5 The year of Waterloo marked the permanent—so it was thought—restoration of the Bourbons to the throne.
The Red and the Black
in pine boards, Père Sorel6 (as they call him, now that he's a rich man) knew how to play on his neighbor's pressing impatience, and his land-owning mania, squeezing out a sale price of six thousand francs. To be sure, the transaction was criticized by wiser heads in the area. Once, about four o'clock on a Sunday, coming home from church, dressed in his mayoral robes, Monsieur de Rênal saw in the distance old Sorel, surrounded by his three sons, watching him and smiling. That smile proved fatally illuminating to the mayor: he realized, from then on, that he could have bought the land for less. To earn a public reputation in Verrières, the essential thing—while of course building a great many walls—is not to adopt some design carried across the Jura gorges by Italian stonemasons, in their springtime pilgrimages to Paris. Any such innovation would earn the imprudent builder the unshakable taint of rebel; he would be forever after ruined in the eyes of the wise, moderate folk who parcel out reputation in Franche-Comté. In truth, these wise fellows wield an incredibly wearisome despotism, and it is precisely this wretched word that makes small towns unlivable for those who have been successful in that great republic we call Paris. The tyranny of opinion—and such opinion!—is every bit as idiotic in the small towns of France as it is in the United States of America. Chapter Two: A Mayor Importance! My dear sir, isn't that worthless? The respect of donkeys, the astonishment of small children, the rich man's jealousy and the wise man's disdain. —BARNAVE7 Happily for Monsieur de Rênal's reputation as an administrator, a huge retaining wall was required for the public walkway running along the hillside, roughly a hundred feet above the Doubs. This wonderful location gives it one of the most picturesque views in all France. But every spring the rains had regularly furrowed the walkway, digging out gullies and rendering it impassable. This inconvenience, which affected everyone, placed Monsieur de Rênal under the fortunate obligation of immortalizing his administration by a wall twenty feet high and well over two hundred feet long. The upper portion of this wall—on behalf of which Monsieur de Rênal had been compelled to make three trips to Paris, because the former minister of the interior had declared himself the mortal enemy of Verrières's walkway—the upper portion of this walkway had now grown to be four feet above the ground. And as if to challenge all the ministers, present and past, at this very moment slabs of cut stone are being put in place. How many times, dreaming about Parisian balls long left behind, with my chest pressed against those great blocks of stone—a lovely gray streaked with blue—has my glance plunged down into the valley through which the Doubs runs! Out there, along the left bank, five or six valleys go meandering, the eye easily able to distinguish small streams tumbling through them. Having splashed through one waterfall after another, one sees them pouring into the Doubs. The sun is powerful, in these mountains: when it shines directly overhead, a traveler's daydreaming, as he stands on this raised earthwork, is sheltered by magnificent plane trees. They owe their rapid growth, as well as their beautiful foliage, green tinted with blue, to the