The Red and the Black by Stendhal Read Free Book Online Page A

complexion and big black sidewhiskers, was one of those vulgar,
brazen, loud individuals who are called handsome fellows in the
provinces.
    M me de Rênal, who was extremely shy and seemed highly impressionable, * was especially disturbed by M. Valenod's constant movements and his
loud voice. What the people of Verrières call the pleasures of the
flesh were something totally alien to her, and this had given her the
reputation of being very proud of her origins. Nothing could have been
further from her thoughts, but she had been delighted to find the
townsfolk visiting her less often. I shall not conceal the fact that
she was considered silly by their ladies, because she never
tried to manipulate her husband, and let slip the most marvellous
opportunities of getting him to buy hats for her in Paris or Besançon.
As long as she was left to wander alone in her beautiful garden she
never uttered a word of complaint.
    She was a naïve creature who had never ventured so much as to judge
her husband and admit to herself that she found him boring. She
imagined without putting it into words that no husband and wife
enjoyed a more tender relationship. She was particularly fond of M. de
Rênal when he talked to her about his plans for their children, one
of whom he destined for the army, the next for the magistracy and the
third for the Church. In short, she found M. p far less boring than
all the other men of her acquaintance.
    This conjugal opinion was well founded. The mayor of Verrières had a
reputation for wit and above all for good taste, which he owed to the
half-dozen jokes he had inherited from an uncle. Old Captain de Rênal
had served in the Duke of Orleans' * infantry regiment before the Revolution, and when he went to Paris he
was admitted to the duke's salons. There he had set eyes on M me de Montesson, * the famous M me de Genlis, and M. Ducrest, the creator of the Palais-Royal. These characters made all too frequent appearances in M me de Rênal's anecdotes. But gradually it had become an effort for
    -15-

him to remember things which had to be recounted with such subtlety,
and for some time now he had not repeated his anecdotes about the
House of Orleans except on grand occasions. Since, moreover, he was
extremely polite except when the conversation was about money, he was
rightly considered to be the most aristocratic person in Verrières.
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CHAPTER 4
Father and son
E sarà mia colpa
Se cosi è ?
MACHIAVELLI *
    'MY good lady * really is pretty shrewd!' said the mayor of Verrières to himself at
six o'clock the following morning as he was walking down to old Mr
Sorel's mill. 'Whatever I may have said to her to maintain a fitting
show of superiority, it hadn't occurred to me that if I don't take on
the young abbé * Sorel, who is said to know Latin like an angel, the master of the
workhouse, that eternal agitator, could well have the very same idea,
and snap him up first. How smugly he'd talk about his children's
tutor! . . . Now will this tutor wear a cassock once he's in my
employment?'
    M. de Rênal was
pondering this question when he caught sight of a peasant in the
distance, a man nearly six foot tall, who seemed very busy at this
early hour of the morning measuring pieces of wood stacked up along
the towpath by the Doubs. He did not look at all pleased to see his
worship approaching, for his pieces of wood were blocking the path,
and had been stacked there contrary to regulations.
    Old Mr Sorel--for it was the man himself--was most surprised and
still more pleased at the unusual proposition which M. de Rênal was
making to him in respect of his son Julien. This did not prevent him
from listening with that air of surly gloom and indifference which the
inhabitants of these mountains are so good at putting on to cover up
their cunning. Having been slaves at the time of Spanish rule, they
still keep this characteristic of the Egyptian fellah's countenance.
    Sorel's