feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_45_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 16
feat_summary_id: part 2, chapter 16
feat_summary: {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 16", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-16", "summary": "Julien locks his bedroom door for the night, sneaks out into the garden, and finds the ladder that Mathilde has left for him. He climbs up into her room carrying a pistol. Julien runs to her and tries to kiss her. But she pushes him away and tells him not to act shamefully. Mathilde gets him to let the ladder leaning against the window back down into the garden. Now he has no way of getting out of the room except the door. Mathilde admits that she invited him to her room in order to test his courage. After some small talk, they have sex. Neither one of them is satisfied by it. For Mathilde, she's just acting the way books say she's supposed to. For Julien, the sex isn't as good as what he had with Madame de Renal. Julien sneaks out the next morning. He gets on his horse and rides out to one of the forests surrounding Paris. Mathilde goes to church and starts to wonder whether she actually loves him, or just thinks she does.", "analysis": ""}
text: CHAPTER XLVI
  
  ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING
  
  
          This garden was very big, it had been planned a
          few years ago in perfect taste. But the trees were
          more than a century old. It had a certain rustic
          atmosphere.--_Massinger_.
  
  
  He was going to write a countermanding letter to Fouque when eleven
  o'clock struck. He noisily turned the lock of the door of his room as
  though he had locked himself in. He went with a sleuth-like step to
  observe what was happening over the house, especially on the fourth
  storey where the servants slept. There was nothing unusual. One of
  madame de la Mole's chambermaids was giving an entertainment, the
  servants were taking punch with much gaiety. "Those who laugh like
  that," thought Julien, "cannot be participating in the nocturnal
  expedition; if they were, they would be more serious."
  
  Eventually he stationed himself in an obscure corner of the garden. "If
  their plan is to hide themselves from the servants of the house, they
  will despatch the persons whom they have told off to surprise me over
  the garden wall.
  
  "If M. de Croisenois shows any sense of proportion in this matter, he
  is bound to find it less compromising for the young person, whom he
  wishes to make his wife if he has me surprised before I enter her room."
  
  He made a military and extremely detailed reconnaissance. "My honour is
  at stake," he thought. "If I tumble into some pitfall it will not be an
  excuse in my own eyes to say, 'I never thought of it.'"
  
  The weather was desperately serene. About eleven o'clock the moon rose,
  at half-past twelve it completely illuminated the facade of the hotel
  looking out upon the garden.
  
  "She is mad," Julien said to himself. As one o'clock struck there
  was still a light in comte Norbert's windows. Julien had never been
  so frightened in his life, he only saw the dangers of the enterprise
  and had no enthusiasm at all. He went and took the immense ladder,
  waited five minutes to give her time to tell him not to go, and five
  minutes after one placed the ladder against Mathilde's window. He
  mounted softly, pistol in hand, astonished at not being attacked. As he
  approached the window it opened noiselessly.
  
  "So there you are, monsieur," said Mathilde to him with considerable
  emotion. "I have been following your movements for the last hour."
  
  Julien was very much embarrassed. He did not know how to conduct
  himself. He did not feel at all in love. He thought in his
  embarrassment that he ought to be venturesome. He tried to kiss
  Mathilde.
  
  "For shame," she said to him, pushing him away.
  
  Extremely glad at being rebuffed, he hastened to look round him. The
  moon was so brilliant that the shadows which it made in mademoiselle de
  la Mole's room were black. "It's quite possible for men to be concealed
  without my seeing them," he thought.
  
  "What have you got in your pocket at the side of your coat?" Mathilde
  said to him, delighted at finding something to talk about. She was
  suffering strangely; all those sentiments of reserve and timidity which
  were so natural to a girl of good birth, had reasserted their dominion
  and were torturing her.
  
  "I have all kinds of arms and pistols," answered Julien equally glad at
  having something to say.
  
  "You must take the ladder away," said Mathilde.
  
  "It is very big, and may break the windows of the salon down below or
  the room on the ground floor."
  
  "You must not break the windows," replied Mathilde making a vain effort
  to assume an ordinary conversational tone; "it seems to me you can
  lower the ladder by tying a cord to the first rung. I have always a
  supply of cords at hand."
  
