Julien Sorel's insights as he awaits execution in Red and the Black

Mme de Renal visits Julien Sorel in his prison cell (atop a high tower, a motif that Stendahl developed much further in Charterhouse) and she tells him she has always loved him, and Julien likewise and they spend a long time in each other's arms. So she so easily forgives him for shooting her twice in the back (what a hero!) and takes blame for writing a letter to his father-in-law to be denouncing him (the priest made me do it!). J considers an appeal just so as to have more time to spend w/ Mme de R - but it's still of great importance to him that he go to his execution without showing fear. A few more encounters happen, as his estranged father visits him in the cell and J bestows on him some money - despite the father's horrible mistreatment of his youngest son. J then imagines his father showing off gold pieces and boasting, a thought that leads J to further speculation on his death sentence. Interestingly, he asks to meet w/ 2 other condemned men, men who are condemned for "ordinary" crimes, not for political actions nor for crimes of passion. One of the men tells J his life story - amazingly, Stendahl does not share the story - imagine what Dostoyevsky would have done w/ this scene! - but J begins to reflect that these career criminals are more immoral than the church and political leaders, w/ their bribery and hypocrisy. J in fact loses all faith in the church, as he seems to begin to recognize the class structure in France (and elsewhere), in which men who steal or kill for "need" are considered far beneath those who steal (or kill? for greed, for power. J's ramblings are little incoherent and hard to follow as his execution nears, and his insights are not the most original or inaccessible, but we can see that the prospect of a hanging (or the guillotine), to paraphrase Johnson, has concentrated his mind, made him aware of a social corruption and malaise that should have been apparent to him long ago. BTW, he is completely, even cruelly, dismissive of the mother-to-be of his child, treating her as a pest and annoyance though she has done him nothing but kindness.