prevented him, however, from taking his own unhappiness too tragically. His pride could take support in what had taken place the previous day. "Whatever may be their advantages over me," he thought, as he went into the garden alone, "Mathilde has never been to a single one of them what, twice in my life, she has deigned to be to me!" His penetration did not go further. He absolutely failed to appreciate the character of the extraordinary person whom chance had just made the supreme mistress of all his happiness.
He tried, on the following day, to make himself and his horse dead tired with fatigue. He made no attempt in the evening to go near the blue sofa to which Mathilde remained constant. He noticed that comte Norbert did not even deign to look at him when he met him about the house. "He must be doing something very much against the grain," he thought; "he is naturally so polite."
Sleep would have been a happiness to Julien. In spite of his physical fatigue, memories which were only too seductive commenced to invade his imagination. He had not the genius to see that, inasmuch as his long rides on horseback over forests on the outskirts of Paris only affected him, and had no affect at all on Mathilde's heart or mind, he was consequently leaving his eventual destiny to the caprice of chance. He thought that one thing would give his pain an infinite relief: it would be to speak to Mathilde. Yet what would he venture to say to her?
He was dreaming deeply about this at seven o'clock one morning when he suddenly saw her enter the library.
"I know, monsieur, that you are anxious to speak to me."
"Great heavens! who told you?"
"I know, anyway; that is enough. If you are dishonourable, you can ruin me, or at least try to. But this danger, which I do not believe to be real, will certainly not prevent me from being sincere. I do not love you any more, monsieur, I have been led astray by my foolish imagination."
Distracted by love and unhappiness, as a result of this terrible blow, Julien tried to justify himself. Nothing could have been more absurd. Does one make any excuses for failure to please? But reason had no longer any control over his actions. A blind instinct urged him to get the determination of his fate postponed. He thought that, so long as he
