He abandoned himself to these reflections as he stood upright in one of the great mahogany cupboards into which he had been put at the sign of the first sounds of movement in the neighbouring apartment, which was madame de la Mole's. Mathilde followed her mother to mass, the servants soon left the apartment and Julien easily escaped before they came back to finish their work. He mounted a horse and tried to find the most solitary spots in one of the forests near Paris. He was more astonished than happy. The happiness which filled his soul from time to time resembled that of a young sub-lieutenant who as the result of some surprising feat has just been made a full-fledged colonel by the commander-in-chief; he felt himself lifted up to an immense height. Everything which was above him the day before was now on a level with him or even below him. Little by little Julien's happiness increased in proportion as he got further away from Paris. If there was no tenderness in his soul, the reason was that, however strange it may appear to say so, Mathilde had in everything she had done, simply accomplished a duty. The only thing she had not foreseen in all the events of that night, was the shame and unhappiness which she had experienced instead of that absolute felicity which is found in novels. "Can I have made a mistake, and not be in love with him?" she said to herself. CHAPTER XLVII AN OLD SWORD I now mean to be serious; it is time Since laughter now-a-days is deemed too serious. A jest at vice by virtues 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.