The Red and the Black (83 page)

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Authors: Stendhal

Tags: #General, #Fiction, #France, #Classics, #Literary, #Europe, #Juvenile Fiction, #Psychological, #Young men, #Church and state, #People & Places, #Bildungsromane, #Ambition, #Young Men - France

BOOK: The Red and the Black
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liberals in Catalonia against Ferdinand VII. It was severely repressed.
Carnot
:
1753-1823, mathematician and leading figure of the Revolution. He
organized the Republican armies and planned military strategy. He was
exiled by the Restoration.
Vély's History of France
: publication of this history began in 1755 and was completed after Vély's death in 1759.
Piedmontese . . . revolutionaries
: reference to the 1821 uprising.
Letters from a Portuguese nun
:
a collection of passionate love letters which appeared in 1669
purporting to be a translation of the correspondence of Mariana
Alcoforado, a Portuguese nun.
Hernani
:
drama by Victor Hugo ( 1802-85) which caused a wellprepared uproar at
its first performance in 1830 because it deliberately violated the
conventions of French classical theatre. It became a focal point for
the hostility between traditionalists and the emerging Romantic
movement.
lettres de cachet
: letters bearing the king's seal and containing a peremptory order of imprisonment or exile.
Talma
: 1763-1826, French tragic actor much admired by Napoleon.
Place de Grève
: see n. to p. 246.
Boniface de la Mole
: see n. to p. 251.
Marguerite of Navarre
:
Marguerite de Valois, 1553-1615 (known as la Reine Margot), daughter
of Henri II of France and Catherine de Medici, and sister of Charles
IX, Henri III and the Duc d'Alençon. She married Henri III of Navarre
(later Henri IV of France, grandson of the earlier Marguerite de
Navarre who was sister to François I). Renowned for her wit, beauty
and amorous adventures, she wrote poetry and a volume of memoirs.
Duc d'Alençon
: 1554-84, son of Henri II and Catherine de Medici, and brother of Marguerite de Navarre.
Catherine de Medici
:
1519-89, wife of Henri II and mother of François II, Charles IX,
Henri III (Duc d'Anjou), Marguerite de Valois and the Duc d'Alençon.
She acted as regent during Charles IX's minority, and was a ruthless
politician. Her motive for imprisoning her son the Duc d'Alençon and
her son-in-law Henri de Navarre was to thwart a plot to substitute the
Duc d'Alençon for the Duc d'Anjou (who had become King of Poland) as
heir to the ailing Charles IX.

-548-

24th of August 1572
: St Bartholomew's day. Date of the massacre of Protestants ordered by Charles IX at the instigation of Catherine de Medici.
First Prince of the Blood
: the Duc d'Alençon.
d'Aubigné
: 1552-1630, French writer and historian; companionat-arms of Henri IV. His account of La Mole's plot was published in 1660.
Brantôme
:
1560-1614, French historian; chamberlain of the Duc d'Alençon. His
minutely detailed chronicle of Court life contains an account of La
Mole's adventures.
L'Etoile
: 1546-1611, French chronicler. His
Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris sous Henri III
is a daily record of the period 1574-1610.
Henri III's reign
: 1574-89.
the League
: the
Sainte Ligue
was a Catholic confederation founded by the
Duc de Guise
to defend Catholicism against the Calvinist movement when Henri III
made peace with the Protestants in 1576. There ensued a religious war
in which the Guises tried to seize the throne. It ended when Henri IV
finally renounced Calvinism in 1593.
Mérimée
: 1803-70, French writer best known for his short stories.
Wagram
: defeat of the Archduke Charles of Austria by Napoleon on 6 July 1809.
Abbé Maury
: 1746-1817; a cobbler's son who rose to become bishop, then cardinal.
Manon Lescaut
: novel by the
Abbé Prévost
( 1697-1763), published in 1731.
Bassompierre
: 1579-1646, marshal of France and diplomat.
Louis XIII
: 1601-43; reigned from 1610.
Vendée
:
département on the west coast of France. Royalist stronghold during
the Revolution, and site of a counter-revolutionary uprising in 1793-5.
Charter
see n. to p. 156.
Duc d'Angoulême
:
Charles de Valois, 1573-1650, illegitimate son of Charles IX and
Marie Touchet. His Memoirs document the reigns of Henri III and Henri
IV.
A little trip to Greece or Africa
:
like Lord Byron, many young men from different parts of Europe went
to Greece from 1821 onwards to fight in the War of Independence
against Turkey. French

