day in his cell. They know complete happiness. After three days, M. de Renal has ordered that his wife return to Verrieres. An ambitious priest has undertaken the conversion of Julien and has posted himself in all weather outside the prison, where much to Julien's annoyance, he attracts a great crowd. In desperation, Julien admits him, then rids himself of the troublesome priest by sending him to say masses for the poor. Mathilde arrives on the heels of the departing priest to relate the treachery of Valenod and to try to convince Julien of the necessity of requesting a reprieve. Julien finally sends her away, requesting that she listen to a mass for him. The much dreaded visit of his father occurs. Sorel ceases his reproaches when Julien suggests that he will bequeath his money to his father and brothers. Julien then shares a bottle of champagne with two other prisoners and listens to the life story of one. Finally, Julien is left to his gloomy meditations. Julien submits to confession, and provincial public opinion is thereby satisfied. Mme. de Renal has left Verrieres and, living with her aunt in Besancon, visits Julien twice a day. This bliss is interrupted by the daily visits of Mathilde. M. de Croisenois has been killed in a duel defending the honor of Mathilde. Julien angrily rejects a Jansenist's entreaties that he make a spectacular conversion, which, according to the priest, would encourage many lost souls to return to the Church. Julien must dissuade Mme. de Renal from begging a reprieve from the king at Saint-Cloud. After the execution, Mathilde visits the cell and carries off Julien's head. Fouque, carrying out Julien's last wishes, negotiates his burial on a high hill overlooking Verrieres. Mathilde accompanies the procession and with her own hands buries Julien's head. Mme. de Renal dies three days after the death of Julien.", "analysis": "In the time of the novel, the action of Chapter 43 occurs only one hour after Mathilde had left Julien's cell in the preceding chapter. In Chapter 43, the incident of greatest importance is, of course, Mme. de Renal's visit with Julien. Then in almost a sentence, Stendhal indicates that \"three days after these visits had been taking place,\" M. de Renal recalls her home. The end of the chapter elaborates another short incident, the interview of the priest, and Chapter 44 opens with the immediate reaction of Julien after the priest has left. This is typical of Stendhal's treatment of time and events. A single chapter develops one incident , culminates it , and introduces a second . The long-awaited event is the reunion of Mme. de Renal with Julien. Stendhal tells us that Julien has never known such happiness, although the author's \"pudeur\" prevents him, as usual, from elaborating the ecstatic happiness that both enjoy during this supreme moment. He passes over it with: \"much later, when they were able to speak.\" Mme. de Renal loves Julien as a human should love only God. This is no doubt the love that Stendhal would have wanted to receive. Mme. de Renal's sadness and admission of her disgrace prompt a \"new happiness\" in Julien. In Stendhal's conception of love, one constantly makes new discoveries in the object, which increases one's love for her. We are now aware of the extent of Julien's love for Mme. de Renal and of how instrumental it has been in his calm acceptance of the death penalty up to this point. Imagining himself bereft of her love, Julien was prepared for death. Now, a new possibility of happiness opens up before him, and he will really know the terror of the condemned man. The priest's visit serves to materialize Julien's despair, and thereafter, he sees death as horrible. It was no doubt Stendhal's \"pudeur\" that prevented him from giving titles to the last four chapters in the original version of the novel. It is as if the suggestion of privacy were thus made after Julien has been condemned to death. Within one short chapter, Julien moves from the heights of bliss to the depths of despair. Weeping about his own death, Julien will be visited, in Chapter 44, by three more \"misfortunes\": the visits of Mathilde and of his father, and exposure to the criminals with whom he shares a bottle of champagne. From these he will draw food for meditation. During these meditations, the reader will witness, for the last time, Julien's solitude. There exists in this chapter the same movement as in the preceding one, but in reverse: From the depths of despair, Julien will emerge \"strong and resolute, as a man who sees clearly into his own heart.\" Julien finally learns about the machinations of Mathilde and Frilair. The latter, no doubt in an effort to mitigate the betrayal he has suffered personally from Valenod, has tried to shift the blame for Julien's conviction to Julien himself. Frilair sees the courtroom oration as an invitation for condemnation to death. Julien has great difficulty in concealing his despair from Mathilde. His remark concerning the prisoner's public situation vis-a-vis the world sets the tone for the chapter. Just as in life outside, Julien is forced to adopt a hypocritical air in dealing with his visitors to protect what remains of his courage. The interlude of the prisoners is at once a moment of respite, of relief -- an escape from the horror of the present moment -- thereby permitting Julien to transform his self-reproach and grief into a more objective melancholy, and a pendant to the visit by his father. Both incidents are inspirational to his musings in the latter part of the chapter. The prisoner episode is reminiscent of the appearance of Geronomo at the Renal home in Part I, which constituted a sort of poetic escape from the misfortunes of the family. Here, there is a more macabre note. Greed for money has motivated the life of this criminal, otherwise endowed with a brave heart. Thus taken out of himself, Julien is able to recapture the necessary detachment to arrive at the re-creation of the required attitude before death. From Julien's meditations result some of the very important ingredients of beylism: the need to see man for what he is, not to be taken in, not to betray one's real nature; the danger of trading the present moment of happiness, so hard to come by, for sterile meditations about the unfathomable; in the absence of any ethical basis of society, the necessity of the creation of and adherence to a private code of morality based upon duty toward oneself. Five days elapsed during Chapter 44. Stendhal terminates his novel with rapidity. One would be hard put to say over what extent of time the action takes place in the final chapter. It opens as a continuation of the final scene of the preceding chapter: Fouque awakens Julien, the latter having regained his composure and resolution. Stendhal is winding up, moving from Julien's relationship to Mme. de Renal, to Mathilde, almost without transition. Julien admits to Mme. de Renal that he mistook, at the time, the real happiness he had known with her in Vergy. Mathilde is insanely jealous of Mme. de Renal's visits, and Julien's own role toward Mathilde has now become almost paternal, just as Mme. de Renal's love for him still has a maternal character. Stendhal's refusal to indulge in hyperbolic description and pathos is evidenced by his very sparse treatment of the execution of Julien, which has been termed literary euthanasia. We are told that the weather was beautiful and that Julien was poetic, courageous, observant of decorum. Stendhal even makes Julien \"speak\" after the narration of his death, as instructions to Fouque concerning burial are given. Note the final utilization of the \"high place\" motif in the burial of Julien. The cell has been the scene of his last happiness, and the heights culminate this representation beyond death. It is fitting that Mathilde be portrayed in this macabre scene retrieving Julien's head. It permits her to play the final scene in the drama from the past which she has re-enacted in her affair with Julien. There is likewise a kind of poetic justice attained thereby -- her \"amour de tete\" is recompensed. One wonders at the future of Mathilde de la Mole. Stendhal has hinted in a previous chapter that Frilair's attempts to replace Julien had not yet been noticed by Mathilde. As for Mme. de Renal, her death is the logical consequence of her character and conduct. She and Julien have shared a more vital identity. Mathilde and Mme. de Renal, each reflecting aspects of Julien, are complementary."}
CHAPTER LXXIII


