CHAPTER XLIII

A PLOT

        Disconnected remarks, casual meetings, become
        transformed in the eyes of an imaginative man into
        the most convincing proofs, if he has any fire in his
        temperament.--_Schiller_.

The following day he again caught Norbert and his sister talking about
him. A funereal silence was established on his arrival as on the
previous day. His suspicions were now unbounded. "Can these charming
young people have started to make fun of me? I must own this is much
more probable, much more natural than any suggested passion on the part
of mademoiselle de La Mole for a poor devil of a secretary. In the
first place, have those people got any passions at all? Mystification
is their strong point. They are jealous of my poor little superiority
in speaking. Being jealous again is one of their weaknesses. On that
basis everything is explicable. Mademoiselle de La Mole simply wants to
persuade me that she is marking me out for special favour in order to
show me off to her betrothed?"

This cruel suspicion completely changed Julien's psychological
condition. The idea found in his heart a budding love which it had no
difficulty in destroying. This love was only founded on Mathilde's rare
beauty, or rather on her queenly manners and her admirable dresses.
Julien was still a parvenu in this respect. We are assured that there
is nothing equal to a pretty society women for dazzling a peasant
who is at the same time a man of intellect, when he is admitted to
first class society. It had not been Mathilde's character which had
given Julien food for dreams in the days that had just passed. He had
sufficient sense to realise that he knew nothing about her character.
All he saw of it might be merely superficial.

For instance, Mathilde would not have missed mass on Sunday for
anything in the world. She accompanied her mother there nearly every
time. If when in the salon of the Hotel de La Mole some indiscreet man
forgot where he was, and indulged in the remotest allusion to any jest
against the real or supposed interests of Church or State, Mathilde
immediately assumed an icy seriousness. Her previously arch expression
re-assumed all the impassive haughtiness of an old family portrait.

But Julien had assured himself that she always had one or two of
Voltaire's most philosophic volumes in her room. He himself would
often steal some tomes of that fine edition which was so magnificently
bound. By moving each volume a little distance from the one next to it
he managed to hide the absence of the one he took away, but he soon
noticed that someone else was reading Voltaire. He had recourse to a
trick worthy of the seminary and placed some pieces of hair on those
volumes which he thought were likely to interest mademoiselle de La
Mole. They disappeared for whole weeks.

M. de La Mole had lost patience with his bookseller, who always sent
him all the spurious memoirs, and had instructed Julien to buy all the
new books, which were at all stimulating. But in order to prevent the
poison spreading over the household, the secretary was ordered to place
the books in a little book-case that stood in the marquis's own room.
He was soon quite certain that although the new books were hostile to
the interests of both State and Church, they very quickly disappeared.
It was certainly not Norbert who read them.

Julien attached undue importance to this discovery, and attributed to
mademoiselle de la Mole a Machiavellian role. This seeming depravity
constituted a charm in his eyes, the one moral charm, in fact, which
she possessed. He was led into this extravagance by his boredom with
hypocrisy and moral platitudes.

It was more a case of his exciting his own imagination than of his
being swept away by his love.

It was only after he had abandoned himself to reveries about the
elegance of mademoiselle de la Mole's figure, the excellent taste
of he dress, the whiteness of her hand, the beauty of her arm, the
_disinvoltura_ of all her movements, that he began to find himself in
love. Then in order to complete the charm he thought her a Catherine
de' Medici. Nothing was too deep or too criminal for the character
which he ascribed to her. She was the ideal of the Maslons, the
Frilairs, and the Castanedes whom he had admired so much in his youth.
To put it shortly, she represented in his eyes the Paris ideal.

Could anything possibly be more humorous than believing in the depth or
in the depravity of the Parisian character?

It is impossible that this _trio_ is making fun of me thought Julien.
The reader knows little of his character if he has not begun already
to imagine his cold and gloomy expression when he answered Mathilde's
looks. A bitter irony rebuffed those assurances of friendship which the
astonished mademoiselle de la Mole ventured to hazard on two or three
occasions.

Piqued by this sudden eccentricity, the heart of this young girl,
though naturally cold, bored and intellectual, became as impassioned as
it was naturally capable of being. But there was also a large element
of pride in Mathilde's character, and the birth of a sentiment which
made all her happiness dependent on another, was accompanied by a
gloomy melancholy.

Julien had derived sufficient advantage from his stay in Paris to
appreciate that this was not the frigid melancholy of ennui. Instead
of being keen as she had been on at homes, theatres, and all kinds of
distractions, she now shunned them.

Music sung by Frenchmen bored Mathilde to death, yet Julien, who
always made a point of being present when the audience came out of the
Opera, noticed that she made a point of getting taken there as often
as she could. He thought he noticed that she had lost a little of that
brilliant neatness of touch which used to be manifest in everything
she did. She would sometimes answer her friends with jests rendered
positively outrageous through the sheer force of their stinging energy.
He thought that she made a special butt of the marquis de Croisenois.
That young man must be desperately in love with money not to give the
go-by to that girl, however rich she maybe, thought Julien. And as for
himself, indignant at these outrages on masculine self-respect, he
redoubled his frigidity towards her. Sometimes he went so far as to
answer her with scant courtesy.

In spite of his resolution not to become the dupe of Mathilde's signs
of interest, these manifestations were so palpable on certain days, and
Julien, whose eyes were beginning to be opened, began to find her so
pretty, that he was sometimes embarrassed.

"These young people of society will score in the long run by their
skill and their coolness over my inexperience," he said to himself. "I
must leave and put an end to all this." The marquis had just entrusted
him with the administration of a number of small estates and houses
which he possessed in Lower Languedoc. A journey was necessary; M. de
la Mole reluctantly consented. Julien had become his other self, except
in those matters which concerned his political career.

"So, when we come to balance the account," Julien said to himself,
as he prepared his departure, "they have not caught me. Whether the
jests that mademoiselle de la Mole made to those gentlemen are real,
or whether they were only intended to inspire me with confidence, they
have simply amused me.

"If there is no conspiracy against the carpenter's son, mademoiselle de
la Mole is an enigma, but at any rate, she is quite as much an enigma
for the marquis de Croisenois as she is to me. Yesterday, for instance,
her bad temper was very real, and I had the pleasure of seeing her
snub, thanks to her favour for me, a young man who is as noble and as
rich as I am a poor scoundrel of a plebeian. That is my finest triumph;
it will divert me in my post-chaise as I traverse the Languedoc plains."

He had kept his departure a secret, but Mathilde knew, even better than
he did himself, that he was going to leave Paris the following day for
a long time. She developed a maddening headache, which was rendered
worse by the stuffy salon. She walked a great deal in the garden, and
persecuted Norbert, the marquis de Croisenois, Caylus, de Luz, and
some other young men who had dined at the Hotel de la Mole, to such an
extent by her mordant witticisms, that she drove them to take their
leave. She kept looking at Julien in a strange way.

"Perhaps that look is a pose," thought Julien, "but how about that
hurried breathing and all that agitation? Bah," he said to himself,
"who am I to judge of such things? We are dealing with the cream of
Parisian sublimity and subtlety. As for that hurried breathing which
was on the point of affecting me, she no doubt studied it with Leontine
Fay, whom she likes so much."

They were left alone; the conversation was obviously languishing. "No,
Julien has no feeling for me," said Mathilde to herself, in a state of
real unhappiness.

As he was taking leave of her she took his arm violently.

"You will receive a letter from me this evening," she said to him in a
voice that was so changed that its tone was scarcely recognisable.

This circumstance affected Julien immediately.

"My father," she continued, "has a proper regard for the services you
render him. You must not leave to-morrow; find an excuse." And she ran
away.

Her figure was charming. It was impossible to have a prettier foot. She
ran with a grace which fascinated Julien, but will the reader guess
what he began to think about after she had finally left him? He felt
wounded by the imperious tone with which she had said the words, "you
must." Louis XV. too, when on his death-bed, had been keenly irritated
by the words "you must," which had been tactlessly pronounced by his
first physician, and yet Louis XV. was not a parvenu.

An hour afterwards a footman gave Julien a letter. It was quite simply
a declaration of love.

"The style is too affected," said Julien to himself, as he endeavoured
to control by his literary criticism the joy which was spreading over
his cheeks and forcing him to smile in spite of himself.

At last his passionate exultation was too strong to be controlled. "So
I," he suddenly exclaimed, "I, the poor peasant, get a declaration of
love from a great lady."

