What It Is
The book of the cult of Napoleon Bonaparte that Julien Sorel keeps as the object he prizes most in the world, and one of the three works for which, according to the narrator, he would let himself be killed. It was the old chief surgeon, a veteran of Napoleon's campaigns in Italy, who left Julien the books of his education.
Where It Appears
In Chapter 4 of Book I, the father's blow knocks the book into the stream, as Julien reads on top of a beam at the sawmill, and the narrator names the book in the look Julien still casts at the water.
he looked sadly at the stream where the book had fallen; of all of them it was the one he prized most, the Memorial of Saint Helena.
Chapter V looks back to explain Julien's education: the old chief surgeon of the Legion of Honor, a veteran of Napoleon's campaigns in Italy, was his only master of affection, and he left him the books; the three in which Julien believes are Rousseau's Confessions, the bulletins of the Grande Armée and the Memorial of Saint Helena ("Koran" here means his scripture):
The collection of Grande Armée bulletins and the Memorial of Saint Helena completed his Koran. He would let himself be killed for these three works. He had never believed in any other.
In Chapter 9 of Book I, the loyalty the book sustains has to be kept hidden: Julien burns a portrait of Napoleon kept in his mattress.
Ch. IX. Julien burning the portrait of Napoleon hidden in the mattress:
All my reputation destroyed, annihilated in a second!, Julien thought as he watched the box burn, and my reputation is my only good, it is for it alone that I live... And yet, what a life, my God!
In Chapter 22 of Book II, the book supplies the epigraph of that chapter, the one about the conspiratorial meeting Julien attends as a secretary, and the phrase chosen is about Paris.
In Paris, one gains consideration by one's carriage, not by one's virtue.
In Chapter 31 of Book II, after seeing Mathilde de La Mole in tears in the opera box, which he compares to a great battle won in part, Julien opens another book from Saint Helena, the Memoirs dictated by Napoleon, and forces himself to read it for two hours while his mind does not follow his eyes; soon after, he flings it away and formulates the plan to frighten her.
With a passionate gesture he opened Napoleon's Memoirs of Saint Helena, and for two long hours forced himself to read them; only his eyes read, he cared little, he forced himself.
TO FRIGHTEN HER, he suddenly exclaimed, flinging the book away. The enemy will obey me only in proportion as I frighten him, so he will not dare to despise me.
What It Means
The beginning of the book is Julien's education between the sawmill and the Memorial of Saint Helena. The book appears at the sawmill and in an epigraph of Book II; in Chapter XXXI, Julien reads another book from Saint Helena, the Memoirs dictated by Napoleon.
The Napoleon of the book that falls into the stream, Julien's most precious possession, in Chapter XXXI, in the Memoirs dictated at Saint Helena, no longer holds his head, only his eyes, and the book is flung away at the very moment he swaps the model of Napoleon for the tactic of frightening a woman. The ambition born from reading the Memorial continues, but it no longer needs it.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Education and training, Ambition.
- Characters: Julien Sorel, Father Sorel.
- Neighboring symbol: the uniform and the cassock.