4 From Virgil's Aeneid, the phrase describes Dido.
The Red and the Black
happened! I attack a woman's honor! Ah, let me be betrayed—a thousand times better, that way." It was a ghastly evening.
Chapter Sixteen: One O'Clock in the Morning
Chapter Sixteen: One O'Clock in the Morning The garden was very big, designed fairly recently and in perfect taste. But the trees were more than a century old. The effect was somewhat rustic. —Massinger1 He was about to write a counterorder to Fouqué, when one o'clock sounded. He locked the door to his room noisily, as if he were shutting himself in for the night. Then he loped around the whole house, like a wolf, especially on the top floor, where the servants were quartered. He saw nothing unusual. One of Madame de La Mole's maids was having a party, and the servants were happily emptying the punch bowl. "The ones who are laughing like that," thought Julien, "can't be the ones participating in a nocturnal expedition. They'd be more serious." At last he went and stood in a dark corner of the garden. "If their plan is to hide themselves from the de La Mole servants, the ones who are supposed to surprise me will have to come in over the garden walls. "If Monsieur de Croisenois has any sense about all this, he has to know how much less compromising it would be, for the young woman he wants to marry, to surprise me before I've reached her room." He performed a very precise military reconnaissance. "This is a question of my honor," he thought. "If I let something slip by me, it won't be an excuse—not to me—if I tell myself: 'I never thought of that.'" The weather was depressingly fine. The moon had risen about eleven o'clock; by twelve- thirty, the side of the house facing the garden was fully lit. "She's insane," Julien told himself. When one o'clock sounded, there was still light in Count Norbert's windows. Never in all his life had Julien been so terrified: all he saw were the risks he was taking, nor was he enthusiastic about taking them. He went to get the big ladder, waited five minutes so she had time to countermand her instructions, and at five after one set the ladder against Mathilde's window. He climbed up quietly, pistol in hand, astonished not to have been attacked. As he reached the window, she threw it open, noiselessly. "There you are, sir," Mathilde said to him, very emotionally. "I've been following your movements for the last hour." Julien was deeply embarrassed; he did not know how to behave; he felt no love whatever. In his embarrassment he thought he might as well act the lover, so he tried to kiss Mathilde. "For shame!" she said, pushing him away. Very happy to have been repulsed, he quickly glanced around him. The moon was so bright that the shadows it cast in Mathilde's room were black. "But there could well be men so well hidden that I can't see them," he thought. "What's that in your side pocket?" Mathilde asked, delighted to have found a subject for conversation. She was feeling strangely tormented: all those feelings of restraint and shyness, so natural to a well-bred girl, had resumed their sway and were torturing her. "I've got all sorts of weapons, as well as pistols," Julien replied, equally happy to have something to say. "The ladder has to be removed," said Mathilde. "It's huge, and it might break the glass in the room down below, or the ones in the mezzanine."