Chapter summary
Julien Sorel lives in the tower in a tranquility that leaves him indifferent even to the presence of Mathilde de La Mole. He tells the judge and the lawyer that there was a crime with premeditation, and he furiously refuses the lawyer's suggestion to plead jealousy. He asks that no one speak to him of the trial, and he spends his last days smoking cigars on the terrace and thinking of Vergy. Meanwhile Mathilde, through the correspondence of the marechale de Fervaques with the vicar general, gets the word "bishopric" and a note from the bishop, written in the margin of a letter from his niece, favorable to Julien, passed along to him. The Abbé de Frilair, on the eve of the drawing of the thirty-six jurors, laments the Jacobin law that multiplied them. The next day he names five members of the Congregation in town and Messrs. Valenod, Moirod, and Cholin, for whom he vouches. Madame de Rênal, who had promised her husband not to leave her bed, goes to Besançon and writes to each of the thirty-six jurors a letter asking them to declare the premeditation not beyond dispute.
Analysis
Julien furiously refuses to plead jealousy because he calls the plea an abominable lie: he prefers death to a defense that falsifies what he did. He asks that no one speak to him of the trial and lives "in his ideal life," between cigars and the memory of Vergy. The tranquility that leaves him indifferent even to Mathilde's presence is made of refusing everything that pulls him back toward practical life.
Julien in prison: Still, it is strange that I only learned the art of enjoying life after seeing its end approach.
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