finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_15_part_0.txt
The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 16
part 1, chapter 16
{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 16", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-16", "summary": "The day after Julien and Madame de Renal have slept together, they barely make eye contact when they sit down for lunch. Madame starts to worry that he's not looking at her because he's no longer interested. Madame de Renal's cousin M. Derville sees that something is going on between them and makes sure to always get between them while they're hanging out that day. The next night at 1 a.m., Julien sneaks back into Madame's room for more sex. Julien becomes comfortable with talking to Madame about his doubts and anxieties. It only brings them closer together. Madame often thinks that she should have married a man more like Julien, with a poetic soul. Madame Derville becomes fed up with her cousin's foolish flirtations with Julien. She leaves one day without any explanation. Madame de Renal isn't sad to see her go. Now she gets to be alone with Julien all the time.", "analysis": ""}
CHAPTER XVI

THE DAY AFTER


    He turned his lips to hers and with his hand
    Called back the tangles of her wandering hair.
                               _Don Juan,_ c. I, st. 170.


Happily for Julien's fame, Madame de Renal had been too agitated and
too astonished to appreciate the stupidity of the man who had in a
single moment become the whole to world her.

"Oh, my God!" she said to herself, as she pressed him to retire when
she saw the dawn break, "if my husband has heard the noise, I am lost."
Julien, who had had the time to make up some phrases, remembered this
one,

"Would you regret your life?"

"Oh, very much at a moment like this, but I should not regret having
known you."

Julien thought it incumbent on his dignity to go back to his room in
broad daylight and with deliberate imprudence.

The continuous attention with which he kept on studying his slightest
actions with the absurd idea of appearing a man of experience had only
one advantage. When he saw Madame de Renal again at breakfast his
conduct was a masterpiece of prudence.

As for her, she could not look at him without blushing up to the eyes,
and could not live a moment without looking at him. She realised her
own nervousness, and her efforts to hide it redoubled. Julien only
lifted his eyes towards her once. At first Madame de Renal admired
his prudence: soon seeing that this single look was not repealed, she
became alarmed. "Could it be that he does not love me?" she said to
herself. "Alas! I am quite old for him. I am ten years older than he
is."

As she passed from the dining-room to the garden, she pressed Julien's
hand. In the surprise caused by so singular a mark of love, he regarded
her with passion, for he had thought her very pretty over breakfast,
and while keeping his eyes downcast he had passed his time in thinking
of the details of her charms. This look consoled Madame de Renal. It
did not take away all her anxiety, but her anxiety tended to take away
nearly completely all her remorse towards her husband.

The husband had noticed nothing at breakfast. It was not so with
Madame Derville. She thought she saw Madame de Renal on the point of
succumbing. During the whole day her bold and incisive friendship
regaled her cousin with those innuendoes which were intended to paint
in hideous colours the dangers she was running.

Madame de Renal was burning to find herself alone with Julien. She
wished to ask him if he still loved her. In spite of the unalterable
sweetness of her character, she was several times on the point of
notifying her friend how officious she was.

Madame Derville arranged things so adroitly that evening in the garden,
that she found herself placed between Madame de Renal and Julien.
Madame de Renal, who had thought in her imagination how delicious it
would be to press Julien's hand and carry it to her lips, was not able
to address a single word to him.

This hitch increased her agitation. She was devoured by one pang of
remorse. She had so scolded Julien for his imprudence in coming to her
room on the preceding night, that she trembled lest he should not come
to-night. She left the garden early and went and ensconced herself in
her room, but not being able to control her impatience, she went and
glued her ear to Julien's door. In spite of the uncertainty and passion
which devoured her, she did not dare to enter. This action seemed
to her the greatest possible meanness, for it forms the basis of a
provincial proverb.

The servants had not yet all gone to bed. Prudence at last compelled
her to return to her room. Two hours of waiting were two centuries of
torture.

Julien was too faithful to what he called his duty to fail to
accomplish stage by stage what he had mapped out for himself.

As one o'clock struck, he escaped softly from his room, assured himself
that the master of the house was soundly asleep, and appeared in Madame
de Renal's room. To-night he experienced more happiness by the side of
his love, for he thought less constantly about the part he had to play.
He had eyes to see, and ears to hear. What Madame de Renal said to him
about his age contributed to give him some assurance.

"Alas! I am ten years older than you. How can you love me?" she
repeated vaguely, because the idea oppressed her.

Julien could not realise her happiness, but he saw that it was genuine
and he forgot almost entirely his own fear of being ridiculous.

