finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Red and the Black/section_0_part_0.txt
The Red and the Black.part 1.chapters 1-3
chapters 1-3
{"name": "Chapters 1-3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201128052739/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/the-red-and-the-black/summary-and-analysis/part-1-chapters-13", "summary": "M. de Renal is the mayor and wealthy owner of the nail factory in the small mountain village of Verrieres in the eastern province of Franche-Comte. Situated above the river Doubs, the village owes the prosperity of its peasant citizenry to sawmills and to the manufacture of calico. The sudden arrival of M. Appert, sent from M. de La Mole in Paris to inspect the municipal workhouse and prison administered by M. Valenod, the mayor's assistant, has erupted on the otherwise peaceful existence of the village. The village, a microcosm of Paris and of all of France in this respect, is politically divided into two camps: royalists like the mayor and a liberal element dissatisfied with the Restoration. They are in agreement, however, upon the importance that they attribute to money and in their slavish respect for small-town public opinion. Father Chelan, Jansenist and village priest for many years, takes M. Appert on a tour of the workhouse and prison, thereby disobeying the wishes of M. Valenod, who risks being exposed for misuse of funds, given the pitiable conditions existing in these institutions. Renal and Valenod have, in fact, visited Chelan and reprimanded him for this action. This is the subject of the conversation between M. and Mme. de Renal one day as they are strolling with their three children on the \"Cours de La Fidelite,\" a public promenade sustained by an enormous retaining wall, the glory of Verrieres, the construction of which is due to the administration of Mayor de Renal. The latter then proposes to his wife that they hire Julien Sorel, student priest of Chelan, as tutor for their children, a move destined to increase his own social prestige since it will cause envy among the liberal textile mill owners. Julien's father, a crafty sawyer, has already, in the past, outwitted Renal in a land transaction.", "analysis": "Note that Stendhal does not rely for his exposition on many pages of description and documentation. His method might be called \"free associational\" and characterizes the entire novel since the exposition never ends. It is clearly not that of his famous contemporary Balzac or of the latter's predecessor Scott.  Stendhal moves rather swiftly back and forth from background description to an action scene as the need arises, after an initial five pages of introductory setting. Chapter divisions are entirely arbitrary: Chapter 1 situates Verrieres, characterizes the economy of the town, then introduces a hypothetical Parisian visitor who will encounter the mayor, giving Stendhal the opportunity to present him for the first time. Most of the short chapter is, in fact, devoted to M. de Renal, to his home, his past, and his relationship with Sorel even before Stendhal reaches Chapter 2, which, as the title indicates, is to be devoted to M. de Renal. Stendhal does not exhaust the description of a newly introduced character upon initial presentation, but rather he returns periodically to \"round it out,\" having been led astray into digressions. Nothing is seen out of relation to other considerations: describing Renal physically leads Stendhal to ascribe to the passerby a moral judgment about Renal, condensing time; this then leads Stendhal to Renal's home; then a parenthetical note about his ancestry; next Renal's imposing \"retaining walls\" are evoked; then a comparison with gardens of other manufacturing towns; this leads the author to mention Sorel since it is through him that the land was acquired; follows a necessary remark about the shrewdness of Sorel; and finally an incident which illustrates that M. de Renal suspected that he had been bettered in the bargain. Had Stendhal followed the path into Verrieres consistently as his means of introduction, the reader would have been enlightened about Sorel's sawmill at an earlier point. This omission is not an oversight, however. Before Sorel and especially his son Julien, the hero of the novel, can be introduced, the adversary against which Julien will pit himself in its various forms must be defined. The adversary will be all of society as it incarnates the corruption and stagnation of the Restoration, thereby oppressing a superior being. Chapter 1 thus gives us a sweeping, superficial tour; Chapter 2 repeats this gesture, now evoking Valenod and Maslon by the same \"afterthought\" technique before introducing the action proper: the Renals' conversation on the promenade. The last few lines of this chapter begin the conversation, the meaning of which escapes the reader, and Stendhal must reappear to furnish more background details at the beginning of Chapter 3. The latter, in turn, involves a \"flashback\" to an episode having occurred the day before -- this before we hear the end of the conversation between the Renals. Thus, we hear briefly of Julien for the first time in Chapter 3, and we see him through the eyes of M. de Renal, whose judgment we have already learned to question. Julien can't be a liberal, reasons Renal, since he has been studying theology for the last three years. These recurring views of M. de Renal in interaction with other people permit us to judge him as pretentious, vain, easily duped, proud, and avaricious. Stendhal next turns to Mme. de Renal and devotes a page to her character and history, taking care to emphasize her virtue and resignation to her lot. She is unaware that life holds anything better than what her husband offers her. Even the method of exposition fits a description of Stendhal's style as that of \"improvisation.\" It suggests the image of ever-widening, superimposed circles."}
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.