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troops set off for North Africa in May 1830 and seized Algiers on 4 July.
died in 1816
:
reference to the dissolution of the newly elected Chamber by Louis
XVIII, because it had an ungovernable reactionary majority. Stendhal
explains in his correspondence that the broad left/right split in
party politics after 1816 killed off ridicule by replacing a single
aristocratic stereotype (from which one was ridiculed for deviating)
with alternative models which guaranteed that one man's fool would be
another's hero.
. . . only its shadow
: La Fontaine,
The Shepherd and his Flock
(
Fables
, IX, 19).
restore their forests to the clergy
:
a continuing grievance of the Ultras: the Revolution had dispossessed
the Church of its forests, and the liberals succeeded in thwarting
proposals to hand them back in the early days of the Restoration.
Coblenz
: reputed to be a place of loose morals.
Schiller
:
1759-1805. Critics have seen in this epigraph (not identified in
Schiller's works) a free interpretation by Stendhal of the following
lines from Shakespeare
Othello
( III.3): 'Trifles light as air / Seem to the jealous confirmations strong / As proofs from holy writ.'
fake Memoirs
: There was such a vogue for memoirs in 1829-30 that numerous fake ones of famous people were published and avidly read.
disinvoltura
: 'carefree abandon' (Italian).
Languedoc
: former province in south-western and central-southem France.
Léontine Fay
: famous actress of the time.
English handwriting
: French term for a cursive, right-leaning script widely taught in France.
footstool
:
reference to the ancient privilege of being seated at Court in the
presence of the king and queen, which had recently been reinstated.
St Louis
: Louis IX, 1214-70, King of France from 1226.
Bishop of Beauvais
: consecrated in 1825 at the age of 40.
Granvelle
:
Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle ( 1517-86), born in Besançon, became
Bishop of Arras, and went on to be a minister of the Emperor Charles
V. His father had in fact also served in the same capacity.

-550-

in Poissy
:
Fontan and Magalon, editors of a satirical publication, were
imprisoned in 1824 and later condemned to hard labour in the prison at
Poissy for criticizing the Government.
Colonel Caron
: French officer executed in 1822, after being framed by the police and accused of insurrection.
Esprit per. pré. gui.
II.A. 30
: Stendhal's cryptic note has been deciphered as:
Esprit per[d) pré[fecture]
. Gui[zot]. 11 août 1830. ('
Wit loses Prefecture
.
Guizot. 11 August 1830'). Stendhal had applied to Guizot (an official
at the ministry of the interior) for a post as prefect, and been
turned down. He took pleasure in alluding cryptically to this
rejection in a footnote to his novel, and also in the header at the
top of the page in question (not included in this translation because
of pagination constraints), which reads:
L'ESPRIT PERD
. He was appointed consul at Trieste a few weeks later.
Alfred de Musset
: 1810-57, French writer.
Jarnac . . . Moncontour
: victories won in 1569 by the Catholics, led by the
Duc d'Anjou
(the future Henri III), over the Protestant forces of the Prince de Condé and Admiral Coligny respectively.
Algiers
: see n. to p. 325.
Jacobins
: see n. to p. 8.
surrender of Baylen
: General Dupont signed a disastrous capitulation at Bailén in Andalucia in 1808.
. . . MYSELF
: echo of a line from Corneille tragedy
Médée
, 1635 ( I. 5).
Schiller
:
Critics have noted similarities between this epigraph (not identified
in Schiller's works) and the following lines from Shakespeare
Julius Caesar
:
'Between the acting of a dreadful thing / And the first motion, all
the interim / Is like a phantasm, or a hideous dream' ( II.1).
Don Diego
: the father of the hero Rodrigue in Corneille play
Le Cid
( 1636) says to his son: 'We only have one honour. There are so many sweethearts!' ( III.6).
Gascon
: people from Gascony (former duchy in S.W. France) have a reputation for humour and bragging.
Abelard's fate
:
Pierre Abélard ( 1079-1142) was a scholastic philosopher best
remembered for his ill-fated passion for his pupil Héloïse. Her uncle
took revenge by breaking into Abélard's room at dead of night and
castrating him.

