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The Red and the Black · Book II · Chapter 35

A storm

LoveAmbitionAppearance and Reality

Chapter summary

The Abbé Pirard hands Julien Sorel twenty thousand francs from the Marquis de La Mole and a version of his origins in which his real father is left out. In Strasbourg, a lieutenant of the 15th Hussars, Julien commands respect through his impassivity, already calculates the next rank, and sends five hundred francs to Abbé Chélan for the poor. A note from Mathilde de La Mole ("All is lost") makes him run to Paris, where she shows him her father's letter, which refuses marriage to a man who seduces a girl because she is rich, and the letter from Madame de Rênal, written in response to the request for information. Julien says the marquis is just, leaves Mathilde in the street, and sets out for Verrières. Julien does not reply by letter. He buys pistols, enters the church of Verrières (see the church of Verrières) during Mass, and fires twice at the woman he loved most. He misses with the first shot; with the second, she falls.

Analysis

Julien leaves for Verrières after reading Madame de Rênal's letter, written in response to the marquis's request, which describes him as poor and ambitious, rising through hypocrisy and the seduction of a weak woman. He does not reply: he buys pistols and fires inside the church. It can be read as the revenge of a man who feels betrayed by the woman he loved most. Or as the explosion of what he had repressed, in a gesture without calculation.

Along with the marquis's twenty thousand francs, Abbé Pirard brings the formula that erases the father from the new biography: Father Sorel becomes only the carpenter who looked after the boy.

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