The first minute in which he noticed this movement, he felt an extreme joy. Immediately afterwards, he thought of Korasoff: “I may lose everything by a single word.”
The strain of carrying out his tactics was so great that his arms stiffened. “I dare not even allow myself to press this supple, charming frame to my heart, or she will despise me or treat me badly. What an awful character!” And while he cursed Mathilde’s character, he loved her a hundred times more. He thought he had a queen in his arms.
Julien’s impassive coldness intensified the anguished pride which was lacerating the soul of mademoiselle de la Mole. She was far from having the necessary self-possession to try and read in his eyes what he felt for her at that particular moment. She could not make up her mind to look at him. She trembled lest she might encounter a contemptuous expression.
Seated motionless on the library divan, with her head turned in the opposite direction to Julien, she was a prey to the most poignant anguish that pride and love can inflict upon a human soul. What an awful step had she just slipped into taking! “It has been reserved for me, unhappy woman that I am, to see my most unbecoming advances rebuffed! and rebuffed by whom?” added her maddened and wounded pride; “rebuffed by a servant of my father’s! That’s more than I will put up with,” she said aloud, and rising in a fury, she opened the drawer of Julien’s table, which was two yards in front of her.
She stood petrified with horror when she saw eight or ten unopened letters, completely like the one the porter had just brought up. She recognised Julien’s handwriting, though more or less disguised, on all the addresses.
“So,” she cried, quite beside herself, “you are not only on good terms with her, but you actually despise her. You, a nobody, despise madame la maréchale de Fervaques!”
“Oh, forgive me, my dear,” she added, throwing herself on her knees; “despise me if you wish, but love me. I cannot live without your love.” And she fell down in a dead faint.
“So our proud lady is lying at my feet,” said Julien to himself.