CHAPTER II

A MAYOR


        Importance! What is it, sir after all? The respect of
        fools, the wonder of children, the envy of the rich, the
        contempt of the wise man.--_Barnave_


Happily for the reputation of M. de Renal as an administrator an
immense wall of support was necessary for the public promenade which
goes along the hill, a hundred steps above the course of the Doubs.
This admirable position secures for the promenade one of the most
picturesque views in the whole of France. But the rain water used to
make furrows in the walk every spring, caused ditches to appear, and
rendered it generally impracticable. This nuisance, which was felt
by the whole town, put M. de Renal in the happy position of being
compelled to immortalise his administration by building a wall twenty
feet high and thirty to forty yards long.

The parapet of this wall, which occasioned M. de Renal three journeys
to Paris (for the last Minister of the Interior but one had declared
himself the mortal enemy of the promenade of Verrieres), is now raised
to a height of four feet above the ground, and as though to defy all
ministers whether past or present, it is at present adorned with tiles
of hewn stone.

How many times have my looks plunged into the valley of the Doubs, as I
thought of the Paris balls which I had abandoned on the previous night,
and leant my breast against the great blocks of stone, whose beautiful
grey almost verged on blue. Beyond the left bank, there wind five
or six valleys, at the bottom of which I could see quite distinctly
several small streams. There is a view of them falling into the Doubs,
after a series of cascades. The sun is very warm in these mountains.
When it beats straight down, the pensive traveller on the terrace
finds shelter under some magnificent plane trees. They owe their rapid
growth and their fine verdure with its almost bluish shade to the new
soil, which M. the mayor has had placed behind his immense wall of
support for (in spite of the opposition of the Municipal Council) he
has enlarged the promenade by more than six feet (and although he is an
Ultra and I am a Liberal, I praise him for it), and that is why both in
his opinion and in that of M. Valenod, the fortunate Director of the
workhouse of Verrieres, this terrace can brook comparison with that of
Saint-Germain en Laye.

I find personally only one thing at which to cavil in the COURS DE LA
FIDELITE, (this official name is to be read in fifteen to twenty places
on those immortal tiles which earned M. de Renal an extra cross.) The
grievance I find in the Cours de la Fidelite is the barbarous manner in
which the authorities have cut these vigorous plane trees and clipped
them to the quick. In fact they really resemble with their dwarfed,
rounded and flattened heads the most vulgar plants of the vegetable
garden, while they are really capable of attaining the magnificent
development of the English plane trees. But the wish of M. the mayor
is despotic, and all the trees belonging to the municipality are
ruthlessly pruned twice a year. The local Liberals suggest, but they
are probably exaggerating, that the hand of the official gardener
has become much more severe, since M. the Vicar Maslon started
appropriating the clippings. This young ecclesiastic was sent to
Besancon some years ago to keep watch on the abbe Chelan and some cures
in the neighbouring districts. An old Surgeon-Major of Napoleon's
Italian Army, who was living in retirement at Verrieres, and who had
been in his time described by M. the mayor as both a Jacobin and a
Bonapartiste, dared to complain to the mayor one day of the periodical
mutilation of these fine trees.

"I like the shade," answered M. de Renal, with just a tinge of that
hauteur which becomes a mayor when he is talking to a surgeon, who is
a member of the Legion of Honour. "I like the shade, I have _my_ trees
clipped in order to give shade, and I cannot conceive that a tree can
have any other purpose, provided of course _it is not bringing in any
profit_, like the useful walnut tree."