"As for myself, I haven't done so badly," he added, restraining his
joy as much as he could. "I have managed to preserve my self-respect.
I did not say that I loved her." He began to study the formation of
the letters. Mademoiselle de la Mole had a pretty little English
handwriting. He needed some concrete occupation to distract him from a
joy which verged on delirium.

"Your departure forces me to speak.... I could not bear not to see you
again."

A thought had just struck Julien like a new discovery. It interrupted
his examination of Mathilde's letter, and redoubled his joy. "So I
score over the marquis de Croisenois," he exclaimed. "Yes, I who could
only talk seriously! And he is so handsome. He has a moustache and a
charming uniform. He always manages to say something witty and clever
just at the psychological moment."

Julien experienced a delightful minute. He was wandering at random in
the garden, mad with happiness.

Afterwards he went up to his desk, and had himself ushered in to the
marquis de la Mole, who was fortunately still in. He showed him several
stamped papers which had come from Normandy, and had no difficulty
in convincing him that he was obliged to put off his departure for
Languedoc in order to look after the Normandy lawsuits.

"I am very glad that you are not going," said the marquis to him, when
they had finished talking business. "I like seeing you." Julien went
out; the words irritated him.

"And I--I am going to seduce his daughter! and perhaps render
impossible that marriage with the marquis de Croisenois to which the
marquis looks forward with such delight. If he does not get made a
duke, at any rate his daughter will have a coronet." Julien thought of
leaving for Languedoc in spite of Mathilde's letter, and in spite of
the explanation he had just given to the marquis. This flash of virtue
quickly disappeared.

"How kind it is of me," he said to himself, "me ... a plebeian, takes
pity on a family of this rank! Yes, me, whom the duke of Chaulnes
calls a servant! How does the marquis manage to increase his immense
fortune? By selling stock when he picks up information at the castle
that there will be a panic of a _coup d'etat_ on the following day.
And shall I, who have been flung down into the lowest class by a cruel
providence--I, whom providence has given a noble heart but not an
income of a thousand francs, that is to say, not enough to buy bread
with, literally not enough to buy bread with--shall I refuse a pleasure
that presents itself? A limpid fountain which will quench my thirst in
this scorching desert of mediocrity which I am traversing with such
difficulty! Upon my word, I am not such a fool! Each man for himself in
that desert of egoism which is called life."

And he remembered certain disdainful looks which madame de la Mole, and
especially her lady friends, had favoured him with.

The pleasure of scoring over the marquis de Croisenois completed the
rout of this echo of virtue.

"How I should like to make him angry," said Julien. "With what
confidence would I give him a sword thrust now!" And he went through
the segoon thrust. "Up till now I have been a mere usher, who exploited
basely the little courage he had. After this letter I am his equal.

"Yes," he slowly said to himself, with an infinite pleasure, "the
merits of the marquis and myself have been weighed in the balance, and
it is the poor carpenter from the Jura who turns the scale.

"Good!" he exclaimed, "this is how I shall sign my answer. Don't
imagine, mademoiselle de la Mole, that I am forgetting my place. I will
make you realise and fully appreciate that it is for a carpenter's son
that you are betraying a descendant of the famous Guy de Croisenois who
followed St. Louis to the Crusade."

Julien was unable to control his joy. He was obliged to go down into
the garden. He had locked himself in his room, but he found it too
narrow to breathe in.

"To think of it being me, the poor peasant from the Jura," he kept
on repeating to himself, "to think of it being me who am eternally
condemned to wear this gloomy black suit! Alas twenty years ago I would
have worn a uniform like they do! In those days a man like me either
got killed or became a general at thirty-six. The letter which he held
clenched in his hand gave him a heroic pose and stature. Nowadays, it
is true, if one sticks to this black suit, one gets at forty an income
of a hundred thousand francs and the blue ribbon like my lord bishop of
Beauvais.

"Well," he said to himself with a Mephistophelian smile, "I have more
brains than they. I am shrewd enough to choose the uniform of my
century. And he felt a quickening of his ambition and of his attachment
to his ecclesiastical dress. What cardinals of even lower birth than
mine have not succeeded in governing! My compatriot Granvelle, for
instance."

Julien's agitation became gradually calmed! Prudence emerged to the
top. He said to himself like his master Tartuffe whose part he knew by
heart:

    Je puis croire ces mots, un artifice honnete.
    *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
    Je ne me firai point a des propos si doux,
    Qu'un peu de ses faveurs apres quoi je soupire
    Ne vienne m'assurer tout ce qu'ils m'ont pudire.
                                  _Tartuffe, act iv. Scene v_.

"Tartuffe, too, was ruined by a woman, and he was as good as most
men.... My answer may be shown.... and the way out of that is this," he
added pronouncing his words slowly with an intonation of deliberate and
restrained ferocity. "We will begin by quoting the most vivid passages
from the letter of the sublime Mathilde."

"Quite so, but M. de Croisenois' lackeys will hurl themselves upon me
and snatch the original away."

"No, they won't, for I am well armed, and as we know I am accustomed to
firing on lackeys."

"Well, suppose one of them has courage, and hurls himself upon me. He
has been promised a hundred napoleons. I kill him, or wound him, good,
that's what they want. I shall be thrown into prison legally. I shall
be had up in the police court and the judges will send me with all
justice and all equity to keep Messieurs Fontan and Magalon company
in Poissy. There I shall be landed in the middle of four hundred
scoundrels.... And am I to have the slightest pity on these people,"
he exclaimed getting up impetuously! "Do they show any to persons of
the third estate when they have them in their power!" With these words
his gratitude to M. de la Mole, which had been in spite of himself
torturing his conscience up to this time, breathed its last.

"Softly, gentlemen, I follow this little Machiavellian trick, the abbe
Maslon or M. Castanede of the seminary could not have done better. You
will take the provocative letter away from me and I shall exemplify the
second volume of Colonel Caron at Colmar."

"One moment, gentlemen, I will send the fatal letter in a well-sealed
packet to M. the abbe Pirard to take care of. He's an honest man, a
Jansenist, and consequently incorruptible. Yes, but he will open the
letters.... Fouque is the man to whom I must send it."

We must admit that Julien's expression was awful, his countenance
ghastly; it breathed unmitigated criminality. It represented the
unhappy man at war with all society.

"To arms," exclaimed Julien. And he bounded up the flight of steps
of the hotel with one stride. He entered the stall of the street
scrivener; he frightened him. "Copy this," he said, giving him
mademoiselle de la Mole's letter.

While the scrivener was working, he himself wrote to Fouque. He asked
him to take care of a valuable deposit. "But he said to himself,"
breaking in upon his train of thought, "the secret service of the
post-office will open my letter, and will give you gentlemen the one
you are looking for ... not quite, gentlemen." He went and bought an
enormous Bible from a Protestant bookseller, skillfully hid Mathilde's
letter in the cover, and packed it all up. His parcel left by the
diligence addressed to one of Fouque's workmen, whose name was known to
nobody at Paris.

This done, he returned to the Hotel de la Mole, joyous and buoyant.

Now it's our turn he exclaimed as he locked himself into the room and
threw off his coat.

"What! mademoiselle," he wrote to Mathilde, "is it mademoiselle de la
Mole who gets Arsene her father's lackey to hand an only too flattering
letter to a poor carpenter from the Jura, in order no doubt to make
fun of his simplicity?" And he copied out the most explicit phrases in
the letter which he had just received. His own letter would have done
honour to the diplomatic prudence of M. the Chevalier de Beauvoisis.
It was still only ten o'clock when Julien entered the Italian opera,
intoxicated with happiness and that feeling of his own power which was
so novel for a poor devil like him. He heard his friend Geronimo sing.
Music had never exalted him to such a pitch.

Julien drops in on a conversation between Mathilde and Norbert, who are speaking about him. They fall silent, and he wonders for a moment if they're conspiring to make fun of him. While doing some business for the Marquis de La Mole, Julien realizes that some of the man's private books are going missing. The books are especially racy, and Julien knows it's not Norbert who's taking them. It must be Mathilde. Julien learns that he'll have to make a trip to a place called Languedoc. He smiles to think that while he's gone, he'll know that he is first in Mathilde's heart. One night while walking, Mathilde grips him by the arm and tells him to expect a letter from her that night. An hour later, Julien receives a letter that plainly declares Mathilde's love for him. He decides to put off his trip to Languedoc. He revels in the fact that he, such a poor young man, has bested all the richest noblemen in Paris. Julien worries that he might be walking into a trap if he tries to visit Mathilde. After all, he has been shot at before for visiting a woman's bedroom. So he decides to send his letter from Mathilde to his buddy Fouqe for safekeeping, just in case something happens to him.


