Far from that he remained stubbornly in the salon and did not even look in the direction of the garden, though God knows what pain that caused him!
"It is better to have this explanation out all at once," thought mademoiselle de la Mole; she went into the garden alone, Julien did not appear.
Mathilde went and walked near the salon window. She found him very much occupied in describing to madame de Fervaques the old ruined chateau which crown the banks along the Rhine and invest them with so much atmosphere.
He was beginning to acquit himself with some credit in that sentimental picturesque jargon which is called wit in certain salons.
Prince Korasoff would have been very proud if he had been at Paris. This evening was exactly what he had predicted.
He would have approved the line of conduct which Julien followed on the subsequent days.
An intrigue among the members of the secret government was going to bestow a few blue ribbons; madame marechale de Fervaques was insisting on her great uncle being made a chevalier of the order.
The marquis de la Mole had the same pretensions for his father-in-law; they joined forces and the marechale came to the Hotel de la Mole nearly every day.
It was from her that Julien learned that the marquis was going to be a minister. He was offering to the Camarilla a very ingenious plan for the annihilation of the charter within three years without any disturbance.
If M. de la Mole became a minister, Julien could hope for a bishopric: but all these important interests seemed to be veiled and hazy.
His imagination only perceived them very vaguely, and so to speak, in the far distance.
The awful unhappiness which was making him into a madman could find no other interest in life except the character of his relations with mademoiselle de la Mole.
He calculated that after five or six careful years he would manage to get himself loved again.
This cold brain had been reduced, as one sees, to a state of complete disorder.
Out of all the qualities which had formerly distinguished him, all that remained was a little firmness.
He was literally faithful to the line of conduct which prince Korasoff had dictated, and placed himself every evening near madame Fervaques' armchair, but he found it impossible to think of a word to say to her.
The strain of making Mathilde think that he had recovered exhausted his whole moral force, and when he was with the marechale he seemed almost lifeless; even his eyes had lost all their fire, as in cases of extreme physical suffering.
As madame de la Mole's views were invariably a counterpart of the opinions of that husband of hers who could make her into a Duchess, she had been singing Julien's praises for some days. _____
CHAPTER LVI
MORAL LOVE _____
There also was of course in Adeline
That calm patrician polish in the address,
Which ne'er can pass the equinoctial line
Of anything which Nature would express;
Just as a Mandarin finds nothing fine.
At least his manner suffers not to guess
That anything he views can greatly please.
Don Juan, c. xiii. st. 84. _____
"There is an element of madness in all this family's way of looking at things," thought the marechale; "they are infatuated with their young abbe, whose only accomplishment is to be a good listener, though his eyes are fine enough, it is true."
Julien, on his side, found in the marechale's manners an almost perfect instance of that patrician calm which exhales a scrupulous politeness; and, what is more, announces at the same time the impossibility of any violent emotion.
Madame de Fervaques would have been as much scandalised by any unexpected movement or any lack of self-control, as by a lack of dignity towards one's inferiors.
She would have regarded the slightest symptom of sensibility as a kind of moral drunkenness which puts one to the blush and was extremely prejudicial to what a person of high rank owed to herself.
Her great happiness was to talk of the king's last hunt; her favourite book, was the Memoirs of the Duke de Saint Simon, especially the genealogical part.
Julien knew the place where the arrangement of the light suited madame de Fervaques' particular style of beauty.
He got there in advance, but was careful to turn his chair in such a way as not to see Mathilde.
Astonished one day at this consistent policy of hiding himself from her, she left the blue sofa and came to work by the little table near the marechale's armchair.
Julien had a fairly close view of her over madame de Fervaques' hat.
Those eyes, which were the arbiters of his fate, frightened him, and then hurled him violently out of his habitual apathy. He talked, and talked very well.
He was speaking to the marechale, but his one aim was to produce an impression upon Mathilde's soul.
He became so animated that eventually madame de Fervaques did not manage to understand a word he said.
This was a prime merit.
If it had occurred to Julien to follow it up by some phrases of German mysticism, lofty religion, and Jesuitism, the marechale would have immediately given him a rank among the superior men whose mission it was to regenerate the age.
"Since he has bad enough taste," said mademoiselle de la Mole, "to talk so long and so ardently to madame de Fervaques, I shall not listen to him any more."
She kept her resolution during the whole latter part of the evening, although she had difficulty in doing so.
At midnight, when she took her mother's candle to accompany her to her room, madame de la Mole stopped on the staircase to enter into an exhaustive eulogy of Julien.
Mathilde ended by losing her temper. She could not get to sleep.
She felt calmed by this thought: "the very things which I despise in a man may none the less constitute a great merit in the eyes of the marechale."
As for Julien, he had done something, he was less unhappy; his eyes chanced to fall on the Russian leather portfolio in which prince Korasoff had placed the fifty-three love letters which he had presented to him.
Julien saw a note at the bottom of the first letter: No.
1 is sent eight days after the first meeting.