I once made them up for a woman who loved me, and bored me—it is the weakness of my character. I denounce myself to you, forgive me."
Bitter tears streamed over Mathilde's cheeks.
"As soon as some trifle offends me and throws me back on my meditation," continued Julien, "my abominable memory, which I curse at this very minute, offers me a resource, and I abuse it." "So I must have slipped, without knowing it, into some action which has displeased you," said Mathilde with a charming simplicity.
"I remember one day that when you passed near this honeysuckle you picked a flower, M. de Luz took it from you and you let him keep it.
I was two paces away."
"M. de Luz?
It is impossible," replied Mathilde with all her natural haughtiness.
"I do not do things like that."
"I am sure of it," Julien replied sharply.
"Well, my dear, it is true," said Mathilde, as she sadly lowered her eyes.
She knew positively that many months had elapsed since she had allowed M. de Luz to do such a thing.
Julien looked at her with ineffable tenderness,
"No," he said to himself, "she does not love me less."
In the evening she rallied him with a laugh on his fancy for madame de Fervaques.
"Think of a bourgeois loving a parvenu, those are perhaps the only type of hearts that my Julien cannot make mad with love.
She has made you into a real dandy," she said playing with his hair.
During the period when he thought himself scorned by Mathilde, Julien had become one of the best dressed men in Paris.
He had, moreover, a further advantage over other dandies, in as much as once he had finished dressing he never gave a further thought to his appearance.
One thing still piqued Mathilde, Julien continued to copy out the Russian letters and send them to the marechale. _____
CHAPTER LXII
THE TIGER _____
Alas, why these things and not other things?—Beaumarchais. _____
An English traveller tells of the intimacy in which he lived with a tiger. He had trained it and would caress it, but he always kept a cocked pistol on his table.
Julien only abandoned himself to the fulness of his happiness in those moments when Mathilde could not read the expression in his eyes.
He scrupulously performed his duty of addressing some harsh word to her from time to time.
When Mathilde's sweetness, which he noticed with some surprise, together with the completeness of her devotion were on the point of depriving him of all self-control, he was courageous enough to leave her suddenly.
Mathilde loved for the first time in her life.
Life had previously always dragged along at a tortoise pace, but now it flew.
As, however, her pride required to find a vent in some way or other, she wished to expose herself to all the dangers in which her love could involve her.
It was Julien who was prudent, and it was only when it was a question of danger that she did not follow her own inclination; but submissive, and almost humble as she was when with him, she only showed additional haughtiness to everyone in the house who came near her, whether relatives or friends.
In the evening she would call Julien to her in the salon in the presence of sixty people, and have a long and private conversation with him.
The little Tanbeau installed himself one day close to them. She requested him to go and fetch from the library the volume of Smollet which deals with the revolution of 1688, and when he hesitated, added with an expression of insulting haughtiness, which was a veritable balm to Julien's soul,
"Don't hurry."
"Have you noticed that little monster's expression?" he said to her.
"His uncle has been in attendance in this salon for ten or twelve years, otherwise I would have had him packed off immediately."
Her behaviour towards MM. de Croisenois, de Luz, etc., though outwardly perfectly polite, was in reality scarcely less provocative.
Mathilde keenly reproached herself for all the confidential remarks about them which she had formerly made to Julien, and all the more so since she did not dare to confess that she had exaggerated to him the, in fact, almost absolutely innocent manifestations of interest of which these gentlemen had been the objects.
In spite of her best resolutions her womanly pride invariably prevented her from saying to Julien,
"It was because I was talking to you that I found a pleasure in describing my weakness in not drawing my hand away, when M. de Croisenois had placed his on a marble table and had just touched it."
But now, as soon as one of these gentlemen had been speaking to her for some moments, she found she had a question to put to Julien, and she made this an excuse for keeping him by her side.
She discovered that she was enceinte and joyfully informed Julien of the fact.
"Do you doubt me now?
Is it not a guarantee?
I am your wife for ever."
This announcement struck Julien with profound astonishment. He was on the point of forgetting the governing principle of his conduct.
How am I to be deliberately cold and insulting towards this poor young girl, who is ruining herself for my sake.
And if she looked at all ill, he could not, even on those days when the terrible voice of wisdom made itself heard, find the courage to address to her one of those harsh remarks which his experience had found so indispensable to the preservation of their love.
"I will write to my father," said Mathilde to him one day, "he is more than a father to me, he is a friend; that being so, I think it unworthy both of you and of myself to try and deceive him, even for a single minute."
"Great heavens, what are you going to do?" said Julien in alarm.
"My duty," she answered with eyes shining with joy.