Part one

The truth is the bitter truth.

I. Town

Put thousands together – less bad,

But the cage is less gay.

The town of Verrieres is perhaps one of the most picturesque in all of Franche-Comté. White houses with peaked red-tiled roofs are spread along the hillside, where clumps of powerful chestnut trees rise from every hollow. The Doux runs a few hundred steps below the city fortifications; They were once built by the Spaniards, but now only ruins remain.

From the north, Verrieres is protected by a high mountain - this is one of the spurs of the Jura. The broken peaks of Werra are covered with snow from the very first frosts in October. A stream rushes down the mountain; before flowing into the Doubs, it runs through Verrieres and on its way sets in motion many sawmills. This simple industry brings a certain amount of prosperity to the majority of the inhabitants, who are more like peasants than city dwellers. However, it was not the sawmills that enriched this town; The production of printed fabrics, the so-called Mulhouse heels, was the source of general prosperity, which, after the fall of Napoleon, made it possible to renovate the facades of almost all houses in Verrieres.

As soon as you enter the city, you are deafened by the roar of some heavily humming and scary-looking car. Twenty heavy hammers fall with a roar that shakes the pavement; they are lifted by a wheel driven by a mountain stream. Each of these hammers produces, I won’t say how many thousands of nails every day. Blooming, pretty girls are engaged in exposing pieces of iron to the blows of these huge hammers, which immediately turn into nails. This production, so crude in appearance, is one of those things that most strikes the traveler who first finds himself in the mountains that separate France from Helvetia. If a traveler who finds himself in Verrieres is curious about whose wonderful nail factory it is, which deafens passers-by walking along Grand Street, he will be answered in a drawling voice: “Ah, the factory is Mr. Mayor’s.”

And if a traveler lingers even for a few minutes on the Grand Rue de Verrieres, which stretches from the banks of the Doubs to the very top of the hill, there is a hundred to one chance that he will certainly meet a tall man with an important and anxious face.

As soon as he appears, all the hats hastily rise. His hair is gray and he is dressed all in gray. He is a holder of several orders, he has a high forehead, an aquiline nose, and in general his face is not devoid of a certain regularity of features, and at first glance it may even seem that, together with the dignity of a provincial mayor, he combines a certain pleasantness that is sometimes still inherent in people at forty-eight to fifty years old. However, very soon the traveling Parisian will be unpleasantly surprised by the expression of complacency and arrogance, in which some kind of limitation and poverty of imagination is evident. One feels that all the talents of this man come down to forcing everyone who owes him to pay himself with the greatest accuracy, while he himself delays paying his debts as long as possible.

This is the mayor of Verrieres, M. de Renal. Having crossed the street with an important step, he enters the city hall and disappears from the eyes of the traveler. But if the traveler continues his walk, then, after walking another hundred steps, he will notice a rather beautiful house, and behind the cast-iron lattice surrounding the property, a magnificent garden. Behind it, outlining the horizon, are the Burgundian hills, and it seems as if all this was deliberately designed to please the eye. This view can make the traveler forget about that atmosphere plagued by petty profiteering, in which he is already beginning to suffocate.

They will explain to him that this house belongs to M. de Renal. It was with the proceeds from a large nail factory that the mayor of Verrieres built his beautiful mansion of cut stone, and now he is decorating it. They say that his ancestors are Spaniards, from an old family that allegedly settled in these parts long before their conquest by Louis XIV.

Since 1815, Mr. Mayor has been ashamed of being a manufacturer: 1815 made him mayor of the city of Verrieres. The massive ledges of the walls supporting the vast areas of the magnificent park, descending in terraces to the Doubs, are also a well-deserved reward given to M. de Renal for his deep knowledge of ironmongery.

In France there is no hope of seeing such picturesque gardens as those that surround the industrial cities of Germany - Leipzig, Frankfurt, Nuremberg and others. In Franche-Comté, the more walls you have, the more your property bristles with stones piled one on top of the other, the more rights you acquire to the respect of your neighbors. And Mr. de Renal’s gardens, where there is absolutely wall on wall, also evoke such admiration because Mr. Mayor acquired some of the small plots that went to them that were literally worth their weight in gold. For example, that sawmill on the very banks of the Doubs, which so amazed you when entering Verrieres, and you also noticed the name “Sorel” written in giant letters on a board across the entire roof - six years ago it was located on the same the place where M. de Renal is now erecting the wall of the fourth terrace of his gardens.

No matter how proud Mr. Mayor was, he had to spend a long time courting and persuading old Sorel, a stubborn, tough guy; and he had to lay out a considerable amount of clear gold in order to convince him to move his sawmill to another place. As for the public stream that made the saw flow, M. de Renal, thanks to his connections in Paris, ensured that it was diverted into a different channel. He gained this sign of favor after the elections of 1821.

He gave Sorel four arpans for one, five hundred paces down the bank of the Doubs, and although this new location was much more profitable for the production of spruce boards, Father Sorel - that was what they called him since he became rich - managed to squeeze out of impatience and mania of the owner that seized his neighbor, a tidy sum of six thousand francs.

True, the local wise guys were slandering this deal. One Sunday, it was about four years ago, M. de Renal, in full mayoral garb, was returning from church and saw from afar the old man Sorel: he stood with his three sons and grinned at him. This grin shed a fatal light into the soul of Mr. Mayor - since then he has been haunted by the thought that he could have made the exchange much cheaper.

To earn public respect in Verrieres, it is very important, while piling up as many walls as possible, not to be seduced by some invention of these Italian masons who make their way through the gorges of the Jura in the spring, heading to Paris.

Such an innovation would have earned the careless builder the reputation of an extravagant for all eternity, and he would have perished forever in the opinion of prudent and moderate people, who are in charge of the distribution of public respect in Franche-Comte.

In all honesty, these smart guys display a completely intolerable despotism, and it is this vile word that makes life in small towns unbearable for anyone who lived in the great republic called Paris. The tyranny of public opinion - and what an opinion! – is as stupid in the small towns of France as in the United States of America.

II. Mister Mayor

Prestige! What, sir, do you think this is nothing? Honor from fools, children staring in amazement, envy of the rich, contempt from the wise.

Fortunately for M. de Renal and his reputation as the ruler of the city, the city boulevard, located on the hillside, hundreds of feet above the Doubs, had to be surrounded by a huge retaining wall. From here, thanks to its extremely favorable location, one of the most picturesque views of France opens up. But every spring the boulevard was washed away by rain, the paths turned into continuous potholes, and it became completely unsuitable for walking. This inconvenience, felt by everyone, placed M. de Renal in the happy necessity of perpetuating his reign by building a stone wall twenty feet high and thirty to forty toises long.

