feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_36_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 2.chapter 7
feat_summary_id: part 2, chapter 7
feat_summary: {"name": "Part 2, Chapter 7", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-2-chapter-7", "summary": "The Marquis de La Mole tells Julien to go buy a new blue suit to wear around the house. It's only when he's wearing this suit that the marquis is able to treat him as an equal. When he's wearing his priest's black robes, the Marquis can't help but feel like they're different. The marquis is confined to his bed by an attack of gout. Julien visits him and entertains him with the story of how he came to fight a duel in Paris. The marquis gives Julien more and more responsibilities. He soon finds out that his financial advisors have been swindling him and hiding money from him. The marquis gives Julien the generous sum of 3,000 francs for helping him. When the marquis tries to give Julien another gift, Julien declines. This impresses the marquis. The marquis sends Julien to do some business in England. While there, Julien makes friends with a Russian nobleman named Prince Korasoff. Julien wants to meet some famous English philosopher, but then finds out that the guy is in jail for speaking his mind. When he gets back to France, the marquis scolds him for some political remarks he made to some foreign diplomats. Julien says that it wouldn't be good enough to make boring chitchat with these people. He had to say something substantial. The marquis gives Julien a special medal to wear around his neck whenever he's acting as the youngest son of the marquis' friend. When he's not wearing it, he'll just be the marquis' secretary. That'll help the marquis decide how to behave toward him. But to be sure, he wants Julien to know that this doesn't make him a nobleman. It's all just temporary. Monsieur Valenod from Verrieres visits the de La Mole house as the newly elected mayor of his town. It looks like he beat out Monsieur de Renal for the job. As a joke, Julien recommends a local imbecile for a posting in Verrieres. The marquis agrees that it would be a good joke and gives the man the position. Only later does Julien realize that he has kept a good, honorable man from getting the position. He feels guilty for toying with people's futures.", "analysis": ""}
text: CHAPTER XXXVII
  
  AN ATTACK OF GOUT
  
  
       And I got advancement, not on my merit, but because my
                  master had the gout.--_Bertolotti_.
  
  The reader is perhaps surprised by this free and almost friendly tone.
  We had forgotten to say that the marquis had been confined to his house
  for six weeks by the gout.
  
  Mademoiselle de la Mole and her mother were at Hyeres near the
  marquise's mother. The comte Norbert only saw his father at stray
  moments. They got on very well, but had nothing to say to each other.
  M. de la Mole, reduced to Julien's society, was astonished to find that
  he possessed ideas. He made him read the papers to him. Soon the young
  secretary was competent to pick out the interesting passages. There was
  a new paper which the marquis abhorred. He had sworn never to read it,
  and spoke about it every day. Julien laughed. In his irritation against
  the present time, the marquis made him read Livy aloud. The improvised
  translation of the Latin text amused him. The marquis said one day
  in that tone of excessive politeness which frequently tried Julien's
  patience,
  
  "Allow me to present you with a blue suit, my dear Sorel. When you find
  it convenient to wear it and to come and see me, I shall look upon you
  as the younger brother of the comte de Chaulnes, that is to say, the
  son of my friend the old Duke."
  
  Julien did not quite gather what it was all about, but he tried a visit
  in the blue suit that very evening. The marquis treated him like an
  equal. Julien had a spirit capable of appreciating true politeness, but
  he had no idea of nuances. Before this freak of the marquis's he would
  have sworn that it was impossible for him to have been treated with
  more consideration. "What an admirable talent," said Julien to himself.
  When he got up to go, the marquis apologised for not being able to
  accompany him by reason of his gout.
  
  Julien was preoccupied by this strange idea. "Perhaps he is making fun
  of me," he thought. He went to ask advice of the abbe Pirard, who being
  less polite than the marquis, made no other answer except to whistle
  and change the subject.
  
  Julien presented himself to the marquis the next morning in his black
  suit, with his letter case and his letters for signature. He was
  received in the old way, but when he wore the blue suit that evening,
  the marquis's tone was quite different, and absolutely as polite as on
  the previous day.
  
  "As you are not exactly bored," said the marquis to him, "by these
  visits which you are kind enough to pay to a poor old man, you must
  tell him about all the little incidents of your life, but you must
  be frank and think of nothing except narrating them clearly and in
  an amusing way. For one must amuse oneself," continued the marquis.
  "That's the only reality in life. I can't have my life saved in a
  battle every day, or get a present of a million francs every day, but
  if I had Rivarol here by my sofa he would rid me every day of an hour
  of suffering and boredom. I saw a lot of him at Hamburg during the
  emigration."
  
