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486 a word with which to express his blame for a character whom he found so exhausting. She was changeable. There is only a step from this epithet to that of wrong-headed, the greatest term of opprobrium known to the provinces.

"It is singular," said Julien to himself, as Mathilde was going out of his prison one day, "that I should be so insensible at being the object of so keen a passion! And two months ago I adored her! I have, of course, read that the approach of death makes one lose interest in everything, but it is awful to feel oneself ungrateful, and not to be able to change. Am I an egoist, then?" He addressed the most humiliating reproaches to himself on this score.

Ambition was dead in his heart; another passion had arisen from its ashes. He called it remorse at having assassinated madame de Rênal.

As a matter of fact, he loved her to the point of distraction. He experienced a singular happiness on these occasions when, being left absolutely alone, and without being afraid of being interrupted, he could surrender himself completely to the memory of the happy days which he had once passed at Verrières, or at Vergy. The slightest incidents of these days, which had fleeted away only too rapidly, possessed an irresistible freshness and charm. He never gave a thought to his Paris successes; they bored him.

These moods, which became intensified with every succeeding day, were partly guessed by the jealous Mathilde. She realised very clearly that she had to struggle against his love of solitude. Sometimes, with terror in her heart, she uttered madame de Rênal's name.

She saw Julien quiver. Henceforth her passion had neither bounds nor limit.

"If he dies, I will die after him," she said to herself in all good faith. "What will the Paris salons say when they see a girl of my own rank carry her adoration for a lover who is condemned to death to such a pitch as this? For sentiments like these you must go back to the age of the heroes. It was loves of this kind which thrilled the hearts of the century of Charles IX. and Henri III."

In the midst of her keenest transports, when she was clasping Julien's head against her heart, she would say to herself with horror, "What! is this charming head doomed to fall?