When he was deep asleep an hour afterwards, he was woken up by feeling
tears flow over his hand. "Oh, it is Mathilde again," he thought, only
half awake. "She has come again, faithful to her tactics of attacking
my resolution by her sentimentalism." Bored by the prospect of this
new scene of hackneyed pathos he did not open his eyes. The verses of
Belphgor, as he ran away from his wife, came into his mind. He heard a
strange sigh. He opened his eyes. It was madame de Renal.

"Ah, so I see you again before I die, or is it an illusion," he
exclaimed as he threw himself at her feet.

"But, forgive me, madame, you must look upon me as a mere murderer," he
said, immediately, as he recovered himself.

"Monsieur, I have come to entreat you to appeal; I know you do not want
to...." her sobs choked her; she was unable to speak.

"Deign to forgive me."

"If you want me to forgive you," she said to him, getting up and
throwing herself into his arms, "appeal immediately against your death
sentence."

Julien covered her with kisses.

"Will you come and see me every day during those two months?"

"I swear it--every day, unless my husband forbids me."

"I will sign it," exclaimed Julien.

"What! you really forgive me! Is it possible?"

He clasped her in his arms; he was mad. She gave a little cry.

"It is nothing," she said to him. "You hurt me."

"Your shoulder," exclaimed Julien, bursting into tears. He drew back
a little, and covered her hands with kisses of fire. "Who could
have prophesied this, dear, the last time I saw you in your room at
Verrieres?"

"Who could have prophesied then that I should write that infamous
letter to M. de la Mole?"

"Know that I have always loved you, and that I have never loved anyone
but you."

"Is it possible?" cried Madame de Renal, who was delighted in her turn.
She leant on Julien, who was on his knees, and they cried silently for
a long time.

Julien had never experienced moments like this at any period of his
whole life.

"And how about that young madame Michelet?" said Madame de Renal, a
long time afterwards when they were able to speak. "Or rather, that
mademoiselle de la Mole? for I am really beginning to believe in that
strange romance."

"It is only superficially true," answered Julien. "She is my wife, but
she is not my mistress."

After interrupting each other a hundred times over, they managed with
great difficulty to explain to each other what they did not know. The
letter written to M. de la Mole had been drafted by the young priest
who directed Madame de Renal's conscience, and had been subsequently
copied by her, "What a horrible thing religion has made me do," she
said to him, "and even so I softened the most awful passages in the
letter."

Julien's ecstatic happiness proved the fulness of her forgiveness. He
had never been so mad with love.

"And yet I regard myself as devout," madame de Renal went on to say to
him in the ensuing conversation. "I believe sincerely in God! I equally
believe, and I even have full proof of it, that the crime which I am
committing is an awful one, and yet the very minute I see you, even
after you have fired two pistol shots at me--" and at this point, in
spite of her resistance, Julien covered her with kisses.

"Leave me alone," she continued, "I want to argue with you, I am
frightened lest I should forget.... The very minute I see you all my
duties disappear. I have nothing but love for you, dear, or rather, the
word love is too weak. I feel for you what I ought only to feel for
God; a mixture of respect, love, obedience.... As a matter of fact, I
don't know what you inspire me with.... If you were to tell me to stab
the gaoler with a knife, the crime would be committed before I had
given it a thought. Explain this very clearly to me before I leave you.
I want to see down to the bottom of my heart; for we shall take leave
of each other in two months.... By the bye, shall we take leave of each
other?" she said to him with a smile.

"I take back my words," exclaimed Julien, getting up, "I shall not
appeal from my death sentence, if you try, either by poison, knife,
pistol, charcoal, or any other means whatsoever, to put an end to your
life, or make any attempt upon it."

Madame de Renal's expression suddenly changed. The most lively
tenderness was succeeded by a mood of deep meditation.

"Supposing we were to die at once," she said to him.

"Who knows what one will find in the other life," answered Julien,
"perhaps torment, perhaps nothing at all. Cannot we pass two delicious
months together? Two months means a good many days. I shall never have
been so happy."

"You will never have been so happy?"

"Never," repeated Julien ecstatically, "and I am talking to you just as
I should talk to myself. May God save me from exaggerating."

"Words like that are a command," she said with a timid melancholy smile.

"Well, you will swear by the love you have for me, to make no attempt
either direct or indirect, upon your life ... remember," he added,
"that you must live for my son, whom Mathilde will hand over to lackeys
as soon as she is marquise de Croisenois."

"I swear," she answered coldly, "but I want to take away your notice
of appeal, drawn and signed by yourself. I will go myself to M. the
procureur-general."

"Be careful, you will compromise yourself."

"After having taken the step of coming to see you in your prison, I
shall be a heroine of local scandal for Besancon, and the whole of
Franche-Comte," she said very dejectedly. "I have crossed the bounds of
austere modesty.... I am a woman who has lost her honour; it is true
that it is for your sake...."

