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begins work on Lamiel , his last, unfinished novel. 24 June: leaves Paris to resume office as consul and is back at his desk on 10 August.
1840:
1 January: suffers first stroke. 25 September: Honoré de Balzac publishes elogious review of La Chartreuse de Parme (in which he also tells its author how he could have written it better).
1841:
Further illness. 15 September: granted sick leave. 22 October: leaves for Paris.
1842:
22 March: collapses in the street after dinner with the Minister of
Foreign Affairs and dies in his lodgings at 2 a.m. the following
morning. 24 March: buried in the cemetery of Montmartre. Desired
epitaph: 'Arrigo Beyle Milanese. Scrisse. Amò. Visse.'
    -xxix-

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-xxx-

THE RED AND THE BLACK
A Chronicle of 1830
    TO THE HAPPY FEW *
    -1-

BOOK ONE
The truth, the truth
in all its harshness.
    DANTON *
    CHAPTER 1
A small town
Put thousands together
Less bad.
But the cage less gay.
    HOBBES
    THE small town of Verrières may be regarded as one of the prettiest in the Franche-Comté. * Its white houses with their steeply pitched roofs of red tile are
spread over a hillside where clumps of sturdy Spanish chestnuts mark
out the slightest dips in the terrain. The river Doubs flows several
hundred feet beneath the old town walls, built in former times by the
Spaniards and now fallen to ruin.
    Verrières is sheltered on its northern side by a high mountain ridge,
part of the Jura range. Right from the earliest cold spells in October
the jagged peaks of the Verra are covered with snow. A mountain
stream which comes tumbling down from the heights passes through
Verrières on its way to join the Doubs, and supplies power to numerous
sawmills. This simple form of industry provides a reasonably
comfortable living for the majority of the inhabitants, who are
peasants rather than townsfolk. The wealth acquired by this little
town does not, however, come from the sawmills, but rather from the
factory where painted fabrics are produced in the Mulhouse tradition. * This is the source of the general prosperity which, since the fall
of Napoleon, has enabled all the house-fronts in Verrières to be
refurbished.
    -3-

You have scarcely set foot in the town before you are deafened by the
din from a noisy and fearful-looking machine. Twenty massive hammers
come thundering down with a noise to set the cobbles shaking, and are
lifted up again by a wheel driven by the waters of the stream. Each
one of these hammers makes countless thousands of nails every day. It
is the task of pretty, fresh-cheeked girls to hold out the little
pieces of iron which the enormous hammers beat speedily into nails.
This rough-looking work is one of the activities which the traveller
who ventures for the first time into the mountains separating France
from Switzerland finds most surprising. If on his arrival in Verrières
the traveller asks who owns this fine nail factory which deafens
people as they go up the main street, he will be told in the drawling
local accent: 'Ah! that belongs to his worship the mayor.'
    If the traveller stops but a moment in the main street of Verrières,
which climbs up from the bank of the Doubs almost to the top of the
hill, you can bet a hundred to one he will see a tall man appearing on
the scene with the look of someone going about important business. As
he passes, all hats are raised with alacrity. His hair is turning
grey, and grey is what he wears. He is a member of several orders of
knighthood, * he has a high forehead and a Roman nose, and his face is not
without a certain overall regularity: people even think at first sight
that it combines the dignity befitting a village mayor with that
special charm which can still be found in someone rising fifty. But
soon the traveller from Paris is shocked by a certain look of
self-satisfaction and complacency mingled with an indefinable hint of
narrow-mindedness and lack of imagination. You feel in the