feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_7_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 8
feat_summary_id: part 1, chapter 8
feat_summary: {"name": "Part 1, Chapter 8", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-8", "summary": "The chambermaid Elisa finds out that she's going to inherit some money. She hopes that this money will give her the freedom she needs to marry Julien. Her local priest, Father Chelan is happy about this. But he's sad to find out that Julien isn't interested. Father sits Julien down and tells him that he needs to think carefully about becoming a priest. He knows Julien is ambitious and he's worried that Julien will do whatever it takes to become rich. That's why he's worried that Julien is going to compromise on his holy values in order to flatter and make friends with powerful men. Father Chelan can see through Julien's phony belief in the church. He wants Julien to stay way from the priesthood. Meanwhile, Madame de Renal realizes that Elisa has been very depressed lately, in spite of the money she's just inherited. Elisa tells Madame about Julien refusing her. Madame feels bad, but also is secretly pleased. She still promises Elisa that she'll try to convince Julien to marry the girl. The narrator tells us that Madame only does this because she loves the pleasure of hearing Julien reject Elisa over and over. It's only after this encounter that she starts to wonder if she's in love with Julien. The mayor needs to leave for a few days on business. While he's gone, Madame asks the workmen to construct a walkway on her property. She relishes the opportunity to spend the next couple of days with Julien, with both of them directing the workers. In other words, she likes having Julien temporarily replace her husband as man of the house. Julien and Madame start hunting butterflies together and reading about them in books. They finally have something they can talk about. Neighbors notice that Madame has started paying more attention to her wardrobe. A cousin of Madame de Renal's, named Madame Derville, visits the de Renal house. The two spend a lot of time together, and Derville recognizes that Madame is happier than usual. Julien often spends time with the two women as they hang out beneath a tree. One evening, his hand accidentally brushes against Madame de Renal's. She quickly pulls hers away. Julien decides that he must find a way to touch her hand without this happening.", "analysis": ""}
text: CHAPTER VIII
  
  LITTLE EPISODES
  
  
      "Then there were sighs, the deeper for suppression,
      And stolen glances sweeter for the theft,
      And burning blushes, though for no transgression."
                                   _Don Juan_, c. I, st. 74.
  
  
  It was only when Madame de Renal began to think of her maid Elisa
  that there was some slight change in that angelic sweetness which she
  owed both to her natural character and her actual happiness. The girl
  had come into a fortune, went to confess herself to the cure Chelan
  and confessed to him her plan of marrying Julien. The cure was truly
  rejoiced at his friend's good fortune, but he was extremely surprised
  when Julien resolutely informed him that Mademoiselle Elisa's offer
  could not suit him.
  
  "Beware, my friend, of what is passing within your heart," said the
  cure with a frown, "I congratulate you on your mission, if that is the
  only reason why you despise a more than ample fortune. It is fifty-six
  years since I was first cure of Verrieres, and yet I shall be turned
  out, according to all appearances. I am distressed by it, and yet my
  income amounts to eight hundred francs. I inform you of this detail so
  that you may not be under any illusions as to what awaits you in your
  career as a priest. If you think of paying court to the men who enjoy
  power, your eternal damnation is assured. You may make your fortune,
  but you will have to do harm to the poor, flatter the sub-prefect,
  the mayor, the man who enjoys prestige, and pander to his passion;
  this conduct, which in the world is called knowledge of life, is not
  absolutely incompatible with salvation so far as a layman is concerned;
  but in our career we have to make a choice; it is a question of making
  one's fortune either in this world or the next; there is no middle
  course. Come, my dear friend, reflect, and come back in three days with
  a definite answer. I am pained to detect that there is at the bottom
  of your character a sombre passion which is far from indicating to me
  that moderation and that perfect renunciation of earthly advantages so
  necessary for a priest; I augur well of your intellect, but allow me to
  tell you," added the good cure with tears in his eyes, "I tremble for
  your salvation in your career as a priest."
  
  Julien was ashamed of his emotion; he found himself loved for the first
  time in his life; he wept with delight; and went to hide his tears in
  the great woods behind Verrieres.
  
  "Why am I in this position?" he said to himself at last, "I feel that
  I would give my life a hundred times over for this good cure Chelan,
  and he has just proved to me that I am nothing more than a fool. It
  is especially necessary for me to deceive him, and he manages to find
  me out. The secret ardour which he refers to is my plan of making my
  fortune. He thinks I am unworthy of being a priest, that too, just when
  I was imagining that my sacrifice of fifty louis would give him the
  very highest idea of my piety and devotion to my mission."
  
  "In future," continued Julien, "I will only reckon on those elements in
  my character which I have tested. Who could have told me that I should
  find any pleasure in shedding tears? How I should like some one to
  convince me that I am simply a fool!"
  
