finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_71_part_0.txt
The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 42
part 2, chapter 42
{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 42", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-42", "summary": "Julien returns to prison and goes into a cell reserved for people on death row. So yeah, the trial didn't work out so well. He can't help but think of what a bright future he's wasting, and he gives into despair. In three days, he'll have his head chopped off. Mathilde comes in and starts talking about his appeal, but he says he has no intention of appealing. His lawyer visits again, and he gets the guy to go away by saying that he's willing to consider an appeal.", "analysis": ""}
CHAPTER LXXII[1]


When Julien was taken back to prison he had been taken into a room
intended for those who were condemned to death. Although a man who in
the usual way would notice the most petty details, he had quite failed
to observe that he had not been taken up to his turret. He was thinking
of what he would say to madame de Renal if he had the happiness of
seeing her before the final moment. He thought that she would break
into what he was saying and was anxious to be able to express his
absolute repentance with his very first words. "How can I convince her
that I love her alone after committing an action like that? For after
all, it was either out of ambition, or out of love for Mathilde, that I
wanted to kill her."

As he went to bed, he came across sheets of a rough coarse material.
"Ah! I am in the condemned cell, he said to himself. That is right.

"Comte Altamira used to tell me that Danton, on the eve of his death,
would say in his loud voice: 'it is singular but you cannot conjugate
the verb guillotine in all its tenses: of course you can say, I shall
be guillotined, thou shalt be guillotined, but you don't say, I have
been guillotined.'

"Why not?" went on Julien, "if there is another life.... Upon my word,
it will be all up with me if I find the God of the Christians there: He
is a tyrant, and as such, he is full of ideas of vengeance: his Bible
speaks of nothing but atrocious punishment. I never liked him--I could
never get myself to believe that anyone really liked him. He has no
pity (and he remembered several passages in the Bible) he will punish
me atrociously.

"But supposing I find Fenelon's God: He will perhaps say to me: 'Much
forgiveness will be vouchsafed to thee, inasmuch as thou hast loved
much.'

"Have I loved much? Ah! I loved madame de Renal, but my conduct has
been atrocious. In that, as in other cases, simple modest merit was
abandoned for the sake of what was brilliant.

"But still, what fine prospects? Colonel of Hussars, if we had had a
war: secretary of a legation during peace: then ambassador ... for
I should soon have picked up politics ... and even if I had been an
idiot, would the marquis de la Mole's son-in-law have had any rivalry
to fear? All my stupidities have been forgiven, or rather, counted
as merits. A man of merit, then, and living in the grandest style at
Vienna or London.

"Not exactly, monsieur. Guillotined in three days' time."

Julien laughed heartily at this sally of his wit. "As a matter of fact,
man has two beings within him, he thought. Who the devil can have
thought of such a sinister notion?"

"Well, yes, my friend: guillotined in three days," he answered the
interruptor. "M. de Cholin will hire a window and share the expense
with the abbe Maslon. Well, which of those two worthy personages
will rob the other over the price paid for hiring that window?" The
following passage from Rotrou's "Venceslas" suddenly came back into his
mind:--

              LADISLAS
    .................Mon ame est toute prete.
    THE KING, _father of Ladislas_.
    L'echafaud l'est aussi: portez-y-votre tete.

"A good repartee" he thought, as he went to sleep. He was awakened in
the morning by someone catching hold of him violently.

"What! already," said Julien, opening his haggard eyes. He thought he
was already in the executioner's hands.

It was Mathilde. "Luckily, she has not understood me." This reflection
restored all his self possession. He found Mathilde as changed as
though she had gone through a six months' illness: she was really not
recognisable.

"That infamous Frilair has betrayed me," she said to him, wringing her
hands. Her fury prevented her from crying.

"Was I not fine when I made my speech yesterday?" answered Julien. "I
was improvising for the first time in my life! It is true that it is to
be feared that it will also be the last."

At this moment, Julien was playing on Mathilde's character with all
the self-possession of a clever pianist, whose fingers are on the
instrument.... "It is true," he added, "that I lack the advantage of a
distinguished birth, but Mathilde's great soul has lifted her lover up
to her own level. Do you think that Boniface de la Mole would have cut
a better figure before his judges?"

On this particular day, Mathilde was as unaffectedly tender as a poor
girl living in a fifth storey. But she failed to extract from him any
simpler remark. He was paying her back without knowing it for all the
torture she had frequently inflicted on him.

"The sources of the Nile are unknown," said Julien to himself: "it has
not been vouchsafed to the human eye to see the king of rivers as a
simple brook: similarly, no human eye shall see Julien weak. In the
first place because he is not so. But I have a heart which it is easy
to touch. The most commonplace words, if said in a genuine tone, can
make my voice broken and even cause me to shed tears. How often have
frigid characters not despised me for this weakness. They thought that
I was asking a favour: that is what I cannot put up with.

"It is said that when at the foot of the scaffold, Danton was affected
by the thought of his wife: but Danton had given strength to a nation
of coxcombs and prevented the enemy from reaching Paris.... I alone
know what I should have been able to do.... I represent to the others
at the very outside, simply A PERHAPS.

