Chapter summary
Enchanted at having nearly been killed, Mathilde de La Mole seeks out Julien Sorel after dinner and takes him for a walk in the garden, where she begins to confide in him about the young men she was enthusiastic about, Croisenois, Caylus and Luz. It is not only confession, it is pleasure in seeing him suffer: as she speaks, she rediscovers in herself a remnant of inclination for them, and Julien listens to her on the same avenue where he had waited for the hour to strike before entering her room. The cruel intimacy lasts eight days.
Analysis
Mathilde makes these confidences because she has begun to love Julien again without realizing it: the narrator says that it is by talking to him that she takes such pleasure in dwelling on her fancies for Croisenois, Caylus and Luz, and only in the final days does his pain become a pleasure for her. Julien listens because love has unhinged him: he stays on the avenue where he waited for the hour to strike, and then watches her from behind a closed shutter.
One day, mad with love and with pain, Julien tells her that she no longer loves him, he who adores her, and commits what the narrator calls the worst folly possible.
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