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416 Astonished one day at this consistent policy of hiding him self from her, she left the blue sofa and came to work by the little table near the maréchale's armchair. Julien had a fairly close view of her over madame de Fervaques' hat.

Those eyes, which were the arbiters of his fate, frightened him, and then hurled him violently out of his habitual apathy. He talked, and talked very well.

He was speaking to the maréchale, but his one aim was to produce an impression upon Mathilde's soul. He became so animated that eventually madame de Fervaques did not manage to understand a word he said.

This was a prime merit. If it had occurred to Julien to follow it up by some phrases of German mysticism, lofty religion, and Jesuitism, the maréchale would have immediately given him a rank among the superior men whose mission it was to regenerate the age.

"Since he has bad enough taste," said mademoiselle de la Mole, "to talk so long and so ardently to madame de Fervaques, I shall not listen to him any more." She kept her resolution during the whole latter part of the evening, although she had difficulty in doing so.

At midnight, when she took her mother's candle to accompany her to her room, madame de la Mole stopped on the staircase to enter into an exhaustive eulogy of Julien. Mathilde ended by losing her temper. She could not get to sleep. She felt calmed by this thought: "the very things which I despise in a man may none the less constitute a great merit in the eyes of the maréchale."

As for Julien, he had done something, he was less unhappy; his eyes chanced to fall on the Russian leather poitfolio in which prince Korasoff had placed the fifty-three love letters which he had presented to him. Julien saw a note at the bottom of the first letter: No. 1 is sent eight days after the first meeting.

"I am behind hand," exclaimed Julien. "It is quite a long time since I met madame de Fervaques." He immediately began to copy out this first love letter. It was a homily packed with moral platitudes and deadly dull. Julien was fortunate enough to fall asleep at the second page.

Some hours afterwards he was surprised to see the broad daylight as he lent on his desk. The most painful moments