"If madame de Renal had been here in my cell instead of Mathilde,
should I have been able to have answered for myself? The extremity of
my despair and my repentance would have been taken for a craven fear of
death by the Valenods and all the patricians of the locality. They are
so proud, are those feeble spirits, whom their pecuniary position puts
above temptation! 'You see what it is to be born a carpenter's son,'
M. de Moirod and de Cholin doubtless said after having condemned me to
death! 'A man can learn to be learned and clever, but the qualities of
the heart--the qualities of the heart cannot be learnt.' Even in the
case of this poor Mathilde, who is crying now, or rather, who cannot
cry," he said to himself, as he looked at her red eyes.... And he
clasped her in his arms: the sight of a genuine grief made him forget
the sequence of his logic.... "She has perhaps cried all the night," he
said to himself, "but how ashamed she will be of this memory on some
future day! She will regard herself as having been led astray in her
first youth by a plebeian's low view of life.... Le Croisenois is weak
enough to marry her, and upon my word, he will do well to do so. She
will make him play a part."

    "Du droit qu'un esprit ferme et vaste en ses desseins
    A sur l'esprit grossier des vulgaires humaines."

"Ah! that's really humorous; since I have been doomed to die, all the
verses I ever knew in my life are coming back into my memory. It must
be a sign of demoralisation."

Mathilde kept on repeating in a choked voice: "He is there in the next
room." At last he paid attention to what she was saying. "Her voice is
weak," he thought, "but all the imperiousness of her character comes
out in her intonation. She lowers her voice in order to avoid getting
angry."

"And who is there?" he said, gently.

"The advocate, to get you to sign your appeal."

"I shall not appeal."

"What! you will not appeal," she said, getting up, with her eyes
sparkling with rage. "And why, if you please?"

"Because I feel at the present time that I have the courage to die
without giving people occasion to laugh too much at my expense. And
who will guarantee that I shall be in so sound a frame of mind in two
months' time, after living for a long time in this damp cell? I foresee
interviews with the priests, with my father. I can imagine nothing more
unpleasant. Let's die."

This unexpected opposition awakened all the haughtiness of Mathilde's
character. She had not managed to see the abbe de Frilair before the
time when visitors were admitted to the cells in the Besancon prison.
Her fury vented itself on Julien. She adored him, and nevertheless she
exhibited for a good quarter of an hour in her invective against his,
Julien's, character, and her regret at having ever loved him, the
same haughty soul which had formerly overwhelmed him with such cutting
insults in the library of the Hotel de la Mole.

"In justice to the glory of your stock, Heaven should have had you born
a man," he said to her.

"But as for myself," he thought, "I should be very foolish to go on
living for two more months in this disgusting place, to serve as a
butt for all the infamous humiliations which the patrician party can
devise,[2] and having the outburst of this mad woman for my only
consolation.... Well, the morning after to-morrow I shall fight a duel
with a man known for his self-possession and his remarkable skill ...
his very remarkable skill," said the Mephistophelian part of him; "he
never makes a miss. Well, so be it--good." (Mathilde continued to wax
eloquent). "No, not for a minute," he said to himself, "I shall not
appeal."

Having made this resolution, he fell into meditation....

"The courier will bring the paper at six o'clock as usual, as he
passes; at eight o'clock, after M. de Renal has finished reading it,
Elisa will go on tiptoe and place it on her bed. Later on she will wake
up; suddenly, as she reads it she will become troubled; her pretty
hands will tremble; she will go on reading down to these words: _At
five minutes past ten he had ceased to exist_.

"She will shed hot tears, I know her; it will matter nothing that I
tried to assassinate her--all will be forgotten, and the person whose
life I wished to take will be the only one who will sincerely lament my
death.

"Ah, that's a good paradox," he thought, and he thought about nothing
except madame de Renal during the good quarter of an hour which the
scene Mathilde was making still lasted. In spite of himself, and though
he made frequent answers to what Mathilde was saying, he could not take
his mind away from the thought of the bedroom at Verrieres. He saw the
Besancon Gazette on the counterpane of orange taffeta; he saw that
white hand clutching at it convulsively. He saw madame de Renal cry....
He followed the path of every tear over her charming face.

Mademoiselle de la Mole, being unable to get anything out of Julien,
asked the advocate to come in. Fortunately, he was an old captain of
the Italian army of 1796, where he had been a comrade of Manuel.

He opposed the condemned man's resolution as a matter of form. Wishing
to treat him with respect, Julien explained all his reasons.

"Upon my word, I can understand a man taking the view you do," said
M. Felix Vaneau (that was the advocate's name) to him at last. "But
you have three full days in which to appeal, and it is my duty to come
back every day. If a volcano were to open under the prison between now
and two months' time you would be saved. You might die of illness," he
said, looking at Julien.

Julien pressed his hand--"I thank you, you are a good fellow. I will
think it over."

And when Mathilde eventually left with the advocate, he felt much more
affection for the advocate than for her.


[1] There is no heading to this and the following chapters in the
original.--TRANSL.

[2] The speaker is a Jacobin.






Part 2, Chapter 42
Julien returns to prison and goes into a cell reserved for people on death row. So yeah, the trial didn't work out so well. He can't help but think of what a bright future he's wasting, and he gives into despair. In three days, he'll have his head chopped off. Mathilde comes in and starts talking about his appeal, but he says he has no intention of appealing. His lawyer visits again, and he gets the guy to go away by saying that he's willing to consider an appeal.