Part 1

Produced by Tokuya Matsumoto <toqyam@os.rim.or.jp>

Le Rouge et le Noir

Chronicle of the Nineteenth Century

by Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)

FIRST VOLUME

The truth, the bitter truth

Danton

CHAPTER ONE

A SMALL TOWN

Put thousands together Less bad, But the cage less gay.

HOBBES

The little town of Verrières may pass for one of the prettiest in the Franche-Comté. Its white houses with their pointed roofs of red tiles stretch along the slope of a hill, whose slightest windings are marked by clumps of sturdy chestnut trees. The Doubs flows a few hundred feet below its fortifications, built long ago by the Spaniards, and now in ruins.

Verrières is sheltered on the north by a high mountain, one of the branches of the Jura. The broken peaks of the Verra are covered with snow as soon as the first cold of October. A torrent, rushing down from the mountain, passes through Verrières before emptying into the Doubs and sets in motion a great number of sawmills; this is a very simple industry, which procures a certain comfort to the majority of the inhabitants, who are more peasants than burghers. It is not, however, the sawmills that have enriched this little town. It is to the manufacture of printed cloths, known as Mulhouse goods, that one owes the general ease which, since the fall of Napoleon, has caused almost all the houses of Verrières to be rebuilt.

Scarcely has one entered the town than one is deafened by the noise of a machine, noisy and terrible in appearance. Twenty heavy hammers, falling again with a noise that makes the pavement tremble, are raised by a wheel turned by the water of the torrent. Each of these hammers makes, every day, I know not how many thousands of nails. It is fresh and pretty young girls who present to the blows of these enormous hammers the little pieces of iron which are rapidly transformed into nails. This work, so harsh in appearance, is one of those which most astonish the traveler penetrating for the first time into the mountains that separate France from Helvetia. If, on entering Verrières, the traveler asks to whom belongs that fine nail factory which deafens those who go up the main street, he is answered with a drawling accent: _Why! it belongs to the mayor_.

If the traveler stops a few moments in that main street of Verrières, which climbs from the bank of the Doubs up toward the top of the hill, there are a hundred to one odds that he will see appear a tall man with a busy and important air.

At his approach all hats are quickly raised. His hair is graying, and he is dressed in gray. He is a knight of several orders, he has a large forehead, an aquiline nose, and on the whole his face is not without a certain regularity: one even finds, at first sight, that it unites to the dignity of a village mayor that sort of agreeableness which may still be met with at forty-eight or fifty years of age. But soon the Parisian traveler is offended by a certain air of self-satisfaction and conceit mixed with I know not what of narrowness and lack of invention. One feels, in short, that this man's talent is limited to having himself paid very exactly what is owed him, and to paying himself as late as possible when he owes.

Such is the mayor of Verrières, M. de Rênal. Having crossed the street with a grave step, he enters the town hall and disappears from the traveler's sight. But, a hundred paces higher, if the latter continues his walk, he catches sight of a rather fine-looking house, and through an iron grille adjoining the house, magnificent gardens. Beyond, is a line of horizon formed by the hills of Burgundy; and which seems made to order for the pleasure of the eyes. This view makes the traveler forget the pestilent atmosphere of petty money interests with which he is beginning to be asphyxiated.

He is told that this house belongs to M. de Rênal. It is to the profits he made on his great nail factory that the mayor of Verrières owes this fine dwelling of cut stone which he is now finishing. His family, it is said, is ancient Spanish, and, as is claimed, established in the country long before the conquest of Louis X.

Since 1815 he has blushed at being an industrialist: 1815 made him mayor of Verrières. The terrace walls which support the various parts of this magnificent garden which, story upon story, descends to the Doubs, are also the reward of M. de Rênal's skill in the trade of land.

Do not expect to find in France those picturesque gardens which surround the manufacturing towns of Germany, Leipzig, Frankfurt, Nuremberg, etc. In the Franche-Comté, the more one builds walls, the more one bristles one's property with stones ranged one above another, the more one acquires rights to the respect of one's neighbors. The gardens of M. de Rênal, full of walls, are still admired because he bought at the price of gold certain little bits of land they occupy. For example, that sawmill, whose singular position on the bank of the Doubs struck you on entering Verrières, and where you noticed the name SOREL, written in gigantic characters on a board dominating the roof, it occupied, six years ago, the space on which is now raised the wall of the fourth terrace of M. de Rênal's gardens.

Despite his pride, M. the mayor had to make many advances to old Sorel, a hard and stubborn peasant; he had to count out fine gold louis to obtain that he transport his works elsewhere. As for the public brook which drove the saw, M. de Rênal, by means of the credit he enjoys in Paris, obtained that it be diverted. This favor came to him after the elections of 182...

