finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_10_part_0.txt
The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 11
part 1, chapter 11
{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 11", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-11", "summary": "After a quick visit to Father Chelan, Julien returns to the de Renals' house. He goes into the garden and sits with Madame de Renal and her cousin, Madame Dervilles. Monsieur de Renal comes to sit with them and talks angrily about politics. When he's not looking, Julien kisses Madame de Renal's arm. After her husband has left, Madame de Renal feels overcome with passion. But she's also scared that she's on the road to becoming an adulteress. She's also scared that Julien still loves another woman. She decides to treat Julien with total coldness the next time she sees him.", "analysis": ""}
CHAPTER XI

AN EVENING


    Yet Julia's very coldness still was kind,
    And tremulously gently her small hand
    Withdrew itself from his, but left behind
    A little pressure, thrilling, and so bland,
    And slight, so very slight that to the mind,
    'Twas but a doubt.
                        _Don Juan_, c. I. st, 71.


It was necessary, however, to put in an appearance at Verrieres. As
Julien left the cure house he was fortunate enough to meet M. Valenod,
whom he hastened to tell of the increase in his salary.

On returning to Vergy, Julien waited till night had fallen before going
down into the garden. His soul was fatigued by the great number of
violent emotions which had agitated him during the day. "What shall I
say to them?" he reflected anxiously, as he thought about the ladies.
He was far from realising that his soul was just in a mood to discuss
those trivial circumstances which usually monopolise all feminine
interests. Julien was often unintelligible to Madame Derville, and even
to her friend, and he in his turn only half understood all that they
said to him. Such was the effect of the force and, if I may venture to
use such language, the greatness of the transports of passion which
overwhelmed the soul of this ambitious youth. In this singular being it
was storm nearly every day.

As he entered the garden this evening, Julien was inclined to take an
interest in what the pretty cousins were thinking. They were waiting
for him impatiently. He took his accustomed seat next to Madame de
Renal. The darkness soon became profound. He attempted to take hold of
a white hand which he had seen some time near him, as it leant on the
back of a chair. Some hesitation was shewn, but eventually the hand was
withdrawn in a manner which indicated displeasure. Julien was inclined
to give up the attempt as a bad job, and to continue his conversation
quite gaily, when he heard M. de Renal approaching.

The coarse words he had uttered in the morning were still ringing in
Julien's ears. "Would not taking possession of his wife's hand in his
very presence," he said to himself, "be a good way of scoring off that
creature who has all that life can give him. Yes! I will do it. I, the
very man for whom he has evidenced so great a contempt."

From that moment the tranquillity which was so alien to Julien's real
character quickly disappeared. He was obsessed by an anxious desire
that Madame de Renal should abandon her hand to him.

M. de Renal was talking politics with vehemence; two or three
commercial men in Verrieres had been growing distinctly richer than he
was, and were going to annoy him over the elections. Madame Derville
was listening to him. Irritated by these tirades, Julien brought his
chair nearer Madame de Renal. All his movements were concealed by the
darkness. He dared to put his hand very near to the pretty arm which
was left uncovered by the dress. He was troubled and had lost control
of his mind. He brought his face near to that pretty arm and dared to
put his lips on it.

Madame de Renal shuddered. Her husband was four paces away. She
hastened to give her hand to Julien, and at the same time to push him
back a little. As M. de Renal was continuing his insults against those
ne'er-do-wells and Jacobins who were growing so rich, Julien covered
the hand which had been abandoned to him with kisses, which were either
really passionate or at any rate seemed so to Madame de Renal. But
the poor woman had already had the proofs on that same fatal day that
the man whom she adored, without owning it to herself, loved another!
During the whole time Julien had been absent she had been the prey to
an extreme unhappiness which had made her reflect.

"What," she said to herself, "Am I going to love, am I going to be in
love? Am I, a married woman, going to fall in love? But," she said to
herself, "I have never felt for my husband this dark madness, which
never permits of my keeping Julien out of my thoughts. After all, he
is only a child who is full of respect for me. This madness will be
fleeting. In what way do the sentiments which I may have for this young
man concern my husband? M. de Renal would be bored by the conversations
which I have with Julien on imaginative subjects. As for him, he simply
thinks of his business. I am not taking anything away from him to give
to Julien."

No hypocrisy had sullied the purity of that naive soul, now swept away
by a passion such as it had never felt before. She deceived herself,
but without knowing it. But none the less, a certain instinct of virtue
was alarmed. Such were the combats which were agitating her when
Julien appeared in the garden. She heard him speak and almost at the
same moment she saw him sit down by her side. Her soul was as it were
transported by this charming happiness which had for the last fortnight
surprised her even more than it had allured. Everything was novel for
her. None the less, she said to herself after some moments, "the mere
presence of Julien is quite enough to blot out all his wrongs." She was
frightened; it was then that she took away her hand.

