30 Son of Napoleon and Marie-Louise, proclaimed "King of Rome" by his father even before his birth in 1811. He was known as the King of Rome to true believers in the Bonapartiste cause—who also called him Napoleon II, Napoleon having pointlessly abdicated in his favor in 1814. He was named Duke of Reichstadt by his grandfather, the Austrian emperor, and died in 1832, not having seen his father after the age of three.
Chapter Forty-Four
understands him, my soul needs him...But all I find is a fop with filthy hair—aside from the pleasant amenities, a Chevalier de Beauvoisis. "But a true priest, a Massillon,31 a Fénelon...Massillon consecrated Dubois32 as a bishop. The Memoirs of Saint-Simon spoiled Fénélon33 for me. But, finally, a real priest...Then the world's sensitive hearts would have a place to come together...We would not be isolated.. .. This good priest would talk to us about God. But which God? Not the one in the Bible, a cruel, petty tyrant, thirsting for vengeance...but Voltaire's God, just, good, infinite..." He was troubled by all his memories of that Bible, which he knew by heart..."Yet, if there are three in one, how can we believe in that great name, GOD, after the frightful abuse, acting in that name, the priests have committed? "To live in isolation! ... What torture! ... "I'm becoming crazy and unjust," Julien told himself, striking his forehead. "I am completely alone in this cell, but on this earth I have not lived in isolation. I had a powerful idea of duty. That duty, which rightly or wrongly was prescribed for me...It's been like a solid tree trunk, and I have leaned on it when it stormed. I staggered, I was shaken. In the end, I've never been anything more than a man...But I wasn't swept away. "The damp air in this cell is what's making me think about isolation... "And why be a hypocrite, even as I'm cursing hypocrisy? It isn't really death, nor this cell, nor its damp air—it's Madame de Rênal's absence that's crushing me. If, in Verrières, just to see her I had to live for whole weeks, hidden in the cellars, would I be complaining? "I'm overwhelmed by my contemporaries' influence," he said haughtily and with a bitter laugh. "Speaking only to myself, and two steps from death, I'm still a hypocrite...Oh you nineteenth century! "...A hunter in a forest fires his gun, his prey falls, he comes to get it. His boot smashes into an anthill, two feet high, and destroys the ants' home; ants are scattered far and wide, their eggs...The best ant philosopher could never understand this huge black thing, immense, horrible—the hunter's boot—which suddenly broke into their dwelling, with incredible speed, and just before that happened there had been a dreadful noise, together with a shower of reddish sparks... "...So too death, life, eternity: matters terribly simple to whoever has organs vast enough to have any conception of them... "A mayfly born at nine in the morning, during the summer's long days, and dying at five that evening: How could it comprehend the word night? "Let it live another five hours, and it sees and understands what night is. "As for me, I will die in twenty-three hours. Give me five more years of life, to be with Madame de Rênal." And then he began to laugh like Mephistopheles. "What stupidity, trying to think my way through such huge questions. "First of all, I'm just as much a hypocrite, all alone, as I would be were there anyone to listen to me.