[...] As for Mme. de Renal, her hand in Julien's, she hadn't a thought in the world; she was letting herself live. For her the hours they spent beneath that great lime tree, which, as local tradition would have it, had been planted by Charles the Bold,* were a time of bliss. She listened delightedly to the wind moaning in the tree's thick foliage and to the sound of the first few scattered drops that were beginning to fall on its lowest leaves. Julien failed to remark one detail that might well have reassured him; Mme. de Renal, who had been forced to take her hand out of his so she could get up to help her cousin right a pot of flowers the wind had knocked over at their feet, was scarcely seated again when she gave him back her hand with almost no fuss, as if it were already a thing understood between them.

Midnight had struck long ago; it was high time to leave the garden; they separated. Mme. de Renal, transported by the joys of love, was so ignorant that she hardly blamed herself at all. Happiness robbed her of sleep. Julien, tired to death by the pitched battle between timidity and pride that had been raging in his heart all day long, was carried off by a leaden sleep.