finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_31_part_0.txt
The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 2
part 2, chapter 2
{"name": "Part 2, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-2", "summary": "Father Pirard leads Julien to the Marquis de La Mole. The man is so polite and courteous that Julien is caught off guard. After the meeting, Julien goes to a tailor to get some new clothes. Julien's first tasks for the marquis don't go well, since he doesn't spell very well. He's more of an oral learner. Julien also makes the blunder of not being properly dressed for certain hours of the day. He later meets the Marquis' wife, who barely looks at him. The Marquis' son, Count Norbert, seems like a nice enough guy. At dinner, Julien is able to win much of the family over with his knowledge of old books. Even The Marquis' wife gives him the benefit of the doubt, since he seems to amuse her husband.", "analysis": ""}
CHAPTER XXXII

ENTRY INTO SOCIETY


        Ludicrous and pathetic memory: the first drawing-room
        where one appeared alone and without support at the
        age of eighteen! the look of a woman sufficed to
        intimidate me. The more I wished to please the more
        clumsy I became. I evolved the most unfounded ideas
        about everything. I would either abandon myself without
        any reason, or I would regard a man as an enemy simply
        because he had looked at me with a serious air; but
        all the same, in the middle of the unhappiness of
        my timidity, how beautiful did I find a beautiful
        day--_Kant_.


Julien stopped in amazement in the middle of the courtyard. "Pull
yourself together," said the abbe Pirard. "You get horrible ideas into
your head, besides you are only a child. What has happened to the
nil mirari of Horace (no enthusiasm) remember that when they see you
established here this crowd of lackeys will make fun of you. They will
see in you an equal who has been unjustly placed above them; and, under
a masquerade of good advice and a desire to help you, they will try to
make you fall into some gross blunder."

"Let them do their worst," said Julien biting his lip, and he became as
distrustful as ever.

The salons on the first storey which our gentlemen went through before
reaching the marquis' study, would have seemed to you, my reader, as
gloomy as they were magnificent. If they had been given to you just as
they were, you would have refused to live in them. This was the domain
of yawning and melancholy reasoning. They redoubled Julien's rapture.
"How can any one be unhappy?" he thought, "who lives in so splendid an
abode."

Finally our gentlemen arrived at the ugliest rooms in this superb
suite. There was scarcely any light. They found there a little keen
man with a lively eye and a blonde wig. The abbe turned round
to Julien and presented him. It was the marquis. Julien had much
difficulty in recognising him, he found his manner was so polite.
It was no longer the grand seigneur with that haughty manner of the
abbey of Bray-le-Haut. Julien thought that his wig had much too many
hairs. As the result of this opinion he was not at all intimidated.
The descendant of the friend of Henry III. seemed to him at first of
a rather insignificant appearance. He was extremely thin and very
restless, but he soon noticed that the marquis had a politeness which
was even more pleasant to his listener than that of the Bishop of
Besancon himself. The audience only lasted three minutes. As they went
out the abbe said to Julien,

"You looked at the marquis just as you would have looked at a picture.
I am not a great expert in what these people here call politeness. You
will soon know more about it than I do, but really the boldness of your
looks seemed scarcely polite."

They had got back into the fiacre. The driver stopped near the
boulevard; the abbe ushered Julien into a suite of large rooms. Julien
noticed that there was no furniture. He was looking at the magnificent
gilded clock representing a subject which he thought very indecent,
when a very elegant gentleman approached him with a smiling air. Julien
bowed slightly.

The gentleman smiled and put his hand on his shoulder. Julien shuddered
and leapt back, he reddened with rage. The abbe Pirard, in spite of his
gravity, laughed till the tears came into his eyes. The gentleman was a
tailor.