  Three days later, Julien found the excuse with which he ought to have
  been prepared on the first day; the excuse was a piece of calumny, but
  what did it matter? He confessed to the cure, with a great deal of
  hesitation, that he had been persuaded from the suggested union by a
  reason he could not explain, inasmuch as it tended to damage a third
  party. This was equivalent to impeaching Elisa's conduct. M. Chelan
  found that his manner betrayed a certain worldly fire which was very
  different from that which ought to have animated a young acolyte.
  
  "My friend," he said to him again, "be a good country citizen,
  respected and educated, rather than a priest without a true mission."
  
  So far as words were concerned, Julien answered these new remonstrances
  very well. He managed to find the words which a young and ardent
  seminarist would have employed, but the tone in which he pronounced
  them, together with the thinly concealed fire which blazed in his eye,
  alarmed M. Chelan.
  
  You must not have too bad an opinion of Julien's prospects. He
  invented with correctness all the words suitable to a prudent and
  cunning hypocrisy. It was not bad for his age. As for his tone and his
  gestures, he had spent his life with country people; he had never been
  given an opportunity of seeing great models. Consequently, as soon as
  he was given a chance of getting near such gentlemen, his gestures
  became as admirable as his words.
  
  Madame de Renal was astonished that her maid's new fortune did not
  make her more happy. She saw her repeatedly going to the cure and
  coming back with tears in her eyes. At last Elisa talked to her of her
  marriage.
  
  Madame de Renal thought she was ill. A kind of fever prevented her from
  sleeping. She only lived when either her maid or Julien were in sight.
  She was unable to think of anything except them and the happiness
  which they would find in their home. Her imagination depicted in the
  most fascinating colours the poverty of the little house, where they
  were to live on their income of fifty louis a year. Julien could quite
  well become an advocate at Bray, the sub-prefecture, two leagues from
  Verrieres. In that case she would see him sometimes. Madame de Renal
  sincerely believed she would go mad. She said so to her husband and
  finally fell ill. That very evening when her maid was attending her,
  she noticed that the girl was crying. She abhorred Elisa at that
  moment, and started to scold her; she then begged her pardon. Elisa's
  tears redoubled. She said if her mistress would allow her, she would
  tell her all her unhappiness.
  
  "Tell me," answered Madame de Renal.
  
  "Well, Madame, he refuses me, some wicked people must have spoken badly
  about me. He believes them."
  
  "Who refuses you?" said Madame de Renal, scarcely breathing.
  
  "Who else, Madame, but M. Julien," answered the maid sobbing. "M. the
  cure had been unable to overcome his resistance, for M. the cure thinks
  that he ought not to refuse an honest girl on the pretext that she
  has been a maid. After all, M. Julien's father is nothing more than
  a carpenter, and how did he himself earn his living before he was at
  Madame's?"
  
  Madame de Renal stopped listening; her excessive happiness had almost
  deprived her of her reason. She made the girl repeat several times
  the assurance that Julien had refused her, with a positiveness which
  shut the door on the possibility of his coming round to a more prudent
  decision.
  
  "I will make a last attempt," she said to her maid. "I will speak to M.
  Julien."
  
  The following day, after breakfast, Madame de Renal indulged in the
  delightful luxury of pleading her rival's cause, and of seeing Elisa's
  hand and fortune stubbornly refused for a whole hour.
  
  Julien gradually emerged from his cautiously worded answers, and
  finished by answering with spirit Madame de Renal's good advice. She
  could not help being overcome by the torrent of happiness which, after
  so many days of despair, now inundated her soul. She felt quite ill.
  When she had recovered and was comfortably in her own room she sent
  everyone away. She was profoundly astonished.
  
  "Can I be in love with Julien?" she finally said to herself. This
  discovery, which at any other time would have plunged her into remorse
  and the deepest agitation, now only produced the effect of a singular,
  but as it were, indifferent spectacle. Her soul was exhausted by all
  that she had just gone through, and had no more sensibility to passion
  left.
  
  Madame de Renal tried to work, and fell into a deep sleep; when she
  woke up she did not frighten herself so much as she ought to have. She
  was too happy to be able to see anything wrong in anything. Naive and
  innocent as she was, this worthy provincial woman had never tortured
  her soul in her endeavours to extract from it a little sensibility to
  some new shade of sentiment or unhappiness. Entirely absorbed as she
  had been before Julien's arrival with that mass of work which falls
  to the lot of a good mistress of a household away from Paris, Madame
  de Renal thought of passion in the same way in which we think of a
  lottery: a certain deception, a happiness sought after by fools.
  
