Stendhal's cynicism

Getting to the point where you have to say, Really?, is there no character in Stendahl's The Red and the Black who has an iota of morality, responsibility, altruism, or even a momentary thought about values or other people or anything but his or her own advancement in the world? Stendahl is the most cynical or writers, more so than the materialistic Balzac. French intellectuals scoff at the sentimentality of 19th-century British writers - the sentimentality of Dickens, the earnestness of Eliot, the fatalism of Hardy, the gentle narrative asides of Trollope, to name a few so-called faulted writers - but the hard-heartedness and relentless opportunism of Stendahl tops, or bottoms, them all. Why am I reading this novel? I know that the novel comes to a dramatic conclusion and that, at the end, Julien Sorel, the arriviste, reflects on the course of his life, and I'm far enough in that I'll keep reading to see (or to recall - I have read R&B before, many years ago, though little remains in my conscious memory of that first reading) how Stendahl brings the novel around. But at this point, 2/3 of the way through this long novel, I could almost quit: Julien has won the heart, or at least the attention, of the beautiful daughter, Mlle de la Mole, of his employer - she's really interested in him even though, or perhaps because, he is not of her social class, and he sees in her sudden attentions an opportunity continue his social ascension - even though he recognizes her superficiality and egotism and even compares her, unfavorbly, with the honesty and openness of the woman he had an affair with (Mm de Renal) back in the provinces. No good for either can come of this.