"I don't want to know where the man is," said the marquis to her one day.
"Send him this letter."
Mathilde read:
"The Languedoc estates bring in 20,600 francs.
I give 10,600 francs to my daughter, and 10,000 francs to M. Julien Sorel.
It is understood that I give the actual estates.
Tell the notary to draw up two separate deeds of gift, and to bring them to me to-morrow, after this there are to be no more relations between us.
Ah, Monsieur, could I have expected all this? The marquis de La Mole."
"I thank you very much," said Mathilde gaily.
"We will go and settle in the Chateau d'Aiguillon, between Agen and Marmande.
The country is said to be as beautiful as Italy."
This gift was an extreme surprise to Julien.
He was no longer the cold, severe man whom we have hitherto known.
His thoughts were engrossed in advance by his son's destiny.
This unexpected fortune, substantial as it was for a man as poor as himself, made him ambitious.
He pictured a time when both his wife and himself would have an income of 36,000 francs.
As for Mathilde, all her emotions were concentrated on her adoration for her husband, for that was the name by which her pride insisted on calling Julien.
Her one great ambition was to secure the recognition of her marriage.
She passed her time in exaggerating to herself the consummate prudence which she had manifested in linking her fate to that of a superior man.
The idea of personal merit became a positive craze with her.
Julien's almost continuous absence, coupled with the complications of business matters and the little time available in which to talk love, completed the good effect produced by the wise tactics which Julien had previously discovered.
Mathilde finished by losing patience at seeing so little of the man whom she had come really to love.
In a moment of irritation she wrote to her father and commenced her letter like Othello:
"My very choice is sufficient proof that I have preferred Julien to all the advantages which society offered to the daughter of the marquis de la Mole.
Such pleasures, based as they are on prestige and petty vanity mean nothing to me.
It is now nearly six weeks since I have lived separated from my husband.
That is sufficient to manifest my respect for yourself.
Before next Thursday I shall leave the paternal house.
Your acts of kindness have enriched us.
No one knows my secret except the venerable abbe Pirard.
I shall go to him: he will marry us, and an hour after the ceremony we shall be on the road to Languedoc, and we will never appear again in Paris except by your instructions.
But what cuts me to the quick is that all this will provide the subject matter for piquant anecdotes against me and against yourself.
May not the epigrams of a foolish public compel our excellent Norbert to pick a quarrel with Julien, under such circumstances I know I should have no control over him. We should discover in his soul the mark of the rebel plebian.
Oh father, I entreat you on my knees, come and be present at my marriage in M. Pirard's church next Thursday.
It will blunt the sting of malignant scandal and will guarantee the life's happiness of your only daughter, and of that of my husband, etc., etc."
This letter threw the marquis's soul into a strange embarrassment.
He must at last take a definite line.
All his little habits: all his vulgar friends had lost their influence.
In these strange circumstances the great lines of his character, which had been formed by the events of his youth, reassumed all their original force.
The misfortunes of the emigration had made him into an imaginative man.
After having enjoyed for two years an immense fortune and all the distinctions of the court, 1790 had flung him into the awful miseries of the emigration.
This hard schooling had changed the character of a spirit of twenty-two.
In essence, he was not so much dominated by his present riches as encamped in their midst.
But that very imagination which had preserved his soul from the taint of avarice, had made him a victim of a mad passion for seeing his daughter decorated by a fine title.
During the six weeks which had just elapsed, the marquis had felt at times impelled by a caprice for making Julien rich. He considered poverty mean, humiliating for himself, M. de la Mole, and impossible in his daughter's husband; he was ready to lavish money.
On the next day his imagination would go off on another tack, and he would think that Julien would read between the lines of this financial generosity, change his name, exile himself to America, and write to Mathilde that he was dead for her.
M. de la Mole imagined this letter written, and went so far as to follow its effect on his daughter's character.
The day when he was awakened from these highly youthful dreams by Mathilde's actual letter after he had been thinking for along time of killing Julien or securing his disappearance he was dreaming of building up a brilliant position for him.
He would make him take the name of one of his estates, and why should he not make him inherit a peerage?
His father-in-law, M. the duke de Chaulnes, had, since the death of his own son in Spain, frequently spoken to him about his desire to transmit his title to Norbert....