CHAPTER XXIV

A CAPITAL

        What a noise, what busy people! What ideas for the
        future in a brain of twenty! What distraction offered by
        love.--_Barnave_.

Finally he saw some black walls near a distant mountain. It was the
citadel of Besancon. "How different it would be for me," he said
with a sigh, "if I were arriving at this noble military town to be
sub-lieutenant in one of the regiments entrusted with its defence."
Besancon is not only one of the prettiest towns in France, it abounds
in people of spirit and brains. But Julien was only a little peasant,
and had no means of approaching distinguished people.

He had taken a civilian suit at Fouque's, and it was in this dress that
he passed the drawbridge. Steeped as he was in the history of the siege
of 1674, he wished to see the ramparts of the citadel before shutting
himself up in the seminary. He was within an ace two or three times
of getting himself arrested by the sentinel. He was penetrating into
places which military genius forbids the public to enter, in order to
sell twelve or fifteen francs worth of corn every year.

The height of the walls, the depth of the ditches, the terrible aspect
of the cannons had been engrossing him for several hours when he passed
before the great cafe on the boulevard. He was motionless with wonder;
it was in vain that he read the word _cafe_, written in big characters
above the two immense doors. He could not believe his eyes. He made an
effort to overcome his timidity. He dared to enter, and found himself
in a hall twenty or thirty yards long, and with a ceiling at least
twenty feet high. To-day, everything had a fascination for him.

Two games of billiards were in progress. The waiters were crying out
the scores. The players ran round the tables encumbered by spectators.
Clouds of tobacco smoke came from everybody's mouth, and enveloped them
in a blue haze. The high stature of these men, their rounded shoulders,
their heavy gait, their enormous whiskers, the long tailed coats which
covered them, everything combined to attract Julien's attention. These
noble children of the antique Bisontium only spoke at the top of their
voice. They gave themselves terrible martial airs. Julien stood still
and admired them. He kept thinking of the immensity and magnificence
of a great capital like Besancon. He felt absolutely devoid of the
requisite courage to ask one of those haughty looking gentlemen, who
were crying out the billiard scores, for a cup of coffee.

But the young lady at the bar had noticed the charming face of this
young civilian from the country, who had stopped three feet from
the stove with his little parcel under his arm, and was looking at
the fine white plaster bust of the king. This young lady, a big
_Franc-comtoise_, very well made, and dressed with the elegance
suitable to the prestige of the cafe, had already said two or three
times in a little voice not intended to be heard by any one except
Julien, "Monsieur, Monsieur." Julien's eyes encountered big blue eyes
full of tenderness, and saw that he was the person who was being spoken
to.

He sharply approached the bar and the pretty girl, as though he had
been marching towards the enemy. In this great manoeuvre the parcel fell.

What pity will not our provincial inspire in the young lycee scholars
of Paris, who, at the early age of fifteen, know already how to enter
a cafe with so distinguished an air? But these children who have such
style at fifteen turn commonplace at eighteen. The impassioned timidity
which is met with in the provinces, sometimes manages to master its own
nervousness, and thus trains the will. "I must tell her the truth,"
thought Julien, who was becoming courageous by dint of conquering his
timidity as he approached this pretty girl, who deigned to address him.

"Madame, this is the first time in my life that I have come to
Besancon. I should like to have some bread and a cup of coffee in
return for payment."

The young lady smiled a little, and then blushed. She feared the ironic
attention and the jests of the billiard players might be turned against
this pretty young man. He would be frightened and would not appear
there again.

"Sit here near me," she said to him, showing him a marble table almost
completely hidden by the enormous mahogany counter which extended into
the hall.

The young lady leant over the counter, and had thus an opportunity of
displaying a superb figure. Julien noticed it. All his ideas changed.
The pretty young lady had just placed before him a cup, some sugar, and
a little roll. She hesitated to call a waiter for the coffee, as she
realised that his arrival would put an end to her _tete-a-tete_ with
Julien.

Julien was pensively comparing this blonde and merry beauty with
certain memories which would often thrill him. The thought of the
passion of which he had been the object, nearly freed him from all
his timidity. The pretty young woman had only one moment to save the
situation. She read it in Julien's looks.

"This pipe smoke makes you cough; come and have breakfast to-morrow
before eight o'clock in the morning. I am practically alone then."

"What is your name?" said Julien, with the caressing smile of happy
timidity.

"Amanda Binet."

"Will you allow me to send you within an hour's time a little parcel
about as big as this?"

The beautiful Amanda reflected a little.

"I am watched. What you ask may compromise me. All the same, I will
write my address on a card, which you will put on your parcel. Send it
boldly to me."

"My name is Julien Sorel," said the young man. "I have neither
relatives nor acquaintances at Besancon."

"Ah, I understand," she said joyfully. "You come to study law."

"Alas, no," answered Julien, "I am being sent to the Seminary."

The most complete discouragement damped Amanda's features. She called
a waiter. She had courage now. The waiter poured out some coffee for
Julien without looking at him.

Amanda was receiving money at the counter. Julien was proud of having
dared to speak: a dispute was going on at one of the billiard tables.
The cries and the protests of the players resounded over the immense
hall, and made a din which astonished Julien. Amanda was dreamy, and
kept her eyes lowered.

"If you like, Mademoiselle," he said to her suddenly with assurance, "I
will say that I am your cousin."

This little air of authority pleased Amanda. "He's not a mere nobody,"
she thought. She spoke to him very quickly, without looking at him,
because her eye was occupied in seeing if anybody was coming near the
counter.

"I come from Genlis, near Dijon. Say that you are also from Genlis and
are my mother's cousin."

"I shall not fail to do so."

"All the gentlemen who go to the Seminary pass here before the cafe
every Thursday in the summer at five o'clock."

"If you think of me when I am passing, have a bunch of violets in your
hand."

Amanda looked at him with an astonished air. This look changed Julien's
courage into audacity. Nevertheless, he reddened considerably, as he
said to her. "I feel that I love you with the most violent love."

"Speak in lower tones," she said to him with a frightened air.

Julien was trying to recollect phrases out of a volume of the _Nouvelle
Heloise_ which he had found at Vergy. His memory served him in good
stead. For ten minutes he recited the _Nouvelle Heloise_ to the
delighted Mademoiselle Amanda. He was happy on the strength of his own
bravery, when suddenly the beautiful Franc-contoise assumed an icy
air. One of her lovers had appeared at the cafe door. He approached
the bar, whistling, and swaggering his shoulders. He looked at Julien.
The latter's imagination, which always indulged in extremes, suddenly
brimmed over with ideas of a duel. He paled greatly, put down his
cup, assumed an assured demeanour, and considered his rival very
attentively. As this rival lowered his head, while he familiarly poured
out on the counter a glass of brandy for himself, Amanda ordered Julien
with a look to lower his eyes. He obeyed, and for two minutes kept
motionless in his place, pale, resolute, and only thinking of what was
going to happen. He was truly happy at this moment. The rival had been
astonished by Julien's eyes. Gulping down his glass of brandy, he said
a few words to Amanda, placed his two hands in the pockets of his big
tail coat, and approached the billiard table, whistling, and looking at
Julien. The latter got up transported with rage, but he did not know
what to do in order to be offensive. He put down his little parcel, and
walked towards the billiard table with all the swagger he could muster.

It was in vain that prudence said to him, "but your ecclesiastical
career will be ruined by a duel immediately on top of your arrival at
Besancon."

"What does it matter. It shall never be said that I let an insolent
fellow go scot free."

Amanda saw his courage. It contrasted prettily with the simplicity of
his manners. She instantly preferred him to the big young man with the
tail coat. She got up, and while appearing to be following with her eye
somebody who was passing in the street, she went and quickly placed
herself between him and the billiard table.

"Take care not to look askance at that gentleman. He is my
brother-in-law."

"What does it matter? He looked at me."

"Do you want to make me unhappy? No doubt he looked at you, why it may
be he is going to speak to you. I told him that you were a relative of
my mother, and that you had arrived from Genlis. He is a Franc-contois,
and has never gone beyond Doleon the Burgundy Road, so say what you
like and fear nothing."

Julien was still hesitating. Her barmaid's imagination furnished her
with an abundance of lies, and she quickly added.

"No doubt he looked at you, but it was at a moment when he was asking
me who you were. He is a man who is boorish with everyone. He did not
mean to insult you."

Julien's eye followed the pretended brother-in-law. He saw him buy a
ticket for the pool, which they were playing at the further of the
two billiard tables. Julien heard his loud voice shouting out in a
threatening tone, "My turn to play."

He passed sharply before Madame Amanda, and took a step towards the
billiard table. Amanda seized him by the arm.

"Come and pay me first," she said to him.

"That is right," thought Julien. "She is frightened that I shall leave
without paying." Amanda was as agitated as he was, and very red. She
gave him the change as slowly as she could, while she repeated to him,
in a low voice,

"Leave the cafe this instant, or I shall love you no more, and yet I do
love you very much."

Julien did go out, but slowly. "Am I not in duty bound," he repeated
to himself, "to go and stare at that coarse person in my turn?" This
uncertainty kept him on the boulevard in the front of the cafe for an
hour; he kept looking if his man was coming out. He did not come out,
and Julien went away.

He had only been at Besancon some hours, and already he had overcome
one pang of remorse. The old surgeon-major had formerly given him some
fencing lessons, in spite of his gout. That was all the science which
Julien could enlist in the service of his anger. But this embarrassment
would have been nothing if he had only known how to vent his temper
otherwise than by the giving of a blow, for if it had come to a matter
of fisticuffs, his enormous rival would have beaten him and then
cleared out.

"There is not much difference between a seminary and a prison," said
Julien to himself, "for a poor devil like me, without protectors and
without money. I must leave my civilian clothes in some inn, where I
can put my black suit on again. If I ever manage to get out of the
seminary for a few hours, I shall be able to see Mdlle. Amanda again in
my lay clothes." This reasoning was all very fine. Though Julien passed
in front of all the inns, he did not dare to enter a single one.

Finally, as he was passing again before the Hotel des Ambassadeurs, his
anxious eyes encountered those of a big woman, still fairly young, with
a high colour, and a gay and happy air. He approached her and told his
story.

"Certainly, my pretty little abbe," said the hostess of the
Ambassadeurs to him, "I will keep your lay clothes for you, and I will
even have them regularly brushed. In weather like this, it is not good
to leave a suit of cloth without touching it." She took a key, and
conducted him herself to a room, and advised him to make out a note of
what he was leaving.

"Good heavens. How well you look like that, M. the abbe Sorel," said
the big woman to him when he came down to the kitchen. I will go and
get a good dinner served up to you, and she added in a low voice, "It
will only cost twenty sous instead of the fifty which everybody else
pays, for one must really take care of your little purse strings."

"I have ten louis," Julien replied with certain pride.

"Oh, great heavens," answered the good hostess in alarm. "Don't talk
so loud, there are quite a lot of bad characters in Besancon. They'll
steal all that from you in less than no time, and above all, never go
into the cafe s, they are filled with bad characters."

"Indeed," said Julien, to whom those words gave food for thought.

"Don't go anywhere else, except to my place. I will make coffee for
you. Remember that you will always find a friend here, and a good
dinner for twenty sous. So now you understand, I hope. Go and sit down
at table, I will serve you myself."

"I shan't be able to eat," said Julien to her. "I am too upset. I am
going to enter the seminary, as I leave you." The good woman, would not
allow him to leave before she had filled his pockets with provisions.
Finally Julien took his road towards the terrible place. The hostess
was standing at the threshold, and showed him the way.

CHAPTER XXV

THE SEMINARY

        Three hundred and thirty-six dinners at eighty-five
        centimes. Three hundred and thirty-six suppers at fifty
        centimes. Chocolate to those who are entitled to it. How
        much profit can be made on the contract?--_Valenod of
        Besancon_.

He saw in the distance the iron gilt cross on the door. He approached
slowly. His legs seemed to give way beneath him. "So here is this hell
upon earth which I shall be unable to leave."

Finally he made up his mind to ring. The noise of the bell reverberated
as though through a solitude. At the end of ten minutes a pale man,
clothed in black, came and opened the door. Julien looked at him, and
immediately lowered his eyes. This porter had a singular physiognomy.
The green projecting pupils of his eyes were as round as those of a
cat. The straight lines of his eyebrows betokened the impossibility of
any sympathy. His thin lips came round in a semicircle over projecting
teeth. None the less, his physiognomy did not so much betoken crime
as rather that perfect callousness which is so much more terrifying
to the young. The one sentiment which Julien's rapid gaze surmised in
this long and devout face was a profound contempt for every topic of
conversation which did not deal with things celestial. Julien raised
his eyes with an effort, and in a voice rendered quavering by the
beating of his heart explained that he desired to speak to M. Pirard,
the director of the Seminary. Without saying a word the man in black
signed to him to follow. They ascended two stories by a large staircase
with a wooden rail, whose warped stairs inclined to the side opposite
the wall, and seemed on the point of falling. A little door with a
big cemetery cross of white wood painted black at the top was opened
with difficulty, and the porter made him enter a dark low room, whose
whitewashed walls were decorated with two big pictures blackened by
age. In this room Julien was left alone. He was overwhelmed. His heart
was beating violently. He would have been happy to have ventured to
cry. A silence of death reigned over the whole house.

At the end of a quarter of an hour, which seemed a whole day to him,
the sinister looking porter reappeared on the threshold of a door at
the other end of the room, and without vouchsafing a word, signed to
him to advance. He entered into a room even larger than the first,
and very badly lighted. The walls also were whitened, but there was
no furniture. Only in a corner near the door Julien saw as he passed
a white wooden bed, two straw chairs, and a little pinewood armchair
without any cushions. He perceived at the other end of the room, near a
small window with yellow panes decorated with badly kept flower vases,
a man seated at a table, and covered with a dilapidated cassock. He
appeared to be in a temper, and took one after the other a number of
little squares of paper, which he arranged on his table after he had
written some words on them. He did not notice Julien's presence. The
latter did not move, but kept standing near the centre of the room in
the place where the porter, who had gone out and shut the door, had
left him.

Ten minutes passed in this way: the badly dressed man kept on writing
all the time. Julien's emotion and terror were so great that he thought
he was on the point of falling. A philosopher would have said, possibly
wrongly, "It is a violent impression made by ugliness on a soul
intended by nature to love the beautiful."

The man who was writing lifted up his head. Julien only perceived it
after a moment had passed, and even after seeing it, he still remained
motionless, as though struck dead by the terrible look of which he
was the victim. Julien's troubled eyes just managed to make out a
long face, all covered with red blotches except the forehead, which
manifested a mortal pallor. Two little black eyes, calculated to
terrify the most courageous, shone between these red cheeks and that
white forehead. The vast area of his forehead was bounded by thick,
flat, jet black hair.

