Chapter summary
The Marquis de La Mole receives Abbé Pirard in Paris without ceremony, absorbed in six months of intrigue to obtain a ministry that, out of gratitude, would make him a duke, and offers him the post of secretary, which the abbé refuses. Faced with the marquis's sincere embarrassment, Pirard then suggests Julien Sorel, a young man of proud heart who will be persecuted in the seminary (see the seminary at Besançon). The marquis, who already knows the young man's name and does not say where he knows it from, agrees to make him companion to his son and sends a thousand francs for the journey.
Julien receives the letter stamped at Châlons, and the leaf that falls at his feet is the signal agreed with Pirard. The bishop congratulates him on the great destiny awaiting him in Paris, and the mayor personally brings a passport with the traveler's name left blank, while Fouqué, the friend who is a timber merchant, disapproves of the change and predicts it will end in a post vilified in the newspapers. Julien takes him for a provincial bourgeois, since he is at last going to act on the stage of great events.
In Verrières, Abbé Chélan receives him sternly, speaks only of theology and makes him rent another horse so he can leave town without seeing anyone. Julien dismisses the horse at sunset, buys a ladder from a peasant and, before dawn, climbs the terraces of the mayor's garden to the window of Madame de Rênal. She repels him with religious horror, repentant over what she calls a crime, and gives in when he, now a cold politician, announces with calculated coldness that he is leaving forever. Julien spends the day hidden in the room of Madame Derville, her cousin, which is locked with a key; when Madame de Rênal brings him soup, she meets in the corridor the servant who had hidden the ladder, advancing silently as if listening to something. At night her husband knocks at the bedroom door saying there are thieves; Julien escapes through the study window under gunfire and takes the Geneva road, so that whoever looks for him will look along the Paris road.
Analysis
Julien disobeys Chélan, who had ordered him to leave town without seeing anyone, because he had come to Verrières hoping to see Madame de Rênal again and, believing she had written to him a little while ago, decides to see her or die. She, who repels him with religious horror, gives in when he announces, with calculated coldness, that he is leaving forever: the fear of losing him defeats remorse.
Before seeing Madame de Rênal again, Julien sees in Fouqué's warning only the pettiness of a provincial bourgeois: Julien saw in all of that only the narrowness of mind of a provincial bourgeois. He was finally going to act on the stage of great events.
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