feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_2_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 3
feat_summary_id: part 1, chapter 3
feat_summary: {"name": "Part 1, Chapter 3", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-3", "summary": "We look in on a guy named Monsieur Appert, who has been sent from Paris to meet with a local priest named Father Chelan. It sounds like the two of them need to visit the prison on some mysterious business. The Father seems especially annoyed about something that's going on. Monsieur Appert visits the prisons with Chelan. He never says a word the whole time. When the two of them visit the prison a second time that day, the guard says he's received orders not to let them in. Father Chelan scolds him until he lets them pass. Meanwhile, we find out that the mayor, Monsieur de Renal, and another man named Valenod want to get Chelan removed from the district because he doesn't play ball with them politically. When the two tell Chelan the news, he answers that he'll never leave the community. He'll live there even in retirement just to shame de Renal and Valenod about what they've done. For crying out loud, the guy is 80 years old. Later on, the mayor's wife asks him what harm it could do to let Chelan keep his job. But the conversation quickly turns to the fact that the mayor wants a special tutor to teach their children. It's a matter of pride, since having a private tutor is a symbol of wealth just like owning a Porsche or a big house. The mayor is eager to have the town talking about how well off he is. The person the mayor wants to hire is the son of the sawmill owner, Sorel. The narrator gives us a short description of Madame de Renal, telling us that she's a beautiful woman who can't admit to herself that she finds her husband boring. She has never known anything other than obedience and shyness, so she can't even imagine what love is supposed to look like.", "analysis": ""}
text: CHAPTER III
  
  THE POOR FUND
  
  
          A virtuous cure who does not intrigue is a providence
          for the village.--_Fleury_
  
  
  It should be mentioned that the cure of Verrieres, an old man of
  ninety, who owed to the bracing mountain air an iron constitution and
  an iron character, had the right to visit the prison, the hospital and
  the workhouse at any hour. It had been at precisely six o'clock in the
  morning that M. Appert, who had a Paris recommendation to the cure,
  had been shrewd enough to arrive at a little inquisitive town. He had
  immediately gone on to the cure's house.
  
  The cure Chelan became pensive as he read the letter written to him by
  the M. le Marquis de La Mole, Peer of France, and the richest landed
  proprietor of the province.
  
  "I am old and beloved here," he said to himself in a whisper, "they
  would not dare!" Then he suddenly turned to the gentleman from Paris,
  with eyes, which in spite of his great age, shone with that sacred fire
  which betokens the delight of doing a fine but slightly dangerous act.
  
  "Come with me, sir," he said, "but please do not express any opinion of
  the things which we shall see, in the presence of the jailer, and above
  all not in the presence of the superintendents of the workhouse."
  
  M. Appert realised that he had to do with a man of spirit. He followed
  the venerable cure, visited the hospital and workhouse, put a lot of
  questions, but in spite of somewhat extraordinary answers, did not
  indulge in the slightest expression of censure.
  
  This visit lasted several hours; the cure invited M. Appert to dine,
  but the latter made the excuse of having some letters to write; as a
  matter of fact, he did not wish to compromise his generous companion to
  any further extent. About three o'clock these gentlemen went to finish
  their inspection of the workhouse and then returned to the prison.
  There they found the jailer by the gate, a kind of giant, six feet
  high, with bow legs. His ignoble face had become hideous by reason of
  his terror.
  
  "Ah, monsieur," he said to the cure as soon as he saw him, "is not the
  gentleman whom I see there, M. Appert?"
  
  "What does that matter?" said the cure.
  
  "The reason is that I received yesterday the most specific orders, and
  M. the Prefect sent a message by a gendarme who must have galloped
  during the whole of the night, that M. Appert was not to be allowed in
  the prisons."
  
  "I can tell you, M. Noiroud," said the cure, "that the traveller who is
  with me is M. Appert, but do you or do you not admit that I have the
  right to enter the prison at any hour of the day or night accompanied
  by anybody I choose?"
  
  "Yes, M. the cure," said the jailer in a low voice, lowering his head
  like a bull-dog, induced to a grudging obedience by fear of the stick,
  "only, M. the cure, I have a wife and children, and shall be turned out
  if they inform against me. I only have my place to live on."
  
  "I, too, should be sorry enough to lose mine," answered the good cure,
  with increasing emotion in his voice.
  