  And the marquis told Julien the stories of Rivarol and the inhabitants
  of Hamburg who needed the combined efforts of four individuals to
  understand an epigram. M. de la Mole, being reduced to the society of
  this little abbe, tried to teach him. He put Julien's pride on its
  mettle. As he was asked to speak the truth, Julien resolved to tell
  everything, but to suppress two things, his fanatical admiration for
  the name which irritated the marquis, and that complete scepticism,
  which was not particularly appropriate to a prospective cure. His
  little affair with the chevalier de Beauvoisis came in very handy. The
  marquis laughed till the tears came into his eyes at the scene in the
  cafe in the Rue St. Honore with the coachman who had loaded him with
  sordid insults. The occasion was marked by a complete frankness between
  the marquis and the protege.
  
  M. de la Mole became interested in this singular character. At the
  beginning he had encouraged Julian's droll blunders in order to enjoy
  laughing at them. Soon he found it more interesting to correct very
  gently this young man's false outlook on life.
  
  "All other provincials who come to Paris admire everything,"
  thought the marquis. "This one hates everything. They have too much
  affectation; he has not affectation enough; and fools take him for a
  fool."
  
  The attack of gout was protracted by the great winter cold and lasted
  some months.
  
  "One gets quite attached to a fine spaniel," thought the marquis. "Why
  should I be so ashamed of being attached to this little abbe? He is
  original. I treat him as a son. Well, where's the bother? The whim, if
  it lasts, will cost me a diamond and five hundred louis in my will."
  Once the marquis had realised his protege's strength of character, he
  entrusted him with some new business every day.
  
  Julien noticed with alarm that this great lord would often give him
  inconsistent orders with regard to the same matter.
  
  That might compromise him seriously. Julien now made a point whenever
  he worked with him, of bringing a register with him in which he wrote
  his instructions which the marquis initialled. Julien had now a clerk
  who would transcribe the instructions relating to each matter in a
  separate book. This book also contained a copy of all the letters.
  
  This idea seemed at first absolutely boring and ridiculous, but in two
  months the marquis appreciated its advantages. Julien suggested to him
  that he should take a clerk out of a banker's who was to keep proper
  book-keeping accounts of all the receipts and of all the expenses of
  the estates which Julien had been charged to administer.
  
  These measures so enlightened the marquis as to his own affairs that
  he could indulge the pleasure of undertaking two or three speculations
  without the help of his nominee who always robbed him.
  
  "Take three thousand francs for yourself," he said one day to his young
  steward.
  
  "Monsieur, I should lay myself open to calumny."
  
  "What do you want then?" retorted the marquis irritably.
  
  "Perhaps you will be kind enough to make out a statement of account and
  enter it in your own hand in the book. That order will give me a sum of
  3,000 francs. Besides it's M. the abbe Pirard who had the idea of all
  this exactness in accounts." The marquis wrote out his instructions in
  the register with the bored air of the Marquis de Moncade listening to
  the accounts of his steward M. Poisson.
  
  Business was never talked when Julien appeared in the evening in
  his blue suit. The kindness of the marquis was so flattering to the
  self-respect of our hero, which was always morbidly sensitive, that
  in spite of himself, he soon came to feel a kind of attachment for
  this nice old man. It is not that Julien was a man of sensibility
  as the phrase is understood at Paris, but he was not a monster, and
  no one since the death of the old major had talked to him with so
  much kindness. He observed that the marquis showed a politeness and
  consideration for his own personal feelings which he had never found in
  the old surgeon. He now realised that the surgeon was much prouder of
  his cross than was the marquis of his blue ribbon. The marquis's father
  had been a great lord.
  
  One day, at the end of a morning audience for the transaction of
  business, when the black suit was worn, Julien happened to amuse the
  marquis who kept him for a couple of hours, and insisted on giving him
  some banknotes which his nominee had just brought from the house.
  
  "I hope M. le Marquis, that I am not deviating from the profound
  respect which I owe you, if I beg you to allow me to say a word."
  
  "Speak, my friend."
  
  "M. le Marquis will deign to allow me to refuse this gift. It is not
  meant for the man in the black suit, and it would completely spoil
  those manners which you have kindly put up with in the man in the blue
  suit." He saluted with much respect and went out without looking at his
  employer.
  
  This incident amused the marquis. He told it in the evening to the abbe
  Pirard.
  
  "I must confess one thing to you, my dear abbe. I know Julien's birth,
  and I authorise you not to regard this confidence as a secret."
  
