CHAPTER XLIII
A PLOT
Disconnected remarks, casual meetings, become transformed in the eyes of an imaginative man into the most convincing proofs, if he has any fire in his temperament.—Schiller.
The following day he again caught Norbert and his sister talking about him. A funereal silence was established on his arrival as on the previous day. His suspicions were now unbounded. "Can these charming young people have started to make fun of me? I must own this is much more probable, much more natural than any suggested passion on the part of madamoiselle de La Mole for a poor devil of a secretary. In the first place, have those people got any passions at all? Mystification is their strong point. They are jealous of my poor little superiority in speaking. Being jealous again is one of their weaknesses. On that basis everything is explicable. Mademoiselle de La Mole simply wants to persuade me that she is marking me out for special favour in order to show me off to her betrothed?"
This cruel suspicion completely changed Julien's psychological condition. The idea found in his heart a budding love which it had no difficulty in destroying. This love was only founded on Mathilde's rare beauty, or rather on her queenly manners and her admirable dresses. Julien was still a parvenu in this respect. We are assured that there is nothing equal to a pretty society women for dazzling a peasant who is at the same time a man of intellect, when he is admitted to first class society. It had not been Mathilde's character which had given Julien food for dreams in the days that had just passed. He had sufficient sense to realise that he knew nothing about her character. All he saw of it might be merely superficial.
