The Red and the Black
Stendhal
 In two volumes, The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of the 19th Century tells the story of Julien Sorel’s life in a monarchic society of fixed social class. Book I presents the ambitious son of a carpenter in the (fictional) Verrières village, in Franche-Comté, France, who would rather read and daydream about the glory days of Napoleon's long-disbanded army, than work his father’s timber business with his brothers, who beat him for his intellectual affectations. In the event, Julien Sorel becomes an acolyte of the abbé Chénal, the local Catholic prelate, who later secures him a post as the tutor for the children of Monsieur de Rênal, the mayor of Verrières. Despite appearing to be a pious, austere cleric, Julien is uninterested in the Bible beyond its literary value, and how he can use memorised passages (learnt in Latin) to impress important people. He enters a love affair with Monsieur de Rênal’s wife; it ends badly when exposed to the village, by her chambermaid, Elisa, who had romantic designs upon him. The abbé Chénal orders Julien to a seminary in Besançon, which he finds intellectually stifling and pervaded with social cliques. The initially cynical seminary director, the abbé Pirard (of the Jansenist faction more hated than the Jesuit faction in the diocese), likes Julien, and becomes his protector. Disgusted by the Church’s political machinations, the abbé Pirard leaves the seminary, yet first rescues Julien from the persecution he would have suffered as his protégé, by recommending him as private secretary to the diplomat Marquis de la Mole, a Roman Catholic legitimist. Book II chronicles the time leading to the July Revolution of 1830, and Julien Sorel’s Parisian life, as an employee of the de la Mole family. Despite moving among high society, the family and their friends, condescend to Julien for being an uncouth plebeian — his intellectual talents notwithstanding. In his boundlessly ambitious rise in the world, Julien perceives the materialism and hypocrisy important to the élite of Parisian society, and that the counter-revolutionary temper of the time renders it impossible for well-born men of superior intellect and æsthetic sensibility to progressively participate in the public affairs of the nation with any success. The Marquis de la Mole takes Julien to a secret meeting, then despatches him on a dangerous mission to communicate a political letter (that he has memorised) to the Duc d'Angouleme, who is exiled in England; however, the callow Julien is mentally distracted, by an unsatisfying love affair, thus he only learns the message by rote, but not its political significance as a legitimist plot. Unwittingly, the plebeian Julien Sorel risks his life in secret service to the right-wing monarchists he most opposes; to himself, Julien rationalises such action as merely helping the Marquis, his employer, whom he respects. Meanwhile, in the preceding months, the Marquis’s bored daughter, Mathilde de la Mole, had become emotionally torn, between her romantic attraction to Julien, for his admirable personal and intellectual qualities, and her social repugnance at becoming sexually intimate with a lower-class man. At first, he finds her unattractive, but his interest is piqued, by her attentions and the admiration she inspires in others; twice, she seduces and rejects him, leaving him in a miasma of despair, self-doubt, and happiness (he won her over aristocrat suitors). Only during his secret mission does he gain the key to winning her affections: a cynical jeu d’amour proffered to him by Prince Korasoff, a Russian man-of-the-world. At great emotional cost, Julien feigns indifference to Mathilde, provoking her jealousy with a sheaf of love-letters meant to woo Madame de Fervaques, a widow in the social circle of the de la Mole family. Consequently, Mathilde sincerely falls in love with Julien, eventually revealing to him that she carries his child; yet, whilst he was on diplomatic mission in England, she became officially engaged to Monsieur de Croisenois, an amiable, rich young man, heir to a duchy. Learning of Julien’s romantic liaison with Mathilde, the Marquis de la Mole is angered, but relents before her determination, and his affection for him, and bestows upon Julien an income-producing property attached to an aristocratic title, and a military commission in the army. Although ready to bless their marriage, he changes his mind upon receiving the reply to a character-reference-letter he wrote to the abbé Chénal, Julien’s previous employer in the village of Verrières; however, the reply letter, written by Madame de Rênal — at the urging of her confessor priest — warns the Marquis that Julien Sorel is a social-climbing cad who preys upon emotionally vulnerable women. On learning the Marquis’s disapproval of the marriage, Julien Sorel travels to his home village of Verrières and shoots Madame de Rênal during Mass in the village church; she survives. Despite the efforts of Mathilde, Madame de Rênal, and the priests devoted to him since his early life, Julien Sorel is determined to die — because the materialist society of Bourbon Restoration France will not accommodate a low-born man of superior intellect and æsthetic sensibility possessing neither money nor social connections. Meanwhile, the presumptive duke, Monsieur de Croisenois, one of the fortunate few of Bourbon France, is killed in a duel fought over a slur upon the honour of Mathilde de la Mole. Despite her undiminished love for Julien, his imperiously intellectual nature, and its component romantic exhibitionism, render Mathilde’s prison visits to him a duty. Moreover, when Julien learns he did not kill Madame de Rênal, that resurrects his intemperate love for her — lain dormant throughout his Parisian time and his passion for Mathilde, who visits him during the final days of his life. Afterwards, Mathilde de la Mole re-enacts the cherished, 16th-century French tale of Queen Margot visiting her dead lover, Joseph Boniface de La Mole, to kiss the lips of his severed head. In the 19th century, Mathilde de la Mole so treated Julien Sorel’s severed head, making a shrine of his tomb, in the Italian fashion.