第 四十八 章 · CRUEL MOMENTS

. 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 hôtel 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-Valère 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 hôtel; 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 rôle and a great rôle, 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.