The parapet of this wall, for the sake of which M. de Renal had to travel three times to Paris, because the penultimate Minister of the Interior declared himself the mortal enemy of the Verrieres Boulevard, this parapet now rises about four feet above the ground. And, as if challenging all ministers, past and present, it is now decorated with granite slabs.

How many times, immersed in memories of the balls of recently abandoned Paris, leaning my chest on these huge stone slabs of a beautiful gray color, slightly shimmering with blue, my gaze wandered along the Doubs Valley. In the distance, on the left bank, five or six ravines meander, in the depths of which the eye can clearly discern flowing streams. They run down, are torn down by waterfalls here and there, and finally fall into the Doubs. The sun in our mountains is hot, and when it is directly overhead, the traveler, daydreaming on this terrace, is protected by the shade of magnificent plane trees. Thanks to the alluvial soil, they grow quickly, and their luxurious greenery has a blue tint, for Mr. Mayor ordered the earth to be piled along the entire length of his huge retaining wall; despite the opposition of the municipal council, he widened the boulevard by about six feet (for which I praise him, although he is an ultra-royalist and I am a liberal), and that is why this terrace, in his opinion, and also in the opinion of M. Valnod, is prosperous director of the Verrieres almshouse, is in no way inferior to the Saint-Germain terrace in Laie.

As for me, I can only complain about one drawback of the Alley of Fidelity - this official name can be read in fifteen or twenty places on the marble tablets, for which M. de Renal was awarded another cross - in my opinion, the lack of the Alley of Fidelity - These are barbarically mutilated mighty plane trees: on the orders of their superiors, they are cut off and punished mercilessly. Instead of being like the round, flattened crowns of the most inconspicuous garden vegetables, they could freely acquire those magnificent forms that one sees in their counterparts in England. But the will of Mr. Mayor is unbreakable, and twice a year all the trees belonging to the community are mercilessly amputated. Local liberals say - however, this is, of course, an exaggeration - that the hand of the city gardener has become much more severe since Monsieur Vicar Malon began the custom of appropriating the fruits of this haircut.

This young clergyman was sent from Besançon several years ago to observe the Abbe Cheland and several other priests in the surrounding area. An old regimental doctor, a participant in the Italian campaign, who retired to Verrieres and who during his lifetime was, according to the mayor, both a Jacobin and a Bonapartist, once dared to reproach the mayor for this systematic disfigurement of beautiful trees.

“I love the shade,” answered M. de Renal with that shade of arrogance in his voice, which is acceptable when talking with a regimental doctor, a holder of the Legion of Honor, “I love the shade and I order my trees to be trimmed so that they provide shade.” And I don't know what else trees are good for if they can't, like a healthy nut, generate income.

Here it is, the great word that decides everything in Verrieres: to generate income; to this, and only to this, the thoughts of more than three-quarters of the entire population invariably come down.

Generate income- this is the argument that governs everything in this town, which seemed so beautiful to you. A stranger who finds himself here, captivated by the beauty of the cool, deep valleys encircling the town, at first imagines that the local inhabitants are very receptive to beauty; they endlessly talk about the beauty of their region; it cannot be denied that they value it very much, because it attracts strangers, whose money enriches the innkeepers, and this, in turn, by virtue of the existing city tax laws, brings income to the city.

One fine autumn day, Mr. de Renal was walking along the Alley of Fidelity, arm in arm with his wife. Listening to the reasoning of her husband, who was pontificating with an air of importance, Madame de Renal watched her three boys with a restless gaze. The eldest, who could have been about eleven years old, kept running up to the parapet with the obvious intention of climbing onto it. A gentle voice then pronounced the name of Adolf, and the boy immediately abandoned his bold idea. Madame de Renal looked about thirty years old, but she was still very pretty.

“However he might regret it later, this upstart from Paris,” said M. de Renal in an offended tone, and his usually pale cheeks seemed even paler. - I will have friends at court...

But even though I am going to tell you about the province for two hundred pages, I am still not such a barbarian as to harass you with lengthy and with sophisticated innuendo provincial conversation.

This upstart from Paris, so hated by the mayor, was none other than M. Appert, who two days ago managed to get into not only the prison and the Verrieres almshouse, but also the hospital, which was under the gratuitous care of M. Mayor and the city's most prominent homeowners.

“But,” answered Madame de Renal timidly, “what can this gentleman from Paris do to you if you manage the property of the poor with such scrupulous conscientiousness?”

“He came here only to criticize us, and then he will go to press articles in liberal newspapers.”

- But you never read them, my friend.

“But we are constantly being told about these Jacobin articles; all this distracts us and prevents us from doing good. No, as for me, I will never forgive our priest for this.

III. Poor property

The virtuous curé, free from all intrigues, is truly a blessing from God for the village.

It must be said that the curé of Verrieres, an eighty-year-old man who, thanks to the invigorating air of the local mountains, retained iron health and an iron character, enjoyed the right to visit the prison, hospital and even the charity house at any time. So M. Appert, who in Paris was provided with a letter of recommendation to the curate, had the prudence to arrive in this small inquisitive town exactly at six o'clock in the morning and immediately went to the clergyman's house.

Reading a letter written to him by the Marquis de La Mole, peer of France and the richest landowner in the entire area, Curé Chelan became thoughtful.

“I’m an old man, and they love me here,” he finally said in a low voice, talking to himself, “they won’t dare.” And then, turning to the visiting Parisian, he said, raising his eyes, in which, despite his advanced age, a sacred fire sparkled, indicating that it gave him joy to perform a noble, albeit somewhat risky, act:

“Come with me, sir, but I will ask you not to say anything in the presence of the prison guard, and especially in the presence of the guards of the charity home, about what we will see.”

Mr. Appert realized that he was dealing with a courageous man; he went with the venerable priest, visited with him a prison, a hospital, a nursing home, asked a lot of questions, but, despite the strange answers, did not allow himself to express the slightest condemnation.

This inspection lasted several hours. The priest invited Mr. Appert to dine with him, but he excused himself by saying that he had to write a lot of letters: he did not want to further compromise his generous companion. At about three o'clock they went to finish inspecting the charity house and then returned to the prison. At the door they were met by a watchman - a bandy-legged giant, tall; his already vile face became completely disgusting with fear.

“Ah, sir,” he said, as soon as he saw the priest, “this gentleman who came with you, isn’t it Mr. Appert?”

- Well, what then? - said the curé.

“And the fact is that yesterday I received a precise order about them—Mr. Prefect sent it with a gendarme, who had to ride all night—to under no circumstances allow M. Appert into prison.”

