CHAPTER LXXI

THE TRIAL

        The country will remember this celebrated case for
        a long time. The interest in the accused amounted
        to an agitation. The reason was that his crime was
        astonishing, and yet not atrocious. Even if it had been,
        this young man was so handsome. His brilliant career,
        that came to an end so early in his life, intensified
        the pathos. "Will they condemn him?" the women asked of
        the men of their acquaintance, and they could be seen to
        grow pale as they waited for the answer.--_Sainte Beuve_.

The day that madame de Renal and Mathilde feared so much arrived at
last.

Their terror was intensified by the strange appearance of the town,
which had its emotional effect even upon Fouque's sturdy soul. All the
province had rushed to Besancon to see the trial of this romantic case.

There had been no room left in the inns for some days. M. the president
of the assizes, was besieged by requests for tickets; all the ladies
in the town wanted to be present at the trial. Julien's portrait was
hawked about the streets, etc., etc.

Mathilde was keeping in reserve for this supreme moment a complete
autograph letter from my lord, bishop of ----. This prelate, who
governed the Church of France and created its bishops, was good enough
to ask for Julien's acquittal. On the eve of the trial, Mathilde took
this letter to the all-powerful grand vicar.

When she was going away in tears at the end of the interview, M.
de Frilair at last emerged from his diplomatic reserve and almost
shewed some emotion himself. "I will be responsible for the jury's
verdict," he said to her. "Out of the twelve persons charged with the
investigation of whether your friend's crime is made out, and above
all, whether there was premeditation, I can count six friends who are
devoted to my fortunes, and I have given them to understand that they
have it in their power to promote me to the episcopate. Baron Valenod,
whom I have made mayor of Verrieres, can do just as he likes with two
of his officials, MM. de Moirod, and de Cholin. As a matter of fact,
fate has given us for this business two jurymen of extremely loose
views; but, although ultra-Liberals, they are faithful to my orders on
great occasions, and I have requested them to vote like M. Valenod.
I have learnt that a sixth juryman, a manufacturer, who is immensely
rich, and a garrulous Liberal into the bargain, has secret aspirations
for a contract with the War Office, and doubtless he would not like to
displease me. I have had him told that M. de Valenod knows my final
injunctions."

"And who is this M. Valenod?" said Mathilde, anxiously.

"If you knew him, you could not doubt our success. He is an audacious
speaker, coarse, impudent, with a natural gift for managing fools. 1814
saw him in low water, and I am going to make a prefect of him. He is
capable of beating the other jurymen if they do not vote his way."

Mathilde felt a little reassured.

Another discussion awaited her in the evening. To avoid the
prolongation of an unpleasant scene, the result of which, in his view,
was absolutely certain, Julien had resolved not to make a speech.

"My advocate will speak," he said to Mathilde. "I shall figure too long
anyway as a laughing-stock to all my enemies. These provincials have
been shocked by the rapidity of my success, for which I have to thank
you, and believe me, there is not one of them who does not desire my
conviction, though he would be quite ready to cry like an idiot when I
am taken to my death."

"They desire to see you humiliated. That is only too true," answered
Mathilde, "but I do not think they are at all cruel. My presence at
Besancon, and the sight of my sufferings have interested all the women;
your handsome face will do the rest. If you say a few words to your
judges, the whole audience will be on your side, etc., etc."

At nine o'clock on the following day, when Julien left his prison
for the great hall of the Palais de Justice, the gendarmes had much
difficulty in driving away the immense crowd that was packed in the
courtyard. Julien had slept well. He was very calm, and experienced no
other sentiment except a sense of philosophic pity towards that crowd
of jealous creatures who were going to applaud his death sentence,
though without cruelty. He was very surprised when, having been
detained in the middle of the crowd more than a quarter of an hour,
he was obliged to admit that his presence affected the public with
a tender pity. He did not hear a single unpleasant remark. "These
provincials are less evil than I thought," he said to himself.

As he entered the courtroom, he was struck by the elegance of the
architecture. It was real Gothic, with a number of pretty little
columns hewn out of stone with the utmost care. He thought himself in
England.

But his attention was soon engrossed by twelve or fifteen pretty
women, who sat exactly opposite the prisoner's seat and filled the
three balconies above the judges and the jury. As he turned round
towards the public, he saw that the circular gallery that dominated the
amphitheatre was filled with women, the majority were young and seemed
very pretty, their eyes were shining and full of interest. The crowd
was enormous throughout the rest of the room. People were knocking
against the door, and the janitors could not obtain silence.

When all the eyes that were looking for Julien observed where he was,
and saw him occupying the slightly raised place which is reserved for
the prisoner, he was greeted by a murmur of astonishment and tender
interest.

You would have taken him for under twenty on this day. He was dressed
very simply, but with a perfect grace. His hair and his forehead were
charming. Mathilde had insisted on officiating personally at his
toilette. Julien's pallor was extreme. Scarcely was he seated in this
place than he heard people say all over the room, "Great heavens! how
young he is!... But he's quite a child!... He is much better than his
portrait."