He gave Sorel four acres for one, five hundred paces lower down on the banks of the Doubs. And, though this position was much more advantageous for his trade in pine planks, father Sorel, as he has been called since he grew rich, had the secret of extracting from the impatience and the _landowner's mania_ which animated his neighbor, a sum of 6000 francs.

It is true that this arrangement was criticized by the sensible heads of the place. Once, it was a Sunday, four years ago, M. de Rênal, returning from church in his mayor's dress, saw from afar old Sorel, surrounded by his three sons, smile as he looked at him. This smile struck a fatal blow into the soul of M. the mayor, who has thought since then that he might have obtained the exchange more cheaply.

To arrive at public consideration in Verrières, the essential is not to adopt, while building many walls, some plan brought from Italy by those masons who, in the spring, cross the gorges of the Jura to reach Paris. Such an innovation would earn the imprudent builder an eternal reputation of _wronghead_, and he would be forever lost with the wise and moderate men who distribute consideration in the Franche-Comté.

In fact, these wise men exercise there the most tiresome despotism; it is because of this ugly word that the stay in small towns is insupportable, for whoever has lived in that great republic called Paris. The tyranny of opinion, and what an opinion! is as stupid in the small towns of France as in the United States of America.

CHAPTER II

A MAYOR

Importance! Sir, is it nothing? The respect of fools, the amazement of children, the envy of the rich, the scorn of the wise.

BARNAVE

Happily for the reputation of M. de Rênal as an administrator, an immense retaining wall was necessary for the public walk which runs along the hill a hundred feet above the course of the Doubs. It owes to this admirable position one of the most picturesque views in France. But, each spring, the rain water furrowed the walk, hollowed ravines there, and made it impassable. This inconvenience, felt by all, put M. de Rênal in the happy necessity of immortalizing his administration by a wall twenty feet high and thirty or forty fathoms long.

The parapet of this wall, for which M. de Rênal had to make three trips to Paris, for the next-to-last Minister of the Interior had declared himself the mortal enemy of the walk of Verrières, the parapet of this wall now rises four feet above the ground. And, as if to defy all present and past ministers, it is now being faced with slabs of cut stone.

How many times, thinking of the balls of Paris abandoned the night before, and my chest leaning against those great blocks of stone of a fine gray tending to blue, have my glances plunged into the valley of the Doubs! Beyond, on the left bank, wind five or six valleys at the bottom of which the eye distinctly makes out little brooks. After having run from cascade to cascade, one sees them fall into the Doubs. The sun is very hot in these mountains; when it shines straight down, the traveler's reverie is sheltered on this terrace by magnificent plane trees. Their rapid growth and their fine bluish green they owe to the imported earth which M. the mayor had placed behind his immense retaining wall, for, despite the opposition of the municipal council, he widened the walk by more than six feet (though he is an ultra and I a liberal, I praise him for it); that is why in his opinion and in that of M. Valenod, the fortunate director of the poorhouse of Verrières, this terrace can sustain comparison with that of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

I find, for my part, but one thing to criticize in the COURS DE LA FIDÉLITÉ; one reads this official name in fifteen or twenty places, on marble plaques which won M. de Rênal an additional cross, what I would reproach the Cours de la Fidélité with is the barbarous manner in which authority has the vigorous plane trees cut and clipped to the quick. Instead of resembling, with their low round and flattened heads, the most common of kitchen plants, they would ask nothing better than to have those magnificent forms one sees them take in England. But M. the mayor's will is despotic, and twice a year all the trees belonging to the commune are pitilessly amputated. The liberals of the place claim, but they exaggerate, that the hand of the official gardener has become much severer since M. the vicar Maslon took to appropriating the products of the clipping.

This young ecclesiastic was sent from Besançon, some years ago, to watch over the Abbé Chélan and several priests of the surroundings. An old surgeon-major of the army of Italy, retired at Verrières, and who in his lifetime was, according to M. the mayor, both Jacobin and Bonapartist, once dared complain to him of the periodic mutilation of those fine trees.

--I love shade, answered M. de Rênal with the shade of haughtiness befitting when one speaks to a surgeon, member of the Legion of Honor, I love shade, I have my trees cut to give shade, and I cannot conceive that a tree is made for anything else, when, however, like the useful walnut, it _brings in no income_.

There is the great word which decides everything at Verrières: TO BRING IN INCOME. Alone it represents the habitual thought of more than three quarters of the inhabitants.

