Life was no longer boring, he was envisaging everything from a new point of view, he had no longer any ambition.
He rarely thought about mademoiselle de la Mole.
His passion of remorse engrossed him a great deal, and often conjured up the image of madame de Renal, particularly during the silence of the night, which in this high turret was only disturbed by the song of the osprey.
He thanked heaven that he had not inflicted a mortal wound.
"Astonishing," he said to himself,
"I thought that she had destroyed my future happiness for ever by her letter to M. de la Mole, and here am I, less than a fortnight after the date of that letter, not giving a single thought to all the things that engrossed me then. An income of two or three thousand francs, on which to live quietly in a mountain district, like Vergy.... I was happy then....
I did not realise my happiness."
At other moments he would jump up from his chair.
"If I had mortally wounded madame de Renal, I would have killed myself....
I need to feel certain of that so as not to horrify myself."
"Kill myself?
That's the great question," he said to himself.
"Oh, those judges, those fiends of red tape, who would hang their best citizen in order to win the cross.... At any rate, I should escape from their control and from the bad French of their insults, which the local paper will call eloquence."
"I still have five or six weeks, more or less to live....
Kill myself.
No, not for a minute," he said to himself after some days,
"Napoleon went on living."
"Besides, I find life pleasant, this place is quiet, I am not troubled with bores," he added with a smile, and he began to make out a list of the books which he wanted to order from Paris. _____
CHAPTER LXVII
A TURRET _____
The tomb of a friend.—Sterne. _____
He heard a loud noise in the corridor. It was not the time when the gaoler usually came up to his prison. The osprey flew away with a shriek. The door opened, and the venerable cure Chelan threw himself into his arms. He was trembling all over and had his stick in his hands.
"Great God!
Is it possible, my child—I ought to say monster?"
The good old man could not add a single word.
Julien was afraid he would fall down.
He was obliged to lead him to a chair.
The hand of time lay heavy on this man who had once been so active.
He seemed to Julien the mere shadow of his former self.
When he had regained his breath, he said,
"It was only the day before yesterday that I received your letter from Strasbourg with your five hundred francs for the poor of Verrieres.
They brought it to me in the mountains at Liveru where I am living in retirement with my nephew Jean.
Yesterday I learnt of the catastrophe.... Heavens, is it possible?"
And the old man left off weeping. He did not seem to have any ideas left, but added mechanically, "You will have need of your five hundred francs, I will bring them back to you."
"I need to see you, my father," exclaimed Julien, really touched.
"I have money, anyway."
But he could not obtain any coherent answer.
From time to time, M. Chelan shed some tears which coursed silently down his cheeks. He then looked at Julien, and was quite dazed when he saw him kiss his hands and carry them to his lips.
That face which had once been so vivid, and which had once portrayed with such vigour the most noble emotions was now sunk in a perpetual apathy.
A kind of peasant came soon to fetch the old man.
"You must not fatigue him," he said to Julien, who understood that he was the nephew.
This visit left Julien plunged in a cruel unhappiness which found no vent in tears.
Everything seemed to him gloomy and disconsolate. He felt his heart frozen in his bosom.
This moment was the cruellest which he had experienced since the crime.
He had just seen death and seen it in all its ugliness.
All his illusions about greatness of soul and nobility of character had been dissipated like a cloud before the hurricane.
This awful plight lasted several hours.
After moral poisoning, physical remedies and champagne are necessary.
Julien would have considered himself a coward to have resorted to them.
"What a fool I am," he exclaimed, towards the end of the horrible day that he had spent entirely in walking up and down his narrow turret.