29 An unhappily married man in a comic tale by La Fontaine.

29 An unhappily married man in a comic tale by La Fontaine.

and the very moment I see you, even after you've twice fired a pistol at me—" And at this point, in spite of her, Julien covered her with kisses. "Let me go," she went on. "I need to argue with you, before I forget...As soon as I see you, my whole sense of duty disappears, all I am is my love for you—though the word love is much too feeble. What I feel for you is what I ought to feel only for God: a mixture of respect, and love, and obedience...But, really, I don't know what you make me feel. If you told me to attack the jailer with a knife, the crime would have been done before I even knew I was doing it. Explain that to me, very clearly, before I leave here: I want to see right into my heart, since in another two months we'll be separated...And speaking of which, do we really need to be separated?" "I take back my promise," cried Julien, rising. "I will not appeal the death sentence if you try by any means to end your life—poison, a knife, gas, a pistol—or if you seek in any other way to stop yourself from living." Madame de Rênal's face suddenly changed. The most vivid tenderness gave way to a profound reverie. "And if we were to die right now?" she finally said. "Who knows what we'll find, in that other life?" Julien answered. "Perhaps suffering, perhaps nothing at all. Can't we spend two months together, delightfully? Two months: that's a great many days. I'll never have been so happy!" "You'll never have been so happy?" "Never," Julien repeated ecstatically. "And I'm speaking to you as I speak to myself. God save me from exaggeration." "When you speak like that, I feel myself compelled to obey you," she said, smiling timidly and sadly. "Very well! Do you swear, on the love you feel for me, not to attempt your life in any way, direct or indirect...Imagine," he added, "that you need to live for my son's sake. For Mathilde will abandon him to the servants as soon as she's the Marquise de Croisenois." "I swear," she said calmly. "But I plan to take with me your appeal, written in your hand, and signed. I will bring it to the prosecutor myself." "Be careful. You'll compromise yourself." "Having taken the step of coming to see you in prison, I'll forever be, for Besançon and all Franche-Comté, the heroine of endless anecdotes," she said, seeming deeply sorrowful. "The boundaries of strict modesty have been crossed...I am a woman without honor and, truly, it has been for you..." Her voice was so sad that Julien embraced her with a happiness utterly new to him. This was not love's drunkenness, but extraordinary gratitude. He had just seen, for the first time, the full extent of the sacrifice she'd made for him. Some charitable soul, without a doubt, informed Monsieur de Rênal of the long visits his wife was making to Julien's prison, because after three days he sent his carriage, along with an express order that she return at once to Verrières. That cruel separation began a cruel day for Julien. Two or three hours later, he learned that a certain scheming priest (who had not been able to wheedle himself into the Jesuit order in Besançon) had, that morning, set himself in the street outside the prison gates. It was raining heavily, and he stayed there, intending to play a martyr's role. Julien was not a bit in the mood: this stupidity profoundly troubled him. He had already, that morning, refused to see this priest. But the man had gotten it into his head that he would hear Julien's confession and thus give himself a reputation among the young women of Besançon, especially for the secrets he could then pretend to have been told.

