6 Manon Lescaut, by the abbé Prévost, Rousseau's La Nouvelle Héloïse, and Diderot's Lettres d'une religieuse portugaise were all eighteenth-century novels with vague reputations for immorality, especially among conservatives like the La Moles.
The Red and the Black
truly great deeds. "How wretched that there's no real court, like Catherine de Médici's7 or Louis XIII's!8 I think I could do anything, no matter how bold, no matter how grand. What wouldn't I do if a passionate king, like Louis XIII, were sighing at my feet! I'd lead him straight into that peasant revolt, the Vendée,9 as Baron de Tully always says, and he'd go on from there, he'd reconquer his whole kingdom, there'd be an end to any more Constitutions10...and Julien would help me. What is he missing? Name and fortune. He'd make himself a name, he'd win himself a fortune. "Croisenois isn't missing anything. For the rest of his life, all he'll be is a sort of right-wing duke, a sort of liberal, a wobbly-minded man, forever avoiding extremes, and as a result, forever coming in second. "What great deed isn't extreme when it's first begun? Only when it's been accomplished can it seem possible in the eyes of ordinary men. Yes—it has to be love, with all its miracles, that now will rule my heart: I feel its quickening fire. Heaven owes me this sign of favor. My happiness will be worthy of me. The days of my life will no longer, one by one, each coldly resemble the one before it. There's already grandeur, and true audacity, in daring to love someone so far beneath me in social standing. We'll see: Will he continue to deserve me? The first time I see weakness in him, I'll give him up. A girl of my birth, and with the courtly nature they've been good enough to concede me [this was one of her father's favorite expressions] must not behave like an idiot. "And isn't that the role I'd be playing if I loved the Marquis de Croisenois? I would be nothing more than a new edition of my cousins, for whom I feel such utter contempt. I know in advance everything the poor marquis would say to me, everything I'd then have to say to him. What kind of love makes you yawn? You might as well be pious and devout. There'd be the same kind of ceremony my youngest cousin had, when her marriage contract was signed, with all the grandparents there—unless they'd been upset by some clause the lawyer for the other side had put, in the night before."