the priesthood.  By unexpected good luck, his Latin earned him an appointment as tutor to the children of M. de Renal, the pompous and purse-proud Mayor of Verrieres.  Julien is haunted by his peculiar notions of duties which he owes it to himself to perform as steps towards his worldly advancement; for circumstances have made him a consummate hypocrite.  One of these duties is to make love to Mme. de Renal:  “Why should he not be loved as Bonaparte, while still poor, had been loved by the brilliant Mme. de Beauharnais?” His pursuit of the Mayor’s gentle and inexperienced wife proves only too successful, but at last reaches the ears of the Abbe Chelan, whose influence compels Julien to leave Verrieres and go to the Seminary at Besancon, to finish his theological studies.  His stay at the Seminary was full of disappointment, for “it was in vain that he made himself small and insignificant, he could not please:  he was too different.”  At last he has a chance to go to Paris, as secretary to the influential Marquis de La Mole, who interests himself in Julien and endeavors to advance him socially.  The Marquis has a daughter, Mathilde, a female counterpart of Stendhal’s heroes; with exalted ideas of duty, and a profound reverence for Marguerite of Navarre, who dared to ask the executioner for the head of her lover, Boniface de La Mole, executed April 30th, 1574.  Mathilde always assumed mourning on April 30th.  “I know of nothing,” she declared, “except condemnation to death, which distinguishes a man:  it is the only thing which cannot be bought.”  Julien soon conceives it his duty to win Mathilde’s affections, and the love passages which ensue between these two “esprits superieurs” are singular in the extreme:  they arrive at love only through a complicated intellectual process, in which the question of duty, either to themselves or to each other, is always paramount.  At last it becomes necessary to confess their affection to the Marquis, who is naturally furious.  “For the first time in his life this nobleman forgot his manners:  he overwhelmed him with atrocious insults, worthy of a cab-driver.  Perhaps the novelty of these oaths was a distraction.”  What hurts him most is that Mathilde will be plain Mme. Sorel and not a duchess.  But at this juncture the father receives a letter from Mme. de Renal, telling of her relations with Julien, and accusing him of having deliberately won Mathilde in order to possess her wealth.  Such baseness the Marquis cannot pardon, and at any cost he forbids the marriage.  Julien returns immediately to Verrieres, and finding Mme. de Renal in church, deliberately shoots her.  She ultimately recovers from her wound, but Julien is nevertheless condemned and guillotined.  Mme. de Renal dies of remorse, while Mathilde, emulating Marguerite de Navarre, buries Julien’s head with her own hands.