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

by Stendhal

  -531-

  in the Gallican, or French, tradition found themselves the victims of a wave of hostility from the younger Ultramontane clergy whose absolute allegiance was to the pope. These intrigues were particularly prevalent in the Franche-Comté.

  14voted 'no' to the Empire: in the plebiscite held before Napoleon was crowned emperor in Dec. 1804, there were 3,572,329 votes in favour of the Empire, 2,569 against.

  14carpenter's son: the French term charpentier denotes someone who typically prepares and assembles timber frames for use in building construction. I have translated it here by the English 'carpenter' (now archaic in this sense), in order to preserve the biblical resonance of the expression 'carpenter's son', recurrently applied to Julien.

  15impressionable: this translates the French inégal which appears in the original edition. Castex corrects it to égal (even-tempered) on the grounds that inégal does not fit Mme de Rênal's character. I think that this correction is not justified by close reading of the text.

  15Duke of Orleans: Philippe-Egalité ( 1747-93) was a supporter of the Revolution, voted for the death of his cousin Louis XVI, and was himself executed. His son Louis-Philippe ( 1773-1850) became King of France in 1830.

  15Mme de Montesson: married Philippe-Egalité in secret. Mme de Genlis: 1746-1830, niece of Mme de Montesson and governess to the children of her marriage to Philippe-Egalité. She wrote a number of books on education. M. Ducrest: nephew of Mme de Montesson and brother of Mme de Genlis. He was responsible for renovating the Palais-Royal ( Paris residence of the House of Orleans) and adding its distinctive galleries.

  17Machiavelli: 1469-1527. 'And will I be at fault if it is so?'

  17good lady: the French expression used (ma femme) is not refined usage. Stendhal comments in the margin of his personal copy of the novel that M. de R. does not refer to his wife as 'Mme de Rênal' (in upper-class tradition).

  17abbé: a term originally denoting an abbot in the Catholic Church, but later extended to anyone wearing ecclesiastical dress, whether or not he had been ordained as a priest. Abbés without ecclesiastical duties were frequently employed as private tutors. They wore either a black suit with frock-coat, or a cassock (hence M. de Rênal's uncertainty about Julien's dress).

  -532-

  19St Helena Chronicle: the Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène ( 1823) was compiled by the Comte de Las Cases, Napoleon's secretary, who accompanied him to St Helena and kept a record of their conversations.

  21Ennius: 239-169 Bc. [Unus homo nobis] cunctando restituis rem: 'By delaying he [one man] saved the republic [for us].' Reference to Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator, who ultimately defeated Hannibal by never offering him pitched battle.

  22 Rousseau: 1712-78, French Enlightenment philosopher and writer. His major works include La Nouvelle Héloèse ( 1761), an epistolary novel; the Contrat Social ( 1762), a treatise on political philosophy; and his Confessions (posthumous), a sentimental, selfjustificatory autobiography.

  22On the Pope: Joseph de Maistre ( 1753-1821) was an opponent of the Revolution and a staunch defender of the monarchy and the pope. His book was widely read by the young guard of Ultramontane priests.

  24thiry-six francs: so that the monthly wage could be paid in everyday écu coins, each worth 3 or 6 francs.

  25make a Station: perform the requisite devotions in front of one of the fourteen images representing successive incidents in Christ's Passion.

  25Lodi bridge, Arcola and Rivoli: victories by Napoleon over the Austrians; the first two in 1796, the latter in 1797.

  25Congregation: name given by Stendhal's contemporaries to the Association des Chevaliers de la Foi ('Association of Knights of the Faith'), a Jesuit-inspired secret society whose true identity or even existence was unknown to the general public. It had a network across France, and was deeply involved in reactionary politics. The term congrégation was also used to refer to the pious associations officially established by the Concordat of 1801 and dedicated to charitable works, particularly the Congrégation de la Vierge and its various affiliates. Since the secret Congregation found it expedient to shelter behind the activities of the latter, and membership was in many instances overlapping, it is not surprising that the general public often grouped all these bodies together indiscriminately under the one term congrégation.

  25Le Constitutionnel: founded in 1815, it favoured constitutional monarchy and became the mouthpiece of the liberal opposition.

  26Mmede Beauharnais: 1763-1814, the future Empress Josephine.

  -533-

  She was first married to the Vicomte de Beauharnais, who was executed in 1794. She then married General Bonaparte in 1796. They were divorced in 1809.