  "What a difference!" answered the jailer keenly. "As for you, M. le
  cure, we all know that you have eight hundred francs a year, good solid
  money."
  
  Such were the facts which, commented upon and exaggerated in twenty
  different ways, had been agitating for the last two days all the odious
  passions of the little town of Verrieres.
  
  At the present time they served as the text for the little discussion
  which M. de Renal was having with his wife. He had visited the cure
  earlier in the morning accompanied by M. Valenod, the director of the
  workhouse, in order to convey their most emphatic displeasure. M.
  Chelan had no protector, and felt all the weight of their words.
  
  "Well, gentlemen, I shall be the third cure of eighty years of age who
  has been turned out in this district. I have been here for fifty-six
  years. I have baptized nearly all the inhabitants of the town, which
  was only a hamlet when I came to it. Every day I marry young people
  whose grandparents I have married in days gone by. Verrieres is my
  family, but I said to myself when I saw the stranger, 'This man from
  Paris may as a matter of fact be a Liberal, there are only too many of
  them about, but what harm can he do to our poor and to our prisoners?'"
  
  The reproaches of M. de Renal, and above all, those of M. Valenod, the
  director of the workhouse, became more and more animated.
  
  "Well, gentlemen, turn me out then," the old cure exclaimed in a
  trembling voice; "I shall still continue to live in the district. As
  you know, I inherited forty-eight years ago a piece of land that brings
  in eight hundred francs a year; I shall live on that income. I do not
  save anything out of my living, gentlemen; and that is perhaps why,
  when you talk to me about it, I am not particularly frightened."
  
  M. de Renal always got on very well with his wife, but he did not know
  what to answer when she timidly repeated the phrase of M. le cure,
  "What harm can this Paris gentleman do the prisoners?" He was on the
  point of quite losing his temper when she gave a cry. Her second son
  had mounted the parapet of the terrace wall and was running along it,
  although the wall was raised to a height of more than twenty feet above
  the vineyard on the other side. The fear of frightening her son and
  making him fall prevented Madame de Renal speaking to him. But at last
  the child, who was smiling at his own pluck, looked at his mother, saw
  her pallor, jumped down on to the walk and ran to her. He was well
  scolded.
  
  This little event changed the course of the conversation.
  
  "I really mean to take Sorel, the son of the sawyer, into the house,"
  said M. de Renal; "he will look after the children, who are getting too
  naughty for us to manage. He is a young priest, or as good as one, a
  good Latin scholar, and will make the children get on. According to the
  cure, he has a steady character. I will give him three hundred francs a
  year and his board. I have some doubts as to his morality, for he used
  to be the favourite of that old Surgeon-Major, Member of the Legion of
  Honour, who went to board with the Sorels, on the pretext that he was
  their cousin. It is quite possible that that man was really simply a
  secret agent of the Liberals. He said that the mountain air did his
  asthma good, but that is something which has never been proved. He
  has gone through all _Buonaparte's_ campaigns in Italy, and had even,
  it was said, voted against the Empire in the plebiscite. This Liberal
  taught the Sorel boy Latin, and left him a number of books which he had
  brought with him. Of course, in the ordinary way, I should have never
  thought of allowing a carpenter's son to come into contact with our
  children, but the cure told me, the very day before the scene which
  has just estranged us for ever, that Sorel has been studying theology
  for three years with the intention of entering a seminary. He is,
  consequently, not a Liberal, and he certainly is a good Latin scholar.
  
  "This arrangement will be convenient in more than one way," continued
  M. de Renal, looking at his wife with a diplomatic air. "That Valenod
  is proud enough of his two fine Norman horses which he has just bought
  for his carriage, but he hasn't a tutor for his children."
  
  "He might take this one away from us."
  
  "You approve of my plan, then?" said M. de Renal, thanking his wife
  with a smile for the excellent idea which she had just had. "Well,
  that's settled."
  
  "Good gracious, my dear, how quickly you make up your mind!"
  
  "It is because I'm a man of character, as the cure found out right
  enough. Don't let us deceive ourselves; we are surrounded by Liberals
  in this place. All those cloth merchants are jealous of me, I am
  certain of it; two or three are becoming rich men. Well, I should
  rather fancy it for them to see M. de Renal's children pass along the
  street as they go out for their walk, escorted by _their tutor_. It
  will impress people. My grandfather often used to tell us that he had
  a tutor when he was young. It may run me into a hundred crowns, but
  that ought to be looked upon as an expense necessary for keeping up our
  position."
  
