feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_49_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 20
feat_summary_id: part 2, chapter 20
feat_summary: {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 20", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-20", "summary": "Julien goes to dinner feeling depressed because Mathilde is ignoring him again. He spends his time observing the high class people who come to dinner, and reminds himself that Mathilde has done things with him that she hasn't with them. Mathilde comes to him in the library later that day and says she knows that he wants to speak to her. She tells him flat out that she no longer loves him. She follows this by unleashing a hurricane of insults on Julien, calling him a poor nobody. Julien tries to run away, but Mathilde catches him by the arm and holds him. Later on, Julien is so preoccupied with his romantic drama that he knocks over a Japanese blue vase owned by Madame de La Mole. Mathilde is delighted to see the blue vase break because she has always found it ugly. Julien says that he is sorry the vase has been destroyed, just like his heart. No one knows what this second part means except for Mathilde.", "analysis": ""}
text: CHAPTER L
  
  THE JAPANESE VASE
  
  
          His heart does not first realise the full extremity of
          his unhappiness: he is more troubled than moved. But as
          reason returns he feels the depth of his misfortune. All
          the pleasures of life seem to have been destroyed, he
          can only feel the sharp barbs of a lacerating despair.
          But what is the use of talking of physical pain? What
          pain which is only felt by the body can be compared to
          this pain?--_Jean Paul_.
  
  
  The dinner bell rang, Julien had barely time to dress: he found
  Mathilde in the salon. She was pressing her brother and M. de
  Croisenois to promise her that they would not go and spend the evening
  at Suresnes with madame the marechale de Fervaques.
  
  It would have been difficult to have shown herself more amiable or
  fascinating to them. M. de Luz, de Caylus and several of their friends
  came in after dinner. One would have said that mademoiselle de la Mole
  had commenced again to cultivate the most scrupulous conventionality
  at the same time as her sisterly affection. Although the weather was
  delightful this evening, she refused to go out into the garden, and
  insisted on their all staying near the arm-chair where madame de la
  Mole was sitting. The blue sofa was the centre of the group as it had
  been in the winter.
  
  Mathilde was out of temper with the garden, or at any rate she found it
  absolutely boring: it was bound up with the memory of Julien.
  
  Unhappiness blunts the edge of the intellect. Our hero had the bad
  taste to stop by that little straw chair which had formerly witnessed
  his most brilliant triumphs. To-day none spoke to him, his presence
  seemed to be unnoticed, and worse than that. Those of mademoiselle de
  la Mole's friends who were sitting near him at the end of the sofa,
  made a point of somehow or other turning their back on him, at any rate
  he thought so.
  
  "It is a court disgrace," he thought. He tried to study for a moment
  the people who were endeavouring to overwhelm him with their contempt.
  M. de Luz had an important post in the King's suite, the result of
  which was that the handsome officer began every conversation with
  every listener who came along by telling him this special piece of
  information. His uncle had started at seven o'clock for St. Cloud
  and reckoned on spending the night there. This detail was introduced
  with all the appearance of good nature but it never failed to be
  worked in. As Julien scrutinized M. de Croisenois with a stern gaze of
  unhappiness, he observed that this good amiable young man attributed
  a great influence to occult causes. He even went so far as to become
  melancholy and out of temper if he saw an event of the slightest
  importance ascribed to a simple and perfectly natural cause.
  
  "There is an element of madness in this," Julien said to himself.
  This man's character has a striking analogy with that of the Emperor
  Alexander, such as the Prince Korasoff described it to me. During the
  first year of his stay in Paris poor Julien, fresh from the seminary
  and dazzled by the graces of all these amiable young people, whom he
  found so novel, had felt bound to admire them. Their true character was
  only beginning to become outlined in his eyes.
  
  "I am playing an undignified role here," he suddenly thought. The
  question was, how he could leave the little straw chair without undue
  awkwardness. He wanted to invent something, and tried to extract some
  novel excuse from an imagination which was otherwise engrossed. He was
  compelled to fall back on his memory, which was, it must be owned,
  somewhat poor in resources of this kind.
  
  The poor boy was still very much out of his element, and could not have
  exhibited a more complete and noticeable awkwardness when he got up to
  leave the salon. His misery was only too palpable in his whole manner.
  He had been playing, for the last three quarters of an hour, the role
  of an officious inferior from whom one does not take the trouble to
  hide what one really thinks.
  