  29Mozart (Figaro): 'I no longer know what I am, or what I'm doing.'

  36sub-prefect: official representing central government at the level of the district (arrondissement). The prefect heads a departement (see n. to p. 106 below).

  37Elective Affinities: the title of a novel by Goethe ( 1908), dealing with the attractions of a married couple for two other people.

  37feast of St Louis: 25 Aug.

  41 Théâtre de Madame: vaudeville theatre in Paris built in 1820.

  41Aveyron: département in S.W. France at the southern end of the Massif Central.

  42the late Prince de Condé: Louis-Joseph, Prince de Condé ( 1736-1818), organized a counter-revolutionary army in 1792.

  43Besenval's Memoirs: published in 1805-6, they give a detailed picture of pre-revolutionary France.

  44de visu: 'by sight' (Latin).

  44 La Quotidienne: Ultra-royalist newspaper founded in 1792.

  44Jacobin: see n. to p. 8.

  45mezzo-termine: 'compromise' (Italian).

  48 Don Juan: Don Juan, the poem by Byron ( 1788-1824), appeared in 1819.

  50leagues: for distances, see p. 530.

  52Gabrielle: the legend of the Châtelaine de Vergy exists in numerous versions. In the original 13th-c. French verse romance, as also in the tale in the Heptameron by Marguerite de Navarre ( 1492-1549), the lady dies of grief, believing in error that her lover has disclosed their love to another woman; whereupon the lover kills himself. Later versions are more gruesome: the lover perishes first, and the jealous husband serves up his heart to the lady at dinner. Realizing what she has eaten, she starves herself to death. In 1804 Stendhal had seen a stage adaptation of the story, Gabrielle de Vergy by Dormont de Belloy (first performed in 1777). A modern French version of the 13th-c. legend was published in 1829. The real village of Vergy is not in the FrancheComté but in Burgundy, near Dijon.

  -534-

  52Tuileries: the Palais des Tuileries, begun in 1564, was the Paris residence of the French monarchy. It was partially burned down by the Commune in 1871, and finally destroyed in 1882. Only parts of the gardens remain.

  53M. Godart's excellent study: Jean-Baptiste Godart, Histoire Naturelle des lépidoptères en France. The work was unfinished when the author died in 1823.

  56 Strombeck: the Baron de Strombeck was a personal friend of Stendhal's. Guérin ( 1774-1833) exhibited his painting of Dido and Aeneas at the Salon of 1817. It depicts Dido listening to Aeneas in the presence of her sister.

  58Charles the Bold: 1433-77, Duke of Burgundy from 1467.

  60the Robespierres of this world: Robespierre ( 1758-94) was a key figure in the French Revolution. He instigated the Terror in 1793, and met his own death on the scaffold.

  66More than fifty crowns: 56 écus worth 3 francs each would represent the extra sum of 168 francs offered by M. de Rênal.

  73 Sieyès: 1748-1836, churchman and politician; author of a famous pamphlet on the Tiers Etat ( 1789), and one of the organizers of Napoleon's coup d'état of Nov. 1799.

  77Pontarlier: town close to the Swiss border on the road from Neuchâtel to Dijon.

  80 Saint-Réal: Abbé de Saint-Réal ( 1639-92), French historian. The ascription to him of this key aesthetic formulation is false, and critics have seen in it a pun on the name Saint-Réal: a fou
nding father of the doctrine of realism, or the 'Holy Real'.

  85Polidori: Byron's doctor and secretary. Stendhal met them both in Milan in 1816.

  87Corneille: 'L'amour / Fait les égalités et ne les cherche pas.' These lines are attributed by Stendhal to Corneille ( 1606-84), but they in fact come from Venceslas, a play by Rotrou ( 1609-50).

  89 Love's Blazon: in literal translation this medieval verse reads: Love in Latin gives amor;

  So then from love ensueth death [la mort],

  And, as its heralds, care which gnaws [qui mord],

  Grief, sorrow, trickery, sin, remorse [remords].

  94 provincial saying: fictitious?

  99 Robespierre: see n. to p. 60.

  -535-

  100 Voltaire: 1694-1788, philosopher and writer of the French Enlightenment; mordant critic of all forms of religious and political humbug.

