"I cannot guarantee not to show some emotion. This dense, squalid cell gives me fits of fever in which I do not recognise myself, but fear?—no!
I shall not be seen to flinch."
He had made his arrangements in advance for Fouque to take Mathilde and madame de Renal away on the morning of his last day.
"Drive them away in the same carriage," he had said. "Do you see that the post-horses do not leave off galloping.
They will either fall into each other's arms, or manifest towards each other a mortal hatred.
In either case the poor women will have something to distract them a little from their awful grief."
Julien had made madame de Renal swear that she would live to look after Mathilde's son.
"Who knows?
Perhaps we have still some sensations after our death," he had said one day to Fouque.
"I should like to rest, for rest is the right word, in that little grotto in the great mountain which dominates Verrieres.
Many a time, as I have told you, I have spent the night alone in that grotto, and as my gaze would plunge far and wide over the richest provinces of France, ambition would inflame my heart.
In those days it was my passion....
Anyway, I hold that grotto dear, and one cannot dispute that its situation might well arouse the desires of the philosopher's soul....
Well, you know! those good priests of Besancon will make money out of everything. If you know how to manage it, they will sell you my mortal remains."
Fouque succeeded in this melancholy business.
He was passing the night alone in his room by his friend's body when, to his great surprise, he saw Mathilde come in. A few hours before he had left her ten leagues from Besancon.
Her face and eyes looked distraught.
"I want to see him," she said.
Fouque had not the courage either to speak or get up.
He pointed with his finger to a big blue cloak on the floor; there was wrapped in it all that remained of Julien.
She threw herself on her knees.
The memory of Boniface de la Mole, and of Marguerite of Navarre gave her, no doubt, a superhuman courage.
Her trembling hands undid the cloak. Fouque turned away his eyes.
He heard Mathilde walking feverishly about the room.
She lit several candles.
When Fouque could bring himself to look at her, she had placed Julien's head on a little marble table in front of her, and was kissing it on the forehead.
Mathilde followed her lover to the tomb which he had chosen.
A great number of priests convoyed the bier, and, alone in her draped carriage, without anyone knowing it, she carried on her knees the head of the man whom she had loved so much.
When they arrived in this way at the most elevated peak of the high mountains of the Jura, twenty priests celebrated the service of the dead in the middle of the night in this little grotto, which was magnificently illuminated by a countless number of wax candles.
Attracted by this strange and singular ceremony, all the inhabitants of the little mountain villages which the funeral had passed through, followed it.
Mathilde appeared in their midst in long mourning garments, and had several thousands of five-franc pieces thrown to them at the end of the service.
When she was left alone with Fouque, she insisted on burying her lover's head with her own hands. Fouque nearly went mad with grief.
Mathilde took care that this wild grotto should be decorated with marble monuments that had been sculpted in Italy at great expense. Madame de Renal kept her promise.
She did not try to make any attempt upon her life; but she died embracing her children, three days after Julien.