15 Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836) was an important political figure during the Revolution. A priest and vicar-general of Chartres under the ancien régime, in 1789 he published a political pamphlet, Qu'est-ce que le tiers état? (What Is the Third Estate?), which was seen as a political manifesto for liberal reforms desired by the Third Estate. A shrewd and crafty politician, after serving in the legislatures of the revolutionary and Directory governments, Sieyès became one of five directors. Hoping to grab power himself, he joined forces
Chapter Twelve: A Journey
At five o'clock the next day, before Madame de Rênal made her appearance, Julien had obtained a three-day leave from her husband. He had not expected to, but he wanted to see her again; he kept thinking about her exceedingly pretty hand. He went down to the garden, where Madame de Rênal was usually waiting for him. Had Julien actually been in love with her, he would have looked up and seen her, behind the half-closed shutters on the first floor, her forehead leaning against the glass. She watched him. Finally, for all her good resolutions, she decided to go down. Her habitual pallor had given way to the most lively color. This entirely unsophisticated woman was plainly upset. A feeling of constraint and even of anger had changed her expression of intense serenity; she appeared totally divorced from all the vulgar concerns of her existence; and the net effect was to add fascination to a celestial face. Julien went over to her at once, admiring the beautiful arms, revealed by a hastily thrown on shawl. The freshness of the morning air seemed to add an additional glow to a complexion already showing, after her long, troubling night, an extraordinary range of reactions. Her beauty was modest as well as touching, and even when heavy with thought—as one never saw among the lower classes—was apparently able to quicken in Julien aspects of his soul he had never before sensed. Too busy admiring these surprising charms, his eyes most attentive, Julien never gave a thought to the friendly greeting he was expecting. He was thus even more than astonished by a glacial coldness, which she seemed determined to convey, and in which, also, he thought he could even read an intention to put him in his place. The smile of pleasure died on his lips; he remembered his worldly status, especially as compared to a rich, noble heiress. All one could see in his expression, just then, was arrogance and anger at himself. He felt a deep regret at having delayed his departure for more than an hour, all for the sake of being greeted by so humiliating a reception. "Only a fool," he said to himself, "gets angry at others. A stone falls because it's heavy. Am I going to be forever a child? When will I acquire the good habit of giving these people my soul, only and exactly to the extent they pay me for it? If I want to be valued by them, as well as by myself, it must be by demonstrating to them that my poverty is doing business with their wealth, and yet that my heart is a thousand leagues distant from their insolence, set in a sphere too high to be affected by their petty displays of either disdain or approval." While these sentiments came crowding into the young tutor's soul, his mobile face took on an expression of proud suffering and ferocity. Madame de Rênal was deeply troubled. The virtuous frigidity with which she had meant to greet him gave way to an expression of concern, a concern stirred by the abrupt changes she had just witnessed. All the empty words people employ, in the morning, about health and the fine day we're having, simultaneously dried up in them both. Julien, whose judgment was not in the least troubled by passion, quickly found a way to show Madame de Rênal how little he believed in friendly relations with her: he said nothing about the little trip he was taking, told her good-bye, and went away. As she watched him go, struck dumb by the somber arrogance she could see in his look, so very friendly only the night before, her oldest son, running up from the end of the garden, hugged her and said: "We're on leave. Monsieur Julien's going on a trip." Hearing this, Madame de Rênal felt herself gripped by a mortal chill. Virtue made her miserable, and weakness made her even more miserable.
with General Bonaparte in plotting the 1799 coup, hoping to become the éminence grise of the young military hero. Like all others who hoped to dominate Napoleon, he soon found himself eclipsed and out of power.
