Julien Sorel, a carpenter's son in a small town in the Franche-Comté, worships Napoleon, but under the restored Bourbons the army offers a poor boy nothing, so he seeks advancement through the Church. Tutor in the mayor's house and lover of the mayor's wife, then a seminarian in Besançon and secretary to a marquis in Paris, he climbs by calculation, though his feelings keep upsetting his plans.