"Will you come near, yes or no?" said the man at last, impatiently.

Julien advanced with an uneasy step, and at last, paler than he had
ever been in his life and on the point of falling, stopped three paces
from the little white wooden table which was covered with the squares
of paper.

"Nearer," said the man.

Julien advanced still further, holding out his hand, as though trying
to lean on something.

"Your name?"

"Julien Sorel."

"You are certainly very late," said the man to him, as he rivetted
again on him that terrible gaze.

Julien could not endure this look. Holding out his hand as though to
support himself, he fell all his length along the floor.

The man rang. Julien had only lost the use of his eyes and the power of
movement. He heard steps approaching.

He was lifted up and placed on the little armchair of white wood. He
heard the terrible man saying to the porter,

"He has had an epileptic fit apparently, and this is the finishing
touch."

When Julien was able to open his eyes, the man with the red face was
going on with his writing. The porter had disappeared. "I must have
courage," said our hero to himself, "and above all, hide what I feel."
He felt violently sick. "If anything happens to me, God knows what they
will think of me."

Finally the man stopped writing and looked sideways at Julien.

"Are you in a fit state to answer me?"

"Yes, sir," said Julien in an enfeebled voice.

"Ah, that's fortunate."

The man in black had half got up, and was looking impatiently for a
letter in the drawer of his pinewood table, which opened with a grind.
He found it, sat down slowly, and looking again at Julien in a manner
calculated to suck out of him the little life which he still possessed,
said,

"You have been recommended to me by M. Chelan. He was the best cure in
the diocese; he was an upright man if there ever was one, and my friend
for thirty years."

"Oh. It's to M. Pirard then that I have the honour of speaking?" said
Julien in a dying voice.

"Apparently," replied the director of the seminary, as he looked at him
disagreeably.

The glitter of his little eyes doubled and was followed by an
involuntary movement of the muscles of the corner of the mouth. It
was the physiognomy of the tiger savouring in advance the pleasure of
devouring its prey.

"Chelan's letter is short," he said, as though speaking to himself.
"_Intelligenti pauca_. In the present time it is impossible to write
too little." He read aloud:--

        "I recommend to you Julien Sorel of this parish, whom
        I baptized nearly twenty years ago, the son of a rich
        carpenter who gives him nothing. Julien will be a
        remarkable worker in the vineyard of the Lord. He lacks
        neither memory nor intelligence; he has some faculty
        for reflection. Will he persevere in his calling? Is he
        sincere?"

"Sincere," repeated the abbe Pirard with an astonished air, looking at
Julien. But the abbe's look was already less devoid of all humanity.
"Sincere," he repeated, lowering his voice, and resuming his reading:--

        "I ask you for a stipend for Julien Sorel. He will earn
        it by passing the necessary examinations. I have taught
        him a little theology, that old and good theology of the
        Bossuets, the Arnaults, and the Fleury's. If the person
        does not suit you, send him back to me. The director
        of the workhouse, whom you know well, offers him eight
        hundred to be tutor to his children. My inner self is
        tranquil, thanks to God. I am accustoming myself to the
        terrible blow, 'Vale et me ama.'"

The abbe Pirard, speaking more slowly as he read the signature,
pronounced with a sigh the word, "Chelan."

"He is tranquil," he said, "in fact his righteousness deserves such a
recompense. May God grant it to me in such a case." He looked up to
heaven and made the sign of the cross. At the sight of that sacred sign
Julien felt an alleviation of the profound horror which had frozen him
since his entry into the house.

"I have here three hundred and twenty-one aspirants for the most holy
state," said the abbe Pirard at last, in a tone, which though severe,
was not malicious; "only seven or eight have been recommended to me by
such men as the abbe Chelan; so you will be the ninth of these among
the three hundred and twenty-one. But my protection means neither
favour nor weakness, it means doubled care, and doubled severity
against vice. Go and lock that door."

Julian made an effort to walk, and managed not to fall. He noticed that
a little window near the entrance door looked out on to the country.
He saw the trees; that sight did him as much good as the sight of old
friends.

"'Loquerisne linquam latinam?'" (Do you speak Latin?) said the abbe
Pirard to him as he came back.

"'Ita, pater optime,'" (Yes, excellent Father) answered Julien,
recovering himself a little. But it was certain that nobody in the
world had ever appeared to him less excellent than had M. Pirard for
the last half hour.

The conversation continued in Latin. The expression in the abbe's eyes
softened. Julien regained some self-possession. "How weak I am," he
thought, "to let myself be imposed on by these appearances of virtue.
The man is probably nothing more than a rascal, like M. Maslon," and
Julien congratulated himself on having hidden nearly all his money in
his boots.

The abbe Pirard examined Julien in theology; he was surprised at
the extent of his knowledge, but his astonishment increased when he
questioned him in particular on sacred scriptures. But when it came to
questions of the doctrines of the Fathers, he perceived that Julien
scarcely even knew the names of Saint Jerome, Saint Augustin, Saint
Bonaventure, Saint Basile, etc., etc.

"As a matter of fact," thought the abbe Pirard, "this is simply that
fatal tendency to Protestantism for which I have always reproached
Chelan. A profound, and only too profound knowledge of the Holy
Scriptures."

(Julien had just started speaking to him, without being questioned on
the point, about the real time when Genesis, the Pentateuch, etc., has
been written).

"To what does this never-ending reasoning over the Holy Scriptures lead
to?" thought the abbe Pirard, "if not to self-examination, that is to
say, the most awful Protestantism. And by the side of this imprudent
knowledge, nothing about the Fathers to compensate for that tendency."

But the astonishment of the director of the seminary was quite
unbounded when having questioned Julien about the authority of the
Pope, and expecting to hear the maxims of the ancient Gallican Church,
the young man recited to him the whole book of M. de Maistre "Strange
man, that Chelan," thought the abbe Pirard. "Did he show him the book
simply to teach him to make fun of it?"

It was in vain that he questioned Julien and endeavoured to guess if
he seriously believed in the doctrine of M. de Maistre. The young man
only answered what he had learnt by heart. From this moment Julien was
really happy. He felt that he was master of himself. After a very long
examination, it seemed to him that M. Pirard's severity towards him was
only affected. Indeed, the director of the seminary would have embraced
Julien in the name of logic, for he found so much clearness, precision
and lucidity in his answers, had it not been for the principles of
austere gravity towards his theology pupils which he had inculcated in
himself for the last fifteen years.

"Here we have a bold and healthy mind," he said to himself, "but corpus
debile" (the body is weak).

"Do you often fall like that?" he said to Julien in French, pointing
with his finger to the floor.

"It's the first time in my life. The porter's face unnerved me," added
Julien, blushing like a child. The abbe Pirard almost smiled.

"That's the result of vain worldly pomp. You are apparently accustomed
to smiling faces, those veritable theatres of falsehood. Truth is
austere, Monsieur, but is not our task down here also austere? You must
be careful that your conscience guards against that weakness of yours,
too much sensibility to vain external graces."

"If you had not been recommended to me," said the abbe Pirard, resuming
the Latin language with an obvious pleasure, "If you had not been
recommended by a man, by the abbe Chelan, I would talk to you the vain
language of that world, to which it would appear you are only too well
accustomed. I would tell you that the full stipend which you solicit
is the most difficult thing in the world to obtain. But the fifty-six
years which the abbe Chelan has spent in apostolic work have stood him
in poor stead if he cannot dispose of a stipend at the seminary."

After these words, the abbe Pirard recommended Julien not to enter any
secret society or congregation without his consent.

"I give you my word of honour," said Julien, with all an honest man's
expansion of heart. The director of the seminary smiled for the first
time.

"That expression is not used here," he said to him. "It is too
reminiscent of that vain honour of worldly people, which leads them to
so many errors and often to so many crimes. You owe me obedience by
virtue of paragraph seventeen of the bull Unam Eccesiam of St. Pius the
Fifth. I am your ecclesiastical superior. To hear in this house, my
dear son, is to obey. How much money, have you?"

("So here we are," said Julien to himself, "that was the reason of the
'my very dear son')."

"Thirty-five francs, my father."

"Write out carefully how you use that money. You will have to give me
an account of it."

This painful audience had lasted three hours. Julien summoned the
porter.

"Go and install Julien Sorel in cell No. 103," said the abbe Pirard to
the man.

As a great favour he let Julien have a place all to himself. "Carry his
box there," he added.

Julien lowered his eyes, and recognised his box just in front of him.
He had been looking at it for three hours and had not recognised it.

As he arrived at No. 103, which was a little room eight feet square on
the top story of the house, Julien noticed that it looked out on to the
ramparts, and he perceived beyond them the pretty plain which the Doubs
divides from the town.

"What a charming view!" exclaimed Julien. In speaking like this he did
not feel what the words actually expressed. The violent sensations
which he had experienced during the short time that he had been at
Besancon had absolutely exhausted his strength. He sat down near the
window on the one wooden chair in the cell, and fell at once into a
profound sleep. He did not hear either the supper bell or the bell for
benediction. They had forgotten him. When the first rays of the sun
woke him up the following morning, he found himself lying on the floor.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE WORLD, OR WHAT THE RICH LACK

        I am alone in the world. No one deigns to spare me
        a thought. All those whom I see make their fortune,
        have an insolence and hardness of heart which I do not
        feel in myself. They hate me by reason of kindness
        and good-humour. Oh, I shall die soon, either from
        starvation or the unhappiness of seeing men so hard of
        heart.--_Young_.

He hastened to brush his clothes and run down. He was late. Instead of
trying to justify himself Julien crossed his arms over his breast.

"Peccavi pater optime (I have sinned, I confess my fault, oh, my
father)," he said with a contrite air.

This first speech was a great success. The clever ones among the
seminarists saw that they had to deal with a man who knew something
about the elements of the profession. The recreation hour arrived, and
Julien saw that he was the object of general curiosity, but he only
manifested reserved silence. Following the maxims he had laid down for
himself, he considered his three hundred and twenty-one comrades as
enemies. The most dangerous of all in his eyes was the abbe Pirard. A
few days afterwards Julien had to choose a confessor, and was given a
list.

"Great heavens! what do they take me for?" he said to himself. "Do they
think I don't understand what's what?" Then he chose the abbe Pirard.

This step proved decisive without his suspecting it.

A little seminarist, who was quite young and a native of Verrieres, and
who had declared himself his friend since the first day, informed him
that he would probably have acted more prudently if he had chosen M.
Castanede, the sub-director of the seminary.

"The abbe Castanede is the enemy of Pirard, who is suspected of
Jansenism," added the little seminarist in a whisper. All the first
steps of our hero were, in spite of the prudence on which he plumed
himself, as much mistakes as his choice of a confessor. Misled as he
was by all the self-confidence of a man of imagination, he took his
projects for facts, and believed that he was a consummate hypocrite.
His folly went so far as to reproach himself for his success in this
kind of weakness.

"Alas, it is my only weapon," he said to himself. "At another period I
should have earned my livelihood by eloquent deeds in the face of the
enemy."

Satisfied as he was with his own conduct, Julien looked around him. He
found everywhere the appearance of the purest virtue.

Eight or ten seminarists lived in the odour of sanctity, and had
visions like Saint Theresa, and Saint Francis, when he received his
stigmata on Mount _Vernia_ in the Appenines. But it was a great secret
and their friends concealed it. These poor young people who had
visions were always in the infirmary. A hundred others combined an
indefatigable application to a robust faith. They worked till they fell
ill, but without learning much. Two or three were distinguished by a
real talent, amongst others a student of the name of Chazel, but both
they and Julien felt mutually unsympathetic.

The rest of these three hundred and twenty-one seminarists consisted
exclusively of coarse persons, who were by no means sure of
understanding the Latin words which they kept on repeating the livelong
day. Nearly all were the sons of peasants, and they preferred to gain
their livelihood by reciting some Latin words than by ploughing the
earth. It was after this examination of his colleagues that Julien,
during the first few days, promised himself a speedy success.

"Intelligent people are needed in every service," he said to himself,
"for, after all, there is work to be done. I should have been a
sergeant under Napoleon. I shall be a grand vicar among these future
cures."

"All these poor devils," he added, "manual labourers as they have been
since their childhood, have lived on curded milk and black bread up
till they arrived here. They would only eat meat five or six times a
year in their hovels. Like the Roman soldiers who used to find war the
time of rest, these poor peasants are enchanted with the delights of
the seminary."

Julien could never read anything in their gloomy eyes but the
satisfaction of physical craving after dinner, and the expectation
of sensual pleasure before the meal. Such were the people among whom
Julien had to distinguish himself; but the fact which he did not know,
and which they refrained from telling him, was that coming out first
in the different courses of dogma, ecclesiastical history, etc., etc.,
which are taken at the seminary, constituted in their eyes, neither
more nor less than a splendid sin.

Since the time of Voltaire and two-chamber Government, which is at
bottom simply distrust and personal self-examination, and gives the
popular mind that bad habit of being suspicious, the Church of France
seems to have realised that books are its real enemies. It is the
submissive heart which counts for everything in its eyes. It suspects,
and rightly so, any success in studies, even sacred ones. What is to
prevent a superior man from crossing over to the opposite side like
Sieyes or Gregory. The trembling Church clings on to the Pope as its
one chance of safety. The Pope alone is in a position to attempt to
paralyse all personal self-examination, and to make an impression by
means of the pompous piety of his court ceremonial on the bored and
morbid spirit of fashionable society.

Julien, as he began to get some glimpse of these various truths,
which are none the less in total contradiction to all the official
pronouncements of any seminary, fell into a profound melancholy. He
worked a great deal and rapidly succeeded in learning things which were
extremely useful to a priest, extremely false in his own eyes, and
devoid of the slightest interest for him. He felt there was nothing
else to do.

"Am I then forgotten by the whole world," he thought. He did not know
that M. Pirard had received and thrown into the fire several letters
with the Dijon stamp in which the most lively passion would pierce
through the most formal conventionalism of style. "This love seems to
be fought by great attacks of remorse. All the better," thought the
abbe Pirard. "At any rate this lad has not loved an infidel woman."

One day the abbe Pirard opened a letter which seemed half-blotted out
by tears. It was an adieu for ever. "At last," said the writer to
Julien, "Heaven has granted me the grace of hating, not the author of
my fall, but my fall itself. The sacrifice has been made, dear one, not
without tears as you see. The safety of those to whom I must devote
my life, and whom you love so much, is the decisive factor. A just
but terrible God will no longer see His way to avenge on them their
mother's crimes. Adieu, Julien. Be just towards all men." The end of
the letter was nearly entirely illegible. The writer gave an address at
Dijon, but at the same time expressed the hope that Julien would not
answer, or at any rate would employ language which a reformed woman
could read without blushing. Julien's melancholy, aggravated by the
mediocre nourishment which the contractor who gave dinners at thirteen
centimes per head supplied to the seminary, began to affect his health,
when Fouque suddenly appeared in his room one morning.

