finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_8_part_0.txt
The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 9
part 1, chapter 9
{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-9", "summary": "Julien sits down with Madame de Renal and her friend Madame Derville one evening. When he's sure that Derville can't see, he reaches out and holds Madame de Renal's hand. She pulls away, but he grabs it again. When Madame Derville asks to head back inside the house, Madame de Renal says she'd like to stay out . Julien hardly sleeps that night and sleeps in until noon the next day. When he comes downstairs, he gets chewed out by a newly returned Monsieur de Renal. The boss isn't happy that Julien has wasted the entire morning with teaching anything to the de Renal children. While walking with Madame de Renal, Julie learns the Monsieur de Renal is going to have all the mattresses in the house re-stuffed. He is secretly hiding a picture under his mattress and he's worried that it'll be found. At this point, we don't know who's in the picture. He takes Madame de Renal aside and asks her to help him get his picture back. Madame is crushed because she assumes it's a picture of his sweetheart. Nonetheless, she goes up to his room for him and gets the box that the picture is in. She has also promised Julien not to look at the picture. We only find out afterward that it's a portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte that Julien is hiding. The rich folks of France all despise Napoleon, and Julien might get run out of town if people found out that he worshipped the man like a hero. Julien burns the box and everything in it. Afterward, he tries to kiss Madame's hand. But she pushes him away and he storms off, angry with hurt pride.", "analysis": ""}
CHAPTER IX

AN EVENING IN THE COUNTRY


        M. Guerin's Dido, a charming sketch!--_Strombeck_.


His expression was singular when he saw Madame de Renal the next
day; he watched her like an enemy with whom he would have to fight a
duel. These looks, which were so different from those of the previous
evening, made Madame de Renal lose her head; she had been kind to him
and he appeared angry. She could not take her eyes off his.

Madame Derville's presence allowed Julien to devote less time to
conversation, and more time to thinking about what he had in his mind.
His one object all this day was to fortify himself by reading the
inspired book that gave strength to his soul.

He considerably curtailed the children's lessons, and when Madame de
Renal's presence had effectually brought him back to the pursuit of his
ambition, he decided that she absolutely must allow her hand to rest in
his that evening.

The setting of the sun which brought the crucial moment nearer and
nearer made Julien's heart beat in a strange way. Night came. He
noticed with a joy, which took an immense weight off his heart, that
it was going to be very dark. The sky, which was laden with big clouds
that had been brought along by a sultry wind, seemed to herald a storm.
The two friends went for their walk very late. All they did that night
struck Julien as strange. They were enjoying that hour which seems to
give certain refined souls an increased pleasure in loving.

At last they sat down, Madame de Renal beside Julien, and Madame
Derville near her friend. Engrossed as he was by the attempt which
he was going to make, Julien could think of nothing to say. The
conversation languished.

"Shall I be as nervous and miserable over my first duel?" said Julien
to himself; for he was too suspicious both of himself and of others,
not to realise his own mental state.

In his mortal anguish, he would have preferred any danger whatsoever.
How many times did he not wish some matter to crop up which would
necessitate Madame de Renal going into the house and leaving the
garden! The violent strain on Julien's nerves was too great for his
voice not to be considerably changed; soon Madame de Renal's voice
became nervous as well, but Julien did not notice it. The awful battle
raging between duty and timidity was too painful, for him to be in a
position to observe anything outside himself. A quarter to ten had
just struck on the chateau clock without his having ventured anything.
Julien was indignant at his own cowardice, and said to himself, "at
the exact moment when ten o'clock strikes, I will perform what I have
resolved to do all through the day, or I will go up to my room and blow
out my brains."

After a final moment of expectation and anxiety, during which Julien
was rendered almost beside himself by his excessive emotion, ten
o'clock struck from the clock over his head. Each stroke of the fatal
clock reverberated in his bosom, and caused an almost physical pang.

Finally, when the last stroke of ten was still reverberating, he
stretched out his hand and took Madame de Renal's, who immediately
withdrew it. Julien, scarcely knowing what he was doing, seized it
again. In spite of his own excitement, he could not help being struck
by the icy coldness of the hand which he was taking; he pressed it
convulsively; a last effort was made to take it away, but in the end
the hand remained in his.

