In the PrisonWhen Julien was lee back to prison he had been put in a cell reserved forthose under sentence of death. He, who, as a rule, observed the most trifling1 details, had never noticed that he was not being taken up to his olddungeon. He was thinking of what he would say to Madame de Renal, if,before the fatal moment, he should have the good fortune to see her. Hefelt that she would not allow him to speak, and was seeking a way of expressing his repentance2 in the first words he would utter. 'After such anaction, how am I to convince her that I love her and her only? For afterall I sought to kill her either out of ambition or for love of Mathilde.'
On getting into bed he found himself between sheets of a coarse cloth.
The scales fell from his eyes. 'Ah! I am in the condemned3 cell,' he said tohimself, 'awaiting my sentence. It is right …'Conte Altamira told me once that, on the eve of his death, Danton saidin his loud voice: "It is strange, the verb to guillotine cannot be conjugated4 in all its tenses; one can say: I shall be guillotined, thou shalt be guillotined, but one does not say: I have been guillotined."'Why not,' Julien went on, 'if there is another life? Faith, if I meet theChristian Deity5, I am lost: He is a tyrant6, and, as such, is full of ideas ofvengeance; His Bible speaks of nothing but fearful punishments. I neverloved Him! I could never even believe that anyone did love Him sincerely. He is devoid7 of pity.' (Here Julien recalled several passages fromthe Bible.) 'He will punish me in some abominable8 manner …'But if I meet the God of Fenelon! He will say to me perhaps: "Muchshall be pardoned thee, because thou hast loved much … "'Have I loved much? Ah! I did love Madame de Renal, but my conducthas been atrocious. There, as elsewhere, I abandoned a simple and modest merit for what was brilliant …'But then, what a prospect9! Colonel of Hussars, should we go to war;Secretary of Legation in time of peace; after that, Ambassador … for I should soon have learned the business … and had I been a mere10 fool,need the son-in-law of the Marquis de La Mole11 fear any rival? All myfoolish actions would have been forgiven me, or rather counted to me asmerits. A man of distinction, enjoying the most splendid existence in Vienna or London …'Not precisely12 that, Sir, to be guillotined in three days' time.'
Julien laughed heartily13 at this sally of his own wit. 'Indeed, man hastwo different beings inside him,' he reflected. 'What devil thought of thatmalicious touch?
'Very well, yes, my friend, guillotined in three days' time,' he repliedto the interrupter. 'M. de Cholin will hire a window, sharing the expensewith the abbe Maslon. Well, for the cost of hiring that window, which ofthose two worthies14 will rob the other?'
A passage from Rotrou's Venceslas entered his head suddenly.
Ladislas: My soul is well prepared. The King (his father): So is the scaffold; lay your head thereon.
'A good answer,' he thought, and fell asleep. Someone awakened15 himin the morning by shaking him violently.
'What, already!' said Julien, opening a haggard eye. He imagined himself to be in the headsman's hands.
It was Mathilde. 'Fortunately, she did not understand.' This reflectionrestored all his presence of mind. He found Mathilde changed as thoughafter six months of illness: she was positively16 unrecognisable.
'That wretch17 Frilair has betrayed me,' she said to him, wringing18 herhands; rage prevented her from speaking.
'Was I not fine yesterday when I rose to speak?' replied Julien. 'I wasimprovising, and for the first time in my life! It is true that there is reasonto fear it may also be the last.'
At this moment Julien was playing upon Mathilde's nature with all thecalm of a skilled pianist touching19 the keys of a piano … 'The advantageof noble birth I lack, it is true,' he went on, 'but the great heart of Mathilde has raised her lover to her own level. Do you suppose that Bonifacede La Mole cut a better figure before his judges?'
Mathilde, that morning, was tender without affectation, like any poorgirl dwelling20 in an attic21; but she could not win from him any simplerspeech. He paid her back, unconsciously, the torment22 that she had ofteninflicted on him.
