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" is getting serious," thought Julien, "and a little too clear," he added after thinking a little. "Why to be sure! This fine young lady can talk to me in the library with a freedom which, thank heaven, is absolutely complete; the marquis, frightened as he is that I show him accounts, never sets foot in it. Why! M. de la Mole and the comte Norbert, the only persons who ever come here, are absent nearly the whole day, and the sublime Mathilde for whom a sovereign prince would not be too noble a suitor, wants me to commit an abominable indiscretion.

"It is clear they want to ruin me, or at the least make fun of me. First they wanted to ruin me by my own letters; they happen to be discreet; well, they want some act which is clearer than daylight. These handsome little gentlemen think I am too silly or too conceited. The devil! To think of climbing like this up a ladder to a storey twenty-five feet high in the finest moonlight. They would have time to see me, even from the neighbouring houses. I shall cut a pretty figure to be sure on my ladder!" Julien went up to his room again and began to pack his trunk whistling. He had decided to leave and not even to answer.

But this wise resolution did not give him peace of mind. "If by chance," he suddenly said to himself after he had closed his trunk, "Mathilde is in good faith, why then I cut the figure of an arrant coward in her eyes. I have