All mademoiselle de la Mole's ideas changed when she saw Julien. "As a matter of fact he is my husband," she said to herself. "If I am sincere in my return to sensible notions, he is clearly the man I ought to marry."

She was expecting importunities and airs of unhappiness on the part of Julien; she commenced rehearsing her answers, for he would doubtless try to address some words to her when they left the dinner table. Far from that he remained stubbornly in the salon and did not even look in the direction of the garden, though God knows what pain that caused him!

"It is better to have this explanation out all at once," thought mademoiselle de la Mole; she went into the garden alone, Julien did not appear. Mathilde went and walked near the salon window. She found him very much occupied in describing to madame de Fervaques the old ruined chateau which crown the banks along the Rhine and invest them with so much atmosphere. He was beginning to acquit himself with some credit in that sentimental picturesque jargon which is called wit in certain salons. Prince Korasoff would have been very proud if he had been at Paris. This evening was exactly what he had predicted.

He would have approved the line of conduct which Julien followed on the subsequent days.

An intrigue among the members of the secret government was going to bestow a few blue ribbons; madame maréchale de Fervaques was insisting on her great uncle being made a chevalier of the order. The marquis de la Mole had the same pretensions for his father-in-law; they joined forces and the maréchale came to the hotel de la Mole nearly every day. It was from her that Julien learned that the marquis was going to be a minister. He was offering to the Camarilla a very ingenious plan for the annihilation of the charter within three years without any disturbance.

If M. de la Mole became a minister, Julien could hope for a bishopric: but all these important interests seemed to be veiled and hazy. His imagination only perceived them very vaguely, and so to speak, in the far distance. The awful unhappiness which was making him into a madman could find no other interest in life except the character of his relations with mademoiselle de la Mole. He calculated that after five or six careful years he would manage to get himself loved again.

This cold brain had been reduced, as one sees, to a state of complete disorder. Out of all the qualities which had formerly distinguished him, all that remained was a little firmness. He was literally faithful to the line of conduct which prince Korasoff had dictated, and placed himself every evening near madame Fervaques' armchair, but he found it impossible to think of a word to say to her.

The strain of making Mathilde think that he had recovered exhausted his whole moral force, and when he was with the maréchale he seemed almost lifeless; even his eyes had lost all their fire, as in cases of extreme physical suffering.

As madame de la Mole's views were invariably a counterpart of the opinions of that husband of hers who could make her into a Duchess, she had been singing Julien's praises for some days.

CHAPTER LVI

MORAL LOVE

Don Juan, c. xiii. st. 84.

" There is an element of madness in all this family's way of looking at things," thought the maréchale; "they are infatuated with their young abbé, whose only accomplishment is to be a good listener, though his eyes are fine enough, it is true."

Julien, on his side, found in the maréchale's manners an almost perfect instance of that patrician calm which exhales a scrupulous politeness; and, what is more, announces at the same time the impossibility of any violent emotion. Madame de Fervaques would have been as much scandalised by any unexpected movement or any lack of self-control, as by a lack of dignity towards one's inferiors. She would have regarded the slightest symptom of sensibility as a kind of moral drunkenness which puts one to the blush and was extremely prejudicial to what a person of high rank owed to herself. Her great happiness was to talk of the king's last hunt; her favourite book, was the Memoirs of the Duke de Saint Simon , especially the genealogical part.

Julien knew the place where the arrangement of the light suited madame de Fervaques' particular style of beauty. He got there in advance, but was careful to turn his chair in such a way as not to see Mathilde.

Astonished one day at this consistent policy of hiding him self from her, she left the blue sofa and came to work by the little table near the maréchale's armchair. Julien had a fairly close view of her over madame de Fervaques' hat.

Those eyes, which were the arbiters of his fate, frightened him, and then hurled him violently out of his habitual apathy. He talked, and talked very well.

He was speaking to the maréchale, but his one aim was to produce an impression upon Mathilde's soul. He became so animated that eventually madame de Fervaques did not manage to understand a word he said.

This was a prime merit. If it had occurred to Julien to follow it up by some phrases of German mysticism, lofty religion, and Jesuitism, the maréchale would have immediately given him a rank among the superior men whose mission it was to regenerate the age.

"Since he has bad enough taste," said mademoiselle de la Mole, "to talk so long and so ardently to madame de Fervaques, I shall not listen to him any more." She kept her resolution during the whole latter part of the evening, although she had difficulty in doing so.

At midnight, when she took her mother's candle to accompany her to her room, madame de la Mole stopped on the staircase to enter into an exhaustive eulogy of Julien. Mathilde ended by losing her temper. She could not get to sleep. She felt calmed by this thought: "the very things which I despise in a man may none the less constitute a great merit in the eyes of the maréchale."

As for Julien, he had done something, he was less unhappy; his eyes chanced to fall on the Russian leather poitfolio in which prince Korasoff had placed the fifty-three love letters which he had presented to him. Julien saw a note at the bottom of the first letter: No. 1 is sent eight days after the first meeting.

"I am behind hand," exclaimed Julien. "It is quite a long time since I met madame de Fervaques." He immediately began to copy out this first love letter. It was a homily packed with moral platitudes and deadly dull. Julien was fortunate enough to fall asleep at the second page.

Some hours afterwards he was surprised to see the broad daylight as he lent on his desk. The most painful moments in his life were those when he woke up every morning to realise his unhappiness. On this particular day he finished copying out his letter in a state verging on laughter. "Is it possible," he said to himself, "that there ever lived a young man who actually wrote like that." He counted several sentences of nine lines each. At the bottom of the original he noticed a pencilled note. "These letters are delivered personally, on horseback, black cravat, blue tail-coat. You give the letter to the porter with a contrite air; expression of profound melancholy. If you notice any chambermaid, dry your eyes furtively and speak to her."

All this was duly carried out.

"I am taking a very bold course!" thought Julien as he came out of the hotel de Fervaques, "but all the worse for Korasoff. To think of daring to write to so virtuous a celebrity. I shall be treated with the utmost contempt, and nothing will amuse me more. It is really the only comedy that I can in any way appreciate. Yes, it will amuse me to load with ridicule that odious creature whom I call myself. If I believed in myself, I would commit some crime to distract myself."

