The abbe Pirard will never let me finish my first sentence, while the comte Altamira will propose enlisting me in some conspiracy.
And yet I am mad; I feel it, I am mad.
Who will be able to guide me, what will become of me?" _____
CHAPTER XLVIII
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 hotel 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-Valere 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.