Castres 1676—A brother has just murdered his sister in the house next to mine. This gentleman had already been guilty of one murder. His father saved his life by causing five-hundred crowns to be distributed among the councillors.—Locke: Journey in France.
When she left the bishop’s palace, Mathilde did not hesitate to despatch a courier to madame de Fervaques. The fear of compromising herself did not stop her for a moment. She entreated her rival to obtain for M. de Frilair an autograph letter from the bishop of ——. She went as far as to entreat her to come herself to Besançon with all speed. This was an heroic act on the part of a proud and jealous soul.
Acting on Fouqué’s advice, she had had the discretion to refrain from mentioning the steps she had taken for Julien. Her presence troubled him enough without that. A better man when face to face with death than he had ever been during his life, he had remorse not only towards M. de la Mole, but also towards Mathilde.
“Come,” he said to himself, “there are times when I feel absent-minded and even bored by her society. She is ruining herself on my account, and this is how I reward her. Am I really a scoundrel?” This question would have bothered him but little in the days when he was ambitious. In those days he looked upon failure as the only disgrace.
His moral discomfort when with Mathilde was proportionately emphasized by the fact that he inspired her at this time with the maddest and most extraordinary passion. She talked of nothing but the strange sacrifices that she was ready to make in order to save him.
Exalted as she was by a sentiment on which she plumed herself, to the complete subordination of her pride, she would have liked not to have let a single minute of her life go by without filling it with some extraordinary act. The strangest projects, and ones involving her in the utmost danger, supplied the topics of her long interviews with Julien. The well-paid gaolers allowed her to reign over the prison. Mathilde’s ideas were not limited by the sacrifice of her reputation. She would have thought nothing of making her condition known to society at large. Throwing herself on her knees before the king’s carriage as it galloped along, in order to ask for Julien’s pardon, and thus attracting the attention of the prince, at the risk of being crushed a thousand times over, was one of the least fantastic dreams in which this exalted and courageous imagination chose to indulge. She was certain of being admitted into the reserved portion of the park of St. Cloud, through those friends of hers who were employed at the king’s court.
Julien thought himself somewhat unworthy of so much devotion. As a matter of fact, he was tired of heroism. A simple, naïve, and almost timid tenderness was what would have appealed to him, while Mathilde’s haughty soul, on the other hand, always required the idea of a public and an audience.
In the midst of all her anguish and all her fears for the life of that lover whom she was unwilling to survive, she felt a secret need of astonishing the public by the extravagance of her love and the sublimity of her actions.