feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_47_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 18
feat_summary_id: part 2, chapter 18
feat_summary: {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 18", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-18", "summary": "Mathilde thinks back on how Julien almost murdered her in the library and figures that for some reason, this gesture makes him truly worthy of her. She walks up to Julien the next day and asks him to accompany her into the garden. Once they're alone, she starts talking to him about the state of her heart. She makes sure to talk as much as possible about all the other young men in her life. This tortures Julien. Finally, Julien tells her that he loves her and that he'll do anything for her. This destroys Mathilde's interest in him, since she only wanted him in the first place because he paid no attention to her. Now that he's groveling at her feet, she finds him repulsive.", "analysis": ""}
text: CHAPTER XLVIII
  
  CRUEL MOMENTS
  
  
          And she confesses it to me! She goes into even
          the smallest details! Her beautiful eyes fixed on
          mine, and describes the love which she felt for
          another.--_Schiller_.
  
  
  The delighted mademoiselle de la Mole thought of nothing but the
  happiness of having been nearly killed. She went so far as to say to
  herself, "he is worthy of being my master since he was on the point of
  killing me. How many handsome young society men would have to be melted
  together before they were capable of so passionate a transport."
  
  "I must admit that he was very handsome at the time when he climbed up
  on the chair to replace the sword in the same picturesque position in
  which the decorator hung it! After all it was not so foolish of me to
  love him."
  
  If at that moment some honourable means of reconciliation had presented
  itself, she would have embraced it with pleasure. Julien locked in his
  room was a prey to the most violent despair. He thought in his madness
  of throwing himself at her feet. If instead of hiding himself in an out
  of the way place, he had wandered about the garden of the hotel so as
  to keep within reach of any opportunity, he would perhaps have changed
  in a single moment his awful unhappiness into the keenest happiness.
  
  But the tact for whose lack we are now reproaching him would have been
  incompatible with that sublime seizure of the sword, which at the
  present time rendered him so handsome in the eyes of mademoiselle de
  la Mole. This whim in Julien's favour lasted the whole day; Mathilde
  conjured up a charming image of the short moments during which she had
  loved him: she regretted them.
  
  "As a matter of fact," she said to herself, "my passion for this poor
  boy can from his point of view only have lasted from one hour after
  midnight when I saw him arrive by his ladder with all his pistols in
  his coat pocket, till eight o'clock in the morning. It was a quarter of
  an hour after that as I listened to mass at Sainte-Valere that I began
  to think that he might very well try to terrify me into obedience."
  
  After dinner mademoiselle de la Mole, so far from avoiding Julien,
  spoke to him and made him promise to follow her into the garden. He
  obeyed. It was a new experience.
  
  Without suspecting it Mathilde was yielding to the love which she was
  now feeling for him again. She found an extreme pleasure in walking by
  his side, and she looked curiously at those hands which had seized the
  sword to kill her that very morning.
  
  After such an action, after all that had taken place, some of the
  former conversation was out of the question.
  
  Mathilde gradually began to talk confidentially to him about the
  state of her heart. She found a singular pleasure in this kind of
  conversation, she even went so far as to describe to him the fleeting
  moments of enthusiasm which she had experienced for M. de Croisenois,
  for M. de Caylus----
  
  "What! M. de Caylus as well!" exclaimed Julien, and all the jealousy of
  a discarded lover burst out in those words, Mathilde thought as much,
  but did not feel at all insulted.
  
  She continued torturing Julien by describing her former sentiments with
  the most picturesque detail and the accent of the most intimate truth.
  He saw that she was portraying what she had in her mind's eye. He had
  the pain of noticing that as she spoke she made new discoveries in her
  own heart.
  
  The unhappiness of jealousy could not be carried further.
  
  It is cruel enough to suspect that a rival is loved, but there is no
  doubt that to hear the woman one adores confess in detail the love
  which rivals inspires, is the utmost limit of anguish.
  
  Oh, how great a punishment was there now for those impulses of pride
  which had induced Julien to place himself as superior to the Caylus
  and the Croisenois! How deeply did he feel his own unhappiness as he
  exaggerated to himself their most petty advantages. With what hearty
  good faith he despised himself.
  
  Mathilde struck him as adorable. All words are weak to express his
  excessive admiration. As he walked beside her he looked surreptitiously
  at her hands, her arms, her queenly bearing. He was so completely
  overcome by love and unhappiness as to be on the point of falling at
  her feet and crying "pity."
  
  "Yes, and that person who is so beautiful, who is so superior to
  everything and who loved me once, will doubtless soon love M. de
  Caylus."
  
  Julien could have no doubts of mademoiselle de la Mole's sincerity,
  the accent of truth was only too palpable in everything she said. In
  order that nothing might be wanting to complete his unhappiness there
  were moments when, as a result of thinking about the sentiments which
  she had once experienced for M. de Caylus, Mathilde came to talk of
  him, as though she loved him at the present time. She certainly put an
  inflection of love into her voice. Julien distinguished it clearly.
  
  He would have suffered less if his bosom had been filled inside with
  molten lead. Plunged as he was in this abyss of unhappiness how could
  the poor boy have guessed that it was simply because she was talking to
  him, that mademoiselle de la Mole found so much pleasure in recalling
  those weaknesses of love which she had formerly experienced for M. de
  Caylus or M. de Luz.
  
  Words fail to express Julien's anguish. He listened to these detailed
  confidences of the love she had experienced for others in that very
  avenue of pines where he had waited so few days ago for one o'clock
  to strike that he might invade her room. No human being can undergo a
  greater degree of unhappiness.
  
