Chapter summary
Alone, Mathilde de La Mole misses even the austere discussions she used to have with Julien Sorel, and justifies to herself, with arguments, why it was worth yielding: it was not his mustache or his elegance on horseback, it was his ideas about the future of France and about the possible resemblance between what is coming and the English revolution of 1688. She even imagines herself as Madame Roland beside a Julien in the role of Roland, the Girondin couple that the French Revolution destroyed in 1793. While doodling in an album, she unintentionally sketches a profile identical to his and takes it for a miracle of love. At the Italian opera, an aria in which the heroine says she must be punished for loving too much moves her; at home, claiming fever, she repeats the cantilena at the piano through the night and concludes that she has conquered her passion. The narrator observes that this love is cerebral, wittier than true love but lasting only a few moments of enthusiasm, because it constantly judges itself, and defends the novel against the charge of immorality: a novel is a mirror carried along a great road, and whoever should be accused is the road that lets the mud pile up.
The next day Mathilde sets out to displease Julien in everything, to make sure she has defeated her passion, and he, not understanding the maneuver, considers himself a victim and even thinks of suicide. Seeing her bedroom light go out, he decides to climb the gardener's ladder, which was chained up: when the clock strikes one, he twists a link of the chain, leans the ladder against Mathilde's window and enters the room. She throws herself into his arms, accuses herself of pride, calls him "my lord" and begs his pardon. At dawn he climbs down the ladder, to protect her reputation, and Mathilde throws a lock of cut hair from the window to him as a sign of obedience. It is the second victory and the second collapse: at lunch the next day, her hair dressed to show the cut, she calls him "my lord" in front of everyone, and the day after, her hair dressed to hide it, she treats him with calm, courteous eyes and no longer thinks of love. Julien gallops out through the woods of Meudon, not understanding what he did to deserve this misfortune.
Analysis
Mathilde reconstructs with arguments why it was worth yielding, because she needs the act to seem the fruit of reason and not of impulse: it was not his mustache or his elegance on horseback, it was his ideas about the future of France. The love she wants is one that justifies itself, and that is why the profile she drew without meaning to unsettles her.
She even imagines herself as Madame Roland beside a Julien in the role of Roland, the Girondin couple that the French Revolution destroyed in 1793.
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