“I can tell you, Monsieur Noirou,” said the curé, “that this stranger who came with me is really Monsieur Appert.” You should know that I have the right to enter the prison at any hour of the day or night and can bring with me anyone I please.

“That’s how it is, Monsieur Curé,” answered the watchman, lowering his voice and lowering his head, like a bulldog being forced to obey by showing him a stick. “Only, Mr. Curé, I have a wife and children, and if there is a complaint against me and I lose my place, what will I do with my life then?” After all, only service feeds me.

“I, too, would be very sorry to lose my parish,” answered the honest curé, his voice breaking with emotion.

- They compared it! – the watchman responded quickly. “You, Monsieur Curé, everyone knows this, have eight hundred livres of rent and a piece of your own land.”

These are the incidents, exaggerated, altered in twenty ways, that have inflamed all sorts of evil passions in the small town of Verrieres for the last two days. They were now the subject of a small disagreement between M. de Renal and his wife. In the morning, M. de Renal, together with M. Valnot, the director of the charity house, came to the priest to express his lively displeasure. Mr. Shelan had no patrons; he felt what consequences this conversation threatened him with.

“Well, gentlemen, apparently, I will be the third priest who, at the age of eighty, will be refused a place in these parts.” I've been here fifty-six years; I baptized almost all the inhabitants of this city, which was just a village when I arrived here. Every day I marry young people, just as I once married their grandfathers. Verrieres is my family, but the fear of leaving him cannot force me either to enter into a deal with my conscience or to be guided in my actions by anything other than it. When I saw this visitor, I said to myself: “Perhaps this Parisian is really a liberal - there are many of them now - but what harm can he do to our poor people or prisoners?”

However, the reproaches of M. de Renal, and especially M. Valnot, the director of the charity home, became more and more offensive.

- Well, gentlemen, take my parish away from me! - exclaimed the old priest in a trembling voice. “I still won’t leave these places.” Everyone knows that forty-eight years ago I inherited a small plot of land that brings me eight hundred livres; This is what I will live on. After all, gentlemen, I don’t make any side savings in my service, and maybe that’s why I don’t get scared when they threaten me with being fired.

Monsieur de Renal lived very amicably with his wife, but did not know how to answer her question when she timidly repeated: “What harm can this Parisian do to our prisoners?” – he was ready to flare up when suddenly she screamed. Her second son jumped onto the parapet and ran along it, although this wall rose more than twenty feet above the vineyard that stretched on the other side of it. Fearing that the child would fall in fright, Madame de Renal did not dare to call him. Finally the boy, who was beaming with his daring, looked back at his mother and, seeing that she had turned pale, jumped off the parapet and ran up to her. He was properly reprimanded.

This small incident forced the couple to move the conversation to another subject.

“I still decided to take this Sorel, the son of a sawmill, to me,” said M. de Renal. - He will look after the children, otherwise they have become too playful. This is a young theologian, almost a priest; he knows Latin excellently and will be able to force them to study; The priest says that he has a strong character. I will give him three hundred francs in salary and board. I had some doubts about his good character, - after all, he was the favorite of this old doctor, a holder of the Legion of Honor, who, using the pretext that he was some kind of relative of Sorel, came to them and remained to live on their bread. But it is very possible that this man was, in essence, a secret agent of the liberals; he claimed that our mountain air helped him with asthma, but who knows? He is with Buonaparte went through all the Italian campaigns, and they say that even when they voted for the Empire, he wrote “no.” This liberal taught Sorel's son and left him many books that he brought with him. Of course, it would never have occurred to me to take a carpenter’s son to the children, but just on the eve of this story, because of which I now quarreled with the priest forever, he told me that Sorel’s son had been studying theology for three years now and was planning to enroll. to the seminary, which means he is not a liberal, and, in addition, he is a Latinist. But there are some other considerations here,” continued M. de Renal, looking at his wife with the air of a diplomat. - Mr. Valno is so proud that he acquired a pair of beautiful Normandy girls for his trip. But his children do not have a tutor.

“He can still intercept it from us.”

“So you approve of my project,” Mr. de Renal picked up, thanking his wife with a smile for the wonderful idea that she had just expressed. - So, it’s decided.

“Oh, my God, dear friend, how quickly everything is resolved for you.”

“Because I am a man of character, and our priest will now be convinced of this.” There is no need to deceive yourself - we are surrounded on all sides by liberals here. All these manufacturers envy me, I'm sure of it; two or three of them have already made their way into the moneybags. Well, let them watch how the children of M. de Renal go for a walk under the supervision of their tutor. This will inspire them with something. My grandfather often told us that in his childhood he always had a tutor. It will cost me about a hundred crowns, but in our position this expense is necessary to maintain prestige.

This sudden decision made Madame de Renal think twice. Madame de Renal, a tall, stately woman, was once known, as they say, as the first beauty in the entire district. There was something simple-minded and youthful in her appearance and demeanor. This naive grace, full of innocence and liveliness, could perhaps captivate a Parisian with some kind of hidden ardor. But if Madame de Renal knew that she could make an impression of this kind, she would be burned with shame. Her heart was alien to any coquetry or pretense. It was rumored that M. Valno, a rich man, the director of a charity home, courted her, but without the slightest success, which gained great fame for her virtue, for M. Valno, a tall man in the prime of his years, powerfully built, with a ruddy face and magnificent with black sideburns, belonged precisely to that class of rude, impudent and noisy people who in the provinces are called “handsome men.” Madame de Renal, a very timid creature, apparently had an extremely uneven character, and she was extremely irritated by the constant fussiness and deafening peals of Monsieur Valno's voice. And since she shied away from everything that is called fun in Verrieres, they began to say about her that she was too proud of her origins. She had never even thought about it, but she was very pleased when the residents of the town began to visit her less often. Let's not hide the fact that in the eyes of local ladies she was considered a fool, because she did not know how to conduct any policy towards her husband and missed the most convenient opportunities to force him to buy an elegant hat for her in Paris or Besançon. If only no one bothered her to wander through her wonderful garden, she asked for nothing more.

She was a simple soul: she could never even have any pretensions to judge her husband or admit to herself that she was bored with him. She believed—though never, however, thinking about it—that there could be no other, more tender relationship between husband and wife. She loved M. de Renal most when he told her about his projects regarding children, of whom he intended one to become a military man, another to become an official, and the third to become a minister of the church. In general, she found M. de Renal much less boring than all the other men they had visited.

