Book One, Chapter I: Milan in 1796

On the 15th of May 1796, General Bonaparte made his entry into Milan at the head of that young army which had just crossed the bridge of Lodi and taught the world that after so many centuries Caesar and Alexander had a successor. The miracles of daring and genius of which Italy was a witness in a few months awoke a sleeping people. Only a week before the arrival of the French, the Milanese still regarded them as a mere rabble of brigands, accustomed to run away always before the troops of His Imperial and Royal Majesty: at least that was what was repeated to them three times a week by a little newssheet no larger than a hand, and printed on dirty paper.

In the Middle Ages, the Lombards of the republics had shown a valour equal to that of the French, and had deserved to see their towns razed to the ground by the German emperors. Since they had become faithful subjects, their great business was the printing of sonnets on little handkerchiefs of pink taffeta whenever a young girl of some rich or noble family married. Two or three years after this great event in her life, the girl took a cavaliere servente; sometimes the name of the cicisbeo chosen by the husband's family occupied an honourable place in the marriage contract. It was a long way from these effeminate manners to the profound emotions caused by the unexpected arrival of the French army.

Soon there sprang up new and passionate manners. A whole people discovered, on the 15th of May 1796, that everything it had respected until then was supremely ridiculous, and sometimes odious. The departure of the last Austrian regiment marked the fall of the old ideas: to risk one's life became the fashion. People saw that to be happy after centuries of insipid sensations, one must love one's country with a real love, and seek out heroic actions. They had been plunged into a black night by the jealous despotism of Charles V and Philip II; they overturned their statues, and suddenly found themselves flooded with light.

The French soldiers laughed and sang from morning till night; they were all under twenty-five, and their commander-in-chief, who was twenty-seven, passed for the oldest man in his army. This gaiety, this youth, this recklessness, made an amusing answer to the furious preachings of the monks, who for six months had been announcing from the pulpit that the French were monsters, obliged, on pain of death, to burn everything and cut off everyone's head.

Among them was a lieutenant named Robert, who was billeted in the palace of the Marchese del Dongo. This officer, a rather dashing young man, possessed, on the day of his billeting, nothing more than a single six-franc crown. He had shoes with no soles, made from the upper leather of a soldier's shoes picked up on the field of battle; and he was terribly afraid of being invited to dinner by the marchesa, a young and beautiful woman, and of having to appear before her in that state. But she sent for him; she received him at her table with her young sister-in-law, Gina, a girl of thirteen; and the lieutenant, delighted, forgot his shoes, and was charming. He stayed a long time in the palace.

Stendhal lets it be understood, without ever saying so, that this French lieutenant was the father of the hero of the story.

The Marchese del Dongo, meanwhile, had fled before the French to his castle of Grianta, on Lake Como. He was a man of narrow, mean and cold spirit, a great noble, chamberlain to the Emperor of Austria, who hated the Revolution and all new ideas with a fearful hatred, and who counted his money by night. When the Austrians came back in 1799, after the French defeats, he returned to Milan, and exulted; and when the French returned after Marengo, he fled again.

His second son, Fabrizio Valserra, Marchesino del Dongo, was born in 1798. He was handsome, gay, and very much loved by his mother and by his young aunt Gina. His elder brother, Ascanio, was the image of his father.

Gina del Dongo, at sixteen, married, against the wishes of her brother, the Count Pietranera, a poor nobleman, handsome, brave, an officer in the army of Napoleon's kingdom of Italy. The marchese never forgave her. She lived in Milan, at the height of the brilliant society of the kingdom of Italy, beautiful, witty, generous, and adored by her husband; and she adored her little nephew, whom she spoiled, and who was much more her child than his own mother's.