  His conduct this morning is noble, thought the marquis, so I will
  ennoble him myself.
  
  Some time afterwards the marquis was able to go out.
  
  "Go and pass a couple of months at London," he said to Julien.
  "Ordinary and special couriers will bring you the letters I have
  received, together with my notes. You will write out the answers and
  send them back to me, putting each letter inside the answer. I have
  ascertained that the delay will be no more than five days."
  
  As he took the post down the Calais route, Julien was astonished at the
  triviality of the alleged business on which he had been sent.
  
  We will say nothing about the feeling of hate and almost horror with
  which he touched English soil. His mad passion for Bonaparte is already
  known. He saw in every officer a Sir Hudson Low, in every great
  noble a Lord Bathurst, ordering the infamies of St. Helena and being
  recompensed by six years of office.
  
  At London he really got to know the meaning of sublime fatuity. He had
  struck up a friendship with some young Russian nobles who initiated him.
  
  "Your future is assured, my dear Sorel," they said to him. "You
  naturally have that cold demeanour, _a thousand leagues away from the
  sensation one has at the moment_, that we have been making such efforts
  to acquire."
  
  "You have not understood your century," said the Prince Korasoff to
  him. "Always do the opposite of what is expected of you. On my honour
  there you have the sole religion of the period. Don't be foolish or
  affected, for then follies and affectations will be expected of you,
  and the maxim will not longer prove true."
  
  Julien covered himself with glory one day in the Salon of the Duke
  of Fitz-Folke who had invited him to dinner together with the Prince
  Korasoff. They waited for an hour. The way in which Julien conducted
  himself in the middle of twenty people who were waiting is still quoted
  as a precedent among the young secretaries of the London Embassy. His
  demeanour was unimpeachable.
  
  In spite of his friends, the dandies, he made a point of seeing the
  celebrated Philip Vane, the one philosopher that England has had
  since Locke. He found him finishing his seventh year in prison. The
  aristocracy doesn't joke in this country, thought Julien. Moreover Vane
  is disgraced, calumniated, etc.
  
  Julien found him in cheery spirits. The rage of the aristocracy
  prevented him from being bored. "There's the only merry man I've seen
  in England," thought Julien to himself, as he left the prison.
  
  "The idea which tyrants find most useful is the idea of God," Vane had
  said to him.
  
  We suppress the rest of the system as being cynical.
  
  "What amusing notion do you bring me from England?" said M. la Mole to
  him on his return. He was silent. "What notion do you bring me, amusing
  or otherwise?" repeated the marquis sharply.
  
  "In the first place," said Julien, "The sanest Englishman is mad one
  hour every day. He is visited by the Demon of Suicide who is the local
  God.
  
  "In the second place, intellect and genius lose twenty-five per cent.
  of their value when they disembark in England.
  
  "In the third place, nothing in the world is so beautiful, so
  admirable, so touching, as the English landscapes."
  
  "Now it is my turn," said the marquis.
  
  "In the first place, why do you go and say at the ball at the Russian
  Ambassador's that there were three hundred thousand young men of twenty
  in France who passionately desire war? Do you think that is nice for
  the kings?"
  
  "One doesn't know what to do when talking to great diplomats," said
  Julien. "They have a mania for starting serious discussions. If one
  confines oneself to the commonplaces of the papers, one is taken for a
  fool. If one indulges in some original truth, they are astonished and
  at a loss for an answer, and get you informed by the first Secretary
  of the Embassy at seven o'clock next day that your conduct has been
  unbecoming."
  
  "Not bad," said the marquis laughing. "Anyway I will wager Monsieur
  Deep-one that you have not guessed what you went to do in England."
  
  "Pardon me," answered Julien. "I went there to dine once a week with
  the king's ambassador, who is the most polite of men."
  
  "You went to fetch this cross you see here," said the marquis to him.
  "I do not want to make you leave off your black suit, and I have got
  accustomed to the more amusing tone I have assumed with the man who
  wears the blue suit. So understand this until further orders. When I
  see this cross, you will be my friend, the Duke of Chaulne's younger
  son, who has been employed in the diplomatic service the last six
  months without having any idea of it. Observe," added the marquis
  very seriously, cutting short all manifestations of thanks, "that I
  do not want you to forget your place. That is always a mistake and a
  misfortune both for patron and for dependent. When my lawsuits bore
  you, or when you no longer suit me, I will ask a good living like that
  of our good friend the abbe Pirard's for you, and nothing more," added
  the marquis dryly. This put Julien's pride at its ease. He talked much
  more. He did not so frequently think himself insulted and aimed at by
  those phrases which are susceptible of some interpretation which is
  scarcely polite, and which anybody may give utterance to in the course
  of an animated conversation.
  
