finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_41_part_0.txt
The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 12
part 2, chapter 12
{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 12", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-12", "summary": "Mathilde praises Julien in front of her brother and Croisenois, the guy who wants to marry her. They tell her to be careful, since people like Julien would have them all killed if they had their way. Pretty soon, all the young men around the de La Mole house band together to destroy Mathilde's opinion of Julien. One day, Julien follows Mathilde and the group of young men into the garden and hears Mathilde passionately defending him. Now he knows there must be something between them.", "analysis": ""}
CHAPTER XLII

IS HE A DANTON?


        The need of anxiety. These words summed up the character
        of my aunt, the beautiful Marguerite de Valois, who was
        soon to marry the King of Navarre whom we see reigning
        at present in France under the name of Henry IV. The
        need of staking something was the key to the character
        of this charming princess; hence her quarrels and
        reconciliations with her brothers from the time when she
        was sixteen. Now, what can a young girl stake? The most
        precious thing she has: her reputation, the esteem of a
        lifetime.
                        _Memoirs of the Duke d' Angouleme._
                        _the natural son of Charles IX_.


"There is no contract to sign for Julien and me, there is no notary;
everything is on the heroic plane, everything is the child of chance.
Apart from the noble birth which he lacks, it is the love of Marguerite
de Valois for the young La Mole, the most distinguished man of the
time, over again. Is it my fault that the young men of the court are
such great advocates of the conventional, and turn pale at the mere
idea of the slightest adventure which is a little out of the ordinary?
A little journey in Greece or Africa represents the highest pitch of
their audacity, and moreover they can only march in troops. As soon as
they find themselves alone they are frightened, not of the Bedouin's
lance, but of ridicule and that fear makes them mad.

"My little Julien on the other hand only likes to act alone. This
unique person never thinks for a minute of seeking help or support in
others! He despises others, and that is why I do not despise him.

"If Julien were noble as well as poor, my love would simply be a vulgar
piece of stupidity, a sheer mesalliance; I would have nothing to do
with it; it would be absolutely devoid of the characteristic traits of
grand passion--the immensity of the difficulty to be overcome and the
black uncertainty cf the result."

Mademoiselle de la Mole was so engrossed in these pretty arguments that
without realising what she was doing, she praised Julien to the marquis
de Croisenois and her brother on the following day. Her eloquence went
so far that it provoked them.

"You be careful of this young man who has so much energy," exclaimed
her brother; "if we have another revolution he will have us all
guillotined."

She was careful not to answer, but hastened to rally her brother and
the marquis de Croisenois on the apprehension which energy caused them.
"It is at bottom simply the fear of meeting the unexpected, the fear of
being non-plussed in the presence of the unexpected--"

"Always, always, gentlemen, the fear of ridicule, a monster which had
the misfortune to die in 1816."

"Ridicule has ceased to exist in a country where there are two
parties," M. de la Mole was fond of saying.

His daughter had understood the idea.

"So, gentlemen," she would say to Julien's enemies, "you will be
frightened all your life and you will be told afterwards,

          "Ce n'etait pas un loup, ce n'en etait que l'ombre."

Matilde soon left them. Her brother's words horrified her; they
occasioned her much anxiety, but the day afterwards she regarded them
as tantamount to the highest praise.

"His energy frightens them in this age where all energy is dead. I will
tell him my brother's phrase. I want to see what answer he will make.
But I will choose one of the moments when his eyes are shining. Then he
will not be able to lie to me.

"He must be a Danton!" she added after a long and vague reverie. "Well,
suppose the revolution begins again, what figures will Croisenois and
my brother cut then? It is settled in advance: Sublime resignation.
They will be heroic sheep who will allow their throats to be cut
without saying a word. Their one fear when they die will still be the
fear of being bad form. If a Jacobin came to arrest my little Julien he
would blow his brains out, however small a chance he had of escaping.
He is not frightened of doing anything in bad form."

These last words made her pensive; they recalled painful memories and
deprived her of all her boldness. These words reminded her of the jests
of MM. de Caylus, Croisenois, de Luz and her brother; these gentlemen
joined in censuring Julien for his priestly demeanour, which they said
was humble and hypocritical.

"But," she went on suddenly with her eyes gleaming with joy, "the very
bitterness and the very frequency of their jests prove in spite of
themselves that he is the most distinguished man whom we have seen this
winter. What matter his defects and the things which they make fun of?
He has the element of greatness and they are shocked by it. Yes, they,
the very men who are so good and so charitable in other matters. It is
a fact that he is poor and that he has studied in order to be a priest;
they are the heads of a squadron and never had any need of studying;
they found it less trouble.

"In spite of all the handicap of his everlasting black suit and of that
priestly expression which he must wear, poor boy, if he isn't to die of
hunger, his merit frightens them, nothing could be clearer. And as for
that priest-like expression, why he no longer has it after we have been
alone for some moments, and after those gentlemen have evolved what
they imagine to be a subtle and impromptu epigram, is not their first
look towards Julien? I have often noticed it. And yet they know well
that he never speaks to them unless he is questioned. I am the only one
whom he speaks to. He thinks I have a lofty soul. He only answers the
points they raise sufficiently to be polite. He immediately reverts
into respectfulness. But with me he will discuss things for whole
hours, he is not certain of his ideas so long as I find the slightest
objection to them. There has not been a single rifle-shot fired all
this winter; words have been the only means of attracting attention.
Well, my father, who is a superior man and will carry the fortunes of
our house very far, respects Julien. Every one else hates him, no one
despises him except my mother's devout friends."

The Comte de Caylus had or pretended to have a great passion for
horses; he passed his life in his stables and often breakfasted there.
This great passion, together with his habit of never laughing, won for
him much respect among his friends: he was the eagle of the little
circle.

