When Julien's coldness and astonishment showed no sign of abatement, she burst into tears.
"Let me manage our affairs," she exclaimed ecstatically, as she clasped him in her arms.
"You know, dear, it is not of my own free will that I separate from you.
Write under cover to my maid. Address it in a strange hand-writing, I will write volumes to you.
Adieu, flee."
This last word wounded Julien, but he none the less obeyed.
"It will be fatal," he thought "if, in their most gracious moments these aristocrats manage to shock me."
Mathilde firmly opposed all her father's prudent plans.
She would not open negotiations on any other basis except this. She was to be Madame Sorel, and was either to live with her husband in poverty in Switzerland, or with her father in Paris.
She rejected absolutely the suggestion of a secret accouchement.
"In that case I should begin to be confronted with a prospect of calumny and dishonour.
I shall go travelling with my husband two months after the marriage, and it will be easy to pretend that my son was born at a proper time."
This firmness though at first received with violent fits of anger, eventually made the marquis hesitate.
"Here," he said to his daughter in a moment of emotion, "is a gift of ten thousand francs a year. Send it to your Julien, and let him quickly make it impossible for me to retract it."
In order to obey Mathilde, whose imperious temper he well knew, Julien had travelled forty useless leagues; he was superintending the accounts of the farmers at Villequier. This act of benevolence on the part of the marquis occasioned his return.
He went and asked asylum of the abbe Pirard, who had become Mathilde's most useful ally during his absence.
Every time that he was questioned by the marquis, he would prove to him that any other course except public marriage would be a crime in the eyes of God.
"And happily," added the abbe, "worldly wisdom is in this instance in agreement with religion.
Could one, in view of Mdlle. de la Mole's passionate character, rely for a minute on her keeping any secret which she did not herself wish to preserve?
If one does not reconcile oneself to the frankness of a public marriage, society will concern itself much longer with this strange mesalliance.
Everything must be said all at once without either the appearance or the reality of the slightest mystery."
"It is true," said the marquis pensively.
Two or three friends of M. de la Mole were of the same opinion as the abbe Pirard.
The great obstacle in their view was Mathilde's decided character.
But in spite of all these fine arguments the marquis's soul could not reconcile itself to giving up all hopes of a coronet for his daughter.
He ransacked his memory and his imagination for all the variations of knavery and duplicity which had been feasible in his youth.
Yielding to necessity and having fear of the law seemed absurd and humiliating for a man in his position.
He was paying dearly now for the luxury of those enchanting dreams concerning the future of his cherished daughter in which he had indulged for the last ten years.
"Who could have anticipated it?" he said to himself.
"A girl of so proud a character, of so lofty a disposition, who is even prouder than I am of the name she bears?
A girl whose hand has already been asked for by all the cream of the nobility of France."
"We must give up all faith in prudence.
This age is made to confound everything.
We are marching towards chaos." _____
CHAPTER LXIV
A MAN OF INTELLECT _____
The prefect said to himself as he rode along the highway on horseback, "why should I not be a minister, a president of the council, a duke?
This is how I should make war....
By these means I should have all the reformers put in irons."—The Globe. _____
No argument will succeed in destroying the paramount influence of ten years of agreeable dreaming.
The marquis thought it illogical to be angry, but could not bring himself to forgive.
"If only this Julien could die by accident," he sometimes said to himself.
It was in this way that his depressed imagination found a certain relief in running after the most absurd chim?ras.
They paralysed the influence of the wise arguments of the abbe Pirard.
A month went by in this way without negotiations advancing one single stage.
The marquis had in this family matter, just as he had in politics, brilliant ideas over which he would be enthusiastic for two or three days.
And then a line of tactics would fail to please him because it was based on sound arguments, while arguments only found favour in his eyes in so far as they were based on his favourite plan.
He would work for three days with all the ardour and enthusiasm of a poet on bringing matters to a certain stage; on the following day he would not give it a thought.
Julien was at first disconcerted by the slowness of the marquis; but, after some weeks, he began to surmise that M. de La Mole had no definite plan with regard to this matter.
Madame de La Mole and the whole household believed that Julien was travelling in the provinces in connection with the administration of the estates; he was in hiding in the parsonage of the abbe Pirard and saw Mathilde every day; every morning she would spend an hour with her father, but they would sometimes go for weeks on end without talking of the matter which engrossed all their thoughts.