"Prisoner," said the gendarme who was sitting on his right, "do you see
those six ladies in that balcony?" The gendarme pointed out a little
gallery that jutted out over the amphitheatre where the jury were
placed. "That's madame, the prefect's wife," continued the gendarme.
"Next to her, madame the marquise de M----. She likes you well: I have
heard her speak to the judge of first instance. Next to her is madame
Derville."

"Madame Derville!" exclaimed Julien, and a vivid blush spread over his
forehead. "When she leaves here," he thought, "she will write to madame
de Renal." He was ignorant of madame de Renal's arrival at Besancon.
The witnesses were quickly heard. After the first words of the opening
of the prosecution by the advocate-general, two of the ladies in the
little balcony just opposite Julien burst into tears. Julien noticed
that madame Derville did not break down at all. He remarked, however,
that she was very red.

The advocate-general was indulging in melodrama in bad French over the
barbarity of the crime that had been perpetrated. Julien noticed that
madame Derville's neighbours seemed to manifest a keen disapproval.
Several jurors, who were apparently acquainted with the ladies, spoke
to them and seemed to reassure them. "So far as it goes, that is
certainly a good omen," thought Julien.

Up to the present, he had felt himself steeped in an unadulterated
contempt for all the persons who were present at the trial. This
sentiment of disgust was intensified by the stale eloquence of
the advocate-general. But the coldness of Julien's soul gradually
disappeared before the marks of interest of which he was evidently the
object.

He was satisfied with the sturdy demeanour of his advocate. "No
phrases," he said to him in a whisper, as he was about to commence his
speech.

"All the bombast which our opponent has stolen from Bossuet and
lavished upon you," said the advocate, "has done you good."

As a matter of fact, he had scarcely spoken for five minutes before
practically all the women had their handkerchiefs in their hands. The
advocate was encouraged, and addressed some extremely strong remarks
to the jury. Julien shuddered. He felt on the point of breaking into
tears. "My God," he thought, "what would my enemies say?"

He was on the point of succumbing to the emotion which was overcoming
him, when, luckily for him, he surprised an insolent look from M. the
baron de Valenod.

"That rogue's eyes are gleaming," he said to himself "What a triumph
for that base soul! If my crime had only produced this one result, it
would be my duty to curse it. God knows what he will say about it to
madame de Renal."

This idea effaced all others. Shortly afterwards Julien was brought
back to reality by the public's manifestation of applause. The advocate
had just finished his speech. Julien remembered that it was good form
to shake hands with him. The time had passed rapidly.

They brought in refreshments for the advocate and the prisoner. It was
only then that Julien was struck by the fact that none of the women had
left the audience to go and get dinner.

"Upon my word, I am dying of hunger," said the advocate. "And you?"

"I, too," answered Julien.

"See, there's madame, the prefect's wife, who is also getting her
dinner," said the advocate, as he pointed out the little balcony. "Keep
up your courage; everything is going all right." The court sat again.

Midnight struck as the president was summing up. The president was
obliged to pause in his remarks. Amid the silence and the anxiety of
all present, the reverberation of the clock filled the hall.

"So my last day is now beginning," thought Julien. He soon felt
inflamed by the idea of his duty. Up to the present he had controlled
his emotion and had kept his resolution not to speak. When the
president of the assizes asked him if he had anything to add, he got
up. He saw in front of him the eyes of madame Derville, which seemed
very brilliant in the artificial light. "Can she by any chance be
crying?" he thought.

"Gentlemen of the jury!

"I am induced to speak by my fear of that contempt which I thought,
at the very moment of my death, I should be able to defy. Gentlemen,
I have not the honour of belonging to your class. You behold in me a
peasant who has rebelled against the meanness of his fortune.

"I do not ask you for any pardon," continued Julien, with a firmer
note in his voice. "I am under no illusions. Death awaits me; it
will be just. I have brought myself to make an attempt on the life
of the woman who is most worthy of all reverence and all respect.
Madame de Renal was a mother to me. My crime was atrocious, and it
was premeditated. Consequently, I have deserved death, gentlemen of
the jury. But even if I were not so guilty, I see among you men who,
without a thought for any pity that may be due to my youth, would like
to use me as a means for punishing and discouraging for ever that class
of young man who, though born in an inferior class, and to some extent
oppressed by poverty, have none the less been fortunate enough to
obtain a good education, and bold enough to mix with what the pride of
the rich calls Society.

"That is my crime, gentlemen, and it will be punished with even more
severity, inasmuch as, in fact, I am very far from being judged by my
peers. I do not see on the jury benches any peasant who has made money,
but only indignant bourgeois...."

Julien talked in this strain for twenty minutes. He said everything
he had on his mind. The advocate-general, who aspired to the favours
of the aristocracy, writhed in his seat. But in spite of the somewhat
abstract turn which Julien had given to his speech, all the women
burst out into tears. Even madame Derville put her handkerchief to
her eyes. Before finishing, Julien alluded again to the fact of his
premeditation, to his repentance, and to the respect and unbounded
filial admiration which, in happier days, he had entertained for madame
de Renal.... Madame Derville gave a cry and fainted.

