feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_57_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 28
feat_summary_id: part 2, chapter 28
feat_summary: {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 28", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-28", "summary": "At this point, Julien is accompanying Madame Fervaques to the opera in her private box. They discuss things like music and novels together. Julien is pleased to find that Madame has a bit of an obscene vein in her. The next day, Julien is almost caught in a lie. In one of his letters to Fervaque, he forgot to change the names of certain places that Prince Korasoff used in his letters. He manages to lie his way out of it, though. Incidentally, it's the first time Madame has ever acknowledged the fact that she's read his letters. Mathilde responds to this apparent romance by paying more attention to Croisenois, the man who wants to marry her. This kills Julien, but he's not willing to back down until he's done everything Korasoff told him.", "analysis": ""}
text: CHAPTER LVIII
  
  MANON LESCAUT
  
  
          Accordingly once he was thoroughly convinced of the
          asinine stupidity of the prior, he would usually succeed
          well enough by calling white black, and black white.
          _Lichtenberg_.
  
  
  The Russian instructions peremptorily forbade the writer from ever
  contradicting in conversation the recipient of the letters. No pretext
  could excuse any deviation from the role of that most ecstatic
  admiration. The letters were always based on that hypothesis.
  
  One evening at the opera, when in madame de Fervaques' box, Julien
  spoke of the ballet of _Manon Lescaut_ in the most enthusiastic terms.
  His only reason for talking in that strain was the fact that he thought
  it insignificant.
  
  The marechale said that the ballet was very inferior to the abbe
  Prevost's novel.
  
  "The idea," thought Julien, both surprised and amused, "of so highly
  virtuous a person praising a novel! Madame de Fervaques used to profess
  two or three times a week the most absolute contempt for those writers,
  who, by means of their insipid works, try to corrupt a youth which is,
  alas! only too inclined to the errors of the senses."
  
  "_Manon Lescaut_" continued the marechale, "is said to be one of the
  best of this immoral and dangerous type of book. The weaknesses and the
  deserved anguish of a criminal heart are, they say, portrayed with a
  truth which is not lacking in depth; a fact which does not prevent your
  Bonaparte from stating at St. Helena that it is simply a novel written
  for lackeys."
  
  The word Bonaparte restored to Julien all the activity of his mind.
  "They have tried to ruin me with the marechale; they have told her of
  my enthusiasm for Napoleon. This fact has sufficiently piqued her to
  make her yield to the temptation to make me feel it." This discovery
  amused him all the evening, and rendered him amusing. As he took leave
  of the marechale in the vestibule of the opera, she said to him,
  "Remember, monsieur, one must not like Bonaparte if you like me; at
  the best he can only be accepted as a necessity imposed by Providence.
  Besides, the man did not have a sufficiently supple soul to appreciate
  masterpieces of art."
  
  "When you like me," Julien kept on repeating to himself, "that means
  nothing or means everything. Here we have mysteries of language which
  are beyond us poor provincials." And he thought a great deal about
  madame de Renal, as he copied out an immense letter destined for the
  marechale.
  
  "How is it," she said to him the following day, with an assumed
  indifference which he thought was clumsily assumed, "that you talk to
  me about London and Richmond in a letter which you wrote last night, I
  think, when you came back from the opera?"
  
  Julien was very embarrassed. He had copied line by line without
  thinking about what he was writing, and had apparently forgotten to
  substitute Paris and Saint Cloud for the words London and Richmond
  which occurred in the original. He commenced two or three sentences,
  but found it impossible to finish them. He felt on the point of
  succumbing to a fit of idiotic laughter. Finally by picking his words
  he succeeded in formulating this inspiration: "Exalted as I was by the
  discussion of the most sublime and greatest interests of the human
  soul, my own soul may have been somewhat absent in my letter to you."
  
  "I am making an impression," he said to himself, "so I can spare myself
  the boredom of the rest of the evening." He left the Hotel de Fervaques
  at a run. In the evening he had another look at the original of the
  letter which he had copied out on the previous night, and soon came to
  the fatal place where the young Russian made mention of London and of
  Richmond. Julien was very astonished to find this letter almost tender.
  