"I give you your liberty for two days," said the abbe as they went
out. "You cannot be introduced before then to Madame de la Mole. Any
one else would watch over you as if you were a young girl during these
first few moments of your life in this new Babylon. Get ruined at once
if you have got to be ruined, and I will be rid of my own weakness of
being fond of you. The day after to-morrow this tailor will bring you
two suits, you will give the man who tries them on five francs. Apart
from that don't let these Parisians hear the sound of your voice. If
you say a word they will manage somehow to make fun of you. They have a
talent for it. Come and see me the day after to-morrow at noon.... Go
and ruin yourself.... I was forgetting, go and order boots and a hat at
these addresses."

Julien scrutinised the handwriting of the addresses.

"It's the marquis's hand," said the abbe; "he is an energetic man who
foresees everything, and prefers doing to ordering. He is taking you
into his house, so that you may spare him that kind of trouble. Will
you have enough brains to execute efficiently all the instructions
which he will give you with scarcely a word of explanation? The future
will show, look after yourself."

Julien entered the shops indicated by the addresses without saying a
single word. He observed that he was received with respect, and that
the bootmaker as he wrote his name down in the ledger put M. de Sorel.

When he was in the Cemetery of Pere La Chaise a very obliging
gentleman, and what is more, one who was Liberal in his views,
suggested that he should show Julien the tomb of Marshal Ney which a
sagacious statecraft had deprived of the honour of an epitaph, but when
he left this Liberal, who with tears in his eyes almost clasped him in
his arms, Julien was without his watch. Enriched by this experience two
days afterwards he presented himself to the abbe Pirard, who looked at
him for a long time.

"Perhaps you are going to become a fop," said the abbe to him severely.
Julien looked like a very young man in full mourning; as a matter of
fact, he looked very well, but the good abbe was too provincial himself
to see that Julien still carried his shoulders in that particular way
which signifies in the provinces both elegance and importance. When the
marquis saw Julien his opinion of his graces differed so radically from
that of the good abbe as he said,

"Would you have any objection to M. le Sorel taking some dancing
lessons?"

The abbe was thunderstruck.

"No," he answered at last. "Julien is not a priest."

The marquis went up the steps of a little secret staircase two at a
time, and installed our hero in a pretty attic which looked out on the
big garden of the hotel. He asked him how many shirts he had got at the
linen drapers.

"Two," answered Julien, intimidated at seeing so great a lord
condescend to such details.

"Very good," replied the marquis quite seriously, and with a certain
curt imperiousness which gave Julien food for thought. "Very good, get
twenty-two more shirts. Here are your first quarter's wages."

As he went down from the attic the marquis called an old man. "Arsene,"
he said to him, "you will serve M. Sorel." A few minutes afterwards
Julien found himself alone in a magnificent library. It was a delicious
moment. To prevent his emotion being discovered he went and hid in
a little dark corner. From there he contemplated with rapture the
brilliant backs of the books. "I shall be able to read all these," he
said to himself. "How can I fail to like it here? M. de Renal would
have thought himself dishonoured for ever by doing one-hundredth part
of what the Marquis de la Mole has just done for me.

"But let me have a look at the copies I have to make." Having finished
this work Julien ventured to approach the books. He almost went mad
with joy as he opened an edition of Voltaire. He ran and opened the
door of the library to avoid being surprised. He then indulged in the
luxury of opening each of the eighty volumes. They were magnificently
bound and were the masterpiece of the best binder in London. It was
even more than was required to raise Julien's admiration to the maximum.

An hour afterwards the marquis came in and was surprised to notice that
Julien spelt cela with two "ll" cella. "Is all that the abbe told me of
his knowledge simply a fairy tale?" The marquis was greatly discouraged
and gently said to him,

"You are not sure of your spelling?"

"That is true," said Julien without thinking in the least of the
injustice that he was doing to himself. He was overcome by the kindness
of the marquis which recalled to him through sheer force of contrast
the superciliousness of M. de Renal.

"This trial of the little Franc-comtois abbe is waste of time," thought
the marquis, "but I had such great need of a reliable man."

