3 The year of the first fall of Napoleon, and the initial return of the Bourbons, before the Hundred Days and Waterloo. Ancien régime class distinctions became important again, at least among aristocrats of the stripe of Monsieur de Rênal. The names of Rênal's old friends come from two Grenoble acquaintances of young Stendhal, whom the author remembered fondly: Falcoz was a bookseller and Ducros a librarian.
The Red and the Black
"If I don't kill my wife, just drive her away in disgrace, she has her aunt in Besançon, who'll back her with her entire fortune. My wife will go live in Paris, with Julien. Everyone in Verrières will know about it, and I'll still be taken for a stupid fool." Then the miserable man became aware, by the thin light coming from his lamp, that dawn was coming. He went out to take a bit of fresh air in the garden. Right then, he had virtually decided not to create a scandal—mostly because a scandal would give such immense pleasure to his good friends in Verrières. Walking in the garden calmed him a little. "No," he exclaimed inwardly, "I'm not going to deprive myself of my wife, she's much too useful to me." He pictured to himself, with horror, what the house would be like without his wife. He had no relative except the Marquise de R— ——, a widow, an imbecile, and ill-natured. A wonderfully sensible idea began to come to him—but carrying it off would require a strength of character far superior to what the poor man actually possessed. "If I keep my wife," he told himself, "I know that, some day, if she provokes me, I'll reproach her for her sin. She's proud, we'll separate—and that will happen even before she's inherited her aunt's estate. Oh, how they'll make fun of me! My wife loves her children; in the end they'll go to her. But me, I'll be the talk of Verrières. 'What?' they'll say. 'Didn't he even know how to get revenge on his wife?' Wouldn't it better to be satisfied with being suspicious, and not go hunting for proof? But then I'd be tying my own hands, I'd never again be able to reproach her for anything." The next minute, having revived his wounded vanity, Monsieur de Rênal recalled, in great detail, all the various tricks recited at Verrières's casino and at the gentlemen's club,4 when some sharp-tongued fellow would interrupt their play at billiards, amusing himself by cutting up a deluded husband. But, now, how cruel those witticisms seemed to him! "God! Why isn't my wife dead! Then I wouldn't be open to ridicule. If only I were a widower! I'd go to Paris and spend six months in the best society." After a moment of happiness, inspired by the thought of becoming a widower, his mind began to toy with ways of finding out the truth. At midnight, once everyone was in bed, could he spread a thin layer of bran in front of the door to Julien's room? The next morning, at daybreak, he'd be able to see the footprints. "But what good would it be," he swore to himself, suddenly and violently. "That slut Elisa would have seen it, and everyone in the house knows how jealous I am." In another of the stories told at the casino, a husband guaranteed his misfortune by sticking a bit of wax, like a seal, on his wife's door and on that of her lover. After so many hours of circling around and around, this way of shedding light on his fate struck him, decidedly, as the best of all, and he had begun to think how to work it out when the walkway curved and, coming toward him, there was his wife, whom he had hoped to see dead. She was coming back from the village. She had gone to hear mass at the church in Vergy. A vague tradition, on which philosophers may cast cold eyes, but in which she had faith, maintained that the little church that served them today had once been the chapel of the Lord of Vergy. The idea so obsessed Madame de Rênal that she constantly went there to pray. She imagined, over and over, her husband out hunting, and killing Julien, as if by accident, then later that night making her eat his heart.