This was the wife's reasonable opinion. The mayor of Verrieres owed his reputation as a witty man, and especially as a man of good taste, to half a dozen jokes inherited from his uncle. Old Captain de Renal, before the Revolution, served in the infantry regiment of His Grace the Duke of Orleans, and, when he was in Paris, enjoyed the privilege of visiting the Crown Prince at his house. There he happened to see Madame de Montesson, the famous Madame de Genlis, Mr. Ducret, the Palais Royal inventor. All these characters constantly appeared in Mr. de Renal's jokes. But little by little the art of putting such delicate and now forgotten details into a decent form became a difficult task for him, and for some time now he resorted to anecdotes from the life of the Duke of Orleans only on especially solemn occasions. Since, among other things, he was a very polite man, except, of course, when it came to money, he was rightly considered the greatest aristocrat in Verrieres.

The mayor of the small French town of Verrieres, Mr. de Renal, takes into the house a tutor - a young man named Julien Sorel. Ambitious and ambitious, Julien studies theology, knows Latin perfectly and reads pages from the Bible by heart. Since childhood, he has dreamed of fame and recognition, and also admires Napoleon. He believes that the path of a priest is the right way to make a career. His politeness and intelligence contrast sharply with the manners and character of Monsieur de Renal, whose wife gradually warms to Julien and then falls in love with him. They become lovers, but Madame de Renal is pious, she is constantly tormented by pangs of conscience, and the deceived husband receives an anonymous letter warning about his wife’s betrayal. Julien, by prior agreement with Madame de Renal, writes a similar letter, as if it had come to her. But rumors spread around the city, and Julien has to leave. He gets a job at the theological seminary in Besançon, impressing the rector Abbot Pirard with his knowledge. When the time comes to choose his confessor, he chooses Pirard, who, as it later turned out, was suspected of Jansenism.

They want to force Pirard to resign. His friend, the rich and influential Marquis de La Mole, invites the abbot to move to Paris and allocates him a parish four leagues from the capital. When the Marquis mentioned that he was looking for a secretary, Pirard suggested Julien as a man who “has both energy and intelligence.” He is very glad to have the opportunity to be in Paris. The Marquis, in turn, notices Julien for his hard work and abilities and entrusts him with the most difficult matters. He also meets the marquis's daughter Matilda, who is frankly bored in secular society. Matilda is spoiled and selfish, but not stupid and very beautiful. The proud woman's pride is offended by Julien's indifference, and unexpectedly she falls in love with him. Julien does not experience reciprocal passion, but the attention of the aristocrat flatters him. After a night spent together, Matilda is horrified and breaks off relations with Julien, who is also tormented by unrequited love. His friend, Prince Korazov, advises him to make Matilda jealous by flirting with other women, and the plan unexpectedly succeeds. Mathilde falls in love with Julien again, and then announces that she is expecting a child and wants to marry him. However, Sorel's rosy plans are upset by a sudden letter from Madame de Renal. The woman writes:

Poverty and greed prompted this man, capable of incredible hypocrisy, to seduce a weak and unhappy woman and in this way create a certain position for himself and become one of the people... [He] does not recognize any laws of religion. To be honest, I have to think that one of the ways to achieve success is for him to seduce the woman who enjoys the greatest influence in the house.

The Marquis de La Mole does not want to see Julien. The same one goes to Madame de Renal, buys a pistol on the way and shoots his former lover. Madame Renal does not die from her wounds, but Julien is still taken into custody and sentenced to death. In prison, he again makes peace with Madame de Renal and repents of attempting to commit murder. He realizes that he has always been in love only with her. Madame de Renal comes to him in prison and tells him that the letter was written by her confessor, and she only rewrote it. After Julien is sentenced to death, he refuses to appeal, arguing that he has achieved everything in life, and death will only end this journey. Madame de Renal dies three days after Julien's execution.

The novel “Red and Black” is often called a harbinger of psychological realism. Its author is Marie-Henri Bayle, better known as Stendhal.

“Red and Black”: summary

The events of the novel take place in France in the 1820s. Since the novel touches on social and political issues, a summary of The Red and the Black should begin with a description of the historical background. Thus, Stendhal’s work tells about the times of the reign of Charles X, who tried to restore the order that existed before 1789.

The mayor of the city of Veviers, Mister de Renal, decides to hire a tutor. The old curé recommended to him Julien Sorel, the 18-year-old son of a carpenter with rare abilities. Julien is very ambitious and is ready to do anything to succeed. It is worth noting that throughout the entire novel the main character faces a choice between a church career (the clergy wore clothing and military service (the officer’s uniform was red), which is why Stendhal called the novel “Red and Black.”

The summary tells that soon the wife of Mr. de Renal realizes that she loves her tutor. Julien also finds his mistress charming and decides to win her for the sake of self-affirmation and revenge on Mr. de Renal. They soon become lovers. But when Madame de Renal's son becomes seriously ill, it seems to her that this is punishment for her sin. Further, the novel “Red and Black,” a brief summary of which omits details, tells of an anonymous letter that reveals to Mr. de Renal the truth about But she convinces her husband that she is innocent, and Julien is forced to leave Veviers.

The main character moves to Besançon and enters the seminary. Here he makes friends with Abbot Pirard. The latter has a powerful patron, the Marquis de La Mole. Through the efforts of Pirard, the named aristocrat accepts Julien as his secretary. Further, “The Red and the Black,” a summary of which would be incomplete without social issues, describes the adaptation of Julien in Paris, and in particular, in the aristocratic world. Julien turns into a real dandy. Even Matilda, the daughter of the marquis, falls in love with him. But after Matilda spends the night with Julien, she decides to break off the relationship.

An acquaintance of Julien advises him to start courting someone else in order to make Matilda jealous. Thus, the proud aristocrat again falls into the arms of the protagonist. Having become pregnant, Mathilde decides to marry Julien. Upon learning of this, her father becomes furious, but still submits to his daughter. In order to somehow rectify the situation, the Marquis decides to create an appropriate position in society for his future son-in-law. But suddenly a letter appears from Madame Renal, describing Julien as a hypocritical careerist. Because of this, he is forced to leave Matilda

Further, “Red and Black,” a brief summary of which cannot convey the entire psychologism of the novel, tells about the events that took place in Verrieres. Julien enters the local church and shoots his ex-lover. While in prison, he learns that his former lover has survived. Now he understands that he can die in peace. But Matilda does her best to help him. Despite receiving a death sentence. In prison, Madame de Renal visits him and admits that the ill-fated letter was composed by her confessor. After this, Julien realizes that he loves only her, but on the same day he is executed. Matilda buries her ex-fiancé's head with her own hands.

The fate of the main character of the novel "Red and Black" reflects the peculiarities of social life in France at that time. This work is a kind of encyclopedia of the Restoration era.