The moment when Julien brought his horse back to the stable was the happiest he had experienced for a whole month. Korasoff had expressly forbidden him to look at the mistress who had left him, on any pretext whatsoever. But the step of that horse, which she knew so well, and Julien's way of knocking on the stable door with his riding-whip to call a man, sometimes attracted Mathilde to behind the window-curtain. The muslin was so light that Julien could see through it. By looking under the brim of his hat in a certain way, he could get a view of Mathilde's figure without seeing her eyes. "Consequently," he said to himself, "she cannot see mine, and that is not really looking at her."

In the evening madame de Fervaques behaved towards him, exactly as though she had never received the philosophic mystical and religious dissertation which he had given to her porter in the morning with so melancholy an air. Chance had shown Julien on the preceding day how to be eloquent; he placed himself in such a position that he could see Mathilde's eyes. She, on her side, left the blue sofa a minute after the maréchale's arrival; this involved abandoning her usual associates. M. de Croisenois seemed overwhelmed by this new caprice: his palpable grief alleviated the awfulness of Julien's agony.

This unexpected turn in his life made him talk like an angel, and inasmuch as a certain element of self-appreciation will insinuate itself even into those hearts which serve as a temple for the most august virtue, the marechale said to herself as she got into her carriage, "Madame de la Mole is right, this young priest has distinction. My presence must have overawed him at first. As a matter of fact, the whole tone of this house is very frivolous; I can see nothing but instances of virtue helped by oldness, and standing in great need of the chills of age. This young man must have managed to appreciate the difference; he writes well, but I fear very much that this request of his in his letter for me to enlighten him with my advice, is really nothing less than an, as yet, unconscious sentiment.

"Nevertheless how many conversions have begun like that! What makes me consider this a good omen is the difference between his style and that of the young people whose letters I have had an opportunity of seeing. One cannot avoid recognising unction, profound seriousness, and much conviction in the prose of this young acolyte; he has no doubt the sweet virtue of a Massillon."

CHAPTER LVII

THE FINEST PLACES IN THE CHURCH

Telemaque.

The idea of a bishopric had thus become associated with the idea of Julien in the mind of a woman, who would sooner or later have at her disposal the finest places in the Church of France. This idea had not struck Julien at all; at the present time his thoughts were strictly limited to his actual unhappiness. Everything tended to intensify it. The sight of his room, for instance, had become unbearable. When he came back in the evening with his candle, each piece of furniture and each little ornament seemed to become articulate, and to announce harshly some new phase of his unhappiness.

"I have a hard task before me to-day," he said to himself as he came in with a vivacity which he had not experienced for a long time; "let us hope that the second letter will be as boring as the first."

It was more so. What he was copying seemed so absurd that he finished up by transcribing it line for line without thinking of the sense.

"It is even more bombastic," he said to himself, "than those official documents of the treaty of Munster which my professor of diplomacy made me copy out at London."

It was only then that he remembered madame de Fervaque's letters which he had forgotten to give back to the grave Spaniard Don Diego Bustos. He found them. They were really almost as nonsensical as those of the young Russian nobleman. Their vagueness was unlimited. It meant everything and nothing. "It's the Æolian harp of style," thought Julien. "The only real thing I see in the middle of all these lofty thoughts about annihilation, death, infinity, etc., is an abominable fear of ridicule."

The monologue which we have just condensed was repeated for fifteen days on end. Falling off to sleep as he copied out a sort of commentary on the Apocalypse, going with a melancholy expression to deliver it the following day, taking his horse back to the stable in the hope of catching sight of Mathilde's dress, working, going in the evening to the opera on those evenings when madame de Fervaques did not come to the hôtel de la Mole, such were the monotonous events in Julien's life. His life had more interest, when madame la Fervaques visited the marquise; he could then catch a glimpse of Mathilde's eyes underneath a feather of the maréchale's hat, and he would wax eloquent. His picturesque and sentimental phrases began to assume a style, which was both more striking and more elegant.

He quite realised that what he said was absurd in Mathilde's eyes, but he wished to impress her by the elegance of his diction. " The falser my speeches are the more I ought to please," thought Julien, and he then had the abominable audacity to exaggerate certain elements in his own character. He soon appreciated that to avoid appearing vulgar in the eyes of the maréchale it was necessary to eschew simple and rational ideas. He would continue on these lines, or would cut short his grand eloquence according as he saw appreciation or indifference in the eyes of the two great ladies whom he had set out to please.

Taking it all round, his life was less awful than when his days were passed in inaction.

"But," he said to himself one evening, "here I am copying out the fifteenth of these abominable dissertations; the first fourteen have been duly delivered to the maréchale's porter. I shall have the honour of filling all the drawers in her escritoire. And yet she treats me as though I never wrote. What can be the end of all this? Will my constancy bore her as much as it does me? I must admit that that Russian friend of Korasoff's who was in love with the pretty Quakeress of Richmond, was a terrible man in his time; no one could be more overwhelming."

Like all mediocre individuals, who chance to come into contact with the manœuvres of a great general, Julien understood nothing of the attack executed by the young Russian on the heart of the young English girl. The only purpose of the first forty letters was to secure forgiveness for the boldness of writing at all. The sweet person, who perhaps lived a life of inordinate boredom, had to be induced to contract the habit of receiving letters, which were perhaps a little less insipid that her everyday life.

One morning a letter was delivered to Julien. He recognised the arms of madame la Fervaques, and broke the seal with an eagerness which would have seemed impossible to him some days before. It was only an. invitation to dinner.

He rushed to prince Korasoff's instructions. Unfortunately the young Russian had taken it into his head to be as flippant as Dorat, just when he should have been simple and intelligible! Julien was not able to form any idea of the moral position which he ought to take up at the maréchale's dinner.

The salon was extremely magnificent and decorated like the gallery de Diane in the Tuilleries with panelled oil-paintings.

