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

by Stendhal

  At the Père-Lachaise cemetery, * a most obliging gentleman, who turned out to be even more liberal in his remarks, volunteered to point out to Julien the tomb of Marshal Ney, * deprived of the honour of an epitaph by a clever piece of politics. But when he parted from this liberal who, with tears in his eyes, almost clasped him in his arms, Julien no longer had his watch on him. This was the experience that had enriched Julien when at noon two days later he presented himself to Father Pirard; the latter looked hard at him.

  'Perhaps you are going to become a fop,' said the priest severely. Julien looked like a very young man in high mourning; as a matter of fact, it suited him very well, but the good priest was too much of a provincial himself to see that Julien still had that way of moving his shoulders which in the provinces denotes both elegance and self-importance. On seeing Julien, the marquis judged his graces so differently from Father Pirard that he asked him:

  'Would you have any objection to M. Sorel's taking dancing lessons?'

  The priest was rooted to the spot.

  'No,' he replied at last, 'Julien isn't a priest.'

  Running up a little hidden staircase two steps at a time, the marquis went himself to settle our hero into a pretty-looking

  -252-

  attic looking out over the huge garden of the house. He asked him how many shirts he had obtained from the linener.

  'Two,' replied Julien, intimidated to see such a great lord stoop to details of this kind.

  'Fine,' went on the marquis with a serious air and a curt and imperious note in his voice which set Julien thinking. 'Fine! Get another twenty-two shirts. Here's the first quarterly instalment of your salary.'

  As he went down from the attic, the marquis called out to an old man: 'Arsène, you will attend to M. Sorel's wants.' A few minutes later, Julien found himself alone in a magnificent library; it was a delectable moment. So as not to be caught unawares in this state of emotion, he went and hid in a little dark corner; from there he cast his rapturous gaze over the shining spines of the books: I shall be able to read all this, he said to himself. And how could I dislike it here? M. de Rênal would have believed himself dishonoured for ever if he had done one hundredth of the things the Marquis de La Mole has just done for me.

  But let's see what fair copies I've got to do. Once the work was finished, Julien dared to approach the books; he almost danced for joy on finding an edition of Voltaire. He ran and opened the library door in order not to be taken by surprise. Then he gave himself the pleasure of opening each one of the eighty volumes. They were magnificently bound, it was the work of the best craftsman in London. This was more than enough to bring Julien to a pitch of admiration.

  An hour later, the marquis came in, looked at Julien's work and noticed with astonishment that Julien wrote possible with a single s: posible. * Could everything Father Pirard told me about his learning be pure fabrication! Deeply disappointed, the marquis said to him gently:

  'You're a bit unsure of your spelling, aren't you?'

  'That's right,' said Julien without thinking in the very least about the damage he was doing himself; he was touched by the marquis's displays of kindness, which reminded him of the arrogant tone of M. de Rênal.

  I'm wasting my time over this whole experiment with a

  -253-

  young abbé from the Franche-Comté, thought the marquis; but I did so need someone I could rely on!

  'Possible is spelled with a double s,' the marquis told him; when your work is finished, look up in the dictionary any words you are unsure how to spell.'

  At six o'clock the marquis sent for him. He looked with obvious pain at Julien's boots: 'I have myself to blame for it, I didn't tell you that every day at five thirty you must go and dress.'

  Julien looked at him uncomprehendingly.

  'I mean put on stockings. Arsène will remind you; today I shall make your excuses.'

