"It is singular," said Julien to himself, as Mathilde was going out of his prison one day, "that I should be so insensible at being the object of so keen a passion! And two months ago I adored her!
I have, of course, read that the approach of death makes one lose interest in everything, but it is awful to feel oneself ungrateful, and not to be able to change.
Am I an egoist, then?"
He addressed the most humiliating reproaches to himself on this score.
Ambition was dead in his heart; another passion had arisen from its ashes. He called it remorse at having assassinated madame de Renal.
As a matter of fact, he loved her to the point of distraction.
He experienced a singular happiness on these occasions when, being left absolutely alone, and without being afraid of being interrupted, he could surrender himself completely to the memory of the happy days which he had once passed at Verrieres, or at Vergy.
The slightest incidents of these days, which had fleeted away only too rapidly, possessed an irresistible freshness and charm.
He never gave a thought to his Paris successes; they bored him.
These moods, which became intensified with every succeeding day, were partly guessed by the jealous Mathilde.
She realised very clearly that she had to struggle against his love of solitude.
Sometimes, with terror in her heart, she uttered madame de Renal's name.
She saw Julien quiver.
Henceforth her passion had neither bounds nor limit.
"If he dies, I will die after him," she said to herself in all good faith.
"What will the Paris salons say when they see a girl of my own rank carry her adoration for a lover who is condemned to death to such a pitch as this?
For sentiments like these you must go back to the age of the heroes.
It was loves of this kind which thrilled the hearts of the century of Charles IX. and Henri III."
In the midst of her keenest transports, when she was clasping Julien's head against her heart, she would say to herself with horror,
"What! is this charming head doomed to fall?
Well," she added, inflamed by a not unhappy heroism, "these lips of mine, which are now pressing against this pretty hair, will be icy cold less than twenty-four hours afterwards."
Thoughts of the awful voluptuousness of such heroic moments gripped her in a compelling embrace.
The idea of suicide, absorbing enough in itself, entered that haughty soul (to which, up to the present it had been so utterly alien), and soon reigned over it with an absolute dominion.
"No, the blood of my ancestors has not grown tepid in descending to me," said Mathilde proudly to herself.
"I have a favour to ask of you," said her lover to her one day. "Put your child out to nurse at Verrieres. Madame de Renal will look after the nurse."
"Those words of yours are very harsh." And Mathilde paled.
"It is true, and I ask your pardon a thousand times," exclaimed Julien, emerging from his reverie, and clasping her in his arms.
After having dried his tears, he reverted to his original idea, but with greater tact.
He had given a twist of melancholy philosophy to the conversation.
He talked of that future of his which was so soon going to close.
"One must admit, dear one, that passions are an accident in life, but such accidents only occur in superior souls....
My son's death would be in reality a happiness for your own proud family, and all the servants will realize as much.
Neglect will be the lot of that child of shame and unhappiness. I hope that, at a time which I do not wish to fix, but which nevertheless I am courageous enough to imagine, you will obey my last advice: you will marry the marquis de Croisenois."
"What?
Dishonoured?"
"Dishonour cannot attach to a name such as yours.
You will be a widow, and the widow of a madman—that is all.
I will go further—my crime will confer no dishonour, since it had no money motive.
Perhaps when the time comes for your marriage, some philosophic legislator will have so far prevailed on the prejudice of his contemporaries as to have secured the suppression of the death penalty.
Then some friendly voice will say, by way of giving an instance:
'Why, madame de la Mole's first husband was a madman, but not a wicked man or a criminal.
It was absurd to have his head cut off.' So my memory will not be infamous in any way—at least, after a certain time.... Your position in society, your fortune, and, if you will allow me to say so, your genius, will make M. de Croisenois, once he is your husband, play a part which he would have never managed to secure unaided.
He only possesses birth and bravery, and those qualities alone, though they constituted an accomplished man in 1729, are an anachronism a century later on, and only give rise to unwarranted pretensions.
You need other things if you are to place yourself at the head of the youth of France."
"You will take all the help of your firm and enterprising character to the political party which you will make your husband join.
You may be able to be a successor to the Chevreuses and the Longuevilles of the Fronde—but then, dear one, the divine fire which animates you at present will have grown a little tepid.
Allow me to tell you," he added, "after many other preparatory phrases, that in fifteen years' time you will look upon the love you once had for me as a madness, which though excusable, was a piece of madness all the same."
He stopped suddenly and became meditative.
He found himself again confronted with the idea which shocked Mathilde so much:
"In fifteen years, madame de Renal will adore my son and you will have forgotten him." _____