There were some light spots on these pictures. Julien learnt later that the mistress of the house had thought the subject somewhat lacking in decency and that she had had the pictures corrected. "What a moral century! " he thought.

He noticed in this salon three of the persons who had been present at the drawing up of the secret note. One of them, my lord bishop of ——— the marechale's uncle had the disposition of the ecclesiastical patronage, and could, it was said, refuse his niece nothing. "What immense progress I have made," said Julien to himself with a melancholy smile, "and how indifferent I am to it. Here I am dining with the famous bishop of ——— ."

The dinner was mediocre and the conversation wearisome.

"It's like the small talk in a bad book," thought Julien. "All the greatest subjects of human thought are proudly tackled. After listening for three minutes one asks oneself which is greater—the speaker's bombast, or his abominable ignorance?"

The reader has doubtless forgotten the little man of letters named Tanbeau, who was the nephew of the Academician, and intended to be professor, who seemed entrusted with the task of poisoning the salon of the hôtel de la Mole with his base calumnies.

It was this little man who gave Julien the first inkling that though madame de Fervaques did not answer, she might quite well take an indulgent view of the sentiment which dictated them. M. Tanbeau's sinister soul was lacerated by the thought of Julien's success; "but since, on the other hand, a man of merit cannot be in two places at the same time any more than a fool," said the future professor to himself, "if Sorel becomes the lover of the sublime maréchale, she will obtain some lucrative position for him in the church, and I shall be rid of him in the hôtel de la Mole."

M. the abbé Pirard addressed long sermons to Julien concerning his success at the hotel de Fervaques. There was a sectarian jealousy between the austere Jansenist and the salon of the virtuous maréchale which was Jesuitical, reactionary, and monarchical.

CHAPTER LVIII

MANON LESCAUT

Accordingly once he was thoroughly convinced of the asinine stupidity of the prior, he would usually succeed well enough by calling white black, and black white. Lichiemberg .

The Russian instructions peremptorily forbade the writer from ever contradicting in conversation the recipient of the letters. No pretext could excuse any deviation from the rôle of that most estatic admiration. The letters were always based on that hypothesis.

One evening at the opera, when in madame de Fervaques' box, Julien spoke of the ballet of Manon Lescaut in the most enthusiastic terms. His only reason for talking in that strain was the fact that he thought it insignificant.

The maréchale said that the ballet was very inferior to the abbé Prévost's novel.

"The idea," thought Julien, both surprised and amused, "of so highly virtuous a person praising a novel! Madame de Fervaques used to profess two or three times a week the most absolute contempt for those writers, who, by means of their insipid works, try to corrupt a youth which is, alas! only too inclined to the errors of the senses."

" Manon Lescaut ," continued the maréchale, "is said to be one of the best of this immoral and dangerous type of book. The weaknesses and the deserved anguish of a criminal heart are, they say, portrayed with a truth which is not lacking in depth; a fact which does not prevent your Bonaparte from stating at St. Helena that it is simply a novel written for lackeys."

The word Bonaparte restored to Julien all the activity of his mind. "They have tried to ruin me with the maréchale; they have told her of my enthusiasm for Napoleon. This fact has sufficiently piqued her to make her yield to the temptation to make me feel it." This discovery amused him all the evening, and rendered him amusing. As he took leave of the marechale in the vestibule of the opera, she said to him, "Remember, monsieur, one must not like Bonaparte if you like me; at the best he can only be accepted as a necessity imposed by Providence. Besides, the man did not have a sufficiently supple soul to appreciate masterpieces of art."

"When you like me," Julien kept on repeating to himself, "that means nothing or means everything. Here we have mysteries of language which are beyond us poor provincials." And he thought a great deal about madame de Rênal, as he copied out an immense letter destined for the marechale.

"How is it," she said to him the following day, with an assumed indifference which he thought was clumsily assumed, "that you talk to me about London and Richmond in a letter which you wrote last night, I think, when you came back from the opera?"

Julien was very embarrassed. He had copied line by line without thinking about what he was writing, and had apparently forgotten to substitute Paris and Saint Cloud for the words London and Richmond which occurred in the original. He commenced two or three sentences, but found it impossible to finish them. He felt on the point of succumbing to a fit of idiotic laughter. Finally by picking his words he succeeded in formulating this inspiration: "Exalted as I was by the discussion of the most sublime and greatest interests of the human soul, my own soul may have been somewhat absent in my letter to you."

"I am making an impression," he said to himself, "so I can spare myself the boredom of the rest of the evening." He left the hôtel de Fervaques at a run. In the evening he had another look at the original of the letter which he had copied out on the previous night, and soon came to the fatal place where the young Russian made mention of London and of Richmond. Julien was very astonished to find this letter almost tender.

It had been the contrast between the apparent lightness of his conversation, and the sublime and almost apocalyptic profundity of his letters which had marked him out for favour. The maréchale was particularly pleased by the longness of the sentences; this was very far from being that sprightly style which that immoral man Voltaire had brought into fashion. Although our hero made every possible human effort to eliminate from his conversation any symptom of good sense, it still preserved a certain anti-monarchical and blasphemous tinge which did not escape madame de Fervaques. Surrounded as she was by persons who, though eminently moral, had very often not a single idea during a whole evening, this lady was profoundly struck by anything resembling a novelty, but at the same time she thought she owed it to herself to be offended by it. She called this defect: Keeping the imprint of the lightness of the age.

But such salons are only worth observing when one has a favour to procure. The reader doubtless shares all the ennui of the colourless life which Julien was leading. This period represents the steppes of our journey.

Mademoiselle de la Mole needed to exercise her self-control to avoid thinking of Julien during the whole period filled by the de Fervaques episode. Her soul was a prey to violent battles; sometimes she piqued herself on despising that melancholy young man, but his conversation captivated her in spite of herself. She was particularly astonished by his absolute falseness. He did not say a single word to the maréchale which was not a lie, or at any rate, an abominable travesty of his own way of thinking, which Mathilde knew so perfectly in every phase. This Macchiavellianiasm impressed her. "What subtlety," she said to herself. "What a difference between the bombastic coxcombs, or the common rascals like Tanbeau who talk in the same strain."

