CHAPTER LXVIII
A POWERFUL MAN
But her proceedings are so mysterious and her figure is so elegant! Who can she be?—Schiller.
The doors of the turret opened very early on the following day.
"Oh! good God," he thought, "here's my father! What an unpleasant scene!"
At the same time a woman dressed like a peasant rushed into his arms. He had difficulty in recognising her. It was mademoiselle de la Mole.
"You wicked man! Your letter only told me where you were. As for what you call your crime, but which is really nothing more or less than a noble vengeance, which shews me all the loftiness of the heart which beats within your bosom, I only got to know of it at Verrières."
In spite of all his prejudices against mademoiselle de la Mole, prejudices moreover which he had not owned to himself quite frankly, Julien found her extremely pretty. It was impossible not to recognise both in what she had done and what she had said, a noble disinterested feeling far above the level of anything that a petty vulgar soul would have dared to do? He thought that he still loved a queen, and after a few moments said to her with a remarkable nobility both of thought and of elocution,
"I sketched out the future very clearly. After my death I intended to remarry you to M. de Croisenois, who will officially of course then marry a widow. The noble but slightly romantic soul of this charming widow, who will have been brought back to the cult of vulgar prudence by an
