CHAPTER XLIV
A YOUNG GIRL'S THOUGHTS
What perplexity! What sleepless nights! Great God. Am I going to make myself contemptible? He will despise me himself. But he is leaving, he is going away.
Mathilde had not written without a struggle. Whatever might have been the beginning of her interest in Julien, it soon dominated that pride which had reigned unchallenged in her heart since she had begun to know herself. This cold and haughty soul was swept away for the first time by a sentiment of passion, but if this passion dominated her pride, it still kept faithfully to the habits of that pride. Two months of struggles and new sensations had transformed, so to speak her whole moral life.
Mathilde thought she was in sight of happiness. This vista, irresistible as it is for those who combine a superior intellect with a courageous soul, had to struggle for a long time against her self respect and all her vulgar duties. One day she went into her mother's room at seven o'clock in the morning and asked permission to take refuge in Villequier. The marquise did not even deign to answer her, and advised her to go back to bed. This was the last effort of vulgar prudence and respect for tradition.
The fear of doing wrong and of offending those ideas which the Caylus's, the de Luz's, the Croisenois' held for sacred had little power over her soul. She considered such creatures incapable of understanding her. She would have consulted them, if it had been a matter of buying a carriage or an estate. Her real fear was that Julien was displeased with her.
"Perhaps he, too, has only the appearance of a superior man?"
