"The garden will be a useful place to hand her the letter," he thought after he had finished it, and he went there. He looked at the window of mademoiselle de la Mole's room.
It was on the first storey, next to her mother's apartment, but there was a large ground floor.
This latter was so high that, as Julien walked under the avenue of pines with his letter in his hands, he could not be seen from mademoiselle de la Mole's window.
The dome formed by the well clipped pines intercepted the view.
"What!" said Julien to himself angrily, "another indiscretion!
If they have really begun making fun of me, showing myself with a letter is playing into my enemy's hands."
Norbert's room was exactly above his sister's and if Julien came out from under the dome formed by the clipped branches of the pine, the comte and his friend could follow all his movements.
Mademoiselle de la Mole appeared behind her window; he half showed his letter; she lowered her head, then Julien ran up to his own room and met accidentally on the main staircase the fair Mathilde, who seized the letter with complete self-possession and smiling eyes.
"What passion there was in the eyes of that poor madame de Renal," said Julien to himself, "when she ventured to receive a letter from me, even after six months of intimate relationship!
I don't think she ever looked at me with smiling eyes in her whole life."
He did not formulate so precisely the rest of his answer; was he perhaps ashamed of the triviality of the motive which were actuating him?
"But how different too," he went on to think, "are her elegant morning dress and her distinguished appearance!
A man of taste on seeing mademoiselle de la Mole thirty yards off would infer the position which she occupies in society.
That is what can be called a specific merit."
In spite of all this humorousness, Julien was not yet quite honest with himself; madame de Renal had no marquis de Croisenois to sacrifice to him.
His only rival was that grotesque sub-prefect, M. Charcot, who assumed the name of Maugiron, because there were no Maugirons left in France.
At five o'clock Julien received a third letter. It was thrown to him from the library door.
Mademoiselle de la Mole ran away again.
"What a mania for writing," he said to himself with a laugh, "when one can talk so easily.
The enemy wants my letters, that is clear, and many of them."
He did not hurry to open this one.
"More elegant phrases," he thought; but he paled as he read it.
There were only eight lines.
"I need to speak to you; I must speak to you this evening. Be in the garden at the moment when one o'clock is striking.
Take the big gardeners' ladder near the well; place it against my window, and climb up to my room.
It is moonlight; never mind." _____
CHAPTER XLV
IS IT A PLOT? _____
Oh, how cruel is the interval between the conception and the execution of a great project.
What vain fears,
what fits of irresolution!
It is a matter of life and death—even more is at stake honour!—Schiller. _____
"This is getting serious," thought Julien, "and a little too clear," he added after thinking a little. "Why to be sure!
This fine young lady can talk to me in the library with a freedom which, thank heaven, is absolutely complete; the marquis, frightened as he is that I show him accounts, never sets foot in it.
Why! M. de la Mole and the comte Norbert, the only persons who ever come here, are absent nearly the whole day, and the sublime Mathilde for whom a sovereign prince would not be too noble a suitor, wants me to commit an abominable indiscretion.
"It is clear they want to ruin me, or at the least make fun of me.
First they wanted to ruin me by my own letters; they happen to be discreet; well, they want some act which is clearer than daylight.
These handsome little gentlemen think I am too silly or too conceited.
The devil!
To think of climbing like this up a ladder to a storey twenty-five feet high in the finest moonlight.
They would have time to see me, even from the neighbouring houses.
I shall cut a pretty figure to be sure on my ladder!"
Julien went up to his room again and began to pack his trunk whistling.
He had decided to leave and not even to answer.
But this wise resolution did not give him peace of mind.
"If by chance," he suddenly said to himself after he had closed his trunk, "Mathilde is in good faith, why then I cut the figure of an arrant coward in her eyes.
I have no birth myself, so I need great qualities attested straight away by speaking actions—money down—no charitable credit."
He spent a quarter-of-an-hour in reflecting.
"What is the good of denying it?" he said at last.
"She will think me a coward.