feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/shmoop/The Red and the Black/section_3_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 1.chapter 4
feat_summary_id: part 1, chapter 4
feat_summary: {"name": "Part 1, Chapter 4", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200920104425/https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/red-and-the-black/summary/part-1-chapter-4", "summary": "Monsieur de Renal approaches Mr. Sorel about getting his son to work in the Renal house as a tutor. Sorel is happy about the news, but he doesn't show it because he's a stone cold bargainer and he wants to take Renal for as much money as he can. When he gets back to the sawmill, Monsieur Sorel see his son Julien reading a book instead of doing his job and looking after the machinery. He whaps his son on the head and calls him lazy. We can tell that Mr. Sorel is about to tell his son about the arrangements with the mayor, but Julien trembles as if his dad is going to kill him for some reason.", "analysis": ""}
text: CHAPTER IV
  
  A FATHER AND A SON
  
  
      E sara mia colpa
      Se cosi e?
                    --_Machiavelli_.
  
  
  "My wife really has a head on her shoulders," said the mayor of
  Verrieres at six o'clock the following morning, as he went down to the
  saw-mill of Father Sorel. "It had never occurred to me that if I do not
  take little Abbe Sorel, who, they say, knows Latin like an angel, that
  restless spirit, the director of the workhouse, might have the same
  idea and snatch him away from me, though of course I told her that it
  had, in order to preserve my proper superiority. And how smugly, to be
  sure, would he talk about his children's tutor!... The question is,
  once the tutor's mine, shall he wear the cassock?"
  
  M. de Renal was absorbed in this problem when he saw a peasant in the
  distance, a man nearly six feet tall, who since dawn had apparently
  been occupied in measuring some pieces of wood which had been put
  down alongside the Doubs on the towing-path. The peasant did not look
  particularly pleased when he saw M. the Mayor approach, as these pieces
  of wood obstructed the road, and had been placed there in breach of the
  rules.
  
  Father Sorel (for it was he) was very surprised, and even more pleased
  at the singular offer which M. de Renal made him for his son Julien.
  None the less, he listened to it with that air of sulky discontent and
  apathy which the subtle inhabitants of these mountains know so well
  how to assume. Slaves as they have been since the time of the Spanish
  Conquest, they still preserve this feature, which is also found in the
  character of the Egyptian fellah.
  
  Sorel's answer was at first simply a long-winded recitation of
  all the formulas of respect which he knew by heart. While he was
  repeating these empty words with an uneasy smile, which accentuated
  all the natural disingenuousness, if not, indeed, knavishness of his
  physiognomy, the active mind of the old peasant tried to discover what
  reason could induce so important a man to take into his house his
  good-for-nothing of a son. He was very dissatisfied with Julien, and
  it was for Julien that M. de Renal offered the undreamt-of salary of
  300 fcs. a year, with board and even clothing. This latter claim, which
  Father Sorel had had the genius to spring upon the mayor, had been
  granted with equal suddenness by M. de Renal.
  
  This demand made an impression on the mayor. It is clear, he said to
  himself, that since Sorel is not beside himself with delight over my
  proposal, as in the ordinary way he ought to be, he must have had
  offers made to him elsewhere, and whom could they have come from, if
  not from Valenod. It was in vain that M. de Renal pressed Sorel to
  clinch the matter then and there. The old peasant, astute man that
  he was, stubbornly refused to do so. He wanted, he said, to consult
  his son, as if in the provinces, forsooth, a rich father consulted a
  penniless son for any other reason than as a mere matter of form.
  
  A water saw-mill consists of a shed by the side of a stream. The roof
  is supported by a framework resting on four large timber pillars. A
  saw can be seen going up and down at a height of eight to ten feet in
  the middle of the shed, while a piece of wood is propelled against
  this saw by a very simple mechanism. It is a wheel whose motive-power
  is supplied by the stream, which sets in motion this double piece of
  mechanism, the mechanism of the saw which goes up and down, and the
  mechanism which gently pushes the piece of wood towards the saw, which
  cuts it up into planks.
  
  Approaching his workshop, Father Sorel called Julien in his stentorian
  voice; nobody answered. He only saw his giant elder sons, who, armed
  with heavy axes, were cutting up the pine planks which they had to
  carry to the saw. They were engrossed in following exactly the black
  mark traced on each piece of wood, from which every blow of their axes
  threw off enormous shavings. They did not hear their father's voice.
  The latter made his way towards the shed. He entered it and looked in
  vain for Julien in the place where he ought to have been by the side of
  the saw. He saw him five or six feet higher up, sitting astride one of
  the rafters of the roof. Instead of watching attentively the action of
  the machinery, Julien was reading. Nothing was more anti-pathetic to
  old Sorel. He might possibly have forgiven Julien his puny physique,
  ill adapted as it was to manual labour, and different as it was from
  that of his elder brothers; but he hated this reading mania. He could
  not read himself.
  