CHAPTER XLIV

A YOUNG GIRL'S THOUGHTS

        What perplexity! What sleepless nights! Great God. Am I
        going to make myself contemptible? He will despise me
        himself. But he is leaving, he is going away.
                                    _Alfred de Musset_

Mathilde had not written without a struggle. Whatever might have been
the beginning of her interest in Julien, it soon dominated that pride
which had reigned unchallenged in her heart since she had begun to know
herself. This cold and haughty soul was swept away for the first time
by a sentiment of passion, but if this passion dominated her pride,
it still kept faithfully to the habits of that pride. Two months of
struggles and new sensations had transformed, so to speak her whole
moral life.

Mathilde thought she was in sight of happiness. This vista,
irresistible as it is for those who combine a superior intellect with
a courageous soul, had to struggle for a long time against her self
respect and all her vulgar duties. One day she went into her mother's
room at seven o'clock in the morning and asked permission to take
refuge in Villequier. The marquise did not even deign to answer her,
and advised her to go back to bed. This was the last effort of vulgar
prudence and respect for tradition.

The fear of doing wrong and of offending those ideas which the
Caylus's, the de Luz's, the Croisenois' held for sacred had little
power over her soul. She considered such creatures incapable of
understanding her. She would have consulted them, if it had been a
matter of buying a carriage or an estate. Her real fear was that Julien
was displeased with her.

"Perhaps he, too, has only the appearance of a superior man?"

She abhorred lack of character; that was her one objection to the
handsome young men who surrounded her. The more they made elegant
fun of everything which deviated from the prevailing mode, or which
conformed to it but indifferently, the lower they fell in her eyes.

They were brave and that was all. "And after all in what way were they
brave?" she said to herself. "In duels, but the duel is nothing more
than a formality. The whole thing is mapped out beforehand, even the
correct thing to say when you fall. Stretched on the turf, and with
your hand on your heart, you must vouchsafe a generous forgiveness to
the adversary, and a few words for a fair lady, who is often imaginary,
or if she does exist, will go to a ball on the day of your death for
fear of arousing suspicion."

"One braves danger at the head of a squadron brilliant with steel, but
how about that danger which is solitary, strange, unforeseen and really
ugly."

"Alas," said Mathilde to herself, "it was at the court of Henri III.
that men who were great both by character and by birth were to be
found! Yes! If Julien had served at Jarnac or Moncontour, I should no
longer doubt. In those days of strength and vigour Frenchmen were not
dolls. The day of the battle was almost the one which presented the
fewest problems."

Their life was not imprisoned, like an Egyptian mummy in a covering
which was common to all, and always the same. "Yes," she added, "there
was more real courage in going home alone at eleven o'clock in the
evening when one came out of the Hotel de Soissons where Catherine
de' Medici lived than there is nowadays in running over to Algiers.
A man's life was then a series of hazards. Nowadays civilisation has
banished hazard. There are no more surprises. If anything new appears
in any idea there are not sufficient epigrams to immortalise it, but if
anything new appears in actual life, our panic reaches the lowest depth
of cowardice. Whatever folly panic makes us commit is excused. What a
degenerate and boring age! What would Boniface de la Mole have said
if, lifting his cut-off head out of the tomb, he had seen seventeen of
his descendants allow themselves to be caught like sheep in 1793 in
order to be guillotined two days afterwards! Death was certain, but it
would have been bad form to have defended themselves and to have killed
at least one or two Jacobins. Yes! in the heroic days of France, in
the age of Boniface de la Mole, Julien would have been the chief of
a squadron, while my brother would have been the young priest with
decorous manners, with wisdom in his eyes and reason on his lips." Some
months previously Mathilde had given up all hope of meeting any being
who was a little different from the common pattern. She had found some
happiness in allowing herself to write to some young society men. This
rash procedure, which was so unbecoming and so imprudent in a young
girl, might have disgraced her in the eyes of M. de Croisenois, the
Duke de Chaulnes, his father, and the whole Hotel de Chaulnes, who on
seeing the projected marriage broken off would have wanted to know the
reason. At that time Mathilde had been unable to sleep on those days
when she had written one of her letters. But those letters were only
answers. But now she ventured to declare her own love. She wrote first
(what a terrible word!) to a man of the lowest social grade.

This circumstance rendered her eternal disgrace quite inevitable in the
event of detection. Who of the women who visited her mother would have
dared to take her part? What official excuse could be evolved which
could successfully cope with the awful contempt of society.

Besides speaking was awful enough, but writing! "There are some
things which are not written!" Napoleon had exclaimed on learning of
the capitulation of Baylen. And it was Julien who had told her that
epigram, as though giving her a lesson that was to come in useful
subsequently.

But all this was comparatively unimportant, Mathilde's anguish had
other causes. Forgetting the terrible effect it would produce on
society, and the ineffable blot on her scutcheon that would follow such
an outrage on her own caste, Mathilde was going to write to a person
of a very different character to the Croisenois', the de Luz's, the
Caylus's.

She would have been frightened at the depth and mystery in Julien's
character, even if she had merely entered into a conventional
acquaintance with him. And she was going to make him her lover, perhaps
her master.

"What will his pretensions not be, if he is ever in a position to do
everything with me? Well! I shall say, like Medea: _Au milieu de tant
de perils il me reste Moi_." She believed that Julien had no respect
for nobility of blood. What was more, he probably did not love her.

In these last moments of awful doubt her feminine pride suggested to
her certain ideas. "Everything is bound to be extraordinary in the life
of a girl like me," exclaimed Mathilde impatiently. The pride, which
had been drilled into her since her cradle, began to struggle with her
virtue. It was at this moment that Julien's departure precipitated
everything.

(Such characters are luckily very rare.)

Very late in the evening, Julien was malicious enough to have a very
heavy trunk taken down to the porter's lodge. He called the valet, who
was courting mademoiselle de la Mole's chambermaid, to move it. "This
manoeuvre cannot result in anything," he said to himself, "but if it
does succeed, she will think that I have gone." Very tickled by this
humorous thought, he fell asleep. Mathilde did not sleep a wink.

Julien left the hotel very early the next morning without being seen,
but he came back before eight o'clock.

He had scarcely entered the library before M. de la Mole appeared
on the threshold. He handed her his answer. He thought that it was
his duty to speak to her, it was certainly perfectly feasible, but
mademoiselle de la Mole would not listen to him and disappeared. Julien
was delighted. He did not know what to say.

"If all this is not a put up job with comte Norbert, it is clear that
it is my cold looks which have kindled the strange love which this
aristocratic girl chooses to entertain for me. I should be really
too much of a fool if I ever allowed myself to take a fancy to that
big blonde doll." This train of reasoning left him colder and more
calculating than he had ever been.

"In the battle for which we are preparing," he added, "pride of birth
will be like a high hill which constitutes a military position between
her and me. That must be the field of the manoeuvres. I made a great
mistake in staying in Paris; this postponing of my departure cheapens
and exposes me, if all this is simply a trick. What danger was there in
leaving? If they were making fun of me, I was making fun of them. If
her interest for me was in any way real, I was making that interest a
hundred times more intense."

Mademoiselle de la Mole's letter had given Julien's vanity so keen a
pleasure, that wreathed as he was in smiles at his good fortune he had
forgotten to think seriously about the propriety of leaving.

It was one of the fatal elements of his character to be extremely
sensitive to his own weaknesses. He was extremely upset by this one,
and had almost forgotten the incredible victory which had preceded this
slight check, when about nine o'clock mademoiselle de la Mole appeared
on the threshold of the library, flung him a letter and ran away.

"So this is going to be the romance by letters," he said as he picked
it up. "The enemy makes a false move; I will reply by coldness and
virtue."

He was asked with a poignancy which merely increased his inner gaiety
to give a definite answer. He indulged in the pleasure of mystifying
those persons who he thought wanted to make fun of him for two pages,
and it was out of humour again that he announced towards the end of his
answer his definite departure on the following morning.

"The garden will be a useful place to hand her the letter," he thought
after he had finished it, and he went there. He looked at the window of
mademoiselle de la Mole's room.

It was on the first storey, next to her mother's apartment, but there
was a large ground floor.

