He accomplished easily enough what he believed to be a duty; he was very far from thinking himself much in love with mademoiselle de la Mole. He had certainly not loved her three days before, when he had been hidden in the big mahogany cupboard. But the moment that he found himself estranged from her for ever his mood underwent a complete and rapid change. His memory tortured him by going over the least details in that night, which had as a matter of fact left him so cold. In the very night that followed this announcement of a final rupture, Julien almost went mad at being obliged to own to himself that he loved mademoiselle de la Mole. This discovery was followed by awful struggles: all his emotions were overwhelmed. Two days later, instead of being haughty towards M. de Croisenois, he could have almost burst out into tears and embraced him. His habituation to unhappiness gave him a gleam of commonsense, he decided to leave for Languedoc, packed his trunk and went to the post. He felt he would faint, when on arriving at the office of the mails, he was told that by a singular chance there was a place in the Toulouse mail. He booked it and returned to the Hôtel de la Mole to announce his departure to the marquis. M. de la Mole had gone out. More dead than alive Julien went into the library to wait for him. What was his emotion when he found mademoiselle de la Mole there. As she saw him come, she assumed a malicious expression which it was impossible to mistake. In his unhappiness and surprise Julien lost his head and was weak enough to say to her in a tone of the most heartfelt tenderness. "So you love me no more." "I am horrified at having given myself to the first man who came along," said Mathilde crying with rage against herself. "The first man who came along," cried Julien, and he made for an old mediæval sword which was kept in the library as a curiosity. His grief--which he thought was at its maximum at the moment when he had spoken to mademoiselle de la Mole--had been rendered a hundred times more intense by the tears of shame which he saw her shedding. He would have been the happiest of men if he had been able to kill her. When he was on the point of drawing the sword with some difficulty from its ancient scabbard, Mathilde, rendered happy by so novel a sensation, advanced proudly towards him, her tears were dry. The thought of his benefactor--the marquis de la Mole--presented itself vividly to Julien. "Shall I kill his daughter?" he said to himself, "how horrible." He made a movement to throw down the sword. "She will certainly," he thought, "burst out laughing at the sight of such a melodramatic pose:" that idea was responsible for his regaining all his self-possession. He looked curiously at the blade of the old sword as though he had been looking for some spot of rust, then put it back in the scabbard and replaced it with the utmost tranquillity on the gilt bronze nail from which it hung.