Part One, I: The Lancer

Lucien Leuwen had been expelled from the École Polytechnique for having gone for a walk, inappropriately, on a day when all the students were confined to quarters: the day of one of those riots in June 1832 or April 1834. He was suspected of republican opinions.

Stendhal leaves the date of the riot vague; both were insurrections of the republicans against Louis-Philippe's government.

He was the only son of M. François Leuwen, one of the richest bankers of Paris — a man of sixty-five, witty, cynical, epicurean, who loved good dinners and the opera, despised the government he lent money to, and adored his son with an amused, ironical tenderness. His mother, Madame Leuwen, was a gentle, intelligent woman, whose salon was frequented by men of wit.

Lucien was young, handsome, rich, kind, and idle; he despised idleness, and longed to be useful, without knowing how. He had a vague republican idealism, and a vague sense of shame at his father's money.

"You need a profession," said his father. "Would you like to be a sub-lieutenant of lancers?" Lucien accepted — partly from boredom, partly to prove to himself that he was good for something. His father bought him a commission, a uniform, and horses; and Lucien left Paris to join the 27th Lancers in garrison at Nancy, in Lorraine.

Stendhal mocks the July Monarchy's army: an army without wars, whose only task is to keep order against the workers.

He arrived at Nancy, a grey, dull, provincial town, dominated by its old royalist nobility, who despised the new regime and its officers, and by its bourgeoisie, which was republican at heart. The lieutenant-colonel was a coward and a sycophant; the officers spied on one another. Lucien was lonely.

On his first day in town, riding through a street at the head of a squad, his horse slipped and threw him, in front of a house whose windows had green shutters. As he picked himself up, mortified, he caught sight, at one of the windows, of a young woman with magnificent blond hair, who was looking down at him with a disdainful air. He felt himself ridiculous.

This fall in front of the green shutters is the beginning of Lucien's love.

She was Madame Bathilde de Chasteller, a young widow of great fortune and of the best legitimist family in Nancy, whose father, the Marquis de Pontlevé, was one of the most obstinate of the old royalists. She was reputed to be cold, proud and inaccessible.

Nancy Society

Lucien, to see her, resolved to enter the royalist society of Nancy, which shut its doors to officers of Louis-Philippe. He found a guide: Dr. Du Poirier, a clever, coarse, intriguing doctor, the political brain of the legitimist party in the town, who saw in this rich young man a possible convert. Du Poirier introduced him into the salons of the old nobility: the Serpierre family, with its many daughters, among them the tall, kind, plain Théodelinde, who became Lucien's friend; the lively and flirtatious Madame d'Hocquincourt; and others. Lucien, who despised their opinions, learned to be agreeable, to talk to old ladies, to be a little hypocritical. He even went to church.

Stendhal's portrait of the provincial legitimists — their prejudices, their boredom, their intrigues — is one of the great satires of the novel.