This latter was so high that, as Julien walked under the avenue
of pines with his letter in his hands, he could not be seen from
mademoiselle de la Mole's window. The dome formed by the well clipped
pines intercepted the view. "What!" said Julien to himself angrily,
"another indiscretion! If they have really begun making fun of me,
showing myself with a letter is playing into my enemy's hands."

Norbert's room was exactly above his sister's and if Julien came out
from under the dome formed by the clipped branches of the pine, the
comte and his friend could follow all his movements.

Mademoiselle de la Mole appeared behind her window; he half showed his
letter; she lowered her head, then Julien ran up to his own room and
met accidentally on the main staircase the fair Mathilde, who seized
the letter with complete self-possession and smiling eyes.

"What passion there was in the eyes of that poor madame de Renal," said
Julien to himself, "when she ventured to receive a letter from me,
even after six months of intimate relationship! I don't think she ever
looked at me with smiling eyes in her whole life."

He did not formulate so precisely the rest of his answer; was he
perhaps ashamed of the triviality of the motive which were actuating
him?

"But how different too," he went on to think, "are her elegant morning
dress and her distinguished appearance! A man of taste on seeing
mademoiselle de la Mole thirty yards off would infer the position which
she occupies in society. That is what can be called a specific merit."

In spite of all this humorousness, Julien was not yet quite honest with
himself; madame de Renal had no marquis de Croisenois to sacrifice to
him. His only rival was that grotesque sub-prefect, M. Charcot, who
assumed the name of Maugiron, because there were no Maugirons left in
France.

At five o'clock Julien received a third letter. It was thrown to him
from the library door. Mademoiselle de la Mole ran away again. "What
a mania for writing," he said to himself with a laugh, "when one can
talk so easily. The enemy wants my letters, that is clear, and many of
them." He did not hurry to open this one. "More elegant phrases," he
thought; but he paled as he read it. There were only eight lines.

"I need to speak to you; I must speak to you this evening. Be in
the garden at the moment when one o'clock is striking. Take the big
gardeners' ladder near the well; place it against my window, and climb
up to my room. It is moonlight; never mind."

Mathilde waits for some sort of reply to her letter to Julien. She is overwhelmed with happiness. Meanwhile, Julien gets a servant to put his trunk near the front door to make Mathilde think he has left for Languedoc. He does this just to tease her desire a little more. He runs into Mathilde later the next night and hands her his written reply to her note. She takes it and runs away. About an hour later, Mathilde shows up at the door of the study and throws a letter at him, running away again. He writes another letter quickly and gives it to Mathilde while passing her on the stairs. He gets a third letter from Mathilde that night, which shows him just how obsessed she's become. He gets nervous, though, when he reads the letter and finds out that Mathilde wants him to meet her in the garden at one a.m. She says there'll be a ladder there that can lead him up to her room. Now he really thinks he's being led into a trap, because this sounds too bold to be true.


CHAPTER XLV

IS IT A PLOT?

Oh, how cruel is the interval between the conception
and the execution of a great project. What vain fears,
what fits of irresolution! It is a matter of life and
death--even more is at stake honour!--_Schiller_.

"This is getting serious," thought Julien, "and a little too clear,"
he added after thinking a little. "Why to be sure! This fine young
lady can talk to me in the library with a freedom which, thank heaven,
is absolutely complete; the marquis, frightened as he is that I show
him accounts, never sets foot in it. Why! M. de la Mole and the comte
Norbert, the only persons who ever come here, are absent nearly the
whole day, and the sublime Mathilde for whom a sovereign prince
would not be too noble a suitor, wants me to commit an abominable
indiscretion.

"It is clear they want to ruin me, or at the least make fun of me.
First they wanted to ruin me by my own letters; they happen to be
discreet; well, they want some act which is clearer than daylight.
These handsome little gentlemen think I am too silly or too conceited.
The devil! To think of climbing like this up a ladder to a storey
twenty-five feet high in the finest moonlight. They would have time to
see me, even from the neighbouring houses. I shall cut a pretty figure
to be sure on my ladder!" Julien went up to his room again and began
to pack his trunk whistling. He had decided to leave and not even to
answer.

But this wise resolution did not give him peace of mind. "If by
chance," he suddenly said to himself after he had closed his trunk,
"Mathilde is in good faith, why then I cut the figure of an arrant
coward in her eyes. I have no birth myself, so I need great qualities
attested straight away by speaking actions--money down--no charitable
credit."

He spent a quarter-of-an-hour in reflecting. "What is the good of
denying it?" he said at last. "She will think me a coward. I shall lose
not only the most brilliant person in high society, as they all said at
M. the duke de Retz's ball, but also the heavenly pleasure of seeing
the marquis de Croisenois, the son of a duke, who will be one day a
duke himself, sacrificed to me. A charming young man who has all the
qualities I lack. A happy wit, birth, fortune....

"This regret will haunt me all my life, not on her account, 'there are
so many mistresses!... but there is only one honour!' says old don
Diego. And here am I clearly and palpably shrinking from the first
danger that presents itself; for the duel with M. de Beauvoisis was
simply a joke. This is quite different. A servant may fire at me point
blank, but that is the least danger; I may be disgraced.

"This is getting serious, my boy," he added with a Gascon gaiety and
accent. "Honour is at stake. A poor devil flung by chance into as low a
grade as I am will never find such an opportunity again. I shall have
my conquests, but they will be inferior ones...."

He reflected for a long time, he walked up and down hurriedly, and
then from time to time would suddenly stop. A magnificent marble bust
of cardinal de Richelieu had been placed in his room. It attracted his
gaze in spite of himself. This bust seemed to look at him severely as
though reproaching him with the lack of that audacity which ought to be
so natural to the French character. "Would I have hesitated in your age
great man?"

"At the worst," said Julien to himself, "suppose all this is a trap,
it is pretty black and pretty compromising for a young girl. They know
that I am not the man to hold my tongue. They will therefore have to
kill me. That was right enough in 1574 in the days of Boniface de la
Mole, but nobody today would ever have the pluck. They are not the same
men. Mademoiselle de la Mole is the object of so much jealousy. Four
hundred salons would ring with her disgrace to-morrow, and how pleased
they would all be.

"The servants gossip among themselves about marked the favours of
which I am the recipient. I know it, I have heard them....

"On the other hand they're her letters. They may think that I have
them on me. They may surprise me in her room and take them from me. I
shall have to deal with two, three, or four men. How can I tell? But
where are they going to find these men? Where are they to find discreet
subordinates in Paris? Justice frightens them.... By God! It may be the
Caylus's, the Croisenois', the de Luz's themselves. The idea of the
ludicrous figure I should cut in the middle of them at the particular
minute may have attracted them. Look out for the fate of Abelard, M.
the secretary.

"Well, by heaven, I'll mark you. I'll strike at your faces like Caesar's
soldiers at Pharsalia. As for the letters, I can put them in a safe
place."

Julien copied out the two last, hid them in a fine volume of Voltaire
in the library and himself took the originals to the post.

"What folly am I going to rush into," he said to himself with surprise
and terror when he returned. He had been a quarter of an hour without
contemplating what he was to do on this coming night.

"But if I refuse, I am bound to despise myself afterwards. This matter
will always occasion me great doubt during my whole life, and to a man
like me such doubts are the most poignant unhappiness. Did I not feel
like that for Amanda's lover! I think I would find it easier to forgive
myself for a perfectly clear crime; once admitted, I could leave off
thinking of it.

"Why! I shall have been the rival of a man who bears one of the finest
names in France, and then out of pure light-heartedness, declared
myself his inferior! After all, it is cowardly not to go; these words
clinch everything," exclaimed Julien as he got up ... "besides she is
quite pretty."

"If this is not a piece of treachery, what a folly is she not
committing for my sake. If it's a piece of mystification, by heaven,
gentlemen, it only depends on me to turn the jest into earnest and that
I will do.

"But supposing they tie my hands together at the moment I enter the
room: they may have placed some ingenious machine there.

"It's like a duel," he said to himself with a laugh. "Everyone makes
a full parade, says my _maitre d'armes_, but the good God, who wishes
the thing to end, makes one of them forget to parry. Besides, here's
something to answer them with." He drew his pistols out of his pocket,
and although the priming was shining, he renewed it.