"I have been able to get in at last. I have duly been five times to
Besancon in order to see you. Could never get in. I put someone by the
door to watch. Why the devil don't you ever go out?"

"It is a test which I have imposed on myself."

"I find you greatly changed, but here you are again. I have just
learned from a couple of good five franc pieces that I was only a fool
not to have offered them on my first journey."

The conversation of the two friends went on for ever. Julien changed
colour when Fouque said to him,

"Do you know, by the by, that your pupils' mother has become positively
devout."

And he began to talk in that off-hand manner which makes so singular an
impression on the passionate soul, whose dearest interests are being
destroyed without the speaker having the faintest suspicion of it.

"Yes, my friend, the most exalted devoutness. She is said to make
pilgrimages. But to the eternal shame of the abbe Maslon, who has
played the spy so long on that poor M. Chelan, Madame de Renal would
have nothing to do with him. She goes to confession to Dijon or
Besancon."

"She goes to Besancon," said Julien, flushing all over his forehead.

"Pretty often," said Fouque in a questioning manner.

"Have you got any _Constitutionnels_ on you?"

"What do you say?" replied Fouque.

"I'm asking if you've got any _Constitutionnels_?" went on Julien
in the quietest tone imaginable. "They cost thirty sous a number here."

"What!" exclaimed Fouque. "Liberals even in the seminary! Poor France,"
he added, assuming the abbe Maslon's hypocritical voice and sugary tone.

This visit would have made a deep impression on our hero, if he had not
been put on the track of an important discovery by some words addressed
to him the following day by the little seminarist from Verrieres.
Julien's conduct since he had been at the seminary had been nothing but
a series of false steps. He began to make bitter fun of himself.

In point of fact the important actions in his life had been cleverly
managed, but he was careless about details, and cleverness in a
seminary consists in attention to details. Consequently, he had already
the reputation among his comrades of being a _strong-minded person._ He
had been betrayed by a number of little actions.

He had been convicted in their eyes of this enormity, _he thought and
judged for himself_ instead of blindly following authority and example.
The abbe Pirard had been no help to him. He had not spoken to him
on a single occasion apart from the confessional, and even there he
listened more than he spoke. Matters would have been very different if
he had chosen the abbe Castanede. The moment that Julien realised his
folly, he ceased to be bored. He wished to know the whole extent of the
evil, and to effect this emerged a little from that haughty obstinate
silence with which he had scrupulously rebuffed his comrades. It was
now that they took their revenge on him. His advances were welcomed by
a contempt verging on derision. He realised that there had not been one
single hour from the time of his entry into the seminary, particularly
during recreation time, which had not resulted in affecting him one
way or another, which had not increased the number of his enemies, or
won for him the goodwill of some seminarist who was either sincerely
virtuous or of a fibre slightly less coarse than that of the others.
The evil to repair was infinite, and the task very difficult.
Henceforth, Julien's attention was always on guard. The problem before
him was to map out a new character for himself.

The moving of his eyes for example, occasioned him a great deal of
trouble. It is with good reason that they are carried lowered in these
places.

"How presumptuous I was at Verrieres," said Julien to himself. "I
thought I lived; I was only preparing for life, and here I am at last
in the world such as I shall find it, until my part comes to an end,
surrounded by real enemies. What immense difficulties," he added,
"are involved in keeping up this hypocrisy every single minute. It is
enough to put the labours of Hercules into the shade. The Hercules of
modern times is the Pope Sixtus Quintus, who deceived by his modesty
fifteen years on end forty Cardinals who had seen the liveliness and
haughtiness of his whole youth.

"So knowledge is nothing here," he said to himself with disgust.
"Progress in doctrine, in sacred history, etc., only seem to count.
Everything said on those subjects is only intended to entrap fools like
me. Alas my only merit consists in my rapid progress, and in the way in
which I grasp all their nonsense. Do they really value those things at
their true worth? Do they judge them like I do. And I had the stupidity
to be proud of my quickness. The only result of my coming out top has
been to give me inveterate enemies. Chazel, who really knows more than
I do, always throws some blunder in his compositions which gets him put
back to the fiftieth place. If he comes out first, it is only because
he is absent-minded. O how useful would one word, just one word, of M.
Pirard, have been to me."

As soon as Julien was disillusioned, the long exercises in ascetic
piety, such as the attendances in the chapel five times a week, the
intonation of hymns at the chapel of the Sacre Coeur, etc., etc.,
which had previously seemed to him so deadly boring, became his most
interesting opportunities for action. Thanks to a severe introspection,
and above all, by trying not to overdo his methods, Julien did not
attempt at the outset to perform significant actions (that is to say,
actions which are proof of a certain Christian perfection) like those
seminarists who served as a model to the rest.

Seminarists have a special way, even of eating a poached egg, which
betokens progress in the devout life.

The reader who smiles at this will perhaps be good enough to remember
all the mistakes which the abbe Delille made over the eating of an egg
when he was invited to breakfast with a lady of the Court of Louis XVI.

Julien first tried to arrive at the state of _non culpa_, that is
to say the state of the young seminarist whose demeanour and manner
of moving his arms, eyes, etc. while in fact without any trace of
worldliness, do not yet indicate that the person is entirely absorbed
by the conception of the other world, and the idea of the pure
nothingness of this one.

Julien incessantly found such phrases as these charcoaled on the walls
of the corridors. "What are sixty years of ordeals balanced against
an eternity of delights or any eternity of boiling oil in hell?" He
despised them no longer. He realised that it was necessary to have them
incessantly before his eyes. "What am I going to do all my life," he
said to himself. "I shall sell to the faithful a place in heaven. How
am I going to make that place visible to their eyes? By the difference
between my appearance and that of a layman."

After several months of absolutely unremitting application, Julien
still had the appearance of thinking. The way in which he would move
his eyes and hold his mouth did not betoken that implicit faith which
is ready to believe everything and undergo everything, even at the cost
of martyrdom. Julien saw with anger that he was surpassed in this by
the coarsest peasants. There was good reason for their not appearing
full of thought.

What pains did he not take to acquire that facial expression of blindly
fervent faith which is found so frequently in the Italian convents,
and of which Le Guerchin has left such perfect models in his Church
pictures for the benefit of us laymen.

On feast-days, the seminarists were regaled with sausages and cabbage.
Julien's table neighbours observed that he did not appreciate this
happiness. That was looked upon as one of his paramount crimes.
His comrades saw in this a most odious trait, and the most foolish
hypocrisy. Nothing made him more enemies.

"Look at this bourgeois, look at this stuck-up person," they would
say, "who pretends to despise the best rations there are, sausages and
cabbage, shame on the villain! The haughty wretch, he is damned for
ever."

"Alas, these young peasants, who are my comrades, find their ignorance
an immense advantage," Julien would exclaim in his moments of
discouragement. "The professor has not got to deliver them on their
arrival at the seminary from that awful number of worldly ideas which I
brought into it, and which they read on my face whatever I do."

Julien watched with an attention bordering on envy the coarsest of the
little peasants who arrived at the seminary. From the moment when they
were made to doff their shabby jackets to don the black robe, their
education consisted of an immense and limitless respect for _hard
liquid cash_ as they say in Franche-Comte.

That is the consecrated and heroic way of expressing the sublime idea
of current money.

These seminarists, like the heroes in Voltaire's novels, found their
happiness in dining well. Julien discovered in nearly all of them
an innate respect for the man who wears a suit of good cloth. This
sentiment appreciates the distributive justice, which is given us at
our courts, at its value or even above its true value. "What can one
gain," they would often repeat among themselves, "by having a law suit
with 'a big man?'"

That is the expression current in the valleys of the Jura to express
a rich man. One can judge of their respect for the richest entity
of all--the government. Failure to smile deferentially at the mere
name of M. the Prefect is regarded as an imprudence in the eyes of
the Franche-Comte peasant, and imprudence in poor people is quickly
punished by lack of bread.

After having been almost suffocated at first by his feeling of
contempt, Julien eventually experienced a feeling of pity; it often
happened that the fathers of most of his comrades would enter their
hovel in winter evenings and fail to find there either bread, chestnuts
or potatoes.

"What is there astonishing then?" Julien would say to himself, "if in
their eyes the happy man is in the first place the one who has just had
a good dinner, and in the second place the one who possesses a good
suit? My comrades have a lasting vocation, that is to say, they see
in the ecclesiastical calling a long continuance of the happiness of
dining well and having a warm suit."

Julien happened to hear a young imaginative seminarist say to his
companion.

"Why shouldn't I become Pope like Sixtus Quintus who kept pigs?"

"They only make Italians Popes," answered his friend. "But they will
certainly draw lots amongst us for the great vicarships, canonries and
perhaps bishoprics. M. P---- Bishop of Chalons, is the son of a cooper.
That's what my father is."

One day, in the middle of a theology lesson, the Abbe Pirard summoned
Julien to him. The young fellow was delighted to leave the dark, moral
atmosphere in which he had been plunged. Julien received from the
director the same welcome which had frightened him so much on the first
day of his entry.

"Explain to me what is written on this playing card?" he said, looking
at him in a way calculated to make him sink into the earth.

Julien read:

"Amanda Binet of the Giraffe Cafe before eight o'clock. Say you're from
Genlis, and my mother's cousin."

Julien realised the immense danger. The spies of the abbe Castanede had
stolen the address.

"I was trembling with fear the day I came here," he answered, looking
at the abbe Pirard's forehead, for he could not endure that terrible
gaze. "M. Chelan told me that this is a place of informers and
mischief-makers of all kinds, and that spying and tale-bearing by one
comrade on another was encouraged by the authorities. Heaven wishes it
to be so, so as to show life such as it is to the young priests, and
fill them with disgust for the world and all its pomps."

"And it's to me that you make these fine speeches," said the abbe
Pirard furiously. "You young villain."

"My brothers used to beat me at Verrieres," answered Julien coldly,
"When they had occasion to be jealous of me."

"Indeed, indeed," exclaimed M. Pirard, almost beside himself.

Julien went on with his story without being in the least intimidated:--

"The day of my arrival at Besancon I was hungry, and I entered a
cafe. My spirit was full of revulsion for so profane a place, but I
thought that my breakfast would cost me less than at an inn. A lady,
who seemed to be the mistress of the establishment, took pity on my
inexperience. 'Besancon is full of bad characters,' she said to me. 'I
fear something will happen to you, sir. If some mishap should occur to
you, have recourse to me and send to my house before eight o'clock. If
the porters of the seminary refuse to execute your errand, say you are
my cousin and a native of Genlis.'"

"I will have all this chatter verified," exclaimed the abbe Pirard,
unable to stand still, and walking about the room.

"Back to the cell."

The abbe followed Julien and locked him in. The latter immediately
began to examine his trunk, at the bottom of which the fatal cards had
been so carefully hidden. Nothing was missing in the trunk, but several
things had been disarranged. Nevertheless, he had never been without
the key. What luck that, during the whole time of my blindness, said
Julien to himself, I never availed myself of the permission to go out
that Monsieur Castanede would offer me so frequently, with a kindness
which I now understand. Perhaps I should have had the weakness to have
changed my clothes and gone to see the fair Amanda, and then I should
have been ruined. When they gave up hope of exploiting that piece of
information for the accomplishment of his ruin, they had used it to
inform against him. Two hours afterwards the director summoned him.

"You did not lie," he said to him, with a less severe look, "but
keeping an address like that is an indiscretion of a gravity which you
are unable to realise. Unhappy child! It may perhaps do you harm in ten
years' time."

CHAPTER XXVII

FIRST EXPERIENCE OF LIFE

        The present time, Great God! is the ark of the Lord;
        cursed be he who touches it.--_Diderot_.

The reader will kindly excuse us if we give very few clear and definite
facts concerning this period of Julien's life. It is not that we
lack facts; quite the contrary. But it may be that what he saw in
the seminary is too black for the medium colour which the author
has endeavoured to preserve throughout these pages. Those of our
contemporaries who have suffered from certain things cannot remember
them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that
of reading a tale.

Julien achieved scant success in his essays at hypocritical gestures.
He experienced moments of disgust, and even of complete discouragement.
He was not a success, even in a a vile career. The slightest help
from outside would have sufficed to have given him heart again, for
the difficulty to overcome was not very great, but he was alone, like
a derelict ship in the middle of the ocean. "And when I do succeed,"
he would say to himself, "think of having to pass a whole lifetime in
such awful company, gluttons who have no thought but for the large
omelette which they will guzzle at dinner-time, or persons like the
abbe Castanede, who finds no crime too black! They will attain power,
but, great heavens! at what cost.

"The will of man is powerful, I read it everywhere, but is it enough to
overcome so great a disgust? The task of all the great men was easy by
comparison. However terrible was the danger, they found it fine, and
who can realise, except myself, the ugliness of my surroundings?"

This moment was the most trying in his whole life. It would have been
so easy for him to have enlisted in one of the fine regiments at the
garrison of Besancon. He could have become a Latin master. He needed so
little for his subsistence, but in that case no more career, no more
future for his imagination. It was equivalent to death. Here is one of
his sad days in detail:

"I have so often presumed to congratulate myself on being different
from the other young peasants! Well, I have lived enough to realise
that _difference engenders hate_," he said to himself one morning.
This great truth had just been borne in upon him by one of his most
irritating failures. He had been working for eight days at teaching a
pupil who lived in an odour of sanctity. He used to go out with him
into the courtyard and listen submissively to pieces of fatuity enough
to send one to sleep standing. Suddenly the weather turned stormy. The
thunder growled, and the holy pupil exclaimed as he roughly pushed him
away.

"Listen! Everyone for himself in this world. I don't want to be burned
by the thunder. God may strike you with lightning like a blasphemer,
like a Voltaire."

"I deserve to be drowned if I go to sleep during the storm," exclaimed
Julien, with his teeth clenched with rage, and with his eyes opened
towards the sky now furrowed by the lightning. "Let us try the conquest
of some other rogue."

The bell rang for the abbe Castanede's course of sacred history. That
day the abbe Castanede was teaching those young peasants already
so frightened by their father's hardships and poverty, that the
Government, that entity so terrible in their eyes, possessed no real
and legitimate power except by virtue of the delegation of God's vicar
on earth.

"Render yourselves worthy, by the holiness of your life and by your
obedience, of the benevolence of the Pope. Be _like a stick in his
hands_," he added, "and you will obtain a superb position, where you
will be far from all control, and enjoy the King's commands, a position
from which you cannot be removed, and where one-third of the salary
is paid by the Government, while the faithful who are moulded by your
preaching pay the other two-thirds."

