finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_3_part_0.txt
The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 4
part 1, chapter 4
{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-4", "summary": "Monsieur de Renal approaches Mr. Sorel about getting his son to work in the Renal house as a tutor. Sorel is happy about the news, but he doesn't show it because he's a stone cold bargainer and he wants to take Renal for as much money as he can. When he gets back to the sawmill, Monsieur Sorel see his son Julien reading a book instead of doing his job and looking after the machinery. He whaps his son on the head and calls him lazy. We can tell that Mr. Sorel is about to tell his son about the arrangements with the mayor, but Julien trembles as if his dad is going to kill him for some reason.", "analysis": ""}
CHAPTER IV

A FATHER AND A SON


    E sara mia colpa
    Se cosi e?
                  --_Machiavelli_.


"My wife really has a head on her shoulders," said the mayor of
Verrieres at six o'clock the following morning, as he went down to the
saw-mill of Father Sorel. "It had never occurred to me that if I do not
take little Abbe Sorel, who, they say, knows Latin like an angel, that
restless spirit, the director of the workhouse, might have the same
idea and snatch him away from me, though of course I told her that it
had, in order to preserve my proper superiority. And how smugly, to be
sure, would he talk about his children's tutor!... The question is,
once the tutor's mine, shall he wear the cassock?"

M. de Renal was absorbed in this problem when he saw a peasant in the
distance, a man nearly six feet tall, who since dawn had apparently
been occupied in measuring some pieces of wood which had been put
down alongside the Doubs on the towing-path. The peasant did not look
particularly pleased when he saw M. the Mayor approach, as these pieces
of wood obstructed the road, and had been placed there in breach of the
rules.

Father Sorel (for it was he) was very surprised, and even more pleased
at the singular offer which M. de Renal made him for his son Julien.
None the less, he listened to it with that air of sulky discontent and
apathy which the subtle inhabitants of these mountains know so well
how to assume. Slaves as they have been since the time of the Spanish
Conquest, they still preserve this feature, which is also found in the
character of the Egyptian fellah.

Sorel's answer was at first simply a long-winded recitation of
all the formulas of respect which he knew by heart. While he was
repeating these empty words with an uneasy smile, which accentuated
all the natural disingenuousness, if not, indeed, knavishness of his
physiognomy, the active mind of the old peasant tried to discover what
reason could induce so important a man to take into his house his
good-for-nothing of a son. He was very dissatisfied with Julien, and
it was for Julien that M. de Renal offered the undreamt-of salary of
300 fcs. a year, with board and even clothing. This latter claim, which
Father Sorel had had the genius to spring upon the mayor, had been
granted with equal suddenness by M. de Renal.

This demand made an impression on the mayor. It is clear, he said to
himself, that since Sorel is not beside himself with delight over my
proposal, as in the ordinary way he ought to be, he must have had
offers made to him elsewhere, and whom could they have come from, if
not from Valenod. It was in vain that M. de Renal pressed Sorel to
clinch the matter then and there. The old peasant, astute man that
he was, stubbornly refused to do so. He wanted, he said, to consult
his son, as if in the provinces, forsooth, a rich father consulted a
penniless son for any other reason than as a mere matter of form.

A water saw-mill consists of a shed by the side of a stream. The roof
is supported by a framework resting on four large timber pillars. A
saw can be seen going up and down at a height of eight to ten feet in
the middle of the shed, while a piece of wood is propelled against
this saw by a very simple mechanism. It is a wheel whose motive-power
is supplied by the stream, which sets in motion this double piece of
mechanism, the mechanism of the saw which goes up and down, and the
mechanism which gently pushes the piece of wood towards the saw, which
cuts it up into planks.

Approaching his workshop, Father Sorel called Julien in his stentorian
voice; nobody answered. He only saw his giant elder sons, who, armed
with heavy axes, were cutting up the pine planks which they had to
carry to the saw. They were engrossed in following exactly the black
mark traced on each piece of wood, from which every blow of their axes
threw off enormous shavings. They did not hear their father's voice.
The latter made his way towards the shed. He entered it and looked in
vain for Julien in the place where he ought to have been by the side of
the saw. He saw him five or six feet higher up, sitting astride one of
the rafters of the roof. Instead of watching attentively the action of
the machinery, Julien was reading. Nothing was more anti-pathetic to
old Sorel. He might possibly have forgiven Julien his puny physique,
ill adapted as it was to manual labour, and different as it was from
that of his elder brothers; but he hated this reading mania. He could
not read himself.

