managing this decided young person. I was afraid that I should not succeed." Her distinguished and intractable appearance intensified in his eyes the charm of the rare beauty whom he now saw practically entreating him. He regained all his self-possession—and he did not hesitate to move the dagger about in her heart.
"I should not be at all surprised," he said to her lightly, "if we were to learn that it was owing to jealousy that M. Sorel fired two pistol shots at the woman he once loved so much. Of course she must have consoled herself and for some time she has been seeing extremely frequently a certain abbé Marquinot of Dijon, a kind of Jansenist, and as immoral as all Jansenists are."
M. de Frilair experienced the voluptuous pleasure of torturing at his leisure the heart of this beautiful girl whose weakness he had surprised.
"Why," he added, as he fixed his ardent eyes upon Mathilde, "should M. Sorel have chosen the church, if it were not for the reason that his rival was celebrating mass in it at that very moment? Everyone attributes an infinite amount of intelligence and an even greater amount of prudence to the fortunate man who is the object of your interest. What would have been simpler than to hide himself in the garden of M. de Rênal which he knows so well. Once there he could put the woman of whom he was jealous to death with the practical certainty of being neither seen, caught, nor suspected."
This apparently sound train of reasoning eventually made Mathilde loose all self-possession. Her haughty soul steeped in all that arid prudence, which passes in high society for the true psychology of the human heart, was not of the type to be at all quick in appreciating that joy of scorning all prudence, which an ardent soul can find so keen. In the high classes of Paris society in which Mathilde had lived, it is only rarely that passion can divest itself of prudence, and people always make a point of throwing themselves out of windows from the fifth storey.
At last the abbé de Frilair was sure of his power over her. He gave Mathilde to understand (and he was doubtless lying) that he could do what he liked with the public official who was entrusted with the conduct of Julien's prosecution.
