feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_68_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 39
feat_summary_id: part 2, chapter 39
feat_summary: {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 39", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-39", "summary": "Mathilde runs all over town pleading Julien's case. But no matter what she does for him, all he can feel toward her is indifference. It sounds like he's really checked out from the hotel of life. The next time Mathilde visits him, Julien says that he would like Madame de Renal to look after their child growing up. You can imagine how this goes over with Mathilde. Julien tries to cheer Mathilde up by saying that she still has time to hide her scandal and to marry a successful young man in Paris.", "analysis": ""}
text: CHAPTER LXIX
  
  THE INTRIGUE
  
  
          Castres 1676--A brother has just murdered his sister
          in the house next to mine. This gentleman had already
          been guilty of one murder. His father saved his life by
          causing five-hundred crowns to be distributed among the
          councillors.--_Locke: Journey in France_.
  
  
  When she left the bishop's palace, Mathilde did not hesitate to
  despatch a courier to madame de Fervaques. The fear of compromising
  herself did not stop her for a moment. She entreated her rival to
  obtain for M. de Frilair an autograph letter from the bishop of ----.
  She went as far as to entreat her to come herself to Besancon with all
  speed. This was an heroic act on the part of a proud and jealous soul.
  
  Acting on Fouque's advice, she had had the discretion to refrain from
  mentioning the steps she had taken for Julien. Her presence troubled
  him enough without that. A better man when face to face with death than
  he had ever been during his life, he had remorse not only towards M. de
  la Mole, but also towards Mathilde.
  
  "Come," he said to himself, "there are times when I feel absent-minded
  and even bored by her society. She is ruining herself on my account,
  and this is how I reward her. Am I really a scoundrel?" This question
  would have bothered him but little in the days when he was ambitious.
  In those days he looked upon failure as the only disgrace.
  
  His moral discomfort when with Mathilde was proportionately emphasized
  by the fact that he inspired her at this time with the maddest and most
  extraordinary passion. She talked of nothing but the strange sacrifices
  that she was ready to make in order to save him.
  
  Exalted as she was by a sentiment on which she plumed herself, to the
  complete subordination of her pride, she would have liked not to have
  let a single minute of her life go by without filling it with some
  extraordinary act. The strangest projects, and ones involving her in
  the utmost danger, supplied the topics of her long interviews with
  Julien. The well-paid gaolers allowed her to reign over the prison.
  Mathilde's ideas were not limited by the sacrifice of her reputation.
  She would have thought nothing of making her condition known to society
  at large. Throwing herself on her knees before the king's carriage
  as it galloped along, in order to ask for Julien's pardon, and thus
  attracting the attention of the prince, at the risk of being crushed
  a thousand times over, was one of the least fantastic dreams in which
  this exalted and courageous imagination chose to indulge. She was
  certain of being admitted into the reserved portion of the park of St.
  Cloud, through those friends of hers who were employed at the king's
  court.
  
  Julien thought himself somewhat unworthy of so much devotion. As a
  matter of fact, he was tired of heroism. A simple, naive, and almost
  timid tenderness was what would have appealed to him, while Mathilde's
  haughty soul, on the other hand, always required the idea of a public
  and an audience.
  
  In the midst of all her anguish and all her fears for the life of
  that lover whom she was unwilling to survive, she felt a secret need
  of astonishing the public by the extravagance of her love and the
  sublimity of her actions.
  
  Julien felt irritated at not finding himself touched by all this
  heroism. What would he have felt if he had known of all the mad ideas
  with which Mathilde overwhelmed the devoted but eminently logical and
  limited spirit of the good Fouque?
  
  He did not know what to find fault with in Mathilde's devotion. For
  he, too, would have sacrificed all his fortune, and have exposed his
  life to the greatest risks in order to save Julien. He was dumbfounded
  by the quantity of gold which Mathilde flung away. During the first
  days Fouque, who had all the provincial's respect for money, was much
  impressed by the sums she spent in this way.
  
  He at last discovered that mademoiselle de la Mole's projects
  frequently varied, and he was greatly relieved at finding a word with
  which to express his blame for a character whom he found so exhausting.
  She was changeable. There is only a step from this epithet to that of
  wrong-headed, the greatest term of opprobrium known to the provinces.
  
  "It is singular," said Julien to himself, as Mathilde was going out
  of his prison one day, "that I should be so insensible at being the
  object of so keen a passion! And two months ago I adored her! I have,
  of course, read that the approach of death makes one lose interest
  in everything, but it is awful to feel oneself ungrateful, and not
  to be able to change. Am I an egoist, then?" He addressed the most
  humiliating reproaches to himself on this score.
  
  Ambition was dead in his heart; another passion had arisen from its
  ashes. He called it remorse at having assassinated madame de Renal.
  
