"Julien is sincere enough with me," she said to herself, "a man at his age, in a inferior position, and rendered unhappy as he is by an extraordinary ambition, must have need of a woman friend. I am perhaps that friend, but I see no sign of love in him.
Taking into account the audacity of his character he would surely have spoken to me about his love."
This uncertainty and this discussion with herself which henceforth monopolised Mathilde's time, and in connection with which she found new arguments each time that Julien spoke to her, completely routed those fits of boredom to which she had been so liable.
Daughter as she was of a man of intellect who might become a minister, mademoiselle de la Mole had been when in the convent of the Sacred Heart, the object of the most excessive flattery.
This misfortune can never be compensated for.
She had been persuaded that by reason of all her advantages of birth, fortune, etc., she ought to be happier than any one else.
This is the cause of the boredom of princes and of all their follies.
Mathilde had not escaped the deadly influence of this idea.
However intelligent one may be, one cannot at the age of ten be on one's guard against the flatteries of a whole convent, which are apparently so well founded.
From the moment that she had decided that she loved Julien, she was no longer bored.
She congratulated herself every day on having deliberately decided to indulge in a grand passion.
"This amusement is very dangerous," she thought. "All the better, all the better, a thousand times.
Without a grand passion I should be languishing in boredom during the finest time of my life, the years from sixteen to twenty.
I have already wasted my finest years: all my pleasure consisted in being obliged to listen to the silly arguments of my mother's friends who when at Coblentz in 1792 were not quite so strict, so they say, as their words of to-day."
It was while Mathilde was a prey to these great fits of uncertainty that Julien was baffled by those long looks of hers which lingered upon him.
He noticed, no doubt, an increased frigidity in the manner of comte Norbert, and a fresh touch of haughtiness in the manner of MM. de Caylus, de Luz and de Croisenois.
He was accustomed to that.
He would sometimes be their victim in this way at the end of an evening when, in view of the position he occupied, he had been unduly brilliant.
Had it not been for the especial welcome with which Mathilde would greet him, and the curiosity with which all this society inspired him, he would have avoided following these brilliant moustachioed young men into the garden, when they accompanied mademoiselle de La Mole there, in the hour after dinner.
"Yes," Julien would say to himself, "it is impossible for me to deceive myself, mademoiselle de la Mole looks at me in a very singular way.
But even when her fine blue open eyes are fixed on me, wide open with the most abandon, I always detect behind them an element of scrutiny, self-possession and malice.
Is it possible that this may be love?
But how different to madame de Renal's looks!"
One evening after dinner Julien, who had followed M. de la Mole into his study, was rapidly walking back to the garden.
He approached Mathilde's circle without any warning, and caught some words pronounced in a very loud voice.
She was teasing her brother.
Julien heard his name distinctly pronounced twice.
He appeared. There was immediately a profound silence and abortive efforts were made to dissipate it.
Mademoiselle de la Mole and her brother were too animated to find another topic of conversation. MM. de Caylus, de Croisenois, de Luz, and one of their friends, manifested an icy coldness to Julien.
He went away. _____
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.