Chapter summary
For Julien Sorel, the partnership offer his friend Fouqué, a timber merchant, made him has ended his happiness, and, without deciding anything, he drafts a detailed plan of seduction. When Madame de Rênal asks him whether he has no other name besides Julien, he does not know how to answer, and he tries to repair the failure by kissing her in a passage from one room to another, nearly being seen. She, frightened and reminded of Valenod, now always keeps one of the children beside her. After lunch, in front of the subgovernor Maugiron, Julien moves his boot forward and touches Madame de Rênal's foot, and she drops the English scissors, which break, and she tells him: "Be prudent, it is an order!" That evening Julien goes to Verrières and finds the curé Abbé Chélan packing his belongings, dismissed and replaced by the vicar Maslon. Julien takes advantage of the episode to write to Fouqué that the injustice may make it more advantageous that his salvation does not depend on any religious order.
Analysis
Julien writes the plan because his pride does not want to leave anything to chance, and because, unsettled, he is afraid of Madame de Rênal and of the dress that seems to him the vanguard of Paris: being a lover becomes a task of honor, to be carried out with method. The kiss in the passage, imposed as a duty, frightens Madame de Rênal, who from then on keeps one of the children always at her side. When, after lunch, he touches her foot in front of Maugiron, however, she does not repel him: she covers the gesture by lamenting the scissors and only orders him to be prudent.
Ch. XIV. Calculation precedes the gesture, and it is calculation that gets in the way: Julien's pride admits no improvisation, and the written plan is what makes him clumsy before Madame de Rênal:
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