But he in his turn dumbfounded Mathilde when he informed her that the special feature in Julien's strange adventure which astonished and interested Besancon society, was that he had formerly inspired Madame de Renal with a grand passion and reciprocated it for a long time.
M. de Frilair had no difficulty in perceiving the extreme trouble which his story produced.
"I have my revenge," he thought.
"After all it's a way of managing this decided young person. I was afraid that I should not succeed."
Her distinguished and intractable appearance intensified in his eyes the charm of the rare beauty whom he now saw practically entreating him.
He regained all his self-possession—and he did not hesitate to move the dagger about in her heart.
"I should not be at all surprised," he said to her lightly, "if we were to learn that it was owing to jealousy that M. Sorel fired two pistol shots at the woman he once loved so much.
Of course she must have consoled herself and for some time she has been seeing extremely frequently a certain abbe Marquinot of Dijon, a kind of Jansenist, and as immoral as all Jansenists are."
M. de Frilair experienced the voluptuous pleasure of torturing at his leisure the heart of this beautiful girl whose weakness he had surprised.
"Why," he added, as he fixed his ardent eyes upon Mathilde, "should M. Sorel have chosen the church, if it were not for the reason that his rival was celebrating mass in it at that very moment?
Everyone attributes an infinite amount of intelligence and an even greater amount of prudence to the fortunate man who is the object of your interest.
What would have been simpler than to hide himself in the garden of M. de Renal which he knows so well. Once there he could put the woman of whom he was jealous to death with the practical certainty of being neither seen, caught, nor suspected." This apparently sound train of reasoning eventually made Mathilde loose all self-possession.
Her haughty soul steeped in all that arid prudence, which passes in high society for the true psychology of the human heart, was not of the type to be at all quick in appreciating that joy of scorning all prudence, which an ardent soul can find so keen.
In the high classes of Paris society in which Mathilde had lived, it is only rarely that passion can divest itself of prudence, and people always make a point of throwing themselves out of windows from the fifth storey.
At last the abbe de Frilair was sure of his power over her.
He gave Mathilde to understand (and he was doubtless lying) that he could do what he liked with the public official who was entrusted with the conduct of Julien's prosecution.
After the thirty-six jurymen for the sessions had been chosen by ballot, he would approach at least thirty jurymen directly and personally.
If M. de Frilair had not thought Mathilde so pretty, he would not have spoken so clearly before the fifth or sixth interview. _____
CHAPTER LXIX
THE INTRIGUE _____
Castres 1676—A brother has just murdered his sister in the house next to mine. This gentleman had already been guilty of one murder.
His father saved his life by causing five-hundred crowns to be distributed among the councillors.—Locke: Journey in France. _____
When she left the bishop's palace, Mathilde did not hesitate to despatch a courier to madame de Fervaques. The fear of compromising herself did not stop her for a moment.
She entreated her rival to obtain for M. de Frilair an autograph letter from the bishop of ——.
She went as far as to entreat her to come herself to Besancon with all speed. This was an heroic act on the part of a proud and jealous soul.
Acting on Fouque's advice, she had had the discretion to refrain from mentioning the steps she had taken for Julien.
Her presence troubled him enough without that.
A better man when face to face with death than he had ever been during his life, he had remorse not only towards M. de la Mole, but also towards Mathilde.
"Come," he said to himself, "there are times when I feel absent-minded and even bored by her society.
She is ruining herself on my account, and this is how I reward her.
Am I really a scoundrel?"
This question would have bothered him but little in the days when he was ambitious. In those days he looked upon failure as the only disgrace.
His moral discomfort when with Mathilde was proportionately emphasized by the fact that he inspired her at this time with the maddest and most extraordinary passion.
She talked of nothing but the strange sacrifices that she was ready to make in order to save him.
Exalted as she was by a sentiment on which she plumed herself, to the complete subordination of her pride, she would have liked not to have let a single minute of her life go by without filling it with some extraordinary act.
The strangest projects, and ones involving her in the utmost danger, supplied the topics of her long interviews with Julien.
The well-paid gaolers allowed her to reign over the prison.
Mathilde's ideas were not limited by the sacrifice of her reputation. She would have thought nothing of making her condition known to society at large.
Throwing herself on her knees before the king's carriage as it galloped along, in order to ask for Julien's pardon, and thus attracting the attention of the prince, at the risk of being crushed a thousand times over, was one of the least fantastic dreams in which this exalted and courageous imagination chose to indulge.
She was certain of being admitted into the reserved portion of the park of St. Cloud, through those friends of hers who were employed at the king's court.
Julien thought himself somewhat unworthy of so much devotion. As a matter of fact, he was tired of heroism.
A simple, naive, and almost timid tenderness was what would have appealed to him, while Mathilde's haughty soul, on the other hand, always required the idea of a public and an audience.
In the midst of all her anguish and all her fears for the life of that lover whom she was unwilling to survive, she felt a secret need of astonishing the public by the extravagance of her love and the sublimity of her actions.
Julien felt irritated at not finding himself touched by all this heroism.
What would he have felt if he had known of all the mad ideas with which Mathilde overwhelmed the devoted but eminently logical and limited spirit of the good Fouque?
He did not know what to find fault with in Mathilde's devotion. For he, too, would have sacrificed all his fortune, and have exposed his life to the greatest risks in order to save Julien.
He was dumbfounded by the quantity of gold which Mathilde flung away.
During the first days Fouque, who had all the provincial's respect for money, was much impressed by the sums she spent in this way.
He at last discovered that mademoiselle de la Mole's projects frequently varied, and he was greatly relieved at finding a word with which to express his blame for a character whom he found so exhausting. She was changeable.
There is only a step from this epithet to that of wrong-headed, the greatest term of opprobrium known to the provinces.