This is the great word which is all decisive at Verrieres. "BRINGING IN
PROFIT," this word alone sums up the habitual trend of thought of more
than three-quarters of the inhabitants.

_Bringing in profit_ is the consideration which decides everything in
this little town which you thought so pretty. The stranger who arrives
in the town is fascinated by the beauty of the fresh deep valleys which
surround it, and he imagines at first that the inhabitants have an
appreciation of the beautiful. They talk only too frequently of the
beauty of their country, and it cannot be denied that they lay great
stress on it, but the reason is that it attracts a number of strangers,
whose money enriches the inn-keepers, a process which _brings in
profit_ to the town, owing to the machinery of the octroi.

It was on a fine, autumn day that M. de Renal was taking a promenade
on the Cours de la Fidelite with his wife on his arm. While listening
to her husband (who was talking in a somewhat solemn manner) Madame de
Renal followed anxiously with her eyes the movements of three little
boys. The eldest, who might have been eleven years old, went too
frequently near the parapet and looked as though he was going to climb
up it. A sweet voice then pronounced the name of Adolphe and the child
gave up his ambitious project. Madame de Renal seemed a woman of thirty
years of age but still fairly pretty.

"He may be sorry for it, may this fine gentleman from Paris," said
M. de Renal, with an offended air and a face even paler than usual.
"I am not without a few friends at court!" But though I want to
talk to you about the provinces for two hundred pages, I lack the
requisite barbarity to make you undergo all the long-windedness and
circumlocutions of a provincial dialogue.

This fine gentleman from Paris, who was so odious to the mayor of
Verrieres, was no other than the M. Appert, who had two days previously
managed to find his way not only into the prison and workhouse of
Verrieres, but also into the hospital, which was gratuitously conducted
by the mayor and the principal proprietors of the district.

"But," said Madame de Renal timidly, "what harm can this Paris
gentleman do you, since you administer the poor fund with the utmost
scrupulous honesty?"

"He only comes to _throw_ blame and afterwards he will get some
articles into the Liberal press."

"You never read them, my dear."

"But they always talk to us about those Jacobin articles, all that
distracts us and prevents us from doing good.[1] Personally, I shall
never forgive the cure."

[1] Historically true.





CHAPTER III

THE POOR FUND


        A virtuous cure who does not intrigue is a providence
        for the village.--_Fleury_


It should be mentioned that the cure of Verrieres, an old man of
ninety, who owed to the bracing mountain air an iron constitution and
an iron character, had the right to visit the prison, the hospital and
the workhouse at any hour. It had been at precisely six o'clock in the
morning that M. Appert, who had a Paris recommendation to the cure,
had been shrewd enough to arrive at a little inquisitive town. He had
immediately gone on to the cure's house.

The cure Chelan became pensive as he read the letter written to him by
the M. le Marquis de La Mole, Peer of France, and the richest landed
proprietor of the province.

"I am old and beloved here," he said to himself in a whisper, "they
would not dare!" Then he suddenly turned to the gentleman from Paris,
with eyes, which in spite of his great age, shone with that sacred fire
which betokens the delight of doing a fine but slightly dangerous act.

"Come with me, sir," he said, "but please do not express any opinion of
the things which we shall see, in the presence of the jailer, and above
all not in the presence of the superintendents of the workhouse."

M. Appert realised that he had to do with a man of spirit. He followed
the venerable cure, visited the hospital and workhouse, put a lot of
questions, but in spite of somewhat extraordinary answers, did not
indulge in the slightest expression of censure.

This visit lasted several hours; the cure invited M. Appert to dine,
but the latter made the excuse of having some letters to write; as a
matter of fact, he did not wish to compromise his generous companion to
any further extent. About three o'clock these gentlemen went to finish
their inspection of the workhouse and then returned to the prison.
There they found the jailer by the gate, a kind of giant, six feet
high, with bow legs. His ignoble face had become hideous by reason of
his terror.