This work was already ready to appear in print when the great events of July broke out and gave all minds a direction that was not very favorable for the play of imagination. We have reason to believe that the following pages were written in 1827.

Part one

I. Town

The town of Verrieres is perhaps one of the most picturesque in all of Franche-Comté. White houses with peaked red-tiled roofs are spread along the hillside, where clumps of powerful chestnut trees rise from every hollow. The Doux runs a few hundred steps below the city fortifications; They were once built by the Spaniards, but now only ruins remain.

From the north, Verrieres is protected by a high mountain - this is one of the spurs of the Jura. The broken peaks of Werra are covered with snow from the very first frosts in October. A stream rushes down the mountain; before flowing into the Doubs, it runs through Verrieres and on its way sets in motion many sawmills. This simple industry brings a certain amount of prosperity to the majority of the inhabitants, who are more like peasants than city dwellers. However, it was not the sawmills that enriched this town; the production of printed fabrics, the so-called Mulhouse heels, was the source of general prosperity, which, after the fall of Napoleon, made it possible to renovate the facades of almost all houses in Verrieres.

As soon as you enter the city, you are deafened by the roar of some heavily humming and scary-looking car. Twenty heavy hammers fall with a roar that shakes the pavement; they are lifted by a wheel driven by a mountain stream. Each of these hammers produces, I won’t say how many thousands of nails every day. Blooming, pretty girls are engaged in exposing pieces of iron to the blows of these huge hammers, which immediately turn into nails. This production, so rude in appearance, is one of those things that most strikes the traveler who first finds himself in the mountains that separate France from Helvetia. If a traveler who finds himself in Verrieres is curious about whose wonderful nail factory it is, which deafens passers-by walking along Grand Street, he will be answered in a drawling voice: “Ah, the factory is Mr. Mayor’s.”

And if a traveler lingers even for a few minutes on the Grand Rue de Verrieres, which stretches from the banks of the Doubs to the very top of the hill, there is a hundred to one chance that he will certainly meet a tall man with an important and anxious face.

As soon as he appears, all the hats hastily rise. His hair is gray and he is dressed all in gray. He is a holder of several orders, he has a high forehead, an aquiline nose, and in general his face is not devoid of a certain regularity of features, and at first glance it may even seem that, together with the dignity of a provincial mayor, he combines a certain pleasantness that is sometimes still inherent in people at forty-eight to fifty years old. However, very soon the traveling Parisian will be unpleasantly surprised by the expression of complacency and arrogance, in which some kind of limitation and poverty of imagination is evident. One feels that all the talents of this man come down to forcing everyone who owes him to pay himself with the greatest accuracy, while he himself delays paying his debts as long as possible.

This is the mayor of Verrieres, M. de Renal. Having crossed the street with an important step, he enters the city hall and disappears from the eyes of the traveler. But if the traveler continues his walk, then, after walking another hundred steps, he will notice a rather beautiful house, and behind the cast-iron lattice surrounding the property, a magnificent garden. Behind it, outlining the horizon, are the Burgundian hills, and it seems as if all this was deliberately conceived to please the eye. This view can make the traveler forget about that atmosphere plagued by petty profiteering, in which he is already beginning to suffocate.

They will explain to him that this house belongs to M. de Renal. It was with the proceeds from a large nail factory that the mayor of Verrieres built his beautiful mansion of cut stone, and now he is finishing it up. They say that his ancestors are Spaniards, from an old family, which allegedly settled in these parts long before their conquest by Louis XIV.

Since 1815, Mr. Mayor has been ashamed of being a manufacturer: 1815 made him mayor of the city of Verrieres. The massive ledges of the walls supporting the vast areas of the magnificent park, descending in terraces to the Doubs, are also a well-deserved reward given to M. de Renal for his deep knowledge of ironmongery.

In France there is no hope of seeing such picturesque gardens as those that surround the industrial cities of Germany - Leipzig, Frankfurt, Nuremberg and others. In Franche-Comté, the more walls you have, the more your property bristles with stones piled one on top of the other, the more rights you acquire to the respect of your neighbors. And Mr. de Renal’s gardens, where there is absolutely wall on wall, also evoke such admiration that Mr. Mayor acquired some of the small plots allocated to them that were literally worth their weight in gold. For example, that sawmill on the very banks of the Doubs, which struck you so much when entering Verrieres, and you also noticed the name “Sorel” written in giant letters on a board across the entire roof - it was located on that very same site six years ago the place where M. de Renal is now erecting the wall of the fourth terrace of his gardens.

No matter how proud Mr. Mayor was, he had to spend a long time courting and persuading old Sorel, a stubborn, tough guy; and he had to lay out a considerable amount of clear gold in order to convince him to move his sawmill to another place. As for the public stream that made the saw flow, M. de Renal, thanks to his connections in Paris, ensured that it was diverted into a different channel. He gained this sign of favor after the elections of 1821.

He gave Sorel four arpans for one, five hundred paces down the bank of the Doubs, and although this new location was much more profitable for the production of spruce boards, Father Sorel - that was what they began to call him since he became rich - managed to squeeze out of impatience and mania of the owner that seized his neighbor, a tidy sum of six thousand francs.

True, the local wise guys were slandering this deal. One Sunday, it was about four years ago, M. de Renal, in full mayoral garb, was returning from church and saw from afar the old man Sorel: he stood with his three sons and grinned at him. This grin shed a fatal light into the soul of Mr. Mayor - since then he has been tormented by the thought that he could have made the exchange much cheaper.

To earn public respect in Verrieres, it is very important, while piling up as many walls as possible, not to be seduced by some invention of these Italian masons who make their way through the gorges of the Jura in the spring, heading to Paris.

Such an innovation would have earned the careless builder the reputation of an extravagant for all eternity, and he would have perished forever in the opinion of prudent and moderate people, who are in charge of the distribution of public respect in Franche-Comte.

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Frederic Stendhal
Red and black

Part one

The truth is the bitter truth.

Danton

I. Town

Put thousands together – less bad,

But the cage is less gay.

Hobbes1
Put thousands of better people together than these, in a cage it will become even worse. Hobbes (English).

The town of Verrieres is perhaps one of the most picturesque in all of Franche-Comté. White houses with peaked red-tiled roofs are spread along the hillside, where clumps of powerful chestnut trees rise from every hollow. The Doux runs a few hundred steps below the city fortifications; They were once built by the Spaniards, but now only ruins remain.