His soul was inundated with happiness, not that he loved Madame de
Renal, but an awful torture had just ended. He thought it necessary
to say something, to avoid Madame Derville noticing anything. His
voice was now strong and ringing. Madame de Renal's, on the contrary,
betrayed so much emotion that her friend thought she was ill, and
suggested her going in. Julien scented danger, "if Madame de Renal goes
back to the salon, I shall relapse into the awful state in which I have
been all day. I have held the hand far too short a time for it really
to count as the scoring of an actual advantage."

At the moment when Madame Derville was repeating her suggestion to
go back to the salon, Julien squeezed vigorously the hand that was
abandoned to him.

Madame de Renal, who had started to get up, sat down again and said in
a faint voice,

"I feel a little ill, as a matter of fact, but the open air is doing me
good."

These words confirmed Julien's happiness, which at the present moment
was extreme; he spoke, he forgot to pose, and appeared the most
charming man in the world to the two friends who were listening to him.
Nevertheless, there was a slight lack of courage in all this eloquence
which had suddenly come upon him. He was mortally afraid that Madame
Derville would get tired of the wind before the storm, which was
beginning to rise, and want to go back alone into the salon. He would
then have remained _tete-a-tete_ with Madame de Renal. He had had,
almost by accident that blind courage which is sufficient for action;
but he felt that it was out of his power to speak the simplest word to
Madame de Renal. He was certain that, however slight her reproaches
might be, he would nevertheless be worsted, and that the advantage he
had just won would be destroyed.

Luckily for him on this evening, his moving and emphatic speeches found
favour with Madame Derville, who very often found him as clumsy as a
child and not at all amusing. As for Madame de Renal, with her hand in
Julien's, she did not have a thought; she simply allowed herself to go
on living.

The hours spent under this great pine tree, planted by by Charles the
Bold according to the local tradition, were a real period of happiness.
She listened with delight to the soughing of the wind in the thick
foliage of the pine tree and to the noise of some stray drops which
were beginning to fall upon the leaves which were lowest down. Julien
failed to notice one circumstance which, if he had, would have quickly
reassured him; Madame de Renal, who had been obliged to take away her
hand, because she had got up to help her cousin to pick up a flower-pot
which the wind had knocked over at her feet, had scarcely sat down
again before she gave him her hand with scarcely any difficulty and as
though it had already been a pre-arranged thing between them.

Midnight had struck a long time ago; it was at last necessary to leave
the garden; they separated. Madame de Renal swept away as she was, by
the happiness of loving, was so completely ignorant of the world that
she scarcely reproached herself at all. Her happiness deprived her of
her sleep. A leaden sleep overwhelmed Julien who was mortally fatigued
by the battle which timidity and pride had waged in his heart all
through the day.

He was called at five o'clock on the following day and scarcely gave
Madame de Renal a single thought.

He had accomplished his duty, and a heroic duty too. The consciousness
of this filled him with happiness; he locked himself in his room, and
abandoned himself with quite a new pleasure to reading exploits of his
hero.

When the breakfast bell sounded, the reading of the Bulletins of the
Great Army had made him forget all his advantages of the previous day.
He said to himself flippantly, as he went down to the salon, "I must
tell that woman that I am in love with her." Instead of those looks
brimful of pleasure which he was expecting to meet, he found the stern
visage of M. de Renal, who had arrived from Verrieres two hours ago,
and did not conceal his dissatisfaction at Julien's having passed the
whole morning without attending to the children. Nothing could have
been more sordid than this self-important man when he was in a bad
temper and thought that he could safely show it.

Each harsh word of her husband pierced Madame de Renal's heart.

As for Julien, he was so plunged in his ecstasy, and still so engrossed
by the great events which had been passing before his eyes for several
hours, that he had some difficulty at first in bringing his attention
sufficiently down to listen to the harsh remarks which M. de Renal was
addressing to him. He said to him at last, rather abruptly,

"I was ill."

The tone of this answer would have stung a much less sensitive man than
the mayor of Verrieres. He half thought of answering Julien by turning
him out of the house straight away. He was only restrained by the
maxim which he had prescribed for himself, of never hurrying unduly in
business matters.

"The young fool," he said to himself shortly afterwards, "has won a
kind of reputation in my house. That man Valenod may take him into his
family, or he may quite well marry Elisa, and in either case, he will
be able to have the laugh of me in his heart."

