The Red and the Black (6 page)

thing in this little town you found so pretty. The newcomer who
decides to visit it, won over by the beauty of the cool, deep valleys
round about, imagines to begin with that its inhabitants appreciate
what is beautiful. They are always talking about the beauty of the
locality, and it is undeniable that they value it highly; but this is
because it attracts a number of travellers from elsewhere with the
means to line the innkeepers' pockets, and thereby, through local
taxes, to
bring money to the town
.

On a fine morning in autumn, M. de Rênal was strolling along the
Avenue de la Fidélité with his wife on his arm. While listening to her
husband solemnly talking away, M
^me
de Rênal was keeping an
anxious eye on the activities of three small boys. The eldest, who
might have been eleven, kept on going over to the wall, far too often
for her liking, and making as if to climb on to it. A gentle voice was
then heard calling 'Adolphe', and the boy had to abandon his daring
venture. M
^me
de Rênal looked about thirty, but was still a rather pretty woman.

'He might well come to regret it, this fine gentleman from Paris,' M.
de Rênal was saying. He looked indignant, and his face was paler than
usual. 'It isn't as though I had no friends at Court. . .'

But although I do wish to spend two hundred pages telling you about
the provinces, I shall not be uncivilized enough to subject you to the
long-windedness and
deliberately roundabout ways
of a provincial dialogue.

This fine gentleman from Paris, so loathsome to the mayor of Verrières, was none other than a M. Appert
^*
who had succeeded two days previously not merely in getting inside
the prison and the workhouse in Verrères, but also the hospital
which was run as a charity by the mayor and the chief landowners of
the neighbourhood.

'But what harm can this gentleman from Paris do you,' M
^me
de Rênal asked timidly, 'since you're most scrupulously honest in administering what is given to the poor?'

'His only reason for coming is to
apportion
blame, and then he'll get articles written in newspapers with liberal leanings.'

-9-

'You never read them, my dear.'

'But people gossip about these radical articles; it's all very distracting for us, and it
prevents us from going about our good works
.
¹
For my part I shall never forgive the priest.'

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A virtuous priest who is a stranger to intrigue is a godsend to any village.

FLEURY
^*

You should know that the priest of Verrières, an old man of eighty
who none the less had a constitution and character of iron, thanks to
the invigorating mountain air, was entitled to visit the prison, the
hospital and even the workhouse at any hour of the day or night. It
was precisely at six o'clock in the morning that M. Appert, bearing an
introduction from Paris to the priest, had had the wisdom to turn up
in an inquisitive little town. He had gone straight to the presbytery.

Reading the letter addressed to him
by the Marquis de la Mole, a peer of France and the richest landowner
in the provinces, Father Chélan remained plunged in thought.

'I'm old and well loved here,' he said to himself under his breath,
'they wouldn't dare!' Turning at once to the gentleman from Paris, with a
look in which despite his great age there shone that sacred fire
which betokens pleasure in carrying out a fine action with some degree
of risk attached, he said:

'Come with me, sir, and while we're in the presence of the gaoler and
more particularly of the warders in the workhouse, be so good as to
refrain from commenting on what we shall see there.' M. Appert
realized he was dealing with a stalwart character: he followed the
venerable priest round the prison, the hospice and the workhouse,
asking a good many questions but despite some odd replies never
allowing himself to express the slightest sign of disapproval.

The visit lasted several hours. Father Chélan invited M. Appert to
dinner with him, but the latter said he had letters to write: he did
not want to compromise his generous escort any further. Around three
o'clock the two gentlemen went off to finish inspecting the workhouse
and then returned to the

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prison. On the doorstep they found the gaoler, a bow-legged giant of a
man six foot tall; his unprepossessing face had become hideous with
terror.

'Ah! sir,' he said to Father Chélan on catching sight of him, 'isn't this gentleman I see with you M. Appert?'

'And what if he is?' replied the priest.

'You see, since yesterday I've been under the strictest instructions
delivered from the prefect by a gendarme who must have galloped hard
through the night, not to let p into the prison.'

'I concede, M. Noiroud, that this traveller I have with me is M.
Appert. Do you recognize my right to enter the prison at any hour of
the day or night, and to take with me anyone I please?'

'Yes, Father Chélan,' said the gaoler in a low voice, hanging his
head like a bulldog reluctantly cowed into submission by fear of the
stick. 'But remember, Father Chélan, I've a wife and children, and if
anyone tells on me, I'll get the sack. My job's all I've got to live
off.'

'I should be just as put out to lose mine,' replied the good priest, sounding more and more agitated.

'But there's all the difference!' retorted the gaoler. 'You have an income of eight hundred pounds,
^*
Father Chélan, everyone knows you do--a nice bit of property...'

These are the events which, in numerous versions rich with commentary
and exaggeration, had for the past two days been stirring up all the
spiteful passions in the little town of Verrières. At this particular
moment they formed the subject matter of the little discussion which
M. de Rênal was having with his wife. That morning he had gone to the
priest's house taking with him M. Valenod, the master of the
workhouse, to express their dissatisfaction in the strongest possible
terms. Father Chélan had no one to protect him and he realized the
full implications of their words.

'Well, gentlemen! I shall be the third priest in the neighbourhood to be stripped of his office at the age of eighty.
^*
I've been here for fifty-six years; I've baptized almost all the
inhabitants of the town, which was scarcely more than a village when I
arrived. Every day I marry young folk whose grand-

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parents I married in times gone by. Verrières is my family, but I
said to myself on seeing the stranger: "This man from Paris may indeed
be a liberal, there are only too many of them around; but what harm
can he do our paupers and our prisons?"'