The Red and the Black
This new development completely occupied her mind: she was swept far beyond the sensible resolutions she owed to the horrible night just experienced. It was no longer a matter of resisting this wonderfully amiable lover, but of losing him forever. She had to join the others for lunch. To add to her sorrow, all that Monsieur de Rênal and Madame Derville talked about was Julien's departure. His Honor the Mayor had noted a bit of insolence in the firm tone Julien used, in requesting a leave. "This little peasant surely has a pocketful of offers from someone. But this someone, perhaps Monsieur Valenod, must be a little discouraged by the sum of six hundred francs a year he's now going to have to pay him. It used to be, back in Verrières, that one could insist on a delay of three days in order to think about such things, but this morning, to keep from having to give me a response, our small gentleman left for the mountainside. Having to bargain with a miserable workman who's become insolent—oh, that's where we've come to!" "Since my husband, who says nothing about how deeply he's wounded Julien, now believes Julien intends to leave us, what should I believe?" Madame de Rênal asked herself. "Ah! It's all over and done with!" So she could at least weep freely, and not answer Madame Derville's questions, she said she had a frightful headache and put herself to bed. "That's the way it is, with women," said Monsieur de Rênal once again, "there's always something wrong with these complicated machines. And he went away, laughing at us." While Madame de Rênal was lying, cruelly gripped by the dreadful passion into which chance had drawn her, Julien went cheerfully on his way, in the middle of the most gorgeous scenery mountains can offer. He had to cross the high range north of Vergy. The path he was following, which rose gradually through towering beech trees, zigzagged back and forth along the slopes of the prominent great mountain, north of the Doubs valley. Soon, as he passed above the lesser hills through which, on its way south, the Doubs flowed, he could see all the way to the fertile plains of Burgundy and Beaujolais. Although not markedly sensitive to this sort of beauty, the ambitious young man could not help stopping, from time to time, to contemplate so vast and imposing a spectacle. He finally reached the summit of the great mountain, near which the route he was following would take him, leading down to the isolated valley in which lived his friend, the young timber merchant, Fouqué. Julien felt no urgency about seeing him, neither him nor any other human being. Hidden like a hunting hawk amid the bare rocks crowning the mountain, he could spot from a long way off anyone who might be approaching him. He found a small cave set in the virtually vertical slope of a boulder. He climbed up and was soon settled in this hideaway. "Here," he said, his eyes shining with pleasure, "no one could ever hurt me." It occurred to him that he might linger, free to write out his thoughts, otherwise so risky if set down on paper. A square rock became his desk. His pen flew: he was not aware of where he was. Finally, he realized that the sun was setting behind the mountain range that went all the way to Beaujolais. "Why don't I spend the night here?" he said to himself. "I've got some bread, and I'm free!" The echoes of these wondrous words rang in his soul: hypocrite that he was, he could not be free even with Fouqué. His head in his hands, Julien felt happier, in his cave, than he had ever been in his life, stirred by his wandering thoughts and by the sheer happiness of freedom. Not aware that he was watching, he saw the twilight slowly spreading. In the middle of vast darkness, his soul lost itself in thoughts of what it might be like when he got to Paris. First of all, there would be a woman, both good and beautiful, and with a mind finer than anything he had found in the countryside. He would love her passionately, and he would be loved. If he
Chapter Twelve: A Journey
had to go away, though not for long, it would be to cover himself with glory, thus deserving her love even more. Even endowing him with an imagination like Julien's, a young man brought up among the sad truths of Paris society would snap out of the novel he'd been reading, restored by the coldest irony: all the noble deeds would have vanished, along with any hope of accomplishing them, and they would be replaced by the familiar saying, "If you leave your mistress alone, alas, what you risk is being betrayed two or three times a day!" Our young peasant saw nothing blocking him from the most heroic deeds, except the opportunity to perform them. Now the darkness of night had replaced the day, and he still had a good six miles to go before he reached Fouqué's village. Before he left the little cave, Julien lit a fire and carefully burned every scrap of what he'd written. He startled his friend, knocking on his door at one o'clock in the morning. Fouqué was busy doing his accounts. He was a tall young man, quite sufficiently ugly, with gross, hard features, a nose of infinite length, and a large store of goodwill hidden under his repulsive appearance. "Are you here, on the spur of the moment, because you've broken with your Monsieur de Rênal?" Julien told him, carefully presenting matters as he preferred they be perceived, what had happened the night before. "Stay here with me," Fouqué told him. "I see you quite understand Monsieur de Rênal, and Monsieur Valenod, and the assistant