His passionate kisses, the like of which she had never received before,
made her forget that perhaps he loved another woman. Soon he was no
longer guilty in her eyes. The cessation of that poignant pain which
suspicion had engendered and the presence of a happiness that she had
never even dreamt of, gave her ecstasies of love and of mad gaiety.
The evening was charming for everyone, except the mayor of Verrieres,
who was unable to forget his _parvenu_ manufacturers. Julien left off
thinking about his black ambition, or about those plans of his which
were so difficult to accomplish. For the first time in his life he was
led away by the power of beauty. Lost in a sweetly vague reverie, quite
alien to his character, and softly pressing that hand, which he thought
ideally pretty, he half listened to the rustle of the leaves of the
pine trees, swept by the light night breeze, and to the dogs of the
mill on the Doubs, who barked in the distance.

But this emotion was one of pleasure and not passion. As he entered his
room, he only thought of one happiness, that of taking up again his
favourite book. When one is twenty the idea of the world and the figure
to be cut in it dominate everything.

He soon, however, laid down the book. As the result of thinking of the
victories of Napoleon, he had seen a new element in his own victory.
"Yes," he said to himself, "I have won a battle. I must exploit it. I
must crush the pride of that proud gentleman while he is in retreat.
That would be real Napoleon. I must ask him for three days' holiday to
go and see my friend Fouque. If he refuses me I will threaten to give
him notice, but he will yield the point."

Madame de Renal could not sleep a wink. It seemed as though, until this
moment, she had never lived. She was unable to distract her thoughts
from the happiness of feeling Julian cover her hand with his burning
kisses.

Suddenly the awful word adultery came into her mind. All the
loathesomeness with which the vilest debauchery can invest sensual love
presented itself to her imagination. These ideas essayed to pollute the
divinely tender image which she was fashioning of Julien, and of the
happiness of loving him. The future began to be painted in terrible
colours. She began to regard herself as contemptible.

That moment was awful. Her soul was arriving in unknown countries.
During the evening she had tasted a novel happiness. Now she found
herself suddenly plunged in an atrocious unhappiness. She had never
had any idea of such sufferings; they troubled her reason. She thought
for a moment of confessing to her husband that she was apprehensive
of loving Julien. It would be an opportunity of speaking of him.
Fortunately her memory threw up a maxim which her aunt had once given
her on the eve of her marriage. The maxim dealt with the danger of
making confidences to a husband, for a husband is after all a master.
She wrung her hands in the excess of her grief. She was driven this way
and that by clashing and painful ideas. At one moment she feared that
she was not loved. The next the awful idea of crime tortured her, as
much as if she had to be exposed in the pillory on the following day in
the public square of Verrieres, with a placard to explain her adultery
to the populace.

Madame de Renal had no experience of life. Even in the full possession
of her faculties, and when fully exercising her reason, she would never
have appreciated any distinction between being guilty in the eyes of
God, and finding herself publicly overwhelmed with the crudest marks of
universal contempt.

When the awful idea of adultery, and of all the disgrace which in her
view that crime brought in its train, left her some rest, she began to
dream of the sweetness of living innocently with Julien as in the days
that had gone by.

She found herself confronted with the horrible idea that Julien loved
another woman. She still saw his pallor when he had feared to lose
her portrait, or to compromise her by exposing it to view. For the
first time she had caught fear on that tranquil and noble visage. He
had never shewn such emotion to her or her children. This additional
anguish reached the maximum of unhappiness which the human soul is
capable of enduring. Unconsciously, Madame de Renal uttered cries which
woke up her maid. Suddenly she saw the brightness of a light appear
near her bed, and recognized Elisa. "Is it you he loves?" she exclaimed
in her delirium.

Fortunately, the maid was so astonished by the terrible trouble in
which she found her mistress that she paid no attention to this
singular expression. Madame de Renal appreciated her imprudence.
"I have the fever," she said to her, "and I think I am a little
delirious." Completely woken up by the necessity of controlling
herself, she became less unhappy. Reason regained that supreme control
which the semi-somnolent state had taken away. To free herself from her
maid's continual stare, she ordered her maid to read the paper, and
it was as she listened to the monotonous voice of this girl, reading
a long article from the _Quotidienne_ that Madame de Renal made the
virtuous resolution to treat Julien with absolute coldness when she saw
him again.






Part 1, Chapter 11
After a quick visit to Father Chelan, Julien returns to the de Renals' house. He goes into the garden and sits with Madame de Renal and her cousin, Madame Dervilles. Monsieur de Renal comes to sit with them and talks angrily about politics. When he's not looking, Julien kisses Madame de Renal's arm. After her husband has left, Madame de Renal feels overcome with passion. But she's also scared that she's on the road to becoming an adulteress. She's also scared that Julien still loves another woman. She decides to treat Julien with total coldness the next time she sees him.