"If he dies I shall die," she said to her father. "It will be you who will be the cause of his death.… Perhaps you will rejoice at it but I swear by his shades that I shall at once go into mourning, and shall publicly appear as Madame the widow Sorel, I shall send out my invitations, you can count on it… You will find me neither pusillanimous nor cowardly."
Her love went to the point of madness. M. de la Mole was flabbergasted in his turn.
He began to regard what had happened with a certain amount of logic. Mathilde did not appear at breakfast. The marquis felt an immense weight off his mind, and was particularly flattered when he noticed that she had said nothing to her mother.
Julien was dismounting from his horse. Mathilde had him called and threw herself into his arms almost beneath the very eyes of her chambermaid. Julien was not very appreciative of this transport. He had come away from his long consultation with the abbé Pirard in a very diplomatic and calculating mood. The calculation of possibilities had killed his imagination. Mathilde told him, with tears in her eyes, that she had read his suicide letter.
"My father may change his mind; do me the favour of leaving for Villequier this very minute. Mount your horse again, and leave the hotel before they get up from table."
When Julien's coldness and astonishment showed no sign of abatement, she burst into tears.
"Let me manage our affairs," she exclaimed ecstatically, as she clasped him in her arms. "You know, dear, it is not of my own free will that I separate from you. Write under cover to my maid. Address it in a strange hand-writing, I will write volumes to you. Adieu, flee."
This last word wounded Julien, but he none the less obeyed. "It will be fatal," he thought "if, in their most gracious moments these aristocrats manage to shock me."
Mathilde firmly opposed all her father's prudent plans. She would not open negotiations on any other basis except this. She was to be Madame Sorel, and was either to live with her husband in poverty in Switzerland, or with her father in Paris. She rejected absolutely the suggestion of a secret accouchement. "In that case I should begin to be confronted with a prospect of calumny and dishonour. I shall go travel-
