This day passed with lightning rapidity. Julien was at the zenith of happiness. At seven o'clock in the morning of the following day he installed himself in the library. He hoped the mademoiselle de la Mole would deign to appear there; he had written her an interminable letter. He only saw her several hours afterwards at breakfast. Her hair was done to-day with the very greatest care; a marvellous art had managed to hide the place where the hair had been cut. She looked at Julien once or twice, but her eyes were polite and calm, and there was no question of calling him "My Master." Julien's astonishment prevented him from breathing--Mathilde was reproaching herself for all she had done for him. After mature reflection, she had come to the conclusion that he was a person who, though not absolutely commonplace, was yet not sufficiently different from the common ruck to deserve all the strange follies that she had ventured for his sake. To sum up she did not give love a single thought; on this particular day she was tired of loving. As for Julien, his emotions were those of a child of sixteen. He was a successive prey to awful doubt, astonishment and despair during this breakfast which he thought would never end. As soon as he could decently get up from the table, he flew rather than ran to the stable, saddled his horse himself, and galloped off. "I must kill my heart through sheer force of physical fatigue," he said to himself as he galloped through the Meudon woods. "What have I done, what have I said to deserve a disgrace like this?" "I must do nothing and say nothing to-day," he thought as he re-entered the hôtel. "I must be as dead physically as I am morally." Julien saw nothing any more, it was only his corpse which kept moving. CHAPTER L THE JAPANESE VASE His heart does not first realise the full extremity of his unhappiness: he is more troubled than moved. But as reason returns he feels the depth of his misfortune. All the pleasures of life seem to have been destroyed, he can only feel the sharp barbs of a lacerating despair. But what is the use of talking of physical pain? What pain which is only felt by the body can be compared to this pain?--_Jean Paul_. The dinner bell rang, Julien had barely time to dress: he found Mathilde in the salon. She was pressing her brother and M. de Croisenois to promise her that they would not go and spend the evening at Suresnes with madame the maréchale de Fervaques.