to multiply his questions, with a view of the accused contradicting himself in his answers.
"Don't you see," said Julien to him with a smile, "that I am making myself out as guilty as you can possibly desire? Go away, monsieur, you will not fail to catch the quarry you are pursuing. You will have the pleasure to condemn me. Spare me your presence."
"I have an irksome duty to perform," thought Julien. "I must write to mademoiselle de la Mole:—
"I have avenged myself," he said to her. "Unfortunately, my name will appear in the papers, and I shall not be able to escape from the world incognito. I shall die in two months' time. My revenge was ghastly, like the pain of being separated from you. From this moment I forbid myself to write or pronounce your name. Never speak of me even to my son; silence is the only way of honouring me. To the ordinary commonplace man, I shall represent a common assassin. Allow me the luxury of the truth at this supreme moment; you will forget me. This great catastrophe of which I advise you not to say a single word to a single living person, will exhaust, for several years to come, all that romantic and unduly adventurous element which I have detected in your character. You were intended by nature to live among the heroes of the middle ages; exhibit their firm character. Let what has to happen take place in secret and without your being compromised. You will assume a false name, and you will confide in no one. If you absolutely need a friend's help, I bequeath the abbé Pirard to you.
Do not talk to anyone else, particularly to the people of your own class—the de Luz's, the Caylus's.
A year after my death, marry M. de Croisenois; I command you as your husband. Do not write to me at all, I shall not answer. Though in my view, much less wicked than Iago, I am going to say, like him: 'From this time forth, I never will speack word.'[1]
I shall never be seen to speak or write again. You will have received my final words and my final expressions of adoration.
J. S."
It was only after he had despatched this letter and had recovered himself a little, that Julien felt for the first time extremely unhappy. Those momentous words, I shall die, meant the successive tearing out of his heart of each individual hope and ambition. Death, in itself, was not horrible in his eyes. His whole life had been nothing but a long prepara-
- ↑ Stendhal's bad spelling is here reproduced.
