It was one of the fatal elements of his character to be extremely sensitive to his own weaknesses. He was extremely upset by this one, and had almost forgotten the incredible victory which had preceded this slight check, when about nine o'clock mademoiselle de la Mole appeared on the threshold of the library, flung him a letter and ran away. "So this is going to be the romance by letters," he said as he picked it up. "The enemy makes a false move; I will reply by coldness and virtue." He was asked with a poignancy which merely increased his inner gaiety to give a definite answer. He indulged in the pleasure of mystifying those persons who he thought wanted to make fun of him for two pages, and it was out of humour again that he announced towards the end of his answer his definite departure on the following morning. "The garden will be a useful place to hand her the letter," he thought after he had finished it, and he went there. He looked at the window of mademoiselle de la Mole's room. It was on the first storey, next to her mother's apartment, but there was a large ground floor. This latter was so high that, as Julien walked under the avenue of pines with his letter in his hands, he could not be seen from mademoiselle de la Mole's window. The dome formed by the well clipped pines intercepted the view. "What!" said Julien to himself angrily, "another indiscretion! If they have really begun making fun of me, showing myself with a letter is playing into my enemy's hands." Norbert's room was exactly above his sister's and if Julien came out from under the dome formed by the clipped branches of the pine, the comte and his friend could follow all his movements. Mademoiselle de la Mole appeared behind her window; he half showed his letter; she lowered her head, then Julien ran up to his own room and met accidentally on the main staircase the fair Mathilde, who seized the letter with complete self-possession and smiling eyes. "What passion there was in the eyes of that poor madame de Rênal," said Julien to himself, "when she ventured to receive a letter from me, even after six months of intimate relationship! I don't think she ever looked at me with smiling eyes in her whole life." He did not formulate so precisely the rest of his answer; was he perhaps ashamed of the triviality of the motive which were actuating him? "But how different too," he went on to think, "are her elegant morning dress and her distinguished appearance! A man of taste on seeing mademoiselle de la Mole thirty yards off would infer the position which she occupies in society. That is what can be called a specific merit." In spite of all this humorousness, Julien was not yet quite honest with himself; madame de Rênal had no marquis de Croisenois to sacrifice to him. His only rival was that grotesque sub-prefect, M. Charcot, who assumed the name of Maugiron, because there were no Maugirons left in France.