Stendhal - The Red and the Black (World's Classics Series)

Stendhal

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2018 OK Publishing

ISBN 978-80-272-4694-6

CHAPTER I A SMALL TOWN

CHAPTER II A MAYOR

CHAPTER III THE POOR FUND

CHAPTER IV A FATHER AND A SON

CHAPTER V A NEGOTIATION

CHAPTER VI ENNUI

CHAPTER VII THE ELECTIVE AFFINITIES

CHAPTER VIII LITTLE EPISODES

CHAPTER IX AN EVENING IN THE COUNTRY

CHAPTER X A GREAT HEART AND A SMALL FORTUNE

CHAPTER XI AN EVENING

CHAPTER XII A JOURNEY

CHAPTER XIII THE OPEN WORK STOCKINGS

CHAPTER XIV THE ENGLISH SCISSORS

CHAPTER XV THE COCK'S SONG

CHAPTER XVI THE DAY AFTER

CHAPTER XVII THE FIRST DEPUTY

CHAPTER XVIII A KING AT VERRIRES

CHAPTER XIX THINKING PRODUCES SUFFERING

CHAPTER XX ANONYMOUS LETTERS

CHAPTER XXI DIALOGUE WITH A MASTER

CHAPTER XXII MANNERS OF PROCEDURE IN 1830

CHAPTER XXIII SORROWS OF AN OFFICIAL

CHAPTER XXIV A CAPITAL

CHAPTER XXV THE SEMINARY

CHAPTER XXVI THE WORLD, OR WHAT THE RICH LACK

CHAPTER XXVII FIRST EXPERIENCE OF LIFE

CHAPTER XXVIII A PROCESSION

CHAPTER XXIX THE FIRST PROMOTION

CHAPTER XXX AN AMBITIOUS MAN

CHAPTER XXXI HE PLEASURES OF THE COUNTRY

CHAPTER XXXII ENTRY INTO SOCIETY

CHAPTER XXXIII THE FIRST STEPS

CHAPTER XXXIV THE HOTEL DE LA MOLE

CHAPTER XXXV SENSIBILITY AND A GREAT PIOUS LADY

CHAPTER XXXVI PRONUNCIATION

CHAPTER XXXVII AN ATTACK OF GOUT

CHAPTER XXXVIII WHAT IS THE DECORATION WHICH CONFERS DISTINCTION?

CHAPTER XXXIX THE BALL

CHAPTER XL QUEEN MARGUERITE

CHAPTER XLI A YOUNG GIRL'S DOMINION

CHAPTER XLII IS HE A DANTON?

CHAPTER XLIII A PLOT

CHAPTER XLIV A YOUNG GIRL'S THOUGHTS

CHAPTER XLV IS IT A PLOT?

CHAPTER XLVI ONE O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING

CHAPTER XLVII AN OLD SWORD

CHAPTER XLVIII CRUEL MOMENTS

CHAPTER XLIX THE OPERA BOUFFE

CHAPTER L THE JAPANESE VASE

CHAPTER LI THE SECRET NOTE

CHAPTER LII THE DISCUSSION

CHAPTER LIII THE CLERGY, THE FORESTS, LIBERTY

CHAPTER LIV STRASBOURG

CHAPTER LV THE MINISTRY OF VIRTUE

CHAPTER LVI MORAL LOVE

CHAPTER LVII THE FINEST PLACES IN THE CHURCH

CHAPTER LVIII MANON LESCAUT

CHAPTER LIX ENNUI

CHAPTER LX A BOX AT THE BOUFFES

CHAPTER LXI FRIGHTEN HER

CHAPTER LXII THE TIGER

CHAPTER LXIII THE HELL OF WEAKNESS

CHAPTER LXIV A MAN OF INTELLECT

CHAPTER LXV A STORM

CHAPTER LXVI SAD DETAILS

CHAPTER LXVII A TURRET

CHAPTER LXVIII A POWERFUL MAN

CHAPTER LXIX THE INTRIGUE

CHAPTER LXX TRANQUILITY

CHAPTER LXXI THE TRIAL

CHAPTER LXXII

CHAPTER LXXIII

CHAPTER LXXIV

CHAPTER LXXV

Table of Contents

Put thousands together less bad,

But the cage less gay.—Hobbs.