In spite of the wisdom of these reflections, M. de Renal's
dissatisfaction did not fail to vent itself any the less by a string
of coarse insults which gradually irritated Julien. Madame de Renal
was on the point of bursting into tears. Breakfast was scarcely over,
when she asked Julien to give her his arm for a walk. She leaned on him
affectionately. Julien could only answer all that Madame de Renal said
to him by whispering.

"_That's what rich people are like!_"

M. de Renal was walking quite close to them; his presence increased
Julien's anger. He suddenly noticed that Madame de Renal was leaning on
his arm in a manner which was somewhat marked. This horrified him, and
he pushed her violently away and disengaged his arm.

Luckily, M. de Renal did not see this new piece of impertinence; it was
only noticed by Madame Derville. Her friend burst into tears. M. de
Renal now started to chase away by a shower of stones a little peasant
girl who had taken a private path crossing a corner of the orchard.
"Monsieur Julien, restrain yourself, I pray you. Remember that we all
have our moments of temper," said madame Derville rapidly.

Julien looked at her coldly with eyes in which the most supreme
contempt was depicted.

This look astonished Madame Derville, and it would have surprised
her even more if she had appreciated its real expression; she would
have read in it something like a vague hope of the most atrocious
vengeance. It is, no doubt, such moments of humiliation which have made
Robespierres.

"Your Julien is very violent; he frightens me," said Madame Derville to
her friend, in a low voice.

"He is right to be angry," she answered. "What does it matter if
he does pass a morning without speaking to the children, after the
astonishing progress which he has made them make. One must admit that
men are very hard."

For the first time in her life Madame de Renal experienced a kind
of desire for vengeance against her husband. The extreme hatred of
the rich by which Julien was animated was on the point of exploding.
Luckily, M. de Renal called his gardener, and remained occupied
with him in barring by faggots of thorns the private road through
the orchard. Julien did not vouchsafe any answer to the kindly
consideration of which he was the object during all the rest of the
walk. M. de Renal had scarcely gone away before the two friends made
the excuse of being fatigued, and each asked him for an arm.

Walking as he did between these two women whose extreme nervousness
filled their cheeks with a blushing embarrassment, the haughty pallor
and sombre, resolute air of Julien formed a strange contrast. He
despised these women and all tender sentiments.

"What!" he said to himself, "not even an income of five hundred francs
to finish my studies! Ah! how I should like to send them packing."

And absorbed as he was by these stern ideas, such few courteous words
of his two friends as he deigned to take the trouble to understand,
displeased him as devoid of sense, silly, feeble, in a word--feminine.

As the result of speaking for the sake of speaking and of endeavouring
to keep the conversation alive, it came about that Madame de Renal
mentioned that her husband had come from Verrieres because he had made
a bargain for the May straw with one of his farmers. (In this district
it is the May straw with which the bed mattresses are filled).

"My husband will not rejoin us," added Madame de Renal; "he will occupy
himself with finishing the re-stuffing of the house mattresses with
the help of the gardener and his valet. He has put the May straw this
morning in all the beds on the first storey; he is now at the second."

Julien changed colour. He looked at Madame de Renal in a singular way,
and soon managed somehow to take her on one side, doubling his pace.
Madame Derville allowed them to get ahead.

"Save my life," said Julien to Madame de Renal; "only you can do it,
for you know that the valet hates me desperately. I must confess to
you, madame, that I have a portrait. I have hidden it in the mattress
of my bed."

At these words Madame de Renal in her turn became pale.

"Only you, Madame, are able at this moment to go into my room, feel
about without their noticing in the corner of the mattress; it
is nearest the window. You will find a small, round box of black
cardboard, very glossy."

"Does it contain a portrait?" said Madame de Renal, scarcely able to
hold herself upright.

Julien noticed her air of discouragement, and at once proceeded to
exploit it.

"I have a second favour to ask you, madame. I entreat you not to look
at that portrait; it is my secret."

"It is a secret," repeated Madame de Renal in a faint voice.

But though she had been brought up among people who are proud of their
fortune and appreciative of nothing except money, love had already
instilled generosity into her soul. Truly wounded as she was, it was
with an air of the most simple devotion that Madame de Renal asked
Julien the questions necessary to enable her to fulfil her commission.