Castanede stopped in the courtyard after he left the lesson-room. "It
is particularly appropriate to say of a cure," he said to the pupils
who formed a ring round him, "that the place is worth as much as the
man is worth. I myself have known parishes in the mountains where the
surplice fees were worth more than that of many town livings. There was
quite as much money, without counting the fat capons, the eggs, fresh
butter, and a thousand and one pleasant details, and there the cure is
indisputably the first man. There is not a good meal to which he is not
invited, feted, etc."

Castanede had scarcely gone back to his room before the pupils split up
into knots. Julien did not form part of any of them; he was left out
like a black sheep. He saw in every knot a pupil tossing a coin in the
air, and if he managed to guess right in this game of heads or tails,
his comrades would decide that he would soon have one of those fat
livings.

Anecdotes ensued. A certain young priest, who had scarcely been
ordained a year, had given a tame rabbit to the maidservant of an old
cure, and had succeeded in being asked to be his curate. In a few
months afterwards, for the cure had quickly died, he had replaced him
in that excellent living. Another had succeeded in getting himself
designated as a successor to a very rich town living, by being present
at all the meals of an old, paralytic cure, and by dexterously carving
his poultry. The seminarists, like all young people, exaggerated the
effect of those little devices, which have an element of originality,
and which strike the imagination.

"I must take part in these conversations," said Julien to himself. When
they did not talk about sausages and good livings, the conversation ran
on the worldly aspect of ecclesiastical doctrine, on the differences of
bishops and prefects, of mayors and cures. Julien caught sight of the
conception of a second god, but of a god who was much more formidable
and much more powerful than the other one. That second god was the
Pope. They said among themselves, in a low voice, however, and when
they were quite sure that they would not be heard by Pirard, that
the reason for the Pope not taking the trouble of nominating all the
prefects and mayors of France, was that he had entrusted that duty to
the King of France by entitling him a senior son of the Church.

It was about this time that Julien thought he could exploit, for the
benefit of his own reputation, his knowledge of De Maistre's book
on the Pope. In point of fact, he did astonish his comrades, but it
was only another misfortune. He displeased them by expounding their
own opinions better than they could themselves. Chelan had acted as
imprudently for Julien as he had for himself. He had given him the
habit of reasoning correctly, and of not being put off by empty words,
but he had neglected to tell him that this habit was a crime in the
person of no importance, since every piece of logical reasoning is
offensive.

Julien's command of language added consequently a new crime to his
score. By dint of thinking about him, his colleagues succeeded in
expressing the horror with which he would inspire them by a single
expression; they nicknamed him Martin Luther, "particularly," they
said, "because of that infernal logic which makes him so proud."

Several young seminarists had a fresher complexion than Julien, and
could pass as better-looking, but he had white hands, and was unable to
conceal certain refined habits of personal cleanliness. This advantage
proved a disadvantage in the gloomy house in which chance had cast
him. The dirty peasants among whom he lived asserted that he had very
abandoned morals. We fear that we may weary our reader by a narration
of the thousand and one misfortunes of our hero. The most vigorous of
his comrades, for example, wanted to start the custom of beating him.
He was obliged to arm himself with an iron compass, and to indicate,
though by signs, that he would make use of it. Signs cannot figure in a
spy's report to such good advantage as words.

CHAPTER XXVIII

A PROCESSION

        All hearts were moved. The presence of God seemed to
        have descended into these narrow Gothic streets that
        stretched in every direction, and were sanded by the
        care of the faithful.--_Young_.

It was in vain that Julien pretended to be petty and stupid. He could
not please; he was too different. Yet all these professors, he said to
himself, are very clever people, men in a thousand. Why do they not
like my humility? Only one seemed to take advantage of his readiness
to believe everything, and apparently to swallow everything. This was
the abbe Chas-Bernard, the director of the ceremonies of the cathedral,
where, for the last fifteen years, he had been given occasion to hope
for a canonry. While waiting, he taught homiletics at the seminary.
During the period of Julien's blindness, this class was one of those in
which he most frequently came out top. The abbe Chas had used this as
an opportunity to manifest some friendship to him, and when the class
broke up, he would be glad to take him by the arm for some turns in the
garden.

"What is he getting at," Julien would say to himself. He noticed
with astonishment that, for hours on end, the abbe would talk to him
about the ornaments possessed by the cathedral. It had seventeen lace
chasubles, besides the mourning vestments. A lot was hoped from the old
wife of the judge de Rubempre. This lady, who was ninety years of age,
had kept for at least seventy years her wedding dress of superb Lyons
material, embroidered with gold.

"Imagine, my friend," the abbe Chas would say, stopping abruptly, and
staring with amazement, "that this material keeps quite stiff. There
is so much gold in it. It is generally thought in Besancon that the
will of the judge's wife will result in the cathedral treasure being
increased by more than ten chasubles, without counting four or five
capes for the great feast. I will go further," said the abbe Chas,
lowering his voice, "I have reasons for thinking the judge's wife will
leave us her magnificent silver gilt candlesticks, supposed to have
been bought in Italy by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, whose
favourite minister was one of the good lady's ancestors."

"But what is the fellow getting at with all this old clothes business,"
thought Julien. "These adroit preliminaries have been going on for
centuries, and nothing comes of them. He must be very suspicious of me.
He is cleverer than all the others, whose secret aim can be guessed so
easily in a fortnight. I understand. He must have been suffering for
fifteen years from mortified ambition."

Julien was summoned one evening in the middle of the fencing lesson to
the abbe Pirard, who said to him.

"To-morrow is the feast of Corpus Domini (the Fete Dieu) the abbe
Chas-Bernard needs you to help him to decorate the cathedral. Go and
obey." The abbe Pirard called him back and added sympathetically. "It
depends on you whether you will utilise the occasion to go into the
town."

"Incedo per ignes," answered Julien. (I have secret enemies).

Julien went to the cathedral next morning with downcast eyes. The sight
of the streets and the activity which was beginning to prevail in the
town did him good. In all quarters they were extending the fronts of
the houses for the procession.

All the time that he had passed in the seminary seemed to him no more
than a moment. His thoughts were of Vergy, and of the pretty Amanda
whom he might perhaps meet, for her cafe was not very far off. He saw
in the distance the abbe Chas-Bernard on the threshold of his beloved
cathedral. He was a big man with a jovial face and a frank air. To-day
he looked triumphant. "I was expecting you, my dear son," he cried as
soon as he saw Julien in the distance. "Be welcome. This day's duty
will be protracted and arduous. Let us fortify ourselves by a first
breakfast. We will have the second at ten o'clock during high mass."

"I do not wish, sir," said Julien to him gravely, "to be alone for a
single instant. Deign to observe," he added, showing him the clock over
their heads, "that I have arrived at one minute to five."

"So those little rascals at the seminary frightened you. It is very
good of you to think of them," said the abbe. "But is the road less
beautiful because there are thorns in the hedges which border it.
Travellers go on their way, and leave the wicked thorns to wait in vain
where they are. And now to work my dear friend, to work."

The abbe Chas was right in saying that the task would be arduous. There
had been a great funeral ceremony at the cathedral the previous day.
They had not been able to make any preparations. They had consequently
only one morning for dressing all the Gothic pillars which constitute
the three naves with a kind of red damask cloth ascending to a height
of thirty feet. The Bishop had fetched by mail four decorators from
Paris, but these gentry were not able to do everything, and far from
giving any encouragement to the clumsiness of the Besancon colleagues,
they made it twice as great by making fun of them.

Julien saw that he would have to climb the ladder himself. His agility
served him in good stead. He undertook the direction of the decorators
from town. The Abbe Chas was delighted as he watched him flit from
ladder to ladder. When all the pillars were dressed in damask, five
enormous bouquets of feathers had to be placed on the great baldachin
above the grand altar. A rich coping of gilded wood was supported by
eight big straight columns of Italian marble, but to reach the centre
of the baldachin above the tabernacle involved walking over an old
wooden cornice which was forty feet high and possibly worm-eaten.

The sight of this difficult crossing had extinguished the gaiety of the
Parisian decorators, which up till then had been so brilliant. They
looked at it from down below, argued a great deal, but did not go up.
Julien seized hold of the bouquets of feathers and climbed the ladder
at a run. He placed it neatly on the crown-shaped ornament in the
centre of the baldachin. When he came down the ladder again, the abbe
Chas-Bernard embraced him in his arms.

"Optime" exclaimed the good priest, "I will tell this to Monseigneur."

Breakfast at ten o'clock was very gay. The abbe Chas had never seen his
church look so beautiful.

"Dear disciple," he said to Julien. "My mother used to let out chairs
in this venerable building, so I have been brought up in this great
edifice. The Terror of Robespierre ruined us, but when I was eight
years old, that was my age then, I used to serve masses in private
houses, so you see I got my meals on mass-days. Nobody could fold a
chasuble better than I could, and I never cut the fringes. After the
re-establishment of public worship by Napoleon, I had the good fortune
to direct everything in this venerable metropolis. Five times a year do
my eyes see it adorned with these fine ornaments. But it has never been
so resplendent, and the damask breadths have never been so well tied or
so close to the pillars as they are to-day."

"So he is going to tell me his secret at last," said Julien. "Now he is
going to talk about himself. He is expanding." But nothing imprudent
was said by the man in spite of his evident exaltation.

"All the same he has worked a great deal," said Julien to himself.
"He is happy. What a man! What an example for me! He really takes the
cake." (This was a vulgar phrase which he had learned from the old
surgeon).

As the sanctus of high mass sounded, Julien wanted to take a surplice
to follow the bishop in the superb procession. "And the thieves, my
friend! And the thieves," exclaimed the abbe Chas. "Have you forgotten
them? The procession will go out, but we will watch, will you and I.
We shall be very lucky if we get off with the loss of a couple of ells
of this fine lace which surrounds the base of the pillars. It is a
gift of Madame de Rubempre. It comes from her great-grandfather the
famous Count. It is made of real gold, my friend," added the abbe in
a whisper, and with evident exaltation. "And all genuine. I entrust
you with the watching of the north wing. Do not leave it. I will keep
the south wing and the great nave for myself. Keep an eye on the
confessional. It is there that the women accomplices of the thieves
always spy. Look out for the moment when we turn our backs."

As he finished speaking, a quarter to twelve struck. Immediately
afterwards the sound of the great clock was heard. It rang a full peal.
These full solemn sounds affected Julien. His imagination was no longer
turned to things earthly. The perfume of the incense and of the rose
leaves thrown before the holy sacrament by little children disguised as
St. John increased his exaltation.

Logically the grave sounds of the bell should only have recalled to
Julien's mind the thought of the labour of twenty men paid fifty-four
centimes each, and possibly helped by fifteen or twenty faithful souls.
Logically, he ought to have thought of the wear and tear of the cords
and of the framework and of the danger of the clock itself, which
falls down every two centuries, and to have considered the means of
diminishing the salary of the bell-ringers, or of paying them by some
indulgence or other grace dispensed from the treasures of the Church
without diminishing its purse.

Julien's soul exalted by these sounds with all their virile fulness,
instead of making these wise reflections, wandered in the realm
of imagination. He will never turn out a good priest or a good
administrator. Souls which get thrilled so easily are at the best
only capable of producing an artist. At this moment the presumption
of Julien bursts out into full view. Perhaps fifty of his comrades
in the seminary made attentive to the realities of life by their own
unpopularity and the Jacobinism which they are taught to see hiding
behind every hedge, would have had no other thought suggested by the
great bell of the cathedral except the wages of the ringers. They would
have analysed with the genius of Bareme whether the intensity of the
emotion produced among the public was worth the money which was given
to the ringers. If Julien had only tried to think of the material
interests of the cathedral, his imagination would have transcended its
actual object and thought of economizing forty francs on the fabric
and have lost the opportunity of avoiding an expense of twenty-five
centimes.

While the procession slowly traversed Besancon on the finest day
imaginable, and stopped at the brilliant altar-stations put up by the
authorities, the church remained in profound silence. There prevailed a
semi-obscurity, an agreeable freshness. It was still perfumed with the
fragrance of flowers and incense.

The silence, the deep solitude, the freshness of the long naves
sweetened Julien's reverie. He did not fear being troubled by the
abbe Chas, who was engaged in another part of the building. His soul
had almost abandoned its mortal tenement, which was pacing slowly the
north wing which had been trusted to his surveillance. He was all the
more tranquil when he had assured himself that there was no one in the
confessional except some devout women. His eyes looked in front of him
seeing nothing.

His reverie was almost broken by the sight of two well-dressed women,
one in the Confessional, and the other on a chair quite near her. He
looked without seeing, but noticed, however, either by reason of some
vague appreciation of his duties or admiration for the aristocratic
but simple dress of the ladies, that there was no priest in the
Confessional.

"It is singular," he thought, "that if these fair ladies are devout,
they are not kneeling before some altar, or that if they are in society
they have not an advantageous position in the first row of some
balcony. How well cut that dress is! How graceful!"

He slackened his pace to try and look at them. The lady who was
kneeling in the Confessional turned her head a little hearing the noise
of Julien's step in this solemn place. Suddenly she gave a loud cry,
and felt ill.

As the lady collapsed and fell backwards on her knees, her friend who
was near her hastened to help her. At the same time Julien saw the
shoulders of the lady who was falling backwards. His eyes were struck
by a twisted necklace of fine, big pearls, which he knew well. What
were his emotions when he recognised the hair of Madame de Renal? It
was she! The lady who was trying to prevent her from falling was Madame
Derville. Julien was beside himself and hastened to their side. Madame
de Renal's fall would perhaps have carried her friend along with her,
if Julien had not supported them. He saw the head of Madame de Renal,
pale and entirely devoid of consciousness floating on his shoulder. He
helped Madame Derville to lean that charming head up against a straw
chair. He knelt down.

Madame Derville turned round and recognised him.

"Away, monsieur, away!" she said to him, in a tone of the most lively
anger. "Above all, do not let her see you again. The sight of you would
be sure to horrify her. She was so happy before you came. Your conduct
is atrocious. Flee! Take yourself off if you have any shame left."

These words were spoken with so much authority, and Julien felt so
weak, that he did take himself off. "She always hated me," he said to
himself, thinking of Madame Derville. At the same moment the nasal
chanting of the first priests in the procession which was now coming
back resounded in the church. The abbe Chas-Bernard called Julien, who
at first did not hear him, several times. He came at last and took his
arm behind a pillar where Julien had taken refuge more dead than alive.
He wanted to present him to the Bishop.

"Are you feeling well, my child?" said the abbe to him, seeing him so
pale, and almost incapable of walking. "You have worked too much." The
abbe gave him his arm. "Come, sit down behind me here, on the little
seat of the dispenser of holy water; I will hide you."

They were now beside the main door.

"Calm yourself. We have still a good twenty minutes before Monseigneur
appears. Try and pull yourself together. I will lift you up when he
passes, for in spite of my age, I am strong and vigorous."