"You spell cela with one 'l,'" said the marquis to him, "and when you
have finished your copies look the words whose spelling you are not
sure of up in the dictionary."

The marquis sent for him at six o'clock. He looked at Julien's boots
with manifest pain. "I am sorry for a mistake I made. I did not tell
you that you must dress every day at half-past five."

Julien looked at him but did not understand.

"I mean to say put on stockings. Arsene will remind you. To-day I will
make your apologies."

As he finished the sentence M. de la Mole escorted Julien into a salon
resplendent with gilding. On similar occasions M. de Renal always made
a point of doubling his pace so as to have the privilege of being the
first to pass the threshold. His former employer's petty vanity caused
Julien to tread on the marquis's feet and hurt him a great deal because
of his gout. "So he is clumsy to the bargain," he said to himself. He
presented him to a woman of high stature and of imposing appearance.
It was the marquise. Julien thought that her manner was impertinent,
and that she was a little like Madame de Maugiron, the wife of the
sub-prefect of the arrondissement of Verrieres when she was present
at the Saint-Charles dinner. Rendered somewhat nervous by the extreme
magnificence of the salon Julien did not hear what M. de la Mole was
saying. The marquise scarcely deigned to look at him. There were
several men there, among whom Julien recognised with an inexpressible
pleasure the young bishop of Agde who had deigned to speak to him some
months before at the ceremony of Bray-le-Haut. This young prelate was
doubtless frightened by the tender look which the timidity of Julien
fixed on him, and did not bother to recognise "the provincial."

The men assembled in this salon seemed to Julien to have a certain
element of gloom and constraint. Conversation takes place in a low
voice in Paris and little details are not exaggerated.

A handsome young man with moustaches, came in about half-past six. He
was very pale, and had a very small head.

"You always keep us waiting" said the marquise, as he kissed her hand.

Julien realised that it was the Count de la Mole. From the very first
he thought he was charming.

"Is it possible," he said to himself "that this is the man whose
offensive jests are going to drive me out of the house."

As the result of scrutinising count Norbert, Julien noticed that he
was in boots and spurs. "And I have got to be in shoes just like
an inferior apparently." They sat down at table, Julien heard the
marquise raising her voice a little and saying something severe. Almost
simultaneously he noticed an extremely blonde and very well developed
young person who had just sat down opposite him. Nevertheless she
made no appeal to him. Looking at her attentively he thought that he
had never seen such beautiful eyes, although they betokened a great
coldness of soul. Subsequently Julien thought that, though they
looked bored and sceptical, they were conscious of the duty of being
impressive. "Madame de Renal of course had very fine eyes" he said to
himself, "she used to be universally complimented on them, but they had
nothing in common with these." Julien did not know enough of society
to appreciate that it was the fire of repartee which from time to time
gave their brilliancy to the eyes of Mademoiselle Mathilde (for that
was the name he heard her called by). When Madame de Renal's eyes
became animated, it was with the fire of passion, or as the result of a
generous indignation on hearing of some evil deed. Towards the end of
the meal Julien found a word to express Mademoiselle de la Mole's type
of beauty. Her eyes are scintillating, he said to himself. Apart from
her eyes she was cruelly like her mother, whom he liked less and less,
and he ceased looking at her. By way of compensation he thought Count
Norbert admirable in every respect. Julien was so fascinated that the
idea never occurred to him of being jealous, and hating him because he
was richer and of nobler birth than he was himself.

Julien thought that the marquis looked bored.

About the second course he said to his son: "Norbert, I ask all your
good offices for M. Julien Sorel, whom I have just taken into my staff
and of whom I hope to make a man _si cella se peut_."

"He is my secretary," said the marquis to his neighbour, "and he spells
cela with two ll's." Everybody looked at Julien, who bowed to Norbert
in a manner that was slightly too marked, but speaking generally they
were satisfied with his expression.