To bring in income is the reason which decides everything in this little town which seemed to you so pretty. The stranger who arrives, seduced by the beauty of the fresh and deep valleys which surround him, imagines at first that its inhabitants are sensitive to the beautiful; they speak only too often of the beauty of their country: one cannot deny that they set great store by it, but it is because it attracts some strangers whose money enriches the innkeepers, which, by the mechanism of the excise, _brings in income to the town_.

It was on a fine autumn day that M. de Rênal was walking on the Cours de la Fidélité, giving his arm to his wife. While listening to her husband who spoke with a grave air, Mme de Rênal's eye followed with anxiety the movements of three little boys. The eldest, who might have been eleven years old, approached too often the parapet and made as if to climb it. A soft voice then pronounced the name of Adolphe, and the child renounced his ambitious project. Mme de Rênal appeared a woman of thirty, but still rather pretty.

--He may well repent it, that fine gentleman from Paris, said M. de Rênal with an offended air, and a cheek paler still than usual. I am not without some friends at the Château...

But, though I mean to speak to you of the provinces for two hundred pages, I shall not have the barbarity to make you undergo the length and the artful circumlocutions of a provincial dialogue.

That fine gentleman from Paris, so odious to the mayor of Verrières, was none other than M. Appert, who, two days before, had found the means to introduce himself, not only into the prison and the poorhouse of Verrières, but also into the hospital administered gratuitously by the mayor and the principal landowners of the place.

--But, said Mme de Rênal timidly, what harm can this gentleman from Paris do you, since you administer the goods of the poor with the most scrupulous honesty?

--He comes only to _pour out_ blame, and then he will have articles inserted in the journals of liberalism.

--You never read them, my friend.

--But we are told of these Jacobin articles; all that distracts us and _prevents us from doing good_[*]. As for me, I shall never forgive the curate.

[*] Historical.

CHAPTER III

THE GOOD OF THE POOR

A virtuous priest without intrigue is a Providence for the village.

FLEURY

It must be known that the curate of Verrières, an old man of eighty, but who owed to the keen air of these mountains a health and a character of iron, had the right to visit at any hour the prison, the hospital and even the poorhouse. It was precisely at six in the morning that M. Appert, who from Paris was recommended to the curate, had had the wisdom to arrive in a curious little town. At once he went to the presbytery.

On reading the letter written to him by M. the Marquis de La Mole, peer of France, and the richest landowner of the province, the curate Chélan remained pensive.

I am old and loved here, he said at last half aloud, they would not dare! Turning at once toward the gentleman from Paris, with eyes in which, despite his great age, shone that sacred fire which announces the pleasure of doing a fine, somewhat dangerous action:

--Come with me, sir, and in the presence of the jailer and above all of the overseers of the poorhouse, please emit no opinion on the things we shall see. M. Appert understood that he had to do with a man of heart: he followed the venerable curate, visited the prison, the hospice, the poorhouse, asked many questions, and, despite strange answers, permitted himself not the least mark of blame.

This visit lasted several hours. The curate invited M. Appert to dinner, who pretended to have letters to write: he did not wish to compromise his generous companion further. Toward three o'clock, these gentlemen went to finish the inspection of the poorhouse, and then returned to the prison. There, they found on the door the jailer, a kind of giant six feet tall with bowed legs; his ignoble face had become hideous under the effect of terror.

--Ah! sir, he said to the curate, as soon as he caught sight of him, that gentleman whom I see there with you, is he not M. Appert?

--What does it matter? said the curate.

--It is that since yesterday I have the most precise order, and that M. the prefect sent by a gendarme, who must have galloped all night, not to admit M. Appert into the prison.

--I declare to you, M. Noiroud, said the curate, that this traveler who is with me is M. Appert. Do you acknowledge that I have the right to enter the prison at any hour of the day and of the night, and to be accompanied by whom I please?

--Yes, M. the curate, said the jailer in a low voice, and lowering his head, like a bulldog, whom the fear of the stick makes obey reluctantly. Only, M. the curate, I have a wife and children, if I am denounced I shall be dismissed; I have nothing to live on but my post.

--I should also be very sorry to lose mine, replied the good curate, in a voice more and more moved.

--What a difference! replied the jailer quickly; you, M. the curate, it is known that you have eight hundred livres of income, good property in the sun...

Such are the facts which, commented on, exaggerated in twenty different ways, had for two days agitated all the hateful passions of the little town of Verrières. At this moment, they served as text for the little discussion which M. de Rênal had with his wife. In the morning, followed by M. Valenod, director of the poorhouse, he had gone to the curate's, to testify the liveliest dissatisfaction. M. Chélan was protected by no one; he felt the full import of their words.

