"It's only, if I had been going to die like anybody else, that the sight of that poor old man would have had any right to have thrown me into this awful fit of sadness: but a rapid death in the flower of my age simply puts me beyond the reach of such awful senility."
In spite of all his argumentation, Julien felt as touched as any weak-minded person would have been, and consequently felt unhappy as the result of the visit.
He no longer had any element of rugged greatness, or any Roman virtue.
Death appeared to him at a great height and seemed a less easy proposition.
"This is what I shall take for my thermometer," he said to himself.
"To-night I am ten degrees below the courage requisite for guillotine-point level.
I had that courage this morning.
Anyway, what does it matter so long as it comes back to me at the necessary moment?"
This thermometer idea amused him and finally managed to distract him.
When he woke up the next day he was ashamed of the previous day.
"My happiness and peace of mind are at stake."
He almost made up his mind to write to the Procureur-General to request that no one should be admitted to see him.
"And how about Fouque," he thought?
"If he takes it upon himself to come to Besancon, his grief will be immense."
It had perhaps been two months since he had given Fouque a thought.
"I was a great fool at Strasbourg.
My thoughts did not go beyond my coat-collar.
He was much engrossed by the memory of Fouque, which left him more and more touched.
He walked nervously about.
Here I am, clearly twenty degrees below death point.... If this weakness increases, it will be better for me to kill myself.
What joy for the abbe Maslon, and the Valenods, if I die like an usher."
Fouque arrived. The good, simple man, was distracted by grief.
His one idea, so far as he had any at all, was to sell all he possessed in order to bribe the gaoler and secure Julien's escape.
He talked to him at length of M. de Lavalette's escape.
"You pain me," Julien said to him.
"M. de Lavalette was innocent—I am guilty.
Though you did not mean to, you made me think of the difference...."
"But is it true?
What? were you going to sell all you possessed?" said Julien, suddenly becoming mistrustful and observant.
Fouque was delighted at seeing his friend answer his obsessing idea, and detailed at length, and within a hundred francs, what he would get for each of his properties.
"What a sublime effort for a small country land-owner," thought Julien.
"He is ready to sacrifice for me the fruits of all the economies, and all the little semi-swindling tricks which I used to be ashamed of when I saw him practice them."
"None of the handsome young people whom I saw in the Hotel de la Mole, and who read Rene, would have any of his ridiculous weaknesses: but, except those who are very young and who have also inherited riches and are ignorant of the value of money, which of all those handsome Parisians would be capable of such a sacrifice?"
All Fouque's mistakes in French and all his common gestures seemed to disappear. He threw himself into his arms.
Never have the provinces in comparison with Paris received so fine a tribute.
Fouque was so delighted with the momentary enthusiasm which he read in his friend's eyes that he took it for consent to the flight.
This view of the sublime recalled to Julien all the strength that the apparition of M. Chelan had made him lose.
He was still very young; but in my view he was a fine specimen.
Instead of his character passing from tenderness to cunning, as is the case with the majority of men, age would have given him that kindness of heart which is easily melted ... but what avail these vain prophecies.
The interrogations became more frequent in spite of all the efforts of Julien, who always endeavoured by his answers to shorten the whole matter.
"I killed, or at any rate, I wished to occasion death, and I did so with premeditation," he would repeat every day.
But the judge was a pedant above everything.
Julien's confessions had no effect in curtailing the interrogations. The judge's conceit was wounded.
Julien did not know that they had wanted to transfer him into an awful cell, and that it was only, thanks to Fouque's efforts, that he was allowed to keep his pretty room at the top of a hundred and eighty steps.
M. the abbe de Frilair was one of the important customers who entrusted Fouque with the purveying of their firewood.
The good tradesmen managed to reach the all powerful grand vicar.
M. de Frilair informed him, to his unspeakable delight, that he was so touched by Julien's good qualities, and by the services which he had formerly rendered to the seminary, that he intended to recommend him to the judges.
Fouque thought he saw a hope of saving his friend, and as he went out, bowing down to the ground, requested M. the grand vicar, to distribute a sum of ten louis in masses to entreat the acquittal of the accused.
Fouque was making a strange mistake.
M. de Frilair was very far from being a Valenod.