1 Mozart's Figaro, as every French reader knew, was based on the character from Beaumarchais's wildly popular play, Le Mariage de Figaro. This quote comes from the act 1 aria in which Chérubin sings of his adolescent desires. Mozart and Cimarosa (see note for p. 341, l. 3) were Stendhal's favorite composers.
Chapter Six: Boredom
curlier than most men's—since, to freshen up, he'd just plunged his head into the waters of the public fountain. To her deep pleasure, she'd seen the shy demeanor of a young girl in this fateful tutor, though on her children's account she'd dreaded his harsh surliness. For so quiet and peaceful a soul as Madame de Rênal, the contrast between her fears and the reality she saw in front of her was a great event. She finally recovered from her surprise. She was amazed to find herself standing at the door to her own house, so close to a young man virtually in his shirtsleeves. "Shall we go in, sir," she said with a patently embarrassed air. In all her life, no purely pleasant emotion had ever so deeply moved Madame de Rênal; never had an apparition so charmingly superseded her worst, most troubling fears. So: Her pretty children, of whom she'd taken such loving care, were not to fall into the hands of a peevish, dried-up priest. They had barely walked into the hall when she turned toward Julien, who was timidly following along. The wonderment in his face, seeing so fine a house, was to her yet another charming trait. She could not believe her eyes, especially since she'd thought a tutor had to be wearing black. "But, sir," she said to him, stopping once again, powerfully afraid—because she had been made so happy—of being deceived, "is it really true that you know Latin?" Julien's pride was aroused by these words that demolished the fairy-tale world in which, for a quarter of an hour, he had been living. "Yes, madame," he said, trying to take on a distant, chilly tone. "I know Latin quite as well as our parish priest, and sometimes he even says I know it better than he does." Madame de Rênal realized that Julien, who had stopped barely two steps behind her, was speaking quite cuttingly. She came closer to him and said, in a hushed voice: "But really, these first days you won't whip my children, will you, even when they don't know their lessons?" So sweet, even so suppliant a voice, coming from such a beautiful lady, made Julien instantly unable to think of what he was owed, arriving in this house with such a splendid reputation as a Latinist. Madame de Rênal's face was close to his, he breathed in the perfume of a woman's summer clothing, an amazing sensation for a poor peasant. He grew very red and said, with a sigh and a weak voice: "Have no fear, madame, I will obey you in everything." This was the precise moment when Madame de Rênal, her concern for her children completely dissipated, felt herself struck by Julien's unusual beauty. His almost feminine features, and his embarrassment, did not seem in any way ridiculous to a woman herself so extraordinarily shy. The masculine ways people thought necessary, for a man to be handsome, made her afraid. "How old are you, sir?" she said to Julien. "I'm about to be nineteen." "My oldest son is eleven," Madame de Rênal went on, completely reassured. "He'll be almost a comrade for you; you can reason with him. His father started to beat him, once, and the child was ill for an entire week, but it was only a very tiny blow." "How different from me," thought Julien. "Just yesterday, my father was beating me. How happy these rich people are!" Madame Rênal had already become aware of the slightest nuances the tutor was feeling deep in his soul; she took this swell of sadness for shyness, and wanted to encourage him. "What is your name, sir?" she asked, with a lilt and a graciousness that utterly charmed Julien, though he could not have said why.
