She went out into the garden to await Monsieur Antoine and stopped on the edge of the pond. The water was not very deep; but by lying down at full length!—One who wants to die can always find a way. The variety of suicide which had so tempted Julien a few days before, suggested itself to her with ghastly tranquillity.
"Nobody else on earth cares for me," she thought. "As I cannot be his, I will not be any man's. An infernal hatred has seized me by the throat and strangled me in the midst of my life and my happiness. They are not satisfied to deprive me of love and liberty, they seek to deprive me of honor too. Marcel himself said that I must consent to be reputed that old man's mistress. Ah! if Julien knew that, how he would abhor the comfort in which his mother is living! And if she should suspect it!—They shall both remain in ignorance of it, I am determined; my death will be the result of an accident. It will be impossible to retract the bargain we are about to make. Julien will be rich and honored. No one will ever guess at what price."
Once more the thought passed through Julie's mind that it was in her power and Julien's to shake off all these chains and to be united in spite of poverty.
"He would be happier so," she thought, "and perhaps I am sacrificing myself to his undoing! But who knows where Monsieur Antoine's hatred would stop? A raving maniac is capable of anything; perhaps he would have him murdered. Has he not secret agents, spies, cutthroats, in his service?"
Her brain was in a whirl, she walked round and round the basin as if she were impatiently awaiting the fatal hour. And then, when she thought that she was about to see Julien again, her heart returned to life with a mighty throb, and beat as if it would burst. She had no feeling of remorse, no scruple about breaking oaths extorted from her by the most revolting moral constraint.
"When one is at the point of death," she said to herself, "one has the right to protest before God against the iniquity of his executioners."
At that moment there was an extraordinary power of reaction in that woman, naturally so gentle and submissive. It was like the sudden boiling of a placid lake, caused by a volcanic disturbance, or like the blazing up of a flame just on the point of dying. She was feverish, she was no longer herself.
She saw Monsieur Antoine approaching with Marcel, and she mechanically seated herself, to receive him, on the bench where, three months earlier, the old man had made the strange and absurd proposition, her rejection of which had cost her so dear. As on that day, she heard the foliage rustle and saw the sparrow Julien had tamed flapping his wings and apparently hesitating whether he should light on her shoulder. The little creature had taken a liking to freedom. Julien, being unable to find him as they were going away, had left him behind, hoping that Julie, whose long absence he did not foresee, would be very glad to find him there. Since her return, Julie had seen him several times not far away, friendly but suspicious. She had tried in vain to induce him to come nearer. But this time he allowed himself to be caught. She was holding him in her hands when Monsieur Antoine accosted her.
She smiled and saluted him with a bewildered air; he spoke to her, unconscious of what he was saying, for his long exercise of absolutely despotic power had failed to overcome his timidity at the beginning of an interview. After his inevitable moment of stammering, he could succeed in saying nothing more than this:
"Ah! so you still have your sparrow?"