One o’clock struck. Hearing the stroke of the clock and saying to himself, “I will climb up the ladder,” scarcely took a moment.
It was the flash of genius, good reasons crowded on his mind. “May I be more fortunate than before,” he said to himself. He ran to the ladder. The gardener had chained it up. With the help of the cock of one of his little pistols which he broke, Julien, who for the time being was animated by a superhuman force, twisted one of the links of the chain which held the ladder. He was master of it in a few minutes, and placed it against Mathilde’s window.
“She will be angry and riddle me with scornful words! What does it matter? I will give her a kiss, one last kiss. I will go up to my room and kill myself ... my lips will touch her cheek before I die.”
He flew up the ladder and knocked at the blind; Mathilde heard him after some minutes and tried to open the blind but the ladder was in the way. Julien hung to the iron hook intending to keep the blind open, and at the imminent risk of falling down, gave the ladder a violent shake which moved it a little. Mathilde was able to open the blind.
He threw himself into the window more dead than alive.
“So it is you, dear,” she said as she rushed into his arms.
The excess of Julien’s happiness was indescribable. Mathilde’s almost equalled his own.
She talked against herself to him and denounced herself.
“Punish me for my awful pride,” she said to him, clasping him in her arms so tightly as almost to choke him. “You are my master, dear, I am your slave. I must ask your pardon on my knees for having tried to rebel.” She left his arms to fall at his feet. “Yes,” she said to him, still intoxicated with happiness and with love, “you are my master, reign over me for ever. When your slave tries to revolt, punish her severely.”