  This kind of familiar cruelty lasted for eight long days. Mathilde
  sometimes seemed to seek opportunities of speaking to him and sometimes
  not to avoid them; and the one topic of conversation to which they both
  seemed to revert with a kind of cruel pleasure, was the description of
  the sentiments she had felt for others. She told him about the letters
  which she had written, she remembered their very words, she recited
  whole sentences by heart.
  
  She seemed during these last days to be envisaging Julien with a kind
  of malicious joy. She found a keen enjoyment in his pangs.
  
  One sees that Julien had no experience of life; he had not even read
  any novels. If he had been a little less awkward and he had coolly said
  to the young girl, whom he adored so much and who had been giving him
  such strange confidences: "admit that though I am not worth as much as
  all these gentlemen, I am none the less the man whom you loved," she
  would perhaps have been happy at being at thus guessed; at any rate
  success would have entirely depended on the grace with which Julien had
  expressed the idea, and on the moment which he had chosen to do so. In
  any case he would have extricated himself well and advantageously from
  a situation which Mathilde was beginning to find monotonous.
  
  "And you love me no longer, me, who adores you!" said Julien to her one
  day, overcome by love and unhappiness. This piece of folly was perhaps
  the greatest which he could have committed. These words immediately
  destroyed all the pleasure which mademoiselle de la Mole found in
  talking to him about the state of her heart. She was beginning to be
  surprised that he did not, after what had happened, take offence at
  what she told him. She had even gone so far as to imagine at the very
  moment when he made that foolish remark that perhaps he did not love
  her any more. "His pride has doubtless extinguished his love," she was
  saying to herself. "He is not the man to sit still and see people like
  Caylus, de Luz, Croisenois whom he admits are so superior, preferred to
  him. No, I shall never see him at my feet again."
  
  Julien had often in the naivety of his unhappiness, during the previous
  days praised sincerely the brilliant qualities of these gentlemen; he
  would even go so far as to exaggerate them. This nuance had not escaped
  mademoiselle de la Mole, she was astonished by it, but did not guess
  its reason. Julien's frenzied soul, in praising a rival whom he thought
  was loved, was sympathising with his happiness.
  
  These frank but stupid words changed everything in a single moment;
  confident that she was loved, Mathilde despised him utterly.
  
  She was walking with him when he made his ill-timed remark; she left
  him, and her parting look expressed the most awful contempt. She
  returned to the salon and did not look at him again during the whole
  evening. This contempt monopolised her mind the following day. The
  impulse which during the last week had made her find so much pleasure
  in treating Julien as her most intimate friend was out of the question;
  the very sight of him was disagreeable. The sensation Mathilde felt
  reached the point of disgust; nothing can express the extreme contempt
  which she experienced when her eyes fell upon him.
  
  Julien had understood nothing of the history of Mathilde's heart during
  the last week, but he distinguished the contempt. He had the good sense
  only to appear before her on the rarest possible occasions, and never
  looked at her.
  
  But it was not without a mortal anguish that he, as it were, deprived
  himself of her presence. He thought he felt his unhappiness increasing
  still further. "The courage of a man's heart cannot be carried
  further," he said to himself. He passed his life seated at a little
  window at the top of the hotel; the blind was carefully closed, and
  from here at any rate he could see mademoiselle de la Mole when she
  appeared in the garden.
  
  What were his emotions when he saw her walking after dinner with M. de
  Caylus, M. de Luz, or some other for whom she had confessed to him some
  former amorous weakness!
  
  Julien had no idea that unhappiness could be so intense; he was on
  the point of shouting out. This firm soul was at last completely
  overwhelmed.
  
  Thinking about anything else except mademoiselle de la Mole had become
  odious to him; he became incapable of writing the simplest letters.
  
  "You are mad," the marquis said to him.
  
  Julien was frightened that his secret might be guessed, talked
  about illness and succeeded in being believed. Fortunately for him
  the marquis rallied him at dinner about his next journey; Mathilde
  understood that it might be a very long one. It was now several days
  that Julien had avoided her, and the brilliant young men who had all
  that this pale sombre being she had once loved was lacking, had no
  longer the power of drawing her out of her reverie.
  
  "An ordinary girl," she said to herself, "would have sought out the man
  she preferred among those young people who are the cynosure of a salon;
  but one of the characteristics of genius is not to drive its thoughts
  over the rut traced by the vulgar.
  
  "Why, if I were the companion of a man like Julien, who only lacks the
  fortune that I possess, I should be continually exciting attention, I
  should not pass through life unnoticed. Far from incessantly fearing
  a revolution like my cousins who are so frightened of the people that
  they have not the pluck to scold a postillion who drives them badly, I
  should be certain of playing a role and a great role, for the man whom
  I have chosen has a character and a boundless ambition. What does he
  lack? Friends, money? I will give them him." But she treated Julien in
  her thought as an inferior being whose love one could win whenever one
  wanted.
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Part 2, Chapter 18
target: Mathilde thinks back on how Julien almost murdered her in the library and figures that for some reason, this gesture makes him truly worthy of her. She walks up to Julien the next day and asks him to accompany her into the garden. Once they're alone, she starts talking to him about the state of her heart. She makes sure to talk as much as possible about all the other young men in her life. This tortures Julien. Finally, Julien tells her that he loves her and that he'll do anything for her. This destroys Mathilde's interest in him, since she only wanted him in the first place because he paid no attention to her. Now that he's groveling at her feet, she finds him repulsive.