"But if there is a court, and it's a question of losing or winning a portfolio, my worthy salon people will commit crimes exactly similar to those, which the need of getting a dinner inspired those two felons to perpetrate.
"There is no such thing as natural law, the expression is nothing more than a silly anachronism well worthy of the advocate-general who harried me the other day, and whose grandfather was enriched by one of the confiscations of Louis XIV.
There is no such thing as right, except when there is a law to forbid a certain thing under pain of punishment.
"Before law existed, the only natural thing was the strength of the lion, or the need of a creature who was cold or hungry, to put it in one word, need. No, the people whom the world honours are merely villains who have had the good fortune not to have been caught red-handed.
The prosecutor whom society put on my track was enriched by an infamous act.
I have committed a murder, and I am justly condemned, but the Valenod who has condemned me, is by reason alone of that very deed, a hundred times more harmful to society.
"Well," added Julien sadly but not angrily, "in spite of his avarice, my father is worth more than all those men.
He never loved me.
The disgrace I bring upon him by an infamous death has proved the last straw.
That fear of lacking money, that distorted view of the wickedness of mankind, which is called avarice, make him find a tremendous consolation and sense of security in a sum of three or four hundred louis, which I have been able to leave him.
Some Sunday, after dinner, he will shew his gold to all the envious men in Verrieres.
'Which of you would not be delighted to have a son guillotined at a price like this,' will be the message they will read in his eyes."
This philosophy might be true, but it was of such a character as to make him wish for death.
In this way five long days went by.
He was polite and gentle to Mathilde, whom he saw was exasperated by the most violent jealousy.
One evening Julien seriously thought of taking his own life.
His soul was demoralised by the deep unhappiness in which madame de Renal's departure had thrown him.
He could no longer find pleasure in anything, either in real life or in the sphere of the imagination.
Lack of exercise began to affect his health, and to produce in him all the weakness and exaltation of a young German student.
He began to lose that virile disdain which repels with a drastic oath certain undignified ideas which besiege the soul of the unhappy.
"I loved truth....
Where is it?
Hypocrisy everywhere or at any rate charlatanism. Even in the most virtuous, even in the greatest," and his lips assumed an expression of disgust.
"No, man cannot trust man."
"Madame de —— when she was making a collection for her poor orphans, used to tell me that such and such a prince had just given ten louis, a sheer lie.
But what am I talking about.
Napoleon at St. Helena ... Pure charlatanism like the proclamation in favour of the king of Rome.
"Great God!
If a man like that at a time when misfortune ought to summon him sternly to his duty will sink to charlatanism, what is one to expect from the rest of the human species?"
"Where is truth?
In religion. Yes," he added, with a bitter smile of utter contempt. "In the mouth of the Maslons, the Frilairs, the Castanedes—perhaps in that true Christianity whose priests were not paid any more than were the apostles. But St. Paul was paid by the pleasure of commanding, speaking, getting himself talked about."
"Oh, if there were only a true religion.
Fool that I am.
I see a Gothic cathedral and venerable stained-glass windows, and my weak heart conjures up the priest to fit the scene. My soul would understand him, my soul has need of him. I only find a nincompoop with dirty hair. About as comforting as a chevalier de Beauvoisis.
"But a true priest, a Massillon, a Fenelon. Massillon sacrificed Dubois. Saint-Simon's memoirs have spoilt the illusion of Fenelon, but he was a true priest anyway.
In those days, tender souls could have a place in the world where they could meet together. We should not then have been isolated. That good priest would have talked to us of God.
But what God?
Not the one of the Bible, a cruel petty despot, full of vindictiveness, but the God of Voltaire, just, good, infinite."
He was troubled by all the memories of that Bible which he knew by heart.
"But how on earth, when the deity is three people all at the same time, is one to believe in the great name of GOD, after the frightful way in which our priests have abused it."
"Living alone.
What a torture."
"I am growing mad and unreasonable," said Julien to himself, striking his forehead.
"I am alone here in this cell, but I have not lived alone on earth. I had the powerful idea of duty.
The duty which rightly or wrongly I laid down for myself, has been to me like the trunk of a solid tree which I could lean on during the storm, I stumbled, I was agitated.
After all I was only a man, but I was not swept away.
"It must be the damp air of this cell which made me think of being alone.
"Why should I still play the hypocrite by cursing hypocrisy?
It is neither death, nor the cell, nor the damp air, but madame de Renal's absence which prostrates me.
If, in order to see her at Verrieres, I had to live whole weeks at Verrieres concealed in the cellars of her house, would I complain?"