Julien was trembling so violently when the Bishop passed, that the abbe
Chas gave up the idea of presenting him.

"Do not take it too much to heart," he said. "I will find another
opportunity."

The same evening he had six pounds of candles which had been saved, he
said, by Julien's carefulness, and by the promptness with which he had
extinguished them, carried to the seminary chapel. Nothing could have
been nearer the truth. The poor boy was extinguished himself. He had
not had a single thought after meeting Madame de Renal.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE FIRST PROMOTION

    He knew his age, he knew his department, and he is rich.
                                               _The Forerunner_.

Julien had not emerged from the deep reverie in which the episode in
the cathedral had plunged him, when the severe abbe Pirard summoned him.

"M. the abbe Chas-Bernard has just written in your favour. I am on
the whole sufficiently satisfied with your conduct. You are extremely
imprudent and irresponsible without outward signs of it. However, up
to the present, you have proved yourself possessed of a good and even
generous heart. Your intellect is superior. Taking it all round, I see
in you a spark which one must not neglect.

"I am on the point of leaving this house after fifteen years of work.
My crime is that I have left the seminarists to their free will, and
that I have neither protected nor served that secret society of which
you spoke to me at the Confessional. I wish to do something for you
before I leave. I would have done so two months earlier, for you
deserve it, had it not been for the information laid against you as
the result of the finding in your trunk of Amanda Binet's address. I
will make you New and Old Testament tutor. Julien was transported with
gratitude and evolved the idea of throwing himself on his knees and
thanking God. He yielded to a truer impulse, and approaching the abbe
Pirard, took his hand and pressed it to his lips.

"What is the meaning of this?" exclaimed the director angrily, but
Julien's eyes said even more than his act.

The abbe Pirard looked at him in astonishment, after the manner of a
man who has long lost the habit of encountering refined emotions. The
attention deceived the director. His voice altered.

"Well yes, my child, I am attached to you. Heaven knows that I have
been so in spite of myself. I ought to show neither hate nor love to
anyone. I see in you something which offends the vulgar. Jealousy and
calumny will pursue you in whatever place Providence may place you.
Your comrades will never behold you without hate, and if they pretend
to like you, it will only be to betray you with greater certainty. For
this there is only one remedy. Seek help only from God, who, to punish
you for your presumption, has cursed you with the inevitable hatred
of your comrades. Let your conduct be pure. That is the only resource
which I can see for you. If you love truth with an irresistible
embrace, your enemies will sooner or later be confounded."

It had been so long since Julien had heard a friendly voice that he
must be forgiven a weakness. He burst out into tears.

The abbe Pirard held out his arms to him. This moment was very sweet
to both of them. Julien was mad with joy. This promotion was the first
which he had obtained. The advantages were immense. To realise them one
must have been condemned to pass months on end without an instant's
solitude, and in immediate contact with comrades who were at the best
importunate, and for the most part insupportable. Their cries alone
would have sufficed to disorganise a delicate constitution. The noise
and joy of these peasants, well-fed and well-clothed as they were,
could only find a vent for itself, or believe in its own completeness
when they were shouting with all the strength of their lungs.

Now Julien dined alone, or nearly an hour later than the other
seminarists. He had a key of the garden and could walk in it when no
one else was there.

Julien was astonished to perceive that he was now hated less. He, on
the contrary, had been expecting that their hate would become twice as
intense. That secret desire of his that he should not be spoken to,
which had been only too manifest before, and had earned him so many
enemies, was no longer looked upon as a sign of ridiculous haughtiness.
It became, in the eyes of the coarse beings who surrounded him, a just
appreciation of his own dignity. The hatred of him sensibly diminished,
above all among the youngest of his comrades, who were now his pupils,
and whom he treated with much politeness. Gradually he obtained his own
following. It became looked upon as bad form to call him Martin Luther.

But what is the good of enumerating his friends and his enemies? The
whole business is squalid, and all the more squalid in proportion to
the truth of the picture. And yet the clergy supply the only teachers
of morals which the people have. What would happen to the people
without them? Will the paper ever replace the cure?

Since Julien's new dignity, the director of the seminary made a point
of never speaking to him without witnesses. These tactics were prudent,
both for the master and for the pupil, but above all it was meant for
a test. The invariable principle of that severe Jansenist Pirard was
this--"if a man has merit in your eyes, put obstacles in the way of
all he desires, and of everything which he undertakes. If the merit is
real, he will manage to overthrow or get round those obstacles."

It was the hunting season. It had occurred to Fouque to send a stag
and a boar to the seminary as though they came from Julien's parents.
The dead animals were put down on the floor between the kitchen and
the refectory. It was there that they were seen by all the seminarists
on their way to dinner. They constituted a great attraction for their
curiosity. The boar, dead though it was, made the youngest ones feel
frightened. They touched its tusks. They talked of nothing else for a
whole week.

This gift, which raised Julien's family to the level of that class
of society which deserves respect, struck a deadly blow at all
jealousy. He enjoyed a superiority, consecrated by fortune. Chazel,
the most distinguished of the seminarists, made advances to him, and
always reproached him for not having previously apprised them of his
parents' position and had thus involved them in treating money without
sufficient respect. A conscription took place, from which Julien, in
his capacity as seminarist, was exempt. This circumstance affected him
profoundly. "So there is just passed for ever that moment which, twenty
years earlier, would have seen my heroic life begin. He was walking
alone in the seminary garden. He heard the masons who were walling up
the cloister walls talking between themselves.

"Yes, we must go. There's the new conscription. When _the other_ was
alive it was good business. A mason could become an officer then, could
become a general then. One has seen such things."

"You go and see now. It's only the ragamuffins who leave for the army.
Any one _who has anything_ stays in the country here."

"The man who is born wretched stays wretched, and there you are."

"I say, is it true what they say, that the other is dead?" put in the
third mason.

"Oh well, it's the '_big men_' who say that, you see. The other one
made them afraid."

"What a difference. How the fortification went ahead in his time. And
to think of his being betrayed by his own marshals."

This conversation consoled Julien a little. As he went away, he
repeated with a sigh:

"_Le seul roi dont le peuple a garde la memoire._"

The time for the examination arrived. Julien answered brilliantly. He
saw that Chazel endeavoured to exhibit all his knowledge. On the first
day the examiners, nominated by the famous Grand Vicar de Frilair, were
very irritated at always having to put first, or at any rate second,
on their list, that Julien Sorel, who had been designated to them as
the Benjamin of the Abbe Pirard. There were bets in the seminary that
Julien would come out first in the final list of the examination, a
privilege which carried with it the honour of dining with my Lord
Bishop. But at the end of a sitting, dealing with the fathers of the
Church, an adroit examiner, having first interrogated Julien on Saint
Jerome and his passion for Cicero, went on to speak about Horace,
Virgil and other profane authors. Julien had learnt by heart a great
number of passages from these authors without his comrades' knowledge.
Swept away by his successes, he forgot the place where he was, and
recited in paraphrase with spirit several odes of Horace at the
repeated request of the examiner. Having for twenty minutes given him
enough rope to hang himself, the examiner changed his expression, and
bitterly reproached him for the time he had wasted on these profane
studies, and the useless or criminal ideas which he had got into his
head.

"I am a fool, sir. You are right," said Julien modestly, realising the
adroit stratagem of which he was the victim.

This examiner's dodge was considered dirty, even at the seminary, but
this did not prevent the abbe de Frilair, that adroit individual who
had so cleverly organised the machinery of the Besancon congregation,
and whose despatches to Paris put fear into the hearts of judges,
prefect, and even the generals of the garrison, from placing with
his powerful hand the number 198 against Julien's name. He enjoyed
subjecting his enemy, Pirard the Jansenist, to this mortification.

His chief object for the last ten years had been to deprive him of the
headship of the seminary. The abbe, who had himself followed the plan
which he had indicated to Julien, was sincere, pious, devoted to his
duties and devoid of intrigue, but heaven in its anger had given him
that bilious temperament which is by nature so deeply sensitive to
insults and to hate. None of the insults which were addressed to him
was wasted on his burning soul. He would have handed in his resignation
a hundred times over, but he believed that he was useful in the place
where Providence had set him. "I prevent the progress of Jesuitism and
Idolatry," he said to himself.

At the time of the examinations, it was perhaps nearly two months
since he had spoken to Julien, and nevertheless, he was ill for eight
days when, on receipt of the official letter announcing the result of
the competition, he saw the number 198 placed beside the name of that
pupil whom he regarded as the glory of his town. This stern character
found his only consolation in concentrating all his surveillance on
Julien. He was delighted that he discovered in him neither anger, nor
vindictiveness, nor discouragement.

Julien felt a thrill some months afterwards when he received a letter.
It bore the Paris post-mark. Madame de Renal is remembering her
promises at last, he thought. A gentleman who signed himself Paul
Sorel, and who said that he was his relative, sent him a letter of
credit for five hundred francs. The writer went on to add that if
Julien went on to study successfully the good Latin authors, a similar
sum would be sent to him every year.

"It is she. It is her kindness," said Julien to himself, feeling quite
overcome. "She wishes to console me. But why not a single word of
affection?"

He was making a mistake in regard to this letter, for Madame de Renal,
under the influence of her friend, Madame Derville, was abandoning
herself absolutely to profound remorse. She would often think, in
spite of herself, of that singular being, the meeting with whom had
revolutionized her life. But she carefully refrained from writing to
him.

If we were to talk the terminology of the seminary, we would be able
to recognise a miracle in the sending of these five hundred francs and
to say that heaven was making use of Monsieur de Frilair himself in
order to give this gift to Julien. Twelve years previously the abbe de
Frilair had arrived in Besancon with an extremely exiguous portmanteau,
which, according to the story, contained all his fortune. He was now
one of the richest proprietors of the department. In the course of his
prosperity, he had bought the one half of an estate, while the other
half had been inherited by Monsieur de la Mole. Consequently there was
a great lawsuit between these two personages.

M. le Marquis de la Mole felt that, in spite of his brilliant life at
Paris and the offices which he held at Court, it would be dangerous to
fight at Besancon against the Grand Vicar, who was reputed to make and
unmake prefects.

Instead of soliciting a present of fifty thousand francs which could
have been smuggled into the budget under some name or other, and of
throwing up this miserable lawsuit with the abbe Frilair over a matter
of fifty thousand francs, the marquis lost his temper. He thought
he was in the right, absolutely in the right. Moreover, if one is
permitted to say so, who is the judge who has not got a son, or at any
rate a cousin to push in the world?

In order to enlighten the blindest minds the abbe de Frilair took
the carriage of my Lord the Bishop eight days after the first decree
which he obtained, and went himself to convey the cross of the Legion
of Honour to his advocate. M. de la Mole, a little dumbfounded at
the demeanour of the other side, and appreciating also that his own
advocates were slackening their efforts, asked advice of the abbe
Chelan, who put him in communication with M. Pirard.

At the period of our story the relations between these two men had
lasted for several years. The abbe Pirard imported into this affair
his characteristic passion. Being in constant touch with the Marquis's
advocates, he studied his case, and finding it just, he became quite
openly the solicitor of M. de la Mole against the all-powerful Grand
Vicar. The latter felt outraged by such insolence, and on the part of a
little Jansenist into the bargain.

"See what this Court nobility who pretend to be so powerful really
are," would say the abbe de Frilair to his intimates. M. de la Mole has
not even sent a miserable cross to his agent at Besancon, and will let
him be tamely turned out. None the less, so they write me, this noble
peer never lets a week go by without going to show off his blue ribbon
in the drawing-room of the Keeper of Seal, whoever it may be.

In spite of all the energy of the abbe Pirard, and although M. de la
Mole was always on the best of terms with the minister of justice, and
above all with his officials, the best that he could achieve after six
careful years was not to lose his lawsuit right out. Being as he was
in ceaseless correspondence with the abbe Pirard in connection with an
affair in which they were both passionately interested, the Marquis
came to appreciate the abbe's particular kind of intellect. Little by
little, and in spite of the immense distance in their social positions,
their correspondence assumed the tone of friendship. The abbe Pirard
told the Marquis that they wanted to heap insults upon him till he
should be forced to hand in his resignation. In his anger against what,
in his opinion, was the infamous stratagem employed against Julien, he
narrated his history to the Marquis.

Although extremely rich, this great lord was by no means miserly. He
had never been able to prevail on the abbe Pirard to accept even the
reimbursement of the postal expenses occasioned by the lawsuit. He
seized the opportunity of sending five hundred francs to his favourite
pupil. M. de la Mole himself took the trouble of writing the covering
letter. This gave the abbe food for thought. One day the latter
received a little note which requested him to go immediately on an
urgent matter to an inn on the outskirts of Besancon. He found there
the steward of M. de la Mole.

"M. le Marquis has instructed me to bring you his carriage," said the
man to him. "He hopes that after you have read this letter you will
find it convenient to leave for Paris in four or five days. I will
employ the time in the meanwhile in asking you to be good enough to
show me the estates of M. le Marquis in the Franche-Comte, so that I
can go over them."

The letter was short:--

        "Rid yourself, my good sir, of all the chicanery of the
        provinces and come and breathe the peaceful atmosphere
        of Paris. I send you my carriage which has orders to
        await your decision for four days. I will await you
        myself at Paris until Tuesday. You only require to say
        so, monsieur, to accept in your own name one of the best
        livings in the environs of Paris. The richest of your
        future parishioners has never seen you, but is more
        devoted than you can possibly think: he is the Marquis
        de la Mole."

Without having suspected it, the stern abbe Pirard loved this seminary,
peopled as it was by his enemies, but to which for the past fifteen
years he had devoted all his thoughts. M. de la Mole's letter had
the effect on him of the visit of the surgeon come to perform a
difficult but necessary operation. His dismissal was certain. He made
an appointment with the steward for three days later. For forty-eight
hours he was in a fever of uncertainty. Finally he wrote to the M. de
la Mole, and composed for my Lord the Bishop a letter, a masterpiece of
ecclesiastical style, although it was a little long; it would have been
difficult to have found more unimpeachable phrases, and ones breathing
a more sincere respect. And nevertheless, this letter, intended as it
was to get M. de Frilair into trouble with his patron, gave utterance
to all the serious matters of complaint, and even descended to the
little squalid intrigues which, having been endured with resignation
for six years, were forcing the abbe Pirard to leave the diocese.

They stole his firewood, they poisoned his dog, etc., etc.

Having finished this letter he had Julien called. Like all the other
seminarists, he was sleeping at eight o'clock in the evening.

"You know where the Bishop's Palace is," he said to him in good
classical Latin. "Take this letter to my Lord. I will not hide from
you that I am sending you into the midst of the wolves. Be all ears
and eyes. Let there be no lies in your answers, but realise that the
man questioning you will possibly experience a real joy in being able
to hurt you. I am very pleased, my child, at being able to give you
this experience before I leave you, for I do not hide from you that the
letter which you are bearing is my resignation."