There was still several hours to wait. Julien wrote to Fouque in order
to have something to do. "My friend, do not open the enclosed letter
except in the event of an accident, if you hear that something strange
has happened to me. In that case blot out the proper names in the
manuscript which I am sending you, make eight copies of it, and send
it to the papers of Marseilles, Bordeaux, Lyons, Brussels, etc. Ten
days later have the manuscript printed, send the first copy to M. the
marquis de la Mole, and a fortnight after that throw the other copies
at night into the streets of Verrieres."

Julien made this little memoir in defence of his position as little
compromising as possible for mademoiselle de la Mole. Fouque was only
to open it in the event of an accident. It was put in the form of a
story, but in fact it exactly described his situation.

Julien had just fastened his packet when the dinner bell rang. It made
his heart beat. His imagination was distracted by the story which he
had just composed, and fell a prey to tragic presentiments. He saw
himself seized by servants, trussed, and taken into a cellar with a gag
in his mouth. A servant was stationed there, who never let him out of
sight, and if the family honour required that the adventure should have
a tragic end, it was easy to finish everything with those poisons which
leave no trace. They could then say that he had died of an illness and
would carry his dead body back into his room.

Thrilled like a dramatic author by his own story, Julien was really
afraid when he entered the dining-room. He looked at all those liveried
servants--he studied their faces. "Which ones are chosen for to-night's
expedition?" he said to himself. "The memories of the court of Henri
III. are so vivid in this family, and so often recalled, that if they
think they have been insulted they will show more resolution than other
persons of the same rank." He looked at mademoiselle de la Mole in
order to read the family plans in her eyes; she was pale and looked
quite middle-aged. He thought that she had never looked so great: she
was really handsome and imposing; he almost fell in love with her.
"_Pallida morte futura_," he said to himself (her pallor indicates
her great plans). It was in vain that after dinner he made a point of
walking for a long time in the garden, mademoiselle did not appear.
Speaking to her at that moment would have lifted a great weight off his
heart.

Why not admit it? he was afraid. As he had resolved to act, he was not
ashamed to abandon himself to this emotion. "So long as I show the
necessary courage at the actual moment," he said to himself, "what
does it matter what I feel at this particular moment?" He went to
reconnoitre the situation and find out the weight of the ladder.

"This is an instrument," he said to himself with a smile, "which I am
fated to use both here and at Verrieres. What a difference! In those
days," he added with a sigh, "I was not obliged to distrust the person
for whom I exposed myself to danger. What a difference also in the
danger!"

"There would have been no dishonour for me if I had been killed in M.
de Renal's gardens. It would have been easy to have made my death into
a mystery. But here all kinds of abominable scandal will be talked in
the salons of the Hotel de Chaulnes, the Hotel de Caylus, de Retz,
etc., everywhere in fact. I shall go down to posterity as a monster."

"For two or three years," he went on with a laugh, making fun of
himself; but the idea paralysed him. "And how am I going to manage to
get justified? Suppose that Fouque does print my posthumous pamphlet,
it will only be taken for an additional infamy. Why! I get received
into a house, and I reward the hospitality which I have received,
the kindness with which I have been loaded by printing a pamphlet
about what has happened and attacking the honour of women! Nay! I'd a
thousand times rather be duped."

The evening was awful.

Julien paces in his room, wondering if he should go see Mathilde in her room. On the one hand, it's probably a trap. On the other, he'll never have a chance to be with such a beautiful, rich young woman again. He decides to visit Mathilde, but to keep two loaded pistols in his pockets just in case. Then he sends a copy of Mathilde's letter to Fouqe. He spends the rest of the evening looking for some clue of knowledge in the faces of the servants in the house. He can't help but feel that there's a conspiracy against him. Why else would a girl like Mathilde ask him to her room in the middle of the night?


CHAPTER XLVI

ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING

        This garden was very big, it had been planned a
        few years ago in perfect taste. But the trees were
        more than a century old. It had a certain rustic
        atmosphere.--_Massinger_.

He was going to write a countermanding letter to Fouque when eleven
o'clock struck. He noisily turned the lock of the door of his room as
though he had locked himself in. He went with a sleuth-like step to
observe what was happening over the house, especially on the fourth
storey where the servants slept. There was nothing unusual. One of
madame de la Mole's chambermaids was giving an entertainment, the
servants were taking punch with much gaiety. "Those who laugh like
that," thought Julien, "cannot be participating in the nocturnal
expedition; if they were, they would be more serious."

Eventually he stationed himself in an obscure corner of the garden. "If
their plan is to hide themselves from the servants of the house, they
will despatch the persons whom they have told off to surprise me over
the garden wall.

"If M. de Croisenois shows any sense of proportion in this matter, he
is bound to find it less compromising for the young person, whom he
wishes to make his wife if he has me surprised before I enter her room."

He made a military and extremely detailed reconnaissance. "My honour is
at stake," he thought. "If I tumble into some pitfall it will not be an
excuse in my own eyes to say, 'I never thought of it.'"

The weather was desperately serene. About eleven o'clock the moon rose,
at half-past twelve it completely illuminated the facade of the hotel
looking out upon the garden.

"She is mad," Julien said to himself. As one o'clock struck there
was still a light in comte Norbert's windows. Julien had never been
so frightened in his life, he only saw the dangers of the enterprise
and had no enthusiasm at all. He went and took the immense ladder,
waited five minutes to give her time to tell him not to go, and five
minutes after one placed the ladder against Mathilde's window. He
mounted softly, pistol in hand, astonished at not being attacked. As he
approached the window it opened noiselessly.

"So there you are, monsieur," said Mathilde to him with considerable
emotion. "I have been following your movements for the last hour."

Julien was very much embarrassed. He did not know how to conduct
himself. He did not feel at all in love. He thought in his
embarrassment that he ought to be venturesome. He tried to kiss
Mathilde.

"For shame," she said to him, pushing him away.

Extremely glad at being rebuffed, he hastened to look round him. The
moon was so brilliant that the shadows which it made in mademoiselle de
la Mole's room were black. "It's quite possible for men to be concealed
without my seeing them," he thought.

"What have you got in your pocket at the side of your coat?" Mathilde
said to him, delighted at finding something to talk about. She was
suffering strangely; all those sentiments of reserve and timidity which
were so natural to a girl of good birth, had reasserted their dominion
and were torturing her.

"I have all kinds of arms and pistols," answered Julien equally glad at
having something to say.

"You must take the ladder away," said Mathilde.

"It is very big, and may break the windows of the salon down below or
the room on the ground floor."

"You must not break the windows," replied Mathilde making a vain effort
to assume an ordinary conversational tone; "it seems to me you can
lower the ladder by tying a cord to the first rung. I have always a
supply of cords at hand."

"So this is a woman in love," thought Julien. "She actually dares to
say that she is in love. So much self-possession and such shrewdness in
taking precautions are sufficient indications that I am not triumphing
over M. de Croisenois as I foolishly believed, but that I am simply
succeeding him. As a matter of fact, what does it matter to me? Do I
love her? I am triumphing over the marquis in so far as he would be
very angry at having a successor, and angrier still at that successor
being myself. How haughtily he looked at me this evening in the Cafe
Tortoni when he pretended not to recognise me! And how maliciously he
bowed to me afterwards, when he could not get out of it."

Julien had tied the cord to the last rung of the ladder. He lowered it
softly and leant far out of the balcony in order to avoid its touching
the window pane. "A fine opportunity to kill me," he thought, "if
anyone is hidden in Mathilde's room;" but a profound silence continued
to reign everywhere.

The ladder touched the ground. Julien succeeded in laying it on the
border of the exotic flowers along side the wall.

"What will my mother say," said Mathilde, "when she sees her beautiful
plants all crushed? You must throw down the cord," she added with great
self-possession. "If it were noticed going up to the balcony, it would
be a difficult circumstance to explain."

"And how am I to get away?" said Julien in a jesting tone affecting the
Creole accent. (One of the chambermaids of the household had been born
in Saint-Domingo.)

"You? Why you will leave by the door," said Mathilde, delighted at the
idea.

"Ah! how worthy this man is of all my love," she thought.

Julien had just let the cord fall into the garden; Mathilde grasped
his arm. He thought he had been seized by an enemy and turned round
sharply, drawing a dagger. She had thought that she had heard a window
opening. They remained motionless and scarcely breathed. The moonlight
lit up everything. The noise was not renewed and there was no more
cause for anxiety.

