finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_0_part_0.txt
The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 1
part 1, chapter 1
{"name": "Part 1, Chapter 1", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-1", "summary": "Welcome to Verrieres, a cute little town filled with white houses and chestnut trees. There are a lot of sawmills in the area . There's also a nail factory that belongs to the town's mayor, Monsieur de Renal. We get a description of Mr. Renal, who's a respectable-looking dude with a long, proud family history. We find out that Renal has a relationship with an old peasant named Sorel. He had to buy out the peasant's sawmill in order to expand his garden terrace and keep any ugly mills out of the way. Sorel agreed to move his business, but only after he got a bunch of money out of Renal. The narrator closes the opening chapter by saying that the town of Verrieres is totally tyrannized by public opinion. In other words, there's a lot of gossip and a lot of judgment in the town. If you have a good name, that's great. But if you have a bad name, no one will treat you well.", "analysis": ""}
CHAPTER I

A SMALL TOWN


    Put thousands together less bad,
    But the cage less gay.--_Hobbes_.


The little town of Verrieres can pass for one of the prettiest in
Franche-Comte. Its white houses with their pointed red-tiled roofs
stretch along the slope of a hill, whose slightest undulations are
marked by groups of vigorous chestnuts. The Doubs flows to within some
hundred feet above its fortifications, which were built long ago by the
Spaniards, and are now in ruins.

Verrieres is sheltered on the north by a high mountain which is one of
the branches of the Jura. The jagged peaks of the Verra are covered
with snow from the beginning of the October frosts. A torrent which
rushes down from the mountains traverses Verrieres before throwing
itself into the Doubs, and supplies the motive power for a great number
of saw mills. The industry is very simple, and secures a certain
prosperity to the majority of the inhabitants who are more peasant than
bourgeois. It is not, however, the wood saws which have enriched this
little town. It is the manufacture of painted tiles, called Mulhouse
tiles, that is responsible for that general affluence which has caused
the facades of nearly all the houses in Verrieres to be rebuilt since
the fall of Napoleon.

One has scarcely entered the town, before one is stunned by the din of
a strident machine of terrifying aspect. Twenty heavy hammers which
fall with a noise that makes the paved floor tremble, are lifted
up by a wheel set in motion by the torrent. Each of these hammers
manufactures every day I don't know how many thousands of nails. The
little pieces of iron which are rapidly transformed into nails by these
enormous hammers, are put in position by fresh pretty young girls. This
labour so rough at first sight is one of the industries which most
surprises the traveller who penetrates for the first time the mountains
which separate France and Helvetia. If when he enters Verrieres, the
traveller asks who owns this fine nail factory which deafens everybody
who goes up the Grande-Rue, he is answered in a drawling tone "Eh!
it belongs to M. the Mayor."

And if the traveller stops a few minutes in that Grande-Rue of
Verrieres which goes on an upward incline from the bank of the Doubs to
nearly as far as the summit of the hill, it is a hundred to one that he
will see a big man with a busy and important air.

When he comes in sight all hats are quickly taken off. His hair is
grizzled and he is dressed in grey. He is a Knight of several Orders,
has a large forehead and an aquiline nose, and if you take him all
round, his features are not devoid of certain regularity. One might
even think on the first inspection that it combines with the dignity
of the village mayor that particular kind of comfortableness which is
appropriate to the age of forty-eight or fifty. But soon the traveller
from Paris will be shocked by a certain air of self-satisfaction and
self-complacency mingled with an almost indefinable narrowness and lack
of inspiration. One realises at last that this man's talent is limited
to seeing that he is paid exactly what he is owed, and in paying his
own debts at the latest possible moment.

Such is M. de Renal, the mayor of Verrieres. After having crossed the
road with a solemn step, he enters the mayoral residence and disappears
from the eye of the traveller. But if the latter continues to walk
a hundred steps further up, he will perceive a house with a fairly
fine appearance, with some magnificent gardens behind an iron grill
belonging to the house. Beyond that is an horizon line formed by the
hills of Burgundy, which seem ideally made to delight the eyes. This
view causes the traveller to forget that pestilential atmosphere of
petty money-grubbing by which he is beginning to be suffocated.