The marquis must have spoken about the kind of education which Julien
had received for one of the guests tackled him on Horace. "It was
just by talking about Horace that I succeeded with the bishop of
Besancon," said Julien to himself. Apparently that is the only author
they know. From that instant he was master of himself. This transition
was rendered easy because he had just decided that he would never look
upon Madamoiselle de la Mole as a woman after his own taste. Since the
seminary he had the lowest opinion of men, and was not to be easily
intimidated by them. He would have enjoyed all his self-possession if
the dining-room had been furnished with less magnificence. It was,
as a matter of fact, two mirrors each eight feet high in which he
would look from time to time at the man who was speaking to him about
Horace, which continued to impress him. His phrases were not too long
for a provincial, he had fine eyes whose brilliancy was doubled by his
quavering timidity, or by his happy bashfulness when he had given a
good answer. They found him pleasant. This kind of examination gave
a little interest to a solemn dinner. The marquis signed to Julien's
questioner to press him sharply. "Can he possibly know something?" he
thought.

Julien answered and thought out new ideas. He lost sufficient of his
nervousness, not indeed to exhibit any wit, for that is impossible
for any one ignorant of the special language which is used in Paris,
but to show himself possessed of ideas which, though presented out of
place and ungracefully, were yet original. They saw that he knew Latin
perfectly.

Julien's adversary was a member of the Academy Inscriptions who chanced
to know Latin. He found Julien a very good humanist, was not frightened
of making him feel uncomfortable, and really tried to embarrass him. In
the heat of the controversy Julien eventually forgot the magnificent
furniture of the dining-room. He managed to expound theories concerning
the Latin poets which his questioner had never read of anywhere. Like
an honest man, he gave the young secretary all due credit for them.
As luck would have it, they started a discussion on the question
of whether Horace was poor or rich, a good humoured and careless
voluptuary who made verses to amuse himself, like Chapelle the friend
of Moliere and de la Fontaine, or a poor devil of a poet laureate who
wrote odes for the king's birthday like Southey, the accuser of Lord
Byron. They talked about the state of society under Augustus and under
George IV. At both periods the aristocracy was all-powerful, but,
while at Rome it was despoiled of its power by Maecenas who was only a
simple knight, it had in England reduced George IV practically to the
position of a Venetian doge. This discussion seemed to lift the marquis
out of that state of bored torpor in which he had been plunged at the
beginning of the dinner.

Julien found meaningless such modern names as Southey, Lord Byron,
and George IV, which he now heard pronounced for the first time. But
every one noticed that whenever the conversation dealt with events that
had taken place in Rome and about which knowledge could be obtained
by a perusal of the works of Horace, Martial or Tacitus, etc., he
showed an indisputable superiority. Julien coolly appropriated several
ideas which he had learnt from the bishop of Besancon in the historic
conversation which he had had with that prelate. These ideas were not
the least appreciated.

When every one was tired of talking about poets the marquise, who
always made it a rule to admire whatever amused her husband, deigned
to look at Julien. "Perhaps an educated man lies hid beneath the
clumsy manners of this young abbe," said the Academician who happened
to be near the marquise. Julien caught a few words of what he said.
Ready-made phrases suited the intellect of the mistress of the house
quite well. She adopted this one about Julien, and was very pleased
with herself for having invited the academician to dinner. "He has
amused M. de la Mole" she thought.






Part 2, Chapter 2
Father Pirard leads Julien to the Marquis de La Mole. The man is so polite and courteous that Julien is caught off guard. After the meeting, Julien goes to a tailor to get some new clothes. Julien's first tasks for the marquis don't go well, since he doesn't spell very well. He's more of an oral learner. Julien also makes the blunder of not being properly dressed for certain hours of the day. He later meets the Marquis' wife, who barely looks at him. The Marquis' son, Count Norbert, seems like a nice enough guy. At dinner, Julien is able to win much of the family over with his knowledge of old books. Even The Marquis' wife gives him the benefit of the doubt, since he seems to amuse her husband.