feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_69_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 40
feat_summary_id: part 2, chapter 40
feat_summary: {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 40", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-40", "summary": "Julien's defense lawyer finally shows up, but Julien just tells him what he's been telling everyone else: he shot Madame de Renal with the intent to kill. The lawyer thinks Julien is crazy. Things are looking good for Julien nonetheless. More than half of the jurors selected for his trial are people that the vicar-general has some influence over. Meanwhile, Madame de Renal has realized that she still loves Julien. She writes a letter to the judge saying that she forgives Julien and doesn't want him killed for his actions.", "analysis": ""}
text: CHAPTER LXX
  
  TRANQUILITY
  
  
          It is because I was foolish then that I am wise to-day.
          Oh thou philosopher who seest nothing except the actual
          instant. How short-sighted are thy views! Thine eye
          is not adapted to follow the subterranean work of the
          passions.--_M. Goethe_.
  
  
  This conversation was interrupted by an interrogation followed by
  a conference with the advocate entrusted with the defence. These
  moments were the only absolutely unpleasant ones in a life made up of
  nonchalance and tender reveries.
  
  "There is murder, and murder with premeditation," said Julien to the
  judge as he had done to the advocate, "I am sorry, gentlemen, he added
  with a smile, that this reduces your functions to a very small compass."
  
  "After all," said Julien to himself, when he had managed to rid
  himself of those two persons, "I must really be brave, and apparently
  braver than those two men. They regard that duel with an unfortunate
  termination, which I can only seriously bother myself about on the
  actual day, as the greatest of evils and the arch-terror."
  
  "The fact is that I have known a much greater unhappiness," continued
  Julien, as he went on philosophising with himself. "I suffered far
  more acutely during my first journey to Strasbourg, when I thought I
  was abandoned by Mathilde--and to think that I desired so passionately
  that same perfect intimacy which to-day leaves me so cold--as a matter
  of fact I am more happy alone than when that handsome girl shares my
  solitude."
  
  The advocate, who was a red-tape pedant, thought him mad, and believed,
  with the public, that it was jealousy which had lead him to take up
  the pistol. He ventured one day to give Julien to understand that
  this contention, whether true or false, would be an excellent way of
  pleading. But the accused man became in a single minute a passionate
  and drastic individual.
  
  "As you value your life, monsieur," exclaimed Julien, quite beside
  himself, "mind you never put forward such an abominable lie." The
  cautious advocate was for a moment afraid of being assassinated.
  
  He was preparing his case because the decisive moment was drawing near.
  The only topic of conversation in Besancon, and all the department, was
  the _cause celebre_. Julien did not know of this circumstance. He had
  requested his friends never to talk to him about that kind of thing.
  
  On this particular day, Fouque and Mathilde had tried to inform him
  of certain rumours which in their view were calculated to give hope.
  Julien had stopped them at the very first word.
  
  "Leave me my ideal life. Your pettifogging troubles and details of
  practical life all more or less jar on me and bring me down from my
  heaven. One dies as best one can: but I wish to chose my own way of
  thinking about death. What do I care for other people? My relations
  with other people will be sharply cut short. Be kind enough not to talk
  to me any more about those people. Seeing the judge and the advocate is
  more than enough."
  
  "As a matter of fact," he said to himself, "it seems that I am fated
  to die dreaming. An obscure creature like myself, who is certain to be
  forgotten within a fortnight, would be very silly, one must admit, to
  go and play a part. It is nevertheless singular that I never knew so
  much about the art of enjoying life, as since I have seen its end so
  near me."
  
  He passed his last day in promenading upon the narrow terrace at the
  top of the turret, smoking some excellent cigars which Mathilde had
  had fetched from Holland by a courier. He had no suspicion that his
  appearance was waited for each day by all the telescopes in the town.
  His thoughts were at Vergy. He never spoke to Fouque about madame de
  Renal, but his friend told him two or three times that she was rapidly
  recovering, and these words reverberated in his heart.
  
  While Julien's soul was nearly all the time wholly in the realm
  of ideas, Mathilde, who, as befits an aristocratic spirit, had
  occupied herself with concrete things, had managed to make the
  direct and intimate correspondence between madame de Fervaques and
  M. de Frilair progress so far that the great word bishopric had been
  already pronounced. The venerable prelate, who was entrusted with the
  distribution of the benefices, added in a postscript to one of his
  niece's letters, "This poor Sorel is only a lunatic. I hope he will be
  restored to us."
  