One o'clock was striking when the jury retired to their room. None of
the women had left their places; several men had tears in their eyes.
The conversations were at first very animated, but, as there was a
delay in the verdict of the jury, their general fatigue gradually began
to invest the gathering with an atmosphere of calm. It was a solemn
moment; the lights grew less brilliant. Julien, who was very tired,
heard people around him debating the question of whether this delay was
a good or a bad omen. He was pleased to see that all the wishes were
for him. The jury did not come back, and yet not a woman left the court.

When two o'clock had struck, a great movement was heard. The little
door of the jury room opened. M. the baron de Valenod advanced with
a slow and melodramatic step. He was followed by all the jurors. He
coughed, and then declared on his soul and conscience that the jury's
unanimous verdict was that Julien Sorel was guilty of murder, and of
murder with premeditation. This verdict involved the death penalty,
which was pronounced a moment afterwards. Julien looked at his watch,
and remembered M. de Lavalette. It was a quarter past two. "To-day is
Friday," he thought.

"Yes, but this day is lucky for the Valenod who has got me
convicted.... I am watched too well for Mathilde to manage to save me
like madame de Lavalette saved her husband.... So in three days' time,
at this very hour, I shall know what view to take about the great
perhaps."

At this moment he heard a cry and was called back to the things of this
world. The women around him were sobbing: he saw that all faces were
turned towards a little gallery built into the crowning of a Gothic
pilaster. He knew later that Mathilde had concealed herself there. As
the cry was not repeated, everybody began to look at Julien again, as
the gendarmes were trying to get him through the crowd.

"Let us try not to give that villain Valenod any chance of laughing
at me," thought Julien. "With what a contrite sycophantic expression
he pronounced the verdict which entails the death penalty, while that
poor president of the assizes, although he has been a judge for years
and years, had tears in his eyes as he sentenced me. What a joy the
Valenod must find in revenging himself for our former rivalry for
madame de Renal's favors! ... So I shall never see her again! The thing
is finished.... A last good-bye between us is impossible--I feel it....
How happy I should have been to have told her all the horror I feel for
my crime!

"Mere words. I consider myself justly convicted."

The day of the trial arrives. Nearly the entire countryside has come out for the spectacle. The vicar-general assures Mathilde that there's no way Julien will get the death penalty. When it comes time for Julien to defend himself, though, he stands up and says all the same stuff he's been saying all along about wanting to kill Madame de Renal. And for good measure, he uses his moment in the spotlight to tell all the fashionable people of France just how superficial and empty their souls are. As you can imagine, this doesn't go over well with the jury.


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.

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.


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.

Julien awakes from a nap to the feeling of tears falling on his hand. Madame de Renal is standing over him. She begs him to appeal his conviction. Julien realizes how much he still loves Madame. He agrees to appeal as long as she comes to visit him every day. It turns out that the letter Madame de Renal sent the Marquis de La Mole about her affair with Julien wasn't actually written by her. A young priest wrote it and made her copy it in her own hand. Madame offers to kill herself if this will make Julien happy. He says he'll only appeal his sentence if she promises not to do this.


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.

After Madame de Renal has left his cell, Julien can hear Mathilde coming to visit. He wishes that he didn't have to see her. Everything she does is now irritating to him. Horror of horrors, Julien's estranged father visits him and berates him for being such a miserable coward and a failure. The visit seems to break whatever spirit is left in Julien, because after this he's not as eager to seek an appeal for his conviction. Julien spends the rest of his days tolerating visits from Mathilde and philosophizing about the meaning of his life. His final verdict isn't a good one. He concludes that life is mostly absurd and that the world is run by a bunch of hypocrites.


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.

Julien mentions to his buddy Fouqe that he's willing to consider a last second escape from prison. Fouqe runs off to make the arrangements. Madame de Renal comes to visit Julien one last time. She's even run away from home to see him. Mathilde hears about how often Madame is visiting Julien and she goes crazy with jealousy. Worse yet, the guy back in Paris who wants to marry Mathilde has died in a duel. There are lots of last-second plans to stop Julien's execution, but to no avail. The day quickly comes, and Julien is beheaded. It's kind of abrupt, but yeah, he's dead. The funeral procession takes Julien's body to be buried. But Fouqe manages to get a hold of Julien's body before it's buried. Mathilde visits the house and holds Julien's head in her arms, just like one of her ancestors was rumored to have done for her lover's head a hundred years earlier. Three days after Julien's death, Madame de Renal drops dead for unknown reasons. She's hugging her children at the time. Yeah, pretty grim ending for sure.


CHAPTER I

A SMALL TOWN

    Put thousands together less bad,
    But the cage less gay.--_Hobbes_.

The little town of Verrieres can pass for one of the prettiest in
Franche-Comte. Its white houses with their pointed red-tiled roofs
stretch along the slope of a hill, whose slightest undulations are
marked by groups of vigorous chestnuts. The Doubs flows to within some
hundred feet above its fortifications, which were built long ago by the
Spaniards, and are now in ruins.

