The Red and the Black Read Online Free PDF Page B

end that the
wit of this man does not go beyond making sure he is paid on the dot
whatever is owed to him, and leaving it to the last possible moment to
pay back what he himself owes.
    Such is the mayor of Verrières, M. de Rênal. He walks solemnly across
the road and disappears from sight into the town hall. But if the
traveller continues his stroll he will notice, a hundred yards or so
further up, a rather fine-looking house and, through the iron gate
next to it, some very splendid gardens. The skyline beyond is formed
by the hills of
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Burgundy, and seems expressly created to please the eye. This view
allows the traveller to forget the poisonous atmosphere of petty
financial intrigue which is beginning to stifle him.
    He is told that this house belongs to M. de Rênal. The profits from
his sizeable nail factory have enabled the mayor of Verrières to put
up this fine dwelling in solid stone which he is in the process of
completing. His family, it is said, is of Spanish origin from way
back, and has been settled in the region, so they maintain, since well
before it was conquered by Louis XIV. *
    Since 1815 his involvement with industry has been a source of embarrassment to him: the events of 1815 * made him mayor of Verrières. The walls supporting the terraces of his
magnificent garden which runs down step by step to the Doubs are also
a reward for M. de Rênal's expertise in the iron industry.
    When in France you must not expect to come across the kind of
picturesque gardens that are found on the outskirts of manufacturing
towns in Germany like Leipzig, Frankfurt or Nuremberg. In the
Franche-Comté, the more walls a man builds, the more his land bristles
with rows of stones laid one on top of another, the greater his claim
to his neighbours' respect. M. de Rênal's gardens with their walls
everywhere are further admired because he spent a fortune purchasing
some of the small plots of land on which they are sited. Take, for
instance, that sawmill which caught your eye by its striking location
on the bank of the Doubs as you entered Verrières, and where you
noticed the name SOREL written in gigantic letters on a board set
above the roof: six years ago it used to occupy the site on which the
wall of the fourth terrace of M. de Rênal's gardens is now being
built.
    For all his pride, the mayor
had to enter into lengthy negotiations with old Sorel, a tough and
stubborn peasant if ever there was one. He had to hand over a handsome
sum in gold coin to get him to move his mill elsewhere. As for the public stream which powered the saw, M. de Rênal managed to have it
diverted, using the influence he commands in Paris. This favour was
granted him after the 182- elections. * For each acre he took from Sorel, he gave him four on a site five hundred yards downstream on the banks of the Doubs. And
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although this position was much more advantageous for his trade in
deal planks, old Mr Sorel, as he is called now that he has grown rich,
found a way to screw out of his neighbour's impatience and obsessive greed for land the sum of 6,000 francs as well.
    It is true that this arrangement has come in for some criticism from
the right-thinking individuals in the neighbourhood. Once on a Sunday
four years ago when M. de Rênal was on his way back from church in his
mayor's robes, he noticed from a distance how old Mr Sorel, with his
three sons gathered round him, smiled as he looked in the mayor's
direction. That smile was a fatal flash of illumination for the mayor:
now he can't help thinking he might have been able to drive a better
bargain over the exchange.
    To win
public esteem in Verrières, the main thing, while of course building
walls in great number, is to avoid any design brought over from Italy
by the stonemasons who come through the gorges in the Jura in the
springtime on their way up to Paris. An innovation of this kind would
earn the foolhardy landowner a lasting