But it is wiser to suppress the description of so intense a transport of delirious happiness.
Julien's unselfishness was equal to his happiness.
"I must go down by the ladder," he said to Mathilde, when he saw the dawn of day appear from the quarter of the east over the distant chimneys beyond the garden.
"The sacrifice that I impose on myself is worthy of you. I deprive myself of some hours of the most astonishing happiness that a human soul can savour, but it is a sacrifice I make for the sake of your reputation.
If you know my heart you will appreciate how violent is the strain to which I am putting myself.
Will you always be to me what you are now?
But honour speaks, it suffices.
Let me tell you that since our last interview, thieves have not been the only object of suspicion.
M. de la Mole has set a guard in the garden.
M. Croisenois is surrounded by spies: they know what he does every night."
Mathilde burst out laughing at this idea.
Her mother and a chamber-maid were woken up, they suddenly began to speak to her through the door.
Julien looked at her, she grew pale as she scolded the chamber-maid, and she did not deign to speak to her mother.
"But suppose they think of opening the window, they will see the ladder," Julien said to her.
He clasped her again in his arms, rushed on to the ladder, and slid, rather than climbed down; he was on the ground in a moment.
Three seconds after the ladder was in the avenue of pines, and Mathilde's honour was saved.
Julien returned to his room and found that he was bleeding and almost naked. He had wounded himself in sliding down in that dare-devil way.
Extreme happiness had made him regain all the energy of his character. If twenty men had presented themselves it would have proved at this moment only an additional pleasure to have attacked them unaided.
Happily his military prowess was not put to the proof. He laid the ladder in its usual place and replaced the chain which held it. He did not forget to efface the mark which the ladder had left on the bed of exotic flowers under Mathilde's window.
As he was moving his hand over the soft ground in the darkness and satisfying himself that the mark had entirely disappeared, he felt something fall down on his hands. It was a whole tress of Mathilde's hair which she had cut off and thrown down to him.
She was at the window.
"That's what your servant sends you," she said to him in a fairly loud voice, "It is the sign of eternal gratitude.
I renounce the exercise of my reason, be my master."
Julien was quite overcome and was on the point of going to fetch the ladder again and climbing back into her room.
Finally reason prevailed.
Getting back into the hotel from the garden was not easy.
He succeeded in forcing the door of a cellar. Once in the house he was obliged to break through the door of his room as silently as possible.
In his agitation he had left in the little room which he had just abandoned so rapidly, the key which was in the pocket of his coat.
"I only hope she thinks of hiding that fatal trophy," he thought.
Finally fatigue prevailed over happiness, and as the sun was rising he fell into a deep sleep.
The breakfast bell only just managed to wake him up. He appeared in the dining-room.
Shortly afterwards Mathilde came in.
Julien's pride felt deliciously flattered as he saw the love which shone in the eyes of this beautiful creature who was surrounded by so much homage; but soon his discretion had occasion to be alarmed.
Making an excuse of the little time that she had had to do her hair, Mathilde had arranged it in such a way that Julien could see at the first glance the full extent of the sacrifice that she had made for his sake, by cutting off her hair on the previous night.
If it had been possible to spoil so beautiful a face by anything whatsoever, Mathilde would have succeeded in doing it. A whole tress of her beautiful blonde hair was cut off to within half an inch of the scalp.
Mathilde's whole manner during breakfast was in keeping with this initial imprudence.
One might have said that she had made a specific point of trying to inform the whole world of her mad passion for Julien. Happily on this particular day M. de la Mole and the marquis were very much concerned about an approaching bestowal of "blue ribbons" which was going to take place, and in which M. de Chaulnes was not comprised.
Towards the end of the meal, Mathilde, who was talking to Julien, happened to call him "My Master."
He blushed up to the whites of his eyes.
Mathilde was not left alone for an instant that day, whether by chance or the deliberate policy of madame de la Mole.
In the evening when she passed from the dining-room into the salon, however, she managed to say to Julien:
"You may be thinking I am making an excuse, but mamma has just decided that one of her women is to spend the night in my room."
This day passed with lightning rapidity.
Julien was at the zenith of happiness.
At seven o'clock in the morning of the following day he installed himself in the library. He hoped the mademoiselle de la Mole would deign to appear there; he had written her an interminable letter.
He only saw her several hours afterwards at breakfast.
Her hair was done to-day with the very greatest care; a marvellous art had managed to hide the place where the hair had been cut.
She looked at Julien once or twice, but her eyes were polite and calm, and there was no question of calling him "My Master."
Julien's astonishment prevented him from breathing—Mathilde was reproaching herself for all she had done for him.
After mature reflection, she had come to the conclusion that he was a person who, though not absolutely commonplace, was yet not sufficiently different from the common ruck to deserve all the strange follies that she had ventured for his sake.