Roger Gard

After Napoleon's defeat, the French aristocracy tried to reassert its power in a government known as the Restoration. Venal and corrupt, the Restoration fell in 1830. Later that year, Stendhal published his scathing satire of Restoration society, The Red and the Black . Its title refers to the military and the clergy, the two career paths open to young men of intelligence and ambition but no social standing. Stendha's hero, Julien Sorel, is such a...