  As he finished speaking, M. de La Mole ushered Julien into a drawing-room resplendent with gilding. On comparable occasions, M. de Rênal never failed to quicken his pace in order to gain the advantage of going through the doorway first. This petty vanity of his former employer caused Julien to tread on the marquis's heels, which was exceedingly painful for him on account of his gout. 'Oh! he's clumsy into the bargain,' said the latter to himself. He introduced him to a tall, imposinglooking woman. It was the marquise. Julien thought she had an insolent air, rather like Mme de Maugiron, the wife of the sub-prefect of the Verrières district, at the St Charles's day * dinner. Somewhat thrown by the extreme magnificence of the drawing-room, Julien did not hear what M. de La Mole was saying. The marquise scarcely deigned to look at him. There were a number of men there, among whom Julien was unutterably delighted to recognize the young Bishop of Agde, who had deigned to speak to him a few months back at the Bray-leHaut ceremony. The young prelate must have been alarmed by the tender gaze which Julien in his timidity cast in his direction, and he did not trouble to recognize this provincial.

  The men gathered in this drawing-room seemed to Julien to have an air of gloom and constraint about them; people speak softly in Paris, and do not exaggerate trifling matters.

  A good-looking young man with a moustache, a very pale complexion and a very slim figure came in at about half-past six; he had an exceedingly small head.

  -254-

  'You will always keep people waiting,' said the marquise, as he kissed her hand.

  Julien realized that this was the Count de La Mole. He found him charming right from the start.

  Can it be possible, he wondered, that this is the man whose offensive jokes are to drive me from this house!

  After he had scrutinized Count Norbert for a while, Julien noticed that he was wearing boots and spurs; and I'm supposed to wear shoes, apparently like an inferior. They sat down to table. Julien heard the marquise saying something stern in slightly raised tones. Almost at the same time he caught sight of a young lady with exceedingly fair hair and a most elegant figure, who came and sat down opposite him. He did not find her in the least attractive; however, on looking attentively at her, he thought to himself that he had never seen such beautiful eyes; but they signalled great emotional coldness. Later on, Julien decided that they had an expression of watchful boredom that none the less remains mindful of the duty to appear imposing. And yet Mme de Renal had really beautiful eyes, he said to himself, she was always being complimented on them; but they had nothing in common with this pair. Julien did not have enough experience to discern that it was the fire of repartee that shone from time to time in the eyes of Mlle Mathilde, as he heard her called. When Mme de Rênal's eyes lit up, it was with the fire of passions, or from warm-hearted indignation at the tale of some unkind action. Towards the end of the meal, Julien hit upon a word to express the sort of beauty in Mlle de La Mole's eyes: they glitter, he said to himself. Apart from this, she had a cruel likeness to her mother, whom he disliked more and more, and he stopped looking at her. In contrast, Count Norbert seemed admirable to him from every point of view. Julien was so captivated that it did not occur to him to be jealous and to hate him for being richer and nobler than he was.

  Julien thought the marquis looked bored.

  At about the time the second course was being served, he said to his son:

  ' Norbert, I should like you to be kind to M. Julien Sorel

  -255-

  whom I've just taken on to my staff, and intend to turn into somebody if at all posible.

  'He's my secretary,' the marquis said to his neighbour, 'and he spells possible with only one s.'

  Everyone looked at Julien, who bowed his head rather too markedly in Norbert's direction; but on the whole, the expression on his face went down well.

  The marquis must have mentioned the kind of education Julien had received, for one of the guests challenged him on Horace: talking about Horace was precisely how I succeeded with the Bishop of Besançon, Julien said to himself, it seems they only know this author. From then on, he had himself well
under control. The effort was made easy for him because he had just decided that Mlle de La Mole would never be a woman in his eyes. Since being in the seminary, he defied men to do their worst, and was not easily intimidated by them. He would have been perfectly calm and collected if the dining-room had been less magnificently furnished. What actually overawed him still further was two mirrors, both eight foot high, in which from time to time he would glance at his interlocutor while speaking of Horace. His sentences were not too long for a provincial. He had beautiful eyes, and nervousness made them shine, now hesitantly, now radiantly when he had given a good answer. He was deemed to be agreeable. This kind of examination added a spark of interest to a solemn dinner. The marquis signalled to Julien's interlocutor to push him hard. Could it possibly be that he knows something! he thought.

