finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_45_part_0.txt
The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 16
part 2, chapter 16
{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 16", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-16", "summary": "Julien locks his bedroom door for the night, sneaks out into the garden, and finds the ladder that Mathilde has left for him. He climbs up into her room carrying a pistol. Julien runs to her and tries to kiss her. But she pushes him away and tells him not to act shamefully. Mathilde gets him to let the ladder leaning against the window back down into the garden. Now he has no way of getting out of the room except the door. Mathilde admits that she invited him to her room in order to test his courage. After some small talk, they have sex. Neither one of them is satisfied by it. For Mathilde, she's just acting the way books say she's supposed to. For Julien, the sex isn't as good as what he had with Madame de Renal. Julien sneaks out the next morning. He gets on his horse and rides out to one of the forests surrounding Paris. Mathilde goes to church and starts to wonder whether she actually loves him, or just thinks she does.", "analysis": ""}
CHAPTER XLVI

ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING


        This garden was very big, it had been planned a
        few years ago in perfect taste. But the trees were
        more than a century old. It had a certain rustic
        atmosphere.--_Massinger_.


He was going to write a countermanding letter to Fouque when eleven
o'clock struck. He noisily turned the lock of the door of his room as
though he had locked himself in. He went with a sleuth-like step to
observe what was happening over the house, especially on the fourth
storey where the servants slept. There was nothing unusual. One of
madame de la Mole's chambermaids was giving an entertainment, the
servants were taking punch with much gaiety. "Those who laugh like
that," thought Julien, "cannot be participating in the nocturnal
expedition; if they were, they would be more serious."

Eventually he stationed himself in an obscure corner of the garden. "If
their plan is to hide themselves from the servants of the house, they
will despatch the persons whom they have told off to surprise me over
the garden wall.

"If M. de Croisenois shows any sense of proportion in this matter, he
is bound to find it less compromising for the young person, whom he
wishes to make his wife if he has me surprised before I enter her room."

He made a military and extremely detailed reconnaissance. "My honour is
at stake," he thought. "If I tumble into some pitfall it will not be an
excuse in my own eyes to say, 'I never thought of it.'"

The weather was desperately serene. About eleven o'clock the moon rose,
at half-past twelve it completely illuminated the facade of the hotel
looking out upon the garden.

"She is mad," Julien said to himself. As one o'clock struck there
was still a light in comte Norbert's windows. Julien had never been
so frightened in his life, he only saw the dangers of the enterprise
and had no enthusiasm at all. He went and took the immense ladder,
waited five minutes to give her time to tell him not to go, and five
minutes after one placed the ladder against Mathilde's window. He
mounted softly, pistol in hand, astonished at not being attacked. As he
approached the window it opened noiselessly.

"So there you are, monsieur," said Mathilde to him with considerable
emotion. "I have been following your movements for the last hour."

Julien was very much embarrassed. He did not know how to conduct
himself. He did not feel at all in love. He thought in his
embarrassment that he ought to be venturesome. He tried to kiss
Mathilde.

"For shame," she said to him, pushing him away.

Extremely glad at being rebuffed, he hastened to look round him. The
moon was so brilliant that the shadows which it made in mademoiselle de
la Mole's room were black. "It's quite possible for men to be concealed
without my seeing them," he thought.

"What have you got in your pocket at the side of your coat?" Mathilde
said to him, delighted at finding something to talk about. She was
suffering strangely; all those sentiments of reserve and timidity which
were so natural to a girl of good birth, had reasserted their dominion
and were torturing her.

"I have all kinds of arms and pistols," answered Julien equally glad at
having something to say.

"You must take the ladder away," said Mathilde.

"It is very big, and may break the windows of the salon down below or
the room on the ground floor."

"You must not break the windows," replied Mathilde making a vain effort
to assume an ordinary conversational tone; "it seems to me you can
lower the ladder by tying a cord to the first rung. I have always a
supply of cords at hand."

"So this is a woman in love," thought Julien. "She actually dares to
say that she is in love. So much self-possession and such shrewdness in
taking precautions are sufficient indications that I am not triumphing
over M. de Croisenois as I foolishly believed, but that I am simply
succeeding him. As a matter of fact, what does it matter to me? Do I
love her? I am triumphing over the marquis in so far as he would be
very angry at having a successor, and angrier still at that successor
being myself. How haughtily he looked at me this evening in the Cafe
Tortoni when he pretended not to recognise me! And how maliciously he
bowed to me afterwards, when he could not get out of it."