Her tone was so sad that Julien embraced her with a happiness which was
quite novel to him. It was no longer the intoxication of love, it was
extreme gratitude. He had just realised for the first time the full
extent of the sacrifice which she had made for him.

Some charitable soul, no doubt informed M. de Renal of the long visits
which his wife paid to Julien's prison; for at the end of three days
he sent her his carriage with the express order to return to Verrieres
immediately.

This cruel separation had been a bad beginning for Julien's day. He
was informed two or three hours later that a certain intriguing priest
(who had, however, never managed to make any headway among the Jesuits
of Besancon) had, since the morning, established himself in the street
outside the prison gates. It was raining a great deal, and the man out
there was pretending to play the martyr. Julien was in a weak mood, and
this piece of stupidity annoyed him deeply.

In the morning, he had already refused this priest's visit, but the man
had taken it into his head to confess Julien, and to win a name for
himself among the young women of Besancon by all the confidences which
he would pretend to have received from him.

He declared in a loud voice that he would pass the day and the night by
the prison gates. "God has sent me to touch the heart of this apostate
..." and the lower classes, who are always curious to see a scene,
began to make a crowd.

"Yes, my brothers," he said to them, "I will pass the day here and the
night, as well as all the days and all the nights which will follow.
The Holy Ghost has spoken to me. I am commissioned from above; I am the
man who must save the soul of young Sorel. Do you join in my prayers,
etc."

Julien had a horror of scandal, and of anything which could attract
attention to him. He thought of seizing the opportunity of escaping
from the world incognito; but he had some hope of seeing madame de
Renal again, and he was desperately in love.

The prison gates were situated in one of the most populous streets. His
soul was tortured by the idea of this filthy priest attracting a crowd
and creating a scandal--"and doubtless he is repeating my name at every
single minute!" This moment was more painful than death.

He called the turnkey who was devoted to him, and sent sent him two or
three times at intervals of one hour to see if the priest was still by
the prison gates.

"Monsieur," said the turnkey to him on each occasion, "he is on both
his knees in the mud; he is praying at the top of his voice, and saying
litanies for your soul.

"The impudent fellow," thought Julien. At this moment he actually heard
a dull buzz. It was the responses of the people to the litanies. His
patience was strained to the utmost when he saw the turnkey himself
move his lips while he repeated the Latin words.

"They are beginning to say," added the turnkey, "that you must have a
very hardened heart to refuse the help of this holy man."

"Oh my country, how barbarous you still are!" exclaimed Julien, beside
himself with anger. And he continued his train of thought aloud,
without giving a thought to the turn-key's presence.

"The man wants an article in the paper about him, and that's a way in
which he will certainly get it.

"Oh you cursed provincials! At Paris I should not be subjected to all
these annoyances. There they are more skilled in their charlatanism.

"Show in the holy priest," he said at last to the turnkey, and great
streams of sweat flowed down his forehead. The turnkey made the sign of
the cross and went out rejoicing.

The holy priest turned out to be very ugly, he was even dirtier than he
was ugly. The cold rain intensified the obscurity and dampness of the
cell. The priest wanted to embrace Julien, and began to wax pathetic as
he spoke to him. The basest hypocrisy was only too palpable; Julien had
never been so angry in his whole life.

A quarter of an hour after the priest had come in Julien felt an
absolute coward. Death appeared horrible to him for the first time. He
began to think about the state of decomposition which his body would be
in two days after the execution, etc., etc.

He was on the point of betraying himself by some sign of weakness or
throwing himself on the priest and strangling him with his chain, when
it occurred to him to beg the holy man to go and say a good forty franc
mass for him on that very day.

It was twelve o'clock, so the priest took himself off.





CHAPTER LXXIV


As soon as he had gone out Julien wept desperately and for a long time.
He gradually admitted to himself that if madame de Renal had been at
Besancon he would have confessed his weakness to her. The moment when
he was regretting the absence of this beloved woman he heard Mathilde's
step.

"The worst evil of being in prison," he thought "is one's inability to
close one's door." All Mathilde said only irritated him.

She told him that M. de Valenod had had his nomination to the
prefectship in his pocket on the day of his trial, and had consequently
dared to defy M. de Frilair and give himself the pleasure of condemning
him to death.

"Why did your friend take it into his head," M. de Frilair just said
to me, "to awaken and attack the petty vanity of that bourgeois
aristocracy. Why talk about caste? He pointed out to them what they
ought to do in their own political interest; the fools had not been
giving it a thought and were quite ready to weep. That caste interest
intervened and blinded their eyes to the horror of condemning a man to
death. One must admit that M. Sorel is very inexperienced. If we do not
succeed in saving him by a petition for a reprieve, his death will be a
kind of suicide."

Mathilde was careful not to tell Julien a matter concerning which she
had now no longer any doubts; it was that the abbe de Frilair seeing
that Julien was ruined, had thought that it would further his ambitious
projects to try and become his successor.

"Go and listen to a mass for me," he said to Mathilde, almost beside
himself with vexation and impotent rage, and leave me a moment in
peace. Mathilde who was already very jealous of madame de Renal's
visits and who had just learned of her departure realised the cause of
Julien's bad temper and burst into tears.

Her grief was real; Julien saw this and was only the more irritated. He
had a crying need of solitude, and how was he to get it?

Eventually Mathilde, after having tried to melt him by every possible
argument, left him alone. But almost at the same moment, Fouque
presented himself.

"I need to be alone," he said, to this faithful friend, and as he saw
him hesitate: "I am composing a memorial for my petition for pardon ...
one thing more ... do me a favour, and never speak to me about death.
If I have need of any especial services on that day, let me be the
first to speak to you about it."

When Julien had eventually procured solitude, he found himself more
prostrate and more cowardly than he had been before. The little force
which this enfeebled soul still possessed had all been spent in
concealing his condition from mademoiselle de la Mole.

