Page:The red and the black (1916).djvu/364

344 was pale and looked quite middle-aged. He thought that she had never looked so great: she was really handsome and imposing; he almost fell in love with her. "Pallida morte futura," he said to himself (her pallor indicates her great plans). It was in vain that after dinner he made a point of walking for a long time in the garden, mademoiselle did not appear. Speaking to her at that moment would have lifted a great weight off his heart.

Why not admit it? he was afraid. As he had resolved to act, he was not ashamed to abandon himself to this emotion. "So long as I show the necessary courage at the actual moment," he said to himself, "what does it matter what I feel at this particular moment?" He went to reconnoitre the situation and find out the weight of the ladder.

"This is an instrument," he said to himself with a smile, "which I am fated to use both here and at Verrières. What a difference! In those days," he added with a sigh, " I was not obliged to distrust the person for whom I exposed myself to danger. What a difference also in the danger!"

"There would have been no dishonour for me if I had been killed in M. de Rênal's gardens. It would have been easy to have made my death into a mystery. But here all kinds of abominable scandal will be talked in the salons of the hotel de Chaulnes, the hôtel de Caylus, de Retz, etc., everywhere in fact. I shall go down to posterity as a monster."

"For two or three years," he went on with a laugh, making fun of himself; but the idea paralysed him. "And how am I going to manage to get justified? Suppose that Fouqué does print my posthumous pamphlet, it will only be taken for an additional infamy. Why! I get received into a house, and I reward the hospitality which I have received, the kindness with which I have been loaded by printing a pamphlet about what has happened and attacking the honour of women! Nay! I'd a thousand times rather be duped."

The evening was awful.