الفصل الفصل 54 · STRASBOURG

as best you can

and at half-past twelve on the twenty-second of the month (it was at

present the tenth) come to this same coffee-house. Do not leave for

half-an-hour. Silence!"

These were the only words which Julien heard. They sufficed to inspire

him with the highest admiration. "That is the way," he thought, "that

real business is done; what would this great statesman say if he were

to listen to the impassioned ranters heard three days ago?"

Julien took two days to reach Strasbourg. He thought he would have

nothing to do there. He made a great detour. "If that devil of an abbé

Castanède has recognised me he is not the kind of man to loose track

of me easily.... And how he would revel in making a fool of me, and

causing my mission to fail."

Fortunately the abbé Castanède, who was chief of the congregational

police on all the northern frontier had not recognised him. And the

Strasbourg Jesuits, although very zealous, never gave a thought to

observing Julien, who with his cross and his blue tail-coat looked

like a young military man, very much engrossed in his own personal

appearance.

Chapter 54. STRASBOURG

Fascination! Love gives thee all his love, energy and

all his power of suffering unhappiness. It is only

his enchanting pleasures, his sweet delights, which

are outside thy sphere. When I saw her sleep I was

made to say "With all her angelic beauty and her sweet

weaknesses she is absolutely mine! There she is, quite

in my power, such as Heaven made her in its pity in

order to ravish a man's heart."--_Ode of Schiller_.

Julien was compelled to spend eight days in Strasbourg and tried to

distract himself by thoughts of military glory and patriotic devotion.

Was he in love then? he could not tell, he only felt in his tortured

soul that Mathilde was the absolute mistress both of his happiness

and of his imagination. He needed all the energy of his character

to keep himself from sinking into despair. It was out of his power

to think of anything unconnected with mademoiselle de la Mole. His

ambition and his simple personal successes had formerly distracted him

from the sentiments which madame de Rênal had inspired. Mathilde was

all-absorbing; she loomed large over his whole future.

Julien saw failure in every phase of that future. This same individual

whom we remember to have been so presumptuous and haughty at Verrières,

had fallen into an e