More than once the idea of suicide occurred to him; this image was full of charm, it was like a delicious rest; it was the glass of ice-cold water offered to the wretch who, in the desert, is dying of thirst and heat.
‘My death will increase the scorn that she feels for me!’ he exclaimed. ‘What a memory I shall leave behind me!’
Sunk into the nethermost abyss of misery, a human being has no resource left but courage. Julien had not wisdom enough to say to himself: ‘I must venture all’; but as he looked up at the window of Mathilde’s room, he could see through the shutters that she was putting out her light: he pictured to himself that charming room which he had seen, alas, once only in his life. His imagination went no farther.
One o’clock struck; from hearing the note of the bell to saying to himself: ‘I am going up by the ladder,’ did not take a moment.
This was a flash of genius, cogent reasons followed in abundance. ‘Can I possibly be more wretched?’ he asked himself. He ran to the ladder, the gardener had made it fast with a chain. With the hammer of one of his pocket pistols, which he broke, Julien, animated for the moment by a superhuman force, wrenched open one of the iron links of the chain which bound the ladder; in a few minutes it was free, and he had placed it against Mathilde’s window.
‘She will be angry, will heap contempt upon me, what of that? I give her a kiss, a final kiss, I go up to my room and kill myself . . .; my lips will have touched her cheek before I die!’
He flew up the ladder, tapped at the shutter; a moment later Mathilde heard him, she tried to open the shutter, the ladder kept it closed. Julien clung to the iron latch intended to hold the shutter open, and, risking a thousand falls, gave the ladder a violent shake, and displaced it a little. Mathilde was able to open the shutter.
He flung himself into the room more dead than alive: ‘So it is you!’ she said, and fell into his arms . . .
What words can describe the intensity of Julien’s happiness? Mathilde’s was almost as great.
She spoke to him against herself, she accused herself to him.
‘Punish me for my atrocious pride,’ she said to him, squeezing him in her arms as though to strangle him; ‘you are my master, I am your slave, I must beg pardon upon my knees for having sought to rebel.’ She slipped from his embrace to fall at his feet. ‘Yes, you are my master,’ she said again, intoxicated with love and joy; ‘reign over me for ever, punish your slave severely when she seeks to rebel.’
In another moment she had torn herself from his arms, lighted the candle, and Julien had all the difficulty in the world in preventing her from cutting off all one side of her hair.
‘I wish to remind myself,’ she told him, ‘that I am your servant: should my accursed pride ever make me forget it, show me these locks and say: “There is no question now of love, we are not concerned with the emotion that your heart may be feeling at this moment, you have sworn to obey, obey upon your honour.”’
But it is wiser to suppress the description of so wild a felicity.
Julien’s chivalry was as great as his happiness; ‘I must go down now by the ladder,’ he said to Mathilde, when he saw the dawn appear over the distant chimneys to the east, beyond the gardens. The sacrifice that I am imposing on myself is worthy of you, I am depriving myself of some hours of the most astounding happiness that a human soul can enjoy, it is a sacrifice that I am offering to your reputation: if you know my heart you appreciate the effort that I have to make. Will you always be to me what you are at this moment? But the voice of honour speaks, it is enough. Let me tell you that, since our first meeting, suspicion has not been directed only against robbers. M. de La Mole has set a watch in the garden. M. de Croisenois is surrounded by spies, we know what he is, doing night by night . . . ’
When she heard this idea, Mathilde burst out laughing. Her mother and one of the maids were aroused: immediately they called to her through the door. Julien looked at her, she turned pale as she scolded the maid, and did not condescend to speak to her mother.
‘But if it should occur to them to open the window, they will see the ladder!’ Julien said to her.
He clasped her once more in his arms, sprang on to the ladder and slid rather than climbed down it; in a moment he was on the ground.
Three seconds later the ladder was under the lime alley, and Mathilde’s honour was saved. Julien, on recovering his senses, found himself bleeding copiously and half naked: he had cut himself in his headlong descent.
The intensity of his happiness had restored all the energy of his nature: had a score of men appeared before him, to attack them single-handed would, at that moment, have been but a pleasure the more. Fortunately, his martial valour was not put to the proof: he laid down the ladder in its accustomed place; he replaced the chain that fastened it; he did not forget to come back and obliterate the print which the ladder had left in the border of exotic flowers beneath Mathilde’s window.
As in the darkness he explored the loose earth with his hand, to make sure that the mark was entirely obliterated, he felt something drop on his hand; it was a whole side of Mathilde’s hair which she had clipped and threw down to him.
She was at her window.
‘See what your servant sends you,’ she said in audible tones, ‘it is the sign of eternal obedience. I renounce the exercise of my own reason; be my master.’
Julien, overcome, was on the point of fetching back the ladder and mounting again to her room. Finally reason prevailed.
To enter the house from the garden was by no means easy. He succeeded in forcing the door of a cellar; once in the house he was obliged to break open, as silently as possible, the door of his own room. In his confusion he had left everything behind, including the key, which was in the pocket of his coat. ‘Let us hope,’ he thought, ‘that she will remember to hide all that corpus delicti!’
Finally exhaustion overpowered happiness, and, as the sun rose, he fell into a profound slumber.
The luncheon bell just succeeded in waking him, he made his appearance in the dining-room. Shortly afterwards, Mathilde entered the room. Julien’s pride tasted a momentary joy when he saw the love that glowed in the eyes of this beautiful creature, surrounded by every mark of deference; but soon his prudence found an occasion for alarm.
On the pretext of not having had time to dress her hair properly, Mathilde had so arranged it that Julien could see at a glance the whole extent of the sacrifice that she had made for him in clipping her locks that night. If anything could have spoiled so lovely a head, Mathilde would have succeeded in spoiling hers; all one side of those beautiful pale golden locks were cropped to within half an inch of her scalp.
At luncheon, Mathilde’s whole behaviour was in keeping with this original imprudence. You would have said that she was deliberately trying to let everyone see the insane passion that she had for Julien. Fortunately, that day, M. de La Mole and the Marquise were greatly taken up with a list of forthcoming promotions to the Blue Riband, in which the name of M. de Chaulnes had not been included. Towards the end of the meal, Mathilde in talking to Julien addressed him as ‘my master’. He coloured to the whites of his eyes.
Whether by accident or by the express design of Madame de La Mole, Mathilde was not left alone for an instant that day. In the evening, however, as she passed from the dining-room to the drawing-room, she found an opportunity of saying to Julien:
‘I hope you do not think that it is my idea: Mamma has just decided that one of her maids is to sleep in my room.’
The day passed like lightning; Julien was on the highest pinnacle of happiness. By seven o’clock next morning he was installed in the library; he hoped that Mademoiselle