Nevertheless Julien went through awful days. It was only to accomplish the most painful of duties that he put in a daily appearance in the maréchale's salon.

The strain of playing a part ended by depriving his mind of all its strength. As he crossed each night the immense courtyard of the hotel de Fervaques, it was only through sheer force in character and logic that he succeeded in keeping a little above the level of despair.

"I overcame despair at the seminary," he said, "yet what an awful prospect I had then. I was then either going to make my fortune or come to grief just as I am now. I found myself obliged to pass all my life in intimate association with the most contemptible and disgusting things in the whole world. The following spring, just eleven short months later, I was perhaps the happiest of all young people of my own age."

But very often all this fine logic proved unavailing against the awful reality. He saw Mathilde every day at breakfast and at dinner. He knew from the numerous letters which de la Mole dictated to him that she was on the eve of marrying de Croisenois. This charming man already called twice a day at the hôtel de la Mole; the jealous eye of a jilted lover was alive to every one of his movements. When he thought he had noticed that mademoiselle de la Mole was beginning to encourage her intended, Julien could not help looking tenderly at his pistols as he went up to his room.

"Ah," he said to himself, "would it not be much wiser to take the marks out of my linen and to go into some solitary forest twenty leagues from Paris to put an end to this atrocious life? I should be unknown in the district, my death would remain a secret for a fortnight, and who would bother about me after a fortnight?"

This reasoning was very logical. But on the following day a glimpse of Mathilde's arm between the sleeve of her dress and her glove sufficed to plunge our young philosopher into memories which, though agonising, none the less gave him a hold on life. "Well," he said to himself, "I will follow this Russian plan to the end. How will it all finish?"

"So far as the maréchale is concerned, after I have copied out these fifty-three letters, I shall not write any others.

"As for Mathilde, these six weeks of painful acting will either leave her anger unchanged, or will win me a moment of reconciliation. Great God! I should die of happiness."

And he could not finish his train of thought. After a long reverie he succeeded in taking up the thread of his argument. "In that case," he said to himself, "I should win one day of happiness, and after that her cruelties which are based, alas, on my lack of ability to please her will recommence. I should have nothing left to do, I should be ruined and lost for ever. With such a character as hers what guarantee can she give me? Alas! My manners are no doubt lacking in elegance, and my style of speech is heavy and monotonous. Great God, why am I myself?"

CHAPTER LIX

ENNUI

Girodet.

Madame de Fervaques had begun reading Julien's long letters without any pleasure, but she now began to think about them; one thing, however, grieved her. "What a pity that M. Sorel was not a real priest! He could then be admitted to a kind of intimacy; but in view of that cross, and that almost lay dress, one is exposed to cruel questions and what is one to answer?" She did not finish the train of thought, "Some malicious woman friend may think, and even spread it about that he is some lower middle-class cousin or other, a relative of my father, some tradesman who has been decorated by the National Guard." Up to the time which she had seen Julien, madame de Fervaque's greatest pleasure had been writing the word maréchale after her name. Consequently a morbid parvenu vanity, which was ready to take umbrage at everything, combatted the awakening of her interest in him. "It would be so easy for me," said the maréchale, "to make him a grand vicar in some diocese near Paris! but plain M. Sorel, and what is more, a man who is the secretary of M. de la Mole! It is heart-breaking."

For the first time in her life this soul, which was afraid of everything, was moved by an interest which was alien to its own pretensions to rank and superiority. Her old porter noticed that whenever he brought a letter from this handsome young man, who always looked so sad, he was certain to see that absent, discontented expression, which the maréchale always made a point of assuming on the entry of any of her servants, immediately disappear. The boredom of a mode of life whose ambitions were concentrated on impressing the public without her having at heart any real faculty of enjoyment for that kind of success, had become so intolerable since she had begun to think of Julien that, all that was necessary to prevent her chambermaids being bullied for a whole day, was that their mistress should have passed an hour in the society of this strange young man on the evening of the preceding day. His budding credit was proof against very cleverly written anonymous letters. It was in vain that Tanbeau supplied M. de Luz, de Croisenois, de Caylus, with two or three very clever calumnies which these gentlemen were only too glad to spread, without making too many enquiries of the actual truth of the charges. The maréchale, whose temperament was not calculated to be proof against these vulgar expedients related her doubts to Mathilde, and was always consoled by her.

One day, madame de Fervaques, after having asked three times if there were any letters for her, suddenly decided to answer Julien. It was a case of the triumph of ennui. On reaching the second letter in his name the marechale almost felt herself pulled up sharp by the unbecomingness of writing with her own hand so vulgar an address as to M. Sorel, care of M. le Marquis de la Mole.

"You must bring me envelopes with your address on," she said very drily to Julien in the evening. "Here I am appointed lover and valet in one," thought Julien, and he bowed, amused himself by wrinkling his face up like Arsène, the old valet of the marquis.

He brought the envelopes that very evening, and he received the third letter very early on the following day: he read five or six lines at the beginning, and two or three towards the end. There were four pages of a small and very close writing. The lady gradually developed the sweet habit of writing nearly every day. Julien answered by faithful copies of the Russian letters; and such is the advantage of the bombastic style that madame de Fervaques was not a bit astonished by the lack of connection between his answers and her letters. How gravely irritated would her pride have been if the little Tanbeau who had constituted himself a voluntary spy on all Julien's movements had been able to have informed her that all these letters were left unsealed and thrown haphazard into Julien's drawer.

One morning the porter was bringing into the library a letter to him from the maréchale. Mathilde met the man, saw the letter together with the address in Julien's handwriting. She entered the library as the porter was leaving it, the letter was still on the edge of the table. Julien was very busy with his work and had not yet put it in his drawer.

"I cannot endure this," exclaimed Mathilde, as she took possession of the letter, "you are completely forgetting me, me your wife, your conduct is awful, monsieur."

At these words her pride, shocked by the awful unseemliness of her proceeding, prevented her from speaking. She burst into tears, and soon seemed to Julien scarcely able to breathe. Julien was so surprised and embarrassed that he did not fully appreciate how ideally fortunate this scene was for himself. He helped Mathilde to sit down; she almost abandoned herself in his arms.