Then their embarrassment began again; it was great on both sides.
Julien assured himself that the door was completely locked; he thought
of looking under the bed, but he did not dare; "they might have
stationed one or two lackeys there." Finally he feared that he might
reproach himself in the future for this lack of prudence, and did
look. Mathilde had fallen into all the anguish of the most extreme
timidity. She was horrified at her position.

"What have you done with my letters?" she said at last.

"What a good opportunity to upset these gentlemen, if they are
eavesdropping, and thus avoiding the battle," thought Julien.

"The first is hid in a big Protestant Bible, which last night's
diligence is taking far away from here."

He spoke very distinctly as he went into these details, so as to be
heard by any persons who might be concealed in two large mahogany
cupboards which he had not dared to inspect.

"The other two are in the post and are bound for the same destination
as the first."

"Heavens, why all these precautions?" said Mathilde in alarm.

"What is the good of my lying?" thought Julien, and he confessed all
his suspicions.

"So that's the cause for the coldness of your letters, dear," exclaimed
Mathilde in a tone of madness rather than of tenderness.

Julien did not notice that nuance. The endearment made him lose his
head, or at any rate his suspicions vanished. He dared to clasp in his
arms that beautiful girl who inspired him with such respect. He was
only partially rebuffed. He fell back on his memory as he had once at
Besancon with Armanda Binet, and recited by heart several of the finest
phrases out of the _Nouvelle Heloise_.

"You have the heart of a man," was the answer she made without
listening too attentively to his phrases; "I wanted to test your
courage, I confess it. Your first suspicions and your resolutions show
you even more intrepid, dear, than I had believed."

Mathilde had to make an effort to call him "dear," and was evidently
paying more attention to this strange method of speech than to
the substance of what she was saying. Being called "dear" without
any tenderness in the tone afforded no pleasure to Julien; he was
astonished at not being happy, and eventually fell back on his
reasoning in order to be so. He saw that he was respected by this proud
young girl who never gave undeserved praise; by means of this reasoning
he managed to enjoy the happiness of satisfied vanity. It was not,
it was true, that soulful pleasure which he had sometimes found with
madame de Renal. There was no element of tenderness in the feelings
of these first few minutes. It was the keen happiness of a gratified
ambition, and Julien was, above all, ambitious. He talked again of
the people whom he had suspected and of the precautions which he had
devised. As he spoke, he thought of the best means of exploiting his
victory.

Mathilde was still very embarrassed and seemed paralysed by the
steps which she had taken. She appeared delighted to find a topic
of conversation. They talked of how they were to see each other
again. Julien extracted a delicious joy from the consciousness of
the intelligence and the courage, of which he again proved himself
possessed during this discussion. They had to reckon with extremely
sharp people, the little Tanbeau was certainly a spy, but Mathilde and
himself as well had their share of cleverness.

What was easier than to meet in the library, and there make all
arrangements?

"I can appear in all parts of the hotel," added Julien, "without
rousing suspicion almost, in fact, in madame de la Mole's own room."
It was absolutely necessary to go through it in order to reach her
daughter's room. If Mathilde thought it preferable for him always to
come by a ladder, then he would expose himself to that paltry danger
with a heart intoxicated with joy.

As she listened to him speaking, Mathilde was shocked by this air of
triumph. "So he is my master," she said to herself, she was already a
prey to remorse. Her reason was horrified at the signal folly which she
had just committed. If she had had the power she would have annihilated
both herself and Julien. When for a few moments she managed by sheer
will-power to silence her pangs of remorse, she was rendered very
unhappy by her timidity and wounded shame. She had quite failed to
foresee the awful plight in which she now found herself.

"I must speak to him, however," she said at last. "That is the proper
thing to do. One does talk to one's lover." And then with a view of
accomplishing a duty, and with a tenderness which was manifested rather
in the words which she employed than in the inflection of her voice,
she recounted various resolutions which she had made concerning him
during the last few days.

She had decided that if he should dare to come to her room by the help
of the gardener's ladder according to his instructions, she would be
entirely his. But never were such tender passages spoken in a more
polite and frigid tone. Up to the present this assignation had been
icy. It was enough to make one hate the name of love. What a lesson
in morality for a young and imprudent girl! Is it worth while to ruin
one's future for moments such as this?

After long fits of hesitation which a superficial observer might have
mistaken for the result of the most emphatic hate (so great is the
difficulty which a woman's self-respect finds in yielding even to so
firm a will as hers) Mathilde became eventually a charming mistress.

In point of fact, these ecstasies were a little artificial. Passionate
love was still more the model which they imitated than a real actuality.

Mademoiselle de la Mole thought she was fulfilling a duty towards
herself and towards her lover. "The poor boy," she said to herself,
"has shewn a consummate bravery. He deserves to be happy or it is
really I who will be shewing a lack of character." But she would have
been glad to have redeemed the cruel necessity in which she found
herself even at the price of an eternity of unhappiness.

In spite of the awful violence she was doing to herself she was
completely mistress of her words.

No regret and no reproach spoiled that night which Julien found
extraordinary rather than happy. Great heavens! what a difference to
his last twenty-four hours' stay in Verrieres. These fine Paris manners
manage to spoil everything, even love, he said to himself, quite
unjustly.

He abandoned himself to these reflections as he stood upright in one of
the great mahogany cupboards into which he had been put at the sign of
the first sounds of movement in the neighbouring apartment, which was
madame de la Mole's. Mathilde followed her mother to mass, the servants
soon left the apartment and Julien easily escaped before they came back
to finish their work.

He mounted a horse and tried to find the most solitary spots in one
of the forests near Paris. He was more astonished than happy. The
happiness which filled his soul from time to time resembled that of a
young sub-lieutenant who as the result of some surprising feat has just
been made a full-fledged colonel by the commander-in-chief; he felt
himself lifted up to an immense height. Everything which was above him
the day before was now on a level with him or even below him. Little
by little Julien's happiness increased in proportion as he got further
away from Paris.

If there was no tenderness in his soul, the reason was that, however
strange it may appear to say so, Mathilde had in everything she had
done, simply accomplished a duty. The only thing she had not foreseen
in all the events of that night, was the shame and unhappiness which
she had experienced instead of that absolute felicity which is found in
novels.

"Can I have made a mistake, and not be in love with him?" she said to
herself.

Julien locks his bedroom door for the night, sneaks out into the garden, and finds the ladder that Mathilde has left for him. He climbs up into her room carrying a pistol. Julien runs to her and tries to kiss her. But she pushes him away and tells him not to act shamefully. Mathilde gets him to let the ladder leaning against the window back down into the garden. Now he has no way of getting out of the room except the door. Mathilde admits that she invited him to her room in order to test his courage. After some small talk, they have sex. Neither one of them is satisfied by it. For Mathilde, she's just acting the way books say she's supposed to. For Julien, the sex isn't as good as what he had with Madame de Renal. Julien sneaks out the next morning. He gets on his horse and rides out to one of the forests surrounding Paris. Mathilde goes to church and starts to wonder whether she actually loves him, or just thinks she does.


CHAPTER XLVII

AN OLD SWORD

I now mean to be serious; it is time
Since laughter now-a-days is deemed too serious.
A jest at vice by virtues called a crime.
                             _Don Juan, c. xiii._

She did not appear at dinner. She came for a minute into the salon in
the evening, but did not look at Julien. He considered this behaviour
strange, "but," he thought, "I do not know their usages. She will give
me some good reason for all this." None the less he was a prey to
the most extreme curiosity; he studied the expression of Mathilde's
features; he was bound to own to himself that she looked cold and
malicious. It was evidently not the same woman who on the proceeding
night had had, or pretended to have, transports of happiness which were
too extravagant to be genuine.

The day after, and the subsequent day she showed the same coldness;
she did not look at him, she did not notice his existence. Julien was
devoured by the keenest anxiety and was a thousand leagues removed from
that feeling of triumph which had been his only emotion on the first
day. "Can it be by chance," he said to himself, "a return to virtue?"
But this was a very bourgeois word to apply to the haughty Mathilde.

"Placed in an ordinary position in life she would disbelieve in
religion," thought Julien, "she only likes it in so far as it is very
useful to the interests of her class."

But perhaps she may as a mere matter of delicacy be keenly reproaching
herself for the mistake which she has committed. Julien believed that
he was her first lover.

"But," he said to himself at other moments, "I must admit that there is
no trace of naivety, simplicity, or tenderness in her own demeanour;
I have never seen her more haughty, can she despise me? It would be
worthy of her to reproach herself simply because of my low birth, for
what she has done for me."

