At the trial in Besançon, Julien Sorel does not plead for mercy. He tells the jurors that he deserves death for the crime, but that they want to punish in him the young men born poor who manage to educate themselves and dare to enter good society.
Resolved not to speak, he rises when, after midnight, the president of the court asks whether he has anything to add. He begins: "Gentlemen, I do not have the honor of belonging to your class; you see in me a peasant who has rebelled against the baseness of his lot." He acknowledges that the crime was premeditated, says that Madame de Rênal "was like a mother" to him, and accuses: he will not be judged by his peers, because he sees on the jury benches "no enriched peasant, but only indignant bourgeois."
He speaks for twenty minutes, and the women in the audience weep. The jury withdraws at one o'clock. At two, Baron Valenod, Julien's old rival in Verrières, steps forward "with a grave and theatrical step" and reads the unanimous declaration: guilty of murder with premeditation, which carries the death penalty.
The outcome has a political irony. Vicar General Frilair counted on six friends on the jury and had promised acquittal. Valenod, with the governorship appointment in his pocket, preferred to condemn. Afterward, Frilair complains about the speech: "Why talk about caste?" Julien is condemned by a web of favors just like the career he tried to climb.