The first minute in which he noticed this movement, he felt an extreme joy. Immediately afterwards, he thought of Korasoff: "I may lose everything by a single word."

The strain of carrying out his tactics was so great that his arms stiffened. "I dare not even allow myself to press this supple, charming frame to my heart, or she will despise me or treat me badly. What an awful character!" And while he cursed Mathilde's character, he loved her a hundred times more. He thought he had a queen in his arms.

Julien's impassive coldness intensified the anguished pride which was lacerating the soul of mademoiselle de la Mole. She was far from having the necessary self-possession to try and read in his eyes what he felt for her at that particular moment. She could not make up her mind to look at him. She trembled lest she might encounter a contemptuous expression.

Seated motionless on the library divan, with her head turned in the opposite direction to Julien, she was a prey to the most poignant anguish that pride and love can inflict upon a human soul. What an awful step had she just slipped into taking! "It has been reserved for me, unhappy woman that I am, to see my most unbecoming advances rebuffed! and rebuffed by whom?" added her maddened and wounded pride; "rebuffed by a servant of my father's! That's more than I will put up with," she said aloud, and rising in a fury, she opened the drawer of Julien's table, which was two yards in front of her.

She stood petrified with horror when she saw eight or ten unopened letters, completely like the one the porter had just brought up. She recognised Julien's handwriting, though more or less disguised, on all the addresses.

"So," she cried, quite beside herself, "you are not only on good terms with her, but you actually despise her. You, a nobody, despise madame la maréchale de Fervaques!"

"Oh, forgive me, my dear," she added, throwing herself on her knees; "despise me if you wish, but love me. I cannot live without your love." And she fell down in a dead faint.

CHAPTER LX

A BOX AT THE BOUFFES

Don Juan, c. 1. st. 76.

In the midst of these great transports Julien felt more surprised than happy. Mathilde's abuse proved to him the shrewdness of the Russian tactics. "'Few words, few deeds,' that is my one method of salvation." He picked up Mathilde, and without saying a word, put her back on the divan. She was gradually being overcome by tears.

In order to keep herself in countenance, she took madame de Fervaques' letters in her hands, and slowly broke the seals. She gave a noticeable nervous movement when she recognised the maréchale's handwriting. She turned over the pages of these letters without reading them. Most of them were six pages.

"At least answer me," Mathilde said at last, in the most supplicatory tone, but without daring to look at Julien: "You know how proud I am. It is the misfortune of my position, and of my temperament, too, I confess. Has madame de Fervaques robbed me of your heart? Has she made the sacrifices to which my fatal love swept me?"

A dismal silence was all Julien's answer. "By what right," he thought, "does she ask me to commit an indiscretion unworthy of an honest man?" Mathilde tried to read the letters; her eyes were so wet with tears that it was impossible for her to do so. She had been unhappy for a month past, but this haughty soul had been very far from owning its own feelings even to itself. Chance alone had brought about this explosion. For one instant jealousy and love had won a victory over pride. She was sitting on the divan, and very near him. He saw her hair and her alabaster neck. For a moment he forgot all he owed to himself. He passed his arm around her waist, and clasped her almost to his breast.

She slowly turned her head towards him. He was astonished by the extreme anguish in her eyes. There was not a trace of their usual expression.

Julien felt his strength desert him. So great was the deadly pain of the courageous feat which he was imposing on himself.

"Those eyes will soon express nothing but the coldest disdain," said Julien to himself, "if I allow myself to be swept away by the happiness of loving her." She, however, kept repeatedly assuring him at this moment, in a hushed voice, and in words which she had scarcely the strength to finish, of all her remorse for those steps which her inordinate pride had dictated.

"I, too, have pride," said Julien to her, in a scarcely articulate voice, while his features portrayed the lowest depths of physical prostration.

Mathilde turned round sharply towards him. Hearing his voice was a happiness which she had given up hoping. At this moment her only thought of her haughtiness was to curse it. She would have liked to have found out some abnormal and incredible actions, in order to prove to him the extent to which she adored him and detested herself.

"That pride is probably the reason," continued Julien, "why you singled me out for a moment. My present courageous and manly firmness is certainly the reason why you respect me. I may entertain love for the maréchale."

Mathilde shuddered; a strange expression came into her eyes. She was going to hear her sentence pronounced. This shudder did not escape Julien. He felt his courage weaken.

"Ah," he said to himself, as he listened to the sound of the vain words which his mouth was articulating, as he thought it were some strange sound, "if I could only cover those pale cheeks with kisses without your feeling it."

"I may entertain love for the maréchale," he continued, while his voice became weaker and weaker, "but I certainly have no definite proof of her interest in me."

Mathilde looked at him. He supported that look. He hoped, at any rate, that his expression had not betrayed him. He felt himself bathed in a love that penetrated even into the most secret recesses of his heart. He had never adored her so much; he was almost as mad as Mathilde. If she had mustered sufficient self-possession and courage to manœuvre, he would have abandoned all his play-acting, and fallen at her feet. He had sufficient strength to manage to continue speaking: "Ah, Korasoff," he exclaimed mentally, "why are you not here? How I need a word from you to guide me in my conduct." During this time his voice was saying,

"In default of any other sentiment, gratitude would be sufficient to attach me to the maréchale. She has been indulgent to me; she has consoled me when I have been despised. I cannot put unlimited faith in certain appearances which are, no doubt, extremely flattering, but possibly very fleeting."

"Oh, my God!" exclaimed Mathilde.

"Well, what guarantee will you give me?" replied Julien with a sharp, firm intonation, which seemed to abandon for a moment the prudent forms of diplomacy. "What guarantee, what god will warrant that the position to which you seem inclined to restore me at the present moment will last more than two days?"

"The excess of my love, and my unhappiness if you do not love me," she said to him, taking his hands and turning towards him.