Towards the evening he found consolation in this idea.

"If at the very moment this morning, when death seemed so ugly to
me, I had been given notice of my execution, the public eye would
have acted as a spur to glory, my demeanour would perhaps have had a
certain stiffness about it, like a nervous fop entering a salon. A few
penetrating people, if there are any amongst these provincial might
have managed to divine my weakness.... But no one would have seen it."

And he felt relieved of part of his unhappiness. "I am a coward at this
very moment," he sang to himself, "but no one will know it."

An even more unpleasant episode awaited him on the following day. His
father had been announcing that he would come and see him for some time
past: the old white-haired carpenter appeared in Julien's cell before
he woke up.

Julien felt weak, he was anticipating the most unpleasant reproaches.
His painful emotion was intensified by the fact that on this particular
morning he felt a keen remorse for not loving his father.

"Chance placed us next to each other in the world," he said to himself,
while the turnkey was putting the cell a little in order, "and we have
practically done each other all the harm we possibly could. He has come
to administer the final blow at the moment of my death."

As soon as they were without witnesses, the old man commenced his stern
reproaches.

Julien could not restrain his tears. "What an unworthy weakness," he
said to himself querulously. "He will go about everywhere exaggerating
my lack of courage: what a triumph for the Valenod, and for all the
fatuous hypocrites who rule in Verrieres! They are very great in
France, they combine all the social advantages. But hitherto, I could
at any rate say to myself, it is true they are in receipt of money, and
that all the honours lavished on them, but I have a noble heart.

"But here is a witness whom everyone will believe, and who will testify
to the whole of Verrieres that I shewed weakness when confronted with
death, and who will exaggerate it into the bargain! I shall be taken
for a coward in an ordeal which comes home to all!"

Julien was nearly desperate. He did not know how to get rid of his
father. He felt it absolutely beyond his strength to invent a ruse
capable of deceiving so shrewd an old man.

His mind rapidly reviewed all the alternatives. "I have saved some
money," he suddenly exclaimed.

This inspiration produced a change in the expression of the old man and
in Julien's own condition.

"How ought I to dispose of it?" continued Julien more quietly. The
result had freed him from any feeling of inferiority.

The old carpenter was burning not to let the money slip by him, but
it seemed that Julien wanted to leave part of it to his brothers. He
talked at length and with animation. Julien felt cynical.

"Well, the Lord has given me a message with regard to my will. I will
give a thousand francs to each of my brothers and the rest to you."

"Very good," said the old man. "The rest is due to me: but since God
has been gracious enough to touch your heart, your debts ought to be
paid if you wish to die like a good Christian. There are, moreover, the
expenses of your board and your education, which I advanced to you,
but which you are not thinking of."

"Such is paternal love," repeated Julien to himself, dejectedly, when
he was at last alone. Soon the gaoler appeared.

"Monsieur, I always bring my visitors a good bottle of champagne after
near relations have come to see them. It is a little dear, six francs a
bottle, but it rejoices the heart."

"Bring three glasses," said Julien to him, with a childish eagerness,
"and bring in two of the prisoners whom I have heard walking about
in the corridor." The gaoler brought two men into him who had once
been condemned to the gallows, and had now been convicted of the same
offence again, and were preparing to return to penal servitude. They
were very cheerful scoundrels, and really very remarkable by reason of
their subtlety, their courage, and their coolness.

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

"But you will lie," said Julien.

"Not me," he answered, "my friend there, who is jealous of my twenty
francs will give me away if I say anything untrue."

His history was atrocious. It was evidence of a courageous heart which
had only one passion--that of money.

After their departure Julien was no longer the same man. All his anger
with himself had disappeared. The awful grief which had been poisoned
and rendered more acute by the weakness of which he had been a victim
since madame de Renal's departure had turned to melancholy.

"If I had been less taken in by appearances," he said to himself, "I
would have had a better chance of seeing that the Paris salons are full
of honest men like my father, or clever scoundrels like those felons.
They are right. The men in the salons never get up in the morning with
this poignant thought in their minds, how am I going to get my dinner?
They boast about their honesty and when they are summoned on the jury,
they take pride in convicting the man who has stolen a silver dish
because he felt starving.

"But if there is a court, and it's a question of losing or winning a
portfolio, my worthy salon people will commit crimes exactly similar to
those, which the need of getting a dinner inspired those two felons to
perpetrate.

"There is no such thing as natural law, the expression is nothing
more than a silly anachronism well worthy of the advocate-general who
harried me the other day, and whose grandfather was enriched by one of
the confiscations of Louis XIV. There is no such thing as right, except
when there is a law to forbid a certain thing under pain of punishment.

"Before law existed, the only natural thing was the strength of the
lion, or the need of a creature who was cold or hungry, to put it
in one word, need. No, the people whom the world honours are merely
villains who have had the good fortune not to have been caught
red-handed. The prosecutor whom society put on my track was enriched by
an infamous act. I have committed a murder, and I am justly condemned,
but the Valenod who has condemned me, is by reason alone of that very
deed, a hundred times more harmful to society.

"Well," added Julien sadly but not angrily, "in spite of his avarice,
my father is worth more than all those men. He never loved me.
The disgrace I bring upon him by an infamous death has proved the
last straw. That fear of lacking money, that distorted view of the
wickedness of mankind, which is called avarice, make him find a
tremendous consolation and sense of security in a sum of three or four
hundred louis, which I have been able to leave him. Some Sunday, after
dinner, he will shew his gold to all the envious men in Verrieres.
'Which of you would not be delighted to have a son guillotined at a
price like this,' will be the message they will read in his eyes."

