Chapter summary
Julien Sorel waits for his father, but it is Mathilde de La Mole who enters the tower, dressed as a peasant woman and traveling under the name Madame Michelet. He describes to her the future he imagines for her, married to Croisenois, and she, who had bribed a judge's clerk to get in, proposes that they die together. Mathilde concludes that in Besançon everything depends on the Abbé de Frilair. After eight days of requests she manages to see him, confesses that she is the daughter of the Marquis de La Mole, and asks whether it is possible to make Julien escape. The vicar general, upon reading the letters of the minister of war to Mr. de La Vernaye and realizing that Mathilde is a friend of the marechale de Fervaques, sees a quick path to the episcopate. Frilair says that among the thirty-six jurors drawn by lot he would count on eight or ten friends and could get them to acquit. He then torments her by suggesting that the shot was born of jealousy of Madame de Rênal. He implies that he controls the prosecution and that he will personally work on at least thirty jurors.
Analysis
Frilair becomes interested in Julien's case when he realizes that Mathilde is the marquis's daughter and a friend of the marechale: helping her is the quick path to the episcopate. He offers what he has, the list of jurors, in exchange for what he wants, prestige. Mathilde, who insisted for eight days before being received, knows that in Besançon everything depends on him, and she seeks him out for that reason.
The system described is real in the France of the Restoration: the assize jury was drawn by lot from thirty-six notables of the department, and Abbé de Frilair says he can manipulate a good part of that list to convict or acquit in his favor.
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