Nicolas Steno

“ She had, however, only read ten lines, which proved how much mistaken psychological Dorsenne was in thinking that Maitland was ignorant of the former relations between his mistress and Gorka. Countess Steno’s grandeur, that which made a courageous woman almost a heroine in her passions, was an absolute sincerity and disgust for the usual pettiness of flirtations. She would have disdained to deny to a new lover the knowledge of her past, and the semiavowals, so common to women, would have seemed to her a cowardice still worse. ”

“ Stenovics spoke in a calm, smooth voice. "Absolutely, sir, I believe the man's honest!" he said, with an inflection of good-humored surprise. "One sees how he got the idea! I'm sure he's genuinely devoted to your Majesty, and to the Prince—as we all are. He sees something going on which he doesn't understand; he knows something more is going on that he's ignorant of. ”

“ Truth compels me to state that the division was honourably made, and little Stenne did not feel his crime weigh so heavily on his mind when he heard the coins jingling in his pocket, and thought of the prospective games of galoche!
But—unhappy child!—when he was left alone! When, after they had passed the gate, and his companion had left him—oh, then his pocket weighed heavily, and the hand which pressed upon his heart was hard indeed! Paris was no longer the same. The people passing looked at him severely, as if they were aware of his mission. ”

“ Colonel Stafnitz is high in my confidence. And Lepage is only my servant."
"I seek to stand no higher than any other of your Majesty's servants, except in so far as the nature of my services gives me a claim," said Stenovics.
"But there's one here who stands far nearer to me than any one, who stands nearer to me than any living being. She must know of this thing, if it's true; if it's being done, her hand must be foremost among the hands that are doing it." His eyes fixed themselves on the Countess's face. "Is it true?" he asked.
"Sir, how can you ask? How can you listen? True! ”

“ He was a thorough child of Paris; delicate-looking, pale, about ten years old—perhaps fifteen—one never can tell the ages of these scaramouches. His mother was dead; his father, an old marine, used to guard a square in the Temple quarter. Babies, nursemaids, the old women with folding-chairs, poor mothers—all the leisurely-moving world of Paris which puts itself out of the way of carriages in those gardens—knew Father Stenne, and worshipped him. People knew that under that bristling moustache, the terror of dogs and tramps, there lurked a tender, pleasant, almost a maternal smile ”

“ The last part of the novel is devoted to Stenio. Hurt by Lelia's disdain, which has thrown him into the arms of her sister Pulcherie, he gives himself up to debauch. We find him at a veritable orgy in Pulcherie's house. Later on he is in a monastery at Camaldules, talking to Trenmor and Magnus. In such books we must never be astonished. . . . There is a long speech by Stenio, addressed to Don Juan, whom he regrets to have taken as his model. The poor young man of course commits suicide. He chooses drowning as the author evidently prefers that mode of suicide. ”

“ Never had so gracious a vision followed in the wake of her disconcerting fears. So these pretty children of whom she took such care were not after all to fall into the hands of a dirty grumbling priest. She had scarcely entered the vestibule when she turned round towards Julien, who was following her trembling. His astonishment at the sight of so fine a house proved but an additional charm in Madame de Rênal's eyes. She could not believe her own eyes. It seemed to her, above all, that the tutor ought to have a black suit. ”

“ It was at the time when your good friend Valenod would not have minded their thinking at Verrières that a perfectly platonic little affection was growing up between him and me."
"I had that idea once myself," exclaimed M. de Rênal, furiously striking his head as he progressed from discovery to discovery, "and you told me nothing about it."
"Should one set two friends by the ears on account of a little fit of vanity on the part of our dear director? What society woman has not had addressed to her a few letters which were both extremely witty and even a little gallant?" ”

“ Steen always prefaces a kindness by a great deal of incivility. I asked him once to lend me a pony, my own being suddenly taken lame, and he seized that opportunity to tell me that my father was an impostor in pretending to be a judge of cattle ”

“ But it's like the stranger was ane that doesna lightly yield his point; for, ride as Steenie liked, he was aye beside him at the salfsame pace. At last my gudesire, Steenie Steenson, grew half angry and, to say the truth, half feared.
"What is it that ye want with me, freend?" he said. "If ye be a robber, I have nae money; if ye be a leal man, wanting company, I have nae heart to mirth or speaking; and if ye want to ken the road, I scarce ken it mysell." ”

“ She is still pretty, good and gentle; she is an excellent mother, performs all her duties faithfully, is pious but not a bigot."
"What is he driving at?" thought mademoiselle de la Mole.
"She is happy," continued the comte Altamira; "she was so in 1815. I was then in hiding at her house on her estate near d'Antibos. Well the moment she learnt of marshall Ney's execution she began to dance."
"Is it possible?" said Julien, thunderstruck.
"It's party spirit," replied Altamira. "There are no longer any real passions in the nineteenth century: that's why one is so bored in France. ”

“ He is brave and that is all. He has not a thought which dares to deviate from the conventional. It is always I who have to take up the cudgels in his defence. A young girl of nineteen! Can one at that age act up faithfully every second of the day to the part which one has determined to play. On the other hand whenever mademoiselle de la Mole fixes her eyes on me with a singular expression comte Norbert always goes away. I think that suspicious. Ought he not to be indignant at his sister singling out a servant of her household? ”

“ 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 Rênal was taking a promenade on the Cours de la Fidelité with his wife on his arm. While listening to her husband (who was talking in a somewhat solemn manner) Madame de Rênal followed anxiously with her eyes the movements of three little boys. ”

“ Steen, many of them compositions of numerous figures, and almost all of them executed with the greatest care. It cannot be believed that a man living in a state of continued dissipation and inebriety, could find time to produce so many admirable works, displaying, as they do, a deep study of human nature, and a great discrimination of character, or that the hand of a habitual drunkard could operate with such beauty and precision. ”