  It was in vain that he called Julien two or three times. It was the
  young man's concentration on his book, rather than the din made by the
  saw, which prevented him from hearing his father's terrible voice. At
  last the latter, in spite of his age, jumped nimbly on to the tree
  that was undergoing the action of the saw, and from there on to the
  cross-bar that supported the roof. A violent blow made the book which
  Julien held, go flying into the stream; a second blow on the head,
  equally violent, which took the form of a box on the ears, made him
  lose his balance. He was on the point of falling twelve or fifteen feet
  lower down into the middle of the levers of the running machinery which
  would have cut him to pieces, but his father caught him as he fell, in
  his left hand.
  
  "So that's it, is it, lazy bones! always going to read your damned
  books are you, when you're keeping watch on the saw? You read them in
  the evening if you want to, when you go to play the fool at the cure's,
  that's the proper time."
  
  Although stunned by the force of the blow and bleeding profusely,
  Julien went back to his official post by the side of the saw. He had
  tears in his eyes, less by reason of the physical pain than on account
  of the loss of his beloved book.
  
  "Get down, you beast, when I am talking to you," the noise of the
  machinery prevented Julien from hearing this order. His father, who had
  gone down did not wish to give himself the trouble of climbing up on to
  the machinery again, and went to fetch a long fork used for bringing
  down nuts, with which he struck him on the shoulder. Julien had
  scarcely reached the ground, when old Sorel chased him roughly in front
  of him and pushed him roughly towards the house. "God knows what he is
  going to do with me," said the young man to himself. As he passed, he
  looked sorrowfully into the stream into which his book had fallen, it
  was the one that he held dearest of all, the _Memorial of St. Helena_.
  
  He had purple cheeks and downcast eyes. He was a young man of eighteen
  to nineteen years old, and of puny appearance, with irregular but
  delicate features, and an aquiline nose. The big black eyes which
  betokened in their tranquil moments a temperament at once fiery and
  reflective were at the present moment animated by an expression of
  the most ferocious hate. Dark chestnut hair, which came low down over
  his brow, made his forehead appear small and gave him a sinister look
  during his angry moods. It is doubtful if any face out of all the
  innumerable varieties of the human physiognomy was ever distinguished
  by a more arresting individuality.
  
  A supple well-knit figure, indicated agility rather than strength. His
  air of extreme pensiveness and his great pallor had given his father
  the idea that he would not live, or that if he did, it would only be to
  be a burden to his family. The butt of the whole house, he hated his
  brothers and his father. He was regularly beaten in the Sunday sports
  in the public square.
  
  A little less than a year ago his pretty face had begun to win him some
  sympathy among the young girls. Universally despised as a weakling,
  Julien had adored that old Surgeon-Major, who had one day dared to talk
  to the mayor on the subject of the plane trees.
  
  This Surgeon had sometimes paid Father Sorel for taking his son for
  a day, and had taught him Latin and History, that is to say the 1796
  Campaign in Italy which was all the history he knew. When he died, he
  had bequeathed his Cross of the Legion of Honour, his arrears of half
  pay, and thirty or forty volumes, of which the most precious had just
  fallen into the public stream, which had been diverted owing to the
  influence of M. the Mayor.
  
  Scarcely had he entered the house, when Julien felt his shoulder
  gripped by his father's powerful hand; he trembled, expecting some
  blows.
  
  "Answer me without lying," cried the harsh voice of the old peasant in
  his ears, while his hand turned him round and round, like a child's
  hand turns round a lead soldier. The big black eyes of Julien filled
  with tears, and were confronted by the small grey eyes of the old
  carpenter, who looked as if he meant to read to the very bottom of his
  soul.
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Part 1, Chapter 4
target: Monsieur de Renal approaches Mr. Sorel about getting his son to work in the Renal house as a tutor. Sorel is happy about the news, but he doesn't show it because he's a stone cold bargainer and he wants to take Renal for as much money as he can. When he gets back to the sawmill, Monsieur Sorel see his son Julien reading a book instead of doing his job and looking after the machinery. He whaps his son on the head and calls him lazy. We can tell that Mr. Sorel is about to tell his son about the arrangements with the mayor, but Julien trembles as if his dad is going to kill him for some reason.