Remy Parrottin

Remy Parrottin is a Bouville-born physician and professor whose reputation combines scientific eminence, private wealth, charitable giving, and a remarkable talent for influencing young men. Antoine Roquentin encounters his portrait among Bouville’s civic worthies and recognizes in the celebrated “Great Master” not simply a benevolent scholar but a persuasive guide who can make a challenge to the established order end in renewed loyalty to it.

Identity and Reputation

Parrottin’s portrait identifies him as born in Bouville in 1849 and as a professor at the Ecole de Medecine in Paris. He appears as a portly man in his fifties, painted with loving attention to his finely formed ears and long, nervous hands. Though Roquentin has passed the canvas before without noticing it, he stops to read the inscription and recognizes a name he has previously heard praised by Doctor Wakefield.

Wakefield recalls studying under Parrottin during the winter of 1904, when he spent two years in Paris studying obstetrics. He calls Parrottin the one great man he had met: a leader capable of electrifying his students and carrying them wherever he chose. Wakefield’s admiration includes his generosity as well as his authority. Parrottin possessed an immense fortune and gave a substantial part of it to help poor students.

In person, Parrottin’s easy smile and relaxed posture make him seem approachable rather than imposing. His plump body rests in a large leather armchair, and his manner puts visitors at ease; without the intelligence in his expression, Roquentin thinks, he might pass for an ordinary man. This modest appearance is part of the contrast between the approachable individual and the formidable influence attributed to him.

Method of Influence

Parrottin’s prestige, Roquentin infers, comes from the impression that he understands everything and can be told anything. His conversational style appears to move beyond conventional political limits: he claims to go further than the Socialists, drawing listeners toward doubts about family, country, private property, sacred values, and even the bourgeois elite’s right to command. The movement does not end in those doubts. At the farthest point of apparent radicalism, Parrottin turns the argument around, restoring the old order on what he presents as sound reason and leaving the Socialists behind, calling in vain for the group to wait.

Wakefield describes this process through Parrottin’s own smiling phrase, “to deliver souls.” The Master surrounds himself with young men of good family studying medicine and frequently invites them to lunch. Afterward, in the smoking-room, he offers cigars to students who have only just begun smoking and addresses them as adults. Reclining on a divan among eager listeners, he recalls experiences and tells stories, drawing a pointed moral from each.

Parrottin pays particular attention to a young man who appears headstrong. He encourages him to speak, listens carefully, and gives him ideas to consider. The young man may be full of generous convictions, angered by his parents’ hostility, and tired of thinking alone; when he privately confides his indignation and hopes, Parrottin answers, “I understand you. I understood you from the first day.” The avowal of understanding becomes the beginning of a guided reversal: Parrottin leads him farther along the line of thought, until the young man can follow only with difficulty.

After several such conversations, Wakefield says, the rebel changes. He comes to recognize his ties to his family and surroundings and to accept what Parrottin presents as the elite’s admirable role. He ends enlightened and repentant, having returned to the values he had challenged. Wakefield concludes that Parrottin “cured more souls” than he had cured bodies. The account makes the Master’s influence resemble both therapy and social restoration: the young man’s discontent is heard, then redirected until the existing hierarchy again appears reasonable.

Encounter with Roquentin

Roquentin’s meeting with Parrottin is brief but charged by the reputation he has already acquired through Wakefield’s testimony. Before the portrait, the remembered stories make the scholar’s smile seem to contain extraordinary intelligence and affability. When Parrottin turns that smile toward Roquentin, he hesitates, tries to understand Roquentin’s position, and attempts gently to lead him back “to the fold.” The language of the encounter places Roquentin in the position of a potential dissenter whom the Master might reclaim.

Roquentin does not accept that role. He says to himself that he is not afraid of Parrottin and is no lamb. Instead of following the invitation to disclose himself and be guided, he observes the Master’s unwrinkled forehead, small belly, and hand resting flat on his knee. He returns the smile and leaves. The departure interrupts the sequence Wakefield has described: Parrottin may attempt to draw a visitor into his orbit, but Roquentin declines to become one of his disciples.

Narrative Role and Significance

Parrottin is presented through several layers of reputation: the painted label establishes his public identity, Wakefield’s recollection supplies the admiring portrait of a leader and healer, and Roquentin’s own observations complicate that admiration. The contrast does not erase the evidence of Parrottin’s generosity or personal warmth. Rather, it places those qualities beside the political destination of his mentorship: youthful resistance is welcomed and taken seriously, but ultimately redirected toward renewed acceptance of family bonds and elite authority.

His influence therefore rests on a persuasive combination of listening and reversal. He lets the student travel far enough to feel that inherited values have been tested, then makes their restoration seem like the result of independent understanding. Roquentin’s quiet exit refuses the script of confession, conversion, and return. In that refusal, Parrottin’s reputation as a man who understands everyone meets a limit: his attempt to guide Roquentin back to the fold does not become a successful conversion.