Julien had tied the cord to the last rung of the ladder. He lowered it
softly and leant far out of the balcony in order to avoid its touching
the window pane. "A fine opportunity to kill me," he thought, "if
anyone is hidden in Mathilde's room;" but a profound silence continued
to reign everywhere.

The ladder touched the ground. Julien succeeded in laying it on the
border of the exotic flowers along side the wall.

"What will my mother say," said Mathilde, "when she sees her beautiful
plants all crushed? You must throw down the cord," she added with great
self-possession. "If it were noticed going up to the balcony, it would
be a difficult circumstance to explain."

"And how am I to get away?" said Julien in a jesting tone affecting the
Creole accent. (One of the chambermaids of the household had been born
in Saint-Domingo.)

"You? Why you will leave by the door," said Mathilde, delighted at the
idea.

"Ah! how worthy this man is of all my love," she thought.

Julien had just let the cord fall into the garden; Mathilde grasped
his arm. He thought he had been seized by an enemy and turned round
sharply, drawing a dagger. She had thought that she had heard a window
opening. They remained motionless and scarcely breathed. The moonlight
lit up everything. The noise was not renewed and there was no more
cause for anxiety.

Then their embarrassment began again; it was great on both sides.
Julien assured himself that the door was completely locked; he thought
of looking under the bed, but he did not dare; "they might have
stationed one or two lackeys there." Finally he feared that he might
reproach himself in the future for this lack of prudence, and did
look. Mathilde had fallen into all the anguish of the most extreme
timidity. She was horrified at her position.

"What have you done with my letters?" she said at last.

"What a good opportunity to upset these gentlemen, if they are
eavesdropping, and thus avoiding the battle," thought Julien.

"The first is hid in a big Protestant Bible, which last night's
diligence is taking far away from here."

He spoke very distinctly as he went into these details, so as to be
heard by any persons who might be concealed in two large mahogany
cupboards which he had not dared to inspect.

"The other two are in the post and are bound for the same destination
as the first."

"Heavens, why all these precautions?" said Mathilde in alarm.

"What is the good of my lying?" thought Julien, and he confessed all
his suspicions.

"So that's the cause for the coldness of your letters, dear," exclaimed
Mathilde in a tone of madness rather than of tenderness.

Julien did not notice that nuance. The endearment made him lose his
head, or at any rate his suspicions vanished. He dared to clasp in his
arms that beautiful girl who inspired him with such respect. He was
only partially rebuffed. He fell back on his memory as he had once at
Besancon with Armanda Binet, and recited by heart several of the finest
phrases out of the _Nouvelle Heloise_.

"You have the heart of a man," was the answer she made without
listening too attentively to his phrases; "I wanted to test your
courage, I confess it. Your first suspicions and your resolutions show
you even more intrepid, dear, than I had believed."

Mathilde had to make an effort to call him "dear," and was evidently
paying more attention to this strange method of speech than to
the substance of what she was saying. Being called "dear" without
any tenderness in the tone afforded no pleasure to Julien; he was
astonished at not being happy, and eventually fell back on his
reasoning in order to be so. He saw that he was respected by this proud
young girl who never gave undeserved praise; by means of this reasoning
he managed to enjoy the happiness of satisfied vanity. It was not,
it was true, that soulful pleasure which he had sometimes found with
madame de Renal. There was no element of tenderness in the feelings
of these first few minutes. It was the keen happiness of a gratified
ambition, and Julien was, above all, ambitious. He talked again of
the people whom he had suspected and of the precautions which he had
devised. As he spoke, he thought of the best means of exploiting his
victory.

Mathilde was still very embarrassed and seemed paralysed by the
steps which she had taken. She appeared delighted to find a topic
of conversation. They talked of how they were to see each other
again. Julien extracted a delicious joy from the consciousness of
the intelligence and the courage, of which he again proved himself
possessed during this discussion. They had to reckon with extremely
sharp people, the little Tanbeau was certainly a spy, but Mathilde and
himself as well had their share of cleverness.

What was easier than to meet in the library, and there make all
arrangements?

