Page:The red and the black (1916).djvu/397

Rh present from the Dutch to the Regent, the Duke of Orleans, who had given it to his daughter.…"

Mathilde had followed her mother's movements, and felt delighted at seeing that the blue vase, that she had thought horribly ugly, was broken. Julien was taciturn, and not unduly upset. He saw mademoiselle de la Mole quite near him.

"This vase," he said to her, "has been destroyed for ever. The same is the case with the sentiment which was once master of my heart. I would ask you to accept my apologies for all the pieces of madness which it has made me commit."

And he went out.

"One would really say," said madame de la Mole, as he went out of the room, "that this M. Sorel is quite proud of what he has just done."

These words went right home to Mathilde's heart. "It is true," she said to herself; "my mother has guessed right. That is the sentiment which animates him." It was only then that she ceased rejoicing over yesterday's scene. "Well, it is all over," she said to herself, with an apparent calm. "It is a great lesson, anyway. It is an awful and humiliating mistake! It is enough to make me prudent all the rest of my life."

"Why didn't I speak the truth?" thought Julien. "Why am I still tortured by the love which I once had for that mad woman?"

Far, however, from being extinguished as he had hoped it would be, his love grew more and more rapidly. "She is mad, it is true," he said to himself. "Is she any the less adorable for that? Is it possible for anyone to be prettier? Is not mademoiselle de la Mole the ideal quintessence of all the most vivid pleasures of the most elegant civilisation?" These memories of a bygone happiness seized hold of Julien's mind, and quickly proceeded to destroy all the work of his reason.

It is in vain that reason wrestles with memories of this character. Its stern struggles only increase the fascination.

Twenty-four hours after the breaking of the Japanese vase, Julien was unquestionably one of the most unhappy men in the world.