2 Many scholars believe Altamira to be based on the Neapolitan Count di Fiore, who was a friend of Stendhal's.
The Red and the Black
cannot bear to hear. In Paris, people are careful to hide their laughter, but you remain forever a stranger. Let us pass over in silence the many petty events that might have made Julien look ridiculous, had he not been, after a fashion, beneath ridicule. His insane sensitivity made him commit thousands of blunders. His amusements were entirely precautionary: he practiced with his pistol, every day, and was one of the best pupils of the very best fencing master. The moment he had a bit of free time, instead of spending it with a book, as he used to do, he hurried to the riding school, requesting that he be given the most vicious horses they had. When he rode with the director of the school, he was regularly thrown by his horse. The marquis found him handy, because he worked so doggedly, he was silent, and he had a good mind; gradually, everything difficult to untangle was entrusted to him. The marquis himself, when his high ambitions did not claim his attention, was an excellent man of business: positioned as he was to know what would be happening, he played the market well. He bought houses, he bought woodland, but he had a quick temper. He gave away thousands of francs, and fought lawsuits over hundreds. Passionate rich men go into business for amusement, not for results. What the marquis needed was a head steward who would clarify his finances and put them in order, ready to hand. Madame de La Mole, though by nature restrained, sometimes made fun of Julien. Anything unexpected, spawned by sensitivity, is every great lady's nightmare, since it is the direct opposite of propriety. Two or three times, the marquis defended him: "He may seem silly in your drawing room, but at his desk he's heroic." For his part, Julien fancied he knew the marquise's secret. She took the trouble to find everything of interest the moment Baron de La Joumate was announced. She was cold, her face totally inexpressive. He was small, slim, ugly, very well dressed, lived his life at court and, for the most part, said nothing about anything. That was how his mind worked. Madame de La Mole would have been passionately happy, for the first time in her life, had she been able to make him her daughter's husband.
Chapter Six: Pronunciation
Chapter Six: Pronunciation Their lofty mission is to calmly judge the petty events of which nations' daily lives are composed. Their wisdom is expected to keep great anger from coming out of petty issues, or out of events which rumor transforms, in carrying them abroad. —Gratius1 For someone who had in a sense just landed, whose pride kept him from ever asking a question, Julien did not make many truly serious mistakes. One day, thrust into a café on Saint-Honoré Street, when a sudden shower struck, a tall man in a heavy frock coat, made of wool interwoven with beaver hair, was so startled by Julien's somber stare that he stared right back, exactly as Mademoiselle Amanda's lover had done, one day in Besançon. Julien had too often blamed himself for allowing that insult to go by to tolerate this stare. He demanded an explanation. The frock-coated man replied with the filthiest insults. Everyone in the café gathered around them; passersby stopped in the doorway. As a cautious provincial, Julien never went out without his pistols; his hand closed convulsively on them, in his pocket. But he was sensible, and limited himself to repeating, regularly, "Sir, your address? You are despicable." At last, his firmness in employing only these six words made an impression on the crowd. "Damn! That man who's talking all the time has got to give him his address." The frock-coated man, hearing other people say the same thing, threw five or six calling cards at Julien. Luckily, none of them hit our hero, and he had vowed not to use his pistols unless he was touched. The frock coat left, though not without coming back, over and over, shaking his fist and hurling insults. Julien was soaked in perspiration. "So scum like him can do this to me!" he said to himself, furious. "How can I smother this humiliating sensitivity?" Where would he find a second? He had no friends. He had had a few acquaintances, but after six weeks they had all dropped him. "I am unsocial, and I'm being harshly punished for it," he thought. At last he remembered a man named Liéven, who had been a lieutenant in the Ninety-sixth, a poor devil with whom he had often fenced. He was honest with this man. "I'll be glad to be your second," Liéven said, "but on one condition. If you don't wound your man, you'll fight with me, on the spot." "Agreed," said Julien, delighted, and they went to find Monsieur C. de Beauvoisis, at the address shown on his cards, in the heart of Faubourg Saint-Germain. It was seven in the morning. Not until he was being announced at the man's house did Julien reflect that this might well be Madame de Rênal's young relative, formerly of the French Embassy at Rome, or Naples, who had given the singer, Géronimo, a letter of recommendation. Julien had handed the tall servant one of the cards thrown at him the night before, and one of his own. They were kept waiting, he and his second, for a full three-quarters of an hour; finally they were ushered into a wonderfully elegant room. There they found a tall young man, dressed up like a tailor's dummy; his face displayed both the beauty and the insignificance of the Greek ideal. His remarkably narrow head bore a pyramid of intensely blond hair, elaborately curled, not a hair out of place. "This damned fop," thought the lieutenant of the Ninety-sixth, "made us wait so he could get himself all curled." The man's striped dressing gown, his morning trousers, everything right down to his embroidered slippers, was absolutely