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 trifling 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 repentance 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 condemned 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 conjugated 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 Deity, I am lost: He is a tyrant, 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 devoid of pity.' (Here Julien recalled several passages fromthe Bible.) 'He will punish me in some abominable 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 prospect! 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 mere fool,need the son-in-law of the Marquis de La Mole 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 precisely that, Sir, to be guillotined in three days' time.'

　　Julien laughed heartily 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 worthies 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 awakened 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 positively unrecognisable.

　　'That wretch Frilair has betrayed me,' she said to him, wringing 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 touching 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 dwelling in an attic; but she could not win from him any simplerspeech. He paid her back, unconsciously, the torment 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 behold the King of Rivers in theform of a simple rivulet: 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 soften my voice and even make my tears begin to flow.

　　How often have not the sere 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 intensity of my despairand of my repentance would have appeared in the eyes of the Valenods,and of all............