Chapter summary
Rênal enters the children's room with the servants carrying the mattresses, and Julien Sorel, beside himself, confronts him. He asks whether another tutor would have made the children progress so much, says he can live without him, and says that, leaving that house, he knows where to go. Rênal, who immediately imagines Julien installed in Valenod's house, grants fifty francs a month, and the children run to tell their mother. Julien says he must speak of conscience with Abbé Chélan and climbs through the woods to an isolated rock. There, far from men, he tells himself he has won a battle and wonders what the powerful man was afraid of. Watching a hawk, he envies its strength and isolation and wonders whether Napoleon's destiny will be his.
Analysis
Julien explodes because Rênal's entrance with the servants is the last straw, after being reprimanded for negligence in front of women. He does not negotiate: he asserts the value of what he taught the children and says he knows where to go. Rênal yields out of self-interest, not justice, because he imagines the tutor installed in Valenod's house.
Ch. X. After wresting the raise, Julien climbs into the woods and gives a name to what he has done, in the vocabulary of the chief he admires, war: I have won a battle, he told himself as soon as he was in the woods, far from men's eyes. I have won a battle!
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