tion for unhappiness, and he had made a point of not losing sight of what is considered the greatest unhappiness of all.
"Come then," he said to himself; "if I had to fight a duel in a couple of months, with an expert duellist, should I be weak enough to think about it incessantly with panic in my soul?"
He passed more than an hour in trying to analyze himself thoroughly on this score.
When he saw clear in his own soul, and the truth appeared before his eyes with as much definiteness as one of the pillars of his prison, he thought about remorse.
"Why should I have any? I have been atrociously injured; I have killed—I deserve death, but that is all. I die after having squared my account with humanity. I do not leave any obligation unfulfilled. I owe nothing to anybody; there is nothing shameful about my death, except the instrument of it; that alone, it is true, is simply sufficient to disgrace me in the eyes of the bourgeois of Verrières; but from the intellectual standpoint, what could be more contemptible than they? I have one means of winning their consideration; by flinging pieces of gold to the people as I go to the scaffold. If my memory is linked with the idea of gold, they will always look upon it as resplendent."
After this chain of reasoning, which after a minute's reflection seemed to him self-evident, Julien said to himself, "I have nothing left to do in the world," and fell into a deep sleep.
About 9 o'clock in the evening the gaoler woke him up as he brought in his supper.
"What are they saying in Verrières?"
"M. Julien, the oath which I took before the crucifix in the 'Royal Courtyard,' on the day when I was installed in my place, obliges me to silence."
He was silent, but remained. Julien was amused by the sight of this vulgar hypocrisy. I must make him, he thought, wait a long time for the five francs which he wants to sell his conscience for.
When the gaoler saw him finish his meal without making any attempt to corrupt him, he said in a soft and perfidious voice:
"The affection which I have for you, M. Julien, compels