  As a matter of fact, he loved her to the point of distraction. He
  experienced a singular happiness on these occasions when, being left
  absolutely alone, and without being afraid of being interrupted, he
  could surrender himself completely to the memory of the happy days
  which he had once passed at Verrieres, or at Vergy. The slightest
  incidents of these days, which had fleeted away only too rapidly,
  possessed an irresistible freshness and charm. He never gave a thought
  to his Paris successes; they bored him.
  
  These moods, which became intensified with every succeeding day, were
  partly guessed by the jealous Mathilde. She realised very clearly that
  she had to struggle against his love of solitude. Sometimes, with
  terror in her heart, she uttered madame de Renal's name.
  
  She saw Julien quiver. Henceforth her passion had neither bounds nor
  limit.
  
  "If he dies, I will die after him," she said to herself in all good
  faith. "What will the Paris salons say when they see a girl of my own
  rank carry her adoration for a lover who is condemned to death to such
  a pitch as this? For sentiments like these you must go back to the age
  of the heroes. It was loves of this kind which thrilled the hearts of
  the century of Charles IX. and Henri III."
  
  In the midst of her keenest transports, when she was clasping Julien's
  head against her heart, she would say to herself with horror, "What!
  is this charming head doomed to fall? Well," she added, inflamed by
  a not unhappy heroism, "these lips of mine, which are now pressing
  against this pretty hair, will be icy cold less than twenty-four hours
  afterwards."
  
  Thoughts of the awful voluptuousness of such heroic moments gripped
  her in a compelling embrace. The idea of suicide, absorbing enough
  in itself, entered that haughty soul (to which, up to the present it
  had been so utterly alien), and soon reigned over it with an absolute
  dominion.
  
  "No, the blood of my ancestors has not grown tepid in descending to
  me," said Mathilde proudly to herself.
  
  "I have a favour to ask of you," said her lover to her one day. "Put
  your child out to nurse at Verrieres. Madame de Renal will look after
  the nurse."
  
  "Those words of yours are very harsh." And Mathilde paled.
  
  "It is true, and I ask your pardon a thousand times," exclaimed Julien,
  emerging from his reverie, and clasping her in his arms.
  
  After having dried his tears, he reverted to his original idea, but
  with greater tact. He had given a twist of melancholy philosophy to the
  conversation. He talked of that future of his which was so soon going
  to close. "One must admit, dear one, that passions are an accident in
  life, but such accidents only occur in superior souls.... My son's
  death would be in reality a happiness for your own proud family, and
  all the servants will realize as much. Neglect will be the lot of that
  child of shame and unhappiness. I hope that, at a time which I do not
  wish to fix, but which nevertheless I am courageous enough to imagine,
  you will obey my last advice: you will marry the marquis de Croisenois."
  
  "What? Dishonoured?"
  
  "Dishonour cannot attach to a name such as yours. You will be a widow,
  and the widow of a madman--that is all. I will go further--my crime
  will confer no dishonour, since it had no money motive. Perhaps when
  the time comes for your marriage, some philosophic legislator will have
  so far prevailed on the prejudice of his contemporaries as to have
  secured the suppression of the death penalty. Then some friendly voice
  will say, by way of giving an instance: 'Why, madame de la Mole's first
  husband was a madman, but not a wicked man or a criminal. It was absurd
  to have his head cut off.' So my memory will not be infamous in any
  way--at least, after a certain time.... Your position in society, your
  fortune, and, if you will allow me to say so, your genius, will make M.
  de Croisenois, once he is your husband, play a part which he would have
  never managed to secure unaided. He only possesses birth and bravery,
  and those qualities alone, though they constituted an accomplished man
  in 1729, are an anachronism a century later on, and only give rise to
  unwarranted pretensions. You need other things if you are to place
  yourself at the head of the youth of France."
  
  "You will take all the help of your firm and enterprising character
  to the political party which you will make your husband join. You may
  be able to be a successor to the Chevreuses and the Longuevilles of
  the Fronde--but then, dear one, the divine fire which animates you
  at present will have grown a little tepid. Allow me to tell you," he
  added, "after many other preparatory phrases, that in fifteen years'
  time you will look upon the love you once had for me as a madness,
  which though excusable, was a piece of madness all the same."
  
  He stopped suddenly and became meditative. He found himself again
  confronted with the idea which shocked Mathilde so much: "In fifteen
  years, madame de Renal will adore my son and you will have forgotten
  him."
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Part 2, Chapter 39
target: Mathilde runs all over town pleading Julien's case. But no matter what she does for him, all he can feel toward her is indifference. It sounds like he's really checked out from the hotel of life. The next time Mathilde visits him, Julien says that he would like Madame de Renal to look after their child growing up. You can imagine how this goes over with Mathilde. Julien tries to cheer Mathilde up by saying that she still has time to hide her scandal and to marry a successful young man in Paris.