finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_34_part_0.txt
The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 5
part 2, chapter 5
{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-5", "summary": "Julien gets more and more bored with life at the de La Moles' house. He can't stand the way that no one ever says what they're actually thinking, or if they do, it's something super petty. Julien soon realizes that Madame de La Mole wants her daughter to marry a local baron named Baron de La Joumate.", "analysis": ""}
CHAPTER XXXV

SENSIBILITY AND A GREAT PIOUS LADY


        An idea which has any life in it seems like a crudity,
        so accustomed are they to colourless expression. Woe to
        him who introduces new ideas into his conversation!
                                          --_Faublas_.


This was the stage Julien had reached, when after several months of
probation the steward of the household handed him the third quarter of
his wages. M. de la Mole had entrusted him with the administration of
his estates in Brittany and Normandy. Julien made frequent journeys
there. He had chief control of the correspondence relating to the
famous lawsuit with the abbe de Frilair. M. Pirard had instructed him.

On the data of the short notes which the marquis would scribble on the
margin of all the various paper which were addressed to him, Julien
would compose answers which were nearly all signed.

At the Theology School his professors complained of his lack of
industry, but they did not fail to regard him as one of their most
distinguished pupils. This varied work, tackled as it was with all
the ardour of suffering ambition, soon robbed Julien of that fresh
complexion which he had brought from the provinces. His pallor
constituted one of his merits in the eyes of his comrades, the young
seminarist; he found them much less malicious, much less ready to bow
down to a silver crown than those of Besancon; they thought he was
consumptive. The marquis had given him a horse.

Julien fearing that he might meet people during his rides on horseback,
had given out that this exercise had been prescribed by the doctors.
The abbe Pirard had taken him into several Jansenist Societies. Julien
was astonished; the idea of religion was indissolubly connected in his
mind with the ideas of hypocrisy and covetousness. He admired those
austere pious men who never gave a thought to their income. Several
Jansenists became friendly with him and would give him advice. A new
world opened before him. At the Jansenists he got to know a comte
Altamira, who was nearly six feet high, was a Liberal, a believer, and
had been condemned to death in his own country. He was struck by the
strange contrast of devoutness and love of liberty.

Julien's relations with the young comte had become cool. Norbert
had thought that he answered the jokes of his friends with too much
sharpness. Julien had committed one or two breaches of social etiquette
and vowed to himself that he would never speak to mademoiselle
Mathilde. They were always perfectly polite to him in the Hotel de
la Mole but he felt himself quite lost. His provincial common sense
explained this result by the vulgar proverb _Tout beau tout nouveau_.

He gradually came to have a little more penetration than during his
first days, or it may have been that the first glamour of Parisian
urbanity had passed off. As soon as he left off working, he fell a prey
to a mortal boredom. He was experiencing the withering effects of that
admirable politeness so typical of good society, which is so perfectly
modulated to every degree of the social hierarchy.

No doubt the provinces can be reproached with a commonness and lack of
polish in their tone; but they show a certain amount of passion, when
they answer you. Julien's self-respect was never wounded at the Hotel
de la Mole, but he often felt at the end of the day as though he would
like to cry. A cafe-waiter in the provinces will take an interest in
you if you happen to have some accident as you enter his cafe, but if
this accident has everything about it which is disagreeable to your
vanity, he will repeat ten times in succession the very word which
tortures you, as he tells you how sorry he is. At Paris they make a
point of laughing in secret, but you always remain a stranger.

We pass in silence over a number of little episodes which would have
made Julien ridiculous, if he had not been to some extent above
ridicule. A foolish sensibility resulted in his committing innumerable
acts of bad taste. All his pleasures were precautions; he practiced
pistol shooting every day, he was one of the promising pupils of the
most famous maitres d'armes. As soon as he had an instant to himself,
instead of employing it in reading as he did before, he would rush
off to the riding school and ask for the most vicious horses. When he
went out with the master of the riding school he was almost invariably
thrown.

The marquis found him convenient by reason of his persistent industry,
his silence and his intelligence, and gradually took him into his
confidence with regard to all his affairs, which were in any way
difficult to unravel. The marquis was a sagacious business man on all
those occasions when his lofty ambition gave him some respite; having
special information within his reach, he would speculate successfully
on the Exchange. He would buy mansions and forests; but he would easily
lose his temper. He would give away hundreds of louis, and would go
to law for a few hundred francs. Rich men with a lofty spirit have
recourse to business not so much for results as for distraction. The
marquis needed a chief of staff who would put all his money affairs
into clear and lucid order. Madame de la Mole, although of so even a
character, sometimes made fun of Julien. Great ladies have a horror
of those unexpected incidents which are produced by a sensitive
character; they constitute the opposite pole of etiquette. On two or
three occasions the marquis took his part. "If he is ridiculous in your
salon, he triumphs in his office." Julien on his side thought he had
caught the marquise's secret. She deigned to manifest an interest in
everything the minute the Baron de la Joumate was announced. He was a
cold individual with an expressionless physiognomy. He was tall, thin,
ugly, very well dressed, passed his life in his chateau, and generally
speaking said nothing about anything. Such was his outlook on life.
Madame de la Mole would have been happy for the first time in her life
if she could have made him her daughter's husband.






Part 2, Chapter 5
Julien gets more and more bored with life at the de La Moles' house. He can't stand the way that no one ever says what they're actually thinking, or if they do, it's something super petty. Julien soon realizes that Madame de La Mole wants her daughter to marry a local baron named Baron de La Joumate.