While Julien, full of those preconceived ideas which he had found in
books and in his memories of Verrieres, was chasing the phantom of a
tender mistress, who from the minute when she has made her lover happy
no longer thinks of her own existence, Mathilde's vanity was infuriated
against him.

As for the last two months she had no longer been bored, she was not
frightened of boredom; consequently, without being able to have the
slightest suspicion of it, Julien had lost his greatest advantage.

"I have given myself a master," said mademoiselle de la Mole to
herself, a prey to the blackest sorrow. "Luckily he is honour itself,
but if I offend his vanity, he will revenge himself by making known
the nature of our relations." Mathilde had never had a lover, and
though passing through a stage of life which affords some tender
illusions even to the coldest souls, she fell a prey to the most bitter
reflections.

"He has an immense dominion over me since his reign is one of terror,
and he is capable, if I provoke him, of punishing me with an awful
penalty." This idea alone was enough to induce mademoiselle de la
Mole to insult him. Courage was the primary quality in her character.
The only thing which could give her any thrill and cure her from a
fundamental and chronically recurring ennui was the idea that she was
staking her entire existence on a single throw.

As mademoiselle de la Mole obstinately refused to look at him, Julien
on the third day in spite of her evident objection, followed her into
the billiard-room after dinner.

"Well, sir, you think you have acquired some very strong rights over
me?" she said to him with scarcely controlled anger, "since you venture
to speak to me, in spite of my very clearly manifested wish? Do you
know that no one in the world has had such effrontery?"

The dialogue of these two lovers was incomparably humourous. Without
suspecting it, they were animated by mutual sentiments of the most
vivid hate. As neither the one nor the other had a meekly patient
character, while they were both disciples of good form, they soon came
to informing each other quite clearly that they would break for ever.

"I swear eternal secrecy to you," said Julien. "I should like to add
that I would never address a single word to you, were it not that a
marked change might perhaps jeopardise your reputation." He saluted
respectfully and left.

He accomplished easily enough what he believed to be a duty; he was
very far from thinking himself much in love with mademoiselle de la
Mole. He had certainly not loved her three days before, when he had
been hidden in the big mahogany cupboard. But the moment that he found
himself estranged from her for ever his mood underwent a complete and
rapid change.

His memory tortured him by going over the least details in that night,
which had as a matter of fact left him so cold. In the very night that
followed this announcement of a final rupture, Julien almost went mad
at being obliged to own to himself that he loved mademoiselle de la
Mole.

This discovery was followed by awful struggles: all his emotions were
overwhelmed.

Two days later, instead of being haughty towards M. de Croisenois, he
could have almost burst out into tears and embraced him.

His habituation to unhappiness gave him a gleam of commonsense, he
decided to leave for Languedoc, packed his trunk and went to the post.

He felt he would faint, when on arriving at the office of the mails, he
was told that by a singular chance there was a place in the Toulouse
mail. He booked it and returned to the Hotel de la Mole to announce his
departure to the marquis.

M. de la Mole had gone out. More dead than alive Julien went into
the library to wait for him. What was his emotion when he found
mademoiselle de la Mole there.

As she saw him come, she assumed a malicious expression which it was
impossible to mistake.

In his unhappiness and surprise Julien lost his head and was weak
enough to say to her in a tone of the most heartfelt tenderness. "So
you love me no more."

"I am horrified at having given myself to the first man who came
along," said Mathilde crying with rage against herself.

"The first man who came along," cried Julien, and he made for an old
mediaeval sword which was kept in the library as a curiosity.

His grief--which he thought was at its maximum at the moment when he
had spoken to mademoiselle de la Mole--had been rendered a hundred
times more intense by the tears of shame which he saw her shedding.

He would have been the happiest of men if he had been able to kill her.

When he was on the point of drawing the sword with some difficulty from
its ancient scabbard, Mathilde, rendered happy by so novel a sensation,
advanced proudly towards him, her tears were dry.

The thought of his benefactor--the marquis de la Mole--presented
itself vividly to Julien. "Shall I kill his daughter?" he said to
himself, "how horrible." He made a movement to throw down the sword.
"She will certainly," he thought, "burst out laughing at the sight of
such a melodramatic pose:" that idea was responsible for his regaining
all his self-possession. He looked curiously at the blade of the old
sword as though he had been looking for some spot of rust, then put it
back in the scabbard and replaced it with the utmost tranquillity on
the gilt bronze nail from which it hung.

The whole manoeuvre, which towards the end was very slow, lasted quite
a minute; mademoiselle de la Mole looked at him in astonishment. "So
I have been on the verge of being killed by my lover," she said to
herself.

This idea transported her into the palmiest days of the age of Charles
IX. and of Henri III.

She stood motionless before Julien, who had just replaced the sword;
she looked at him with eyes whose hatred had disappeared. It must be
owned that she was very fascinating at this moment, certainly no woman
looked less like a Parisian doll (this expression symbolised Julien's
great objection to the women of this city).

"I shall relapse into some weakness for him," thought Mathilde; "it
is quite likely that he will think himself my lord and master after a
relapse like that at the very moment that I have been talking to him so
firmly." She ran away.

"By heaven, she is pretty said Julien as he watched her run and that's
the creature who threw herself into my arms with so much passion
scarcely a week ago ... and to think that those moments will never
come back? And that it's my fault, to think of my being lacking
in appreciation at the very moment when I was doing something so
extraordinarily interesting! I must own that I was born with a very
dull and unfortunate character."

The marquis appeared; Julien hastened to announce his departure.

"Where to?" said M. de la Mole.

"For Languedoc."

"No, if you please, you are reserved for higher destinies. If you leave
it will be for the North.... In military phraseology I actually confine
you in the hotel. You will compel me to be never more than two or three
hours away. I may have need of you at any moment."

Julien bowed and retired without a word, leaving the marquis in a state
of great astonishment. He was incapable of speaking. He shut himself
up in his room. He was there free to exaggerate to himself all the
awfulness of his fate.

"So," he thought, "I cannot even get away. God knows how many days
the marquis will keep me in Paris. Great God, what will become of me,
and not a friend whom I can consult? The abbe Pirard will never let
me finish my first sentence, while the comte Altamira will propose
enlisting me in some conspiracy. And yet I am mad; I feel it, I am mad.
Who will be able to guide me, what will become of me?"

Mathilde doesn't come to dinner the day after having sex with Julien. She sees him in the drawing room later that night, but doesn't look at him. Three days go by and Mathilde avoids him. Finally, he follows her into the garden and demands her attention. She is cold and bitter toward him. Julien admits to himself that he's actually in love with Mathilde. He decides to leave for his trip to Languedoc after all. He goes to the de La Moles' library to tell his employer he's leaving. He finds Mathilde there instead and argues with her. She says she's sorry she gave her virginity to the first young man who came along. This wounds Julien's pride badly. Julien grabs an old sword off the wall, intending to kill Mathilde. He recovers his senses before doing it, though. She's impressed by his boldness, since this is the kind of gesture a crazed lover would make in one of her novels. She realizes that she's falling for him again. After Mathilde has run off, the Marquis walks into the library and hears about Julien's departure. He says the he needs Julien to stick around for other business, though.


CHAPTER XLVIII

CRUEL MOMENTS

        And she confesses it to me! She goes into even
        the smallest details! Her beautiful eyes fixed on
        mine, and describes the love which she felt for
        another.--_Schiller_.

The delighted mademoiselle de la Mole thought of nothing but the
happiness of having been nearly killed. She went so far as to say to
herself, "he is worthy of being my master since he was on the point of
killing me. How many handsome young society men would have to be melted
together before they were capable of so passionate a transport."

"I must admit that he was very handsome at the time when he climbed up
on the chair to replace the sword in the same picturesque position in
which the decorator hung it! After all it was not so foolish of me to
love him."

If at that moment some honourable means of reconciliation had presented
itself, she would have embraced it with pleasure. Julien locked in his
room was a prey to the most violent despair. He thought in his madness
of throwing himself at her feet. If instead of hiding himself in an out
of the way place, he had wandered about the garden of the hotel so as
to keep within reach of any opportunity, he would perhaps have changed
in a single moment his awful unhappiness into the keenest happiness.

But the tact for whose lack we are now reproaching him would have been
incompatible with that sublime seizure of the sword, which at the
present time rendered him so handsome in the eyes of mademoiselle de
la Mole. This whim in Julien's favour lasted the whole day; Mathilde
conjured up a charming image of the short moments during which she had
loved him: she regretted them.