'We do not know the source of the Nile,' Julien said to himself; 'it hasnot been granted to the eye of man to behold23 the King of Rivers in theform of a simple rivulet24: similarly no human eye shall ever see Julienweak, if only because he is not weak. But I have a heart that is easilymoved; the most commonplace words, if they are uttered with an accentof truth, may soften25 my voice and even make my tears begin to flow.
How often have not the sere26 hearts despised me for this defect! They believed that I was begging for mercy: that is what I cannot endure.
'They say that the thought of his wife overcame Danton at the foot ofthe scaffold; but Danton had given strength to a nation of coxcombs, andprevented the enemy from reaching Paris . . I alone know what I mighthave managed to do … To others, I am at best only a might-have-been.
'If Madame de Renal had been here, in my cell, instead of Mathilde,should I have been able to control myself? The intensity27 of my despairand of my repentance would have appeared in the eyes of the Valenods,and of all the patricians29 of the neighbourhood, a craven fear of death;they are so proud, those feeble hearts, whom their financial positionplaces out of reach of temptation! "You see what it is," M. de Moirod andM. de Cholin, who have just sentenced me to death, would have said, "tobe born the son of a carpenter! One may become learned, clever, butcourage! … Courage is not taught at school." Even this poor Mathilde,who is now weeping, or rather who can no longer weep,' he said, looking at her red eyes … and he took her in his arms: the sight of genuinegrief made him forget his syllogism30. 'She has been weeping all night,perhaps,' he said to himself: 'but one day how ashamed she will be whenshe remembers! She will regard herself as having been led astray, inearly youth, by the low opinions of a plebeian31 … Croisenois is weakenough to marry her, and, i' faith, he will do well for himself. She willmake him play a part,"By that right Which a firm spirit planning vast designs Has o'er theloutish minds of common men."'Ah, now; here is a pleasant thing: now that I am to die, all the poetry Iever learned in my life comes back to me. It must be a sign ofdecadence … '
Mathilde kept on saying to him in a faint voice: 'He is there, in the nextroom.' At length he began to pay attention to her words. 'Her voice isfeeble,' he thought, 'but all her imperious nature is still in its accents. Shelowers her voice in order not to lose her temper.
'Who is there?' he asked her gently.
'The lawyer, to make you sign your appeal.'
'I shall not appeal.'
'What! You will not appeal,' she said, rising to her feet, her eyes ablazewith anger, 'and why not, if you please?'
'Because at this moment I feel that I have the courage to die withoutexciting undue32 derision. And who can say that in two months' time, aftera long confinement33 in this damp cell, I shall be so well prepared? I foresee interviews with priests, with my father … I can imagine nothing sounpleasant. Let us die.'
This unexpected obstinacy34 awoke all the latent pride in Mathilde'snature. She had not been able to see the abbe de Frilair before the hour atwhich the cells in the prison of Besancon were opened; her anger fellupon Julien. She adored him, and for the next quarter of an hour he wasreminded by her imprecations against his character, her regrets that shehad ever loved him, of that proud spirit which in the past had heapedsuch poignant35 insults upon him, in the library of the Hotel de La Mole.
'Heaven owed it to the glory of your race to bring you into the world aman,' he told her.
'But as for myself,' he thought, 'I should be a rare fool to live twomonths longer in this disgusting abode36, the butt37 of all the infamous38 andhumiliating lies that the patrician28 faction39 is capable of inventing, 18 mysole comfort the imprecations of this madwoman … Well, the day aftertomorrow, I shall be fighting a duel40 in the morning with a man wellknown for his coolness and for his remarkable41 skill … Very remarkable,'
whispered Mephistopheles, 'he never misses his stroke.
'Very well, so be it, all's well that ends well.' (Mathilde's eloquencecontinued to flow.) 'Begad, no,' he said to himself, 'I shall not appeal.'
Having made this decision, he relapsed into his dreams … 'The postman on his rounds will bring the newspaper at six o'clock, as usual; ateight, after M. de Renal has read it, Elisa, entering the room on tiptoe,will lay it down on her bed. Later, she will awake: suddenly, as shereads, she will grow troubled; her lovely hand will tremble; she willcome to the words: At five minutes past ten he had ceased to live.
