"To-day is Friday," he thought.
"Yes, but this day is lucky for the Valenod who has got me convicted.... I am watched too well for Mathilde to manage to save me like madame de Lavalette saved her husband.... So in three days' time, at this very hour, I shall know what view to take about the great perhaps."
At this moment he heard a cry and was called back to the things of this world.
The women around him were sobbing: he saw that all faces were turned towards a little gallery built into the crowning of a Gothic pilaster.
He knew later that Mathilde had concealed herself there.
As the cry was not repeated, everybody began to look at Julien again, as the gendarmes were trying to get him through the crowd.
"Let us try not to give that villain Valenod any chance of laughing at me," thought Julien.
"With what a contrite sycophantic expression he pronounced the verdict which entails the death penalty, while that poor president of the assizes, although he has been a judge for years and years, had tears in his eyes as he sentenced me.
What a joy the Valenod must find in revenging himself for our former rivalry for madame de Renal's favors! ...
So I shall never see her again!
The thing is finished....
A last good-bye between us is impossible—I feel it.... How happy I should have been to have told her all the horror I feel for my crime!
"Mere words. I consider myself justly convicted." _____
CHAPTER LXXII _____
When Julien was taken back to prison he had been taken into a room intended for those who were condemned to death.
Although a man who in the usual way would notice the most petty details, he had quite failed to observe that he had not been taken up to his turret.
He was thinking of what he would say to madame de Renal if he had the happiness of seeing her before the final moment.
He thought that she would break into what he was saying and was anxious to be able to express his absolute repentance with his very first words.
"How can I convince her that I love her alone after committing an action like that?
For after all, it was either out of ambition, or out of love for Mathilde, that I wanted to kill her."
As he went to bed, he came across sheets of a rough coarse material.
"Ah!
I am in the condemned cell, he said to himself.
That is right.
"Comte Altamira used to tell me that Danton, on the eve of his death, would say in his loud voice: 'it is singular but you cannot conjugate the verb guillotine in all its tenses: of course you can say, I shall be guillotined, thou shalt be guillotined, but you don't say, I have been guillotined.'
"Why not?" went on Julien, "if there is another life....
Upon my word, it will be all up with me if I find the God of the Christians there: He is a tyrant, and as such, he is full of ideas of vengeance: his Bible speaks of nothing but atrocious punishment.
I never liked him—I could never get myself to believe that anyone really liked him.
He has no pity (and he remembered several passages in the Bible) he will punish me atrociously.
"But supposing I find Fenelon's God: He will perhaps say to me: 'Much forgiveness will be vouchsafed to thee, inasmuch as thou hast loved much.'
"Have I loved much?
Ah! I loved madame de Renal, but my conduct has been atrocious.
In that, as in other cases, simple modest merit was abandoned for the sake of what was brilliant.
"But still, what fine prospects?
Colonel of Hussars, if we had had a war: secretary of a legation during peace: then ambassador ... for I should soon have picked up politics ... and even if I had been an idiot, would the marquis de la Mole's son-in-law have had any rivalry to fear?
All my stupidities have been forgiven, or rather, counted as merits.
A man of merit, then, and living in the grandest style at Vienna or London.
"Not exactly, monsieur. Guillotined in three days' time."
Julien laughed heartily at this sally of his wit.
"As a matter of fact, man has two beings within him, he thought. Who the devil can have thought of such a sinister notion?"
"Well, yes, my friend: guillotined in three days," he answered the interruptor.
"M. de Cholin will hire a window and share the expense with the abbe Maslon.
Well, which of those two worthy personages will rob the other over the price paid for hiring that window?"
The following passage from Rotrou's "Venceslas" suddenly came back into his mind:— LADISLAS
.................Mon ame est toute prete.
THE KING, father of Ladislas.
L'echafaud l'est aussi: portez-y-votre tete.
"A good repartee" he thought, as he went to sleep.
He was awakened in the morning by someone catching hold of him violently.
"What! already," said Julien, opening his haggard eyes. He thought he was already in the executioner's hands.