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 hôtel.
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."
Mathilde 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.