CHAPTER XLVII
AN OLD SWORD
Since laughter now-a-days is deemed too serious.
A jest at vice by virtue's called a crime.
Don Juan, c. xiii.
She did not appear at dinner. She came for a minute into the salon in the evening, but did not look at Julien. He considered this behaviour strange, "but," he thought, "I do *not know their usages. She will give me some good reason for all this." None the less he was a prey to the most extreme curiosity; he studied the expression of Mathilde's features; he was bound to own to himself that she looked cold and malicious. It was evidently not the same woman who on the proceeding night had had, or pretended to have, transports of happiness which were too extravagant to be genuine.
The day after, and the subsequent day she showed the same coldness; she did not look at him, she did not notice his existence. Julien was devoured by the keenest anxiety and was a thousand leagues removed from that feeling of triumph which had been his only emotion on the first day. "Can it be by chance," he said to himself, "a return to virtue?" But this was a very bourgeois word to apply to the haughty Mathilde.
"Placed in an ordinary position in life she would disbelieve in religion," thought Julien, "she only likes it in so far as it is very useful to the interests of her class."
But perhaps she may as a mere matter of delicacy be keenly reproaching herself for the mistake which she has committed. Julien believed that he was her first lover.
