The Red and the Black [antikvár]

THE RED AND THE BLACK CHAPTER ONE A SMALL TOWN Put thousands together Less bad, But the cage less gay. Hobbes. Y I ^HE small town of Verrieres may be regarded as one I of the most attractive in the Franche-Comté. Its white houses with their high pitched roofs of red tiles are spread over the slope of a hill, the slightest con-tours of which are indicated by clumps of sturdy chestnuts. The Doubs runs some hundreds of feet below its fortifica' tions, built in times past by the Spaniards, and now in ruins. Verrieres is sheltered on the north by a high mountaini a spur of the Jura. The jagged peaks of the Vena put on a mantle of snow in the first cold days of October. A torrent which comes tearing down from the mountain passes through Verrieres before emptying its waters into the Doubs, and supplies power to a great number of sawmills; this is an extremely simple industry, and procures a certain degree of comfort for the majority of the inhabitants, who are of the peasant rather than of the burgess class. It is not, however, the sawmills that have made this little town rich. It is to the manufacture of printed calicoes, known as Mulhouse stuffs, that it owes the gen- [9]