This philosophy might be true, but it was of such a character as to
make him wish for death. In this way five long days went by. He was
polite and gentle to Mathilde, whom he saw was exasperated by the
most violent jealousy. One evening Julien seriously thought of taking
his own life. His soul was demoralised by the deep unhappiness in
which madame de Renal's departure had thrown him. He could no longer
find pleasure in anything, either in real life or in the sphere of
the imagination. Lack of exercise began to affect his health, and
to produce in him all the weakness and exaltation of a young German
student. He began to lose that virile disdain which repels with a
drastic oath certain undignified ideas which besiege the soul of the
unhappy.

"I loved truth.... Where is it? Hypocrisy everywhere or at any rate
charlatanism. Even in the most virtuous, even in the greatest," and his
lips assumed an expression of disgust. "No, man cannot trust man."

"Madame de ---- when she was making a collection for her poor orphans,
used to tell me that such and such a prince had just given ten louis, a
sheer lie. But what am I talking about. Napoleon at St. Helena ... Pure
charlatanism like the proclamation in favour of the king of Rome.

"Great God! If a man like that at a time when misfortune ought to
summon him sternly to his duty will sink to charlatanism, what is one
to expect from the rest of the human species?"

"Where is truth? In religion. Yes," he added, with a bitter smile
of utter contempt. "In the mouth of the Maslons, the Frilairs, the
Castanedes--perhaps in that true Christianity whose priests were not
paid any more than were the apostles. But St. Paul was paid by the
pleasure of commanding, speaking, getting himself talked about."

"Oh, if there were only a true religion. Fool that I am. I see a Gothic
cathedral and venerable stained-glass windows, and my weak heart
conjures up the priest to fit the scene. My soul would understand him,
my soul has need of him. I only find a nincompoop with dirty hair.
About as comforting as a chevalier de Beauvoisis.

"But a true priest, a Massillon, a Fenelon. Massillon sacrificed
Dubois. Saint-Simon's memoirs have spoilt the illusion of Fenelon, but
he was a true priest anyway. In those days, tender souls could have a
place in the world where they could meet together. We should not then
have been isolated. That good priest would have talked to us of God.
But what God? Not the one of the Bible, a cruel petty despot, full of
vindictiveness, but the God of Voltaire, just, good, infinite."

He was troubled by all the memories of that Bible which he knew by
heart. "But how on earth, when the deity is three people all at the
same time, is one to believe in the great name of GOD, after the
frightful way in which our priests have abused it."

"Living alone. What a torture."

"I am growing mad and unreasonable," said Julien to himself, striking
his forehead. "I am alone here in this cell, but I have not lived
alone on earth. I had the powerful idea of duty. The duty which rightly
or wrongly I laid down for myself, has been to me like the trunk of a
solid tree which I could lean on during the storm, I stumbled, I was
agitated. After all I was only a man, but I was not swept away.

"It must be the damp air of this cell which made me think of being
alone.

"Why should I still play the hypocrite by cursing hypocrisy? It is
neither death, nor the cell, nor the damp air, but madame de Renal's
absence which prostrates me. If, in order to see her at Verrieres, I
had to live whole weeks at Verrieres concealed in the cellars of her
house, would I complain?"

"The influence of my contemporaries wins the day," he said aloud, with
a bitter laugh. "Though I am talking to myself and within an ace of
death, I still play the hypocrite. Oh you nineteenth century! A hunter
fires a gun shot in the forest, his quarry falls, he hastens forward
to seize it. His foot knocks against a two-foot anthill, knocks down
the dwelling place of the ants, and scatters the ants and their eggs
far and wide. The most philosophic among the ants will never be able to
understand that black, gigantic and terrifying body, the hunter's boot,
which suddenly invaded their home with incredible rapidity, preceded by
a frightful noise, and accompanied by flashes of reddish fire."

"In the same way, death, life and eternity, are very simple things for
anyone who has organs sufficiently vast to conceive them. An ephemeral
fly is born at nine o'clock in the morning in the long summer days, to
die at five o'clock in the evening. How is it to understand the word
'night'?"

"Give it five more hours of existence, and it will see night, and
understand its meaning."

"So, in my case, I shall die at the age of twenty-three. Give me five
more years of life in order to live with madame de Renal."

He began to laugh like Mephistopheles. How foolish to debate these
great problems.

"(1). I am as hypocritical as though there were someone there to listen
to me.

"(2). I am forgetting to live and to love when I have so few days left
to live. Alas, madame de Renal is absent; perhaps her husband will
not let her come back to Besancon any more, to go on compromising her
honour."

"That is what makes me lonely, and not the absence of a God who is
just, good and omnipotent, devoid of malice, and in no wise greedy of
vengeance."

"Oh, if He did exist. Alas I should fall at His feet. I have deserved
death, I should say to Him, but oh Thou great God, good God, indulgent
God, give me back her whom I love!"

By this time the night was far advanced. After an hour or two of
peaceful sleep, Fouque arrived.

Julien felt strongly resolute, like a man who sees to the bottom of his
soul.





CHAPTER LXXV


"I cannot play such a trick on that poor abbe Chas-Bernard, as to
summon him," he said to Fouque: "it would prevent him from dining for
three whole days.--But try and find some Jansenist who is a friend of
M. Pirard."

Fouque was impatiently waiting for this suggestion. Julien acquitted
himself becomingly of all the duty a man owes to provincial opinion.
Thanks to M. the abbe de Frilair, and in spite of his bad choice of a
confessor, Julien enjoyed in his cell the protection of the priestly
congregation; with a little more diplomacy he might have managed to
escape. But the bad air of the cell produced its effect, and his
strength of mind diminished. But this only intensified his happiness at
madame de Renal's return.

"My first duty is towards you, my dear," she said as she embraced him;
"I have run away from Verrieres."

Julien felt no petty vanity in his relations with her, and told her all
his weaknesses. She was good and charming to him.

In the evening she had scarcely left the prison before she made the
priest, who had clung on to Julien like a veritable prey, go to her
aunt's: as his only object was to win prestige among the young women
who belonged to good Besancon society, madame de Renal easily prevailed
upon him to go and perform a novena at the abbey of Bray-le-Haut.

