feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_15_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 16
feat_summary_id: part 1, chapter 16
feat_summary: {"name": "Part 1, Chapter 16", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-16", "summary": "The day after Julien and Madame de Renal have slept together, they barely make eye contact when they sit down for lunch. Madame starts to worry that he's not looking at her because he's no longer interested. Madame de Renal's cousin M. Derville sees that something is going on between them and makes sure to always get between them while they're hanging out that day. The next night at 1 a.m., Julien sneaks back into Madame's room for more sex. Julien becomes comfortable with talking to Madame about his doubts and anxieties. It only brings them closer together. Madame often thinks that she should have married a man more like Julien, with a poetic soul. Madame Derville becomes fed up with her cousin's foolish flirtations with Julien. She leaves one day without any explanation. Madame de Renal isn't sad to see her go. Now she gets to be alone with Julien all the time.", "analysis": ""}
text: CHAPTER XVI
  
  THE DAY AFTER
  
  
      He turned his lips to hers and with his hand
      Called back the tangles of her wandering hair.
                                 _Don Juan,_ c. I, st. 170.
  
  
  Happily for Julien's fame, Madame de Renal had been too agitated and
  too astonished to appreciate the stupidity of the man who had in a
  single moment become the whole to world her.
  
  "Oh, my God!" she said to herself, as she pressed him to retire when
  she saw the dawn break, "if my husband has heard the noise, I am lost."
  Julien, who had had the time to make up some phrases, remembered this
  one,
  
  "Would you regret your life?"
  
  "Oh, very much at a moment like this, but I should not regret having
  known you."
  
  Julien thought it incumbent on his dignity to go back to his room in
  broad daylight and with deliberate imprudence.
  
  The continuous attention with which he kept on studying his slightest
  actions with the absurd idea of appearing a man of experience had only
  one advantage. When he saw Madame de Renal again at breakfast his
  conduct was a masterpiece of prudence.
  
  As for her, she could not look at him without blushing up to the eyes,
  and could not live a moment without looking at him. She realised her
  own nervousness, and her efforts to hide it redoubled. Julien only
  lifted his eyes towards her once. At first Madame de Renal admired
  his prudence: soon seeing that this single look was not repealed, she
  became alarmed. "Could it be that he does not love me?" she said to
  herself. "Alas! I am quite old for him. I am ten years older than he
  is."
  
  As she passed from the dining-room to the garden, she pressed Julien's
  hand. In the surprise caused by so singular a mark of love, he regarded
  her with passion, for he had thought her very pretty over breakfast,
  and while keeping his eyes downcast he had passed his time in thinking
  of the details of her charms. This look consoled Madame de Renal. It
  did not take away all her anxiety, but her anxiety tended to take away
  nearly completely all her remorse towards her husband.
  
  The husband had noticed nothing at breakfast. It was not so with
  Madame Derville. She thought she saw Madame de Renal on the point of
  succumbing. During the whole day her bold and incisive friendship
  regaled her cousin with those innuendoes which were intended to paint
  in hideous colours the dangers she was running.
  
  Madame de Renal was burning to find herself alone with Julien. She
  wished to ask him if he still loved her. In spite of the unalterable
  sweetness of her character, she was several times on the point of
  notifying her friend how officious she was.
  
  Madame Derville arranged things so adroitly that evening in the garden,
  that she found herself placed between Madame de Renal and Julien.
  Madame de Renal, who had thought in her imagination how delicious it
  would be to press Julien's hand and carry it to her lips, was not able
  to address a single word to him.
  
  This hitch increased her agitation. She was devoured by one pang of
  remorse. She had so scolded Julien for his imprudence in coming to her
  room on the preceding night, that she trembled lest he should not come
  to-night. She left the garden early and went and ensconced herself in
  her room, but not being able to control her impatience, she went and
  glued her ear to Julien's door. In spite of the uncertainty and passion
  which devoured her, she did not dare to enter. This action seemed
  to her the greatest possible meanness, for it forms the basis of a
  provincial proverb.
  
  The servants had not yet all gone to bed. Prudence at last compelled
  her to return to her room. Two hours of waiting were two centuries of
  torture.
  
  Julien was too faithful to what he called his duty to fail to
  accomplish stage by stage what he had mapped out for himself.
  
  As one o'clock struck, he escaped softly from his room, assured himself
  that the master of the house was soundly asleep, and appeared in Madame
  de Renal's room. To-night he experienced more happiness by the side of
  his love, for he thought less constantly about the part he had to play.
  He had eyes to see, and ears to hear. What Madame de Renal said to him
  about his age contributed to give him some assurance.
  
  "Alas! I am ten years older than you. How can you love me?" she
  repeated vaguely, because the idea oppressed her.
  
  Julien could not realise her happiness, but he saw that it was genuine
  and he forgot almost entirely his own fear of being ridiculous.
  