  The dinner bell rang. Madame de Renal blushed violently. She heard the
  voice of Julien who was bringing in the children. Having grown somewhat
  adroit since her falling in love, she complained of an awful headache
  in order to explain her redness.
  
  "That's just like what all women are," answered M. de Renal with a
  coarse laugh. "Those machines have always got something or other to be
  put right."
  
  Although she was accustomed to this type of wit, Madame de Renal was
  shocked by the tone of voice. In order to distract herself, she looked
  at Julien's physiognomy; he would have pleased her at this particular
  moment, even if he had been the ugliest man imaginable.
  
  M. de Renal, who always made a point of copying the habits of the
  gentry of the court, established himself at Vergy in the first fine
  days of the spring; this is the village rendered celebrated by the
  tragic adventure of Gabrielle. A hundred paces from the picturesque
  ruin of the old Gothic church, M. de Renal owns an old chateau with its
  four towers and a garden designed like the one in the Tuileries with
  a great many edging verges of box and avenues of chestnut trees which
  are cut twice in the year. An adjacent field, crowded with apple trees,
  served for a promenade. Eight or ten magnificent walnut trees were at
  the end of the orchard. Their immense foliage went as high as perhaps
  eighty feet.
  
  "Each of these cursed walnut trees," M. de Renal was in the habit of
  saying, whenever his wife admired them, "costs me the harvest of at
  least half an acre; corn cannot grow under their shade."
  
  Madame de Renal found the sight of the country novel: her admiration
  reached the point of enthusiasm. The sentiment by which she was
  animated gave her both ideas and resolution. M. de Renal had returned
  to the town, for mayoral business, two days after their arrival in
  Vergy. But Madame de Renal engaged workmen at her own expense. Julien
  had given her the idea of a little sanded path which was to go round
  the orchard and under the big walnut trees, and render it possible
  for the children to take their walk in the very earliest hours of the
  morning without getting their feet wet from the dew. This idea was put
  into execution within twenty-four hours of its being conceived. Madame
  de Renal gaily spent the whole day with Julien in supervising the
  workmen.
  
  When the Mayor of Verrieres came back from the town he was very
  surprised to find the avenue completed. His arrival surprised Madame
  de Renal as well. She had forgotten his existence. For two months
  he talked with irritation about the boldness involved in making so
  important a repair without consulting him, but Madame de Renal had had
  it executed at her own expense, a fact which somewhat consoled him.
  
  She spent her days in running about the orchard with her children,
  and in catching butterflies. They had made big hoods of clear gauze
  with which they caught the poor _lepidoptera_. This is the barbarous
  name which Julien taught Madame de Renal. For she had had M. Godart's
  fine work ordered from Besancon, and Julien used to tell her about the
  strange habits of the creatures.
  
  They ruthlessly transfixed them by means of pins in a great cardboard
  box which Julien had prepared.
  
  Madame de Renal and Julien had at last a topic of conversation; he was
  no longer exposed to the awful torture that had been occasioned by
  their moments of silence.
  
  They talked incessantly and with extreme interest, though always about
  very innocent matters. This gay, full, active life, pleased the fancy
  of everyone, except Mademoiselle Elisa who found herself overworked.
  Madame had never taken so much trouble with her dress, even at carnival
  time, when there is a ball at Verrieres, she would say; she changes her
  gowns two or three times a day.
  
  As it is not our intention to flatter anyone, we do not propose to
  deny that Madame de Renal, who had a superb skin, arranged her gowns
  in such a way as to leave her arms and her bosom very exposed. She was
  extremely well made, and this style of dress suited her delightfully.
  
  "You have never been _so young_, Madame," her Verrieres friends would
  say to her, when they came to dinner at Vergy (this is one of the local
  expressions).
  
  It is a singular thing, and one which few amongst us will believe, but
  Madame de Renal had no specific object in taking so much trouble. She
  found pleasure in it and spent all the time which she did not pass in
  hunting butterflies with the children and Julien, in working with Elisa
  at making gowns, without giving the matter a further thought. Her only
  expedition to Verrieres was caused by her desire to buy some new summer
  gowns which had just come from Mulhouse.
  
  She brought back to Vergy a young woman who was a relative of hers.
  Since her marriage, Madame de Renal had gradually become attached to
  Madame Derville, who had once been her school mate at the _Sacre Coeur_.
  
  Madame Derville laughed a great deal at what she called her cousin's
  mad ideas: "I would never have thought of them alone," she said. When
  Madame de Renal was with her husband, she was ashamed of those sudden
  ideas, which, are called sallies in Paris, and thought them quite
  silly: but Madame Derville's presence gave her courage. She would start
  to telling her her thoughts in a timid voice, but after the ladies
  had been alone for a long time, Madame de Renal's brain became more
  animated, and a long morning spent together by the two friends passed
  like a second, and left them in the best of spirits. On this particular
  journey, however, the acute Madame Derville thought her cousin much
  less merry, but much more happy than usual.
  