Julien stood motionless. He loved the abbe Pirard. It was in vain that
prudence said to him,

"After this honest man's departure the Sacre-Coeur party will disgrace
me and perhaps expel me."

He could not think of himself. He was embarrassed by a phrase which he
was trying to turn in a polite way, but as a matter of fact he found
himself without the brains to do so.

"Well, my friend, are you not going?"

"Is it because they say, monsieur," answered Julian timidly, "that you
have put nothing on one side during your long administration. I have
six hundred francs."

His tears prevented him from continuing.

"_That also will be noticed,_" said the ex-director of the seminary
coldly. "Go to the Palace. It is getting late."

Chance would so have it that on that evening, the abbe de Frilair
was on duty in the salon of the Palace. My lord was dining with the
prefect, so it was to M. de Frilair himself that Julien, though he did
not know it, handed the letter.

Julien was astonished to see this abbe boldly open the letter which was
addressed to the Bishop. The face of the Grand Vicar soon expressed
surprise, tinged with a lively pleasure, and became twice as grave
as before. Julien, struck with his good appearance, found time to
scrutinise him while he was reading. This face would have possessed
more dignity had it not been for the extreme subtlety which appeared
in some features, and would have gone to the fact of actually denoting
falseness if the possessor of this fine countenance had ceased
to school it for a single minute. The very prominent nose formed
a perfectly straight line and unfortunately gave to an otherwise
distinguished profile, a curious resemblance to the physiognomy of
a fox. Otherwise this abbe, who appeared so engrossed with Monsieur
Pirard's resignation, was dressed with an elegance which Julien had
never seen before in any priest and which pleased him exceedingly.

It was only later that Julien knew in what the special talent of the
abbe de Frilair really consisted. He knew how to amuse his bishop,
an amiable old man made for Paris life, and who looked upon Besancon
as exile. This Bishop had very bad sight, and was passionately fond
of fish. The abbe de Frilair used to take the bones out of the fish
which was served to my Lord. Julien looked silently at the abbe who
was rereading the resignation when the door suddenly opened with a
noise. A richly dressed lackey passed in rapidly. Julien had only
time to turn round towards the door. He perceived a little old man
wearing a pectoral cross. He prostrated himself. The Bishop addressed a
benevolent smile to him and passed on. The handsome abbe followed him
and Julien was left alone in the salon, and was able to admire at his
leisure its pious magnificence.

The Bishop of Besancon, a man whose spirit had been tried but
not broken by the long miseries of the emigration, was more than
seventy-five years old and concerned himself infinitely little with
what might happen in ten years' time.

"Who is that clever-looking seminarist I think I saw as I passed?" said
the Bishop. "Oughtn't they to be in bed according to my regulations."

"That one is very wide-awake I assure you, my Lord, and he brings
great news. It is the resignation of the only Jansenist residing in
your diocese, that terrible abbe Pirard realises at last that we mean
business."

"Well," said the Bishop with a laugh. "I challenge you to replace him
with any man of equal worth, and to show you how much I prize that man,
I will invite him to dinner for to-morrow."

The Grand Vicar tried to slide in a few words concerning the choice of
a successor. The prelate, who was little disposed to talk business,
said to him.

"Before we install the other, let us get to know a little of the
circumstances under which the present one is going. Fetch me this
seminarist. The truth is in the mouth of children."

Julien was summoned. "I shall find myself between two inquisitors,"
he thought. He had never felt more courageous. At the moment when he
entered, two valets, better dressed than M. Valenod himself, were
undressing my lord. That prelate thought he ought to question Julien
on his studies before questioning him about M. Pirard. He talked a
little theology, and was astonished. He soon came to the humanities,
to Virgil, to Horace, to Cicero. "It was those names," thought Julien,
that earned me my number 198. I have nothing to lose. Let us try
and shine. He succeeded. The prelate, who was an excellent humanist
himself, was delighted.

At the prefect's dinner, a young girl who was justly celebrated,
had recited the poem of the Madeleine. He was in the mood to talk
literature, and very quickly forgot the abbe Pirard and his affairs
to discuss with the seminarist whether Horace was rich or poor. The
prelate quoted several odes, but sometimes his memory was sluggish,
and then Julien would recite with modesty the whole ode: the fact
which struck the bishop was that Julien never deviated from the
conversational tone. He spoke his twenty or thirty Latin verses as
though he had been speaking of what was taking place in his own
seminary. They talked for a long time of Virgil, or Cicero, and the
prelate could not help complimenting the young seminarist. "You could
not have studied better."

"My Lord," said Julien, "your seminary can offer you 197 much less
unworthy of your high esteem."

"How is that?" said the Prelate astonished by the number.

"I can support by official proof just what I have had the honour of
saying before my lord. I obtained the number 198 at the seminary's
annual examination by giving accurate answers to the very questions
which are earning me at the present moment my lord's approbation.

"Ah, it is the Benjamin of the abbe Pirard," said the Bishop with a
laugh, as he looked at M. de Frilair. "We should have been prepared
for this. But it is fair fighting. Did you not have to be woken up, my
friend," he said, addressing himself to Julien. "To be sent here?"

"Yes, my Lord. I have only been out of the seminary alone once in my
life to go and help M. the abbe Chas-Bernard decorate the cathedral on
Corpus Christi day.

"Optime," said the Bishop. "So, it is you who showed proof of so much
courage by placing the bouquets of feathers on the baldachin. They
make me shudder. They make me fear that they will cost some man his
life. You will go far, my friend, but I do not wish to cut short your
brilliant career by making you die of hunger."

And by the order of the Bishop, biscuits and wine were brought in, to
which Julien did honour, and the abbe de Frilair, who knew that his
Bishop liked to see people eat gaily and with a good appetite, even
greater honour.

The prelate, more and more satisfied with the end of his evening,
talked for a moment of ecclesiastical history. He saw that Julien did
not understand. The prelate passed on to the moral condition of the
Roman Empire under the system of the Emperor Constantine. The end of
paganism had been accompanied by that state of anxiety and of doubt
which afflicts sad and jaded spirits in the nineteenth century. My Lord
noticed Julien's ignorance of almost the very name of Tacitus. To the
astonishment of the prelate, Julien answered frankly that that author
was not to be found in the seminary library.

"I am truly very glad," said the Bishop gaily, "You relieve me of an
embarrassment. I have been trying for the last five minutes to find a
way of thanking you for the charming evening which you have given me in
a way that I could certainly never have expected. I did not anticipate
finding a teacher in a pupil in my seminary. Although the gift is not
unduly canonical, I want to give you a Tacitus." The prelate had eight
volumes in a superior binding fetched for him, and insisted on writing
himself on the title page of the first volume a Latin compliment to
Julien Sorel. The Bishop plumed himself on his fine Latinity. He
finished by saying to him in a serious tone, which completely clashed
with the rest of the conversation.

"Young man, if you are good, you will have one day the best living in
my diocese, and one not a hundred leagues from my episcopal palace, but
you must be good."

Laden with his volumes, Julien left the palace in a state of great
astonishment as midnight was striking.

My Lord had not said a word to him about the abbe Pirard. Julien was
particularly astonished by the Bishop's extreme politeness. He had had
no conception of such an urbanity in form combined with so natural an
air of dignity. Julien was especially struck by the contrast on seeing
again the gloomy abbe Pirard, who was impatiently awaiting him.

"Quid tibi dixerunt (What have they said to you)?" he cried out to him
in a loud voice as soon as he saw him in the distance. "Speak French,
and repeat my Lord's own words without either adding or subtracting
anything," said the ex-Director of the seminary in his harsh tone,
and with his particularly inelegant manners, as Julien got slightly
confused in translating into Latin the speeches of the Bishop.

"What a strange present on the part of the Bishop to a young
seminarist," he ventured to say as he turned over the leaves of the
superb Tacitus, whose gilt edges seemed to horrify him.

Two o'clock was already striking when he allowed his favourite pupil to
retire to his room after an extremely detailed account.

"Leave me the first volume of your Tacitus," he said to him. "Where
is my Lord Bishop's compliment? This Latin line will serve as your
lightning-conductor in this house after my departure."

Erit tibi, fili mi, successor meus tanquam leo querens quem devoret.
(For my successor will be to you, my son, like a ravening lion seeking
someone to devour).

The following morning Julien noticed a certain strangeness in
the manner in which his comrades spoke to him. It only made him
more reserved. "This," he thought, "is the result of M. Pirard's
resignation. It is known over the whole house, and I pass for his
favourite. There ought logically to be an insult in their demeanour."
But he could not detect it. On the contrary, there was an absence of
hate in the eyes of all those he met along the corridors. "What is the
meaning of this? It is doubtless a trap. Let us play a wary game."

Finally the little seminarist said to him with a laugh,

"Cornelii Taciti opera omnia (complete works of Tacitus)."

On hearing these words, they all congratulated Julien enviously, not
only on the magnificent present which he had received from my lord, but
also on the two hours' conversation with which he had been honoured.
They knew even its minutest details. From that moment envy ceased
completely. They courted him basely. The abbe Castanede, who had
manifested towards him the most extreme insolence the very day before,
came and took his arm and invited him to breakfast.

By some fatality in Julien's character, while the insolence of these
coarse creatures had occasioned him great pain, their baseness afforded
him disgust, but no pleasure.

Towards mid-day the abbe Pirard took leave of his pupils, but not
before addressing to them a severe admonition.

"Do you wish for the honours of the world," he said to them. "For all
the social advantages, for the pleasure of commanding pleasures, of
setting the laws at defiance, and the pleasure of being insolent with
impunity to all? Or do you wish for your eternal salvation? The most
backward of you have only got to open your eyes to distinguish the true
ways."

He had scarcely left before the devotees of the _Sacre Coeur de Jesus_
went into the chapel to intone a Te Deum. Nobody in the seminary took
the ex-director's admonition seriously.

"He shows a great deal of temper because he is losing his job," was
what was said in every quarter.

Not a single seminarist was simple enough to believe in the voluntary
resignation of a position which put him into such close touch with the
big contractors.

The abbe Pirard went and established himself in the finest inn at
Besancon, and making an excuse of business which he had not got,
insisted on passing a couple of days there. The Bishop had invited
him to dinner, and in order to chaff his Grand Vicar de Frilair,
endeavoured to make him shine. They were at dessert when the
extraordinary intelligence arrived from Paris that the abbe Pirard had
been appointed to the magnificent living of N. ---- four leagues from
Paris. The good prelate congratulated him upon it. He saw in the whole
affair a piece of good play which put him in a good temper and gave him
the highest opinion of the abbe's talents. He gave him a magnificent
Latin certificate, and enjoined silence on the abbe de Frilair, who was
venturing to remonstrate.

The same evening, my Lord conveyed his admiration to the Marquise de
Rubempre. This was great news for fine Besancon society. They abandoned
themselves to all kinds of conjectures over this extraordinary favour.
They already saw the abbe Pirard a Bishop. The more subtle brains
thought M. de la Mole was a minister, and indulged on this day in
smiles at the imperious airs that M. the abbe de Frilair adopted in
society.

The following day the abbe Pirard was almost mobbed in the streets,
and the tradesmen came to their shop doors when he went to solicit an
interview with the judges who had had to try the Marquis's lawsuit. For
the first time in his life he was politely received by them. The stern
Jansenist, indignant as he was with all that he saw, worked long with
the advocates whom he had chosen for the Marquis de la Mole, and left
for Paris. He was weak enough to tell two or three college friends who
accompanied him to the carriage whose armorial bearings they admired,
that after having administered the Seminary for fifteen years he was
leaving Besancon with five hundred and twenty francs of savings. His
friends kissed him with tears in their eyes, and said to each other,

"The good abbe could have spared himself that lie. It is really too
ridiculous."

The vulgar, blinded as they are by the love of money, were
constitutionally incapable of understanding that it was in his own
sincerity that the abbe Pirard had found the necessary strength to
fight for six years against Marie Alacoque, the _Sacre Coeur de Jesus_,
the Jesuits and his Bishop.

CHAPTER XXX

AN AMBITIOUS MAN

    There is only one nobility, the title of duke; a marquis is
    ridiculous; the word duke makes one turn round.
                                       _Edinburgh Review_.

The Marquis de la Mole received the abbe Pirard without any of those
aristocratic mannerisms whose very politeness is at the same time so
impertinent to one who understands them. It would have been a waste of
time, and the Marquis was sufficiently expeditious in big affairs to
have no time to lose.

He had been intriguing for six months to get both the king and people
to accept a minister who, as a matter of gratitude, was to make him a
Duke. The Marquis had been asking his Besancon advocate for years on
end for a clear and precise summary of his Franche-Comte lawsuits. How
could the celebrated advocate explain to him what he did not understand
himself? The little square of paper which the abbe handed him explained
the whole matter.

"My dear abbe," said the Marquis to him, having got through in less
than five minutes all polite formulae of personal questions. "My dear
abbe, in the midst of my pretended prosperity I lack the time to occupy
myself seriously with two little matters which are rather important,
my family and my affairs. I manage the fortune of my house on a large
scale. I can carry it far. I manage my pleasures, and that is the first
consideration in my eyes," he added, as he saw a look of astonishment
in the abbe Pirard's eyes. Although a man of common sense, the abbe was
surprised to hear a man talk so frankly about his pleasures.

"Work doubtless exists in Paris," continued the great lord, "but it is
perched on the fifth story, and as soon as I take anyone up, he takes
an apartment on the second floor, and his wife starts a day at home;
the result is no more work and no more efforts except either to be, or
appear to be, a society man. That is the only thing they bother about,
as soon as they have got their bread and butter.

"For my lawsuits, yes, for every single one of them, I have, to put it
plainly, advocates who quarrel to death. One died of consumption the
day before yesterday. Taking my business all round, would you believe,
monsieur, that for three years I have given up all hope of finding a
man who deigns, during the time he is acting as my clerk, to give a
little serious thought to what he is doing. Besides, all this is only a
preliminary.

"I respect you and would venture to add that, although I only see you
for the first time to-day, I like you. Will you be my secretary at a
salary of eight hundred francs or even double. I shall still be the
gainer by it, I swear to you, and I will manage to reserve that fine
living for you for the day when we shall no longer be able to agree."
The abbe refused, but the genuine embarrassment in which he saw the
Marquis suggested an idea to him towards the end of the conversation.

"I have left in the depths of my seminary a poor young man who, if I
mistake not, will be harshly persecuted. If he were only a simple monk
he would be already _in pace_. So far this young man only knows Latin
and the Holy Scriptures, but it is not impossible that he will one day
exhibit great talent, either for preaching or the guiding of souls. I
do not know what he will do, but he has the sacred fire. He may go far.
I thought of giving him to our Bishop, if we had ever had one who was a
little of your way of considering men and things."