Verrieres is sheltered on the north by a high mountain which is one of
the branches of the Jura. The jagged peaks of the Verra are covered
with snow from the beginning of the October frosts. A torrent which
rushes down from the mountains traverses Verrieres before throwing
itself into the Doubs, and supplies the motive power for a great number
of saw mills. The industry is very simple, and secures a certain
prosperity to the majority of the inhabitants who are more peasant than
bourgeois. It is not, however, the wood saws which have enriched this
little town. It is the manufacture of painted tiles, called Mulhouse
tiles, that is responsible for that general affluence which has caused
the facades of nearly all the houses in Verrieres to be rebuilt since
the fall of Napoleon.

One has scarcely entered the town, before one is stunned by the din of
a strident machine of terrifying aspect. Twenty heavy hammers which
fall with a noise that makes the paved floor tremble, are lifted
up by a wheel set in motion by the torrent. Each of these hammers
manufactures every day I don't know how many thousands of nails. The
little pieces of iron which are rapidly transformed into nails by these
enormous hammers, are put in position by fresh pretty young girls. This
labour so rough at first sight is one of the industries which most
surprises the traveller who penetrates for the first time the mountains
which separate France and Helvetia. If when he enters Verrieres, the
traveller asks who owns this fine nail factory which deafens everybody
who goes up the Grande-Rue, he is answered in a drawling tone "Eh!
it belongs to M. the Mayor."

And if the traveller stops a few minutes in that Grande-Rue of
Verrieres which goes on an upward incline from the bank of the Doubs to
nearly as far as the summit of the hill, it is a hundred to one that he
will see a big man with a busy and important air.

When he comes in sight all hats are quickly taken off. His hair is
grizzled and he is dressed in grey. He is a Knight of several Orders,
has a large forehead and an aquiline nose, and if you take him all
round, his features are not devoid of certain regularity. One might
even think on the first inspection that it combines with the dignity
of the village mayor that particular kind of comfortableness which is
appropriate to the age of forty-eight or fifty. But soon the traveller
from Paris will be shocked by a certain air of self-satisfaction and
self-complacency mingled with an almost indefinable narrowness and lack
of inspiration. One realises at last that this man's talent is limited
to seeing that he is paid exactly what he is owed, and in paying his
own debts at the latest possible moment.

Such is M. de Renal, the mayor of Verrieres. After having crossed the
road with a solemn step, he enters the mayoral residence and disappears
from the eye of the traveller. But if the latter continues to walk
a hundred steps further up, he will perceive a house with a fairly
fine appearance, with some magnificent gardens behind an iron grill
belonging to the house. Beyond that is an horizon line formed by the
hills of Burgundy, which seem ideally made to delight the eyes. This
view causes the traveller to forget that pestilential atmosphere of
petty money-grubbing by which he is beginning to be suffocated.

He is told that this house belongs to M. de Renal. It is to the
profits which he has made out of his big nail factory that the mayor
of Verrieres owes this fine residence of hewn stone which he is just
finishing. His family is said to be Spanish and ancient, and is alleged
to have been established in the country well before the conquest of
Louis XIV.

Since 1815, he blushes at being a manufacturer: 1815 made him mayor
of Verrieres. The terraced walls of this magnificent garden which
descends to the Doubs, plateau by plateau, also represent the reward
of M. de Renal's proficiency in the iron-trade. Do not expect to find
in France those picturesque gardens which surround the manufacturing
towns of Germany, like Leipsic, Frankfurt and Nurenburgh, etc. The
more walls you build in Franche-Comte and the more you fortify your
estate with piles of stone, the more claim you will acquire on the
respect of your neighbours. Another reason for the admiration due to
M. de Renal's gardens and their numerous walls, is the fact that he
has purchased, through sheer power of the purse, certain small parcels
of the ground on which they stand. That saw-mill, for instance, whose
singular position on the banks of the Doubs struck you when you entered
Verrieres, and where you notice the name of SOREL written in gigantic
characters on the chief beam of the roof, used to occupy six years
ago that precise space on which is now reared the wall of the fourth
terrace in M. de Renal's gardens.

Proud man that he was, the mayor had none the less to negotiate with
that tough, stubborn peasant, old Sorel. He had to pay him in good
solid golden louis before he could induce him to transfer his workshop
elsewhere. As to the _public_ stream which supplied the motive power
for the saw-mill, M. de Renal obtained its diversion, thanks to the
influence which he enjoyed at Paris. This favour was accorded him after
the election of 182-.

He gave Sorel four acres for every one he had previously held, five
hundred yards lower down on the banks of the Doubs. Although this
position was much more advantageous for his pine-plank trade, father
Sorel (as he is called since he has become rich) knew how to exploit
the impatience and _mania for landed ownership_ which animated his
neighbour to the tune of six thousand francs.

It is true that this arrangement was criticised by the wiseacres of the
locality. One day, it was on a Sunday four years later, as M. de Renal
was coming back from church in his mayor's uniform, he saw old Sorel
smiling at him, as he stared at him some distance away surrounded by
his three sons. That smile threw a fatal flood of light into the soul
of the mayor. From that time on, he is of opinion that he could have
obtained the exchange at a cheaper rate.

