The Pink and the Green was written in 1837, after Stendhal had abandoned Lucien Leuwen in 1834 and before completing The Charterhouse of Parma the following year.
The novel began as a reworking of a story entitled "Mina de Vanghel", which Stendhal had written immediately after The Red and the Black.
[3] The story concerns Mina Wanghen, an 18-year-old rich Prussian heiress in the 1830s with a romantic spirit and inclinations to radical political thought.
When she relocates to Paris, Abbé Miossince, a worldly priest, becomes determined to convert her to Roman Catholicism and make a match between her and the Duke of Montenotte.
The Duke, the son of a Napoleonic general, has a similar distaste for money, and when he hears about Mina from the Abbé, he goes off to his club and settles down with a map of Prussia.