Clavis Libri
Plans Sign in

The Red and the Black · Book I · Chapter 21

Dialogue with a master

Appearance and RealityPolitics

Chapter summary

Julien Sorel spends an hour cutting out words for the anonymous letter, and Madame de Rênal receives it from him with a calm that frightens him, and hands him a jewel case to bury in the mountain in case everything goes wrong. Monsieur de Rênal spends the night awake, imagining killing his wife, expelling her, or pretending to know nothing, and concludes that a scandal would cost him dearly, between his wife's aunt's inheritance in Besançon and the mockery of Verrières. In the morning she approaches him in the garden and hands him the second letter as if a stranger had given it to her. She demands Julien's departure and, insinuating a little platonic passion of Valenod's for her, and his gallant letters, diverts her husband's fury toward the director of the poorhouse. While he forces open her writing desk looking for the letters, she ties the white handkerchief to the dovecote and, on his return, makes him notice that the letters and the anonymous note are on the same paper. At dinner she announces that Julien will have fifteen days' leave in Verrières, which her husband, grudgingly, reduces to one week.

Analysis

Rênal spends the night between killing his wife, expelling her, or pretending to know nothing, and gives up on the scandal because the accounts come out in her favor, the aunt's inheritance and the mockery of Verrières. But at dawn he still plans to check the truth with a hair glued with wax to the door. In the morning she steers the conversation so that he arrives alone at the conclusion she has prepared, handing him the second letter as if from a stranger and insinuating that Valenod courts her.

Among the friends whom Monsieur de Rênal pushed away through arrogance is Falcoz, who opened a liberal newspaper, and the narrator names who took care of the rest: The Congregation resolved to ruin him: his newspaper was condemned, his printer's license canceled.

Unlock with a subscription

Subscription

The complete analysis of every chapter of The Red and the Black comes with a subscription, along with the explanation of each quote, the quiz, the PDF guide, and the study workbook.

See the plansAlready subscribed? Sign in