In order to win the public esteem of Verrieres it is essential that,
though you should build as many walls as you can, you should not adopt
some plan imported from Italy by those masons who cross the passes
of the Jura in the spring on their way to Paris. Such an innovation
would bring down upon the head of the imprudent builder an eternal
reputation for _wrongheadedness_, and he will be lost for ever in the
sight of those wise, well-balanced people who dispense public esteem in
Franche-Comte.

As a matter of fact, these prudent people exercise in the place the
most offensive despotism. It is by reason of this awful word, that
anyone who has lived in that great republic which is called Paris,
finds living in little towns quite intolerable. The tyranny of public
opinion (and what public opinion!) is as _stupid_ in the little towns
of France as in the United States of America.

CHAPTER II

A MAYOR

        Importance! What is it, sir after all? The respect of
        fools, the wonder of children, the envy of the rich, the
        contempt of the wise man.--_Barnave_

Happily for the reputation of M. de Renal as an administrator an
immense wall of support was necessary for the public promenade which
goes along the hill, a hundred steps above the course of the Doubs.
This admirable position secures for the promenade one of the most
picturesque views in the whole of France. But the rain water used to
make furrows in the walk every spring, caused ditches to appear, and
rendered it generally impracticable. This nuisance, which was felt
by the whole town, put M. de Renal in the happy position of being
compelled to immortalise his administration by building a wall twenty
feet high and thirty to forty yards long.

The parapet of this wall, which occasioned M. de Renal three journeys
to Paris (for the last Minister of the Interior but one had declared
himself the mortal enemy of the promenade of Verrieres), is now raised
to a height of four feet above the ground, and as though to defy all
ministers whether past or present, it is at present adorned with tiles
of hewn stone.

How many times have my looks plunged into the valley of the Doubs, as I
thought of the Paris balls which I had abandoned on the previous night,
and leant my breast against the great blocks of stone, whose beautiful
grey almost verged on blue. Beyond the left bank, there wind five
or six valleys, at the bottom of which I could see quite distinctly
several small streams. There is a view of them falling into the Doubs,
after a series of cascades. The sun is very warm in these mountains.
When it beats straight down, the pensive traveller on the terrace
finds shelter under some magnificent plane trees. They owe their rapid
growth and their fine verdure with its almost bluish shade to the new
soil, which M. the mayor has had placed behind his immense wall of
support for (in spite of the opposition of the Municipal Council) he
has enlarged the promenade by more than six feet (and although he is an
Ultra and I am a Liberal, I praise him for it), and that is why both in
his opinion and in that of M. Valenod, the fortunate Director of the
workhouse of Verrieres, this terrace can brook comparison with that of
Saint-Germain en Laye.

I find personally only one thing at which to cavil in the COURS DE LA
FIDELITE, (this official name is to be read in fifteen to twenty places
on those immortal tiles which earned M. de Renal an extra cross.) The
grievance I find in the Cours de la Fidelite is the barbarous manner in
which the authorities have cut these vigorous plane trees and clipped
them to the quick. In fact they really resemble with their dwarfed,
rounded and flattened heads the most vulgar plants of the vegetable
garden, while they are really capable of attaining the magnificent
development of the English plane trees. But the wish of M. the mayor
is despotic, and all the trees belonging to the municipality are
ruthlessly pruned twice a year. The local Liberals suggest, but they
are probably exaggerating, that the hand of the official gardener
has become much more severe, since M. the Vicar Maslon started
appropriating the clippings. This young ecclesiastic was sent to
Besancon some years ago to keep watch on the abbe Chelan and some cures
in the neighbouring districts. An old Surgeon-Major of Napoleon's
Italian Army, who was living in retirement at Verrieres, and who had
been in his time described by M. the mayor as both a Jacobin and a
Bonapartiste, dared to complain to the mayor one day of the periodical
mutilation of these fine trees.

"I like the shade," answered M. de Renal, with just a tinge of that
hauteur which becomes a mayor when he is talking to a surgeon, who is
a member of the Legion of Honour. "I like the shade, I have _my_ trees
clipped in order to give shade, and I cannot conceive that a tree can
have any other purpose, provided of course _it is not bringing in any
profit_, like the useful walnut tree."

This is the great word which is all decisive at Verrieres. "BRINGING IN
PROFIT," this word alone sums up the habitual trend of thought of more
than three-quarters of the inhabitants.

_Bringing in profit_ is the consideration which decides everything in
this little town which you thought so pretty. The stranger who arrives
in the town is fascinated by the beauty of the fresh deep valleys which
surround it, and he imagines at first that the inhabitants have an
appreciation of the beautiful. They talk only too frequently of the
beauty of their country, and it cannot be denied that they lay great
stress on it, but the reason is that it attracts a number of strangers,
whose money enriches the inn-keepers, a process which _brings in
profit_ to the town, owing to the machinery of the octroi.