"So" she said to him as she went away, "it is a little round box of
black cardboard, very glossy."

"Yes, Madame," answered Julien, with that hardness which danger gives
to men.

She ascended the second storey of the chateau as pale as though she had
been going to her death. Her misery was completed by the sensation that
she was on the verge of falling ill, but the necessity of doing Julien
a service restored her strength.

"I must have that box," she said to herself, as she doubled her pace.

She heard her husband speaking to the valet in Julien's very room.
Happily, they passed into the children's room. She lifted up the
mattress, and plunged her hand into the stuffing so violently that she
bruised her fingers. But, though she was very sensitive to slight pain
of this kind, she was not conscious of it now, for she felt almost
simultaneously the smooth surface of the cardboard box. She seized it
and disappeared.

She had scarcely recovered from the fear of being surprised by her
husband than the horror with which this box inspired her came within an
ace of positively making her feel ill.

"So Julien is in love, and I hold here the portrait of the woman whom
he loves!"

Seated on the chair in the ante-chamber of his apartment, Madame
de Renal fell a prey to all the horrors of jealousy. Her extreme
ignorance, moreover, was useful to her at this juncture; her
astonishment mitigated her grief. Julien seized the box without
thanking her or saying a single word, and ran into his room, where
he lit a fire and immediately burnt it. He was pale and in a state
of collapse. He exaggerated the extent of the danger which he had
undergone.

"Finding Napoleon's portrait," he said to himself, "in the possession
of a man who professes so great a hate for the usurper! Found, too,
by M. de Renal, who is so great an _ultra_, and is now in a state of
irritation, and, to complete my imprudence, lines written in my own
handwriting on the white cardboard behind the portrait, lines, too,
which can leave no doubt on the score of my excessive admiration. And
each of these transports of love is dated. There was one the day before
yesterday."

"All my reputation collapsed and shattered in a moment," said Julien
to himself as he watched the box burn, "and my reputation is my only
asset. It is all I have to live by--and what a life to, by heaven!"

An hour afterwards, this fatigue, together with the pity which he felt
for himself made him inclined to be more tender. He met Madame de Renal
and took her hand, which he kissed with more sincerity than he had
ever done before. She blushed with happiness and almost simultaneously
rebuffed Julien with all the anger of jealousy. Julien's pride which
had been so recently wounded made him act foolishly at this juncture.
He saw in Madame de Renal nothing but a rich woman, he disdainfully let
her hand fall and went away. He went and walked about meditatively in
the garden. Soon a bitter smile appeared on his lips.

"Here I am walking about as serenely as a man who is master of his own
time. I am not bothering about the children! I am exposing myself to M.
de Renal's humiliating remarks, and he will be quite right." He ran to
the children's room. The caresses of the youngest child, whom he loved
very much, somewhat calmed his agony.

"He does not despise me yet," thought Julien. But he soon reproached
himself for this alleviation of his agony as though it were a new
weakness. The children caress me just in the same way in which they
would caress the young hunting-hound which was bought yesterday.






Part 1, Chapter 9
Julien sits down with Madame de Renal and her friend Madame Derville one evening. When he's sure that Derville can't see, he reaches out and holds Madame de Renal's hand. She pulls away, but he grabs it again. When Madame Derville asks to head back inside the house, Madame de Renal says she'd like to stay out . Julien hardly sleeps that night and sleeps in until noon the next day. When he comes downstairs, he gets chewed out by a newly returned Monsieur de Renal. The boss isn't happy that Julien has wasted the entire morning with teaching anything to the de Renal children. While walking with Madame de Renal, Julie learns the Monsieur de Renal is going to have all the mattresses in the house re-stuffed. He is secretly hiding a picture under his mattress and he's worried that it'll be found. At this point, we don't know who's in the picture. He takes Madame de Renal aside and asks her to help him get his picture back. Madame is crushed because she assumes it's a picture of his sweetheart. Nonetheless, she goes up to his room for him and gets the box that the picture is in. She has also promised Julien not to look at the picture. We only find out afterward that it's a portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte that Julien is hiding. The rich folks of France all despise Napoleon, and Julien might get run out of town if people found out that he worshipped the man like a hero. Julien burns the box and everything in it. Afterward, he tries to kiss Madame's hand. But she pushes him away and he storms off, angry with hurt pride.