  100 Louis XV: 1710-74, came to the throne in 1715.

  100 Chamber of Deputies: lower house of the French Parliament. Deputies were chosen by electoral colleges, themselves elected by citizens paying sufficient taxes to qualify as primary electors.

  101Fontenoy: victory of the French over the English and the Dutch in 1745.

  101peculiar institution: reference to one of the local pious associations sponsored by the official Congregation to enlist the lower orders (see n. to p. 25 above). They were believed by liberals to turn servants into spies.

  101as equals: shown in French by the use of the 'familiar' pronoun tu.

  102 Richelieu: 1585-1642, cardinal and statesman. He entered Louis XIII's council in 1624 and played a major role in shaping the absolute monarchy and centralizing French administration. (The Duc de Richelieu (see n. to p. 394) had been prime minister in Mme de Rênal's own time, but the cardinal is a more plausible model for her to choose.)

  105Bray-le-Haut: fictitious.

  105Jansenist: follower of the doctrine of Cornelius Jansenius ( 1585-1638) on divine grace, predestination, and the perverseness of the human will. The history of the French Catholic Church was marked by hostility between Jesuits and Jansenists.

  106département: the French Constitution of 1789 abolished the old French provinces and divided the territory of France into 83 départements.

  107 Leipzig: site of the battle of the Nations in 1813 between Napoleon and the Allies. Montmirail: Napoleonic victory of 1814.

  108Revolution: that of 1789.

  108Restoration: see n. to p. 5 above.

  108Agde: French port on the Mediterranean coast.

  113a sky-blue sash: see n. to p. 212 below.

  113ardent chapel: the French expression chapelle ardente is the standard term for a mortuary chapel lit by candles.

  -536-

  114St Clement: the real St Clement was pope from 88 to 97, and was not a military figure. There are no surviving effigies of him.

  115 Philip the Good: 1396-1497, Duke of Burgundy from 1419.

  116'93 of cursed memory: during the Terror of 1793, the National Guard in Lyon revolted, imprisoned the mayor and massacred 200 local Jacobins.

  116lottery office: the royal lottery, founded in 1776, abolished in 1836.

  116yesserdy: the French word hier is misspelt yert and italicized by Stendhal.

  125Guardate alia pagine 130: 'look at page 130'.

  125spelling mistakes: not reproduced by Stendhal in the text of the letter.

  129red morocco case: Stendhal specifies a case used to hold a single glass. It was customary for a suitor to have a crystal glass engraved with appropriate verses, and to present this to his beloved in a case as a love-token. Mme de Rênal might well have received such a case from her husband.

  133Casino: Stendhal's uncle had frequented an Ultra-royalist circle in Grenoble called the Casino.

  134making her eat his heart: see n. to p. 52.

  140That man taking refuge on his roof: allusion to a notorious incident in the Isère in 1816, when a liberal innkeeper who had fallen foul of the Ultras tried to escape arrest by climbing on to a neighbour's roof, and was shot dead.

  143 Malagrida: 1689-1761, Italian Jesuit burned in Lisbon by the Inquisition on account of his seditious writings. This quotation is generally (and elsewhere by Stendhal) attributed to the diplomat Talleyrand ( 1754-1838).

  144edicate: the French verb éduquer (italicized by Stendhal) had been stigmatized by Voltaire, and was still considered vulgar in the 1860s by the lexicographer Littré.

  144 King Philip: Philip II of Macedon ( 382-336 BC) employed Aristotle as rotor to his son Alexander. M. de Maugiron's compliment to Julien is modelled directly on the text of an apocryphal letter from King Philip to Aristotle, quoted in 19th-c. biographies of Aristotle.

  148the last mission: the Catholic Church organized a number of propaganda missions in the provinces during the Restoration.

  -537-

  148 Ligorio's new theology: St Alphonsus Liguori ( 1696-1787) was a Neapolitan bishop and missionary who founded the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer ( 1732). He was an outspoken critic of Jansenism.

  149La Fontaine: 1621-95. French poet whose Fables have long been an obligatory ingredient in French children's education.

  149Messire Jean Chouart: the priest in the fable 'The Priest and the Dead Man' ( VII, 11): accompanying a coffin to the cemetery, he is thinking covetously of the luxuries he will be able to buy with the money he earns from this funeral, when a sudden jolt smashes his head against the coffin, and he accompanies the dead man to the grave. The annotated edition of the Fables published in 1818 by the writer Charles Nodier ( 1780-1844) gives a reactionary, monarchist commentary on the fables.

