The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the Nineteenth Century

by Stendhal

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  Burgundy, and seems expressly created to please the eye. This view allows the traveller to forget the poisonous atmosphere of petty financial intrigue which is beginning to stifle him.

  He is told that this house belongs to M. de Rênal. The profits from his sizeable nail factory have enabled the mayor of Verrières to put up this fine dwelling in solid stone which he is in the process of completing. His family, it is said, is of Spanish origin from way back, and has been settled in the region, so they maintain, since well before it was conquered by Louis XIV. *

  Since 1815 his involvement with industry has been a source of embarrassment to him: the events of 1815 * made him mayor of Verrières. The walls supporting the terraces of his magnificent garden which runs down step by step to the Doubs are also a reward for M. de Rênal's expertise in the iron industry.

  When in France you must not expect to come across the kind of picturesque gardens that are found on the outskirts of manufacturing towns in Germany like Leipzig, Frankfurt or Nuremberg. In the Franche-Comté, the more walls a man builds, the more his land bristles with rows of stones laid one on top of another, the greater his claim to his neighbours' respect. M. de Rênal's gardens with their walls everywhere are further admired because he spent a fortune purchasing some of the small plots of land on which they are sited. Take, for instance, that sawmill which caught your eye by its striking location on the bank of the Doubs as you entered Verrières, and where you noticed the name SOREL written in gigantic letters on a board set above the roof: six years ago it used to occupy the site on which the wall of the fourth terrace of M. de Rênal's gardens is now being built.

  For all his pride, the mayor had to enter into lengthy negotiations with old Sorel, a tough and stubborn peasant if ever there was one. He had to hand over a handsome sum in gold coin to get him to move his mill elsewhere. As for the public stream which powered the saw, M. de Rênal managed to have it diverted, using the influence he commands in Paris. This favour was granted him after the 182- elections. * For each acre he took from Sorel, he gave him four on a site five hundred yards downstream on the banks of the Doubs. And

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  although this position was much more advantageous for his trade in deal planks, old Mr Sorel, as he is called now that he has grown rich, found a way to screw out of his neighbour's impatience and obsessive greed for land the sum of 6,000 francs as well.

  It is true that this arrangement has come in for some criticism from the right-thinking individuals in the neighbourhood. Once on a Sunday four years ago when M. de Rênal was on his way back from church in his mayor's robes, he noticed from a distance how old Mr Sorel, with his three sons gathered round him, smiled as he looked in the mayor's direction. That smile was a fatal flash of illumination for the mayor: now he can't help thinking he might have been able to drive a better bargain over the exchange.

  To win public esteem in Verrières, the main thing, while of course building walls in great number, is to avoid any design brought over from Italy by the stonemasons who come through the gorges in the Jura in the springtime on their way up to Paris. An innovation of this kind would earn the foolhardy landowner a lasting reputation for unsound views, and discredit him for ever in the eyes of the wise and sensible folk who mete out esteem in the Franch-Comté.

  In actual fact, these wise folk keep everyone there in the grip of the most irksome despotism. This dirty word sums up why it is that life in a small town is unbearable to anyone who has dwelt in the great republic called Paris. Public opinion-and you can just imagine what it's like!--exercises a tyranny that is every bit as mindless * in small towns in France as it is in the United States of America.

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  CHAPTER 2

  A mayor

  Does dignity then count for nothing, sir? It is respected by fools, held in awe by children, envied by the rich, and despised by any wise man.

  BARNAVE *

  FORTUNATELY for M. de Rênal's reputation as an administrator, a massive retaining-wall was needed to shore up the public promenade which runs along the hillside a hundred feet or so above the course of the Doubs. From this excellent vantage-point you get one of the most picturesque views in the whole of France. But every spring, rainwater used to erode the path away, leaving deep gullies and making it quite impassable. This drawback affected everyone, and put M. de Rênal in the fortunate position of having to immortalize his term of office by building a wall twenty foot high and some eighty yards long.

  The parapet of this wall cost M. de Rênal three journeys to Paris, because the last Minister of the Interior but one had declared himself utterly opposed to the promenade at Verrières. The parapet now rises four feet above ground level, and, as if in defiance of all ministers past and present, it is now being dressed with slabs of solid stone.

  How many times, as I stood there leaning my chest against those great blocks of fine blue-grey stone, musing on the Paris balls I had left behind the day before, have I gazed down into the valley of the Doubs! Beyond it on the left bank there are five or six winding valleys with tiny streams at the bottom clearly visible to the naked eye. You can see them cascading down into the Doubs. The heat of the sun is fierce in the mountains here, and when it shines overhead the musing traveller is sheltered by the magnificent plane trees on this terrace. They owe their rapid growth and their fine blue-green foliage to the new soil which the mayor had the builders bring

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  up to put behind his huge retaining-wall. For in spite of opposition from the town council, he widened the promenade by more than six feet (which I welcome, although he is an Ultra * and I am a liberal), and in his opinion and that of M. Valenod, who has the good fortune to be master of the workhouse in Verrières, this terrace is now fit to be compared to the one at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. *

  For my part, I have only one criticism of the AVENUE DE LA FIDÉLITÉ (you can read its official name in fifteen or twenty places on marble plaques which have earned M. de Rênal yet one more decoration); what I dislike about it is the barbarous way the municipality pollards these leafy planes to the quick, giving them low, round, smooth heads which make them look like the commonest of vegetables from the allotment, when they are crying out to be left in the magnificent shapes they display in England. But the mayor's will is tyrannical, and twice a year all the trees belonging to the commune have their branches mercilessly amputated. Local liberals claim, not without some exaggeration, that the hand of the official gardener has become far heavier since M. Maslon the curate adopted the habit of appropriating the cuttings for himself.

