10 Euros Julien Sorel

Part of the Monnaie de Paris "Les Héros Littéraires" series, this piece honors Stendhal's protagonist from Le Rouge et le Noir (1830), a novel so politically charged at publication that Stendhal reportedly wrote it in 52 days to outrun censorship concerns under the Restoration. Julien Sorel's trajectory — provincial ambition colliding with Bourbon-era class rigidity — made the character a touchstone of 19th-century French social criticism.

The series paired literary figures with denominations scaled to collector rather than circulation use, issued under the broader French commemorative program that accelerated sharply after 2010.