The spasmodic movement which she had just made had slightly displaced her tippet; Julien caught a view of her charming shoulders. Her slightly dishevelled hair recalled a delicious memory.…

He was on the point of succumbing. "One imprudent word," he said to himself, "and I have to start all over again that long series of days which I have passed in despair. Madame de Rênal used to find reasons for doing what her heart dictated. This young girl of high society never allows her heart to be moved except when she has proved to herself by sound logic that it ought to be moved."

He saw this proof in the twinkling of an eye, and in the twinkling of an eye too, he regained his courage. He took away his hands which Mathilde was pressing in her own, and moved a little away from her with a marked respect.

Human courage could not go further. He then busied himself with putting together madame de Fervaque's letters which were spread out on the divan, and it was with all the appearance of extreme politeness that he cruelly exploited the psychological moment by adding,

"Mademoiselle de la Mole will allow me to reflect over all this." He went rapidly away and left the library; she heard him shut all the doors one after the other.

"The monster is not the least bit troubled," she said to herself. "But what am I saying? Monster? He is wise, prudent, good. It is I myself who have committed more wrong than one can imagine."

This point of view lasted. Mathilde was almost happy to-day, for she gave herself up to love unreservedly. One would have said that this soul had never been disturbed by pride (and what pride!)

She shuddered with horror when a lackey announced madame le Fervaques into the salon in the evening. The man's voice struck her as sinister. She could not endure the sight of the maréchale, and stopped suddenly. Julien who had felt little pride over his painful victory, had feared to face her, and had not dined at the hotel de la Mole.

His love and his happiness rapidly increased in proportion to the time that elapsed from the moment of the battle. He was blaming himself already. "How could I resist her?" he said to himself. "Suppose she were to go and leave off loving me! One single moment may change that haughty soul, and I must admit that I have treated her awfully."

In the evening he felt that it was absolutely necessary to put in an appearance at the Bouffes in madame de Fervaques' box. She had expressly invited him. Mathilde would be bound to know of his presence or his discourteous absence. In spite of the clearness of this logic, he could not at the beginning of the evening bring himself to plunge into society. By speaking he would lose half his happiness. Ten o'clock struck and it was absolutely necessary to show himself. Luckily he found the maréchale's box packed with women, and was relegated to a place near the door where he was completely hidden by the hats. This position saved him from looking ridiculous; Caroline's divine notes of despair in the Matrimonio Segreto made him burst into tears. Madame de Fervaques saw these tears. They represented so great a contrast with the masculine firmness of his usual expression that the soul of the old-fashioned lady, saturated as it had been for many years with all the corroding acid of parvenu haughtiness, was none the less touched. Such remnants of a woman's heart as she still possessed impelled her to speak: she wanted to enjoy the sound of his voice at this moment.

"Have you seen the de la Mole ladies?" she said to him. "They are in the third tier." Julien immediately craned out over the theatre, leaning politely enough on the front of the box. He saw Mathilde; her eyes were shining with tears.

"And yet it is not their Opera day," thought Julien; "how eager she must be!"

Mathilde had prevailed on her mother to come to the Bouffes in spite of the inconveniently high tier of the box, which a lady friend of the family had hastened to offer her. She wanted to see if Julien would pass the evening with the maréchale.

CHAPTER LXI

FRIGHTEN HER

So this is the fine miracle of your civilisation; you have, turned love into an ordinary business.— Barnave.

Julien rushed into madame de la Mole's box. His eyes first met the tearful eyes of Mathilde; she was crying without reserve. There were only insignificant personages present, the friend who had leant her box, and some men whom she knew. Mathilde placed her hand on Julien's; she seemed to have forgotten all fear of her mother. Almost stifled as she was by her tears, she said nothing but this one word: "Guarantees!"

"So long as I don't speak to her," said Julien to himself. He was himself very moved, and concealed his eyes with his hand as best he could under the pretext of avoiding the dazzling light of the third tier of boxes. "If I speak she may suspect the excess of my emotion, the sound of my voice will betray me. All may yet be lost. His struggles were more painful than they had been in the morning, his soul had had the time to become moved. He had been frightened at seeing Mathilde piqued with vanity. Intoxicated as he was with love and pleasure he resolved not to speak.

In my view this is one of the finest traits in his character, an individual capable of such an effort of self-control may go far si fata sinant.

Mademoiselle de la Mole insisted on taking Julien back to the hotel. Luckily it was raining a great deal, but the marquise had him placed opposite her, talked to him incessantly, and prevented him saying a single word to her daughter. One might have thought that the marquise was nursing Julien's happiness for him; no longer fearing to lose everything through his excessive emotion, he madly abandoned himself to his happiness.

Shall I dare to say that when he went back to his room Julien fell on his knees and covered with kisses the love letters which prince Korasoff had given him.

"How much I owe you, great man," he exclaimed in his madness. Little by little he regained his self-possession. He compared himself to a general who had just won a great battle. "My advantage is definite and immense," he said to himself, "but what will happen to-morrow? One instant may ruin everything."

With a passionate gesture he opened the Memoirs which Napoleon had dictated at St. Helena and for two long hours forced himself to read them. Only his eyes read; no matter, he made himself do it. During this singular reading his head and his heart rose to the most exalted level and worked unconsciously. "Her heart is very different from madame de Rênal's," he said to himself, but he did not go further.

"Frighten her!" he suddenly exclaimed, hurling away the book. "The enemy will only obey me in so far as I frighten him, but then he will not dare to show contempt for me."

Intoxicated with joy he walked up and down his little room. In point of fact his happiness was based rather on pride than on love.

"Frighten her!" he repeated proudly, and he had cause to be proud.

"Madame de Rênal always doubted even in her happiest moments if my love was equal to her own. In this case I have to subjugate a demon, consequently I must subjugate her." He knew quite well that Mathilde would be in the library at eight o'clock in the morning of the following day. He did not appear before nine o'clock. He was burning with love, but his head dominated his heart.

Scarcely a single minute passed without his repeating to himself. "Keep her obsessed by this great doubt. Does he love me?" Her own brilliant position, together with the flattery of all who speak to her, tend a little too much to make her reassure herself.

