feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_1_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 2
feat_summary_id: part 1, chapter 2
feat_summary: {"name": "Part 1, Chapter 2", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-2", "summary": "We're not done with Monsieur de Renal yet. Now the narrator tells us about a retaining wall that the mayor had built in order to make sure one of the town's public paths gives a nice view of the countryside. We're starting to wonder when this book's plot is going to get going. Sometimes, people complain about the way the mayor has all the town trees shaved down, but he argues that they should look pretty and give shade, especially since they bring in no money. And here, the narrator tells us that one major problem with Verrieres is that its inhabitants tend to measure the value of everything with money. While walking along one day, Monsieur de Renal talks to his wife about how unhappy he is with certain people in the community criticizing him. He especially has a hate-on for one of the local priests.", "analysis": ""}
text: CHAPTER II
  
  A MAYOR
  
  
          Importance! What is it, sir after all? The respect of
          fools, the wonder of children, the envy of the rich, the
          contempt of the wise man.--_Barnave_
  
  
  Happily for the reputation of M. de Renal as an administrator an
  immense wall of support was necessary for the public promenade which
  goes along the hill, a hundred steps above the course of the Doubs.
  This admirable position secures for the promenade one of the most
  picturesque views in the whole of France. But the rain water used to
  make furrows in the walk every spring, caused ditches to appear, and
  rendered it generally impracticable. This nuisance, which was felt
  by the whole town, put M. de Renal in the happy position of being
  compelled to immortalise his administration by building a wall twenty
  feet high and thirty to forty yards long.
  
  The parapet of this wall, which occasioned M. de Renal three journeys
  to Paris (for the last Minister of the Interior but one had declared
  himself the mortal enemy of the promenade of Verrieres), is now raised
  to a height of four feet above the ground, and as though to defy all
  ministers whether past or present, it is at present adorned with tiles
  of hewn stone.
  
  How many times have my looks plunged into the valley of the Doubs, as I
  thought of the Paris balls which I had abandoned on the previous night,
  and leant my breast against the great blocks of stone, whose beautiful
  grey almost verged on blue. Beyond the left bank, there wind five
  or six valleys, at the bottom of which I could see quite distinctly
  several small streams. There is a view of them falling into the Doubs,
  after a series of cascades. The sun is very warm in these mountains.
  When it beats straight down, the pensive traveller on the terrace
  finds shelter under some magnificent plane trees. They owe their rapid
  growth and their fine verdure with its almost bluish shade to the new
  soil, which M. the mayor has had placed behind his immense wall of
  support for (in spite of the opposition of the Municipal Council) he
  has enlarged the promenade by more than six feet (and although he is an
  Ultra and I am a Liberal, I praise him for it), and that is why both in
  his opinion and in that of M. Valenod, the fortunate Director of the
  workhouse of Verrieres, this terrace can brook comparison with that of
  Saint-Germain en Laye.
  
  I find personally only one thing at which to cavil in the COURS DE LA
  FIDELITE, (this official name is to be read in fifteen to twenty places
  on those immortal tiles which earned M. de Renal an extra cross.) The
  grievance I find in the Cours de la Fidelite is the barbarous manner in
  which the authorities have cut these vigorous plane trees and clipped
  them to the quick. In fact they really resemble with their dwarfed,
  rounded and flattened heads the most vulgar plants of the vegetable
  garden, while they are really capable of attaining the magnificent
  development of the English plane trees. But the wish of M. the mayor
  is despotic, and all the trees belonging to the municipality are
  ruthlessly pruned twice a year. The local Liberals suggest, but they
  are probably exaggerating, that the hand of the official gardener
  has become much more severe, since M. the Vicar Maslon started
  appropriating the clippings. This young ecclesiastic was sent to
  Besancon some years ago to keep watch on the abbe Chelan and some cures
  in the neighbouring districts. An old Surgeon-Major of Napoleon's
  Italian Army, who was living in retirement at Verrieres, and who had
  been in his time described by M. the mayor as both a Jacobin and a
  Bonapartiste, dared to complain to the mayor one day of the periodical
  mutilation of these fine trees.
  
  "I like the shade," answered M. de Renal, with just a tinge of that
  hauteur which becomes a mayor when he is talking to a surgeon, who is
  a member of the Legion of Honour. "I like the shade, I have _my_ trees
  clipped in order to give shade, and I cannot conceive that a tree can
  have any other purpose, provided of course _it is not bringing in any
  profit_, like the useful walnut tree."
  
  This is the great word which is all decisive at Verrieres. "BRINGING IN
  PROFIT," this word alone sums up the habitual trend of thought of more
  than three-quarters of the inhabitants.
  
  _Bringing in profit_ is the consideration which decides everything in
  this little town which you thought so pretty. The stranger who arrives
  in the town is fascinated by the beauty of the fresh deep valleys which
  surround it, and he imagines at first that the inhabitants have an
  appreciation of the beautiful. They talk only too frequently of the
  beauty of their country, and it cannot be denied that they lay great
  stress on it, but the reason is that it attracts a number of strangers,
  whose money enriches the inn-keepers, a process which _brings in
  profit_ to the town, owing to the machinery of the octroi.
  
  It was on a fine, autumn day that M. de Renal was taking a promenade
  on the Cours de la Fidelite with his wife on his arm. While listening
  to her husband (who was talking in a somewhat solemn manner) Madame de
  Renal followed anxiously with her eyes the movements of three little
  boys. The eldest, who might have been eleven years old, went too
  frequently near the parapet and looked as though he was going to climb
  up it. A sweet voice then pronounced the name of Adolphe and the child
  gave up his ambitious project. Madame de Renal seemed a woman of thirty
  years of age but still fairly pretty.
  
  "He may be sorry for it, may this fine gentleman from Paris," said
  M. de Renal, with an offended air and a face even paler than usual.
  "I am not without a few friends at court!" But though I want to
  talk to you about the provinces for two hundred pages, I lack the
  requisite barbarity to make you undergo all the long-windedness and
  circumlocutions of a provincial dialogue.
  
  This fine gentleman from Paris, who was so odious to the mayor of
  Verrieres, was no other than the M. Appert, who had two days previously
  managed to find his way not only into the prison and workhouse of
  Verrieres, but also into the hospital, which was gratuitously conducted
  by the mayor and the principal proprietors of the district.
  
  "But," said Madame de Renal timidly, "what harm can this Paris
  gentleman do you, since you administer the poor fund with the utmost
  scrupulous honesty?"
  
  "He only comes to _throw_ blame and afterwards he will get some
  articles into the Liberal press."
  
  "You never read them, my dear."
  
  "But they always talk to us about those Jacobin articles, all that
  distracts us and prevents us from doing good.[1] Personally, I shall
  never forgive the cure."
  
  [1] Historically true.
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Part 1, Chapter 2
target: We're not done with Monsieur de Renal yet. Now the narrator tells us about a retaining wall that the mayor had built in order to make sure one of the town's public paths gives a nice view of the countryside. We're starting to wonder when this book's plot is going to get going. Sometimes, people complain about the way the mayor has all the town trees shaved down, but he argues that they should look pretty and give shade, especially since they bring in no money. And here, the narrator tells us that one major problem with Verrieres is that its inhabitants tend to measure the value of everything with money. While walking along one day, Monsieur de Renal talks to his wife about how unhappy he is with certain people in the community criticizing him. He especially has a hate-on for one of the local priests.