  150 Gros: the geometer Louis-Gabriel Gros ( 1765-1812) had given tuition in mathematics to the young Stendhal, unbeknown to his parents, since Gros held Jansenist views. He was deeply admired by Stendhal.

  152cabaret: modest establishment serving wine and food, where it would be fashionable and deliberately daring for people of the Rênals' class to dine.

  153medical practitioners: the French term officier de santé was applied from 1803 to 1892 to doctors who did not have the title of docteur en médecine.

  155Brotherhood of St Joseph . . . etc.: officially registered pious associations (see n. to p. 25).

  156The Woes of a Civil Servant: this chapter has a slightly different title in the table of contents.

  156 Casti: 1724-1803, Italian writer. 'The pleasure of holding one's head high all year round is well worth buying at the price of one or two quarters of an hour that have to be endured.'

  156Charter: France was granted a Charter by Louis XVIII in 1814.

  157commune: smallest administrative subdivision of a département.

  157Mad the man who trusts her: the couplet attributed to Francois I ( 1494-1547): Souvent femme varie / Bien fol qui s'y fie is recorded by Brantôme (see n. to p. 316). It was given notoriety in 1832 by Victor Hugo in his portrayal of François I in Le Roi s'amuse, and features in Rigoletto (based on Hugo's play).

  159Congregation: see n. to p. 25.

  -538-

  159Mr Five-and-Ninety: reference to a magistrate from Marseille, M. Mérindol, who, in a court case against the pamphleteer Barthélemy in January 1830, let slip the regional form nonante-cinq (instead of the standard quatre-vingt-quinze). He was mercilessly ridiculed by Barthélemy in a poem, and by the whole of the liberal press.

  160Signor Geronimo: probably modelled on the Italian singer Lablache ( 1794-1858), who arrived in France around May 1830 to sing the role of Don Geronimo in Cimarosa Matrimonio Segreto (first performed in Paris in Nov. 1830).

  160 Zingarelli: Italian composer and director of the Conservatory in Naples where Lablache had studied music.

  160Giovannone: Giovanni Stile was appointed director of San-Carlino in 1810.

  161credete a me: 'do believe me'.

  162carta canta!: 'This paper proclaims them!'

  170siege of 1674: Besançon, which belonged to Spain, was besieged by Louis XIV's troops for 27 days i
n 1674. It finally became French under the terms of the treaty of Nijmegen in 1678.

  173La Nouvelle Héloïse: see n. to p. 22 above.

  174Dôle: Genlis is well beyond Dole (sic) on the road from Besançon to Dijon.

  177Besançon Valenod: Stendhal is here putting words into the mouth of the 'purveyor of dinners' at the Besançon seminary (see p. 188)--the counterpart of M. Valenod in the workhouse in Verrières. The French has a pun on the term soumission ('submission'), which means both 'submissiveness' and (as a commercial term) 'tender'.

  180Intelligenti pauca: (Latin) 'Few words [are needed] for one who understands'.

  180 Bossuet: 1627-1704, Bishop of Meaux, theologian, and orator famous for the eloquence of his sermons. He supported Louis XIV against Protestantism, and championed the Gallican cause. Arnault: Antoine Amauld, 1612-94, theologian; key figure in the Jansenist movement associated with the convent of Port-Royal Fleury: see n. to p. 11. Stendhal's grandfather was shocked to note that contemporary priests were ignorant of the writings of this famous Church historian.

  180Vale et me ama: (Latin) 'Farewell, and grant me your affection.'

  -539-

  181(Do you speak Latin?): the translations given in the text are Stendhal's.

  183Unam Ecclesiam: 'One Church': this bull is an invention of Stendhal's.

  185 Young: Edward Young, 1681-1765, author of Night Thoughts, and Love of Fame, the Universal Passion. This epigraph and the one to ch. 28 (both quoted in French) appear to be fictitious; I have translated them 'back' into English.

  186 Mount Verna: Mount Alverino.

  187government by two Chambers: established by the Charter of 1814.

  187books are her real enemies: in 1827 a law was passed at the instigation of the clerical faction to curb freedom of the press.

  187Sieyès: see n. to p. 73.

  187 Grégoire: the Abbé Grégoire, 1750-1831, was Bishop of Blois and a member of the Convention during the Revolution. He was elected deputy for Grenoble in 1819.