"Ah, monsieur," he said to the cure as soon as he saw him, "is not the
gentleman whom I see there, M. Appert?"

"What does that matter?" said the cure.

"The reason is that I received yesterday the most specific orders, and
M. the Prefect sent a message by a gendarme who must have galloped
during the whole of the night, that M. Appert was not to be allowed in
the prisons."

"I can tell you, M. Noiroud," said the cure, "that the traveller who is
with me is M. Appert, but do you or do you not admit that I have the
right to enter the prison at any hour of the day or night accompanied
by anybody I choose?"

"Yes, M. the cure," said the jailer in a low voice, lowering his head
like a bull-dog, induced to a grudging obedience by fear of the stick,
"only, M. the cure, I have a wife and children, and shall be turned out
if they inform against me. I only have my place to live on."

"I, too, should be sorry enough to lose mine," answered the good cure,
with increasing emotion in his voice.

"What a difference!" answered the jailer keenly. "As for you, M. le
cure, we all know that you have eight hundred francs a year, good solid
money."

Such were the facts which, commented upon and exaggerated in twenty
different ways, had been agitating for the last two days all the odious
passions of the little town of Verrieres.

At the present time they served as the text for the little discussion
which M. de Renal was having with his wife. He had visited the cure
earlier in the morning accompanied by M. Valenod, the director of the
workhouse, in order to convey their most emphatic displeasure. M.
Chelan had no protector, and felt all the weight of their words.

"Well, gentlemen, I shall be the third cure of eighty years of age who
has been turned out in this district. I have been here for fifty-six
years. I have baptized nearly all the inhabitants of the town, which
was only a hamlet when I came to it. Every day I marry young people
whose grandparents I have married in days gone by. Verrieres is my
family, but I said to myself when I saw the stranger, 'This man from
Paris may as a matter of fact be a Liberal, there are only too many of
them about, but what harm can he do to our poor and to our prisoners?'"

The reproaches of M. de Renal, and above all, those of M. Valenod, the
director of the workhouse, became more and more animated.

"Well, gentlemen, turn me out then," the old cure exclaimed in a
trembling voice; "I shall still continue to live in the district. As
you know, I inherited forty-eight years ago a piece of land that brings
in eight hundred francs a year; I shall live on that income. I do not
save anything out of my living, gentlemen; and that is perhaps why,
when you talk to me about it, I am not particularly frightened."

M. de Renal always got on very well with his wife, but he did not know
what to answer when she timidly repeated the phrase of M. le cure,
"What harm can this Paris gentleman do the prisoners?" He was on the
point of quite losing his temper when she gave a cry. Her second son
had mounted the parapet of the terrace wall and was running along it,
although the wall was raised to a height of more than twenty feet above
the vineyard on the other side. The fear of frightening her son and
making him fall prevented Madame de Renal speaking to him. But at last
the child, who was smiling at his own pluck, looked at his mother, saw
her pallor, jumped down on to the walk and ran to her. He was well
scolded.

This little event changed the course of the conversation.

"I really mean to take Sorel, the son of the sawyer, into the house,"
said M. de Renal; "he will look after the children, who are getting too
naughty for us to manage. He is a young priest, or as good as one, a
good Latin scholar, and will make the children get on. According to the
cure, he has a steady character. I will give him three hundred francs a
year and his board. I have some doubts as to his morality, for he used
to be the favourite of that old Surgeon-Major, Member of the Legion of
Honour, who went to board with the Sorels, on the pretext that he was
their cousin. It is quite possible that that man was really simply a
secret agent of the Liberals. He said that the mountain air did his
asthma good, but that is something which has never been proved. He
has gone through all _Buonaparte's_ campaigns in Italy, and had even,
it was said, voted against the Empire in the plebiscite. This Liberal
taught the Sorel boy Latin, and left him a number of books which he had
brought with him. Of course, in the ordinary way, I should have never
thought of allowing a carpenter's son to come into contact with our
children, but the cure told me, the very day before the scene which
has just estranged us for ever, that Sorel has been studying theology
for three years with the intention of entering a seminary. He is,
consequently, not a Liberal, and he certainly is a good Latin scholar.

