feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_55_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 26
feat_summary_id: part 2, chapter 26
feat_summary: {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 26", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-26", "summary": "Whenever Madame de Fervaques visits the de La Mole house, Julien always makes sure to seat himself in the place that makes Madame look most beautiful. Whenever he speaks to Madame, it is only to make Mathilde jealous. Julien then starts sending Madame letters, always hand-delivering them on horseback and looking sad like a doomed lover from a romance novel. At first, it looks like the letters have no effect. But the narrator tells us that Madame Fervaques has an improved opinion of Julien now that he's paying a lot of attention to her.", "analysis": ""}
text: CHAPTER LVI
  
  MORAL LOVE
  
  
      There also was of course in Adeline
      That calm patrician polish in the address,
      Which ne'er can pass the equinoctial line
      Of anything which Nature would express;
      Just as a Mandarin finds nothing fine.
      At least his manner suffers not to guess
      That anything he views can greatly please.
                              _Don Juan, c. xiii. st._ 84.
  
  
  "There is an element of madness in all this family's way of looking at
  things," thought the marechale; "they are infatuated with their young
  abbe, whose only accomplishment is to be a good listener, though his
  eyes are fine enough, it is true."
  
  Julien, on his side, found in the marechale's manners an almost perfect
  instance of that patrician calm which exhales a scrupulous politeness;
  and, what is more, announces at the same time the impossibility of
  any violent emotion. Madame de Fervaques would have been as much
  scandalised by any unexpected movement or any lack of self-control, as
  by a lack of dignity towards one's inferiors. She would have regarded
  the slightest symptom of sensibility as a kind of moral drunkenness
  which puts one to the blush and was extremely prejudicial to what a
  person of high rank owed to herself. Her great happiness was to talk of
  the king's last hunt; her favourite book, was the Memoirs of the Duke
  de Saint Simon, especially the genealogical part.
  
  Julien knew the place where the arrangement of the light suited madame
  de Fervaques' particular style of beauty. He got there in advance, but
  was careful to turn his chair in such a way as not to see Mathilde.
  
  Astonished one day at this consistent policy of hiding himself from
  her, she left the blue sofa and came to work by the little table near
  the marechale's armchair. Julien had a fairly close view of her over
  madame de Fervaques' hat.
  
  Those eyes, which were the arbiters of his fate, frightened him, and
  then hurled him violently out of his habitual apathy. He talked, and
  talked very well.
  
  He was speaking to the marechale, but his one aim was to produce an
  impression upon Mathilde's soul. He became so animated that eventually
  madame de Fervaques did not manage to understand a word he said.
  
  This was a prime merit. If it had occurred to Julien to follow it up by
  some phrases of German mysticism, lofty religion, and Jesuitism, the
  marechale would have immediately given him a rank among the superior
  men whose mission it was to regenerate the age.
  
  "Since he has bad enough taste," said mademoiselle de la Mole, "to talk
  so long and so ardently to madame de Fervaques, I shall not listen to
  him any more." She kept her resolution during the whole latter part of
  the evening, although she had difficulty in doing so.
  
  At midnight, when she took her mother's candle to accompany her to
  her room, madame de la Mole stopped on the staircase to enter into an
  exhaustive eulogy of Julien. Mathilde ended by losing her temper. She
  could not get to sleep. She felt calmed by this thought: "the very
  things which I despise in a man may none the less constitute a great
  merit in the eyes of the marechale."
  
  As for Julien, he had done something, he was less unhappy; his eyes
  chanced to fall on the Russian leather portfolio in which prince
  Korasoff had placed the fifty-three love letters which he had presented
  to him. Julien saw a note at the bottom of the first letter: No. 1 is
  sent eight days after the first meeting.
  
  "I am behind hand," exclaimed Julien. "It is quite a long time since I
  met madame de Fervaques." He immediately began to copy out this first
  love letter. It was a homily packed with moral platitudes and deadly
  dull. Julien was fortunate enough to fall asleep at the second page.
  