From the north, Verrieres is protected by a high mountain - this is one of the spurs of the Jura. The broken peaks of Werra are covered with snow from the very first frosts in October. A stream rushes down the mountain; before flowing into the Doubs, it runs through Verrieres and on its way sets in motion many sawmills. This simple industry brings a certain amount of prosperity to the majority of the inhabitants, who are more like peasants than city dwellers. However, it was not the sawmills that enriched this town; The production of printed fabrics, the so-called Mulhouse heels, was the source of general prosperity, which, after the fall of Napoleon, made it possible to renovate the facades of almost all houses in Verrieres.

As soon as you enter the city, you are deafened by the roar of some heavily humming and scary-looking car. Twenty heavy hammers fall with a roar that shakes the pavement; they are lifted by a wheel driven by a mountain stream. Each of these hammers produces, I won’t say how many thousands of nails every day. Blooming, pretty girls are engaged in exposing pieces of iron to the blows of these huge hammers, which immediately turn into nails. This production, so crude in appearance, is one of those things that most strikes the traveler who first finds himself in the mountains that separate France from Helvetia. If a traveler who finds himself in Verrieres is curious about whose wonderful nail factory it is, which deafens passers-by walking along Grand Street, he will be answered in a drawling voice: “Ah, the factory is Mr. Mayor’s.”

And if a traveler lingers even for a few minutes on the Grand Rue de Verrieres, which stretches from the banks of the Doubs to the very top of the hill, there is a hundred to one chance that he will certainly meet a tall man with an important and anxious face.

As soon as he appears, all the hats hastily rise. His hair is gray and he is dressed all in gray. He is a holder of several orders, he has a high forehead, an aquiline nose, and in general his face is not devoid of a certain regularity of features, and at first glance it may even seem that, together with the dignity of a provincial mayor, he combines a certain pleasantness that is sometimes still inherent in people at forty-eight to fifty years old. However, very soon the traveling Parisian will be unpleasantly surprised by the expression of complacency and arrogance, in which some kind of limitation and poverty of imagination is evident. One feels that all the talents of this man come down to forcing everyone who owes him to pay himself with the greatest accuracy, while he himself delays paying his debts as long as possible.

This is the mayor of Verrieres, M. de Renal. Having crossed the street with an important step, he enters the city hall and disappears from the eyes of the traveler. But if the traveler continues his walk, then, after walking another hundred steps, he will notice a rather beautiful house, and behind the cast-iron lattice surrounding the property, a magnificent garden. Behind it, outlining the horizon, are the Burgundian hills, and it seems as if all this was deliberately designed to please the eye. This view can make the traveler forget about that atmosphere plagued by petty profiteering, in which he is already beginning to suffocate.

They will explain to him that this house belongs to M. de Renal. It was with the proceeds from a large nail factory that the mayor of Verrieres built his beautiful mansion of cut stone, and now he is decorating it. They say that his ancestors are Spaniards, from an old family that allegedly settled in these parts long before their conquest by Louis XIV.

Since 1815, Mr. Mayor has been ashamed of being a manufacturer: 1815 made him mayor of the city of Verrieres. The massive ledges of the walls supporting the vast areas of the magnificent park, descending in terraces to the Doubs, are also a well-deserved reward given to M. de Renal for his deep knowledge of ironmongery.

In France there is no hope of seeing such picturesque gardens as those that surround the industrial cities of Germany - Leipzig, Frankfurt, Nuremberg and others. In Franche-Comté, the more walls you have, the more your property bristles with stones piled one on top of the other, the more rights you acquire to the respect of your neighbors. And Mr. de Renal’s gardens, where there is absolutely wall on wall, also evoke such admiration because Mr. Mayor acquired some of the small plots that went to them that were literally worth their weight in gold. For example, that sawmill on the very banks of the Doubs, which so amazed you when entering Verrieres, and you also noticed the name “Sorel” written in giant letters on a board across the entire roof - six years ago it was located on the same the place where M. de Renal is now erecting the wall of the fourth terrace of his gardens.

No matter how proud Mr. Mayor was, he had to spend a long time courting and persuading old Sorel, a stubborn, tough guy; and he had to lay out a considerable amount of clear gold in order to convince him to move his sawmill to another place. As for the public stream that made the saw flow, M. de Renal, thanks to his connections in Paris, ensured that it was diverted into a different channel. He gained this sign of favor after the elections of 1821.

He gave Sorel four arpans for one, five hundred paces down the bank of the Doubs, and although this new location was much more profitable for the production of spruce boards, Father Sorel - that was what they called him since he became rich - managed to squeeze out of impatience and mania of the owner that seized his neighbor, a tidy sum of six thousand francs.

True, the local wise guys were slandering this deal. One Sunday, it was about four years ago, M. de Renal, in full mayoral garb, was returning from church and saw from afar the old man Sorel: he stood with his three sons and grinned at him. This grin shed a fatal light into the soul of Mr. Mayor - since then he has been haunted by the thought that he could have made the exchange much cheaper.

To earn public respect in Verrieres, it is very important, while piling up as many walls as possible, not to be seduced by some invention of these Italian masons who make their way through the gorges of the Jura in the spring, heading to Paris.

Such an innovation would have earned the careless builder the reputation of an extravagant for all eternity, and he would have perished forever in the opinion of prudent and moderate people, who are in charge of the distribution of public respect in Franche-Comte.

In all honesty, these smart guys display a completely intolerable despotism, and it is this vile word that makes life in small towns unbearable for anyone who lived in the great republic called Paris. The tyranny of public opinion - and what an opinion! – is as stupid in the small towns of France as in the United States of America.

II. Mister Mayor

Prestige! What, sir, do you think this is nothing? Honor from fools, children staring in amazement, envy of the rich, contempt from the wise.

Barnav

Fortunately for M. de Renal and his reputation as the ruler of the city, the city boulevard, located on the hillside, hundreds of feet above the Doubs, had to be surrounded by a huge retaining wall. From here, thanks to its extremely favorable location, one of the most picturesque views of France opens up. But every spring the boulevard was washed away by rain, the paths turned into continuous potholes, and it became completely unsuitable for walking. This inconvenience, felt by everyone, placed M. de Renal in the happy necessity of perpetuating his reign by building a stone wall twenty feet high and thirty to forty toises long.

The parapet of this wall, for the sake of which M. de Renal had to travel three times to Paris, because the penultimate Minister of the Interior declared himself the mortal enemy of the Verrieres Boulevard, this parapet now rises about four feet above the ground. And, as if challenging all ministers, past and present, it is now decorated with granite slabs.

