An Old SwordI now mean to be serious:—it is time, Since laughter nowadays isdeem'd too serious. A jest at Vice by Virtue's call'd a crime.

　　Don Juan, XIII.

　　She did not appear at dinner. In the evening she came to the drawing-room for a moment, but did not look at Julien. This behaviour seemed tohim strange; 'but,' he thought, 'I do not know the ways of good society,she will give me some good reason for all this.' At the same time, urgedby the most intense curiosity, he studied the expression on Mathilde'sfeatures; he could not conceal from himself that she had a sharp andmalevolent air. Evidently this was not the same woman who, the nightbefore, had felt or pretended to feel transports of joy too excessive to begenuine.

　　Next day, and the day after, the same coldness on her part; she neveronce looked at him, she seemed unaware of his existence. Julien, devoured by the keenest anxiety, was a thousand leagues from the feelingof triumph which alone had animated him on the first day. 'Can it, byany chance,' he asked himself, 'be a return to the path of virtue?' But thatwas a very middle-class expression to use of the proud Mathilde.

　　'In the ordinary situations of life she has no belief in religion,' thoughtJulien; 'she values it as being very useful to the interests of her caste.

　　'But out of simple delicacy may she not be bitterly reproaching herselfwith the mistake that she has made?' Julien assumed that he was her firstlover.

　　'But,' he said to himself at other moments, 'one must admit that thereis nothing artless, simple, tender, in her attitude; never have I seen herlooking so haughty. Can she despise me? It would be like her to reproach herself with what she has done for me, solely on account of myhumble birth.'

　　 While Julien, steeped in the prejudices he had derived from books andfrom memories of Verrieres, was pursuing the chimera of a tender mistress who never gives a thought to her own existence the moment shehas gratified the desires of her lover, Mathilde in her vanity was furiouswith him.

　　As she had ceased to be bored for the last two months, she was nolonger afraid of boredom; so, albeit he could not for a moment suspect it,Julien was deprived of his strongest advantage.

　　'I have given myself a master!' Mademoiselle de La Mole was saying toherself, in the grip of the blackest despond. 'He may be the soul of honour; but if I goad his vanity to extremes, he will have his revenge bymaking public the nature of our relations.' Mathilde had never had a lover, and at this epoch in life, which gives certain tender illusions to eventhe most sterile hearts, she was a prey to the bitterest reflections.

　　'He has an immense power over me, since he reigns by terror and caninflict a fearful punishment on me if I drive him to extremes.' This idea,by itself, was enough to provoke Mathilde to insult him. Courage wasthe fundamental quality in her character. Nothing was capable of givingher any excitement and of curing her of an ever-present tendency toboredom, but the idea that she was playing heads or tails with her wholeexistence.

　　On the third day, as Mademoiselle de La Mole persisted in not lookingat him, Julien followed her after dinner, to her evident annoyance, intothe billiard room.

　　'Well, Sir; you must imagine yourself to have acquired some verypowerful hold over me,' she said to him, with ill-controlled rage, 'since inopposition to my clearly expressed wishes, you insist on speaking to me?

　　Are you aware that nobody in the world has ever been sopresumptuous?'

　　Nothing could be more entertaining than the dialogue between thesetwo lovers; unconsciously they were animated by a mutual sentiment ofthe keenest hatred. As neither of them had a consistent nature, asmoreover they were used to the ways of good society, it was not long before they both declared in plain terms that they had quarrelled for ever.

　　'I swear to you eternal secrecy,' said Julien; 'I would even add that Iwill never address a word to you again, were it not that your reputationmight be injured by too marked a change.' He bowed respectfully andleft her.

　　 He performed without undue difficulty what he regarded as a duty;he was far from imagining himself to be deeply in love with Mademoiselle de La Mole. No doubt he had not been in love with her three daysearlier, when he had been concealed in the great mahogany wardrobe.

　　But everything changed rapidly in his heart from the moment when hesaw himself parted from her for ever.

　　His pitiless memory set to work reminding him of the slightest incidents of that night which in reality had left him so cold.

　　During the very night after their vow of eternal separation, Juliennearly went mad when he found himself forced to admit that he was inlov............