"I can appear in all parts of the hotel," added Julien, "without
rousing suspicion almost, in fact, in madame de la Mole's own room."
It was absolutely necessary to go through it in order to reach her
daughter's room. If Mathilde thought it preferable for him always to
come by a ladder, then he would expose himself to that paltry danger
with a heart intoxicated with joy.

As she listened to him speaking, Mathilde was shocked by this air of
triumph. "So he is my master," she said to herself, she was already a
prey to remorse. Her reason was horrified at the signal folly which she
had just committed. If she had had the power she would have annihilated
both herself and Julien. When for a few moments she managed by sheer
will-power to silence her pangs of remorse, she was rendered very
unhappy by her timidity and wounded shame. She had quite failed to
foresee the awful plight in which she now found herself.

"I must speak to him, however," she said at last. "That is the proper
thing to do. One does talk to one's lover." And then with a view of
accomplishing a duty, and with a tenderness which was manifested rather
in the words which she employed than in the inflection of her voice,
she recounted various resolutions which she had made concerning him
during the last few days.

She had decided that if he should dare to come to her room by the help
of the gardener's ladder according to his instructions, she would be
entirely his. But never were such tender passages spoken in a more
polite and frigid tone. Up to the present this assignation had been
icy. It was enough to make one hate the name of love. What a lesson
in morality for a young and imprudent girl! Is it worth while to ruin
one's future for moments such as this?

After long fits of hesitation which a superficial observer might have
mistaken for the result of the most emphatic hate (so great is the
difficulty which a woman's self-respect finds in yielding even to so
firm a will as hers) Mathilde became eventually a charming mistress.

In point of fact, these ecstasies were a little artificial. Passionate
love was still more the model which they imitated than a real actuality.

Mademoiselle de la Mole thought she was fulfilling a duty towards
herself and towards her lover. "The poor boy," she said to herself,
"has shewn a consummate bravery. He deserves to be happy or it is
really I who will be shewing a lack of character." But she would have
been glad to have redeemed the cruel necessity in which she found
herself even at the price of an eternity of unhappiness.

In spite of the awful violence she was doing to herself she was
completely mistress of her words.

No regret and no reproach spoiled that night which Julien found
extraordinary rather than happy. Great heavens! what a difference to
his last twenty-four hours' stay in Verrieres. These fine Paris manners
manage to spoil everything, even love, he said to himself, quite
unjustly.

He abandoned himself to these reflections as he stood upright in one of
the great mahogany cupboards into which he had been put at the sign of
the first sounds of movement in the neighbouring apartment, which was
madame de la Mole's. Mathilde followed her mother to mass, the servants
soon left the apartment and Julien easily escaped before they came back
to finish their work.

He mounted a horse and tried to find the most solitary spots in one
of the forests near Paris. He was more astonished than happy. The
happiness which filled his soul from time to time resembled that of a
young sub-lieutenant who as the result of some surprising feat has just
been made a full-fledged colonel by the commander-in-chief; he felt
himself lifted up to an immense height. Everything which was above him
the day before was now on a level with him or even below him. Little
by little Julien's happiness increased in proportion as he got further
away from Paris.

If there was no tenderness in his soul, the reason was that, however
strange it may appear to say so, Mathilde had in everything she had
done, simply accomplished a duty. The only thing she had not foreseen
in all the events of that night, was the shame and unhappiness which
she had experienced instead of that absolute felicity which is found in
novels.

"Can I have made a mistake, and not be in love with him?" she said to
herself.






Part 2, Chapter 16
Julien locks his bedroom door for the night, sneaks out into the garden, and finds the ladder that Mathilde has left for him. He climbs up into her room carrying a pistol. Julien runs to her and tries to kiss her. But she pushes him away and tells him not to act shamefully. Mathilde gets him to let the ladder leaning against the window back down into the garden. Now he has no way of getting out of the room except the door. Mathilde admits that she invited him to her room in order to test his courage. After some small talk, they have sex. Neither one of them is satisfied by it. For Mathilde, she's just acting the way books say she's supposed to. For Julien, the sex isn't as good as what he had with Madame de Renal. Julien sneaks out the next morning. He gets on his horse and rides out to one of the forests surrounding Paris. Mathilde goes to church and starts to wonder whether she actually loves him, or just thinks she does.