"But if I refuse, I am bound to despise myself afterwards. This matter will always occasion me great doubt during my whole life, and to a man like me such doubts are the most poignant unhappiness. Did I not feel like that for Amanda's lover! I think I would find it easier to forgive myself for a perfectly clear crime; once admitted, I could leave off thinking of it. "Why! I shall have been the rival of a man who bears one of the finest names in France, and then out of pure light-heartedness, declared myself his inferior! After all, it is cowardly not to go; these words clinch everything," exclaimed Julien as he got up ... "besides she is quite pretty." "If this is not a piece of treachery, what a folly is she not committing for my sake. If it's a piece of mystification, by heaven, gentlemen, it only depends on me to turn the jest into earnest and that I will do. "But supposing they tie my hands together at the moment I enter the room: they may have placed some ingenious machine there. "It's like a duel," he said to himself with a laugh. "Everyone makes a full parade, says my _maître d'armes_, but the good God, who wishes the thing to end, makes one of them forget to parry. Besides, here's something to answer them with." He drew his pistols out of his pocket, and although the priming was shining, he renewed it. There was still several hours to wait. Julien wrote to Fouqué in order to have something to do. "My friend, do not open the enclosed letter except in the event of an accident, if you hear that something strange has happened to me. In that case blot out the proper names in the manuscript which I am sending you, make eight copies of it, and send it to the papers of Marseilles, Bordeaux, Lyons, Brussels, etc. Ten days later have the manuscript printed, send the first copy to M. the marquis de la Mole, and a fortnight after that throw the other copies at night into the streets of Verrières." Julien made this little memoir in defence of his position as little compromising as possible for mademoiselle de la Mole. Fouqué was only to open it in the event of an accident. It was put in the form of a story, but in fact it exactly described his situation. Julien had just fastened his packet when the dinner bell rang. It made his heart beat. His imagination was distracted by the story which he had just composed, and fell a prey to tragic presentiments. He saw himself seized by servants, trussed, and taken into a cellar with a gag in his mouth. A servant was stationed there, who never let him out of sight, and if the family honour required that the adventure should have a tragic end, it was easy to finish everything with those poisons which leave no trace. They could then say that he had died of an illness and would carry his dead body back into his room.