How many times, immersed in memories of the balls of recently abandoned Paris, leaning my chest on these huge stone slabs of a beautiful gray color, slightly shimmering with blue, my gaze wandered along the Doubs Valley. In the distance, on the left bank, five or six ravines meander, in the depths of which the eye can clearly discern flowing streams. They run down, are torn down by waterfalls here and there, and finally fall into the Doubs. The sun in our mountains is hot, and when it is directly overhead, the traveler, daydreaming on this terrace, is protected by the shade of magnificent plane trees. Thanks to the alluvial soil, they grow quickly, and their luxurious greenery has a blue tint, for Mr. Mayor ordered the earth to be piled along the entire length of his huge retaining wall; despite the opposition of the municipal council, he widened the boulevard by about six feet (for which I praise him, although he is an ultra-royalist and I am a liberal), and that is why this terrace, in his opinion, and also in the opinion of M. Valnod, is prosperous director of the Verrieres almshouse, is in no way inferior to the Saint-Germain terrace in Laie.

As for me, I can only complain about one drawback of the Alley of Fidelity - this official name can be read in fifteen or twenty places on the marble tablets, for which M. de Renal was awarded another cross - in my opinion, the lack of the Alley of Fidelity - These are barbarically mutilated mighty plane trees: on the orders of their superiors, they are cut off and punished mercilessly. Instead of being like the round, flattened crowns of the most inconspicuous garden vegetables, they could freely acquire those magnificent forms that one sees in their counterparts in England. But the will of Mr. Mayor is unbreakable, and twice a year all the trees belonging to the community are mercilessly amputated. Local liberals say - however, this is, of course, an exaggeration - that the hand of the city gardener has become much more severe since Monsieur Vicar Malon began the custom of appropriating the fruits of this haircut.

This young clergyman was sent from Besançon several years ago to observe the Abbe Cheland and several other priests in the surrounding area. An old regimental doctor, a participant in the Italian campaign, who retired to Verrieres and who during his lifetime was, according to the mayor, both a Jacobin and a Bonapartist, once dared to reproach the mayor for this systematic disfigurement of beautiful trees.

“I love the shade,” answered M. de Renal with that shade of arrogance in his voice, which is acceptable when talking with a regimental doctor, a holder of the Legion of Honor, “I love the shade and I order my trees to be trimmed so that they provide shade.” And I don't know what else trees are good for if they can't, like a healthy nut, generate income.

Here it is, the great word that decides everything in Verrieres: to generate income; to this, and only to this, the thoughts of more than three-quarters of the entire population invariably come down.

Generate income- this is the argument that governs everything in this town, which seemed so beautiful to you. A stranger who finds himself here, captivated by the beauty of the cool, deep valleys encircling the town, at first imagines that the local inhabitants are very receptive to beauty; they endlessly talk about the beauty of their region; it cannot be denied that they value it very much, because it attracts strangers, whose money enriches the innkeepers, and this, in turn, by virtue of the existing city tax laws, brings income to the city.

One fine autumn day, Mr. de Renal was walking along the Alley of Fidelity, arm in arm with his wife. Listening to the reasoning of her husband, who was pontificating with an air of importance, Madame de Renal watched her three boys with a restless gaze. The eldest, who could have been about eleven years old, kept running up to the parapet with the obvious intention of climbing onto it. A gentle voice then pronounced the name of Adolf, and the boy immediately abandoned his bold idea. Madame de Renal looked about thirty years old, but she was still very pretty.

“However he might regret it later, this upstart from Paris,” said M. de Renal in an offended tone, and his usually pale cheeks seemed even paler. - I will have friends at court...

But even though I am going to tell you about the province for two hundred pages, I am still not such a barbarian as to harass you with lengthy and with sophisticated innuendo provincial conversation.

This upstart from Paris, so hated by the mayor, was none other than M. Appert, who two days ago managed to get into not only the prison and the Verrieres almshouse, but also the hospital, which was under the gratuitous care of M. Mayor and the city's most prominent homeowners.

“But,” answered Madame de Renal timidly, “what can this gentleman from Paris do to you if you manage the property of the poor with such scrupulous conscientiousness?”

“He came here only to criticize us, and then he will go to press articles in liberal newspapers.”

- But you never read them, my friend.

“But we are constantly being told about these Jacobin articles; all this distracts us and prevents us from doing good. No, as for me, I will never forgive our priest for this.

III. Poor property

The virtuous curé, free from all intrigues, is truly a blessing from God for the village.

Fleury

It must be said that the curé of Verrieres, an eighty-year-old man who, thanks to the invigorating air of the local mountains, retained iron health and an iron character, enjoyed the right to visit the prison, hospital and even the charity house at any time. So M. Appert, who in Paris was provided with a letter of recommendation to the curate, had the prudence to arrive in this small inquisitive town exactly at six o'clock in the morning and immediately went to the clergyman's house.

Reading a letter written to him by the Marquis de La Mole, peer of France and the richest landowner in the entire area, Curé Chelan became thoughtful.

“I’m an old man, and they love me here,” he finally said in a low voice, talking to himself, “they won’t dare.” And then, turning to the visiting Parisian, he said, raising his eyes, in which, despite his advanced age, a sacred fire sparkled, indicating that it gave him joy to perform a noble, albeit somewhat risky, act:

“Come with me, sir, but I will ask you not to say anything in the presence of the prison guard, and especially in the presence of the guards of the charity home, about what we will see.”

Mr. Appert realized that he was dealing with a courageous man; he went with the venerable priest, visited with him a prison, a hospital, a nursing home, asked a lot of questions, but, despite the strange answers, did not allow himself to express the slightest condemnation.

This inspection lasted several hours. The priest invited Mr. Appert to dine with him, but he excused himself by saying that he had to write a lot of letters: he did not want to further compromise his generous companion. At about three o'clock they went to finish inspecting the charity house and then returned to the prison. At the door they were met by a watchman - a bandy-legged giant, tall; his already vile face became completely disgusting with fear.

“Ah, sir,” he said, as soon as he saw the priest, “this gentleman who came with you, isn’t it Mr. Appert?”

- Well, what then? - said the curé.

“And the fact is that yesterday I received a precise order about them—Mr. Prefect sent it with a gendarme, who had to ride all night—to under no circumstances allow M. Appert into prison.”

“I can tell you, Monsieur Noirou,” said the curé, “that this stranger who came with me is really Monsieur Appert.” You should know that I have the right to enter the prison at any hour of the day or night and can bring with me anyone I please.

“That’s how it is, Monsieur Curé,” answered the watchman, lowering his voice and lowering his head, like a bulldog being forced to obey by showing him a stick. “Only, Mr. Curé, I have a wife and children, and if there is a complaint against me and I lose my place, what will I do with my life then?” After all, only service feeds me.

“I, too, would be very sorry to lose my parish,” answered the honest curé, his voice breaking with emotion.

