"My honour is at stake," he thought. "If I tumble into some pitfall it will not be an excuse in my own eyes to say, 'I never thought of it.'"
The weather was desperately serene.
About eleven o'clock the moon rose, at half-past twelve it completely illuminated the facade of the hotel looking out upon the garden.
"She is mad," Julien said to himself.
As one o'clock struck there was still a light in comte Norbert's windows.
Julien had never been so frightened in his life, he only saw the dangers of the enterprise and had no enthusiasm at all.
He went and took the immense ladder, waited five minutes to give her time to tell him not to go, and five minutes after one placed the ladder against Mathilde's window.
He mounted softly, pistol in hand, astonished at not being attacked.
As he approached the window it opened noiselessly.
"So there you are, monsieur," said Mathilde to him with considerable emotion.
"I have been following your movements for the last hour."
Julien was very much embarrassed. He did not know how to conduct himself. He did not feel at all in love.
He thought in his embarrassment that he ought to be venturesome. He tried to kiss Mathilde.
"For shame," she said to him, pushing him away.
Extremely glad at being rebuffed, he hastened to look round him.
The moon was so brilliant that the shadows which it made in mademoiselle de la Mole's room were black.
"It's quite possible for men to be concealed without my seeing them," he thought.
"What have you got in your pocket at the side of your coat?" Mathilde said to him, delighted at finding something to talk about.
She was suffering strangely; all those sentiments of reserve and timidity which were so natural to a girl of good birth, had reasserted their dominion and were torturing her.
"I have all kinds of arms and pistols," answered Julien equally glad at having something to say.
"You must take the ladder away," said Mathilde.
"It is very big, and may break the windows of the salon down below or the room on the ground floor."
"You must not break the windows," replied Mathilde making a vain effort to assume an ordinary conversational tone; "it seems to me you can lower the ladder by tying a cord to the first rung.
I have always a supply of cords at hand."
"So this is a woman in love," thought Julien.
"She actually dares to say that she is in love.
So much self-possession and such shrewdness in taking precautions are sufficient indications that I am not triumphing over M. de Croisenois as I foolishly believed, but that I am simply succeeding him.
As a matter of fact, what does it matter to me?
Do I love her?
I am triumphing over the marquis in so far as he would be very angry at having a successor, and angrier still at that successor being myself.
How haughtily he looked at me this evening in the Cafe Tortoni when he pretended not to recognise me! And how maliciously he bowed to me afterwards, when he could not get out of it."
Julien had tied the cord to the last rung of the ladder. He lowered it softly and leant far out of the balcony in order to avoid its touching the window pane.
"A fine opportunity to kill me," he thought, "if anyone is hidden in Mathilde's room;" but a profound silence continued to reign everywhere.
The ladder touched the ground. Julien succeeded in laying it on the border of the exotic flowers along side the wall.
"What will my mother say," said Mathilde, "when she sees her beautiful plants all crushed?
You must throw down the cord," she added with great self-possession.
"If it were noticed going up to the balcony, it would be a difficult circumstance to explain."
"And how am I to get away?" said Julien in a jesting tone affecting the Creole accent. (One of the chambermaids of the household had been born in Saint-Domingo.)
"You? Why you will leave by the door," said Mathilde, delighted at the idea.
"Ah! how worthy this man is of all my love," she thought.
Julien had just let the cord fall into the garden; Mathilde grasped his arm.
He thought he had been seized by an enemy and turned round sharply, drawing a dagger.
She had thought that she had heard a window opening.
They remained motionless and scarcely breathed.
The moonlight lit up everything.
The noise was not renewed and there was no more cause for anxiety.
Then their embarrassment began again; it was great on both sides.
Julien assured himself that the door was completely locked; he thought of looking under the bed, but he did not dare; "they might have stationed one or two lackeys there."
Finally he feared that he might reproach himself in the future for this lack of prudence, and did look.
Mathilde had fallen into all the anguish of the most extreme timidity.