But no one would have seen it."
And he felt relieved of part of his unhappiness.
"I am a coward at this very moment," he sang to himself, "but no one will know it."
An even more unpleasant episode awaited him on the following day.
His father had been announcing that he would come and see him for some time past: the old white-haired carpenter appeared in Julien's cell before he woke up.
Julien felt weak, he was anticipating the most unpleasant reproaches.
His painful emotion was intensified by the fact that on this particular morning he felt a keen remorse for not loving his father.
"Chance placed us next to each other in the world," he said to himself, while the turnkey was putting the cell a little in order, "and we have practically done each other all the harm we possibly could.
He has come to administer the final blow at the moment of my death."
As soon as they were without witnesses, the old man commenced his stern reproaches.
Julien could not restrain his tears.
"What an unworthy weakness," he said to himself querulously.
"He will go about everywhere exaggerating my lack of courage: what a triumph for the Valenod, and for all the fatuous hypocrites who rule in Verrieres!
They are very great in France, they combine all the social advantages.
But hitherto, I could at any rate say to myself, it is true they are in receipt of money, and that all the honours lavished on them, but I have a noble heart.
"But here is a witness whom everyone will believe, and who will testify to the whole of Verrieres that I shewed weakness when confronted with death, and who will exaggerate it into the bargain!
I shall be taken for a coward in an ordeal which comes home to all!"
Julien was nearly desperate.
He did not know how to get rid of his father.
He felt it absolutely beyond his strength to invent a ruse capable of deceiving so shrewd an old man.
His mind rapidly reviewed all the alternatives.
"I have saved some money," he suddenly exclaimed.
This inspiration produced a change in the expression of the old man and in Julien's own condition.
"How ought I to dispose of it?" continued Julien more quietly.
The result had freed him from any feeling of inferiority.
The old carpenter was burning not to let the money slip by him, but it seemed that Julien wanted to leave part of it to his brothers.
He talked at length and with animation.
Julien felt cynical.
"Well, the Lord has given me a message with regard to my will.
I will give a thousand francs to each of my brothers and the rest to you."
"Very good," said the old man. "The rest is due to me: but since God has been gracious enough to touch your heart, your debts ought to be paid if you wish to die like a good Christian.
There are, moreover, the expenses of your board and your education, which I advanced to you, but which you are not thinking of."
"Such is paternal love," repeated Julien to himself, dejectedly, when he was at last alone.
Soon the gaoler appeared.
"Monsieur, I always bring my visitors a good bottle of champagne after near relations have come to see them.
It is a little dear, six francs a bottle, but it rejoices the heart."
"Bring three glasses," said Julien to him, with a childish eagerness, "and bring in two of the prisoners whom I have heard walking about in the corridor."
The gaoler brought two men into him who had once been condemned to the gallows, and had now been convicted of the same offence again, and were preparing to return to penal servitude.
They were very cheerful scoundrels, and really very remarkable by reason of their subtlety, their courage, and their coolness.
"If you give me twenty francs," said one of them to Julien, "I will tell you the story of my life in detail. It's rich."
"But you will lie," said Julien.
"Not me," he answered, "my friend there, who is jealous of my twenty francs will give me away if I say anything untrue."
His history was atrocious.
It was evidence of a courageous heart which had only one passion—that of money.
After their departure Julien was no longer the same man.
All his anger with himself had disappeared.
The awful grief which had been poisoned and rendered more acute by the weakness of which he had been a victim since madame de Renal's departure had turned to melancholy.
"If I had been less taken in by appearances," he said to himself, "I would have had a better chance of seeing that the Paris salons are full of honest men like my father, or clever scoundrels like those felons.
They are right. The men in the salons never get up in the morning with this poignant thought in their minds, how am I going to get my dinner?
They boast about their honesty and when they are summoned on the jury, they take pride in convicting the man who has stolen a silver dish because he felt starving.