IntrigueCastres, 1676.—He that endeavoured to kill his sister in ourhouse, had before killed a man, and it had cost his father fivehundred ecus to get him off; by their secret distribution, gainingthe favour of the counsellors.

　　LOCKE, Travels in France 17On leaving the Bishop's palace, Mathilde did not hesitate to send amessenger to Madame de Fervaques; the fear of compromising herselfdid not restrain her for a second. She implored her rival to obtain a letterfor M. de Frilair, written throughout in the hand of the Lord Bishop of——. She even went the length of beseeching the other to hasten, herself,to Besancon. This was a heroic measure on the part of a proud and jealous spirit.

　　On the advice of Fouque, she had taken the precaution of saying nothing about what she was doing to Julien. Her presence was disturbingenough in itself. A more honourable man at the approach of death thanhe had been during his life, he now felt compunction at the thought notonly of M. de La Mole, but also of Mathilde.

　　'What is this?' he asked himself, 'I experience in her company momentsof abstraction and even of boredom. She is ruining herself for me, and itis thus that I reward her. Can I indeed be wicked?' This question wouldhave troubled him little when he was ambitious; then, not to succeed inlife was the only disgrace in his eyes.

　　His moral uneasiness, in Mathilde's presence, was all the moremarked, in that he inspired in her at that moment the most extraordinary17.I am indebted to the patience and ingenuity of Mr. Vyvyan Holland, who has tracedthe original text of this motto in The Life of John Locke, with extracts from his Correspondence, Journals and Commonplace Books by Lord King (new edition, 1830) C. K. S. M.

　　 and insensate passion. She could speak of nothing but the strange sacrifices which she was anxious to make to save him.

　　Carried away by a sentiment of which she was proud and which completely overbore her pride, she would have liked not to allow a momentof her life to pass that was not filled with some extraordinary action. Thestrangest plans, the most perilous to herself, formed the theme of herlong conversations with Julien. His gaolers, well rewarded, allowed herto have her way in the prison. Mathilde's ideas were not confined to thesacrifice of her reputation; it mattered nothing to her though she madeher condition known to the whole of society. To fling herself on herknees to crave pardon for Julien, in front of the King's carriage as it cameby at a gallop, to attract the royal attention, at the risk of a thousanddeaths, was one of the tamest fancies of this exalted and courageous imagination. Through her friends who held posts at court, she could countupon being admitted to the reserved parts of the park of Saint-Cloud.

　　Julien felt himself to be hardly worthy of such devotion, to tell thetruth he was tired of heroism. It would have required a simple, artless,almost timid affection to appeal to him, whereas on the contrary,Mathilde's proud spirit must always entertain the idea of a public, ofwhat people would say.

　　In the midst of all her anguish, of all her fears for the life of this lover,whom she was determined not to outlive, she had a secret longing to astonish the public by the intensity of her love and the sublimity of heractions.

　　He resented the discovery that he was unable to feel at all touched byall this heroism. What would his resentment have been, had he known ofall the follies with which Mathilde overpowered the devoted, but eminently reasonable and limited mind of the good Fouque?

　　The latter could scarcely find fault with Mathilde's devotion; for he,too, would have sacrificed his whole fortune and exposed his life to thegreatest risks to save Julien. He was stupefied by the quantity of goldwhich Mathilde scattered abroad. At first, the sums thus spent impressedFouque, who had for money all the veneration of a provincial.

　　Later, he discovered that Mademoiselle de La Mole's plans often varied, and, to his great relief, found a word with which to reproach thischaracter which was so exhausting to him: she was changeable. To thisepithet, that of wrongheaded, the direst anathema in the provinces, is theimmediate sequel.

　　 'It is strange,' Julien said to himself one day as Mathilde was leavinghis prison, 'that so warm a passion, and one of which I am the object,leaves me so unmoved! And I worshipped her two months ago! I haveindeed read that at the approach of death we lose interest in everything;but it is frightful to feel oneself ungrateful and to be unable to change.

　　Can I be an egoist?' He heaped on himself, in this connection, the mosthumiliating reproaches.

　　Ambition was dead in his heart, another passion had risen from itsashes; he called it remorse for having murdered Madame de Re............