  The critical observations he had just made on his rivals prevented
  him, however, from taking his own unhappiness too tragically. His pride
  could take support in what had taken place the previous day. "Whatever
  may be their advantages over me," he thought, as he went into the
  garden alone, "Mathilde has never been to a single one of them what,
  twice in my life, she has deigned to be to me!" His penetration did not
  go further. He absolutely failed to appreciate the character of the
  extraordinary person whom chance had just made the supreme mistress of
  all his happiness.
  
  He tried, on the following day, to make himself and his horse dead
  tired with fatigue. He made no attempt in the evening to go near the
  blue sofa to which Mathilde remained constant. He noticed that comte
  Norbert did not even deign to look at him when he met him about the
  house. "He must be doing something very much against the grain," he
  thought; "he is naturally so polite."
  
  Sleep would have been a happiness to Julien. In spite of his physical
  fatigue, memories which were only too seductive commenced to invade his
  imagination. He had not the genius to see that, inasmuch as his long
  rides on horseback over forests on the outskirts of Paris only affected
  him, and had no affect at all on Mathilde's heart or mind, he was
  consequently leaving his eventual destiny to the caprice of chance. He
  thought that one thing would give his pain an infinite relief: it would
  be to speak to Mathilde. Yet what would he venture to say to her?
  
  He was dreaming deeply about this at seven o'clock one morning when he
  suddenly saw her enter the library.
  
  "I know, monsieur, that you are anxious to speak to me."
  
  "Great heavens! who told you?"
  
  "I know, anyway; that is enough. If you are dishonourable, you can
  ruin me, or at least try to. But this danger, which I do not believe
  to be real, will certainly not prevent me from being sincere. I do
  not love you any more, monsieur, I have been led astray by my foolish
  imagination."
  
  Distracted by love and unhappiness, as a result of this terrible blow,
  Julien tried to justify himself. Nothing could have been more absurd.
  Does one make any excuses for failure to please? But reason had no
  longer any control over his actions. A blind instinct urged him to get
  the determination of his fate postponed. He thought that, so long as
  he kept on speaking, all could not be over. Mathilde had not listened
  to his words; their sound irritated her. She could not conceive how he
  could have the audacity to interrupt her.
  
  She was rendered equally unhappy this morning by remorseful virtue and
  remorseful pride. She felt to some extent pulverised by the idea of
  having given a little abbe, who was the son of a peasant, rights over
  her. "It is almost," she said to herself, in those moments when she
  exaggerated her own misfortune, "as though I had a weakness for one of
  my footmen to reproach myself with." In bold, proud natures there is
  only one step from anger against themselves to wrath against others. In
  these cases the very transports of fury constitute a vivid pleasure.
  
  In a single minute mademoiselle de la Mole reached the point of loading
  Julien with the signs of the most extreme contempt. She had infinite
  wit, and this wit was always triumphant in the art of torturing vanity
  and wounding it cruelly.
  
  For the first time in his life Julien found himself subjected to
  the energy of a superior intellect, which was animated against him
  by the most violent hate. Far from having at present the slightest
  thought of defending himself, he came to despise himself. Hearing
  himself overwhelmed with such marks of contempt which were so cleverly
  calculated to destroy any good opinion that he might have of himself,
  he thought that Mathilde was right, and that she did not say enough.
  
  As for her, she found it deliciously gratifying to her pride to punish
  in this way both herself and him for the adoration that she had felt
  some days previously.
  
  She did not have to invent and improvise the cruel remarks which she
  addressed to him with so much gusto.
  
  All she had to do was to repeat what the advocate of the other side had
  been saying against her love in her own heart for the last eight days.
  
  Each word intensified a hundredfold Julien's awful unhappiness. He
  wanted to run away, but mademoiselle de la Mole took hold of his arm
  authoritatively.
  
  "Be good enough to remark," he said to her, "that you are talking very
  loud. You will be heard in the next room."
  
  "What does it matter?" mademoiselle de la Mole answered haughtily. "Who
  will dare to say they have heard me? I want to cure your miserable
  vanity once and for all of any ideas you may have indulged in on my
  account."
  
  When Julien was allowed to leave the library he was so astonished
  that he was less sensitive to his unhappiness. "She does not love me
  any more," he repeated to himself, speaking aloud as though to teach
  himself how he stood. "It seems that she has loved me eight or ten
  days, but I shall love her all my life."
  