It was in vain that he called Julien two or three times. It was the
young man's concentration on his book, rather than the din made by the
saw, which prevented him from hearing his father's terrible voice. At
last the latter, in spite of his age, jumped nimbly on to the tree
that was undergoing the action of the saw, and from there on to the
cross-bar that supported the roof. A violent blow made the book which
Julien held, go flying into the stream; a second blow on the head,
equally violent, which took the form of a box on the ears, made him
lose his balance. He was on the point of falling twelve or fifteen feet
lower down into the middle of the levers of the running machinery which
would have cut him to pieces, but his father caught him as he fell, in
his left hand.

"So that's it, is it, lazy bones! always going to read your damned
books are you, when you're keeping watch on the saw? You read them in
the evening if you want to, when you go to play the fool at the cure's,
that's the proper time."

Although stunned by the force of the blow and bleeding profusely,
Julien went back to his official post by the side of the saw. He had
tears in his eyes, less by reason of the physical pain than on account
of the loss of his beloved book.

"Get down, you beast, when I am talking to you," the noise of the
machinery prevented Julien from hearing this order. His father, who had
gone down did not wish to give himself the trouble of climbing up on to
the machinery again, and went to fetch a long fork used for bringing
down nuts, with which he struck him on the shoulder. Julien had
scarcely reached the ground, when old Sorel chased him roughly in front
of him and pushed him roughly towards the house. "God knows what he is
going to do with me," said the young man to himself. As he passed, he
looked sorrowfully into the stream into which his book had fallen, it
was the one that he held dearest of all, the _Memorial of St. Helena_.

He had purple cheeks and downcast eyes. He was a young man of eighteen
to nineteen years old, and of puny appearance, with irregular but
delicate features, and an aquiline nose. The big black eyes which
betokened in their tranquil moments a temperament at once fiery and
reflective were at the present moment animated by an expression of
the most ferocious hate. Dark chestnut hair, which came low down over
his brow, made his forehead appear small and gave him a sinister look
during his angry moods. It is doubtful if any face out of all the
innumerable varieties of the human physiognomy was ever distinguished
by a more arresting individuality.

A supple well-knit figure, indicated agility rather than strength. His
air of extreme pensiveness and his great pallor had given his father
the idea that he would not live, or that if he did, it would only be to
be a burden to his family. The butt of the whole house, he hated his
brothers and his father. He was regularly beaten in the Sunday sports
in the public square.

A little less than a year ago his pretty face had begun to win him some
sympathy among the young girls. Universally despised as a weakling,
Julien had adored that old Surgeon-Major, who had one day dared to talk
to the mayor on the subject of the plane trees.

This Surgeon had sometimes paid Father Sorel for taking his son for
a day, and had taught him Latin and History, that is to say the 1796
Campaign in Italy which was all the history he knew. When he died, he
had bequeathed his Cross of the Legion of Honour, his arrears of half
pay, and thirty or forty volumes, of which the most precious had just
fallen into the public stream, which had been diverted owing to the
influence of M. the Mayor.

Scarcely had he entered the house, when Julien felt his shoulder
gripped by his father's powerful hand; he trembled, expecting some
blows.

"Answer me without lying," cried the harsh voice of the old peasant in
his ears, while his hand turned him round and round, like a child's
hand turns round a lead soldier. The big black eyes of Julien filled
with tears, and were confronted by the small grey eyes of the old
carpenter, who looked as if he meant to read to the very bottom of his
soul.






Part 1, Chapter 4
Monsieur de Renal approaches Mr. Sorel about getting his son to work in the Renal house as a tutor. Sorel is happy about the news, but he doesn't show it because he's a stone cold bargainer and he wants to take Renal for as much money as he can. When he gets back to the sawmill, Monsieur Sorel see his son Julien reading a book instead of doing his job and looking after the machinery. He whaps his son on the head and calls him lazy. We can tell that Mr. Sorel is about to tell his son about the arrangements with the mayor, but Julien trembles as if his dad is going to kill him for some reason.