No words can do justice to the madness and extravagance of Julien's
love.

By means of gold, and by using and abusing the influence of her aunt,
who was devout, rich and well-known, madame de Renal managed to see him
twice a day.

At this news, Mathilde's jealousy reached a pitch of positive madness.
M. de Frilair had confessed to her that all his influence did not go
so far as to admit of flouting the conventions by allowing her to
see her sweetheart more than once every day. Mathilde had madame de
Renal followed so as to know the smallest thing she did. M. de Frilair
exhausted all the resources of an extremely clever intellect in order
to prove to her that Julien was unworthy of her.

Plunged though she was in all these torments, she only loved him the
more, and made a horrible scene nearly every day.

Julien wished, with all his might, to behave to the very end like an
honourable man towards this poor young girl whom he had so strangely
compromised, but the reckless love which he felt for madame de Renal
swept him away at every single minute. When he could not manage to
persuade Mathilde of the innocence of her rival's visits by all his
thin excuses, he would say to himself: "at any rate the end of the
drama ought to be quite near. The very fact of not being able to lie
better will be an excuse for me."

Mademoiselle de La Mole learnt of the death of the marquis de
Croisenois. The rich M. de Thaler had indulged in some unpleasant
remarks concerning Mathilde's disappearance: M. de Croisenois went
and asked him to recant them: M. de Thaler showed him some anonymous
letters which had been sent to him, and which were full of details so
artfully put together that the poor marquis could not help catching a
glimpse of the truth.

M. de Thaler indulged in some jests which were devoid of all taste.
Maddened by anger and unhappiness, M. de Croisenois demanded such
unqualified satisfaction, that the millionaire preferred to fight a
duel. Stupidity triumphed, and one of the most lovable of men met with
his death before he was twenty-four.

This death produced a strange and morbid impression on Julien's
demoralised soul.

"Poor Croisenois," he said to Mathilde, "really behaved very reasonably
and very honourably towards us; he had ample ground for hating me and
picking a quarrel with me, by reason of your indiscretion in your
mother's salon; for the hatred which follows on contempt is usually
frenzied."

M. de Croisenois' death changed all Julien's ideas concerning
Mathilde's future. He spent several days in proving to her that she
ought to accept the hand of M. de Luz. "He is a nervous man, not too
much of a Jesuit, and will doubtless be a candidate," he said to her.
"He has a more sinister and persevering ambition than poor Croisenois,
and as there has never been a dukedom in his family, he will be only
too glad to marry Julien Sorel's widow."

"A widow, though, who scorns the grand passions," answered Mathilde
coldly, "for she has lived long enough to see her lover prefer to
her after six months another woman who was the origin of all their
unhappiness."

"You are unjust! Madame de Renal's visits will furnish my advocate
at Paris, who is endeavouring to procure my pardon, with the subject
matter for some sensational phrases; he will depict the murderer
honoured by the attention of his victim. That may produce an
impression, and perhaps some day or other, you will see me provide the
plot of some melodrama or other, etc., etc."

A furious and impotent jealousy, a prolonged and hopeless unhappiness
(for even supposing Julien was saved, how was she to win back his
heart?), coupled with her shame and anguish at loving this unfaithful
lover more than ever had plunged mademoiselle de la Mole into a gloomy
silence, from which all the careful assiduity of M. de Frilair was as
little able to draw her as the rugged frankness of Fouque.

As for Julien, except in those moments which were taken up by
Mathilde's presence, he lived on love with scarcely a thought for the
future.

"In former days," Julien said to her, "when I might have been so happy,
during our walks in the wood of Vergy, a frenzied ambition swept my
soul into the realms of imagination. Instead of pressing to my heart
that charming arm which is so near my lips, the thoughts of my future
took me away from you; I was engaged in countless combats which I
should have to sustain in order to lay the foundations of a colossal
fortune. No, I should have died without knowing what happiness was if
you had not come to see me in this prison."

Two episodes ruffled this tranquil life. Julien's confessor, Jansenist
though he was, was not proof against an intrigue of the Jesuits, and
became their tool without knowing it.

He came to tell him one day that unless he meant to fall into the awful
sin of suicide, he ought to take every possible step to procure his
pardon. Consequently, as the clergy have a great deal of influence with
the minister of Justice at Paris, an easy means presented itself; he
ought to become converted with all publicity.

"With publicity," repeated Julien. "Ha, Ha! I have caught you at it--I
have caught you as well, my father, playing a part like any missionary."

"Your youth," replied the Jansenist gravely, "the interesting
appearance which Providence has given you, the still unsolved mystery
of the motive for your crime, the heroic steps which mademoiselle de
la Mole has so freely taken on your behalf, everything, up to the
surprising affection which your victim manifests towards you, has
contributed to make you the hero of the young women of Besancon.
They have forgotten everything, even politics, on your account. Your
conversion will reverberate in their hearts and will leave behind it a
deep impression. You can be of considerable use to religion, and I was
about to hesitate for the trivial reason that in a similar circumstance
the Jesuits would follow a similar course. But if I did, even in the
one case which has escaped their greedy clutches they would still be
exercising their mischief. The tears which your conversation will
cause to be shed will annul the poisonous effect of ten editions of
Voltaire's works."

"And what will be left for me," answered Julien, coldly, "if I despise
myself? I have been ambitious; I do not mean to blame myself in any
way. Further, I have acted in accordance with the code of the age. Now
I am living from day to day. But I should make myself very unhappy
if I were to yield to what the locality would regard as a piece of
cowardice...."

Madame de Renal was responsible for the other episode which affected
Julien in quite another way. Some intriguing woman friend or other had
managed to persuade this naive and timid soul that it was her duty
to leave for St. Cloud, and go and throw herself at the feet of King
Charles X.

She had made the sacrifice of separating from Julien, and after
a strain as great as that, she no longer thought anything of the
unpleasantness of making an exhibition of herself, though in former
times she would have thought that worse than death.