It was on a fine, autumn day that M. de Renal was taking a promenade
on the Cours de la Fidelite with his wife on his arm. While listening
to her husband (who was talking in a somewhat solemn manner) Madame de
Renal followed anxiously with her eyes the movements of three little
boys. The eldest, who might have been eleven years old, went too
frequently near the parapet and looked as though he was going to climb
up it. A sweet voice then pronounced the name of Adolphe and the child
gave up his ambitious project. Madame de Renal seemed a woman of thirty
years of age but still fairly pretty.

"He may be sorry for it, may this fine gentleman from Paris," said
M. de Renal, with an offended air and a face even paler than usual.
"I am not without a few friends at court!" But though I want to
talk to you about the provinces for two hundred pages, I lack the
requisite barbarity to make you undergo all the long-windedness and
circumlocutions of a provincial dialogue.

This fine gentleman from Paris, who was so odious to the mayor of
Verrieres, was no other than the M. Appert, who had two days previously
managed to find his way not only into the prison and workhouse of
Verrieres, but also into the hospital, which was gratuitously conducted
by the mayor and the principal proprietors of the district.

"But," said Madame de Renal timidly, "what harm can this Paris
gentleman do you, since you administer the poor fund with the utmost
scrupulous honesty?"

"He only comes to _throw_ blame and afterwards he will get some
articles into the Liberal press."

"You never read them, my dear."

"But they always talk to us about those Jacobin articles, all that
distracts us and prevents us from doing good.[1] Personally, I shall
never forgive the cure."

[1] Historically true.

CHAPTER III

THE POOR FUND

        A virtuous cure who does not intrigue is a providence
        for the village.--_Fleury_

It should be mentioned that the cure of Verrieres, an old man of
ninety, who owed to the bracing mountain air an iron constitution and
an iron character, had the right to visit the prison, the hospital and
the workhouse at any hour. It had been at precisely six o'clock in the
morning that M. Appert, who had a Paris recommendation to the cure,
had been shrewd enough to arrive at a little inquisitive town. He had
immediately gone on to the cure's house.

The cure Chelan became pensive as he read the letter written to him by
the M. le Marquis de La Mole, Peer of France, and the richest landed
proprietor of the province.

"I am old and beloved here," he said to himself in a whisper, "they
would not dare!" Then he suddenly turned to the gentleman from Paris,
with eyes, which in spite of his great age, shone with that sacred fire
which betokens the delight of doing a fine but slightly dangerous act.

"Come with me, sir," he said, "but please do not express any opinion of
the things which we shall see, in the presence of the jailer, and above
all not in the presence of the superintendents of the workhouse."

M. Appert realised that he had to do with a man of spirit. He followed
the venerable cure, visited the hospital and workhouse, put a lot of
questions, but in spite of somewhat extraordinary answers, did not
indulge in the slightest expression of censure.

This visit lasted several hours; the cure invited M. Appert to dine,
but the latter made the excuse of having some letters to write; as a
matter of fact, he did not wish to compromise his generous companion to
any further extent. About three o'clock these gentlemen went to finish
their inspection of the workhouse and then returned to the prison.
There they found the jailer by the gate, a kind of giant, six feet
high, with bow legs. His ignoble face had become hideous by reason of
his terror.

"Ah, monsieur," he said to the cure as soon as he saw him, "is not the
gentleman whom I see there, M. Appert?"

"What does that matter?" said the cure.

"The reason is that I received yesterday the most specific orders, and
M. the Prefect sent a message by a gendarme who must have galloped
during the whole of the night, that M. Appert was not to be allowed in
the prisons."

"I can tell you, M. Noiroud," said the cure, "that the traveller who is
with me is M. Appert, but do you or do you not admit that I have the
right to enter the prison at any hour of the day or night accompanied
by anybody I choose?"

"Yes, M. the cure," said the jailer in a low voice, lowering his head
like a bull-dog, induced to a grudging obedience by fear of the stick,
"only, M. the cure, I have a wife and children, and shall be turned out
if they inform against me. I only have my place to live on."

"I, too, should be sorry enough to lose mine," answered the good cure,
with increasing emotion in his voice.

"What a difference!" answered the jailer keenly. "As for you, M. le
cure, we all know that you have eight hundred francs a year, good solid
money."

Such were the facts which, commented upon and exaggerated in twenty
different ways, had been agitating for the last two days all the odious
passions of the little town of Verrieres.

At the present time they served as the text for the little discussion
which M. de Renal was having with his wife. He had visited the cure
earlier in the morning accompanied by M. Valenod, the director of the
workhouse, in order to convey their most emphatic displeasure. M.
Chelan had no protector, and felt all the weight of their words.

"Well, gentlemen, I shall be the third cure of eighty years of age who
has been turned out in this district. I have been here for fifty-six
years. I have baptized nearly all the inhabitants of the town, which
was only a hamlet when I came to it. Every day I marry young people
whose grandparents I have married in days gone by. Verrieres is my
family, but I said to myself when I saw the stranger, 'This man from
Paris may as a matter of fact be a Liberal, there are only too many of
them about, but what harm can he do to our poor and to our prisoners?'"

The reproaches of M. de Renal, and above all, those of M. Valenod, the
director of the workhouse, became more and more animated.