  Julien, on his side, had since coming to the country lived like an
  absolute child, and been as happy as his pupils in running after
  the butterflies. After so long a period of constraint and wary
  diplomacy, he was at last alone and far from human observation; he
  was instinctively free from any apprehension on the score of Madame
  de Renal, and abandoned himself to the sheer pleasure of being alive,
  which is so keen at so young an age, especially among the most
  beautiful mountains in the world.
  
  Ever since Madame Derville's arrival, Julien thought that she was his
  friend; he took the first opportunity of showing her the view from the
  end of the new avenue, under the walnut tree; as a matter of fact it is
  equal, if not superior, to the most wonderful views that Switzerland
  and the Italian lakes can offer. If you ascend the steep slope which
  commences some paces from there, you soon arrive at great precipices
  fringed by oak forests, which almost jut on to the river. It was to the
  peaked summits of these rocks that Julien, who was now happy, free, and
  king of the household into the bargain, would take the two friends, and
  enjoy their admiration these sublime views.
  
  "To me it's like Mozart's music," Madame Derville would say.
  
  The country around Verrieres had been spoilt for Julien by the jealousy
  of his brothers and the presence of a tyranous and angry father. He
  was free from these bitter memories at Vergy; for the first time in
  his life, he failed to see an enemy. When, as frequently happened, M.
  de Renal was in town, he ventured to read; soon, instead of reading at
  night time, a procedure, moreover, which involved carefully hiding his
  lamp at the bottom of a flower-pot turned upside down, he was able to
  indulge in sleep; in the day, however, in the intervals between the
  children's lessons, he would come among these rocks with that book
  which was the one guide of his conduct and object of his enthusiasm. He
  found in it simultaneously happiness, ecstasy and consolation for his
  moments of discouragement.
  
  Certain remarks of Napoleon about women, several discussions about the
  merits of the novels which were fashionable in his reign, furnished him
  now for the first time with some ideas which any other young man of his
  age would have had for a long time.
  
  The dog days arrived. They started the habit of spending the evenings
  under an immense pine tree some yards from the house. The darkness was
  profound. One evening, Julien was speaking and gesticulating, enjoying
  to the full the pleasure of being at his best when talking to young
  women; in one of his gestures, he touched the hand of Madame de Renal
  which was leaning on the back of one of those chairs of painted wood,
  which are so frequently to be seen in gardens.
  
  The hand was quickly removed, but Julien thought it a point of duty
  to secure that that hand should not be removed when he touched it.
  The idea of a duty to be performed and the consciousness of his
  stultification, or rather of his social inferiority, if he should fail
  in achieving it, immediately banished all pleasure from his heart.
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Part 1, Chapter 8
target: The chambermaid Elisa finds out that she's going to inherit some money. She hopes that this money will give her the freedom she needs to marry Julien. Her local priest, Father Chelan is happy about this. But he's sad to find out that Julien isn't interested. Father sits Julien down and tells him that he needs to think carefully about becoming a priest. He knows Julien is ambitious and he's worried that Julien will do whatever it takes to become rich. That's why he's worried that Julien is going to compromise on his holy values in order to flatter and make friends with powerful men. Father Chelan can see through Julien's phony belief in the church. He wants Julien to stay way from the priesthood. Meanwhile, Madame de Renal realizes that Elisa has been very depressed lately, in spite of the money she's just inherited. Elisa tells Madame about Julien refusing her. Madame feels bad, but also is secretly pleased. She still promises Elisa that she'll try to convince Julien to marry the girl. The narrator tells us that Madame only does this because she loves the pleasure of hearing Julien reject Elisa over and over. It's only after this encounter that she starts to wonder if she's in love with Julien. The mayor needs to leave for a few days on business. While he's gone, Madame asks the workmen to construct a walkway on her property. She relishes the opportunity to spend the next couple of days with Julien, with both of them directing the workers. In other words, she likes having Julien temporarily replace her husband as man of the house. Julien and Madame start hunting butterflies together and reading about them in books. They finally have something they can talk about. Neighbors notice that Madame has started paying more attention to her wardrobe. A cousin of Madame de Renal's, named Madame Derville, visits the de Renal house. The two spend a lot of time together, and Derville recognizes that Madame is happier than usual. Julien often spends time with the two women as they hang out beneath a tree. One evening, his hand accidentally brushes against Madame de Renal's. She quickly pulls hers away. Julien decides that he must find a way to touch her hand without this happening.