  This cross earned him a singular visit. It was that of the baron de
  Valenod, who came to Paris to thank the Minister for his barony, and
  arrive at an understanding with him. He was going to be nominated mayor
  of Verrieres, and to supersede M. de Renal.
  
  Julien did not fail to smile to himself when M. Valenod gave him to
  understand that they had just found out that M. de Renal was a Jacobin.
  The fact was that the new baron was the ministerial candidate at the
  election for which they were all getting ready, and that it was M. de
  Renal who was the Liberal candidate at the great electoral college of
  the department, which was, in fact, very ultra.
  
  It was in vain that Julien tried to learn something about madame de
  Renal. The baron seemed to remember their former rivalry, and was
  impenetrable. He concluded by canvassing Julien for his father's vote
  at the election which was going to take place. Julien promised to write.
  
  "You ought, monsieur le Chevalier, to present me to M. the marquis de
  la Mole."
  
  "I ought, as a matter of fact," thought Julien. "But a rascal like
  that!"
  
  "As a matter of fact," he answered, "I am too small a personage in the
  Hotel de la Mole to take it upon myself to introduce anyone." Julien
  told the marquis everything. In the evening he described Valenod's
  pretensions, as well as his deeds and feats since 1814.
  
  "Not only will you present the new baron to me," replied de la Mole,
  very seriously, "but I will invite him to dinner for the day after
  to-morrow. He will be one of our new prefects."
  
  "If that is the case, I ask for my father the post of director of the
  workhouse," answered Julien, coldly.
  
  "With pleasure," answered the marquis gaily. "It shall be granted. I
  was expecting a lecture. You are getting on."
  
  M. de Valenod informed Julien that the manager of the lottery office at
  Verrieres had just died. Julien thought it humorous to give that place
  to M. de Cholin, the old dotard whose petition he had once picked up in
  de la Mole's room. The marquis laughed heartily at the petition, which
  Julien recited as he made him sign the letter which requested that
  appointment of the minister of finance.
  
  M. de Cholin had scarcely been nominated, when Julien learnt that that
  post had been asked by the department for the celebrated geometrician,
  monsieur Gros. That generous man had an income of only 1400 francs, and
  every year had lent 600 to the late manager who had just died, to help
  him bring up his family.
  
  Julien was astonished at what he had done.
  
  "That's nothing," he said to himself. "It will be necessary to commit
  several other injustices if I mean to get on, and also to conceal them
  beneath pretty, sentimental speeches. Poor monsieur Gros! It is he who
  deserves the cross. It is I who have it, and I ought to conform to the
  spirit of the Government which gives it me."
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Part 2, Chapter 7
target: The Marquis de La Mole tells Julien to go buy a new blue suit to wear around the house. It's only when he's wearing this suit that the marquis is able to treat him as an equal. When he's wearing his priest's black robes, the Marquis can't help but feel like they're different. The marquis is confined to his bed by an attack of gout. Julien visits him and entertains him with the story of how he came to fight a duel in Paris. The marquis gives Julien more and more responsibilities. He soon finds out that his financial advisors have been swindling him and hiding money from him. The marquis gives Julien the generous sum of 3,000 francs for helping him. When the marquis tries to give Julien another gift, Julien declines. This impresses the marquis. The marquis sends Julien to do some business in England. While there, Julien makes friends with a Russian nobleman named Prince Korasoff. Julien wants to meet some famous English philosopher, but then finds out that the guy is in jail for speaking his mind. When he gets back to France, the marquis scolds him for some political remarks he made to some foreign diplomats. Julien says that it wouldn't be good enough to make boring chitchat with these people. He had to say something substantial. The marquis gives Julien a special medal to wear around his neck whenever he's acting as the youngest son of the marquis' friend. When he's not wearing it, he'll just be the marquis' secretary. That'll help the marquis decide how to behave toward him. But to be sure, he wants Julien to know that this doesn't make him a nobleman. It's all just temporary. Monsieur Valenod from Verrieres visits the de La Mole house as the newly elected mayor of his town. It looks like he beat out Monsieur de Renal for the job. As a joke, Julien recommends a local imbecile for a posting in Verrieres. The marquis agrees that it would be a good joke and gives the man the position. Only later does Julien realize that he has kept a good, honorable man from getting the position. He feels guilty for toying with people's futures.