  In his replies Julien improvised ideas, and he lost enough of his nervousness to display not wit--something impossible for anyone who doesn't know the idiom used in Paris--but fresh ideas, even if they were lacking in polish and inappositely presented. And everyone saw that he knew Latin perfectly.

  Julien's opponent was a member of the Académie des Inscriptions * who happened to know Latin; he found Julien to be a very fine humanist, lost his fear of making him blush, and tried in earnest to put him on the spot. In the heat of battle Julien at last forgot the magnificent furnishings in the diningroom, and reached the point of putting forward ideas about the Latin poets that his interlocutor had not seen anywhere in

  -256-

  print. As a gentleman he gave the young secretary credit for them. By a stroke of good fortune, they embarked on a discussion about whether Horace was poor or rich: an amiable, sensuous and carefree man who wrote poetry for his own enjoyment like Chapelle, * the friend of Molière and La Fontaine; or a poor devil of a poet laureate imitating the Court and writing odes for the king's birthday like Southey, Lord Byron's accuser. They talked about the state of society under Augustus and under George IV; in both periods the aristocracy was all-powerful, but in Rome it had had power wrested from it by Maecenas, who was only a mere knight, while in England it had more or less reduced George IV to the state of a Venetian doge. This discussion appeared to rouse the marquis from the state of torpor in which boredom had kept him submerged at the beginning of the dinner.

  Julien was at a complete loss over all the modern names like Southey, Lord Byron, George IV, which he was hearing for the first time. But it escaped no one's notice that whenever the conversation turned to events that had happened in Rome, knowledge of which could have been gleaned from the works of Horace, Martial, Tacitus etc., he displayed an unquestionable superiority. Julien did not hesitate to take over several of the ideas he had got from the Bishop of Besançon in the famous discussion he had had with that prelate; they went down more than well.

  When everyone was tired of talking about poets, the marquise, who made it her rule to admire whatever entertained her husband, deigned to look at Julien. 'The uncouth manners of this young abbé may perhaps conceal a man of learning,' the academician sitting near her said to the marquise; and Julien caught snatches of this. Ready-made comments suited the mistress of the house's intelligence well enough; she adopted this one on Julien, and felt pleased with herself for inviting the academician to dinner. He entertains M. de La Mole, she thought.

  -257-

  CHAPTER 3

  The first steps

  This huge valley filled with brilliant lights and so many thousands of men dazzled my eyes. Not a single one knows me, they are all my betters. My head is swimming.

  Poemi dell' avvocato REINA *

  VERY early the next morning, Julien was writing out fair copies of letters in the library when Mlle Mathilde came in by a little communicating door very cleverly hidden with book spines. While Julien was admiring this invention, Mlle Mathilde seemed most astonished and somewhat put out to encounter him there. With her hair in curl-papers Julien thought she looked hard, haughty and almost masculine. Mlle de La Mole had found her own way of stealing books from her father's library without letting it show. Julien's presence made that morning's errand fruitless, which vexed her all the more as she was coming to fetch the second volume of Voltaire Princess of Babylon, * a worthy complement to an eminently royalist and religious upbringing that was a masterpiece of the Sacred Heart! At nineteen this poor girl was already in need of the zest of wit in order to find a novel interesting.

  Count Norbert appeared in the library around three o'clock; he was coming to study a newspaper in order to be able to talk politics that evening, and was delighted to encounter Julien, whose existence he had forgotten about. He behaved exemplarily towards him; he offered to take him riding.

  'My father is giving us time off until dinner.'

  Julien understood the force of this us and was utterly charmed by it.

  'My goodness, your lordship,' said Julien, 'if it were a matter of felling a tree eighty foot high, squaring it off and sawing it into planks, I'd make a good showing, if I may make so bold as to say so; but riding a horse--I've not done that more than six times in my whole life.'

  -258-

  'Well, this'll be the seventh, then,' said Norbert.