  "Is it really possible she was nothing to me, nothing to my heart so
  few days back?"
  
  Mathilde's heart was inundated by the joy of satisfied pride. So she
  had been able to break with him for ever! So complete a triumph over so
  strong an inclination rendered her completely happy. "So this little
  gentleman will understand, once and for all, that he has not, and will
  never have, any dominion over me." She was so happy that in reality she
  ceased to love at this particular moment.
  
  In a less passionate being than Julien love would have become
  impossible after a scene of such awful humiliation. Without deviating
  for a single minute from the requirements of her own self-respect,
  mademoiselle de la Mole had addressed to him some of those unpleasant
  remarks which are so well thought out that they may seem true, even
  when remembered in cold blood.
  
  The conclusion which Julien drew in the first moment of so surprising a
  scene, was that Mathilde was infinitely proud. He firmly believed that
  all was over between them for ever, and none the less, he was awkward
  and nervous towards her at breakfast on the following day. This was a
  fault from which up to now he had been exempt.
  
  Both in small things as in big it was his habit to know what he ought
  and wanted to do, and he used to act accordingly.
  
  The same day after breakfast madame de la Mole asked him for a fairly
  rare, seditious pamphlet which her cure had surreptitiously brought her
  in the morning, and Julien, as he took it from a bracket, knocked over
  a blue porcelain vase which was as ugly as it could possibly be.
  
  Madame de la Mole got up, uttering a cry of distress, and proceeded to
  contemplate at close quarters the ruins of her beloved vase. "It was
  old Japanese," she said. "It came to me from my great aunt, the abbess
  of Chelles. It was a present from the Dutch to the Regent, the Duke of
  Orleans, who had given it to his daughter...."
  
  Mathilde had followed her mother's movements, and felt delighted at
  seeing that the blue vase, that she had thought horribly ugly, was
  broken. Julien was taciturn, and not unduly upset. He saw mademoiselle
  de la Mole quite near him.
  
  "This vase," he said to her, "has been destroyed for ever. The same is
  the case with the sentiment which was once master of my heart. I would
  ask you to accept my apologies for all the pieces of madness which it
  has made me commit." And he went out.
  
  "One would really say," said madame de la Mole, as he went out of the
  room, "that this M. Sorel is quite proud of what he has just done."
  
  These words went right home to Mathilde's heart. "It is true," she
  said to herself; "my mother has guessed right. That is the sentiment
  which animates him." It was only then that she ceased rejoicing over
  yesterday's scene. "Well, it is all over," she said to herself, with
  an apparent calm. "It is a great lesson, anyway. It is an awful and
  humiliating mistake! It is enough to make me prudent all the rest of my
  life."
  
  "Why didn't I speak the truth?" thought Julien. "Why am I still
  tortured by the love which I once had for that mad woman?"
  
  Far, however, from being extinguished as he had hoped it would be, his
  love grew more and more rapidly. "She is mad, it is true," he said
  to himself. "Is she any the less adorable for that? Is it possible
  for anyone to be prettier? Is not mademoiselle de la Mole the ideal
  quintessence of all the most vivid pleasures of the most elegant
  civilisation?" These memories of a bygone happiness seized hold of
  Julien's mind, and quickly proceeded to destroy all the work of his
  reason.
  
  It is in vain that reason wrestles with memories of this character. Its
  stern struggles only increase the fascination.
  
  Twenty-four hours after the breaking of the Japanese vase, Julien was
  unquestionably one of the most unhappy men in the world.
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Part 2, Chapter 20
target: Julien goes to dinner feeling depressed because Mathilde is ignoring him again. He spends his time observing the high class people who come to dinner, and reminds himself that Mathilde has done things with him that she hasn't with them. Mathilde comes to him in the library later that day and says she knows that he wants to speak to her. She tells him flat out that she no longer loves him. She follows this by unleashing a hurricane of insults on Julien, calling him a poor nobody. Julien tries to run away, but Mathilde catches him by the arm and holds him. Later on, Julien is so preoccupied with his romantic drama that he knocks over a Japanese blue vase owned by Madame de La Mole. Mathilde is delighted to see the blue vase break because she has always found it ugly. Julien says that he is sorry the vase has been destroyed, just like his heart. No one knows what this second part means except for Mathilde.