  This young clergyman was sent from Besançon some years ago to keep an eye on Father Chélan and a number of other incumbents of neighbouring parishes. An old army surgeon who had fought in the Italian campaigns and had retired to Verrières--a man who in his lifetime managed to be both a Jacobin * and a Bonapartist at once, according to the mayor-was bold enough one day to complain to his worship about the way these fine trees were being periodically mutilated.

  'I like shade,' replied M. de Rênal with the right degree of aloofness for addressing a surgeon who is a Member of the Legion of Honour. * 'I like shade, and I have my trees pruned to give shade; I can see no other use for a tree when, unlike the serviceable walnut, it doesn't bring in any money.'

  BRINGING IN MONEY: this is the key phrase which settles everything in Verrières. It sums up the habitual thinking of more than three-quarters of its inhabitants.

  Bringing in money is the consideration which settles every-

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  thing in this little town you found so pretty. The newcomer who decides to visit it, won over by the beauty of the cool, deep valleys round about, imagines to begin with that its inhabitants appreciate what is beautiful. They are always talking about the beauty of the locality, and it is undeniable that they value it highly; but this is because it attracts a number of travellers from elsewhere with the means to line the innkeepers' pockets, and thereby, through local taxes, to bring mo
ney to the town.

  On a fine morning in autumn, M. de Rênal was strolling along the Avenue de la Fidélité with his wife on his arm. While listening to her husband solemnly talking away, Mme de Rênal was keeping an anxious eye on the activities of three small boys. The eldest, who might have been eleven, kept on going over to the wall, far too often for her liking, and making as if to climb on to it. A gentle voice was then heard calling 'Adolphe', and the boy had to abandon his daring venture. Mme de Rênal looked about thirty, but was still a rather pretty woman.

  'He might well come to regret it, this fine gentleman from Paris,' M. de Rênal was saying. He looked indignant, and his face was paler than usual. 'It isn't as though I had no friends at Court. . .'

  But although I do wish to spend two hundred pages telling you about the provinces, I shall not be uncivilized enough to subject you to the long-windedness and deliberately roundabout ways of a provincial dialogue.

  This fine gentleman from Paris, so loathsome to the mayor of Verrières, was none other than a M. Appert * who had succeeded two days previously not merely in getting inside the prison and the workhouse in Verrères, but also the hospital which was run as a charity by the mayor and the chief landowners of the neighbourhood.

  'But what harm can this gentleman from Paris do you,' Mme de Rênal asked timidly, 'since you're most scrupulously honest in administering what is given to the poor?'

  'His only reason for coming is to apportion blame, and then he'll get articles written in newspapers with liberal leanings.'

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  'You never read them, my dear.'

  'But people gossip about these radical articles; it's all very distracting for us, and it prevents us from going about our good works. 1 For my part I shall never forgive the priest.'

  ____________________ 1 This is a historical fact. [ Stendhal's note.]

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  CHAPTER 3

  Care of the poor

  A virtuous priest who is a stranger to intrigue is a godsend to any village.

  FLEURY *

  You should know that the priest of Verrières, an old man of eighty who none the less had a constitution and character of iron, thanks to the invigorating mountain air, was entitled to visit the prison, the hospital and even the workhouse at any hour of the day or night. It was precisely at six o'clock in the morning that M. Appert, bearing an introduction from Paris to the priest, had had the wisdom to turn up in an inquisitive little town. He had gone straight to the presbytery.

  Reading the letter addressed to him by the Marquis de la Mole, a peer of France and the richest landowner in the provinces, Father Chélan remained plunged in thought.

  'I'm old and well loved here,' he said to himself under his breath, 'they wouldn't dare!' Turning at once to the gentleman from Paris, with a look in which despite his great age there shone that sacred fire which betokens pleasure in carrying out a fine action with some degree of risk attached, he said:

  'Come with me, sir, and while we're in the presence of the gaoler and more particularly of the warders in the workhouse, be so good as to refrain from commenting on what we shall see there.' M. Appert realized he was dealing with a stalwart character: he followed the venerable priest round the prison, the hospice and the workhouse, asking a good many questions but despite some odd replies never allowing himself to express the slightest sign of disapproval.

  The visit lasted several hours. Father Chélan invited M. Appert to dinner with him, but the latter said he had letters to write: he did not want to compromise his generous escort any further. Around three o'clock the two gentlemen went off to finish inspecting the workhouse and then returned to the

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  prison. On the doorstep they found the gaoler, a bow-legged giant of a man six foot tall; his unprepossessing face had become hideous with terror.