  This sudden resolution left Madame de Renal quite pensive. She was
  a big, well-made woman, who had been the beauty of the country, to
  use the local expression. She had a certain air of simplicity and
  youthfulness in her deportment. This naive grace, with its innocence
  and its vivacity, might even have recalled to a Parisian some
  suggestion of the sweets he had left behind him. If she had realised
  this particular phase of her success, Madame de Renal would have been
  quite ashamed of it. All coquetry, all affectation, were absolutely
  alien to her temperament. M. Valenod, the rich director of the
  workhouse, had the reputation of having paid her court, a fact which
  had cast a singular glamour over her virtue; for this M. Valenod, a
  big young man with a square, sturdy frame, florid face, and big, black
  whiskers, was one of those coarse, blustering, and noisy people who
  pass in the provinces for a "fine man."
  
  Madame de Renal, who had a very shy, and apparently a very uneven
  temperament, was particularly shocked by M. Valenod's lack of repose,
  and by his boisterous loudness. Her aloofness from what, in the
  Verrieres' jargon, was called "having a good time," had earned her the
  reputation of being very proud of her birth. In fact, she never thought
  about it, but she had been extremely glad to find the inhabitants of
  the town visit her less frequently. We shall not deny that she passed
  for a fool in the eyes of _their_ good ladies because she did not
  wheedle her husband, and allowed herself to miss the most splendid
  opportunities of getting fine hats from Paris or Besancon. Provided she
  was allowed to wander in her beautiful garden, she never complained.
  She was a naive soul, who had never educated herself up to the point
  of judging her husband and confessing to herself that he bored her.
  She supposed, without actually formulating the thought, that there was
  no greater sweetness in the relationship between husband and wife than
  she herself had experienced. She loved M. de Renal most when he talked
  about his projects for their children. The elder he had destined for
  the army, the second for the law, and the third for the Church. To sum
  up, she found M. de Renal much less boring than all the other men of
  her acquaintance.
  
  This conjugal opinion was quite sound. The Mayor of Verrieres had a
  reputation for wit, and above all, a reputation for good form, on
  the strength of half-a-dozen "chestnuts" which he had inherited from
  an uncle. Old Captain de Renal had served, before the Revolution, in
  the infantry regiment of M. the Duke of Orleans, and was admitted
  to the Prince's salons when he went to Paris. He had seen Madame de
  Montesson, the famous Madame de Genlis, M. Ducret, the inventor, of the
  Palais-Royal. These personages would crop up only too frequently in M.
  de Renal's anecdotes. He found it, however, more and more of a strain
  to remember stories which required such delicacy in the telling, and
  for some time past it had only been on great occasions that he would
  trot out his anecdotes concerning the House of Orleans. As, moreover,
  he was extremely polite, except on money matters, he passed, and justly
  so, for the most aristocratic personage in Verrieres.
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Part 1, Chapter 3
target: We look in on a guy named Monsieur Appert, who has been sent from Paris to meet with a local priest named Father Chelan. It sounds like the two of them need to visit the prison on some mysterious business. The Father seems especially annoyed about something that's going on. Monsieur Appert visits the prisons with Chelan. He never says a word the whole time. When the two of them visit the prison a second time that day, the guard says he's received orders not to let them in. Father Chelan scolds him until he lets them pass. Meanwhile, we find out that the mayor, Monsieur de Renal, and another man named Valenod want to get Chelan removed from the district because he doesn't play ball with them politically. When the two tell Chelan the news, he answers that he'll never leave the community. He'll live there even in retirement just to shame de Renal and Valenod about what they've done. For crying out loud, the guy is 80 years old. Later on, the mayor's wife asks him what harm it could do to let Chelan keep his job. But the conversation quickly turns to the fact that the mayor wants a special tutor to teach their children. It's a matter of pride, since having a private tutor is a symbol of wealth just like owning a Porsche or a big house. The mayor is eager to have the town talking about how well off he is. The person the mayor wants to hire is the son of the sawmill owner, Sorel. The narrator gives us a short description of Madame de Renal, telling us that she's a beautiful woman who can't admit to herself that she finds her husband boring. She has never known anything other than obedience and shyness, so she can't even imagine what love is supposed to look like.