feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_14_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 15
feat_summary_id: part 1, chapter 15
feat_summary: {"name": "Part 1, Chapter 15", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-15", "summary": "Tired of playing cat and mouse, Julien leads Madame de Renal into the garden and tells her he'll visit her that night at 2 a.m. He says there's something he needs to tell her. Madame tells him not to be a fool and he spends the rest of the evening avoiding her. True to his word, Julien gets up at two in the morning and sneaks down the hallway into Madame de Renal's room. She sits up in bed and calls him a wretch. He rushes forward and hugs her knees, weeping. A few hours later, Julien leaves the room. The narrator implies that he and Madame have had sex.", "analysis": ""}
text: CHAPTER XV
  
  THE COCK'S SONG
  
      Amour en latin faict amour;
      Or done provient d'amour la mart,
      Et, par avant, souley qui moreq,
      Deuil, plours, pieges, forfailz, remord.
                                       BLASON D'AMOUR.
  
  
  If Julien had possessed a little of that adroitness on which he so
  gratuitously plumed himself, he could have congratulated himself the
  following day on the effect produced by his journey to Verrieres. His
  absence had caused his clumsiness to be forgotten. But on that day
  also he was rather sulky. He had a ludicrous idea in the evening, and
  with singular courage he communicated it to Madame de Renal. They had
  scarcely sat down in the garden before Julien brought his mouth near
  Madame de Renal's ear without waiting till it was sufficiently dark and
  at the risk of compromising her terribly, said to her,
  
  "Madame, to-night, at two o'clock, I shall go into your room, I must
  tell you something."
  
  Julien trembled lest his request should be granted. His rakish pose
  weighed him down so terribly that if he could have followed his own
  inclination he would have returned to his room for several days and
  refrained from seeing the ladies any more. He realised that he had
  spoiled by his clever conduct of last evening all the bright prospects
  of the day that had just passed, and was at his wits' end what to do.
  
  Madame de Renal answered the impertinent declaration which Julien had
  dared to make to her with indignation which was real and in no way
  exaggerated. He thought he could see contempt in her curt reply. The
  expression "for shame," had certainly occurred in that whispered answer.
  
  Julien went to the children's room under the pretext of having
  something to say to them, and on his return he placed himself beside
  Madame Derville and very far from Madame de Renal. He thus deprived
  himself of all possibility of taking her hand. The conversation was
  serious, and Julien acquitted himself very well, apart from a few
  moments of silence during which he was cudgelling his brains.
  
  "Why can't I invent some pretty manoeuvre," he said to himself which
  will force Madame de Renal to vouchsafe to me those unambiguous signs
  of tenderness which a few days ago made me think that she was mine.
  
  Julien was extremely disconcerted by the almost desperate plight
  to which he had brought his affairs. Nothing, however, would have
  embarrassed him more than success.
  
  When they separated at midnight, his pessimism made him think that
  he enjoyed Madame Derville's contempt, and that probably he stood no
  better with Madame de Renal.
  
  Feeling in a very bad temper and very humiliated, Julien did not sleep.
  He was leagues away from the idea of giving up all intriguing and
  planning, and of living from day to day with Madame de Renal, and of
  being contented like a child with the happiness brought by every day.
  
  He racked his brains inventing clever manoeuvres, which an instant
  afterwards he found absurd, and, to put it shortly, was very unhappy
  when two o'clock rang from the castle clock.
  
  The noise woke him up like the cock's crow woke up St. Peter. The most
  painful episode was now timed to begin--he had not given a thought to
  his impertinent proposition, since the moment when he had made it and
  it had been so badly received.
  
  "I have told her that I will go to her at two o'clock," he said to
  himself as he got up, "I may be inexperienced and coarse, as the son
  of a peasant naturally would be. Madame Derville has given me to
  understand as much, but at any rate, I will not be weak."
  