  'Ah! sir,' he said to Father Chélan on catching sight of him, 'isn't this gentleman I see with you M. Appert?'

  'And what if he is?' replied the priest.

  'You see, since yesterday I've been under the strictest instructions delivered from the prefect by a gendarme who must have galloped hard through the night, not to let p into the prison.'

  'I concede, M. Noiroud, that this traveller I have with me is M. Appert. Do you recognize my right to enter the prison at any hour of the day or night, and to take with me anyone I please?'

  'Yes, Father Chélan,' said the gaoler in a low voice, hanging his head like a bulldog reluctantly cowed into submission by fear of the stick. 'But remember, Father Chélan, I've a wife and children, and if anyone tells on me, I'll get the sack. My job's all I've got to live off.'

  'I should be just as put out to lose mine,' replied the good priest, sounding more and more agitated.

  'But there's all the difference!' retorted the gaoler. 'You have an income of eight hundred pounds, * Father Chélan, everyone knows you do--a nice bit of property...'

  These are the events which, in numerous versions rich with commentary and exaggeration, had for the past two days been stirring up all the spiteful passions in the little town of Verrières. At this particular moment they formed the subject matter of the little discussion which M. de Rênal was having with his wife. That morning he had gone to the priest's house taking with him M. Valenod, the master of the workhouse, to express their dissatisfaction in the strongest possible terms. Father Chélan had no one to protect him and he realized the full implications of their words.

  'Well, gentlemen! I shall be the third priest in the neighbourhood to be stripped of his office at the age of eighty. * I've been here for fifty-six years; I've baptized almost all the inhabitants of the town, which was scarcely more than a village when I arrived. Every day I marry young folk whose grand-

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  parents I married in times gone by. Verrières is my family, but I said to myself on seeing the stranger: "This man from Paris may indeed be a liberal, there are only too many of them around; but what harm can he do our paupers and our prisons?"'

  When criticism of his conduct from M. de Rênal and especially M. Valenod had reached a pitch of severity, the old priest had exclaimed in a quavering voice:

  'All right then, gentlemen, have me removed from office! It won't stop me living in these parts. Everyone knows that fortyeight years ago I inherited a field which brings in eight hundred pounds. I shall live off this income. I don't put any money by in a position like mine, gentlemen, and maybe that's why I'm not so afraid when there's talk of dismissing me from it.'

  M. de Rênal was on very good terms with his wife, but, not knowing what to reply to her hesitantly repeated question: 'What harm can this gentleman from Paris do to the prisoners?', he was about to lose his temper, when she let out a cry of alarm. Her second son had just climbed on to the top of the terrace wall and was running along it, although there was a drop of more than twenty feet from the wall to the vineyard on the other side. Fear of startling her son and making him fall stopped Mme de Rênal from calling out to him. Eventually the child, laughing at his feat of daring, glanced at his mother and saw how pale she was; he jumped down on to the path and ran over to her. He got a good scolding.

  This little incident gave a new turn to the conversation.

  'I'm determined to take on young Sorel, the sawyer's son, as part of the household,' said M. de Rênal. 'He can keep an eye on the children, who are becoming rather a handful for us. He's a young priest, or as good as, knows his Latin, and the children will learn a great deal from him; he's made of stern stuff, according to Father Chélan. I shall give him three hundred francs and his keep. I did have some doubts about his morality, as he was the blue-eyed boy of that old surgeon who was a member of the Legion of Honour and came to board at the Sorels' on the strength of being a cousin of theirs. The fellow may well really have been a secret agent of the liberals. He used to say that our mountain air did his asthma good, but there's no proof of that. He had taken part in all Buonaparté's campaigns

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  in Italy, and ev
en, so they say, voted 'no' to the Empire * in the past. This liberal taught young Sorel Latin, and left him the stock of books he had brought with him. So I should never have thought of putting the carpenter's son * in charge of our children, had the priest not told me, on the very day before the incident which has just made us enemies for good, that young Sorel has been studying theology for three years with the intention of going to the seminary. So he isn't a liberal, and he does know Latin.

  'This arrangement works out in more ways than one,' went on M. de Rênal, glancing at his wife with a diplomatic look on his face. ' Valenod is as proud as anything of the two fine Normandy cobs he has just bought for his barouche; but he hasn't got a tutor for his children.'

  'He might well get in before us with this one.'

  'So you approve of my plan?' said M. de Rênal with a smile to thank his wife for the excellent idea she had just had. 'Right, that's settled then.'

  'Heavens above! my dearest, you are quick to make up your mind!'

  'That's because I'm a person of character, I am, and this much was obvious to the priest. Let's make no bones about it, we're surrounded by liberals here. All the cloth merchants are envious of me, I know for certain they are; and two or three of them are getting filthy rich. Well, you see, I like the idea of their seeing M. de Rênal's children going past on their walk, in the charge of their tutor. Everyone will be impressed. My grandfather would often tell us how in his youth he'd had a tutor. It may cost me as much as a hundred crowns, but it must be reckoned a necessary expenditure to maintain our station.'