'She will shed hot tears, I know her; in vain did I seek to murder her,all will be forgotten, and the person whose life I sought to take will bethe only one who will weep sincerely for my death.
18.A Jacobin is speaking. (Stendhal's note.) 'Ah, this is a paradox42!' he thought, and, for the next quarter of an hour,while Mathilde continued to make a scene, he thought only of Madamede Renal. In spite of himself, and albeit43 frequently replying to whatMathilde said to him, he could not free his mind from the memory ofthat bedroom at Verrieres. He saw the Gazette de Besancon lying on thecounterpane of orange taffeta. He saw that snowy hand clutching it witha convulsive movement; he saw Madame de Renal weep … He followedthe course of each tear over that charming face. Mademoiselle de LaMole, having failed to get anything out of Julien, made the lawyer comein. He was fortunately an old Captain of the Army of Italy, of 1796, whenhe had served with Manuel.
For the sake of form, he opposed the condemned man's decision. Julien, wishing to treat him with respect, explained all his reasons to him.
'Faith, one may think as you do,' M. Felix Vaneau (this was thelawyer's name) said to him at length. 'But you have three clear days inwhich to appeal, and it is my duty to come back each day. If a volcanoopened beneath the prison, in the next two months, you would be saved.
You may die a natural death,' he said, looking at Julien.
Julien shook his hand. 'I thank you, you are an honest man. I shallthink it over.'
And when Mathilde left him, finally, with the lawyer, he felt far moreaffection for the lawyer than for her.
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trifling
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| adj.微不足道的；没什么价值的 | |
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repentance
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| n.懊悔 | |
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condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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conjugated
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| adj.共轭的，成对的v.列出（动词的）变化形式( conjugate的过去式和过去分词 )；结合，联合，熔化 | |
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deity
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| n.神，神性；被奉若神明的人(或物) | |
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tyrant
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| n.暴君，专制的君主，残暴的人 | |
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devoid
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| adj.全无的，缺乏的 | |
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abominable
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| adj.可厌的，令人憎恶的 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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mole
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| n.胎块；痣；克分子 | |
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precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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worthies
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| 应得某事物( worthy的名词复数 )； 值得做某事； 可尊敬的； 有（某人或事物）的典型特征 | |
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awakened
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| v.（使）醒( awaken的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）觉醒；弄醒；（使）意识到 | |
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positively
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| adv.明确地，断然，坚决地；实在，确实 | |
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wretch
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| n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人 | |
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wringing
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| 淋湿的，湿透的 | |
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touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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attic
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| n.顶楼，屋顶室 | |
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torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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rivulet
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| n.小溪，小河 | |
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soften
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| v.(使)变柔软；(使)变柔和 | |
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sere
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| adj.干枯的；n.演替系列 | |
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intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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patrician
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| adj.贵族的，显贵的；n.贵族；有教养的人；罗马帝国的地方官 | |
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patricians
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| n.（古罗马的）统治阶层成员( patrician的名词复数 )；贵族，显贵 | |
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syllogism
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| n.演绎法，三段论法 | |
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plebeian
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| adj.粗俗的；平民的；n.平民；庶民 | |
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undue
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| adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的 | |
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confinement
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| n.幽禁，拘留，监禁；分娩；限制，局限 | |
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obstinacy
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| n.顽固；（病痛等）难治 | |
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poignant
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| adj.令人痛苦的，辛酸的，惨痛的 | |
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abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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infamous
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| adj.声名狼藉的，臭名昭著的，邪恶的 | |
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faction
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| n.宗派，小集团；派别；派系斗争 | |
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duel
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| n./v.决斗；(双方的)斗争 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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paradox
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| n.似乎矛盾却正确的说法；自相矛盾的人(物) | |
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albeit
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| conj.即使；纵使；虽然 | |
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