He found her sitting on the divan pale and calm, but apparently completely incapable of making a single movement. She held out her hand,

"Dear one, it is true I have offended you, perhaps you are angry with me."

Julien had not been expecting this simple tone. He was on the point of betraying himself.

"You want guarantees, my dear, she added after a silence which she had hoped would be broken. Take me away, let us leave for London. I shall be ruined, dishonoured for ever." She had the courage to take her hand away from Julien to cover her eyes with it.

All her feelings of reserve and feminine virtue had come back into her soul. "Well, dishonour me," she said at last with a sigh, "that will be a guarantee."

"I was happy yesterday, because I had the courage to be severe with myself," thought Julien. After a short silence he had sufficient control over his heart to say in an icy tone,

"Once we are on the road to London, once you are dishonoured, to employ your own expression, who will answer that you will still love me? that my very presence in the post-chaise will not seem importunate? I am not a monster; to have ruined your reputation will only make me still more unhappy. It is not your position in society which is the obstacle, it is unfortunately your own character. Can you yourself guarantee that you will love me for eight days?"

"Ah! let her love me for eight days, just eight days," whispered Julien to himself, "and I will die of happiness. What do I care for the future, what do I care for life? And yet if I wish that divine happiness can commence this very minute, it only depends on me."

Mathild saw that he was pensive.

"So I am completely unworthy of you," she said to him, taking his hand.

Julien kissed her, but at the same time the iron hand of duty gripped his heart. If she sees how much I adore her I shall lose her. And before leaving her arms, he had reassumed all that dignity which is proper to a man.

He managed on this and the following days to conceal his inordinate happiness. There were moments when he even refused himself the pleasure of clasping her in his arms. At other times the delirium of happiness prevailed over all the counsels of prudence.

He had been accustomed to station himself near a bower of honeysuckle in the garden arranged in such a way so as to conceal the ladder when he had looked up at Mathilde's blind in the distance, and lamented her inconstancy. A very big oak tree was quite near, and the trunk of that tree prevented him from being seen by the indiscreet.

As he passed with Mathilde over this very place which recalled his excessive unhappiness so vividly, the contrast between his former despair and his present happiness proved too much for his character. Tears inundated his eyes, and he carried his sweetheart's hand to his lips: "It was here I used to live in my thoughts of you, it was from here that I used to look at that blind, and waited whole hours for the happy moment when I would see that hand open it."

His weakness was unreserved. He portrayed the extremity of his former despair in genuine colours which could not possibly have been invented. Short interjections testified to that present happiness which had put an end to that awful agony.

"My God, what am I doing?" thought Julien, suddenly recovering himself. "I am ruining myself."

In his excessive alarm he thought that he already detected a diminution of the love in mademoiselle de la Mole's eyes. It was an illusion, but Julien's face suddenly changed its expression and became overspread by a mortal pallor. His eyes lost their fire, and an expression of haughtiness touched with malice soon succeeded to his look of the most genuine and unreserved love.

"But what is the matter with you, my dear," said Mathilde to him, both tenderly and anxiously.

"I am lying," said Julien irritably, "and I am lying to you. I am reproaching myself for it, and yet God knows that I respect you sufficiently not to lie to you. You love me, you are devoted to me, and I have no need of praises in order to please you."

"Great heavens! are all the charming things you have been telling me for the last two minutes mere phrases?"

"And I reproach myself for it keenly, dear one. I once made them up for a woman who loved me, and bored me it is the weakness of my character. I denounce myself to you, forgive me."

Bitter tears streamed over Mathilde's cheeks.

"As soon as some trifle offends me and throws me back on my meditation," continued Julien, "my abominable memory, which I curse at this very minute, offers me a resource, and I abuse it."

"So I must have slipped, without knowing it, into some action which has displeased you," said Mathilde with a charming simplicity.

"I remember one day that when you passed near this honeysuckle you picked a flower, M. de Luz took it from you and you let him keep it. I was two paces away."

"M. de Luz? It is impossible," replied Mathilde with all her natural haughtiness. "I do not do things like that."

"I am sure of it," Julien replied sharply.

"Well, my dear, it is true," said Mathilde, as she sadly lowered her eyes. She knew positively that many months had elapsed since she had allowed M. de Luz to do such a thing. Julien looked at her with ineffable tenderness, "No," he said to himself, " she does not love me less."

In the evening she rallied him with a laugh on his fancy for madame de Fervaques. "Think of a bourgeois loving a parvenu, those are perhaps the only type of hearts that my Julien cannot make mad with love. She has made you into a real dandy," she said playing with his hair.

During the period when he thought himself scorned by Mathilde, Julien had become one of the best dressed men in Paris. He had, moreover, a further advantage over other dandies, in as much as once he had finished dressing he never gave a further thought to his appearance.

One thing still piqued Mathilde, Julien continued to copy out the Russian letters and send them to the maréchale.

CHAPTER LXII

THE TIGER

Alas, why these things and not other things?— Beaumarchais .

An English traveller tells of the intimacy in which he lived with a tiger. He had trained it and would caress it, but he always kept a cocked pistol on his table.

Julien only abandoned himself to the fulness of his happiness in those moments when Mathilde could not read the expression in his eyes. He scrupulously performed his duty of addressing some harsh word to her from time to time.

When Mathilde's sweetness, which he noticed with some surprise, together with the completeness of her devotion were on the point of depriving him of all self-control, he was courageous enough to leave her suddenly.

Mathilde loved for the first time in her life.

Life had previously always dragged along at a tortoise pace, but now it flew.

As, however, her pride required to find a vent in some way or other, she wished to expose herself to all the dangers in which her love could involve her. It was Julien who was prudent, and it was only when it was a question of danger that she did not follow her own inclination; but submissive, and almost humble as she was when with him, she only showed additional haughtiness to everyone in the house who came near her, whether relatives or friends.

In the evening she would call Julien to her in the salon in the presence of sixty people, and have a long and private conversation with him.

The little Tanbeau installed himself one day close to them. She requested him to go and fetch from the library the volume of Smollet which deals with the revolution of 1688, and when he hesitated, added with an expression of insulting haughtiness, which was a veritable balm to Julien's soul, "Don't hurry."