--Well, gentlemen! I shall be the third curate, of eighty years of age, whom the faithful will see dismissed in this neighborhood. I have been here fifty-six years, I have baptized almost all the inhabitants of the town, which was but a borough when I arrived. I marry every day young people whose grandfathers I married long ago. Verrières is my family, but the fear of leaving it will not make me compromise with my conscience nor admit another director of my actions. I said to myself on seeing the stranger: This man, come from Paris, may be a liberal, there are only too many of them, but what harm can he do to our poor and to our prisoners?

The reproaches of M. de Rênal, and above all those of M. Valenod, the director of the poorhouse, becoming more and more sharp:

--Well, gentlemen! have me dismissed, cried the old curate, in a trembling voice. I shall none the less dwell in the country. It is known that forty-eight years ago I inherited a field which brings in eight hundred livres. I shall live on that income. I make no illicit savings in my post, I, gentlemen, and that is perhaps why I am not so frightened when they speak of making me lose it.

M. de Rênal lived very well with his wife but, not knowing what to answer to that idea, which she timidly repeated: What harm can this gentleman from Paris do the prisoners? he was on the point of getting thoroughly angry, when she gave a cry. The second of her sons had just climbed onto the parapet of the terrace wall, and was running along it though that wall rose more than twenty feet above the vineyard on the other side. The fear of frightening her son and making him fall kept Mme de Rênal from speaking to him. At last, the child, who was laughing at his exploit, having looked at his mother, saw her pallor, jumped down onto the walk and ran to her. He was well scolded.

This little event changed the course of the conversation.

--I absolutely want to take into my house Sorel the son of the plank sawyer, said M. de Rênal, he will supervise the children, who are beginning to become too little devils for us. He is a young priest, or as good as, a good Latinist, and who will make the children progress, for he has a firm character, said the curate. I had some doubts as to his morality; for he was the youngest of that old surgeon, member of the Legion of Honor, who, under pretext that he was their cousin, had come to board with the Sorels. This man could very well be at bottom but a secret agent of the liberals, he said that the air of our mountains did good to his asthma; but that is what is not proved. He had made all the campaigns of Buonaparté in Italy; and even had, it is said, signed against the Empire at the time. This liberal taught Latin to the son Sorel and left him that quantity of books he had brought with him. Thus I should never have thought of putting the carpenter's son near our children; but the curate, precisely on the eve of the scene which has just estranged us forever, told me that this Sorel has studied theology for three years, with the project of entering the seminary; he is therefore not a liberal, and he is a Latinist.

This arrangement suits in more than one way, continued M. de Rênal, looking at his wife with a diplomatic air, Valenod is all proud of the two fine Normans he has just bought for his calash. But he has no tutor for his children.

--He could well take this one from us.

--You approve of my plan then? said M. de Rênal, thanking his wife, by a smile, for the excellent idea she had just had. Come, that is decided.

--Ah, good Lord! my dear friend, how quickly you take a resolution!

--It is that I have character, I, and the curate saw it well. Let us hide nothing, we are surrounded by liberals here. All these cloth merchants envy me, I am certain of it, two or three are becoming rich; well, I rather like that they see pass the children of M. de Rênal going to the walk under the guidance of their tutor. That will impose. My grandfather told us often that, in his youth, he had had a tutor. It is a hundred crowns it may cost me, but this must be classed as a necessary expense to uphold our rank.

This sudden resolution left Mme de Rênal quite pensive. She was a tall, well-made woman, who had been the beauty of the country, as is said in these mountains. She had a certain air of simplicity, and youth in her bearing; to the eyes of a Parisian, that naive grace, full of innocence and liveliness, would even have gone so far as to recall ideas of sweet voluptuousness. Had she learned of this kind of success, Mme de Rênal would have been much ashamed. Neither coquetry nor affection had ever approached that heart. M. Valenod, the rich director of the poorhouse, passed for having paid court to her, but without success, which had cast a singular luster on her virtue; for this M. Valenod, a big young man, built for strength, with a colored face and big black side-whiskers, was one of those coarse, shameless, grinding beings whom in the provinces they call fine men.

Mme de Rênal, very timid, and of a character apparently very uneven, was above all shocked by the continual movement, and the loud voices of M. Valenod. The aversion she had for what at Verrières they call merriment had won her the reputation of being very proud of her birth. She gave it no thought, but had been very glad to see the townspeople come less to her house. We shall not hide that she passed for a fool in the eyes of their ladies, because, with no policy toward her husband, she let escape the finest occasions to have herself bought fine hats from Paris or Besançon. Provided she was left alone to wander in her fine garden, she never complained.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”