  At the sight of these lines, M. de Frilair felt transported. He had no
  doubts about saving Julien.
  
  "But for this Jacobin law which has ordered the formation of an
  unending panel of jurymen, and which has no other real object, except
  to deprive well-born people of all their influence," he said to
  Mathilde on the eve of the balloting for the thirty-six jurymen of the
  session, "I would have answered for the verdict. I certainly managed to
  get the cure N---- acquitted."
  
  When the names were selected by ballot on the following day, M. de
  Frilair experienced a genuine pleasure in finding that they contained
  five members of the Besancon congregation and that amongst those who
  were strangers to the town were the names of MM. Valenod, de Moirod,
  de Cholin. I can answer for these eight jurymen he said to Mathilde.
  The first five are mere machines, Valenod is my agent: Moirod owes me
  everything: de Cholin is an imbecile who is frightened of everything.
  
  The journal published the names of the jurymen throughout the
  department, and to her husband's unspeakable terror, madame de Renal
  wished to go to Besancon. All that M. de Renal could prevail on her
  to promise was that she would not leave her bed so as to avoid the
  unpleasantness of being called to give evidence. "You do not understand
  my position," said the former mayor of Verrieres. "I am now said to
  be disloyal and a Liberal. No doubt that scoundrel Valenod and M. de
  Frilair will get the procureur-general and the judges to do all they
  can to cause me unpleasantness."
  
  Madame de Renal found no difficulty in yielding to her husband's
  orders. "If I appear at the assize court," she said to herself, "I
  should seem as if I were asking for vengeance." In spite of all the
  promises she had made to the director of her conscience and to her
  husband that she would be discreet, she had scarcely arrived at
  Besancon before she wrote with her own hand to each of the thirty-six
  jurymen:--
  
  "I shall not appear on the day of the trial, monsieur, because my
  presence might be prejudicial to M. Sorel's case. I only desire one
  thing in the world, and that I desire passionately--for him to be
  saved. Have no doubt about it, the awful idea that I am the cause of an
  innocent man being led to his death would poison the rest of my life
  and would no doubt curtail it. How can you condemn him to death while I
  continue to live? No, there is no doubt about it, society has no right
  to take away a man's life, and above all, the life of a being like
  Julien Sorel. Everyone at Verrieres knew that there were moments when
  he was quite distracted. This poor young man has some powerful enemies,
  but even among his enemies, (and how many has he not got?) who is there
  who casts any doubt on his admirable talents and his deep knowledge?
  The man whom you are going to try, monsieur, is not an ordinary person.
  For a period of nearly eighteen months we all knew him as a devout and
  well behaved student. Two or three times in the year he was seized by
  fits of melancholy that went to the point of distraction. The whole
  town of Verrieres, all our neighbours at Vergy, where we live in the
  fine weather, my whole family, and monsieur the sub-prefect himself
  will render justice to his exemplary piety. He knows all the Holy Bible
  by heart. Would a blasphemer have spent years of study in learning the
  Sacred Book. My sons will have the honour of presenting you with this
  letter, they are children. Be good enough to question them, monsieur,
  they will give you all the details concerning this poor young man which
  are necessary to convince you of how barbarous it would be to condemn
  him. Far from revenging me, you would be putting me to death.
  
  "What can his enemies argue against this? The wound, which was the
  result of one of those moments of madness, which my children themselves
  used to remark in their tutor, is so little dangerous than in less
  than two months it has allowed me to take the post from Verrieres to
  Besancon. If I learn, monsieur, that you show the slightest hesitation
  in releasing so innocent a person from the barbarity of the law, I will
  leave my bed, where I am only kept by my husband's express orders, and
  I will go and throw myself at your feet. Bring in a verdict, monsieur,
  that the premeditation has not been made out, and you will not have an
  innocent man's blood on your head, etc."
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Part 2, Chapter 40
target: Julien's defense lawyer finally shows up, but Julien just tells him what he's been telling everyone else: he shot Madame de Renal with the intent to kill. The lawyer thinks Julien is crazy. Things are looking good for Julien nonetheless. More than half of the jurors selected for his trial are people that the vicar-general has some influence over. Meanwhile, Madame de Renal has realized that she still loves Julien. She writes a letter to the judge saying that she forgives Julien and doesn't want him killed for his actions.