"As a matter of fact," she said to herself, "my passion for this poor
boy can from his point of view only have lasted from one hour after
midnight when I saw him arrive by his ladder with all his pistols in
his coat pocket, till eight o'clock in the morning. It was a quarter of
an hour after that as I listened to mass at Sainte-Valere that I began
to think that he might very well try to terrify me into obedience."

After dinner mademoiselle de la Mole, so far from avoiding Julien,
spoke to him and made him promise to follow her into the garden. He
obeyed. It was a new experience.

Without suspecting it Mathilde was yielding to the love which she was
now feeling for him again. She found an extreme pleasure in walking by
his side, and she looked curiously at those hands which had seized the
sword to kill her that very morning.

After such an action, after all that had taken place, some of the
former conversation was out of the question.

Mathilde gradually began to talk confidentially to him about the
state of her heart. She found a singular pleasure in this kind of
conversation, she even went so far as to describe to him the fleeting
moments of enthusiasm which she had experienced for M. de Croisenois,
for M. de Caylus----

"What! M. de Caylus as well!" exclaimed Julien, and all the jealousy of
a discarded lover burst out in those words, Mathilde thought as much,
but did not feel at all insulted.

She continued torturing Julien by describing her former sentiments with
the most picturesque detail and the accent of the most intimate truth.
He saw that she was portraying what she had in her mind's eye. He had
the pain of noticing that as she spoke she made new discoveries in her
own heart.

The unhappiness of jealousy could not be carried further.

It is cruel enough to suspect that a rival is loved, but there is no
doubt that to hear the woman one adores confess in detail the love
which rivals inspires, is the utmost limit of anguish.

Oh, how great a punishment was there now for those impulses of pride
which had induced Julien to place himself as superior to the Caylus
and the Croisenois! How deeply did he feel his own unhappiness as he
exaggerated to himself their most petty advantages. With what hearty
good faith he despised himself.

Mathilde struck him as adorable. All words are weak to express his
excessive admiration. As he walked beside her he looked surreptitiously
at her hands, her arms, her queenly bearing. He was so completely
overcome by love and unhappiness as to be on the point of falling at
her feet and crying "pity."

"Yes, and that person who is so beautiful, who is so superior to
everything and who loved me once, will doubtless soon love M. de
Caylus."

Julien could have no doubts of mademoiselle de la Mole's sincerity,
the accent of truth was only too palpable in everything she said. In
order that nothing might be wanting to complete his unhappiness there
were moments when, as a result of thinking about the sentiments which
she had once experienced for M. de Caylus, Mathilde came to talk of
him, as though she loved him at the present time. She certainly put an
inflection of love into her voice. Julien distinguished it clearly.

He would have suffered less if his bosom had been filled inside with
molten lead. Plunged as he was in this abyss of unhappiness how could
the poor boy have guessed that it was simply because she was talking to
him, that mademoiselle de la Mole found so much pleasure in recalling
those weaknesses of love which she had formerly experienced for M. de
Caylus or M. de Luz.

Words fail to express Julien's anguish. He listened to these detailed
confidences of the love she had experienced for others in that very
avenue of pines where he had waited so few days ago for one o'clock
to strike that he might invade her room. No human being can undergo a
greater degree of unhappiness.

This kind of familiar cruelty lasted for eight long days. Mathilde
sometimes seemed to seek opportunities of speaking to him and sometimes
not to avoid them; and the one topic of conversation to which they both
seemed to revert with a kind of cruel pleasure, was the description of
the sentiments she had felt for others. She told him about the letters
which she had written, she remembered their very words, she recited
whole sentences by heart.

She seemed during these last days to be envisaging Julien with a kind
of malicious joy. She found a keen enjoyment in his pangs.

One sees that Julien had no experience of life; he had not even read
any novels. If he had been a little less awkward and he had coolly said
to the young girl, whom he adored so much and who had been giving him
such strange confidences: "admit that though I am not worth as much as
all these gentlemen, I am none the less the man whom you loved," she
would perhaps have been happy at being at thus guessed; at any rate
success would have entirely depended on the grace with which Julien had
expressed the idea, and on the moment which he had chosen to do so. In
any case he would have extricated himself well and advantageously from
a situation which Mathilde was beginning to find monotonous.

"And you love me no longer, me, who adores you!" said Julien to her one
day, overcome by love and unhappiness. This piece of folly was perhaps
the greatest which he could have committed. These words immediately
destroyed all the pleasure which mademoiselle de la Mole found in
talking to him about the state of her heart. She was beginning to be
surprised that he did not, after what had happened, take offence at
what she told him. She had even gone so far as to imagine at the very
moment when he made that foolish remark that perhaps he did not love
her any more. "His pride has doubtless extinguished his love," she was
saying to herself. "He is not the man to sit still and see people like
Caylus, de Luz, Croisenois whom he admits are so superior, preferred to
him. No, I shall never see him at my feet again."

Julien had often in the naivety of his unhappiness, during the previous
days praised sincerely the brilliant qualities of these gentlemen; he
would even go so far as to exaggerate them. This nuance had not escaped
mademoiselle de la Mole, she was astonished by it, but did not guess
its reason. Julien's frenzied soul, in praising a rival whom he thought
was loved, was sympathising with his happiness.

These frank but stupid words changed everything in a single moment;
confident that she was loved, Mathilde despised him utterly.

She was walking with him when he made his ill-timed remark; she left
him, and her parting look expressed the most awful contempt. She
returned to the salon and did not look at him again during the whole
evening. This contempt monopolised her mind the following day. The
impulse which during the last week had made her find so much pleasure
in treating Julien as her most intimate friend was out of the question;
the very sight of him was disagreeable. The sensation Mathilde felt
reached the point of disgust; nothing can express the extreme contempt
which she experienced when her eyes fell upon him.

Julien had understood nothing of the history of Mathilde's heart during
the last week, but he distinguished the contempt. He had the good sense
only to appear before her on the rarest possible occasions, and never
looked at her.

But it was not without a mortal anguish that he, as it were, deprived
himself of her presence. He thought he felt his unhappiness increasing
still further. "The courage of a man's heart cannot be carried
further," he said to himself. He passed his life seated at a little
window at the top of the hotel; the blind was carefully closed, and
from here at any rate he could see mademoiselle de la Mole when she
appeared in the garden.

What were his emotions when he saw her walking after dinner with M. de
Caylus, M. de Luz, or some other for whom she had confessed to him some
former amorous weakness!

Julien had no idea that unhappiness could be so intense; he was on
the point of shouting out. This firm soul was at last completely
overwhelmed.

Thinking about anything else except mademoiselle de la Mole had become
odious to him; he became incapable of writing the simplest letters.

"You are mad," the marquis said to him.

Julien was frightened that his secret might be guessed, talked
about illness and succeeded in being believed. Fortunately for him
the marquis rallied him at dinner about his next journey; Mathilde
understood that it might be a very long one. It was now several days
that Julien had avoided her, and the brilliant young men who had all
that this pale sombre being she had once loved was lacking, had no
longer the power of drawing her out of her reverie.

"An ordinary girl," she said to herself, "would have sought out the man
she preferred among those young people who are the cynosure of a salon;
but one of the characteristics of genius is not to drive its thoughts
over the rut traced by the vulgar.

"Why, if I were the companion of a man like Julien, who only lacks the
fortune that I possess, I should be continually exciting attention, I
should not pass through life unnoticed. Far from incessantly fearing
a revolution like my cousins who are so frightened of the people that
they have not the pluck to scold a postillion who drives them badly, I
should be certain of playing a role and a great role, for the man whom
I have chosen has a character and a boundless ambition. What does he
lack? Friends, money? I will give them him." But she treated Julien in
her thought as an inferior being whose love one could win whenever one
wanted.

Mathilde thinks back on how Julien almost murdered her in the library and figures that for some reason, this gesture makes him truly worthy of her. She walks up to Julien the next day and asks him to accompany her into the garden. Once they're alone, she starts talking to him about the state of her heart. She makes sure to talk as much as possible about all the other young men in her life. This tortures Julien. Finally, Julien tells her that he loves her and that he'll do anything for her. This destroys Mathilde's interest in him, since she only wanted him in the first place because he paid no attention to her. Now that he's groveling at her feet, she finds him repulsive.