  "So this is a woman in love," thought Julien. "She actually dares to
  say that she is in love. So much self-possession and such shrewdness in
  taking precautions are sufficient indications that I am not triumphing
  over M. de Croisenois as I foolishly believed, but that I am simply
  succeeding him. As a matter of fact, what does it matter to me? Do I
  love her? I am triumphing over the marquis in so far as he would be
  very angry at having a successor, and angrier still at that successor
  being myself. How haughtily he looked at me this evening in the Cafe
  Tortoni when he pretended not to recognise me! And how maliciously he
  bowed to me afterwards, when he could not get out of it."
  
  Julien had tied the cord to the last rung of the ladder. He lowered it
  softly and leant far out of the balcony in order to avoid its touching
  the window pane. "A fine opportunity to kill me," he thought, "if
  anyone is hidden in Mathilde's room;" but a profound silence continued
  to reign everywhere.
  
  The ladder touched the ground. Julien succeeded in laying it on the
  border of the exotic flowers along side the wall.
  
  "What will my mother say," said Mathilde, "when she sees her beautiful
  plants all crushed? You must throw down the cord," she added with great
  self-possession. "If it were noticed going up to the balcony, it would
  be a difficult circumstance to explain."
  
  "And how am I to get away?" said Julien in a jesting tone affecting the
  Creole accent. (One of the chambermaids of the household had been born
  in Saint-Domingo.)
  
  "You? Why you will leave by the door," said Mathilde, delighted at the
  idea.
  
  "Ah! how worthy this man is of all my love," she thought.
  
  Julien had just let the cord fall into the garden; Mathilde grasped
  his arm. He thought he had been seized by an enemy and turned round
  sharply, drawing a dagger. She had thought that she had heard a window
  opening. They remained motionless and scarcely breathed. The moonlight
  lit up everything. The noise was not renewed and there was no more
  cause for anxiety.
  
  Then their embarrassment began again; it was great on both sides.
  Julien assured himself that the door was completely locked; he thought
  of looking under the bed, but he did not dare; "they might have
  stationed one or two lackeys there." Finally he feared that he might
  reproach himself in the future for this lack of prudence, and did
  look. Mathilde had fallen into all the anguish of the most extreme
  timidity. She was horrified at her position.
  
  "What have you done with my letters?" she said at last.
  
  "What a good opportunity to upset these gentlemen, if they are
  eavesdropping, and thus avoiding the battle," thought Julien.
  
  "The first is hid in a big Protestant Bible, which last night's
  diligence is taking far away from here."
  
  He spoke very distinctly as he went into these details, so as to be
  heard by any persons who might be concealed in two large mahogany
  cupboards which he had not dared to inspect.
  
  "The other two are in the post and are bound for the same destination
  as the first."
  
  "Heavens, why all these precautions?" said Mathilde in alarm.
  
  "What is the good of my lying?" thought Julien, and he confessed all
  his suspicions.
  
  "So that's the cause for the coldness of your letters, dear," exclaimed
  Mathilde in a tone of madness rather than of tenderness.
  
  Julien did not notice that nuance. The endearment made him lose his
  head, or at any rate his suspicions vanished. He dared to clasp in his
  arms that beautiful girl who inspired him with such respect. He was
  only partially rebuffed. He fell back on his memory as he had once at
  Besancon with Armanda Binet, and recited by heart several of the finest
  phrases out of the _Nouvelle Heloise_.
  
  "You have the heart of a man," was the answer she made without
  listening too attentively to his phrases; "I wanted to test your
  courage, I confess it. Your first suspicions and your resolutions show
  you even more intrepid, dear, than I had believed."
  
  Mathilde had to make an effort to call him "dear," and was evidently
  paying more attention to this strange method of speech than to
  the substance of what she was saying. Being called "dear" without
  any tenderness in the tone afforded no pleasure to Julien; he was
  astonished at not being happy, and eventually fell back on his
  reasoning in order to be so. He saw that he was respected by this proud
  young girl who never gave undeserved praise; by means of this reasoning
  he managed to enjoy the happiness of satisfied vanity. It was not,
  it was true, that soulful pleasure which he had sometimes found with
  madame de Renal. There was no element of tenderness in the feelings
  of these first few minutes. It was the keen happiness of a gratified
  ambition, and Julien was, above all, ambitious. He talked again of
  the people whom he had suspected and of the precautions which he had
  devised. As he spoke, he thought of the best means of exploiting his
  victory.
  