"Well, gentlemen, turn me out then," the old cure exclaimed in a
trembling voice; "I shall still continue to live in the district. As
you know, I inherited forty-eight years ago a piece of land that brings
in eight hundred francs a year; I shall live on that income. I do not
save anything out of my living, gentlemen; and that is perhaps why,
when you talk to me about it, I am not particularly frightened."

M. de Renal always got on very well with his wife, but he did not know
what to answer when she timidly repeated the phrase of M. le cure,
"What harm can this Paris gentleman do the prisoners?" He was on the
point of quite losing his temper when she gave a cry. Her second son
had mounted the parapet of the terrace wall and was running along it,
although the wall was raised to a height of more than twenty feet above
the vineyard on the other side. The fear of frightening her son and
making him fall prevented Madame de Renal speaking to him. But at last
the child, who was smiling at his own pluck, looked at his mother, saw
her pallor, jumped down on to the walk and ran to her. He was well
scolded.

This little event changed the course of the conversation.

"I really mean to take Sorel, the son of the sawyer, into the house,"
said M. de Renal; "he will look after the children, who are getting too
naughty for us to manage. He is a young priest, or as good as one, a
good Latin scholar, and will make the children get on. According to the
cure, he has a steady character. I will give him three hundred francs a
year and his board. I have some doubts as to his morality, for he used
to be the favourite of that old Surgeon-Major, Member of the Legion of
Honour, who went to board with the Sorels, on the pretext that he was
their cousin. It is quite possible that that man was really simply a
secret agent of the Liberals. He said that the mountain air did his
asthma good, but that is something which has never been proved. He
has gone through all _Buonaparte's_ campaigns in Italy, and had even,
it was said, voted against the Empire in the plebiscite. This Liberal
taught the Sorel boy Latin, and left him a number of books which he had
brought with him. Of course, in the ordinary way, I should have never
thought of allowing a carpenter's son to come into contact with our
children, but the cure told me, the very day before the scene which
has just estranged us for ever, that Sorel has been studying theology
for three years with the intention of entering a seminary. He is,
consequently, not a Liberal, and he certainly is a good Latin scholar.

"This arrangement will be convenient in more than one way," continued
M. de Renal, looking at his wife with a diplomatic air. "That Valenod
is proud enough of his two fine Norman horses which he has just bought
for his carriage, but he hasn't a tutor for his children."

"He might take this one away from us."

"You approve of my plan, then?" said M. de Renal, thanking his wife
with a smile for the excellent idea which she had just had. "Well,
that's settled."

"Good gracious, my dear, how quickly you make up your mind!"

"It is because I'm a man of character, as the cure found out right
enough. Don't let us deceive ourselves; we are surrounded by Liberals
in this place. All those cloth merchants are jealous of me, I am
certain of it; two or three are becoming rich men. Well, I should
rather fancy it for them to see M. de Renal's children pass along the
street as they go out for their walk, escorted by _their tutor_. It
will impress people. My grandfather often used to tell us that he had
a tutor when he was young. It may run me into a hundred crowns, but
that ought to be looked upon as an expense necessary for keeping up our
position."

This sudden resolution left Madame de Renal quite pensive. She was
a big, well-made woman, who had been the beauty of the country, to
use the local expression. She had a certain air of simplicity and
youthfulness in her deportment. This naive grace, with its innocence
and its vivacity, might even have recalled to a Parisian some
suggestion of the sweets he had left behind him. If she had realised
this particular phase of her success, Madame de Renal would have been
quite ashamed of it. All coquetry, all affectation, were absolutely
alien to her temperament. M. Valenod, the rich director of the
workhouse, had the reputation of having paid her court, a fact which
had cast a singular glamour over her virtue; for this M. Valenod, a
big young man with a square, sturdy frame, florid face, and big, black
whiskers, was one of those coarse, blustering, and noisy people who
pass in the provinces for a "fine man."

Madame de Renal, who had a very shy, and apparently a very uneven
temperament, was particularly shocked by M. Valenod's lack of repose,
and by his boisterous loudness. Her aloofness from what, in the
Verrieres' jargon, was called "having a good time," had earned her the
reputation of being very proud of her birth. In fact, she never thought
about it, but she had been extremely glad to find the inhabitants of
the town visit her less frequently. We shall not deny that she passed
for a fool in the eyes of _their_ good ladies because she did not
wheedle her husband, and allowed herself to miss the most splendid
opportunities of getting fine hats from Paris or Besancon. Provided she
was allowed to wander in her beautiful garden, she never complained.
She was a naive soul, who had never educated herself up to the point
of judging her husband and confessing to herself that he bored her.
She supposed, without actually formulating the thought, that there was
no greater sweetness in the relationship between husband and wife than
she herself had experienced. She loved M. de Renal most when he talked
about his projects for their children. The elder he had destined for
the army, the second for the law, and the third for the Church. To sum
up, she found M. de Renal much less boring than all the other men of
her acquaintance.

