CHAPTER XXI
DIALOGUE WITH A MASTER
Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we;
For such as we are made of, such we be.—Twelfth Night.
It was with a childish pleasure that for a whole hour Julien put the words together. As he came out of his room, he met his pupils with their mother. She took the letter with a simplicity and a courage whose calmness terrified him.
"Is the mouth-glue dry enough yet?" she asked him.
"And is this the woman who was so maddened by remorse?" he thought. "What are her plans at this moment?" He was too proud to ask her, but she had never perhaps pleased him more.
"If this turns out badly," she added with the same coolness, "I shall be deprived of everything. Take charge of this, and bury it in some place of the mountain. It will perhaps one day be my only resource."
She gave him a glass case in red morocco filled with gold and some diamonds.
"Now go," she said to him.
She kissed the children, embracing the youngest twice. Julien remained motionless. She left him at a rapid pace without looking at him.
From the moment that M. de Rênal had opened the anonymous letter his life had been awful. He had not been so agitated since a duel which he had just missed having in 1816, and to do him justice, the prospect of receiving a bullet would have made him less unhappy. He scrutinised the letter from every standpoint. "Is that not a woman's handwriting?" he said to himself. In that case, what woman had written it? He reviewed all those whom he knew at Verrières without