  Mathilde was still very embarrassed and seemed paralysed by the
  steps which she had taken. She appeared delighted to find a topic
  of conversation. They talked of how they were to see each other
  again. Julien extracted a delicious joy from the consciousness of
  the intelligence and the courage, of which he again proved himself
  possessed during this discussion. They had to reckon with extremely
  sharp people, the little Tanbeau was certainly a spy, but Mathilde and
  himself as well had their share of cleverness.
  
  What was easier than to meet in the library, and there make all
  arrangements?
  
  "I can appear in all parts of the hotel," added Julien, "without
  rousing suspicion almost, in fact, in madame de la Mole's own room."
  It was absolutely necessary to go through it in order to reach her
  daughter's room. If Mathilde thought it preferable for him always to
  come by a ladder, then he would expose himself to that paltry danger
  with a heart intoxicated with joy.
  
  As she listened to him speaking, Mathilde was shocked by this air of
  triumph. "So he is my master," she said to herself, she was already a
  prey to remorse. Her reason was horrified at the signal folly which she
  had just committed. If she had had the power she would have annihilated
  both herself and Julien. When for a few moments she managed by sheer
  will-power to silence her pangs of remorse, she was rendered very
  unhappy by her timidity and wounded shame. She had quite failed to
  foresee the awful plight in which she now found herself.
  
  "I must speak to him, however," she said at last. "That is the proper
  thing to do. One does talk to one's lover." And then with a view of
  accomplishing a duty, and with a tenderness which was manifested rather
  in the words which she employed than in the inflection of her voice,
  she recounted various resolutions which she had made concerning him
  during the last few days.
  
  She had decided that if he should dare to come to her room by the help
  of the gardener's ladder according to his instructions, she would be
  entirely his. But never were such tender passages spoken in a more
  polite and frigid tone. Up to the present this assignation had been
  icy. It was enough to make one hate the name of love. What a lesson
  in morality for a young and imprudent girl! Is it worth while to ruin
  one's future for moments such as this?
  
  After long fits of hesitation which a superficial observer might have
  mistaken for the result of the most emphatic hate (so great is the
  difficulty which a woman's self-respect finds in yielding even to so
  firm a will as hers) Mathilde became eventually a charming mistress.
  
  In point of fact, these ecstasies were a little artificial. Passionate
  love was still more the model which they imitated than a real actuality.
  
  Mademoiselle de la Mole thought she was fulfilling a duty towards
  herself and towards her lover. "The poor boy," she said to herself,
  "has shewn a consummate bravery. He deserves to be happy or it is
  really I who will be shewing a lack of character." But she would have
  been glad to have redeemed the cruel necessity in which she found
  herself even at the price of an eternity of unhappiness.
  
  In spite of the awful violence she was doing to herself she was
  completely mistress of her words.
  
  No regret and no reproach spoiled that night which Julien found
  extraordinary rather than happy. Great heavens! what a difference to
  his last twenty-four hours' stay in Verrieres. These fine Paris manners
  manage to spoil everything, even love, he said to himself, quite
  unjustly.
  
  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.
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Part 2, Chapter 16
target: Julien locks his bedroom door for the night, sneaks out into the garden, and finds the ladder that Mathilde has left for him. He climbs up into her room carrying a pistol. Julien runs to her and tries to kiss her. But she pushes him away and tells him not to act shamefully. Mathilde gets him to let the ladder leaning against the window back down into the garden. Now he has no way of getting out of the room except the door. Mathilde admits that she invited him to her room in order to test his courage. After some small talk, they have sex. Neither one of them is satisfied by it. For Mathilde, she's just acting the way books say she's supposed to. For Julien, the sex isn't as good as what he had with Madame de Renal. Julien sneaks out the next morning. He gets on his horse and rides out to one of the forests surrounding Paris. Mathilde goes to church and starts to wonder whether she actually loves him, or just thinks she does.