8 As dictated to the Comte de Montholon, who published them in 1822–25.

"Make her afraid!" he kept repeating proudly, and he had reason to be proud. Even in their happiest moments, Madame de Rênal had always doubted that his love equaled hers. "I'm subduing a demon, here, which must be subdued." He knew very well that, at eight the next morning, Mathilde would be at the library; he did not come until nine, burning with love, but his head in charge of his heart. Virtually every single minute he repeated to himself: "Always compel her to deal with this immense uncertainty: 'Does he love me?' Her brilliant social position, the perpetual flattery from everyone she talks to, make her a bit over confident." She was pale, calm; she was sitting on the couch, but seemed unable to move from that position. She held out her hand: "My love, I've offended you, I know I have. Might you be angry at me?..." Julien was not prepared for this plain, direct approach. He was about to betray himself. "You want guarantees, my dear," she added, after a silence she had hoped would be broken. "That's fair. Carry me off; let's go to London...I'll be ruined forever, dishonored..." She managed to take her hand from Julien's and set it over her eyes. All her modesty, her sense of feminine virtue, flooded back into her heart..."All right, dishonor me," she said at last, sighing. "That's a guarantee." "I was happy, yesterday," Julien thought, "because I had the courage to be hard on myself." After a short interval of silence, he took enough control of his heart to say, his voice exceedingly cold: "Once we're en route to London, once you've been dishonored—as you phrase it—who's to say you'll still love me? Will my presence in the mail coach still seem important to you? I'm not a monster: having your reputation destroyed would be nothing more than another wretchedness. Neither your rank, nor your position in society, creates the obstacle, but— unfortunately—your own character. Can you tell yourself: in a week, you'll still love me?" ("Ah, if she loves me for a week, just a week," Julien murmured to himself, "I'll die of happiness. Who cares about the future? Who cares about life or death? And that divine happiness could begin right at this moment, if I want it to. It all depends on me!") Mathilde looked at him, thoughtfully. "So I'm completely unworthy of you," she said, taking his hand once more. Julien embraced her, but duty's iron hand immediately seized his heart. "If she sees how I adore her, I lose her." Even before stepping away from her arms, he had resumed a man's full and fitting dignity. That day, and those which followed it, he managed to conceal his immense happiness. There were moments when he refused even the pleasure of holding her in his arms. At other moments, the delirium of happiness swept away all of caution's counsels. There was an arbor of climbing honeysuckle, meant to hide the gardener's ladder, near which he had taken to placing himself so he could stare from afar at the blinds in Mathilde's window, and weep at her inconstancy. Close by, there was a huge oak, and its trunk had kept him from being seen by curious eyes. Walking by this spot with Mathilde, and remembering so vividly the enormity of his miseries, the contrast of past despair and present felicity was too strong for him. Tears flooded into his eyes and, pressing his lips to his beloved's hand: "Here is where I lived, thinking of you. Here I stood, looking at those blinds, waiting for hours at a time for the blessed moment when I could see your hand opening them..." His weakness was total. He drew his portrait in true colors, none of them merely imagined, depicting the state of despair he had endured. A few quick interjections bore witness to his current happiness, which had brought an end to that horrible suffering...

"Good Lord, what am I doing!" Julien said to himself, suddenly recovering his senses. "I'm lost." His alarm was so intense that he imagined Mademoiselle de La Mole's eyes showing, even now, less love for him. This was illusory, but Julien's face rapidly turned color, and he became mortally pale. His eyes lost their brilliance, for an instant, and a haughty expression, with a trace of nastiness, immediately took the place of the truest, most abandoned look of love. "What's wrong, my dear?" asked Mathilde, tenderly concerned. "I'm a liar," Julien said irritably, "and I was lying to you. I reproach myself, and God knows I sufficiently respect you not to tell you lies. You love me, you're devoted to me, and there's no point to making up fine phrases just to please you." "Good God! Are all those ravishing things you've been telling me, the last ten minutes, just fine phrases?" "And I most sternly reproached myself, my dear. I composed them, once, for a woman who loved me, who also bored me...It's a defect in my character: I openly accuse myself. Forgive me." Tears were running down Mathilde's cheeks. "Every time something startles me, I'm inevitably thrown into a fantasy," Julien continued, "and my ghastly memory—which at the moment I execrate—offers me something from its stockpiles, and I take advantage of it." "Have I just stumbled into doing something, all unawares, that displeases you?" Mathilde asked, with charming naïveté. "I remember, one day, walking by this honeysuckle, you picked a flower and Monsieur de Luz took it, and you let him have it. I was two steps away." "Monsieur de Luz? That can't be," said Mathilde, with the haughtiness so natural to her. "I don't do such things." "I'm sure you did," Julien replied, forcefully. "Well, then it's true, my dear," said Mathilde, sadly lowering her eyes. She'd been positive that, for many months, she'd not permitted Monsieur de Luz to do anything of the kind. Julien looked at her with inexpressible tenderness: "No," he told himself. "She does not love me less ." She laughingly teased him, that night, for his interest in Madame de Fervaques: "A bourgeois in love with a social climber! Those kinds of hearts may be the only ones my Julien can't drive wild. She's turned you into a real dandy," she said, playing with his hair. While Mathilde had so totally scorned him, Julien had become one of the best-dressed men in Paris. But he still had an advantage over men of that sort: once he was dressed, he thought no more about it. One thing irritated Mathilde. Julien continued to copy out the Russian letters and send them to the marshall's widow. Chapter Thirty-Two: The Tiger Alas! Why these things, and not others? —Beaumarchais9