feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_38_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 9
feat_summary_id: part 2, chapter 9
feat_summary: {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 9", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-9", "summary": "Mathilde de La Mole dances with a bunch of dudes at the duke's ball to get her mind off Julien. But it doesn't really work. She keeps trying to listen in on Julien's conversation with Count Altamira, which seems to be all about revolution and politics. All she can think about is how much more interesting he is than the guy she's supposed to marry, a guy named Croisenois. Mathilde soon realizes that Julien takes away her boredom. That's why she's so interested in him. The days after the ball, Julien glows with revolutionary passion. Whenever he sees Mathilde around, this glow fades because he's afraid of giving his true thoughts away. All she sees, though, is a drop in his enthusiasm whenever he sees her. Julien notices that Mathilde is dressed in black as if she's in mourning. When Mathilde tries to ask him what he's thinking about, he boils over and tells her all the violent, revolutionary thoughts he's been having. He's so aggressive that he actually scares Mathilde.", "analysis": ""}
text: CHAPTER XXXIX
  
  THE BALL
  
  
          The luxurious dresses, the glitter of the candles; all
          those pretty arms and fine shoulders; the bouquets,
          the intoxicating strains of Rossini, the paintings of
          Ciceri. I am beside myself.--_Journeys of Useri_.
  
  
  "You are in a bad temper," said the marquise de la Mole to her; "let me
  caution you, it is ungracious at a ball."
  
  "I only have a headache," answered Mathilde disdainfully, "it is too
  hot here."
  
  At this moment the old Baron Tolly became ill and fell down, as though
  to justify mademoiselle de la Mole's remark. They were obliged to carry
  him away. They talked about apoplexy. It was a disagreeable incident.
  
  Mathilde did not bother much about it.
  
  She made a point of never looking at old men, or at anyone who had the
  reputation of being bad company.
  
  She danced in order to escape the conversation about the apoplexy,
  which was not apoplexy inasmuch as the baron put in an appearance the
  following day.
  
  "But Sorel does not come," she said to herself after she had danced.
  She was almost looking round for him when she found him in another
  salon. Astonishing, but he seemed to have lost that impassive coldness
  that was so natural to him; he no longer looked English.
  
  "He is talking to comte Altamira who was sentenced to death," said
  Mathilde to herself. "His eye is full of a sombre fire; he looks like a
  prince in disguise; his haughtiness has become twice as pronounced."
  
  Julien came back to where she was, still talking to Altamira. She
  looked at Altamira fixedly, studying his features in order to trace
  those lofty qualities which can earn a man the honour of being
  condemned to death.
  
  "Yes," he was saying to comte Altamira as he passed by her, "Danton was
  a real man."
  
  "Heavens can he be a Danton?" said Mathilde to herself, "but he has
  so noble a face, and that Danton was so horribly ugly, a butcher I
  believe." Julien was still fairly near her. She did not hesitate to
  call him; she had the consciousness and the pride of putting a question
  that was unusual for a young girl.
  
  "Was not Danton a butcher?" she said to him.
  
  "Yes, in the eyes of certain persons," Julien answered her with the
  most thinly disguised expression of contempt. His eyes were still
  ardent from his conversation with Altamira, "but unfortunately for
  the people of good birth he was an advocate at Mery-sur-Seine, that
  is to say, mademoiselle," he added maliciously, "he began like many
  peers whom I see here. It was true that Danton laboured under a great
  disadvantage in the eyes of beauty; he was ugly."
  
  These last few words were spoken rapidly in an extraordinary and indeed
  very discourteous manner.
  
  Julien waited for a moment, leaning slightly forward and with an air of
  proud humility. He seemed to be saying, "I am paid to answer you and I
  live on my pay." He did not deign to look up at Mathilde. She looked
  like his slave with her fine eyes open abnormally wide and fixed on
  him. Finally as the silence continued he looked at her, like a valet
  looking at his master to receive orders. Although his eyes met the full
  gaze of Mathilde which were fixed on him all the time with a strange
  expression, he went away with a marked eagerness.
  
  "To think of a man who is as handsome as he is," said Mathilde to
  herself as she emerged from her reverie, "praising ugliness in such a
  way, he is not like Caylus or Croisenois. This Sorel has something like
  my father's look when he goes to a fancy dress ball as Napoleon." She
  had completely forgotten Danton. "Yes, I am decidedly bored to-night."
  She took her brother's arm and to his great disgust made him take
  her round the ball-room. The idea occurred to her of following the
  conversation between Julien and the man who had been condemned to
  death.
  
  The crowd was enormous. She managed to find them, however, at the
  moment when two yards in front of her Altamira was going near a
  dumb-waiter to take an ice. He was talking to Julien with his body half
  turned round. He saw an arm in an embroidered coat which was taking an
  ice close by. The embroidery seemed to attract his attention. He turned
  round to look at the person to whom the arm belonged. His noble and yet
  simple eyes immediately assumed a slightly disdainful expression.
  
