Both in small things as in big it was his habit to know what he ought and wanted to do, and he used to act accordingly.
The same day after breakfast madame de la Mole asked him for a fairly rare, seditious pamphlet which her cure had surreptitiously brought her in the morning, and Julien, as he took it from a bracket, knocked over a blue porcelain vase which was as ugly as it could possibly be.
Madame de la Mole got up, uttering a cry of distress, and proceeded to contemplate at close quarters the ruins of her beloved vase.
"It was old Japanese," she said.
"It came to me from my great aunt, the abbess of Chelles.
It was a present from the Dutch to the Regent, the Duke of Orleans, who had given it to his daughter...."
Mathilde had followed her mother's movements, and felt delighted at seeing that the blue vase, that she had thought horribly ugly, was broken.
Julien was taciturn, and not unduly upset. He saw mademoiselle de la Mole quite near him.
"This vase," he said to her, "has been destroyed for ever.
The same is the case with the sentiment which was once master of my heart.
I would ask you to accept my apologies for all the pieces of madness which it has made me commit."
And he went out.
"One would really say," said madame de la Mole, as he went out of the room, "that this M. Sorel is quite proud of what he has just done."
These words went right home to Mathilde's heart.
"It is true," she said to herself; "my mother has guessed right. That is the sentiment which animates him."
It was only then that she ceased rejoicing over yesterday's scene.
"Well, it is all over," she said to herself, with an apparent calm.
"It is a great lesson, anyway.
It is an awful and humiliating mistake! It is enough to make me prudent all the rest of my life."
"Why didn't I speak the truth?" thought Julien.
"Why am I still tortured by the love which I once had for that mad woman?"
Far, however, from being extinguished as he had hoped it would be, his love grew more and more rapidly.
"She is mad, it is true," he said to himself.
"Is she any the less adorable for that?
Is it possible for anyone to be prettier?
Is not mademoiselle de la Mole the ideal quintessence of all the most vivid pleasures of the most elegant civilisation?"
These memories of a bygone happiness seized hold of Julien's mind, and quickly proceeded to destroy all the work of his reason.
It is in vain that reason wrestles with memories of this character. Its stern struggles only increase the fascination.
Twenty-four hours after the breaking of the Japanese vase, Julien was unquestionably one of the most unhappy men in the world. _____
CHAPTER LI
THE SECRET NOTE _____
I have seen everything I relate, and if I may have made a mistake when I saw it, I am certainly not deceiving you in telling you of it.
Letter to the author. _____
The marquis summoned him; M. de la Mole looked rejuvenated, his eye was brilliant.
"Let us discuss your memory a little," he said to Julien, "it is said to be prodigious.
Could you learn four pages by heart and go and say them at London, but without altering a single word?"
The marquis was irritably fingering, the day's Quotidienne, and was trying in vain to hide an extreme seriousness which Julien had never noticed in him before, even when discussing the Frilair lawsuit.
Julien had already learned sufficient manners to appreciate that he ought to appear completely taken in by the lightness of tone which was being manifested.
"This number of the Quotidienne is not very amusing possibly, but if M. the marquis will allow me, I shall do myself the honour to-morrow morning of reciting it to him from beginning to end."
"What, even the advertisements?"
"Quite accurately and without leaving out a word."
"You give me your word?" replied the marquis with sudden gravity.
"Yes, monsieur; the only thing which could upset my memory is the fear of breaking my promise."
"The fact is, I forgot to put this question to you yesterday: I am not going to ask for your oath never to repeat what you are going to hear. I know you too well to insult you like that.
I have answered for you.
I am going to take you into a salon where a dozen persons will he assembled.
You will make a note of what each one says.
"Do not be uneasy. It will not be a confused conversation by any means.
Each one will speak in his turn, though not necessarily in an orderly manner," added the marquis falling back into that light, subtle manner which was so natural to him.
"While we are talking, you will write out twenty pages and will come back here with me, and we will get those twenty pages down to four, and those are the four pages you will recite to me to-morrow morning instead of the four pages of the Quotidienne.