When he thought he had noticed that mademoiselle de la Mole was beginning to encourage her intended, Julien could not help looking tenderly at his pistols as he went up to his room.
"Ah," he said to himself, "would it not be much wiser to take the marks out of my linen and to go into some solitary forest twenty leagues from Paris to put an end to this atrocious life?
I should be unknown in the district, my death would remain a secret for a fortnight, and who would bother about me after a fortnight?"
This reasoning was very logical.
But on the following day a glimpse of Mathilde's arm between the sleeve of her dress and her glove sufficed to plunge our young philosopher into memories which, though agonising, none the less gave him a hold on life.
"Well," he said to himself,
"I will follow this Russian plan to the end.
How will it all finish?"
"So far as the marechale is concerned, after I have copied out these fifty-three letters, I shall not write any others.
"As for Mathilde, these six weeks of painful acting will either leave her anger unchanged, or will win me a moment of reconciliation.
Great God!
I should die of happiness."
And he could not finish his train of thought.
After a long reverie he succeeded in taking up the thread of his argument.
"In that case," he said to himself, "I should win one day of happiness, and after that her cruelties which are based, alas, on my lack of ability to please her will recommence.
I should have nothing left to do, I should be ruined and lost for ever.
With such a character as hers what guarantee can she give me? Alas!
My manners are no doubt lacking in elegance, and my style of speech is heavy and monotonous.
Great God, why am I myself?" _____
CHAPTER LIX
ENNUI _____
Sacrificing one's self to one's passions, let it pass; but sacrificing one's self to passions which one has not got!
Oh! melancholy nineteenth century!
Girodet. _____
Madame de Fervaques had begun reading Julien's long letters without any pleasure, but she now began to think about them; one thing, however, grieved her. "What a pity that M. Sorel was not a real priest!
He could then be admitted to a kind of intimacy; but in view of that cross, and that almost lay dress, one is exposed to cruel questions and what is one to answer?"
She did not finish the train of thought,
"Some malicious woman friend may think, and even spread it about that he is some lower middle-class cousin or other, a relative of my father, some tradesman who has been decorated by the National Guard."
Up to the time which she had seen Julien, madame de Fervaque's greatest pleasure had been writing the word marechale after her name.
Consequently a morbid parvenu vanity, which was ready to take umbrage at everything, combatted the awakening of her interest in him.
"It would be so easy for me," said the marechale, "to make him a grand vicar in some diocese near Paris! but plain M. Sorel, and what is more, a man who is the secretary of M. de la Mole!
It is heart-breaking."
For the first time in her life this soul, which was afraid of everything, was moved by an interest which was alien to its own pretensions to rank and superiority.
Her old porter noticed that whenever he brought a letter from this handsome young man, who always looked so sad, he was certain to see that absent, discontented expression, which the marechale always made a point of assuming on the entry of any of her servants, immediately disappear.
The boredom of a mode of life whose ambitions were concentrated on impressing the public without her having at heart any real faculty of enjoyment for that kind of success, had become so intolerable since she had begun to think of Julien that, all that was necessary to prevent her chambermaids being bullied for a whole day, was that their mistress should have passed an hour in the society of this strange young man on the evening of the preceding day.
His budding credit was proof against very cleverly written anonymous letters.
It was in vain that Tanbeau supplied M. de Luz, de Croisenois, de Caylus, with two or three very clever calumnies which these gentlemen were only too glad to spread, without making too many enquiries of the actual truth of the charges.
The marechale, whose temperament was not calculated to be proof against these vulgar expedients related her doubts to Mathilde, and was always consoled by her.
One day, madame de Fervaques, after having asked three times if there were any letters for her, suddenly decided to answer Julien.
It was a case of the triumph of ennui.
On reaching the second letter in his name the marechale almost felt herself pulled up sharp by the unbecomingness of writing with her own hand so vulgar an address as to M. Sorel, care of M. le Marquis de la Mole.
"You must bring me envelopes with your address on," she said very drily to Julien in the evening.
"Here I am appointed lover and valet in one," thought Julien, and he bowed, amused himself by wrinkling his face up like Arsene, the old valet of the marquis.
He brought the envelopes that very evening, and he received the third letter very early on the following day: he read five or six lines at the beginning, and two or three towards the end.
There were four pages of a small and very close writing.
The lady gradually developed the sweet habit of writing nearly every day.
Julien answered by faithful copies of the Russian letters; and such is the advantage of the bombastic style that madame de Fervaques was not a bit astonished by the lack of connection between his answers and her letters.
How gravely irritated would her pride have been if the little Tanbeau who had constituted himself a voluntary spy on all Julien's movements had been able to have informed her that all these letters were left unsealed and thrown haphazard into Julien's drawer.
One morning the porter was bringing into the library a letter to him from the marechale. Mathilde met the man, saw the letter together with the address in Julien's handwriting.
She entered the library as the porter was leaving it, the letter was still on the edge of the table. Julien was very busy with his work and had not yet put it in his drawer.