  The foolish thought that he was regarded as an inferior, by reason of
  his obscure birth, disappeared also. As Julien's transports reassured
  his timid mistress, she regained a little of her happiness, and of her
  power to judge her lover. Happily, he had not, on this occasion, that
  artificial air which had made the assignation of the previous night a
  triumph rather than a pleasure. If she had realised his concentration
  on playing a part that melancholy discovery would have taken away all
  her happiness for ever. She could only have seen in it the result of
  the difference in their ages.
  
  Although Madame de Renal had never thought of the theories of love,
  difference in age is next to difference in fortune, one of the great
  commonplaces of provincial witticisms, whenever love is the topic of
  conversation.
  
  In a few days Julien surrendered himself with all the ardour of his
  age, and was desperately in love.
  
  "One must own," he said to himself, "that she has an angelic kindness
  of soul, and no one in the world is prettier."
  
  He had almost completely given up playing a part. In a moment of
  abandon, he even confessed to her all his nervousness. This confidence
  raised the passion which he was inspiring to its zenith. "And I have no
  lucky rival after all," said Madame de Renal to herself with delight.
  She ventured to question him on the portrait in which he used to be so
  interested. Julien swore to her that it was that of a man.
  
  When Madame de Renal had enough presence of mind left to reflect, she
  did not recover from her astonishment that so great a happiness could
  exist; and that she had never had anything of.
  
  "Oh," she said to herself, "if I had only known Julien ten years ago
  when I was still considered pretty."
  
  Julien was far from having thoughts like these. His love was still
  akin to ambition. It was the joy of possessing, poor, unfortunate and
  despised as he was, so beautiful a woman. His acts of devotion, and his
  ecstacies at the sight of his mistress's charms finished by reassuring
  her a little with regard to the difference of age. If she had possessed
  a little of that knowledge of life which the woman of thirty has
  enjoyed in the more civilised of countries for quite a long time, she
  would have trembled for the duration of a love, which only seemed to
  thrive on novelty and the intoxication of a young man's vanity. In
  those moments when he forgot his ambition, Julien admired ecstatically
  even the hats and even the dresses of Madame de Renal. He could not
  sate himself with the pleasure of smelling their perfume. He would open
  her mirrored cupboard, and remain hours on end admiring the beauty and
  the order of everything that he found there. His love leaned on him and
  looked at him. He was looking at those jewels and those dresses which
  had had been her wedding presents.
  
  "I might have married a man like that," thought Madame de Renal
  sometimes. "What a fiery soul! What a delightful life one would have
  with him?"
  
  As for Julien, he had never been so near to those terrible instruments
  of feminine artillery. "It is impossible," he said to himself "for
  there to be anything more beautiful in Paris." He could find no flaw
  in his happiness. The sincere admiration and ecstacies of his mistress
  would frequently make him forget that silly pose which had rendered
  him so stiff and almost ridiculous during the first moments of the
  intrigue. There were moments where, in spite of his habitual hypocrisy,
  he found an extreme delight in confessing to this great lady who
  admired him, his ignorance of a crowd of little usages. His mistress's
  rank seemed to lift him above himself. Madame de Renal, on her side,
  would find the sweetest thrill of intellectual voluptuousness in thus
  instructing in a number of little things this young man who was so full
  of genius, and who was looked upon by everyone as destined one day to
  go so far. Even the sub-prefect and M. Valenod could not help admiring
  him. She thought it made them less foolish. As for Madame Derville, she
  was very far from being in a position to express the same sentiments.
  Rendered desperate by what she thought she divined, and seeing that
  her good advice was becoming offensive to a woman who had literally
  lost her head, she left Vergy without giving the explanation, which
  her friend carefully refrained from asking. Madame de Renal shed a few
  tears for her, and soon found her happiness greater than ever. As a
  result of her departure, she found herself alone with her lover nearly
  the whole day.
  
  Julien abandoned himself all the more to the delightful society of his
  sweetheart, since, whenever he was alone, Fouque's fatal proposition
  still continued to agitate him. During the first days of his novel life
  there were moments when the man who had never loved, who had never been
  loved by anyone, would find so delicious a pleasure in being sincere,
  that he was on the point of confessing to Madame de Renal that ambition
  which up to then had been the very essence of his existence. He would
  have liked to have been able to consult her on the strange temptation
  which Fouque's offer held out to him, but a little episode rendered any
  frankness impossible.
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Part 1, Chapter 16
target: The day after Julien and Madame de Renal have slept together, they barely make eye contact when they sit down for lunch. Madame starts to worry that he's not looking at her because he's no longer interested. Madame de Renal's cousin M. Derville sees that something is going on between them and makes sure to always get between them while they're hanging out that day. The next night at 1 a.m., Julien sneaks back into Madame's room for more sex. Julien becomes comfortable with talking to Madame about his doubts and anxieties. It only brings them closer together. Madame often thinks that she should have married a man more like Julien, with a poetic soul. Madame Derville becomes fed up with her cousin's foolish flirtations with Julien. She leaves one day without any explanation. Madame de Renal isn't sad to see her go. Now she gets to be alone with Julien all the time.