  "You see that man," he said to Julien in a low voice; "that is the
  Prince of Araceli Ambassador of ----. He asked M. de Nerval, your
  Minister for Foreign Affairs, for my extradition this morning. See,
  there he is over there playing whist. Monsieur de Nerval is willing
  enough to give me up, for we gave up two or three conspirators to you
  in 1816. If I am given up to my king I shall be hanged in twenty-four
  hours. It will be one of those handsome moustachioed gentlemen who will
  arrest me."
  
  "The wretches!" exclaimed Julien half aloud.
  
  Mathilde did not lose a syllable of their conversation. Her ennui had
  vanished.
  
  "They are not scoundrels," replied Count Altamira. "I talk to you about
  myself in order to give you a vivid impression. Look at the Prince of
  Araceli. He casts his eyes on his golden fleece every five minutes; he
  cannot get over the pleasure of seeing that decoration on his breast.
  In reality the poor man is really an anachronism. The fleece was a
  signal honour a hundred years ago, but he would have been nowhere
  near it in those days. But nowadays, so far as people of birth are
  concerned, you have to be an Araceli to be delighted with it. He had a
  whole town hanged in order to get it."
  
  "Is that the price he had to pay?" said Julien anxiously.
  
  "Not exactly," answered Altamira coldly, "he probably had about thirty
  rich landed proprietors in his district who had the reputation of being
  Liberals thrown into the river."
  
  "What a monster!" pursued Julien.
  
  Mademoiselle de la Mole who was leaning her head forward with keenest
  interest was so near him that her beautiful hair almost touched his
  shoulder.
  
  "You are very young," answered Altamira. "I was telling you that I had
  a married sister in Provence. She is still pretty, good and gentle; she
  is an excellent mother, performs all her duties faithfully, is pious
  but not a bigot."
  
  "What is he driving at?" thought mademoiselle de la Mole.
  
  "She is happy," continued the comte Altamira; "she was so in 1815. I
  was then in hiding at her house on her estate near the Antibes. Well
  the moment she learnt of marshall Ney's execution she began to dance."
  
  "Is it possible?" said Julien, thunderstruck.
  
  "It's party spirit," replied Altamira. "There are no longer any real
  passions in the nineteenth century: that's why one is so bored in
  France. People commit acts of the greatest cruelty, but without any
  feeling of cruelty."
  
  "So much the worse," said Julien, "when one does commit a crime one
  ought at least to take pleasure in committing it; that's the only good
  thing they have about them and that's the only way in which they have
  the slightest justification."
  
  Mademoiselle de la Mole had entirely forgotten what she owed to herself
  and placed herself completely between Altamira and Julien. Her brother,
  who was giving her his arm, and was accustomed to obey her, was
  looking at another part of the room, and in order to keep himself in
  countenance was pretending to be stopped by the crowd.
  
  "You are right," Altamira went on, "one takes pleasure in nothing one
  does, and one does not remember it: this applies even to crimes. I can
  show you perhaps ten men in this ballroom who have been convicted of
  murder. They have forgotten all about it and everybody else as well."
  
  "Many are moved to the point of tears if their dog breaks a paw.
  When you throw flowers on their grave at Pere-la-Chaise, as you say
  so humorously in Paris, we learn they united all the virtues of the
  knights of chivalry, and we speak about the noble feats of their
  great-grandfather who lived in the reign of Henri IV. If, in spite of
  the good offices of the Prince de Araceli, I escape hanging and I ever
  manage to enjoy the use of my money in Paris, I will get you to dine
  with eight or ten of these respected and callous murderers.
  
  "At that dinner you and I will be the only ones whose blood is pure,
  but I shall be despised and almost hated as a monster, while you will
  be simply despised as a man of the people who has pushed his way into
  good society."
  
  "Nothing could be truer," said mademoiselle de la Mole.
  
  Altamira looked at her in astonishment; but Julien did not deign to
  look at her.
  
  "Observe that the revolution, at whose head I found myself," continued
  the comte Altamira, "only failed for the one reason that I would not
  cut off three heads and distribute among our partisans seven or eight
  millions which happened to be in a box of which I happened to have the
  key. My king, who is burning to have me hanged to-day, and who called
  me by my christian name before the rebellion, would have given me the
  great ribbon of his order if I had had those three heads cut off and
  had had the money in those boxes distributed; for I should have had at
  least a semi-success and my country would have had a charta like ----.
  So wags the world; it's a game of chess."
  
  "At that time," answered Julien with a fiery eye, "you did not know the
  game; now...."
  
