Page:The red and the black (1916).djvu/524

504 qualities of the heart cannot be learnt.' Even in the case of this poor Mathilde, who is crying now, or rather, who cannot cry," he said to himself, as he looked at her red eyes.… And he clasped her in his arms: the sight of a genuine grief made him forget the sequence of his logic.… "She has perhaps cried all the night," he said to himself, "but how ashamed she will be of this memory on some future day! She will regard herself as having been led astray in her first youth by a plebeian's low view of life.… Le Croisenois is weak enough to marry her, and upon my word, he will do well to do so. She will make him play a part.

"Ah! that's really humorous; since I have been doomed to die, all the verses I ever knew in my life are coming back into my memory. It must be a sign of demoralisation."

Mathilde kept on repeating in a choked voice: "He is there in the next room." At last he paid attention to what she was saying. "Her voice is weak," he thought, "but all the imperiousness of her character comes out in her intonation. She lowers her voice in order to avoid getting angry."

"And who is there?" he said, gently.

"The advocate, to get you to sign your appeal."

"I shall not appeal."

"What! you will not appeal," she said, getting up, with her eyes sparkling with rage. "And why, if you please?"

"Because I feel at the present time that I have the courage to die without giving people occasion to laugh too much at my expense. And who will guarantee that I shall be in so sound a frame of mind in two months' time, after living for a long time in this damp cell? I foresee interviews with the priests, with my father. I can imagine nothing more unpleasant. Let's die."

This unexpected opposition awakened all the haughtiness of Mathilde's character. She had not managed to see the abbé de Frilair before the time when visitors were admitted to the cells in the Besançon prison. Her fury vented itself on Julien. She adored him, and nevertheless she exhibited for a good quarter of an hour in her invective against his, Julien's,