“ No mournful truth came to chill her, not even the spectre of the future. She imagined herself as happy in ten years' time as she was at the present moment. Even the idea of virtue and of her sworn fidelity to M. de Rênal, which had agitated her some days past, now presented itself in vain, and was sent about its business like an importunate visitor. "I will never grant anything to Julien," said Madame de Rênal; "we will live in the future like we have been living for the last month. He shall be a friend." ”

“ I could have my choice of either marrying Mademoiselle Elisa or of entering into partnership with Fouqué. But it is only the traveller who has just scaled a steep mountain and sits down on the summit who finds a perfect pleasure in resting. Would he be happy if he had to rest all the time?”
Madame de Rênal’s mind had now reached a state of desperation. In spite of her resolutions, she had explained to Julien all the details of the auction. “He will make me forget all my oaths!” she thought. ”

“ But the soul, the brain of Julien is not Berthet but Beyle. And what indeed is the whole book if not a vindication of beylisme, if we may use the word, coined by the man himself for his own outlook on life? For the procedure of Stendhal would seem to have placed his own self in his hero’s shoes, to have lived in imagination his whole life, and to have recorded his experience with a wealth of analytic detail, which in spite of some arrogance, is yet both honest and scientific. ”

“ Nietzsche, in Beyond Good and Evil, described Stendhal as "that remarkable man who, with a Napoleonic tempo, traversed his Europe, in fact several centuries of the European soul, as a surveyor and discoverer thereof. It has required two generations to overtake him one way or other; to divine long afterward some of the riddles that perplexed and enraptured him—this strange Epicurean and man of interrogation, the last great psychologist of France." He also spoke of him as "Stendhal, who has, perhaps, had the most profound eyes and ears of any Frenchman of this century." ”

“ You will put him into a temper and make him quarrel with me. You know to what extent this little gentleman is always spoiling for a quarrel."
"That young man has no tact," resumed Madame de Rênal. "He may be learned, you know all about that, but at bottom he is only a peasant. For my own part I never thought much of him since he refused to marry Elisa. It was an assured fortune; and that on the pretext that sometimes she had made secret visits to M. Valenod."
"Ah," said M. de Rênal, lifting up his eyebrows inordinately. "What, did Julien tell you that?" ”

“ Norbert's remark made the comte think it was good form for a man like him to make a hobby of his horses, and that he must not let them get wet. He went away, and the other gentleman left a minute afterwards making fun of him all the time. "So," thought Julien as he heard them laugh on the staircase, "I have the privilege of seeing the exact opposite of my own situation. I have not got twenty louis a year and I found myself side by side with a man who has twenty louis an hour and they made fun of him. Seeing a sight like that cures one of envy." ”

“ A few moments afterwards he came back to her in a quieter frame of mind.
"The thing is to take some definite line and send Julien away," she said immediately, "after all it is only a labourer's son. You will compensate him by a few crowns and besides he is clever and will easily manage to find a place, with M. Valenod for example, or with the sub-prefect De Maugiron who both have children. In that way you will not be doing him any wrong...."
"There you go talking like the fool that you are," exclaimed M. de Rênal in a terrible voice. "How can one hope that a woman will show any good sense? ”

“ With a mind, which in spite of its natural physical courage was morbidly susceptible to ridicule and was only too frequently the dupe of the fear of being duped, Stendhal would scent an enemy in every friend, and as a mere matter of self-protection set himself to penetrate the secret of every character with which he came into contact. One is also justified in taking into account an honest intellectual enthusiasm which found its vent in deciphering the rarer and more precious manuscripts of the "human document." ”

“ And Markart, of course, seemed no more than one of Stenovics's train.
"And if the courier doesn't start?" asked Stenovics. He took out and lit a cigar, asking no leave of the Countess; probably he hardly knew that he was smoking it.
Stafnitz looked at his watch. "Five o'clock! We have twenty-four hours—it would be risky to keep the secret longer. There's not much time; we must be prompt. But we mustn't sacrifice anything to hurry. For instance, it would look odd to present the King's orders to Baroness Dobrava in the middle of the night! She'd smell a rat, if she's as clever as they say. ”

“ At his son's express request—and at that only—he acquiesced in the release of Mistitch and his satellite Sterkoff; but he was determined to make his own attitude clear and to do what he could to restore the prestige of his family. The Prince said dryly that the prestige would profit best of all by the big guns; the King was minded to supplement their effect by something more ornate. He created a new Order, and made his son Grand Master of it. There was no harm in that, and Stenovics readily consented. He declared that something more must be done for the lady to whom his son owed his life ”

“ In a vague way he heard his companion, amidst loud laughter, making game of the National Guard—of their style of drill; imitating a rush to arms; a night alarm on the ramparts. Subsequently the "big fellow" lowered his tone, the officers drew nearer, their faces became more grave. The wretch was about to tell them of the intended attack of the Franc-tireurs.
Then little Stenne stood up in a rage, as his senses returned to him; he cried out, "None of that, big one, none of that!" but the other only laughed and continued. Ere he had finished, all the officers were on their feet. ”

“ What a rebuff that would be?
"I shall be disgraced both here and at Besançon," answered the abbé Maslon if he appears among my clergy. A Jansenist, by the Lord."
"Whatever you can say, my dear abbé, replied M. de Rênal, I'll never expose the administration of Verrières to receiving such an affront from M. de la Mole. You do not know him. He is orthodox enough at Court, but here in the provinces, he is a satirical wit and cynic, whose only object is to make people uncomfortable. He is capable of covering us with ridicule in the eyes of the Liberals, simply in order to amuse himself. ”