"I will go to the king. I will confess freely that you are my lover.
The life of a man, and of a man like Julien, too, ought to prevail over
every consideration. I will tell him that it was because of jealousy
that you made an attempt upon my life. There are numerous instances of
poor young people who have been saved in such a case by the clemency of
the jury or of the king."

"I will leave off seeing you; I will shut myself up in my prison,"
exclaimed Julien, "and you can be quite certain that if you do not
promise me to take no step which will make a public exhibition of us
both, I will kill myself in despair the day afterwards. This idea of
going to Paris is not your own. Tell me the name of the intriguing
woman who suggested it to you.

"Let us be happy during the small number of days of this short life.
Let us hide our existence; my crime was only too self-evident.
Mademoiselle de la Mole enjoys all possible influence at Paris. Take
it from me that she has done all that is humanly possible. Here in
the provinces I have all the men of wealth and prestige against me.
Your conduct will still further aggravate those rich and essentially
moderate people to whom life comes so easy.... Let us not give the
Maslons, the Valenods, and the thousand other people who are worth more
than they, anything to laugh about."

Julien came to find the bad air of the cell unbearable. Fortunately,
nature was rejoicing in a fine sunshine on the day when they announced
to him that he would have to die, and he was in a courageous vein.
He found walking in the open air as delicious a sensation as the
navigator, who has been at sea for a long time, finds walking on the
ground. "Come on, everything is going all right," he said to himself.
"I am not lacking in courage."

His head had never looked so poetical as at that moment when it was on
the point of falling. The sweet minutes which he had formerly spent in
the woods of Vergy crowded back upon his mind with extreme force.

Everything went off simply, decorously, and without any affectation on
his part.

Two days before he had said to Fouque: "I cannot guarantee not to
show some emotion. This dense, squalid cell gives me fits of fever in
which I do not recognise myself, but fear?--no! I shall not be seen to
flinch."

He had made his arrangements in advance for Fouque to take Mathilde and
madame de Renal away on the morning of his last day.

"Drive them away in the same carriage," he had said. "Do you see that
the post-horses do not leave off galloping. They will either fall into
each other's arms, or manifest towards each other a mortal hatred.
In either case the poor women will have something to distract them a
little from their awful grief."

Julien had made madame de Renal swear that she would live to look after
Mathilde's son.

"Who knows? Perhaps we have still some sensations after our death," he
had said one day to Fouque. "I should like to rest, for rest is the
right word, in that little grotto in the great mountain which dominates
Verrieres. Many a time, as I have told you, I have spent the night
alone in that grotto, and as my gaze would plunge far and wide over the
richest provinces of France, ambition would inflame my heart. In those
days it was my passion.... Anyway, I hold that grotto dear, and one
cannot dispute that its situation might well arouse the desires of the
philosopher's soul.... Well, you know! those good priests of Besancon
will make money out of everything. If you know how to manage it, they
will sell you my mortal remains."

Fouque succeeded in this melancholy business. He was passing the night
alone in his room by his friend's body when, to his great surprise, he
saw Mathilde come in. A few hours before he had left her ten leagues
from Besancon. Her face and eyes looked distraught.

"I want to see him," she said.

Fouque had not the courage either to speak or get up. He pointed with
his finger to a big blue cloak on the floor; there was wrapped in it
all that remained of Julien.

She threw herself on her knees. The memory of Boniface de la Mole, and
of Marguerite of Navarre gave her, no doubt, a superhuman courage. Her
trembling hands undid the cloak. Fouque turned away his eyes.

He heard Mathilde walking feverishly about the room. She lit several
candles. When Fouque could bring himself to look at her, she had placed
Julien's head on a little marble table in front of her, and was kissing
it on the forehead.

Mathilde followed her lover to the tomb which he had chosen. A great
number of priests convoyed the bier, and, alone in her draped carriage,
without anyone knowing it, she carried on her knees the head of the man
whom she had loved so much.

When they arrived in this way at the most elevated peak of the high
mountains of the Jura, twenty priests celebrated the service of the
dead in the middle of the night in this little grotto, which was
magnificently illuminated by a countless number of wax candles.
Attracted by this strange and singular ceremony, all the inhabitants
of the little mountain villages which the funeral had passed through,
followed it.

Mathilde appeared in their midst in long mourning garments, and had
several thousands of five-franc pieces thrown to them at the end of the
service.

When she was left alone with Fouque, she insisted on burying her
lover's head with her own hands. Fouque nearly went mad with grief.

Mathilde took care that this wild grotto should be decorated with
marble monuments that had been sculpted in Italy at great expense.

Madame de Renal kept her promise. She did not try to make any attempt
upon her life; but she died embracing her children, three days after
Julien.


THE END.