When criticism of his conduct from M. de Rênal and especially M.
Valenod had reached a pitch of severity, the old priest had exclaimed
in a quavering voice:

'All right then, gentlemen, have me removed from office! It won't stop
me living in these parts. Everyone knows that fortyeight years ago I
inherited a field which brings in eight hundred pounds. I shall live
off this income. I don't put any money by in a position like mine,
gentlemen, and maybe that's why I'm not so afraid when there's talk of
dismissing me from it.'

M. de Rênal was on very good terms with his wife, but, not knowing
what to reply to her hesitantly repeated question: 'What harm can this
gentleman from Paris do to the prisoners?', he was about to lose his
temper, when she let out a cry of alarm. Her second son had just
climbed on to the top of the terrace wall and was running along it,
although there was a drop of more than twenty feet from the wall to
the vineyard on the other side. Fear of startling her son and making
him fall stopped M
^me
de Rênal from calling out to him.
Eventually the child, laughing at his feat of daring, glanced at his
mother and saw how pale she was; he jumped down on to the path and ran
over to her. He got a good scolding.

This little incident gave a new turn to the conversation.

'I'm determined to take on young Sorel, the sawyer's son, as part of
the household,' said M. de Rênal. 'He can keep an eye on the children,
who are becoming rather a handful for us. He's a young priest, or as
good as, knows his Latin, and the children will learn a great deal
from him; he's made of stern stuff, according to Father Chélan. I
shall give him three hundred francs and his keep. I did have some
doubts about his morality, as he was the blue-eyed boy of that old
surgeon who was a member of the Legion of Honour and came to board at
the Sorels' on the strength of being a cousin of theirs. The fellow
may well really have been a secret agent of the liberals. He used to
say that our mountain air did his asthma good, but there's no proof of
that. He had taken part in all
Buonaparté's
campaigns

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in Italy, and even, so they say, voted 'no' to the Empire
^*
in the past. This liberal taught young Sorel Latin, and left him
the stock of books he had brought with him. So I should never have
thought of putting the carpenter's son
^*
in charge of our children, had the priest not told me, on the very
day before the incident which has just made us enemies for good, that
young Sorel has been studying theology for three years with the
intention of going to the seminary. So he isn't a liberal, and he does
know Latin.

'This arrangement works
out in more ways than one,' went on M. de Rênal, glancing at his wife
with a diplomatic look on his face. ' Valenod is as proud as anything
of the two fine Normandy cobs he has just bought for his barouche; but
he hasn't got a tutor for his children.'

'He might well get in before us with this one.'

'So you approve of my plan?' said M. de Rênal with a smile to thank
his wife for the excellent idea she had just had. 'Right, that's
settled then.'

'Heavens above! my dearest, you are quick to make up your mind!'

'That's because I'm a person of character, I am, and this much was
obvious to the priest. Let's make no bones about it, we're surrounded
by liberals here. All the cloth merchants are envious of me, I know
for certain they are; and two or three of them are getting filthy
rich. Well, you see, I like the idea of their seeing M. de Rênal's
children going past on their walk, in the charge of
their tutor.
Everyone will be impressed. My grandfather would often tell us how in
his youth he'd had a tutor. It may cost me as much as a hundred
crowns, but it must be reckoned a necessary expenditure to maintain
our station.'

This sudden resolve left M
^me
de Rênal deep in thought. She was a tall, well-built woman who had
been the local beauty, as they say in the mountains round here. She
had an artless air about her, and a youthful way of walking. To the
eyes of a Parisian, this natural charm, full of lively innocence,
would even have been enough to conjure up thoughts of sweet
pleasure. Had she known she had this kind of success, M
^me
de Rênal would have felt deeply ashamed of it. Her heart was

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quite untouched by coquetry or affectation. M. Valenod, the wealthy
master of the workhouse, was believed to have tried to win her
favours, but with no success. This had cast a dazzling light on her
virtue since this M. Valenod, a tall, powerfully built young man with a
ruddy complexion and big black sidewhiskers, was one of those vulgar,
brazen, loud individuals who are called handsome fellows in the
provinces.

M
^me
de Rênal, who was extremely shy and seemed highly impressionable,
^*
was especially disturbed by M. Valenod's constant movements and his
loud voice. What the people of Verrières call the pleasures of the
flesh were something totally alien to her, and this had given her the
reputation of being very proud of her origins. Nothing could have been
further from her thoughts, but she had been delighted to find the
townsfolk visiting her less often. I shall not conceal the fact that
she was considered silly by
their
ladies, because she never
tried to manipulate her husband, and let slip the most marvellous
opportunities of getting him to buy hats for her in Paris or Besançon.
As long as she was left to wander alone in her beautiful garden she
never uttered a word of complaint.

She was a naïve creature who had never ventured so much as to judge
her husband and admit to herself that she found him boring. She
imagined without putting it into words that no husband and wife
enjoyed a more tender relationship. She was particularly fond of M. de
Rênal when he talked to her about his plans for their children, one
of whom he destined for the army, the next for the magistracy and the
third for the Church. In short, she found M. p far less boring than
all the other men of her acquaintance.

This conjugal opinion was well founded. The mayor of Verrières had a
reputation for wit and above all for good taste, which he owed to the
half-dozen jokes he had inherited from an uncle. Old Captain de Rênal
had served in the Duke of Orleans'
^*
infantry regiment before the Revolution, and when he went to Paris he
was admitted to the duke's salons. There he had set eyes on M
^me
de Montesson,
^*
the famous M
^me
de Genlis, and M. Ducrest, the creator of the Palais-Royal. These characters made all too frequent appearances in M
^me
de Rênal's anecdotes. But gradually it had become an effort for

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