“Who knows what one will find in the other life,” answered Julien, “perhaps torment, perhaps nothing at all. Cannot we pass two delicious months together? Two months means a good many days. I shall never have been so happy.”
“You will never have been so happy?”
“Never,” repeated Julien ecstatically, “and I am talking to you just as I should talk to myself. May God save me from exaggerating.”
“Words like that are a command,” she said with a timid melancholy smile.
“Well, you will swear by the love you have for me, to make no attempt either direct or indirect, upon your life ... remember,” he added, “that you must live for my son, whom Mathilde will hand over to lackeys as soon as she is marquise de Croisenois.”
“I swear,” she answered coldly, “but I want to take away your notice of appeal, drawn and signed by yourself. I will go myself to M. the procureur-general.”
“Be careful, you will compromise yourself.”
“After having taken the step of coming to see you in your prison, I shall be a heroine of local scandal for Besançon, and the whole of Franche-Comté,” she said very dejectedly. “I have crossed the bounds of austere modesty.... I am a woman who has lost her honour; it is true that it is for your sake....”
Her tone was so sad that Julien embraced her with a happiness which was quite novel to him. It was no longer the intoxication of love, it was extreme gratitude. He had just realised for the first time the full extent of the sacrifice which she had made for him.
Some charitable soul, no doubt informed M. de Rênal of the long visits which his wife paid to Julien’s prison; for at the end of three days he sent her his carriage with the express order to return to Verrières immediately.