  Actually, Julien remembered the King of -----'s triumphal entry into Verrières and thought himself most expert on horseback. But coming back from the Bois de Boulogne, * right in the middle of the Rue du Bac, * he fell off as he swerved suddenly to avoid a cab, and he plastered himself in mud. It was lucky for him that he had two suits. At dinner, wishing to say something to Julien, the marquis asked him about his outing; Norbert hastened to reply in general terms.

  'His lordship is full of kindness towards me,' Julien added, 'I thank him for it, and I appreciate it fully. He deigned to have me ride the more docile and handsome of the horses; but of course he couldn't tie me on, and for want of this precaution I fell off right in the middle of that very long street, near the bridge.'

  Mlle Mathilde tried in vain to conceal a fit of laughter; her indiscretion then requested details. Julien acquitted himself in a perfectly straightforward manner; he had style without realizing it.

  'I think this young priest will go far,' said the marquis to the academician; 'a provincial being straightforward in a situation like that! It's never been seen before and won't be again; and what's more, he's recounting his misfortune in the presence of ladies!'

  Julien put his hearers so much at their ease over his mishap that at the end of dinner, when the general conversation had taken another turn, Mlle Mathilde questioned her brother about the details of the unfortunate incident. As she persisted in her questioning, and Julien caught her eye several times, he plucked up courage to reply directly, although he had not been addressed, and all three of them ended up laughing just like three young inhabitants of a village in the depths of a wood.

  The next day Julien went to two theology classes, and then returned to transcribe some twenty letters. Settled down next to him in the library he found a young man dressed with considerable care, but his appearance was unimpressive and his face spelled envy.

  The marquis came in.

  -259-

  'What are you doing here, Monsieur Tanbeau?' he asked the newcomer sternly.

  'I thought . . .' replied the young man with an ingratiating smile.

  'No, sir, you didn't think. You are trying this on, and it's a failure.'

  Young Tanbeau got up in fury and marched out. He was a nephew of Mme de La Mole's friend the academician, and he hoped to become a man of letters. The academician had secured the marquis's agreement to engage him as a secretary. When Tanbeau, who worked in a remote room, had found out about the favour bestowed on Julien, he wanted to share it, and had come along in the morning to set up his writing things in the library.

  At four o'clock, after some hesitation, Julien was bold enough to call on Count Norbert. The latter was about to go riding and was embarrassed, for he was exquisitely polite.

  'I think', he said to Julien, 'that you will soon
be going to riding school; and in a few weeks' time I'll be delighted to go out on horseback with you.'

  'I wanted to have the honour of thanking you for all your kindness towards me. Be assured, sir,' Julien added with a very serious air, 'that I am most conscious of everything I owe you. If your horse isn't wounded as a result of my clumsiness yesterday, and if he's free, I should like to ride him before dinner.'

  'Goodness me, my dear Sorel, on your own head be it! Just assume that I've put to you all the objections that prudence requires; the fact is that it's four o'clock, we've no time to lose.'

  Once he was mounted:

  'What do you have to do to avoid falling off?' Julien asked the young count.

  'Lots of things,' replied Norbert, laughing his head off. 'For instance, lean back.'

  Julien set off at a fast trot. They were on the Place Louis XVI. *

  'Hey! you young hothead,' said Norbert, 'there are too many carriages, and what's more, driven by rash fools! Once you're

  -260-

  on the ground, their tilburies will run right over you; they're not going to risk spoiling their horses' mouths by pulling them up short.'

  Twenty times over, Norbert saw Julien on the verge of failing off; but eventually the ride ended without an accident. On their return the young count said to his sister:

  'Let me introduce a bold daredevil to you.'

  At dinner, speaking to his father from the far end of the table, he did justice to Julien's boldness; it was all that could be said in praise of his way of riding a horse. Earlier in the day the young count had heard the men who were grooming the horses in the courtyard retailing Julien's fall in order to poke outrageous fun at him.