He declared, loudly, that he would spend day and night at the prison gates. "God has sent me to move the heart of this new apostate..." And the common people, always curious about any dramatic spectacle, began to gather around him. "Yes, brethren," he told them, "I will spend the day here, and the night, every day the same, and every night the same. The Holy Spirit has called to me. I have a mission from on high. I am the one who must save young Sorel's soul. Join me in my prayers, etc., etc." Julien had a horror of scandal, and of everything that might draw attention to him. He thought about seizing this moment to escape, incognito, but he still hoped to see Madame de Rênal again, and he was frantically in love. The prison gate opened onto one of the town's busiest streets. The very thought of this mud-spattered priest, creating crowds and scandal, was torturing his soul. "And surely, he keeps repeating my name!" It was more painful than death. He called two or three times, an hour apart, to a guard who was devoted to him, sending him to see if the priest was still out there. "Sir, he's on his knees in the mud," the guard told him, each time. "He prays in a loud voice, and says prayers for your soul..." "The bare-faced rascal!" thought Julien. And just then, in fact, he heard a dull droning: it was the people calling out the litany's responses. To add to his annoyance, he saw the guards themselves moving their lips, as they repeated the Latin words. "People are starting to say," they told him, "you must have a really hard heart, to refuse the help of this saintly man." "O my country! How barbarous you still are!" cried Julien, wildly angry. And he continued to argue aloud, without a thought to the guards' presence: "This man wants an article in the papers, and this is sure to get it for him. "Ah, accursed provincials! In Paris, I'd never be submitted to such annoyances! There, they know more about charlatans. "Bring in this holy priest," he finally said to the guards, sweat pouring down his forehead. The guards made the sign of the cross and hurried out, all of them joyful. The saintly priest turned out to be horribly ugly; he was even dirtier. The cold rain that had been falling added to the darkness and the humidity in Julien's cell. The priest tried to embrace him, and set himself to speaking tenderly. The lowest form of hypocrisy was only too obvious: Julien had never been so angry in his life. A quarter of an hour after the priest came in, Julien suddenly felt himself turn into a coward. For the first time, death seemed to him horrible. He thought of the state of putrefaction his body would be in, two days after his execution, etc., etc. He would either betray himself, by some sign of weakness, or he'd throw himself on the priest and strangle him with his chain. Then, suddenly, he conceived the idea of asking this holy man to go and say a mass for him, a good forty-franc mass, that very same day. Since it was already almost noon, the priest took his forty francs and hurried away. As soon as he had gone, Julien wept for a long time, and it was death that made him weep. He gradually realized that, if Madame de Rênal had been in Besançon, he would have admitted his weakness to her... Just when he was most regretting this adored woman's absence, he heard Mathilde coming. "The worst of all prison's miseries," he thought, "is not being able to close the door." Everything Mathilde said to him was irritating.

She told him that, on the day of the trial, since Monsieur de Valenod already had, in his pocket, his nomination as governor, he had dared to scoff at the vicar-general and give himself the pleasure of passing a death sentence on Julien. "'What could have been in your friend's mind,' Father de Frilair was just saying to me, 'setting out to rouse and attack the petty vanity of that aristocratic bourgeois! Why talk about class? He showed them what they had to do, in their own political interest: these simpletons hadn't ever thought of that; they were ready to weep for him. Raising the idea of class masked their eyes to the horror of passing a death sentence. It must be admitted that Monsieur Sorel is very much a novice in these matters. If we can't save him, now, by an act of pardon, his death will be a sort of suicide ...'" Mathilde was careful not to tell Julien something she no longer doubted, namely, that Father de Frilair, seeing Julien lost, believed it would be helpful to his ambitions if he sought to replace him in her affections. Virtually beside himself with impotent anger and irritation: "Go hear a mass for me," he told her, "and let me have a little peace." Mathilde, already very jealous about Madame de Rênal's visits, having just heard of her rival's departure, understood Julien's sullen mood and melted into tears. Her sorrow was real. Julien saw that, and was only more irritated by it. He had a desperate need for solitude, but how obtain it? Finally, having tried to soften him by every argument she could muster, Mathilde left him alone. But at almost that same moment, Fouqué appeared. "I really need to be alone," Julien told his faithful friend... And seeing how his friend hesitated: "I'm composing a memorandum, to advance my appeal for a pardon...besides...do me a favor: don't ever talk to me about death. If I need some special help, that day, let me ask, first." When Julien finally had his solitude, he found he was even more overwhelmed and cowardly than before. Whatever strength there had been in his weakened soul had been used up, trying to hide his state of mind from both Mademoiselle de La Mole and from Fouqué. Toward evening, he had an idea that consoled him: "Supposing, this morning, just when death seemed so awful, I'd been warned to ready myself for execution: the public's eyes would have spurred me to glory. My walk might have been rather heavy, like some timid fop going into a drawing room. Some clear-sighted people, if there are any among these provincials, might have guessed my weakness...but nobody would have seen it." And he felt himself freed of some part of misery. "Right now I'm a coward," he was repeating to himself, chanting the words, "but nobody will know that." The next day, there was something almost more unpleasant waiting for him. His father had long since said he would be making a visit, and that day, before Julien woke up, the old white-haired carpenter appeared in his cell. Julien felt weak; he was expecting reproaches of the nastiest sort. To finish off the pain he was experiencing, that very morning he had been feeling the most intense remorse for not loving his father. "Pure chance put us near each other on this earth," he was saying to himself, as the guards did a bit of tidying up, in the cell, "and we've done each other just about all the harm we could. Here he comes, at the moment of my death, to deal me the final blow." The old man's reproaches began just as soon as there was no one else to hear him. Julien could not hold back his tears. "What shameful weakness!" he said to himself, furious. "He'll go everywhere, exaggerating my failed courage. What a triumph for Valenod