As soon as they had reassembled the following day behind madame de la
Mole's armchair, M. de Caylus, supported by Croisenois and by Norbert,
began in Julien's absence to attack sharply the high opinion which
Mathilde entertained for Julien. He did this without any provocation,
and almost the very minute that he caught sight of mademoiselle de la
Mole. She tumbled to the subtlety immediately and was delighted with it.

"So there they are all leagued together," she said to herself, "against
a man of genius who has not ten louis a year to bless himself with and
who cannot answer them except in so far as he is questioned. They are
frightened of him, black coat and all. But how would things stand if he
had epaulettes?"

She had never been more brilliant, hardly had Caylus and his allies
opened their attack than she riddled them with sarcastic jests. When
the fire of these brilliant officers was at length extinguished she
said to M. de Caylus,

"Suppose that some gentleman in the Franche-Comte mountains finds out
to-morrow that Julien is his natural son and gives him a name and
some thousands of francs, why in six months he will be an officer of
hussars like you, gentlemen, in six weeks he will have moustaches like
you gentlemen. And then his greatness of character will no longer be
an object of ridicule. I shall then see you reduced, monsieur the
future duke, to this stale and bad argument, the superiority of the
court nobility over the provincial nobility. But where will you be
if I choose to push you to extremities and am mischievous enough to
make Julien's father a Spanish duke, who was a prisoner of war at
Besancon in the time of Napoleon, and who out of conscientious scruples
acknowledges him on his death bed?" MM. de Caylus, and de Croisenois
found all these assumptions of illegitimacy in rather bad taste. That
was all they saw in Mathilde's reasoning.

His sister's words were so clear that Norbert, in spite of his
submissiveness, assumed a solemn air, which one must admit did not
harmonise very well with his amiable, smiling face. He ventured to say
a few words.

"Are you ill? my dear," answered Mathilde with a little air of
seriousness. "You must be very bad to answer jests by moralizing."

"Moralizing from you! Are you soliciting a job as prefect?"

Mathilde soon forgot the irritation of the comte de Caylus, the bad
temper of Norbert, and the taciturn despair of M. de Croisenois. She
had to decide one way or the other a fatal question which had just
seized upon her soul.

"Julien is sincere enough with me," she said to herself, "a man at
his age, in a inferior position, and rendered unhappy as he is by an
extraordinary ambition, must have need of a woman friend. I am perhaps
that friend, but I see no sign of love in him. Taking into account the
audacity of his character he would surely have spoken to me about his
love."

This uncertainty and this discussion with herself which henceforth
monopolised Mathilde's time, and in connection with which she found new
arguments each time that Julien spoke to her, completely routed those
fits of boredom to which she had been so liable.

Daughter as she was of a man of intellect who might become a minister,
mademoiselle de la Mole had been when in the convent of the Sacred
Heart, the object of the most excessive flattery. This misfortune can
never be compensated for. She had been persuaded that by reason of all
her advantages of birth, fortune, etc., she ought to be happier than
any one else. This is the cause of the boredom of princes and of all
their follies.

Mathilde had not escaped the deadly influence of this idea. However
intelligent one may be, one cannot at the age of ten be on one's guard
against the flatteries of a whole convent, which are apparently so well
founded.

From the moment that she had decided that she loved Julien, she
was no longer bored. She congratulated herself every day on having
deliberately decided to indulge in a grand passion. "This amusement
is very dangerous," she thought. "All the better, all the better, a
thousand times. Without a grand passion I should be languishing in
boredom during the finest time of my life, the years from sixteen
to twenty. I have already wasted my finest years: all my pleasure
consisted in being obliged to listen to the silly arguments of my
mother's friends who when at Coblentz in 1792 were not quite so strict,
so they say, as their words of to-day."

It was while Mathilde was a prey to these great fits of uncertainty
that Julien was baffled by those long looks of hers which lingered upon
him. He noticed, no doubt, an increased frigidity in the manner of
comte Norbert, and a fresh touch of haughtiness in the manner of MM. de
Caylus, de Luz and de Croisenois. He was accustomed to that. He would
sometimes be their victim in this way at the end of an evening when, in
view of the position he occupied, he had been unduly brilliant. Had it
not been for the especial welcome with which Mathilde would greet him,
and the curiosity with which all this society inspired him, he would
have avoided following these brilliant moustachioed young men into the
garden, when they accompanied mademoiselle de La Mole there, in the
hour after dinner.

"Yes," Julien would say to himself, "it is impossible for me to deceive
myself, mademoiselle de la Mole looks at me in a very singular way.
But even when her fine blue open eyes are fixed on me, wide open with
the most abandon, I always detect behind them an element of scrutiny,
self-possession and malice. Is it possible that this may be love? But
how different to madame de Renal's looks!"

One evening after dinner Julien, who had followed M. de la Mole into
his study, was rapidly walking back to the garden. He approached
Mathilde's circle without any warning, and caught some words pronounced
in a very loud voice. She was teasing her brother. Julien heard his
name distinctly pronounced twice. He appeared. There was immediately
a profound silence and abortive efforts were made to dissipate it.
Mademoiselle de la Mole and her brother were too animated to find
another topic of conversation. MM. de Caylus, de Croisenois, de Luz,
and one of their friends, manifested an icy coldness to Julien. He went
away.






Part 2, Chapter 12
Mathilde praises Julien in front of her brother and Croisenois, the guy who wants to marry her. They tell her to be careful, since people like Julien would have them all killed if they had their way. Pretty soon, all the young men around the de La Mole house band together to destroy Mathilde's opinion of Julien. One day, Julien follows Mathilde and the group of young men into the garden and hears Mathilde passionately defending him. Now he knows there must be something between them.