-551-

Pailida morte futura
: 'Pale with her approaching death' ( Virgil,
Aeneid
, IV. 643).
Massinger
: 1584-1640, English dramatist.
Café Tortoni
: fashionable café on the
Boulevard des Itatiens
.
Charles IX
: 1550-74; reigned from 1560 under the regency of his mother Catherine de Medici. Henri III: see n. to p. 340.
St Valery's church
: in the
Rue de Bourgogne
(now no longer standing).
The Opera Bouffe
:
also known as the Italian Opera, and situated on the Boulevard des
Italiens. Like the Grand Opera, it was a meeting-place for the
aristocracy.
the revolution of 1688 in England
:
comparisons between Restoration France and England under James II were a
recurrent theme in the French press at the end of the 1820s. Whether
Charles X might suffer a fate similar to that of James II in 1688 was a
live topic.
Roland
:
Roland de la Platière ( 1734-93), politician. He was minister of the
interior in 1792 and supported the Girondins (see n. to. p. 307). He
committed suicide on learning of his wife's execution. M
me
Roland: 1754-93. She had an influential political salon frequented by Girondins, and perished on the scaffold.
M
me
de Staël
: see n. to p. 302.
this sublime aria
: the opera appears to be fictitious.
Devo punirmi . . .
: 'I must punish myself, I must punish myself, if I've loved too much.'
a purely imaginary figure
:
despite these protestations, a recent society scandal had provided
Stendhal with a model for Mathilde's behaviour. In Jan. 1830, Marie de
Neuville, the 17-year-old niece of a former Government minister, had
eloped to London with Edouard Grasset, a commoner who had made a name
for himself by fighting in the War of Greek Independence. After a
brief escapade, she returned to her family and refused to marry
Grasset.
Meudon
: on the S.W. outskirts of Paris.
Jean Paul
: Johann Paul Richter, 1763-1825.
Saint-Cloud
:
château on a hillside overlooking the Seine on the western outskirts
of Paris, built by Louis XIV's brother, with gardens by Le Nôtre.
Napoleon used it as a summer palace, and it

-552-

was adopted as a Parisian residence by Louis XVIII and Charles X.
Chelles
: town near Meaux on the Marne, to the east of Paris. The abbey is now in ruins.
Duke of Orleans
: Phillipe III ( 1674-1723) was Louis XV's regent from 1715 to 1723.
secret memorandum
:
in 1829-30 the liberal press warned of an ultra-reactionary plot to
call upon foreign powers to intervene against the threat of renewed
revolution in France. The campaign alluded specifically to a 'Secret
Memorandum'. The king's aidede-camp, the Duc de Fitz-James (from whom
Stendhal borrowed many attributes for his portrayal of the Marquis de
la Mole), left in haste on a mission to Germany in July 1830 after the
French Government suffered a severe electoral defeat. Scholars have
recognized a number of contemporary political figures in the
character in this scene.
La Quotidienne
: see n. to p. 264.
Place de Grève
: see n. to p. 246.
On the Pope
: see n. to p. 22.
La Gazette des Tribunaux
: a publication which appeared every weekday, containing full reports on court proceedings.
advocating assassination: the idea of resorting to drastic measures
to rid Europe of Bonaparte was openly voiced abroad in 1814-15.
Go out and seek your own help
: the French sentence echoes a proverb
Aide-toi, le ciel t'aidera
which had been adopted as the name of a liberal society formed in 1827.
1794
: year of sweeping victories for the revolutionary armies.
It will be a god
!: La Fontaine,
Fables
,
IX, 6: 'The Sculptor and the Statue of Jupiter'. The sculptor
contemplates his block of marble and wonders what his chisel will make
of it.
Louis XVI
: reigned 1774-91; guillotioned 1793.
M. de Richelieu
:
the Duc de Richelieu ( 1766-1822) was prime minister twice under
Louis XVIII, and represented France at the Congress of
Aix-la-Chapelle.
1817
: Allied forces occupied France from 1815 (Congress of Vienna) until 1818.
former imperial general
: modelled on General Bourmont, minister of war in 1829, who had deserted Napoleon at Waterloo.

-553-

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