What It Is
The salon of the mansion of the Marquis de La Mole in Paris, where the marquise receives. If the province measures everything by money, Paris measures by birth, boredom and manners, and the weapon that served in Verrières buys no place there.
Where It Appears
In Chapter 1 of Book II, the family name engraved in black marble on the door is the first sign Julien reads.
Such ostentation displeased Julien. They are so afraid of the Jacobins! They see a Robespierre and his cart behind every hedge; they are always joking about everything, and they display their house in this way so that the rabble will recognize it in case of riot, and plunder it.
In Chapter 4 of Book II, the mechanism of the salon is laid out: five or six flatterers frequent the house, and without them the marquise would be left exposed to loneliness, and no one talks about anything of weight.
Ch. IV. The hosts of the La Mole palace:
At bottom, the hosts felt a great deal of pride and a great deal of boredom; they were accustomed to malicious gossip to amuse themselves, so that they could hope for true friends.
No amount of a hundred thousand crowns a year, nor any decoration, can stand against this salon rule. A living idea, however small, seemed like rudeness.
Ch. IV. Opinion as tyrant, in a salon remark:
Why do they expect me to hold today the same opinion I held three weeks ago? In that case, my opinion would be my tyrant.
Ch. IV. In the La Mole salon:
"This is truly a den," he said, like Basile, "I only see vicious people coming in."
Ch. V. Epigraph of the chapter, attributed to Faublas:
A livelier idea seems like rudeness, so accustomed have we become to empty words. Woe to him who invents when he speaks! FAUBLAS
After the duel, Julien meets people of the same caste who are not tedious, and measures the salon by the difference.
Those gentlemen, though very noble, thought Julien, are not tedious like the people who dine at Monsieur de La Mole's mansion; and I see why, [...] They allow themselves to be indecent.
Mathilde de La Mole rules her own circle with epigrams, and is bored by her suitors' identical letters.
In Chapter 29 of Book II, the marechale de Fervaques, who frequents the La Mole house, gives in to the boredom of a way of life made for the public.
The boredom of a way of life that aims only at effect on the public, without any real satisfaction in the depths of the heart with that sort of success, had become so intolerable since she began thinking of Julien
The politics that the salon treats as rudeness appears in another salon, with the marquis himself at the table.
I will take you to a salon where twelve people will be gathered; you will write down what each one says.
Let each of us sacrifice a fifth of his income to form this small devoted troop of five hundred men per department.
What It Means
In Chapter 4 of Book II, boredom there is not a flaw; it is the group's rule of protection: any living idea is read as rudeness, because it forces one to take a position. Chapter 9 of Book II closes the argument:
The two speeches close the argument that the following chapters only illustrate: the Parisian aristocracy tolerates neither the foreign revolutionary nor the ambitious commoner, one because he thinks against it and the other because he was born outside it, and the instrument that punishes thought, the congregation informing the police, is the same that, in later chapters, will condemn Julien in a court.
The marquis is in two rooms. In the marquise's, no living idea is admitted; in the secret meeting, it is he who proposes arming five hundred men per department. The politics that does not enter the salon as conversation is decided outside it by the master of the house.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Social class, Appearance and reality, Politics.
- Characters: Marquis de La Mole, Mathilde de La Mole, Julien Sorel.
- Place: Paris.
- Neighboring symbols: the seminary at Besançon and the severed head.