The Red and the Black
"I'm Julien Sorel, madame. I tremble, coming to a strange house for the first time in my life: I need your protection and for you to pardon me for all sorts of things, in my first days here. I've never gone to school, I'm too poor; the only men I've ever spoken to are my cousin, a surgeon-major and a member of the Legion of Honor, and our parish priest. He'll tell you good things about me. My brothers have always beaten me, so don't believe a word they say, if they tell you bad things. Pardon my faults, madame: they will always be unintentional." Julien was studying Madame de Rênal as he delivered this long speech, and he felt a good deal more comfortable. This is always the effect of perfect graciousness when it springs from natural roots, and above all when the person displaying it never dreams of doing so. Julien, who was an excellent judge of female beauty, would at that moment have sworn that she could not be more than twenty. He suddenly, then and there, had the rash notion of kissing her hand. He was immediately afraid of his own idea. A moment later he said to himself: "It would be sheer cowardice not to do something that might prove distinctly useful to me—and would lessen the disdain this beautiful lady probably feels for a poor workman only just now freed from his saw." Perhaps Julien was encouraged by the words handsome boy, which for six months he'd been hearing, every Sunday, from young girls. As he was silently debating with himself, Madame de Rênal made a few instructive comments on how to begin his work with the children. The violence of his inner struggle once again turned him exceedingly pale. Speaking stiffly, he said: "Never, madame—I'll never beat your children, I swear to God I won't." And as he spoke, he boldly took her hand and carried it to his lips. She was astonished by the gesture and, as she thought about it, shocked. Since the weather was very warm, under her shawl her arm was bare and, as Julien lifted her hand, the arm was completely uncovered. After a moment, she reproached herself for not having, with proper rapidity, registered her indignation. Monsieur de Rênal, having heard them talking, came out of his study. With the same imposing, paternal air he put on when, as mayor, he solemnized marriages, he now addressed Julien: "It will be important that I speak to you before the children see you." Taking Julien into a room, he gestured to his wife—who had preferred to leave them to themselves—to come in, as well. The door once shut behind them, Monsieur de Rênal seated himself, most formally. "The parish priest has informed me that you are dependable: everyone here will treat you honorably, and, if I am satisfied, when you come to leave us I will help you set up on your own. I prefer that you entertain no visits from either relatives or friends, their manners not being suitable for my children. Here, then, are thirty-six francs for the first month—but I require your word that not a cent will go to your father." Monsieur de Rênal was annoyed at the old peasant, who in this business had been the sharper of the two. "Now, sir —and I have ordered that everyone here will so address you, and you will become aware of the advantages of entering a household where everyone acts properly—now, sir, it's not right for the children to see you wearing a jacket. Have the servants seen him?" he asked his wife. "No, my dear," she replied contemplatively. "So much the better. Put this on," he said to the surprised young man, giving him a full- length frock coat. "Shall we pay a visit to Monsieur Durand, the tailor?" More than an hour later, when Monsieur de Rênal returned with the new tutor dressed all in black, he found his wife sitting exactly where he had left her. She felt herself soothed, now,
Chapter Six: Boredom
by Julien's presence; as she considered him, she forgot to be afraid. Julien did not think of her at all: in spite of his distrust for fate and men alike, at this moment his soul was nothing but a child's. He felt that it had been years since, three hours earlier, he had knelt in the church, trembling. He noted Madame de Rênal's distant air; he understood she was angry because he had dared kiss her hand. But the pride he felt, touching these new garments, so different from those he was used to wearing, threw him sharply out of equilibrium, and he tried so hard to hide his pleasure that everything he did became abrupt; he took on a distinctly foolish air. Madame de Rênal watched him, amazed. "A certain sobriety, sir," Monsieur de Rênal told him, "if you wish to be respected by my children and by my domestics." "Sir," replied Julien, "I am troubled, embarrassed, wearing these new clothes; a poor peasant like myself has never worn anything more than a jacket. With your permission, I'll close myself in my room." "So," said Monsieur de Rênal to his wife, "what do you think of this new acquisition?" By a process essentially instinctive, and of which she certainly had no conscious awareness, Madame de Rênal hid the truth from her husband. "I'm hardly as enchanted with this little peasant as you are: your kindness will turn him into such an impertinent that, after a month, you'll have to send him away." "So be it! We'll send him away, I'll lose the hundred francs he'll probably have cost me, and Verrières will have gotten used to seeing Monsieur de Rênal's children with a