"Have you noticed that little monster's expression?" he said to her.

"His uncle has been in attendance in this salon for ten or twelve years, otherwise I would have had him packed off immediately."

Her behaviour towards MM. de Croisenois, de Luz, etc., though outwardly perfectly polite, was in reality scarcely less provocative. Mathilde keenly reproached herself for all the confidential remarks about them which she had formerly made to Julien, and all the more so since she did not dare to confess that she had exaggerated to him the, in fact, almost absolutelyinnocent manifestations of interest of which these gentlemen had been the objects. In spite of her best resolutions her womanly pride invariably prevented her from saying to Julien, "It was because I was talking to you that I found a pleasure in describing my weakness in not drawing my hand away, when M. de Croisenois had placed his on a marble table and had just touched it."

But now, as soon as one of these gentlemen had been speaking to her for some moments, she found she had a question to put to Julien, and she made this an excuse for keeping him by her side.

She discovered that she was enceinte and joyfully informed Julien of the fact.

"Do you doubt me now? Is it not a guarantee? I am your wife for ever."

This announcement struck Julien with profound astonishment. He was on the point of forgetttng the governing principle of his conduct. How am I to be deliberately cold and insulting towards this poor young girl, who is ruining herself for my sake. And if she looked at all ill, he could not, even on those days when the terrible voice of wisdom made itself heard, find the courage to address to her one of those harsh remarks which his experience had found so indispensable to the preservation of their love.

"I will write to my father," said Mathilde to him one day, "he is more than a father to me, he is a friend; that being so, I think it unworthy both of you and of myself to try and deceive him, even for a single minute."

"Great heavens, what are you going to do?" said Julien in alarm.

"My duty," she answered with eyes shining with joy.

She thought she was showing more nobility than her lover.

"But he will pack me off in disgrace."

"It is his right to do so, we must respect it. I will give you my arm, and we will go out by the front door in full daylight."

Julien was thunderstruck and requested her to put it off for a week.

"I cannot," she answered, "it is the voice of honour, I have seen my duty, I must follow it, and follow it at once."

"Well, I order you to put it off," said Julien at last. "Your honour is safe for the present. I am your husband. The position of us will be changed by this momentous step. I too am within my rights. To-day is Tuesday, next Tuesday is the duke de Retz's at home; when M. de la Mole comes home in the evening the porter will give him the fatal letter. His only thought is to make you a duchess, I am sure of it. Think of his unhappiness."

"You mean, think of his vengeance?"

"It may be that I pity my benefactor, and am grieved at injuring him, but I do not fear, and shall never fear anyone."

Mathilde yielded. This was the first occasion, since she had informed Julien of her condition, that he had spoken to her authoritatively. She had never loved him so much. The tender part of his soul had found happiness in seizing on Mathilde's condition as an excuse for refraining from his cruel remarks to her. The question of the confession to M. de la Mole deeply moved him. Was he going to be separated from Mathilde? And, however grieved she would be to see him go, would she have a thought for him after his departure?

He was almost equally horrified by the thought of the justified reproaches which the marquis might address to him.

In the evening he confessed to Mathilde the second reason for his anxiety, and then led away by his love, confessed the first as well.

She changed colour. "Would it really make you unhappy," she said to him, "to pass six months far away from me?"

"Infinitely so. It is the only thing in the world which terrifies me."

Mathilde was very happy. Julien had played his part so assiduously that he had succeeded in making her think that she was the one of the two who loved the more.

The fatal Tuesday arrived. When the marquis came in at midnight he found a letter addressed to him, which was only to be opened himself when no one was there:—

"My father,

"All social ties have been broken between us, only those of nature remain. Next to my husband, you are and always will be the being I shall always hold most dear. My eyes are full of tears, I am thinking of the pain that I am causing you, but if my shame was to be prevented from becoming public, and you were to be given time to reflect and act, I could not postpone any longer the confession that I owe you. If your affection for me, which I know is extremely deep, is good enough to grant me a small allowance, I will go and settle with my husband anywhere you like, in Switzerland, for instance. His name is so obscure that no one would recognize in Madame Sorel, the daughter-in-law of a Verrières' carpenter, your daughter. That is the name which I have so much difficulty in writing. I fear your wrath against Julien, it seems so justified. I shall not be a duchess, my father; but I knew it when I loved him; for I was the one who loved him first, it was I who seduced him. I have inherited from you too lofty a soul to fix my attention on what either is or appears to be vulgar. It is in vain that I thought of M. Croisenois with a view to pleasing you. Why did you place real merit under my eyes? You told me yourself on my return from Hyères, 'that young Sorel is the one person who amuses me,' the poor boy is as grieved as I am if it is possible, at the pain this letter will give you. I cannot prevent you being irritated as a father, but love me as a friend.

"Julien respected me. If he sometimes spoke to me, it was only by reason of his deep gratitude towards yourself, for the natural dignity of his character induces him to keep to his official capacity in any answers he may make to anyone who is so much above him. He has a keen and instinctive appreciation of the difference of social rank. It was I (I confess it with a blush to my best friend, and I shall never make such a confession to anyone else) who clasped his arm one day in the garden.

"Why need you be irritated with him, after twenty-four hours have elapsed? My own lapse is irreparable. If you insist on it, the assurance of his profound respect and of his desperate grief at having displeased you, can be conveyed to you through me. You need not see him at all, but I shall go and join him wherever he wishes. It is his right and it is my duty. He is the father of my child. If your kindness will go so far as to grant us six thousand francs to live on, I will receive it with gratitude; if not, Julien reckons on establishing himself at Besançon, where he will set up as a Latin and literature master. However low may have been the station from which he springs, I am certain he will raise himself. With him I do not fear obscurity. If there is a revolution, I am sure that he will play a prime part. Can you say as much for any of those who have asked for my hand? They have fine estates, you say. I cannot consider that circumstance a reason for admiring them. My Julien would attain a high position, even under the present régime, if he had a million and my father's protection.…"