6 "C'est donc toi!" in French; Mathilde uses the intimate tu form with Julien for the first time.
Chapter Nineteen: Comic Opera
Hearing this, Mathilde roared with laughter. Her mother and one of the maids were awakened; suddenly Mathilde was being spoken to, through the closed door. Julien looked at her: she was pale, even as she scolded the maid and refused to speak to her mother. "But if they think of opening their windows, they'll see the ladder!" he told her. He wound her one final time in his arms, then threw himself down the ladder, sliding rather than climbing down; he was on the ground almost instantly. Three seconds later, the ladder was under the arching linden trees, and Mathilde's honor had been preserved. Julien came back to his senses and found himself covered with blood and very nearly naked: he had been hurt, letting himself slide down so precipitously. Surging happiness had given him all his rightful energy: twenty men might have come at him, and to attack them by himself would, just then, have been only one more delight. Luckily, his military valor was not put to the proof. He set the ladder back in its usual place; he replaced the chain he'd taken off, nor did he forget to erase, in the bed of exotic flowers under Mathilde's window, the imprint left by the ladder. As, in the darkness, he wiped his hand along the soft earth, making sure the imprint had indeed been completely effaced, he felt something fall on his hands. It was her hair, all down one side, which she had cut off and thrown to him. She was at her window. "Here's what your servant sends you," she told him, not at all softly. "It's the sign of eternal obedience. I surrender my capacity to make judgments: be my master." Overcome, Julien was ready to pick up the ladder and climb back up to her. At last, reason prevailed. Getting back into the house, from the garden, was not at all easy. He finally managed to force a cellar door; when he reached the main part of the house he had to break open, as quietly as he could, the door to his room. In his concern and excitement, he had left everything in the little room he'd fled from so rapidly, including the key, which was in his suit pocket. "Just as long," he thought, "as she thinks of hiding all those fatal clothes!" At last, weariness overcame happiness and, just as the sun was rising, he fell into a deep sleep. It was not easy for the lunchtime bell to awaken him; he appeared in the dining room. Mathilde came in shortly afterward. Julien's pride flared with happiness, seeing the love shining in the eyes of this extraordinarily beautiful woman, surrounded as she was by such homage. But prudence soon had reason to be frightened. Pretending that she'd not had time to do her hair properly, Mathilde had so arranged it that he could see, at a glance, the full extent of the sacrifice she'd made for him in cutting off her hair the night before. If so beautiful a face could be spoiled by anything, Mathilde had managed it. One whole side of her ash blonde hair had been cut within half an inch of her head. During lunch, Mathilde's behavior fully lived up to this initial recklessness. It might have been supposed that she was determined to let the whole world know her wild passion for Julien. Fortunately, the Marquis and Marquise de La Mole were preoccupied, that day, with a list of high decorations7 to be awarded, and which did not include Monsieur de Chaulnes. Toward the end of the meal, it happened that Mathilde, who was speaking to Julien, called him my master. He reddened to the white of his eyes.