governor, Maugiron, and the parish priest, Chélan. You have a nice understanding of the fine points of these people's characters, you've readied yourself to handle all sorts of negotiations. You know more about arithmetic than I do; you could easily handle my accounts. I'm doing extremely well. Because I can't possibly do everything by myself, and I'm terrified of meeting up with a scoundrel, if I take someone into the business, I'm losing good opportunities every day of the week. Less than a month ago, I passed a deal to Michaud, from Saint Armand, and he made six thousand francs. I hadn't seen him in six years: we met, just by chance, at an auction in Pontarlier. Why couldn't you have made—yes, you—those six thousand francs, or three thousand, anyway? Because if I'd had you with me that day, I could have bid for that timber cutting, and nobody could have stopped me. So be my partner." The offer did not please Julien: it got in the way of his craziness. All during dinner, prepared by the two friends themselves (as the Homeric heroes had), since Fouqué lived alone, he showed Julien his account books, and demonstrated for his benefit what an opportunity the business offered. Fouqué had the loftiest notions of Julien's mind, and of his character. When Julien was by himself, in his little pinewood room: "It's true," he told himself, "I could make thousands of francs out here, and then I'd be in a better position to become a soldier, or a priest, whichever would be better, whatever's more in fashion, then. The modest savings I'll have accumulated would remove all the petty details and difficulties. Alone up on this mountain, I'll be freed from some of that awful ignorance I suffer from, all those things high society people take so seriously. But Fouqué doesn't plan to get married, yet he keeps telling me that being alone makes him miserable. The real reason he'd take in a partner, someone who has no money to invest in his business, is the hope that he'll find himself a companion, a person who'll never leave him. "Am I capable of deceiving my friend?" Julien asked himself peevishly. This being, for whom hypocrisy and an absence of all sympathy were the usual methods of protecting himself, could not bear, this time, the thought of the slightest trickiness in dealing with a man for whom he had friendly feelings.
The Red and the Black
And then, suddenly, he was relieved, he had found a good reason for refusing. "What! Me turn coward and give up seven or eight years? I'd be twenty-eight, by then—but at that point Bonaparte had done the greatest of things!16 Having hidden myself in obscurity, and made a bit of money by selling timber and earning favors from assorted rascally underlings, who can say if I'd still have the sacred fire you need, if you're going to make a name for yourself?" Next morning, Julien coolly and confidently gave his answer to his good friend, who had thought the partnership idea was all settled. His sacred vocation at the holy altar would not allow Julien to accept. Fouqué could not believe it. "But just think," he kept repeating. "I could either make you a partner or, if you like that better, I could pay you four thousand francs a year! And you'll go back to your Monsieur de Rênal, who looks down at you like mud on his shoes! When you've got four thousand francs in your hand, what's going to stop you from going into the seminary? And let me tell you something else, I'll make sure you get the best parish in the whole region. Let me tell you," Fouqué added, lowering his voice, "I supply firewood for Monsieur ———, and Monsieur —— —, Monsieur ———. I give them the best oak, and let them pay me as if it were ordinary white pine—but there's no better investment anywhere." Nothing could prove victorious over Julien's vocation. In the end, Fouqué thought him slightly insane. The third day, early in the morning, Julien left his friend; he would spend the day walking, surrounded by the great mountain's rocks and boulders. He located his little cave, but the peace he had brought there the first time had vanished: his friend's proposals had swept it away. Like Hercules, he felt himself poised in the balance—not between good and evil, but between the mediocrity of an assured livelihood and all his heroic, youthful dreams. "I have no real steadiness," he told himself, "which makes doubt all the more dangerous. I'm not made of the wood from which great men can be carved, so I worry that eight years spent earning my bread might deprive me of the sublime energy which makes extraordinary things possible." Chapter Thirteen: Fishnet Stockings A novel: It's a mirror you take for a walk down the road. —Saint-Réal17 Seeing the picturesque ruins of the ancient church at Vergy, Julien realized it had been two days since he'd had so much as a stray thought of Madame de Rênal. "When I was leaving the other day, that woman reminded me of the immense distance separating us; she treated me like a workman's son. Of course, she wanted me to see how much she regretted having given me her hand, the previous night...But still, she's so pretty—and her hand! What a bewitching thing! And there's such nobility in her eyes!" The thought that he could have made money with Fouqué brought a certain ease to Julien's mind: it was not so regularly corrupted by irritability and the strong sense of his poverty, his inferior status in the world's eyes. Located as if on a high promontory, he was able to evaluate and, one might say, rise above both extreme poverty and the extreme comfort that,