He is told that this house belongs to M. de Renal. It is to the
profits which he has made out of his big nail factory that the mayor
of Verrieres owes this fine residence of hewn stone which he is just
finishing. His family is said to be Spanish and ancient, and is alleged
to have been established in the country well before the conquest of
Louis XIV.

Since 1815, he blushes at being a manufacturer: 1815 made him mayor
of Verrieres. The terraced walls of this magnificent garden which
descends to the Doubs, plateau by plateau, also represent the reward
of M. de Renal's proficiency in the iron-trade. Do not expect to find
in France those picturesque gardens which surround the manufacturing
towns of Germany, like Leipsic, Frankfurt and Nurenburgh, etc. The
more walls you build in Franche-Comte and the more you fortify your
estate with piles of stone, the more claim you will acquire on the
respect of your neighbours. Another reason for the admiration due to
M. de Renal's gardens and their numerous walls, is the fact that he
has purchased, through sheer power of the purse, certain small parcels
of the ground on which they stand. That saw-mill, for instance, whose
singular position on the banks of the Doubs struck you when you entered
Verrieres, and where you notice the name of SOREL written in gigantic
characters on the chief beam of the roof, used to occupy six years
ago that precise space on which is now reared the wall of the fourth
terrace in M. de Renal's gardens.

Proud man that he was, the mayor had none the less to negotiate with
that tough, stubborn peasant, old Sorel. He had to pay him in good
solid golden louis before he could induce him to transfer his workshop
elsewhere. As to the _public_ stream which supplied the motive power
for the saw-mill, M. de Renal obtained its diversion, thanks to the
influence which he enjoyed at Paris. This favour was accorded him after
the election of 182-.

He gave Sorel four acres for every one he had previously held, five
hundred yards lower down on the banks of the Doubs. Although this
position was much more advantageous for his pine-plank trade, father
Sorel (as he is called since he has become rich) knew how to exploit
the impatience and _mania for landed ownership_ which animated his
neighbour to the tune of six thousand francs.

It is true that this arrangement was criticised by the wiseacres of the
locality. One day, it was on a Sunday four years later, as M. de Renal
was coming back from church in his mayor's uniform, he saw old Sorel
smiling at him, as he stared at him some distance away surrounded by
his three sons. That smile threw a fatal flood of light into the soul
of the mayor. From that time on, he is of opinion that he could have
obtained the exchange at a cheaper rate.

In order to win the public esteem of Verrieres it is essential that,
though you should build as many walls as you can, you should not adopt
some plan imported from Italy by those masons who cross the passes
of the Jura in the spring on their way to Paris. Such an innovation
would bring down upon the head of the imprudent builder an eternal
reputation for _wrongheadedness_, and he will be lost for ever in the
sight of those wise, well-balanced people who dispense public esteem in
Franche-Comte.

As a matter of fact, these prudent people exercise in the place the
most offensive despotism. It is by reason of this awful word, that
anyone who has lived in that great republic which is called Paris,
finds living in little towns quite intolerable. The tyranny of public
opinion (and what public opinion!) is as _stupid_ in the little towns
of France as in the United States of America.





Part 1, Chapter 1
Welcome to Verrieres, a cute little town filled with white houses and chestnut trees. There are a lot of sawmills in the area . There's also a nail factory that belongs to the town's mayor, Monsieur de Renal. We get a description of Mr. Renal, who's a respectable-looking dude with a long, proud family history. We find out that Renal has a relationship with an old peasant named Sorel. He had to buy out the peasant's sawmill in order to expand his garden terrace and keep any ugly mills out of the way. Sorel agreed to move his business, but only after he got a bunch of money out of Renal. The narrator closes the opening chapter by saying that the town of Verrieres is totally tyrannized by public opinion. In other words, there's a lot of gossip and a lot of judgment in the town. If you have a good name, that's great. But if you have a bad name, no one will treat you well.