  Some hours afterwards he was surprised to see the broad daylight as he
  lent on his desk. The most painful moments in his life were those when
  he woke up every morning to realise his unhappiness. On this particular
  day he finished copying out his letter in a state verging on laughter.
  "Is it possible," he said to himself, "that there ever lived a young
  man who actually wrote like that." He counted several sentences of nine
  lines each. At the bottom of the original he noticed a pencilled note.
  "These letters are delivered personally, on horseback, black cravat,
  blue tail-coat. You give the letter to the porter with a contrite air;
  expression of profound melancholy. If you notice any chambermaid, dry
  your eyes furtively and speak to her."
  
  All this was duly carried out.
  
  "I am taking a very bold course!" thought Julien as he came out of the
  Hotel de Fervaques, "but all the worse for Korasoff. To think of daring
  to write to so virtuous a celebrity. I shall be treated with the utmost
  contempt, and nothing will amuse me more. It is really the only comedy
  that I can in any way appreciate. Yes, it will amuse me to load with
  ridicule that odious creature whom I call myself. If I believed in
  myself, I would commit some crime to distract myself."
  
  The moment when Julien brought his horse back to the stable was the
  happiest he had experienced for a whole month. Korasoff had expressly
  forbidden him to look at the mistress who had left him, on any pretext
  whatsoever. But the step of that horse, which she knew so well, and
  Julien's way of knocking on the stable door with his riding-whip to
  call a man, sometimes attracted Mathilde to behind the window-curtain.
  The muslin was so light that Julien could see through it. By looking
  under the brim of his hat in a certain way, he could get a view of
  Mathilde's figure without seeing her eyes. "Consequently," he said to
  himself, "she cannot see mine, and that is not really looking at her."
  
  In the evening madame de Fervaques behaved towards him, exactly as
  though she had never received the philosophic mystical and religious
  dissertation which he had given to her porter in the morning with so
  melancholy an air. Chance had shown Julien on the preceding day how
  to be eloquent; he placed himself in such a position that he could
  see Mathilde's eyes. She, on her side, left the blue sofa a minute
  after the marechale's arrival; this involved abandoning her usual
  associates. M. de Croisenois seemed overwhelmed by this new caprice:
  his palpable grief alleviated the awfulness of Julien's agony.
  
  This unexpected turn in his life made him talk like an angel, and
  inasmuch as a certain element of self-appreciation will insinuate
  itself even into those hearts which serve as a temple for the
  most august virtue, the marechale said to herself as she got into
  her carriage, "Madame de la Mole is right, this young priest has
  distinction. My presence must have overawed him at first. As a matter
  of fact, the whole tone of this house is very frivolous; I can see
  nothing but instances of virtue helped by oldness, and standing in
  great need of the chills of age. This young man must have managed to
  appreciate the difference; he writes well, but I fear very much that
  this request of his in his letter for me to enlighten him with my
  advice, is really nothing less than an, as yet, unconscious sentiment.
  
  "Nevertheless how many conversions have begun like that! What makes me
  consider this a good omen is the difference between his style and that
  of the young people whose letters I have had an opportunity of seeing.
  One cannot avoid recognising unction, profound seriousness, and much
  conviction in the prose of this young acolyte; he has no doubt the
  sweet virtue of a Massillon."
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Part 2, Chapter 26
target: Whenever Madame de Fervaques visits the de La Mole house, Julien always makes sure to seat himself in the place that makes Madame look most beautiful. Whenever he speaks to Madame, it is only to make Mathilde jealous. Julien then starts sending Madame letters, always hand-delivering them on horseback and looking sad like a doomed lover from a romance novel. At first, it looks like the letters have no effect. But the narrator tells us that Madame Fervaques has an improved opinion of Julien now that he's paying a lot of attention to her.