1 François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon (1651–1715) was a clergyman and writer of mystical tendencies who took a great interest in education. A protégé of Madame de Maintenon, Fénelon in 1699 wrote Télémaque as an instructive parable for the Duke de Bourgogne, grandson of Louis XIV and heir presumptive to the throne; he would predecease the old king, and his son would become Louis XV at the age of five. Télémaque, or Telemachus, was the son of Odysseus; in Fénelon's tale, he makes a voyage in search of his long-lost father in the company of his tutor, Mentor. The lessons young Telemachus learns from his travels and from Mentor are intended as a model of governance and conduct for the future king. Télémaque was intended and understood as a critique of the reign of Louis XIV, and Fénelon was banished from court in 1699. The quote given cannot be found or imagined in Fénélon's work.
The Red and the Black
avoid simple, rational ideas. He maintained that standard, shortening the amplifications he would give to these notions, depending on the successful or the indifferent reactions he could observe in the great ladies he was trying to please. On the whole, his life was less horrible than when he had passed his days in purely passive misery. "But," he said to himself one night, "here I am, copying out the fifteenth of these awful disquisitions. The first fourteen have been faithfully delivered to Madame de Fervaques's doorman. I'll achieve the high honor of filling all the storage slots in her desk. And still, she treats me exactly as if I had never written a word! Where will all of this end? Is my persistence as boring to her as it is to me? It must be said, surely, that this Russian, Korasoff's friend, was a dreadful man in his day: there has never been anyone more deadly dull." Like all mediocre men, placed by chance amid the maneuvers of some great general, Julien understood nothing of the young Russian's attack on the lovely English Quakeress. The only purpose of the first forty letters had been to excuse his boldness in daring to writing at all. It had been necessary to create, in this sweet young woman (who may well have become infinitely bored), the habit of receiving letters just a little less insipid, perhaps, than her everyday existence. One morning, a letter came for Julien. He recognized Madame de Fervaques's coat of arms, and broke the seal with a speed that, only a few days earlier, would have seemed to him impossible. It was simply an invitation to dinner. On such points, where he ought to have been clear and direct, the young Russian had been as casual as Claude Dorat, legendarily remiss: Julien was unable to calculate exactly what moral stance he was supposed to assume at this dinner. The drawing room was the ultimate in magnificence, gilded like the great Galleries of Diana, at the Tuileries, and with large, descriptive oil paintings hung on the paneled walls. These canvases bore oddly placed clear spots. Julien learned, later, that the lady of the house, thinking the paintings a bit indecent, had had certain portions blotted out. "This moral age!" he thought. He noted the presence of three people who had helped prepare the secret note. One of them, the Bishop of ———, Madame de Fervaques's uncle, was in charge of placing priests in parishes and, it was said, would deny his niece nothing. "What an immense step I've taken," Julien said to himself, with a melancholy smile, "and how little it means to me! Here I am, dining with the famous Bishop of ———." The dinner was mediocre; the conversation irritating. "It's a bad book's table of contents," Julien thought. "They proudly tackle all the important themes of human thought. But after you listen for three minutes, you have to ask yourself which stands out more clearly, the speaker's sheer bombast or his abominable ignorance." The reader has surely forgotten that minor man of letters, Tanbeau by name, the academician's nephew, and a professor-to-be: he seemed actively employed, here, in vulgar slander aimed at the de La Mole drawing room. It was this little fellow who first gave Julien the idea that, in spite of not having answered his letters, Madame de Fervaques might well look favorably on the sentiment that had led them to be written. Monsieur Tanbeau's black heart was torn apart, contemplating Julien's success. "But on the other hand," the diminutive future professor said to himself, "neither a worthy man nor a fool can manage to be in two places at the same time. If Sorel should become the sublime Fervaques's lover, she'll get him well placed in the Church, and then I'll be rid of him in the de La Mole drawing room."
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Manon Lescaut289F
Father Pirard, too, delivered himself of long sermons, admonishing Julien for his success at this dinner. There was sectarian jealousy, as between the austere Jansenist and the Jesuitical drawing room, reactionary and monarchical, of Marshall de Fervaques's virtuous widow. Chapter Twenty-Eight: Manon Lescaut2 Now, once he was thoroughly convinced of the priest's ignorant stupidity, he usually managed quite well by calling black whatever was white, and white whatever was black. —Lichtenberg3 His Russian instructions prescribed, imperiously, that the woman to whom he was writing should never be conversationally contradicted. Under no pretext whatever was he to set aside his role of ecstatic admirer. Every one of the letters began with this assumption. One evening, at the opera, in Madame de Fervaques's box, Julien was praising to the skies the ballet Manon Lescaut.4 His only reason for such praise was that he himself thought it trivial. Madame de Fervaques observed that the ballet was much inferior to the novel of the same name, by Abbé Prévost, on which it was based. "Ha!" thought Julien, surprised and amused. "A woman of such soaring virtue praising a novel!" Madame de Fervaques regularly testified, two or three times a week, to her utter contempt for writers who, by means of such low works,5 sought to corrupt young people— alas, only too inclined to sensual error. "Among the books in this immoral and dangerous category," Madame de Fervaques continued, "it is said that Manon Lescaut occupies a very high place. The weaknesses and well- deserved anguish of an assuredly guilty heart, it is said, are there drawn with a truthfulness that attains to profundity—which did not keep your Bonaparte from proclaiming, at Saint- Helena, that it was a novel written for servants." This observation restored full vigor to Julien's soul. "Someone has been trying to ruin me with Madame de Fervaques. She's been told of my enthusiasm for Napoleon. It annoys her enough so she's willing to give in and show me her annoyance." The realization amused him, all night long, and made him entertaining. As he was taking leave of her, in the opera lobby: "Remember, sir," she told him, "that people who love me cannot also love Bonaparte. The most I can allow is that they accept him as a necessity imposed by Providence. In any case, the man lacked a soul sufficiently flexible for appreciating artistic masterpieces." "People who love me!" Julien was repeating. "Either that means nothing, or it means everything. Here are the secrets of language, unavailable to us poor provincials." And as he copied out an immense letter, meant for the marshall's widow, he spent much of the time thinking about Madame de Rênal. "How does it happen," Madame de Fervaques asked him the next day, with an assumed indifference he thought unconvincing, "that you mention 'London' and 'Richmond' in a letter you wrote me, I suspect, after leaving the opera?"