feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_34_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 5
feat_summary_id: part 2, chapter 5
feat_summary: {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 5", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-5", "summary": "Julien gets more and more bored with life at the de La Moles' house. He can't stand the way that no one ever says what they're actually thinking, or if they do, it's something super petty. Julien soon realizes that Madame de La Mole wants her daughter to marry a local baron named Baron de La Joumate.", "analysis": ""}
text: CHAPTER XXXV
  
  SENSIBILITY AND A GREAT PIOUS LADY
  
  
          An idea which has any life in it seems like a crudity,
          so accustomed are they to colourless expression. Woe to
          him who introduces new ideas into his conversation!
                                            --_Faublas_.
  
  
  This was the stage Julien had reached, when after several months of
  probation the steward of the household handed him the third quarter of
  his wages. M. de la Mole had entrusted him with the administration of
  his estates in Brittany and Normandy. Julien made frequent journeys
  there. He had chief control of the correspondence relating to the
  famous lawsuit with the abbe de Frilair. M. Pirard had instructed him.
  
  On the data of the short notes which the marquis would scribble on the
  margin of all the various paper which were addressed to him, Julien
  would compose answers which were nearly all signed.
  
  At the Theology School his professors complained of his lack of
  industry, but they did not fail to regard him as one of their most
  distinguished pupils. This varied work, tackled as it was with all
  the ardour of suffering ambition, soon robbed Julien of that fresh
  complexion which he had brought from the provinces. His pallor
  constituted one of his merits in the eyes of his comrades, the young
  seminarist; he found them much less malicious, much less ready to bow
  down to a silver crown than those of Besancon; they thought he was
  consumptive. The marquis had given him a horse.
  
  Julien fearing that he might meet people during his rides on horseback,
  had given out that this exercise had been prescribed by the doctors.
  The abbe Pirard had taken him into several Jansenist Societies. Julien
  was astonished; the idea of religion was indissolubly connected in his
  mind with the ideas of hypocrisy and covetousness. He admired those
  austere pious men who never gave a thought to their income. Several
  Jansenists became friendly with him and would give him advice. A new
  world opened before him. At the Jansenists he got to know a comte
  Altamira, who was nearly six feet high, was a Liberal, a believer, and
  had been condemned to death in his own country. He was struck by the
  strange contrast of devoutness and love of liberty.
  
  Julien's relations with the young comte had become cool. Norbert
  had thought that he answered the jokes of his friends with too much
  sharpness. Julien had committed one or two breaches of social etiquette
  and vowed to himself that he would never speak to mademoiselle
  Mathilde. They were always perfectly polite to him in the Hotel de
  la Mole but he felt himself quite lost. His provincial common sense
  explained this result by the vulgar proverb _Tout beau tout nouveau_.
  
  He gradually came to have a little more penetration than during his
  first days, or it may have been that the first glamour of Parisian
  urbanity had passed off. As soon as he left off working, he fell a prey
  to a mortal boredom. He was experiencing the withering effects of that
  admirable politeness so typical of good society, which is so perfectly
  modulated to every degree of the social hierarchy.
  
  No doubt the provinces can be reproached with a commonness and lack of
  polish in their tone; but they show a certain amount of passion, when
  they answer you. Julien's self-respect was never wounded at the Hotel
  de la Mole, but he often felt at the end of the day as though he would
  like to cry. A cafe-waiter in the provinces will take an interest in
  you if you happen to have some accident as you enter his cafe, but if
  this accident has everything about it which is disagreeable to your
  vanity, he will repeat ten times in succession the very word which
  tortures you, as he tells you how sorry he is. At Paris they make a
  point of laughing in secret, but you always remain a stranger.
  
  We pass in silence over a number of little episodes which would have
  made Julien ridiculous, if he had not been to some extent above
  ridicule. A foolish sensibility resulted in his committing innumerable
  acts of bad taste. All his pleasures were precautions; he practiced
  pistol shooting every day, he was one of the promising pupils of the
  most famous maitres d'armes. As soon as he had an instant to himself,
  instead of employing it in reading as he did before, he would rush
  off to the riding school and ask for the most vicious horses. When he
  went out with the master of the riding school he was almost invariably
  thrown.
  
  The marquis found him convenient by reason of his persistent industry,
  his silence and his intelligence, and gradually took him into his
  confidence with regard to all his affairs, which were in any way
  difficult to unravel. The marquis was a sagacious business man on all
  those occasions when his lofty ambition gave him some respite; having
  special information within his reach, he would speculate successfully
  on the Exchange. He would buy mansions and forests; but he would easily
  lose his temper. He would give away hundreds of louis, and would go
  to law for a few hundred francs. Rich men with a lofty spirit have
  recourse to business not so much for results as for distraction. The
  marquis needed a chief of staff who would put all his money affairs
  into clear and lucid order. Madame de la Mole, although of so even a
  character, sometimes made fun of Julien. Great ladies have a horror
  of those unexpected incidents which are produced by a sensitive
  character; they constitute the opposite pole of etiquette. On two or
  three occasions the marquis took his part. "If he is ridiculous in your
  salon, he triumphs in his office." Julien on his side thought he had
  caught the marquise's secret. She deigned to manifest an interest in
  everything the minute the Baron de la Joumate was announced. He was a
  cold individual with an expressionless physiognomy. He was tall, thin,
  ugly, very well dressed, passed his life in his chateau, and generally
  speaking said nothing about anything. Such was his outlook on life.
  Madame de la Mole would have been happy for the first time in her life
  if she could have made him her daughter's husband.
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Part 2, Chapter 5
target: Julien gets more and more bored with life at the de La Moles' house. He can't stand the way that no one ever says what they're actually thinking, or if they do, it's something super petty. Julien soon realizes that Madame de La Mole wants her daughter to marry a local baron named Baron de La Joumate.