Chapters 43-45
Julien is overjoyed by a visit from Mme. de Renal. He agrees to appeal if she will visit him every day in his cell. They know complete happiness. After three days, M. de Renal has ordered that his wife return to Verrieres. An ambitious priest has undertaken the conversion of Julien and has posted himself in all weather outside the prison, where much to Julien's annoyance, he attracts a great crowd. In desperation, Julien admits him, then rids himself of the troublesome priest by sending him to say masses for the poor. Mathilde arrives on the heels of the departing priest to relate the treachery of Valenod and to try to convince Julien of the necessity of requesting a reprieve. Julien finally sends her away, requesting that she listen to a mass for him. The much dreaded visit of his father occurs. Sorel ceases his reproaches when Julien suggests that he will bequeath his money to his father and brothers. Julien then shares a bottle of champagne with two other prisoners and listens to the life story of one. Finally, Julien is left to his gloomy meditations. Julien submits to confession, and provincial public opinion is thereby satisfied. Mme. de Renal has left Verrieres and, living with her aunt in Besancon, visits Julien twice a day. This bliss is interrupted by the daily visits of Mathilde. M. de Croisenois has been killed in a duel defending the honor of Mathilde. Julien angrily rejects a Jansenist's entreaties that he make a spectacular conversion, which, according to the priest, would encourage many lost souls to return to the Church. Julien must dissuade Mme. de Renal from begging a reprieve from the king at Saint-Cloud. After the execution, Mathilde visits the cell and carries off Julien's head. Fouque, carrying out Julien's last wishes, negotiates his burial on a high hill overlooking Verrieres. Mathilde accompanies the procession and with her own hands buries Julien's head. Mme. de Renal dies three days after the death of Julien.
In the time of the novel, the action of Chapter 43 occurs only one hour after Mathilde had left Julien's cell in the preceding chapter. In Chapter 43, the incident of greatest importance is, of course, Mme. de Renal's visit with Julien. Then in almost a sentence, Stendhal indicates that "three days after these visits had been taking place," M. de Renal recalls her home. The end of the chapter elaborates another short incident, the interview of the priest, and Chapter 44 opens with the immediate reaction of Julien after the priest has left. This is typical of Stendhal's treatment of time and events. A single chapter develops one incident , culminates it , and introduces a second . The long-awaited event is the reunion of Mme. de Renal with Julien. Stendhal tells us that Julien has never known such happiness, although the author's "pudeur" prevents him, as usual, from elaborating the ecstatic happiness that both enjoy during this supreme moment. He passes over it with: "much later, when they were able to speak." Mme. de Renal loves Julien as a human should love only God. This is no doubt the love that Stendhal would have wanted to receive. Mme. de Renal's sadness and admission of her disgrace prompt a "new happiness" in Julien. In Stendhal's conception of love, one constantly makes new discoveries in the object, which increases one's love for her. We are now aware of the extent of Julien's love for Mme. de Renal and of how instrumental it has been in his calm acceptance of the death penalty up to this point. Imagining himself bereft of her love, Julien was prepared for death. Now, a new possibility of happiness opens up before him, and he will really know the terror of the condemned man. The priest's visit serves to materialize Julien's despair, and thereafter, he sees death as horrible. It was no doubt Stendhal's "pudeur" that prevented him from giving titles to the last four chapters in the original version of the novel. It is as if the suggestion of privacy were thus made after Julien has been condemned to death. Within one short chapter, Julien moves from the heights of bliss to the depths of despair. Weeping about his own death, Julien will be visited, in Chapter 44, by three more "misfortunes": the visits of Mathilde and of his father, and exposure to the criminals with whom he shares a bottle of champagne. From these he will draw food for meditation. During these meditations, the reader will witness, for the last time, Julien's solitude. There exists in this chapter the same movement as in the preceding one, but in reverse: From the depths of despair, Julien will emerge "strong and resolute, as a man who sees clearly into his own heart." Julien finally learns about the machinations of Mathilde and Frilair. The latter, no doubt in an effort to mitigate the betrayal he has suffered personally from Valenod, has tried to shift the blame for Julien's conviction to Julien himself. Frilair sees the courtroom oration as an invitation for condemnation to death. Julien has great difficulty in concealing his despair from Mathilde. His remark concerning the prisoner's public situation vis-a-vis the world sets the tone for the chapter. Just as in life outside, Julien is forced to adopt a hypocritical air in dealing with his visitors to protect what remains of his courage. The interlude of the prisoners is at once a moment of respite, of relief -- an escape from the horror of the present moment -- thereby permitting Julien to transform his self-reproach and grief into a more objective melancholy, and a pendant to the visit by his father. Both incidents are inspirational to his musings in the latter part of the chapter. The prisoner episode is reminiscent of the appearance of Geronomo at the Renal home in Part I, which constituted a sort of poetic escape from the misfortunes of the family. Here, there is a more macabre note. Greed for money has motivated the life of this criminal, otherwise endowed with a brave heart. Thus taken out of himself, Julien is able to recapture the necessary detachment to arrive at the re-creation of the required attitude before death. From Julien's meditations result some of the very important ingredients of beylism: the need to see man for what he is, not to be taken in, not to betray one's real nature; the danger of trading the present moment of happiness, so hard to come by, for sterile meditations about the unfathomable; in the absence of any ethical basis of society, the necessity of the creation of and adherence to a private code of morality based upon duty toward oneself. Five days elapsed during Chapter 44. Stendhal terminates his novel with rapidity. One would be hard put to say over what extent of time the action takes place in the final chapter. It opens as a continuation of the final scene of the preceding chapter: Fouque awakens Julien, the latter having regained his composure and resolution. Stendhal is winding up, moving from Julien's relationship to Mme. de Renal, to Mathilde, almost without transition. Julien admits to Mme. de Renal that he mistook, at the time, the real happiness he had known with her in Vergy. Mathilde is insanely jealous of Mme. de Renal's visits, and Julien's own role toward Mathilde has now become almost paternal, just as Mme. de Renal's love for him still has a maternal character. Stendhal's refusal to indulge in hyperbolic description and pathos is evidenced by his very sparse treatment of the execution of Julien, which has been termed literary euthanasia. We are told that the weather was beautiful and that Julien was poetic, courageous, observant of decorum. Stendhal even makes Julien "speak" after the narration of his death, as instructions to Fouque concerning burial are given. Note the final utilization of the "high place" motif in the burial of Julien. The cell has been the scene of his last happiness, and the heights culminate this representation beyond death. It is fitting that Mathilde be portrayed in this macabre scene retrieving Julien's head. It permits her to play the final scene in the drama from the past which she has re-enacted in her affair with Julien. There is likewise a kind of poetic justice attained thereby -- her "amour de tete" is recompensed. One wonders at the future of Mathilde de la Mole. Stendhal has hinted in a previous chapter that Frilair's attempts to replace Julien had not yet been noticed by Mathilde. As for Mme. de Renal, her death is the logical consequence of her character and conduct. She and Julien have shared a more vital identity. Mathilde and Mme. de Renal, each reflecting aspects of Julien, are complementary.