"What is your young man's extraction?" said the Marquis.

"He is said to be the son of a carpenter in our mountains. I rather
believe he is the natural son of some rich man. I have seen him receive
an anonymous or pseudonymous letter with a bill for five hundred
francs."

"Oh, it is Julien Sorel," said the Marquis.

"How do you know his name?" said the abbe, in astonishment, reddening
at his question.

"That's what I'm not going to tell you," answered the Marquis.

"Well," replied the abbe, "you might try making him your secretary. He
has energy. He has a logical mind. In a word, it's worth trying."

"Why not?" said the Marquis. "But would he be the kind of man to allow
his palm to be greased by the Prefect of Police or any one else and
then spy on me? That is only my objection."

After hearing the favourable assurances of the abbe Pirard, the Marquis
took a thousand franc note.

"Send this journey money to Julien Sorel. Let him come to me."

"One sees at once," said the abbe Pirard, "that you live in Paris.
You do not know the tyranny which weighs us poor provincials down,
and particularly those priests who are not friendly to the Jesuits.
They will refuse to let Julien Sorel leave. They will manage to cloak
themselves in the most clever excuses. They will answer me that he is
ill, that his letters were lost in the post, etc., etc."

"I will get a letter from the minister to the Bishop, one of these
days," answered the Marquis.

"I was forgetting to warn you of one thing," said the abbe. "This young
man, though of low birth, has a high spirit. He will be of no use if
you madden his pride. You will make him stupid."

"That pleases me," said the Marquis. "I will make him my son's comrade.
Will that be enough for you?"

Some time afterwards, Julien received a letter in an unknown writing,
and bearing the Chelon postmark. He found in it a draft on a Besancon
merchant, and instructions to present himself at Paris without delay.
The letter was signed in a fictitious name, but Julien had felt a
thrill in opening it. A leaf of a tree had fallen down at his feet. It
was the agreed signal between himself and the abbe Pirard.

Within an hour's time, Julien was summoned to the Bishop's Palace,
where he found himself welcomed with a quite paternal benevolence. My
lord quoted Horace and at the same time complimented him very adroitly
on the exalted destiny which awaited him in Paris in such a way as
to elicit an explanation by way of thanks. Julien was unable to say
anything, simply because he did not know anything, and my Lord showed
him much consideration. One of the little priests in the bishopric
wrote to the mayor, who hastened to bring in person a signed passport,
where the name of the traveller had been left in blank.

Before midnight of the same evening, Julien was at Fouque's. His
friend's shrewd mind was more astonished than pleased with the future
which seemed to await his friend.

"You will finish up," said that Liberal voter, "with a place in the
Government, which will compel you to take some step which will be
calumniated. It will only be by your own disgrace that I shall have
news of you. Remember that, even from the financial standpoint, it is
better to earn a hundred louis in a good timber business, of which
one is his own master, than to receive four thousand francs from a
Government, even though it were that of King Solomon."

Julien saw nothing in this except the pettiness of spirit of a country
bourgeois. At last he was going to make an appearance in the theatre of
great events. Everything was over-shadowed in his eyes by the happiness
of going to Paris, which he imagined to be populated by people of
intellect, full of intrigues and full of hypocrisy, but as polite as
the Bishop of Besancon and the Bishop of Agde. He represented to his
friend that he was deprived of any free choice in the matter by the
abbe Pirard's letter.'

The following day he arrived at Verrieres about noon. He felt the
happiest of men for he counted on seeing Madame de Renal again. He
went first to his protector the good abbe Chelan. He met with a severe
welcome.

"Do you think you are under any obligation to me?" said M. Chelan to
him, without answering his greeting. "You will take breakfast with me.
During that time I will have a horse hired for you and you will leave
Verrieres without seeing anyone."

"Hearing is obeying," answered Julien with a demeanour smacking of
the seminary, and the only questions now discussed were theology and
classical Latin.

He mounted his horse, rode a league, and then perceiving a wood and
not seeing any one who could notice him enter, he plunged into it.
At sunset, he sent away the horse. Later, he entered the cottage of
a peasant, who consented to sell him a ladder and to follow him with
it to the little wood which commands the _Cours de la Fidelite_ at
Verrieres.

"I have been following a poor mutineer of a conscript ... or a
smuggler," said the peasant as he took leave of him, "but what does
it matter? My ladder has been well paid for, and I myself have done a
thing or two in that line."

The night was very black. Towards one o'clock in the morning, Julien,
laden with his ladder, entered Verrieres. He descended as soon as he
could into the bed of the stream, which is banked within two walls, and
traverses M. de Renal's magnificent gardens at a depth of ten feet.
Julien easily climbed up the ladder. "How will the watch dogs welcome
me," he thought. "It all turns on that." The dogs barked and galloped
towards him, but he whistled softly and they came and caressed him.
Then climbing from terrace to terrace he easily managed, although all
the grills were shut, to get as far as the window of Madame de Renal's
bedroom which, on the garden side, was only eight or six feet above the
ground. There was a little heart shaped opening in the shutters which
Julien knew well. To his great disappointment, this little opening was
not illuminated by the flare of a little night-light inside.

"Good God," he said to himself. "This room is not occupied by Madame de
Renal. Where can she be sleeping? The family must be at Verrieres since
I have found the dogs here, but I might meet M. de Renal himself, or
even a stranger in this room without a light, and then what a scandal!"
The most prudent course was to retreat, but this idea horrified Julien.

"If it's a stranger, I will run away for all I'm worth, and leave my
ladder behind me, but if it is she, what a welcome awaits me! I can
well imagine that she has fallen into a mood of penitence and the most
exalted piety, but after all, she still has some remembrance of me,
since she has written to me." This bit of reasoning decided him.

With a beating heart, but resolved none the less to see her or perish
in the attempt, he threw some little pebbles against the shutter.
No answer. He leaned his long ladder beside the window, and himself
knocked on the shutter, at first softly, and then more strongly.
"However dark it is, they may still shoot me," thought Julien. This
idea made the mad adventure simply a question of bravery.

"This room is not being slept in to-night," he thought, "or whatever
person might be there would have woken up by now. So far as it is
concerned, therefore, no further precautions are needed. I must only
try not to be heard by the persons sleeping in the other rooms."

He descended, placed his ladder against one of the shutters, climbed
up again, and placing his hand through the heart-shaped opening, was
fortunate enough to find pretty quickly the wire which is attached to
the hook which closed the shutter. He pulled this wire. It was with an
ineffable joy that he felt that the shutter was no longer held back,
and yielded to his effort.

I must open it bit by bit and let her recognise my voice. He opened the
shutter enough to pass his head through it, while he repeated in a low
voice, "It's a friend."

He pricked up his ears and assured himself that nothing disturbed the
profound silence of the room, but there could be no doubt about it,
there was no light, even half-extinguished, on the mantelpiece. It was
a very bad sign.

"Look out for the gun-shot," he reflected a little, then he ventured
to knock against the window with his finger. No answer. He knocked
harder. I must finish it one way or another, even if I have to break
the window. When he was knocking very hard, he thought he could catch
a glimpse through the darkness of something like a white shadow that
was crossing the room. At last there was no doubt about it. He saw a
shadow which appeared to advance with extreme slowness. Suddenly he saw
a cheek placed against the pane to which his eye was glued.

He shuddered and went away a little, but the night was so black that
he could not, even at this distance, distinguish if it were Madame de
Renal. He was frightened of her crying out at first in alarm. He heard
the dogs prowling and growling around the foot of the ladder. "It is
I," he repeated fairly loudly. "A friend."

No answer. The white phantom had disappeared.

"Deign to open to me. I must speak to you. I am too unhappy." And he
knocked hard enough to break the pane.

A crisp sound followed. The casement fastening of the window yielded.
He pushed the casement and leaped lightly into the room.

The white phantom flitted away from him. He took hold of its arms. It
was a woman. All his ideas of courage vanished. "If it is she, what is
she going to say?" What were his emotions when a little cry gave him to
understand, that it was Madame de Renal?

He clasped her in his arms. She trembled and scarcely had the strength
to push him away.

"Unhappy man. What are you doing?" Her agonised voice could scarcely
articulate the words.

Julien thought that her voice rang with the most genuine indignation.

"I have come to see you after a cruel separation of more than fourteen
months."

"Go away, leave me at once. Oh, M. Chelan, why did you prevent me
writing to him? I could then have foreseen this horror." She pushed
him away with a truly extraordinary strength. "Heaven has deigned to
enlighten me," she repeated in a broken voice. "Go away! Flee!"

"After fourteen months of unhappiness I shall certainly not leave you
without a word. I want to know all you have done. Yes, I have loved
you enough to deserve this confidence. I want to know everything."
This authoritative tone dominated Madame de Renal's heart in spite of
herself. Julien, who was hugging her passionately and resisting her
efforts to get loose, left off clasping her in his arms. This reassured
Madame de Renal a little.

"I will take away the ladder," he said, "to prevent it compromising
us in case some servant should be awakened by the noise, and go on a
round."

"Oh leave me, leave me!" she cried with an admirable anger. "What
do men matter to me! It is God who sees the awful scene you are now
making. You are abusing meanly the sentiments which I had for you but
have no longer. Do you hear, Monsieur Julien?"

He took away the ladder very slowly so as not to make a noise.

"Is your husband in town, dear," he said to her not in order to defy
her but as a sheer matter of habit.

"Don't talk to me like that, I beg you, or I will call my husband. I
feel only too guilty in not having sent you away before. I pity you,"
she said to him, trying to wound his, as she well knew, irritable pride.

This refusal of all endearments, this abrupt way of breaking so tender
a tie which he thought still subsisted, carried the transports of
Julien's love to the point of delirium.

"What! is it possible you do not love me?" he said to her, with one of
those accents that come straight from the heart and impose a severe
strain on the cold equanimity of the listener.

She did not answer. As for him, he wept bitterly.

In fact he had no longer the strength to speak.

"So I am completely forgotten by the one being who ever loved me, what
is the good of living on henceforth?" As soon as he had no longer to
fear the danger of meeting a man all his courage had left him; his
heart now contained no emotion except that of love.

He wept for a long time in silence.

He took her hand; she tried to take it away, and after a few almost
convulsive moments, surrendered it to him. It was extremely dark; they
were both sitting on Madame de Renal's bed.

"What a change from fourteen months ago," thought Julien, and his tears
redoubled. "So absence is really bound to destroy all human sentiments."

"Deign to tell me what has happened to you?" Julien said at last.

"My follies," answered Madame de Renal in a hard voice whose frigid
intonation contained in it a certain element of reproach, "were no
doubt known in the town when you left, your conduct was so imprudent.
Some time afterwards when I was in despair the venerable Chelan came to
see me. He tried in vain for a long time to obtain a confession. One
day he took me to that church at Dijon where I made my first communion.
In that place he ventured to speak himself----" Madame de Renal
was interrupted by her tears. "What a moment of shame. I confessed
everything. The good man was gracious enough not to overwhelm me with
the weight of his indignation. He grieved with me. During that time I
used to write letters to you every day which I never ventured to send.
I hid them carefully and when I was more than usually unhappy I shut
myself up in my room and read over my letters."

"At last M. Chelan induced me to hand them over to him, some of them
written a little more discreetly were sent to you, you never answered."

"I never received any letters from you, I swear!"

"Great heavens! Who can have intercepted them? Imagine my grief until
the day I saw you in the cathedral. I did not know if you were still
alive."

"God granted me the grace of understanding how much I was sinning
towards Him, towards my children, towards my husband," went on Madame
de Renal. "He never loved me in the way that I then thought that you
had loved me."

Julien rushed into her arms, as a matter of fact without any particular
purpose and feeling quite beside himself. But Madame de Renal repelled
him and continued fairly firmly.

"My venerable friend, M. Chelan, made me understand that in marrying I
had plighted all my affections, even those which I did not then know,
and which I had never felt before a certain fatal attachment ... after
the great sacrifice of the letters that were so dear to me, my life has
flowed on, if not happily, at any rate calmly. Do not disturb it. Be
a friend to me, my best friend." Julien covered her hand with kisses.
She perceived he was still crying. "Do not cry, you pain me so much.
Tell me, in your turn, what you have been doing," Julien was unable
to speak. "I want to know the life you lead at the seminary," she
repeated. "And then you will go."

Without thinking about what he was saying Julien spoke of the
numberless intrigues and jealousies which he had first encountered, and
then of the great serenity of his life after he had been made a tutor.

"It was then," he added, "that after a long silence which was no doubt
intended to make me realise what I see only too clearly to-day, that
you no longer loved me and that I had become a matter of indifference
to you...."

Madame de Renal wrung her hands.

"It was then that you sent me the sum of five hundred francs."

"Never," said Madame de Renal.

"It was a letter stamped Paris and signed Paul Sorel so as to avert
suspicion."

There was a little discussion about how the letter could possibly have
originated.

The psychological situation was altered. Without knowing it Julien had
abandoned his solemn tone; they were now once more on the footing of a
tender affection. It was so dark that they did not see each other but
the tone of their voices was eloquent of everything. Julien clasped
his arm round his love's waist. This movement had its dangers. She
tried to put Julien's arms away from her; at this juncture he cleverly
diverted her attention by an interesting detail in his story. The arm
was practically forgotten and remained in its present position.

After many conjectures as to the origin of the five hundred francs
letter, Julien took up his story. He regained a little of his
self-control as he spoke of his past life, which compared with what he
was now experiencing interested him so little. His attention was now
concentrated on the final outcome of of his visit. "You will have to
go," were the curt words he heard from time to time.

"What a disgrace for me if I am dismissed. My remorse will embitter all
my life," he said to himself, "she will never write to me. God knows
when I shall come back to this part of the country." From this moment
Julien's heart became rapidly oblivious of all the heavenly delights of
his present position.

Seated as he was close to a woman whom he adored and practically
clasping her in his arms in this room, the scene of his former
happiness, amid a deep obscurity, seeing quite clearly as he did that
she had just started crying, and feeling that she was sobbing from the
heaving of her chest, he was unfortunate enough to turn into a cold
diplomatist, nearly as cold as in those days when in the courtyard
of the seminary he found himself the butt of some malicious joke on
the part of one of his comrades who was stronger than he was. Julien
protracted his story by talking of his unhappy life since his departure
from Verrieres.

"So," said Madame de Renal to herself, "after a year's absence and
deprived almost entirely of all tokens of memory while I myself was
forgetting him, he only thought of the happy days that he had had in
Verrieres." Her sobs redoubled. Julien saw the success of his story.
He realised that he must play his last card. He abruptly mentioned a
letter he had just received from Paris.

"I have taken leave of my Lord Bishop."

"What! you are not going back to Besancon? You are leaving us for ever?"