  It had been the contrast between the apparent lightness of his
  conversation, and the sublime and almost apocalyptic profundity of
  his letters which had marked him out for favour. The marechale was
  particularly pleased by the longness of the sentences; this was very
  far from being that sprightly style which that immoral man Voltaire
  had brought into fashion. Although our hero made every possible human
  effort to eliminate from his conversation any symptom of good sense, it
  still preserved a certain anti-monarchical and blasphemous tinge which
  did not escape madame de Fervaques. Surrounded as she was by persons
  who, though eminently moral, had very often not a single idea during a
  whole evening, this lady was profoundly struck by anything resembling
  a novelty, but at the same time she thought she owed it to herself to
  be offended by it. She called this defect: Keeping the imprint of the
  lightness of the age.
  
  But such salons are only worth observing when one has a favour to
  procure. The reader doubtless shares all the ennui of the colourless
  life which Julien was leading. This period represents the steppes of
  our journey.
  
  Mademoiselle de la Mole needed to exercise her self-control to avoid
  thinking of Julien during the whole period filled by the de Fervaques
  episode. Her soul was a prey to violent battles; sometimes she piqued
  herself on despising that melancholy young man, but his conversation
  captivated her in spite of herself. She was particularly astonished by
  his absolute falseness. He did not say a single word to the marechale
  which was not a lie, or at any rate, an abominable travesty of his own
  way of thinking, which Mathilde knew so perfectly in every phase. This
  Machiavellianism impressed her. "What subtlety," she said to herself.
  "What a difference between the bombastic coxcombs, or the common
  rascals like Tanbeau who talk in the same strain."
  
  Nevertheless Julien went through awful days. It was only to accomplish
  the most painful of duties that he put in a daily appearance in the
  marechale's salon.
  
  The strain of playing a part ended by depriving his mind of all its
  strength. As he crossed each night the immense courtyard of the Hotel
  de Fervaques, it was only through sheer force in character and logic
  that he succeeded in keeping a little above the level of despair.
  
  "I overcame despair at the seminary," he said, "yet what an awful
  prospect I had then. I was then either going to make my fortune or
  come to grief just as I am now. I found myself obliged to pass all my
  life in intimate association with the most contemptible and disgusting
  things in the whole world. The following spring, just eleven short
  months later, I was perhaps the happiest of all young people of my own
  age."
  
  But very often all this fine logic proved unavailing against the awful
  reality. He saw Mathilde every day at breakfast and at dinner. He knew
  from the numerous letters which de la Mole dictated to him that she was
  on the eve of marrying de Croisenois. This charming man already called
  twice a day at the Hotel de la Mole; the jealous eye of a jilted lover
  was alive to every one of his movements. When he thought he had noticed
  that mademoiselle de la Mole was beginning to encourage her intended,
  Julien could not help looking tenderly at his pistols as he went up to
  his room.
  
  "Ah," he said to himself, "would it not be much wiser to take the marks
  out of my linen and to go into some solitary forest twenty leagues from
  Paris to put an end to this atrocious life? I should be unknown in the
  district, my death would remain a secret for a fortnight, and who would
  bother about me after a fortnight?"
  
  This reasoning was very logical. But on the following day a glimpse of
  Mathilde's arm between the sleeve of her dress and her glove sufficed
  to plunge our young philosopher into memories which, though agonising,
  none the less gave him a hold on life. "Well," he said to himself, "I
  will follow this Russian plan to the end. How will it all finish?"
  
  "So far as the marechale is concerned, after I have copied out these
  fifty-three letters, I shall not write any others.
  
  "As for Mathilde, these six weeks of painful acting will either leave
  her anger unchanged, or will win me a moment of reconciliation. Great
  God! I should die of happiness." And he could not finish his train of
  thought.
  
  After a long reverie he succeeded in taking up the thread of his
  argument. "In that case," he said to himself, "I should win one day of
  happiness, and after that her cruelties which are based, alas, on my
  lack of ability to please her will recommence. I should have nothing
  left to do, I should be ruined and lost for ever. With such a character
  as hers what guarantee can she give me? Alas! My manners are no doubt
  lacking in elegance, and my style of speech is heavy and monotonous.
  Great God, why am I myself?"
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Part 2, Chapter 28
target: At this point, Julien is accompanying Madame Fervaques to the opera in her private box. They discuss things like music and novels together. Julien is pleased to find that Madame has a bit of an obscene vein in her. The next day, Julien is almost caught in a lie. In one of his letters to Fervaque, he forgot to change the names of certain places that Prince Korasoff used in his letters. He manages to lie his way out of it, though. Incidentally, it's the first time Madame has ever acknowledged the fact that she's read his letters. Mathilde responds to this apparent romance by paying more attention to Croisenois, the man who wants to marry her. This kills Julien, but he's not willing to back down until he's done everything Korasoff told him.