“Well, my dear, it is true,” said Mathilde, as she sadly lowered her eyes. She knew positively that many months had elapsed since she had allowed M. de Luz to do such a thing.
Julien looked at her with ineffable tenderness, “No,” he said to himself, “she does not love me less.”
In the evening she rallied him with a laugh on his fancy for madame de Fervaques. “Think of a bourgeois loving a parvenu, those are perhaps the only type of hearts that my Julien cannot make mad with love. She has made you into a real dandy,” she said playing with his hair.
During the period when he thought himself scorned by Mathilde, Julien had become one of the best dressed men in Paris. He had, moreover, a further advantage over other dandies, in as much as once he had finished dressing he never gave a further thought to his appearance.
One thing still piqued Mathilde, Julien continued to copy out the Russian letters and send them to the maréchale.
[CHAPTER LXII]
THE TIGER
Alas, why these things and not other things?—Beaumarchais.