"Yes," answered Julien resolutely, "yes, I am leaving a country where I
have been forgotten even by the woman whom I loved more than anyone in
my life; I am leaving it and I shall never see it again. I am going to
Paris."

"You are going to Paris, dear," exclaimed Madame de Renal.

Her voice was almost choked by her tears and showed the extremity of
her trouble. Julien had need of this encouragement. He was on the point
of executing a manoeuvre which might decide everything against him; and
up to the time of this exclamation he could not tell what effect he was
producing as he was unable to see. He no longer hesitated. The fear of
remorse gave him complete control over himself. He coldly added as he
got up.

"Yes, madame, I leave you for ever. May you be happy. Adieu."

He moved some steps towards the window. He began to open it. Madame de
Renal rushed to him and threw herself into his arms. So it was in this
way that, after a dialogue lasting three hours, Julien obtained what he
desired so passionately during the first two hours.

Madame de Renal's return to her tender feelings and this overshadowing
of her remorse would have been a divine happiness had they come a
little earlier; but, as they had been obtained by artifice, they were
simply a pleasure. Julien insisted on lighting the night-light in spite
of his mistress's opposition.

"Do you wish me then," he said to her "to have no recollection of
having seen you. Is the love in those charming eyes to be lost to me
for ever? Is the whiteness of that pretty hand to remain invisible?
Remember that perhaps I am leaving you for a very long time."

Madame de Renal could refuse him nothing. His argument made her melt
into tears. But the dawn was beginning to throw into sharp relief the
outlines of the pine trees on the mountain east of Verrieres. Instead
of going away Julien, drunk with pleasure, asked Madame de Renal to let
him pass the day in her room and leave the following night.

"And why not?" she answered. "This fatal relapse robs me of all my
respect and will mar all my life," and she pressed him to her heart.
"My husband is no longer the same; he has suspicions, he believes I led
him the way I wanted in all this business, and shows great irritation
against me. If he hears the slightest noise I shall be ruined, he will
hound me out like the unhappy woman that I am."

"Ah here we have a phrase of M. Chelan's," said Julien "you would not
have talked like that before my cruel departure to the seminary; in
those days you used to love me."

Julien was rewarded for the frigidity which he put into those words. He
saw his love suddenly forget the danger which her husband's presence
compelled her to run, in thinking of the much greater danger of seeing
Julien doubt her love. The daylight grew rapidly brighter and vividly
illuminated the room. Julien savoured once more all the deliciousness
of pride, when he saw this charming woman in his arms and almost at his
feet, the only woman whom he had ever loved, and who had been entirely
absorbed only a few hours before by her fear of a terrible God and her
devotion to her duties. Resolutions, fortified by a year's persuasion,
had failed to hold out against his courage.

They soon heard a noise in the house. A matter that Madame de Renal had
not thought of began to trouble her.

"That wicked Elisa will come into the room. What are we to do with this
enormous ladder?" she said to her sweetheart, "where are we to hide it?
I will take it to the loft," she exclaimed suddenly half playfully.

"But you will have to pass through the servants' room," said Julien in
astonishment.

"I will leave the ladder in the corridor and will call the servant and
send him on an errand."

"Think of some explanation to have ready in the event of a servant
passing the ladder and noticing it in the corridor."

"Yes, my angel," said Madame de Renal giving him a kiss "as for you,
dear, remember to hide under the bed pretty quickly if Elisa enters
here during my absence."

Julien was astonished by this sudden gaiety--"So" he thought, "the
approach of a real danger instead of troubling her gives her back
her spirits before she forgets her remorse. Truly a superior woman.
Yes, that's a heart over which it is glorious to reign." Julien was
transported with delight.

Madame de Renal took the ladder, which was obviously too heavy for her.
Julien went to her help. He was admiring that elegant figure which was
so far from betokening any strength when she suddenly seized the ladder
without assistance and took it up as if it had been a chair. She took
it rapidly into the corridor of the third storey where she laid it
alongside the wall. She called a servant, and in order to give him time
to dress himself, went up into the dovecot.

Five minutes later, when she came back to the corridor, she found no
signs of the ladder. What had happened to it? If Julien had been out
of the house she would not have minded the danger in the least. But
supposing her husband were to see the ladder just now, the incident
might be awful. Madame de Renal ran all over the house.

Madame de Renal finally discovered the ladder under the roof where the
servant had carried it and even hid it.

"What does it matter what happens in twenty-four hours," she thought,
"when Julien will be gone?"

She had a vague idea that she ought to take leave of life but what
mattered her duty? He was restored to her after a separation which she
had thought eternal. She was seeing him again and the efforts he had
made to reach her showed the extent of his love.

"What shall I say to my husband," she said to him. "If the servant
tells him he found this ladder?" She was pensive for a moment. "They
will need twenty-four hours to discover the peasant who sold it
to you." And she threw herself into Julien's arms and clasped him
convulsively.

"Oh, if I could only die like this," she cried covering him with
kisses. "But you mustn't die of starvation," she said with a smile.

"Come, I will first hide you in Madame Derville's room which is always
locked." She went and watched at the other end of the corridor and
Julien ran in. "Mind you don't try and open if any one knocks," she
said as she locked him in. "Anyway it would only be a frolic of the
children as they play together."

"Get them to come into the garden under the window," said Julien, "so
that I may have the pleasure of seeing them. Make them speak."

"Yes, yes," cried Madame de Renal to him as she went away. She soon
returned with oranges, biscuits and a bottle of Malaga wine. She had
not been able to steal any bread.

"What is your husband doing?" said Julien.

"He is writing out the figures of the bargains he is going to make with
the peasants."

But eight o'clock had struck and they were making a lot of noise in the
house. If Madame de Renal failed to put in an appearance, they would
look for her all over the house. She was obliged to leave him. Soon she
came back, in defiance of all prudence, bringing him a cup of coffee.
She was frightened lest he should die of starvation.

She managed after breakfast to bring the children under the window of
Madame Derville's room. He thought they had grown a great deal, but
they had begun to look common, or else his ideas had changed. Madame de
Renal spoke to them about Julien. The elder answered in an affectionate
tone and regretted his old tutor, but he found that the younger
children had almost forgotten him.

M. de Renal did not go out that morning; he was going up and downstairs
incessantly engaged in bargaining with some peasants to whom he was
selling potatoes.

Madame de Renal did not have an instant to give to her prisoner until
dinner-time. When the bell had been rung and dinner had been served,
it occurred to her to steal a plate of warm soup for him. As she
noiselessly approached the door of the room which he occupied, she
found herself face to face with the servant who had hid the ladder
in the morning. At the time he too was going noiselessly along the
corridor, as though listening for something. The servant took himself
off in some confusion.

Madame de Renal boldly entered Julien's room. The news of this
encounter made him shudder.

"You are frightened," she said to him, "but I would brave all the
dangers in the world without flinching. There is only one thing I fear,
and that is the moment when I shall be alone after you have left," and
she left him and ran downstairs.

"Ah," thought Julien ecstatically, "remorse is the only danger which
this sublime soul is afraid of."

At last evening came. Monsieur de Renal went to the Casino.

His wife had given out that she was suffering from an awful headache.
She went to her room, hastened to dismiss Elisa and quickly got up in
order to let Julien out.

He was literally starving. Madame de Renal went to the pantry to fetch
some bread. Julien heard a loud cry. Madame de Renal came back and told
him that when she went to the dark pantry and got near the cupboard
where they kept the bread, she had touched a woman's arm as she
stretched out her hand. It was Elisa who had uttered the cry Julien had
heard.

"What was she doing there?"

"Stealing some sweets or else spying on us," said Madame de Renal with
complete indifference, "but luckily I found a pie and a big loaf of
bread."

"But what have you got there?" said Julien pointing to the pockets of
her apron.

Madame de Renal had forgotten that they had been filled with bread
since dinner.

Julien clasped her in his arms with the most lively passion. She had
never seemed to him so beautiful. "I could not meet a woman of greater
character even at Paris," he said confusedly to himself. She combined
all the clumsiness of a woman who was but little accustomed to paying
attentions of this kind, with all the genuine courage of a person who
is only afraid of dangers of quite a different sphere and quite a
different kind of awfulness.

While Julien was enjoying his supper with a hearty appetite and his
sweetheart was rallying him on the simplicity of the meal, the door of
the room was suddenly shaken violently. It was M. de Renal.

"Why have you shut yourself in?" he cried to her.

Julien had only just time to slip under the sofa.

On any ordinary day Madame de Renal would have been upset by this
question which was put with true conjugal harshness; but she realised
that M. de Renal had only to bend down a little to notice Julien, for
M. de Renal had flung himself into the chair opposite the sofa which
Julien had been sitting in one moment before.

Her headache served as an excuse for everything. While her husband on
his side went into a long-winded account of the billiards pool which he
had won at Casino, "yes, to be sure a nineteen franc pool," he added.
She noticed Julien's hat on a chair three paces in front of them.
Her self-possession became twice as great, she began to undress, and
rapidly passing one minute behind her husband threw her dress over the
chair with the hat on it.

At last M. de Renal left. She begged Julien to start over again his
account of his life at the Seminary. "I was not listening to you
yesterday all the time you were speaking, I was only thinking of
prevailing on myself to send you away."

She was the personification of indiscretion. They talked very loud and
about two o'clock in the morning they were interrupted by a violent
knock at the door. It was M. de Renal again.

"Open quickly, there are thieves in the house!" he said. "Saint Jean
found their ladder this morning."

"This is the end of everything," cried Madame de Renal, throwing
herself into Julien's arms. "He will kill both of us, he doesn't
believe there are any thieves. I will die in your arms, and be more
happy in my death than I ever was in my life." She made no attempt to
answer her husband who was beginning to lose his temper, but started
kissing Julien passionately.

"Save Stanislas's mother," he said to her with an imperious look. "I
will jump down into the courtyard through the lavatory window, and
escape in the garden; the dogs have recognised me. Make my clothes into
a parcel and throw them into the garden as soon as you can. In the
meanwhile let him break the door down. But above all, no confession, I
forbid you to confess, it is better that he should suspect rather than
be certain."

"You will kill yourself as you jump!" was her only answer and her only
anxiety.

She went with him to the lavatory window; she then took sufficient time
to hide his clothes. She finally opened the door to her husband who was
boiling with rage. He looked in the room and in the lavatory without
saying a word and disappeared. Julien's clothes were thrown down to
him; he seized them and ran rapidly towards the bottom of the garden in
the direction of the Doubs.

As he was running he heard a bullet whistle past him, and heard at the
same time the report of a gun.

"It is not M. de Renal," he thought, "he's far too bad a shot." The
dogs ran silently at his side, the second shot apparently broke the paw
of one dog, for he began to whine piteously. Julien jumped the wall of
the terrace, did fifty paces under cover, and began to fly in another
direction. He heard voices calling and had a distinct view of his enemy
the servant firing a gun; a farmer also began to shoot away from the
other side of the garden. Julien had already reached the bank of the
Doubs where he dressed himself.

An hour later he was a league from Verrieres on the Geneva road. "If
they had suspicions," thought Julien, "they will look for me on the
Paris road."

Julien quickly demonstrates that he is from the countryside when he almost gets into a fight at a Besancon cafe. He is greeted coldly at the seminary and begins to worry that he has made a mistake. His worry grows to fear when he meets M. Pirard, the director of the seminary. M. Pirard intimidates Julien at first, but when he realizes how intelligent Julien is, he takes him under his wing. This protection proves vital, since Julien's "free thinking" soon makes him many enemies at the seminary. Julien's time at the seminary allows him to perfect his pious hypocrisy; he pretends to be more religious than any of the other students. As a result Julien becomes even more unpopular, and some priests try to get him turned out of the seminary. M. Pirard defends Julien and allows him to help decorate a nearby church for an upcoming holiday. At the church, Julien runs into Mme. de Renal, who shrieks and faints at the sight of him. A friend of Mme. de Renal angrily tells Julien to go away and he obeys. No one else notices this exchange. Back at the seminary, M. Pirard, impressed with Julien's conduct, promotes him to the post of tutor. This encourages the jealousy of the other priests, who attempt to flunk Julien during his exams. Disgruntled with the politics of the seminary, M. Pirard resigns. With the help of a Parisian benefactor, the Marquis de la Mole, Pirard moves to Paris. The Marquis wants Pirard to be his personal secretary, but Pirard recommends Julien in his place. Before leaving for Paris, Julien returns to Verrieres to see Mme. de Renal one last time. She tries to send him away but gradually gives in to temptation and lets Julien spend the night with her. Julien discovers that M. Pirard had been intercepting letters from Mme. de Renal, but they both remain committed to each other. He hides under her bed for a day, and it is only when M. de Renal thinks there is a thief in the house that Julien jumps from Mme. de Renal's window and heads for Paris.

Commentary Despite virtuous characters like M. Chelan and M. Pirard, Stendhal presents a negative image of the Church in this section. The different priests who teach at the seminary are most concerned with their different political allegiances and are constantly back-stabbing each other. The students are largely uneducated peasants who want to become priests only to make money. The seminary is also divided along class lines: Julien is singled out for being a well-educated bourgeois. Stendhal indicates that the Church is a microcosm of the political instability of France. Sincere public servants like Chelan and Pirard are manipulated out of office by reactionary and conservative-minded priests. Although Stendhal was raised in a religious family, he does not hesitate to condemn the Church, and thus France, for its rampant corruption and greed. Julien gains M. Pirard's trust and support, but continues to rely on hypocrisy to get ahead. He lies to Pirard about the amount of money he has with him, as well as about a woman he met at a cafe. He also pretends to be more devout than he actually is, taking pride in his "most interesting acting." Julien's ability to get ahead in the seminary by being what his superiors expect him to be foreshadows his later success in Paris. The Marquis de la Mole hopes that M. Pirard will lend legitimacy to a court case the Marquis is fighting, but has heard of Julien's reputation and gladly accepts him instead. Stendhal emphasizes this relationship between the Marquis and M. Pirard in order to expose the strong ties between the aristocracy and the Church. In effect, M. Pirard hints to the Marquis that Julien is the illegitimate son of a nobleman. Julien's intelligence and "devotion" to the Church is thus falsely explained to be the result of an aristocratic birth. Julien gladly accepts the position in Paris, seeing it as proof that he is moving up in the French society. He feels that his reliance on hypocrisy will pay off in the "theater of the world." In fact, his move to Paris symbolizes a distinct shift in his wavering between the red and the black. Even though he is supposed to continue his ecclesiastical studies in Paris, he plans on living like an aristocratic soldier. This is shown in his visit to Mme. de Renal: he climbs to her window with a ladder, hides under her bed, and dodges the bullets of a servant who mistakes him for a thief. This foray into knight-like chivalry prefigures his adventures in Paris.