"This arrangement will be convenient in more than one way," continued
M. de Renal, looking at his wife with a diplomatic air. "That Valenod
is proud enough of his two fine Norman horses which he has just bought
for his carriage, but he hasn't a tutor for his children."

"He might take this one away from us."

"You approve of my plan, then?" said M. de Renal, thanking his wife
with a smile for the excellent idea which she had just had. "Well,
that's settled."

"Good gracious, my dear, how quickly you make up your mind!"

"It is because I'm a man of character, as the cure found out right
enough. Don't let us deceive ourselves; we are surrounded by Liberals
in this place. All those cloth merchants are jealous of me, I am
certain of it; two or three are becoming rich men. Well, I should
rather fancy it for them to see M. de Renal's children pass along the
street as they go out for their walk, escorted by _their tutor_. It
will impress people. My grandfather often used to tell us that he had
a tutor when he was young. It may run me into a hundred crowns, but
that ought to be looked upon as an expense necessary for keeping up our
position."

This sudden resolution left Madame de Renal quite pensive. She was
a big, well-made woman, who had been the beauty of the country, to
use the local expression. She had a certain air of simplicity and
youthfulness in her deportment. This naive grace, with its innocence
and its vivacity, might even have recalled to a Parisian some
suggestion of the sweets he had left behind him. If she had realised
this particular phase of her success, Madame de Renal would have been
quite ashamed of it. All coquetry, all affectation, were absolutely
alien to her temperament. M. Valenod, the rich director of the
workhouse, had the reputation of having paid her court, a fact which
had cast a singular glamour over her virtue; for this M. Valenod, a
big young man with a square, sturdy frame, florid face, and big, black
whiskers, was one of those coarse, blustering, and noisy people who
pass in the provinces for a "fine man."

Madame de Renal, who had a very shy, and apparently a very uneven
temperament, was particularly shocked by M. Valenod's lack of repose,
and by his boisterous loudness. Her aloofness from what, in the
Verrieres' jargon, was called "having a good time," had earned her the
reputation of being very proud of her birth. In fact, she never thought
about it, but she had been extremely glad to find the inhabitants of
the town visit her less frequently. We shall not deny that she passed
for a fool in the eyes of _their_ good ladies because she did not
wheedle her husband, and allowed herself to miss the most splendid
opportunities of getting fine hats from Paris or Besancon. Provided she
was allowed to wander in her beautiful garden, she never complained.
She was a naive soul, who had never educated herself up to the point
of judging her husband and confessing to herself that he bored her.
She supposed, without actually formulating the thought, that there was
no greater sweetness in the relationship between husband and wife than
she herself had experienced. She loved M. de Renal most when he talked
about his projects for their children. The elder he had destined for
the army, the second for the law, and the third for the Church. To sum
up, she found M. de Renal much less boring than all the other men of
her acquaintance.

This conjugal opinion was quite sound. The Mayor of Verrieres had a
reputation for wit, and above all, a reputation for good form, on
the strength of half-a-dozen "chestnuts" which he had inherited from
an uncle. Old Captain de Renal had served, before the Revolution, in
the infantry regiment of M. the Duke of Orleans, and was admitted
to the Prince's salons when he went to Paris. He had seen Madame de
Montesson, the famous Madame de Genlis, M. Ducret, the inventor, of the
Palais-Royal. These personages would crop up only too frequently in M.
de Renal's anecdotes. He found it, however, more and more of a strain
to remember stories which required such delicacy in the telling, and
for some time past it had only been on great occasions that he would
trot out his anecdotes concerning the House of Orleans. As, moreover,
he was extremely polite, except on money matters, he passed, and justly
so, for the most aristocratic personage in Verrieres.