The little town of Verrières can pass for one of the prettiest in Franche-Comté. Its white houses with their pointed red-tiled roofs stretch along the slope of a hill, whose slightest undulations are marked by groups of vigorous chestnuts. The Doubs flows to within some hundred feet above its fortifications, which were built long ago by the Spaniards, and are now in ruins.

Verrières is sheltered on the north by a high mountain which is one of the branches of the Jura. The jagged peaks of the Verra are covered with snow from the beginning of the October frosts. A torrent which rushes down from the mountains traverses Verrières before throwing itself into the Doubs, and supplies the motive power for a great number of saw mills. The industry is very simple, and secures a certain prosperity to the majority of the inhabitants who are more peasant than bourgeois. It is not, however, the wood saws which have enriched this little town. It is the manufacture of painted tiles, called Mulhouse tiles, that is responsible for that general affluence which has caused the façades of nearly all the houses in Verrières to be rebuilt since the fall of Napoleon.

One has scarcely entered the town, before one is stunned by the din of a strident machine of terrifying aspect. Twenty heavy hammers which fall with a noise that makes the paved floor tremble, are lifted up by a wheel set in motion by the torrent. Each of these hammers manufactures every day I don't know how many thousands of nails. The little pieces of iron which are rapidly transformed into nails by these enormous hammers, are put in position by fresh pretty young girls. This labour so rough at first sight is one of the industries which most surprises the traveller who penetrates for the first time the mountains which separate France and Helvetia. If when he enters Verrières, the traveller asks who owns this fine nail factory which deafens everybody who goes up the Grande-Rue, he is answered in a drawling tone " Eh! it belongs to M. the Mayor ."

And if the traveller stops a few minutes in that Grande-Rue of Verrières which goes on an upward incline from the bank of the Doubs to nearly as far as the summit of the hill, it is a hundred to one that he will see a big man with a busy and important air.

When he comes in sight all hats are quickly taken off. His hair is grizzled and he is dressed in grey. He is a Knight of several Orders, has a large forehead and an aquiline nose, and if you take him all round, his features are not devoid of certain regularity. One might even think on the first inspection that it combines with the dignity of the village mayor that particular kind of comfortableness which is appropriate to the age of forty-eight or fifty. But soon the traveller from Paris will be shocked by a certain air of self-satisfaction and self-complacency mingled with an almost indefinable narrowness and lack of inspiration. One realises at last that this man's talent is limited to seeing that he is paid exactly what he is owed, and in paying his own debts at the latest possible moment.

Such is M. de Rênal, the mayor of Verrières. After having crossed the road with a solemn step, he enters the mayoral residence and disappears from the eye of the traveller. But if the latter continues to walk a hundred steps further up, he will perceive a house with a fairly fine appearance, with some magnificent gardens behind an iron grill belonging to the house. Beyond that is an horizon line formed by the hills of Burgundy, which seem ideally made to delight the eyes. This view causes the traveller to forget that pestilential atmosphere of petty money-grubbing by which he is beginning to be suffocated.

He is told that this house belongs to M. de Rênal. It is to the profits which he has made out of his big nail factory that the mayor of Verrières owes this fine residence of hewn stone which he is just finishing. His family is said to be Spanish and ancient, and is alleged to have been established in the country well before the conquest of Louis XIV.

Since 1815, he blushes at being a manufacturer: 1815 made him mayor of Verrières. The terraced walls of this magnificent garden which descends to the Doubs, plateau by plateau, also represent the reward of M. de Rênal's proficiency in the iron-trade. Do not expect to find in France those picturesque gardens which surround the manufacturing towns of Germany, like Leipsic, Frankfurt and Nurenburgh, etc. The more walls you build in Franche-Comté and the more you fortify your estate with piles of stone, the more claim you will acquire on the respect of your neighbours. Another reason for the admiration due to M. de Rênal's gardens and their numerous walls, is the fact that he has purchased, through sheer power of the purse, certain small parcels of the ground on which they stand. That saw-mill, for instance, whose singular position on the banks of the Doubs struck you when you entered Verrières, and where you notice the name of SOREL written in gigantic characters on the chief beam of the roof, used to occupy six years ago that precise space on which is now reared the wall of the fourth terrace in M. de Rênal's gardens.