  "You mean I would have the heads cut off, and I would not be a
  Girondin, as you said I was the other day? I will give you your
  answer," said Altamira sadly, "when you have killed a man in a duel--a
  far less ugly matter than having him put to death by an executioner."
  
  "Upon my word," said Julien, "the end justifies the means. If instead
  of being an insignificant man I had some power I would have three men
  hanged in order to save four men's lives."
  
  His eyes expressed the fire of his own conscience; they met the eyes of
  mademoiselle de la Mole who was close by him, and their contempt, so
  far from changing into politeness seemed to redouble.
  
  She was deeply shocked; but she found herself unable to forget Julien;
  she dragged her brother away and went off in a temper.
  
  "I must take some punch and dance a lot," she said to herself. "I will
  pick out the best partner and cut some figure at any price. Good, there
  is that celebrated cynic, the comte de Fervaques." She accepted his
  invitation; they danced. "The question is," she thought, "which of us
  two will be the more impertinent, but in order to make absolute fun
  of him, I must get him to talk." Soon all the other members of the
  quadrille were dancing as a matter of formality, they did not want to
  lose any of Mathilde's cutting reparte. M. de Fervaques felt uneasy and
  as he could only find elegant expressions instead of ideas, began to
  scowl. Mathilde, who was in a bad temper was cruel, and made an enemy
  of him. She danced till daylight and then went home terribly tired.
  But when she was in the carriage the little vitality she had left, was
  still employed in making her sad and unhappy. She had been despised by
  Julien and could not despise him.
  
  Julien was at the zenith of his happiness. He was enchanted without
  his knowing it by the music, the flowers, the pretty women, the
  general elegance, and above all by his own imagination which dreamt of
  distinctions for himself and of liberty for all.
  
  "What a fine ball," he said to the comte. "Nothing is lacking."
  
  "Thought is lacking" answered Altamira, and his face betrayed that
  contempt which is only more deadly from the very fact that a manifest
  effort is being made to hide it as a matter of politeness.
  
  "You are right, monsieur the comte, there isn't any thought at all, let
  alone enough to make a conspiracy."
  
  "I am here because of my name, but thought is hated in your salons.
  Thought must not soar above the level of the point of a Vaudeville
  couplet: it is then rewarded. But as for your man who thinks, if he
  shows energy and originality we call him a cynic. Was not that name
  given by one of your judges to Courier. You put him in prison as
  well as Beranger. The priestly congregation hands over to the police
  everyone who is worth anything amongst you individually; and good
  society applauds.
  
  "The fact is your effete society prizes conventionalism above
  everything else. You will never get beyond military bravery. You will
  have Murats, never Washingtons. I can see nothing in France except
  vanity. A man who goes on speaking on the spur of the moment may easily
  come to make an imprudent witticism and the master of the house thinks
  himself insulted."
  
  As he was saying this, the carriage in which the comte was seeing
  Julien home stopped before the Hotel de la Mole. Julien was in love
  with his conspirator. Altamira had paid him this great compliment which
  was evidently the expression of a sound conviction. "You have not got
  the French flippancy and you understand the principle of _utility_."
  It happened that Julien had seen the day before _Marino Faliero_, a
  tragedy, by Casmir Delavigne.
  
  "Has not Israel Bertuccio got more character than all those noble
  Venetians?" said our rebellious plebeian to himself, "and yet those
  are the people whose nobility goes back to the year seven hundred, a
  century before Charlemagne, while the cream of the nobility at M. de
  Ritz's ball to-night only goes back, and that rather lamely, to the
  thirteenth century. Well, in spite of all the noble Venetians whose
  birth makes so great, it is Israel Bertuccio whom one remembers.
  
  "A conspiracy annihilates all titles conferred by social caprice.
  There, a man takes for his crest the rank that is given him by the way
  in which he faces death. The intellect itself loses some of its power.
  
  "What would Danton have been to-day in this age of the Valenods and the
  Renals? Not even a deputy for the Public Prosecutor.
  
  "What am I saying? He would have sold himself to the priests, he
  would have been a minister, for after all the great Danton did steal.
  Mirabeau also sold himself. Napoleon stole millions in Italy, otherwise
  he would have been stopped short in his career by poverty like
  Pichegru. Only La Fayette refrained from stealing. Ought one to steal,
  ought one to sell oneself?" thought Julien. This question pulled him up
  short. He passed the rest of the night in reading the history of the
  revolution.
  
  When he wrote his letters in the library the following day, his mind
  was still concentrated on his conversation with count Altamira.
  
  "As a matter of fact," he said to himself after a long reverie, "If the
  Spanish Liberals had not injured their nation by crimes they would not
  have been cleared out as easily as they were.
  
  "They were haughty, talkative children--just like I am!" he suddenly
  exclaimed as though waking up with a start.
  