This conjugal opinion was quite sound. The Mayor of Verrieres had a
reputation for wit, and above all, a reputation for good form, on
the strength of half-a-dozen "chestnuts" which he had inherited from
an uncle. Old Captain de Renal had served, before the Revolution, in
the infantry regiment of M. the Duke of Orleans, and was admitted
to the Prince's salons when he went to Paris. He had seen Madame de
Montesson, the famous Madame de Genlis, M. Ducret, the inventor, of the
Palais-Royal. These personages would crop up only too frequently in M.
de Renal's anecdotes. He found it, however, more and more of a strain
to remember stories which required such delicacy in the telling, and
for some time past it had only been on great occasions that he would
trot out his anecdotes concerning the House of Orleans. As, moreover,
he was extremely polite, except on money matters, he passed, and justly
so, for the most aristocratic personage in Verrieres.

M. de Renal is the mayor and wealthy owner of the nail factory in the small mountain village of Verrieres in the eastern province of Franche-Comte. Situated above the river Doubs, the village owes the prosperity of its peasant citizenry to sawmills and to the manufacture of calico. The sudden arrival of M. Appert, sent from M. de La Mole in Paris to inspect the municipal workhouse and prison administered by M. Valenod, the mayor's assistant, has erupted on the otherwise peaceful existence of the village. The village, a microcosm of Paris and of all of France in this respect, is politically divided into two camps: royalists like the mayor and a liberal element dissatisfied with the Restoration. They are in agreement, however, upon the importance that they attribute to money and in their slavish respect for small-town public opinion. Father Chelan, Jansenist and village priest for many years, takes M. Appert on a tour of the workhouse and prison, thereby disobeying the wishes of M. Valenod, who risks being exposed for misuse of funds, given the pitiable conditions existing in these institutions. Renal and Valenod have, in fact, visited Chelan and reprimanded him for this action. This is the subject of the conversation between M. and Mme. de Renal one day as they are strolling with their three children on the "Cours de La Fidelite," a public promenade sustained by an enormous retaining wall, the glory of Verrieres, the construction of which is due to the administration of Mayor de Renal. The latter then proposes to his wife that they hire Julien Sorel, student priest of Chelan, as tutor for their children, a move destined to increase his own social prestige since it will cause envy among the liberal textile mill owners. Julien's father, a crafty sawyer, has already, in the past, outwitted Renal in a land transaction.

Note that Stendhal does not rely for his exposition on many pages of description and documentation. His method might be called "free associational" and characterizes the entire novel since the exposition never ends. It is clearly not that of his famous contemporary Balzac or of the latter's predecessor Scott.  Stendhal moves rather swiftly back and forth from background description to an action scene as the need arises, after an initial five pages of introductory setting. Chapter divisions are entirely arbitrary: Chapter 1 situates Verrieres, characterizes the economy of the town, then introduces a hypothetical Parisian visitor who will encounter the mayor, giving Stendhal the opportunity to present him for the first time. Most of the short chapter is, in fact, devoted to M. de Renal, to his home, his past, and his relationship with Sorel even before Stendhal reaches Chapter 2, which, as the title indicates, is to be devoted to M. de Renal. Stendhal does not exhaust the description of a newly introduced character upon initial presentation, but rather he returns periodically to "round it out," having been led astray into digressions. Nothing is seen out of relation to other considerations: describing Renal physically leads Stendhal to ascribe to the passerby a moral judgment about Renal, condensing time; this then leads Stendhal to Renal's home; then a parenthetical note about his ancestry; next Renal's imposing "retaining walls" are evoked; then a comparison with gardens of other manufacturing towns; this leads the author to mention Sorel since it is through him that the land was acquired; follows a necessary remark about the shrewdness of Sorel; and finally an incident which illustrates that M. de Renal suspected that he had been bettered in the bargain. Had Stendhal followed the path into Verrieres consistently as his means of introduction, the reader would have been enlightened about Sorel's sawmill at an earlier point. This omission is not an oversight, however. Before Sorel and especially his son Julien, the hero of the novel, can be introduced, the adversary against which Julien will pit himself in its various forms must be defined. The adversary will be all of society as it incarnates the corruption and stagnation of the Restoration, thereby oppressing a superior being. Chapter 1 thus gives us a sweeping, superficial tour; Chapter 2 repeats this gesture, now evoking Valenod and Maslon by the same "afterthought" technique before introducing the action proper: the Renals' conversation on the promenade. The last few lines of this chapter begin the conversation, the meaning of which escapes the reader, and Stendhal must reappear to furnish more background details at the beginning of Chapter 3. The latter, in turn, involves a "flashback" to an episode having occurred the day before -- this before we hear the end of the conversation between the Renals. Thus, we hear briefly of Julien for the first time in Chapter 3, and we see him through the eyes of M. de Renal, whose judgment we have already learned to question. Julien can't be a liberal, reasons Renal, since he has been studying theology for the last three years. These recurring views of M. de Renal in interaction with other people permit us to judge him as pretentious, vain, easily duped, proud, and avaricious. Stendhal next turns to Mme. de Renal and devotes a page to her character and history, taking care to emphasize her virtue and resignation to her lot. She is unaware that life holds anything better than what her husband offers her. Even the method of exposition fits a description of Stendhal's style as that of "improvisation." It suggests the image of ever-widening, superimposed circles.