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Part 2 Chapter 20

The Japanese VaseHis heart does not at first realise the whole extent of his misery:

  he is more disturbed than moved. But in proportion as his reasonreturns, he feels the depth of his misfortune. All the pleasures inlife are as nothing to him, he can feel only the sharp points of thedespair that is rending him. But what is the good of speaking ofphysical pain? What pain felt by the body alone is comparable tothis?

  JEAN-PAULThe dinner bell rang, Julien had barely time to dress; he found Mathilde in the drawing-room urging her brother and M. de Croisenois not togo and spend the evening with Madame la Marechale de Fervaques.

  She could hardly have been more seductive and charming with them.

  After dinner they were joined by M. de Luz, M. de Caylus and several oftheir friends. One would have said that Mademoiselle de La Mole hadresumed, together with the observance of sisterly affection, that of thestrictest conventions. Although the weather that evening was charming,she insisted that they should not go out to the garden; she was determined not to be lured away from the armchair in which Madame de LaMole was enthroned. The blue sofa was the centre of the group, as inwinter.

  Mathilde was out of humour with the garden, or at least it seemed toher to be utterly boring: it was associated with the memory of Julien.

  Misery destroys judgment. Our hero made the blunder of clinging tothat little cane chair which in the past had witnessed such brilliant triumphs. This evening, nobody spoke to him; his presence passed asthough unperceived or worse. Those of Mademoiselle de La Mole'sfriends who were seated near him at the end of the sofa made an affectation of turning their backs on him, or so he thought.

   'It is a courtier's disgrace,' he concluded. He decided to study for a moment the people who were trying to crush him with their disdain.

  M. de Luz's uncle held an important post in the King's Household, theconsequence of which was that this gallant officer opened his conversation with each fresh arrival with the following interesting detail: Hisuncle had set off at seven o'clock for Saint-Cloud, and expected to spendthe night there. This piece of news was introduced in the most casualmanner, but it never failed to come out.

  Upon observing M. de Croisenois with the severe eye of misery, Julienremarked the enormous influence which this worthy and amiable youngman attributed to occult causes. So much so that he became moody andcross if he heard an event of any importance set down to a simple andquite natural cause. 'There is a trace of madness there,' Julien told himself. 'This character bears a striking resemblance to that of the EmperorAlexander, as Prince Korasoff described him to me.' During the first yearof his stay in Paris, poor Julien, coming fresh from the Seminary, dazzledby the graces, so novel to him, of all these agreeable young men, coulddo nothing but admire them. Their true character was only now beginning to outline itself before his eyes.

  'I am playing an undignified part here,' he suddenly decided. The nextthing was how to leave his little cane chair in a fashion that should notbe too awkward. He tried to think of one, he called for something original upon an imagination that was fully occupied elsewhere. He was obliged to draw upon his memory, which, it must be confessed, was by nomeans rich in resources of this order; the boy was still a thorough novice,so that his awkwardness was complete and attracted everyone's attention when he rose to leave the drawing-room. Misery was all too evidentin his whole deportment. He had been playing the part for three quartersof an hour of a troublesome inferior from whom people do not take thetrouble to conceal what they think of him.

  The critical observations which he had been making at the expense ofhis rivals prevented him, however, from taking his misfortune too seriously; he retained, to give support to his pride, the memory of what hadoccurred the night before last. 'Whatever the advantages they may haveover me,' he thought as he went into the garden by himself, 'Mathildehas not been to any of them what, on two occasions in my life, she hasdeigned to be to me.'

   His sagacity went no farther. He failed entirely to understand the character of the singular person whom chance had now made absolute mistress of his whole happiness.

  He devoted the next day to killing himself and his horse with exhaustion. He made no further attempt, that evening, to approach the blue sofato which Mathilde was faithful. He remarked that Comte Norbert didnot so much as deign to look at him when they met in the house. 'Hemust be making an extraordinary effort,' he thought, 'he who is naturallyso polite.'

  For Julien, sleep would have meant happiness. Despite his bodily exhaustion, memories of a too seductive kind began to invade his wholeimagination. He had not the intelligence to see that by his long ridesthrough the forests round Paris, acting only upon himself and in no wayupon the heart or mind of Mathilde, he was leaving the arrangement ofhis destiny to chance.

  It seemed to him that one thing would supply boundless comfort tohis grief: namely to speak to Mathilde. And yet what could he venture tosay to her?

  This was the question upon which one morning at seven o'clock hewas pondering deeply, when suddenly he saw her enter the library.

  'I know, Sir, that you desire to speak to me.'

  'Great God! Who told you that?'

  'I know it, what more do you want? If you are lacking in honour, youmay ruin me, or at least attempt to do so; but this danger, which I do notregard as real, will certainly not prevent me from being sincere. I nolonger love you, Sir; my wild imagination misled me … '

  On receiving this terrible blow, desperate with love and misery, Julientried to excuse himself. Nothing could be more absurd. Does one excuseoneself for failing to please? But reason no longer held any sway over hisactions. A blind instinct urged him to postpone the decision of his fate. Itseemed to him that so long as he was still speaking, nothing was definitely settled. Mathilde did not listen to his words, the sound of them irritated her, she could not conceive how he had the audacity to interrupther.

  T............

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