  "What difficulty have I surmounted that entitles me to judge such
  devils who, once alive, dared to begin to act. I am like a man who
  exclaims at the close of a meal, 'I won't dine to-morrow; but that
  won't prevent me from feeling as strong and merry like I do to-day.'
  Who knows what one feels when one is half-way through a great action?"
  
  These lofty thoughts were disturbed by the unexpected arrival in
  the library of mademoiselle de la Mole. He was so animated by his
  admiration for the great qualities of such invincibles as Danton,
  Mirabeau, and Carnot that, though he fixed his eyes on mademoiselle de
  la Mole, he neither gave her a thought nor bowed to her, and scarcely
  even saw her. When finally his big, open eyes realized her presence,
  their expression vanished. Mademoiselle de la Mole noticed it with
  bitterness.
  
  It was in vain that she asked him for Vely's History of France which
  was on the highest shelf, and thus necessitated Julien going to fetch
  the longer of the two ladders. Julien had brought the ladder and had
  fetched the volume and given it to her, but had not yet been able to
  give her a single thought. As he was taking the ladder back he hit
  in his hurry one of the glass panes in the library with his elbow;
  the noise of the glass falling on the floor finally brought him to
  himself. He hastened to apologise to mademoiselle de la Mole. He tried
  to be polite and was certainly nothing more. Mathilde saw clearly that
  she had disturbed him, and that he would have preferred to have gone
  on thinking about what he had been engrossed in before her arrival,
  to speaking to her. After looking at him for some time she went
  slowly away. Julien watched her walk. He enjoyed the contrast of her
  present dress with the elegant magnificence of the previous night. The
  difference between the two expressions was equally striking. The young
  girl who had been so haughty at the Duke de Retz's ball, had, at the
  present moment, an almost plaintive expression. "As a matter of fact,"
  said Julien to himself, "that black dress makes the beauty of her
  figure all the more striking. She has a queenly carriage; but why is
  she in mourning?"
  
  "If I ask someone the reason for this mourning, they will think I am
  putting my foot in it again." Julien had now quite emerged from the
  depth of his enthusiasm. "I must read over again all the letters I have
  written this morning. God knows how many missed out words and blunders
  I shall find. As he was forcing himself to concentrate his mind on the
  first of these letters he heard the rustle of a silk dress near him.
  He suddenly turned round, mademoiselle de la Mole was two yards from
  his table, she was smiling. This second interruption put Julien into a
  bad temper. Mathilde had just fully realized that she meant nothing to
  this young man. Her smile was intended to hide her embarrassment; she
  succeeded in doing so.
  
  "You are evidently thinking of something very interesting, Monsieur
  Sorel. Is it not some curious anecdote about that conspiracy which
  is responsible for comte Altamira being in Paris? Tell me what it is
  about, I am burning to know. I will be discreet, I swear it." She was
  astonished at hearing herself utter these words. What! was she asking a
  favour of an inferior! Her embarrassment increased, and she added with
  a little touch of flippancy,
  
  "What has managed to turn such a usually cold person as yourself, into
  an inspired being, a kind of Michael Angelo prophet?"
  
  This sharp and indiscreet question wounded Julien deeply, and rendered
  him madder than ever.
  
  "Was Danton right in stealing?" he said to her brusquely in a manner
  that grew more and more surly. "Ought the revolutionaries of Piedmont
  and of Spain to have injured the people by crimes? To have given all
  the places in the army and all the orders to undeserving persons? Would
  not the persons who wore these orders have feared the return of the
  king? Ought they to have allowed the treasure of Turin to be looted?
  In a word, mademoiselle," he said, coming near her with a terrifying
  expression, "ought the man who wishes to chase ignorance and crime from
  the world to pass like the whirlwind and do evil indiscriminately?"
  
  Mathilde felt frightened, was unable to stand his look, and retreated a
  couples of paces. She looked at him a moment, and then ashamed of her
  own fear, left the library with a light step.
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Part 2, Chapter 9
target: Mathilde de La Mole dances with a bunch of dudes at the duke's ball to get her mind off Julien. But it doesn't really work. She keeps trying to listen in on Julien's conversation with Count Altamira, which seems to be all about revolution and politics. All she can think about is how much more interesting he is than the guy she's supposed to marry, a guy named Croisenois. Mathilde soon realizes that Julien takes away her boredom. That's why she's so interested in him. The days after the ball, Julien glows with revolutionary passion. Whenever he sees Mathilde around, this glow fades because he's afraid of giving his true thoughts away. All she sees, though, is a drop in his enthusiasm whenever he sees her. Julien notices that Mathilde is dressed in black as if she's in mourning. When Mathilde tries to ask him what he's thinking about, he boils over and tells her all the violent, revolutionary thoughts he's been having. He's so aggressive that he actually scares Mathilde.