and all the dull hypocrites who run Verrières! They're truly powerful, in France: they combine in themselves every social advantage. Till now I could at least tell myself: they take in all the money, it's true; all the honors are heaped on them; but me, I have nobility of heart. "And here's a witness no one will doubt, who will certify to everyone in Verrières—and exaggerate it, too—that in the face of death I was a coward! That's what I'll have become, in this great test that they can all understand!" Julien was close to despair. He did not know how he could send his father away. And to invent some pretense that would deceive this sharp-sighted old man was, at that moment, completely beyond his strength. His mind ran quickly through all the possibilities. "I've saved some money!" he suddenly cried. These inspired words changed the old man's face, and changed Julien's status. "How should I take care of it?" Julien went on, more calmly. The effect he'd produced took away all his feelings of inferiority. The old carpenter was burning, longing not to let this money get away from him: he thought Julien wanted to leave something to his brothers. He talked at length and strongly. Julien felt he could scoff at him. "All right, then! God's given me an inspiration. In my will I'll leave a thousand francs to each of my brothers, and the rest to you." "Very good," said the old man. "I deserve all the rest. But since God has been good enough to move your heart, you have to pay your debts if you really want to die as a good Christian. There are still expenses for your food, and your education—moneys I have advanced, on your behalf, though you've never thought about it..." "And here we have fatherly love!" Julien said to himself when he was alone once more, and he said it again, and again, cut to the heart. Soon the jailer appeared. "Sir, after a visit from relatives, I always bring my guests a bottle of good wine. It's a bit expensive, six francs a bottle, but it soothes the heart." "Bring three glasses," Julien told him with childlike haste, "and bring in the two prisoners I hear walking in the corridor." The jailer brought in two convicts, who had fallen back into their old ways and were getting ready to return to the penitentiary. They were the gayest of rascals, and really quite remarkable for their sharpness, their courage, and their calm collectedness. "If you give me twenty francs," one of them said to Julien, "I'll tell you, in detail, the story of my life. It's a blast." "But you'll be telling me a lot of lies?" asked Julien. "Not at all," was the answer. "My friend here, who's jealous about my twenty francs, will squeal on me if I don't tell the truth." It was a horrible story, showing a brave heart, which knew only one passion, and that was money. When they'd left, Julien was no longer the same man. His anger at himself had completely vanished. The ghastly sorrow, inflamed by cowardliness, that had been gripping him ever since Madame de Rênal's departure, had been turned into straightforward melancholy. "As I've become less deceived by mere appearances," he told himself, "I've learned that Paris drawing rooms are inhabited by respectable people just like my father, or by clever rogues like these old convicts. They're right: society people will never wake up, in the morning, with this agonizing thought: 'How am I going to eat?' And they boast about how honest they are! And when they serve on juries, they fiercely condemn a man who stole a set of silver tableware because he thought he'd die of hunger.