The foolish thought that he was regarded as an inferior, by reason of
his obscure birth, disappeared also. As Julien's transports reassured
his timid mistress, she regained a little of her happiness, and of her
power to judge her lover. Happily, he had not, on this occasion, that
artificial air which had made the assignation of the previous night a
triumph rather than a pleasure. If she had realised his concentration
on playing a part that melancholy discovery would have taken away all
her happiness for ever. She could only have seen in it the result of
the difference in their ages.

Although Madame de Renal had never thought of the theories of love,
difference in age is next to difference in fortune, one of the great
commonplaces of provincial witticisms, whenever love is the topic of
conversation.

In a few days Julien surrendered himself with all the ardour of his
age, and was desperately in love.

"One must own," he said to himself, "that she has an angelic kindness
of soul, and no one in the world is prettier."

He had almost completely given up playing a part. In a moment of
abandon, he even confessed to her all his nervousness. This confidence
raised the passion which he was inspiring to its zenith. "And I have no
lucky rival after all," said Madame de Renal to herself with delight.
She ventured to question him on the portrait in which he used to be so
interested. Julien swore to her that it was that of a man.

When Madame de Renal had enough presence of mind left to reflect, she
did not recover from her astonishment that so great a happiness could
exist; and that she had never had anything of.

"Oh," she said to herself, "if I had only known Julien ten years ago
when I was still considered pretty."

Julien was far from having thoughts like these. His love was still
akin to ambition. It was the joy of possessing, poor, unfortunate and
despised as he was, so beautiful a woman. His acts of devotion, and his
ecstacies at the sight of his mistress's charms finished by reassuring
her a little with regard to the difference of age. If she had possessed
a little of that knowledge of life which the woman of thirty has
enjoyed in the more civilised of countries for quite a long time, she
would have trembled for the duration of a love, which only seemed to
thrive on novelty and the intoxication of a young man's vanity. In
those moments when he forgot his ambition, Julien admired ecstatically
even the hats and even the dresses of Madame de Renal. He could not
sate himself with the pleasure of smelling their perfume. He would open
her mirrored cupboard, and remain hours on end admiring the beauty and
the order of everything that he found there. His love leaned on him and
looked at him. He was looking at those jewels and those dresses which
had had been her wedding presents.

"I might have married a man like that," thought Madame de Renal
sometimes. "What a fiery soul! What a delightful life one would have
with him?"

As for Julien, he had never been so near to those terrible instruments
of feminine artillery. "It is impossible," he said to himself "for
there to be anything more beautiful in Paris." He could find no flaw
in his happiness. The sincere admiration and ecstacies of his mistress
would frequently make him forget that silly pose which had rendered
him so stiff and almost ridiculous during the first moments of the
intrigue. There were moments where, in spite of his habitual hypocrisy,
he found an extreme delight in confessing to this great lady who
admired him, his ignorance of a crowd of little usages. His mistress's
rank seemed to lift him above himself. Madame de Renal, on her side,
would find the sweetest thrill of intellectual voluptuousness in thus
instructing in a number of little things this young man who was so full
of genius, and who was looked upon by everyone as destined one day to
go so far. Even the sub-prefect and M. Valenod could not help admiring
him. She thought it made them less foolish. As for Madame Derville, she
was very far from being in a position to express the same sentiments.
Rendered desperate by what she thought she divined, and seeing that
her good advice was becoming offensive to a woman who had literally
lost her head, she left Vergy without giving the explanation, which
her friend carefully refrained from asking. Madame de Renal shed a few
tears for her, and soon found her happiness greater than ever. As a
result of her departure, she found herself alone with her lover nearly
the whole day.

Julien abandoned himself all the more to the delightful society of his
sweetheart, since, whenever he was alone, Fouque's fatal proposition
still continued to agitate him. During the first days of his novel life
there were moments when the man who had never loved, who had never been
loved by anyone, would find so delicious a pleasure in being sincere,
that he was on the point of confessing to Madame de Renal that ambition
which up to then had been the very essence of his existence. He would
have liked to have been able to consult her on the strange temptation
which Fouque's offer held out to him, but a little episode rendered any
frankness impossible.






Part 1, Chapter 16
The day after Julien and Madame de Renal have slept together, they barely make eye contact when they sit down for lunch. Madame starts to worry that he's not looking at her because he's no longer interested. Madame de Renal's cousin M. Derville sees that something is going on between them and makes sure to always get between them while they're hanging out that day. The next night at 1 a.m., Julien sneaks back into Madame's room for more sex. Julien becomes comfortable with talking to Madame about his doubts and anxieties. It only brings them closer together. Madame often thinks that she should have married a man more like Julien, with a poetic soul. Madame Derville becomes fed up with her cousin's foolish flirtations with Julien. She leaves one day without any explanation. Madame de Renal isn't sad to see her go. Now she gets to be alone with Julien all the time.