- They compared it! – the watchman responded quickly. “You, Monsieur Curé, everyone knows this, have eight hundred livres of rent and a piece of your own land.”

These are the incidents, exaggerated, altered in twenty ways, that have inflamed all sorts of evil passions in the small town of Verrieres for the last two days. They were now the subject of a small disagreement between M. de Renal and his wife. In the morning, M. de Renal, together with M. Valnot, the director of the charity house, came to the priest to express his lively displeasure. Mr. Shelan had no patrons; he felt what consequences this conversation threatened him with.

“Well, gentlemen, apparently, I will be the third priest who, at the age of eighty, will be refused a place in these parts.” I've been here fifty-six years; I baptized almost all the inhabitants of this city, which was just a village when I arrived here. Every day I marry young people, just as I once married their grandfathers. Verrieres is my family, but the fear of leaving him cannot force me either to enter into a deal with my conscience or to be guided in my actions by anything other than it. When I saw this visitor, I said to myself: “Perhaps this Parisian is really a liberal - there are many of them now - but what harm can he do to our poor people or prisoners?”

However, the reproaches of M. de Renal, and especially M. Valnot, the director of the charity home, became more and more offensive.

- Well, gentlemen, take my parish away from me! - exclaimed the old priest in a trembling voice. “I still won’t leave these places.” Everyone knows that forty-eight years ago I inherited a small plot of land that brings me eight hundred livres; This is what I will live on. After all, gentlemen, I don’t make any side savings in my service, and maybe that’s why I don’t get scared when they threaten me with being fired.

Monsieur de Renal lived very amicably with his wife, but did not know how to answer her question when she timidly repeated: “What harm can this Parisian do to our prisoners?” – he was ready to flare up when suddenly she screamed. Her second son jumped onto the parapet and ran along it, although this wall rose more than twenty feet above the vineyard that stretched on the other side of it. Fearing that the child would fall in fright, Madame de Renal did not dare to call him. Finally the boy, who was beaming with his daring, looked back at his mother and, seeing that she had turned pale, jumped off the parapet and ran up to her. He was properly reprimanded.

This small incident forced the couple to move the conversation to another subject.

“I still decided to take this Sorel, the son of a sawmill, to me,” said M. de Renal. - He will look after the children, otherwise they have become too playful. This is a young theologian, almost a priest; he knows Latin excellently and will be able to force them to study; The priest says that he has a strong character. I will give him three hundred francs in salary and board. I had some doubts about his good character, - after all, he was the favorite of this old doctor, a holder of the Legion of Honor, who, using the pretext that he was some kind of relative of Sorel, came to them and remained to live on their bread. But it is very possible that this man was, in essence, a secret agent of the liberals; he claimed that our mountain air helped him with asthma, but who knows? He is with Buonaparte went through all the Italian campaigns, and they say that even when they voted for the Empire, he wrote “no.” This liberal taught Sorel's son and left him many books that he brought with him. Of course, it would never have occurred to me to take a carpenter’s son to the children, but just on the eve of this story, because of which I now quarreled with the priest forever, he told me that Sorel’s son had been studying theology for three years now and was planning to enroll. to the seminary, which means he is not a liberal, and, in addition, he is a Latinist. But there are some other considerations here,” continued M. de Renal, looking at his wife with the air of a diplomat. - Mr. Valno is so proud that he acquired a pair of beautiful Normandy girls for his trip. But his children do not have a tutor.

“He can still intercept it from us.”

“So you approve of my project,” Mr. de Renal picked up, thanking his wife with a smile for the wonderful idea that she had just expressed. - So, it’s decided.

“Oh, my God, dear friend, how quickly everything is resolved for you.”

“Because I am a man of character, and our priest will now be convinced of this.” There is no need to deceive yourself - we are surrounded on all sides by liberals here. All these manufacturers envy me, I'm sure of it; two or three of them have already made their way into the moneybags. Well, let them watch how the children of M. de Renal go for a walk under the supervision of their tutor. This will inspire them with something. My grandfather often told us that in his childhood he always had a tutor. It will cost me about a hundred crowns, but in our position this expense is necessary to maintain prestige.

This sudden decision made Madame de Renal think twice. Madame de Renal, a tall, stately woman, was once known, as they say, as the first beauty in the entire district. There was something simple-minded and youthful in her appearance and demeanor. This naive grace, full of innocence and liveliness, could perhaps captivate a Parisian with some kind of hidden ardor. But if Madame de Renal knew that she could make an impression of this kind, she would be burned with shame. Her heart was alien to any coquetry or pretense. It was rumored that M. Valno, a rich man, the director of a charity home, courted her, but without the slightest success, which gained great fame for her virtue, for M. Valno, a tall man in the prime of his years, powerfully built, with a ruddy face and magnificent with black sideburns, belonged precisely to that class of rude, impudent and noisy people who in the provinces are called “handsome men.” Madame de Renal, a very timid creature, apparently had an extremely uneven character, and she was extremely irritated by the constant fussiness and deafening peals of Monsieur Valno's voice. And since she shied away from everything that is called fun in Verrieres, they began to say about her that she was too proud of her origins. She had never even thought about it, but she was very pleased when the residents of the town began to visit her less often. Let's not hide the fact that in the eyes of local ladies she was considered a fool, because she did not know how to conduct any policy towards her husband and missed the most convenient opportunities to force him to buy an elegant hat for her in Paris or Besançon. If only no one bothered her to wander through her wonderful garden, she asked for nothing more.

She was a simple soul: she could never even have any pretensions to judge her husband or admit to herself that she was bored with him. She believed—though never, however, thinking about it—that there could be no other, more tender relationship between husband and wife. She loved M. de Renal most when he told her about his projects regarding children, of whom he intended one to become a military man, another to become an official, and the third to become a minister of the church. In general, she found M. de Renal much less boring than all the other men they had visited.

This was the wife's reasonable opinion. The mayor of Verrieres owed his reputation as a witty man, and especially as a man of good taste, to half a dozen jokes inherited from his uncle. Old Captain de Renal, before the Revolution, served in the infantry regiment of His Grace the Duke of Orleans, and, when he was in Paris, enjoyed the privilege of visiting the Crown Prince at his house. There he happened to see Madame de Montesson, the famous Madame de Genlis, Mr. Ducret, the Palais Royal inventor. All these characters constantly appeared in Mr. de Renal's jokes. But little by little the art of putting such delicate and now forgotten details into a decent form became a difficult task for him, and for some time now he resorted to anecdotes from the life of the Duke of Orleans only on especially solemn occasions. Since, among other things, he was a very polite man, except, of course, when it came to money, he was rightly considered the greatest aristocrat in Verrieres.