tutor. This could not have been accomplished had I left Julien in workman's clothing. If I send him away, of course, I'll keep the new black suit I've just ordered for him at the tailor's. All he'll keep will be the ready-made clothes I found at Monsieur Durand's shop, for which I've paid." To Madame de Rênal, the hour Julien spent in his room seemed like so many seconds. The children, who had been told about their new tutor, overwhelmed their mother with questions. Finally, Julien appeared. It was a different person who returned to them. To say of this man that he was somber would be a misrepresentation: he was sobriety incarnate. He was introduced to the children, to whom he spoke in a manner that astonished even Monsieur de Rênal. "I have come here, gentlemen," he told them as his finished his introductory comments, "for the purpose of teaching you Latin. You already know how to recite your lessons. Here is the Holy Bible," he explained, showing them a small, pocket-sized book, bound in black. "What you have, here, is the detailed story of Our Lord Jesus Christ; this is the part of the Bible known as the New Testament. I will often oblige you to recite your lessons: let me recite mine." The oldest, Adolphe, had picked up the book. "Open it at random," Julien went on, "and tell me the first word of the paragraph. Until you ask me to stop, I will recite from memory this holy book, our rule of conduct in everything." Adolphe opened the book, read out a word, and Julien recited the entire page with the same facility he would have had in speaking French. Monsieur de Rênal gave his wife a triumphant look. Seeing their parents' astonishment, the children opened their eyes wide. A servant came to the door of the room; Julien continued to recite in Latin. The servant remained, at first motionless, and after a time left. Soon Madame de Rênal's chambermaid, and also another woman, the cook, came and hovered near the door. By then, Adolphe had opened the book in eight different places, and Julien went on reciting with unchanged ease. "Ah, my God! What a handsome priest," said the cook, loudly; she was a thoroughly good girl and deeply devout.
The Red and the Black
Monsieur de Rênal's self-esteem was disquieted. He had absolutely no interest in examining the tutor, being totally concerned with rummaging about in his memory for Latin words. At last, he was able to recite a line from Horace. The only Latin Julien knew was the Bible. Knitting his eyebrows, he replied: "The holy ministry for which I am meant will not permit me to read a poet so profane." Monsieur de Rênal quoted quite a number of imaginary verses from Horace. He explained to his children just who Horace was, but the children, smitten with admiration, hardly heard a word he said. They kept watching Julien. With the servants constantly coming and going at the door, Julien felt he ought to prolong his demonstration. "Monsieur Stanislas-Xavier," he said to the youngest child. "You choose a passage from the holy book." Little Stanislas, terribly proud, read out the first words of a paragraph—reading rather better than worse—and Julien recited the whole page. To complete Monsieur de Rênal's triumph, while Julien was intoning, Monsieur Valenod—he of the noble Normand horses— came in, along with Monsieur Charcot de Maugiron, deputy governor of the district. The episode earned Julien the title "sir": the servants themselves would not dare refuse it to him. That evening, all of Verrières crowded into Monsieur de Rênal's house to glimpse the marvel. Julien spoke somberly to all of them, keeping them at a distance. His fame grew so rapidly, all through the town, that not many days later Monsieur de Rênal, fearing someone might steal him away, suggested he sign a contract for two years. "No, sir," Julien replied coolly. "If you should want to send me away, I would be obliged to leave. A contract binding me, without exacting anything of you, does not seem fair, so I can't agree." Julien handled things so well that, less than a month after he'd come to the house, he'd won the respect of Monsieur de Rênal himself. The parish priest having broken relations with both Monsieur de Rênal and Monsieur Valenod, nobody could betray Julien for his old Napoleonic passions. Whenever he spoke of Napoleon, he did so with horror. Chapter Seven: Elective Affinities They can only touch the heart by breaking it. —ACONTEMPORARY The children adored him, he had no affection whatever for them; his mind was elsewhere. Nothing these urchins could ever do made him impatient. Cold, fair, impassive, and yet loved, because somehow his coming had banished boredom from the house: he was a good tutor. He felt only hatred and horror for the high society into which he had been admitted—at the foot of the table, to be sure, which might perhaps explain the hate and the horror. During some formal dinners he was barely able to contain his hate for everyone around him. Once in particular, on the Feast of Saint Louis,2 when Monsieur Valenod was monopolizing the conversation at Monsieur de Rênal's table, Julien came very close to betraying himself; he was saved only by hurrying out to the garden, pretending he had to look in on the children. "What panegyrics on probity!" he silently cried. "You'd think it was the one and only virtue of virtues—and even apart from that, such vulgar respect for a man who has obviously doubled