  Julien had reason to congratulate himself on his courage, for he had
  never put his self-control to so painful a test. As he opened his door,
  he was trembling to such an extent that his knees gave way under him,
  and he was forced to lean against the wall.
  
  He was without shoes; he went and listened at M. de Renal's door, and
  could hear his snoring. He was disconsolate, he had no longer any
  excuse for not going to her room. But, Great Heaven! What was he to do
  there? He had no plan, and even if he had had one, he felt himself so
  nervous that he would have been incapable of carrying it out.
  
  Eventually, suffering a thousand times more than if he had been walking
  to his death, he entered the little corridor that led to Madame de
  Renal's room. He opened the door with a trembling hand and made a
  frightful noise.
  
  There was light; a night light was burning on the mantelpiece. He
  had not expected this new misfortune. As she saw him enter, Madame
  de Renal got quickly out of bed. "Wretch," she cried. There was a
  little confusion. Julien forgot his useless plans, and turned to his
  natural role. To fail to please so charming a woman appeared to him the
  greatest of misfortunes. His only answer to her reproaches was to throw
  himself at her feet while he kissed her knees. As she was speaking to
  him with extreme harshness, he burst into tears.
  
  When Julien came out of Madame de Renal's room some hours afterwards,
  one could have said, adopting the conventional language of the novel,
  that there was nothing left to be desired. In fact, he owed to the love
  he had inspired, and to the unexpected impression which her alluring
  charms had produced upon him, a victory to which his own clumsy tactics
  would never have led him.
  
  But victim that he was of a distorted pride, he pretended even in
  the sweetest moments to play the role of a man accustomed to the
  subjugation of women: he made incredible but deliberate efforts to
  spoil his natural charm. Instead of watching the transports which he
  was bringing into existence, and those pangs of remorse which only set
  their keenness into fuller relief, the idea of duty was continually
  before his eyes. He feared a frightful remorse, and eternal ridicule,
  if he departed from the ideal model he proposed to follow. In a word,
  the very quality which made Julien into a superior being was precisely
  that which prevented him from savouring the happiness which was placed
  within his grasp. It's like the case of a young girl of sixteen with a
  charming complexion who is mad enough to put on rouge before going to a
  ball.
  
  Mortally terrified by the apparition of Julien, Madame de Renal was
  soon a prey to the most cruel alarm. The prayers and despair of Julien
  troubled her keenly.
  
  Even when there was nothing left for her to refuse him she pushed
  Julien away from her with a genuine indignation, and straightway threw
  herself into his arms. There was no plan apparent in all this conduct.
  She thought herself eternally damned, and tried to hide from herself
  the sight of hell by loading Julien with the wildest caresses. In a
  word, nothing would have been lacking in our hero's happiness, not even
  an ardent sensibility in the woman whom he had just captured, if he had
  only known how to enjoy it. Julien's departure did not in any way bring
  to an end those ecstacies which thrilled her in spite of herself, and
  those troubles of remorse which lacerated her.
  
  "My God! being happy--being loved, is that all it comes to?" This was
  Julien's first thought as he entered his room. He was a prey to the
  astonishment and nervous anxiety of the man who has just obtained
  what he has long desired. He has been accustomed to desire, and has
  no longer anything to desire, and nevertheless has no memories. Like
  a soldier coming back from parade. Julien was absorbed in rehearsing
  the details of his conduct. "Have I failed in nothing which I owe to
  myself? Have I played my part well?"
  
  And what a part! the part of a man accustomed to be brilliant with
  women.
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Part 1, Chapter 15
target: Tired of playing cat and mouse, Julien leads Madame de Renal into the garden and tells her he'll visit her that night at 2 a.m. He says there's something he needs to tell her. Madame tells him not to be a fool and he spends the rest of the evening avoiding her. True to his word, Julien gets up at two in the morning and sneaks down the hallway into Madame de Renal's room. She sits up in bed and calls him a wretch. He rushes forward and hugs her knees, weeping. A few hours later, Julien leaves the room. The narrator implies that he and Madame have had sex.