Chapters 1-3
M. de Renal is the mayor and wealthy owner of the nail factory in the small mountain village of Verrieres in the eastern province of Franche-Comte. Situated above the river Doubs, the village owes the prosperity of its peasant citizenry to sawmills and to the manufacture of calico. The sudden arrival of M. Appert, sent from M. de La Mole in Paris to inspect the municipal workhouse and prison administered by M. Valenod, the mayor's assistant, has erupted on the otherwise peaceful existence of the village. The village, a microcosm of Paris and of all of France in this respect, is politically divided into two camps: royalists like the mayor and a liberal element dissatisfied with the Restoration. They are in agreement, however, upon the importance that they attribute to money and in their slavish respect for small-town public opinion. Father Chelan, Jansenist and village priest for many years, takes M. Appert on a tour of the workhouse and prison, thereby disobeying the wishes of M. Valenod, who risks being exposed for misuse of funds, given the pitiable conditions existing in these institutions. Renal and Valenod have, in fact, visited Chelan and reprimanded him for this action. This is the subject of the conversation between M. and Mme. de Renal one day as they are strolling with their three children on the "Cours de La Fidelite," a public promenade sustained by an enormous retaining wall, the glory of Verrieres, the construction of which is due to the administration of Mayor de Renal. The latter then proposes to his wife that they hire Julien Sorel, student priest of Chelan, as tutor for their children, a move destined to increase his own social prestige since it will cause envy among the liberal textile mill owners. Julien's father, a crafty sawyer, has already, in the past, outwitted Renal in a land transaction.
Note that Stendhal does not rely for his exposition on many pages of description and documentation. His method might be called "free associational" and characterizes the entire novel since the exposition never ends. It is clearly not that of his famous contemporary Balzac or of the latter's predecessor Scott.  Stendhal moves rather swiftly back and forth from background description to an action scene as the need arises, after an initial five pages of introductory setting. Chapter divisions are entirely arbitrary: Chapter 1 situates Verrieres, characterizes the economy of the town, then introduces a hypothetical Parisian visitor who will encounter the mayor, giving Stendhal the opportunity to present him for the first time. Most of the short chapter is, in fact, devoted to M. de Renal, to his home, his past, and his relationship with Sorel even before Stendhal reaches Chapter 2, which, as the title indicates, is to be devoted to M. de Renal. Stendhal does not exhaust the description of a newly introduced character upon initial presentation, but rather he returns periodically to "round it out," having been led astray into digressions. Nothing is seen out of relation to other considerations: describing Renal physically leads Stendhal to ascribe to the passerby a moral judgment about Renal, condensing time; this then leads Stendhal to Renal's home; then a parenthetical note about his ancestry; next Renal's imposing "retaining walls" are evoked; then a comparison with gardens of other manufacturing towns; this leads the author to mention Sorel since it is through him that the land was acquired; follows a necessary remark about the shrewdness of Sorel; and finally an incident which illustrates that M. de Renal suspected that he had been bettered in the bargain. Had Stendhal followed the path into Verrieres consistently as his means of introduction, the reader would have been enlightened about Sorel's sawmill at an earlier point. This omission is not an oversight, however. Before Sorel and especially his son Julien, the hero of the novel, can be introduced, the adversary against which Julien will pit himself in its various forms must be defined. The adversary will be all of society as it incarnates the corruption and stagnation of the Restoration, thereby oppressing a superior being. Chapter 1 thus gives us a sweeping, superficial tour; Chapter 2 repeats this gesture, now evoking Valenod and Maslon by the same "afterthought" technique before introducing the action proper: the Renals' conversation on the promenade. The last few lines of this chapter begin the conversation, the meaning of which escapes the reader, and Stendhal must reappear to furnish more background details at the beginning of Chapter 3. The latter, in turn, involves a "flashback" to an episode having occurred the day before -- this before we hear the end of the conversation between the Renals. Thus, we hear briefly of Julien for the first time in Chapter 3, and we see him through the eyes of M. de Renal, whose judgment we have already learned to question. Julien can't be a liberal, reasons Renal, since he has been studying theology for the last three years. These recurring views of M. de Renal in interaction with other people permit us to judge him as pretentious, vain, easily duped, proud, and avaricious. Stendhal next turns to Mme. de Renal and devotes a page to her character and history, taking care to emphasize her virtue and resignation to her lot. She is unaware that life holds anything better than what her husband offers her. Even the method of exposition fits a description of Stendhal's style as that of "improvisation." It suggests the image of ever-widening, superimposed circles.