Page:The red and the black (1916).djvu/534

514 leave me a moment in peace. Mathilde who was already very jealous of madame de Rênal's visits and who had just learned of her departure realised the cause of Julien's bad temper and burst into tears.

Her grief was real; Julien saw this and was only the more irritated. He had a crying need of solitude, and how was he to get it?

Eventually Mathilde, after having tried to melt him by every possible argument, left him alone. But almost at the same moment, Fouqué presented herself.

"I need to be alone," he said, to this faithful friend, and as he saw him hesitate: "I am composing a memorial for my petition for pardon … one thing more … do me a favour, and never speak to me about death. If I have need of any especial services on that day, let me be the first to speak to you about it."

When Julien had eventually procured solitude, he found himself more prostrate and more cowardly than he had been before. The little force which this enfeebled soul still possessed had all been spent in concealing his condition from mademoiselle de la Mole.

Towards the evening he found consolation in this idea.

"If at the very moment this morning, when death seemed so ugly to me, I had been given notice of my execution, the pulic eye would have acted as a spur to glory, my demeanour would perhaps have had a certain stiffness about it, like a nervous fop entering a salon. A few penetrating people, if there are any amongst these provincial might have managed to divine my weakness … 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.