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.

Julien arrives in Besancon. The first thing he does there is go into a cafe because he likes the feeling of being a solitary, handsome traveller in a strange new place. When he reaches the cafe, he strikes up a conversation with a waitress and flirts with her. Soon enough, one of the waitress' boyfriends shows up and starts giving him a mean stare. He decides he wants to fight a duel with the guy, but the waitress stops him. She writes her name on a card for him and tells him to come ask for her later, saying that he's her cousin from away. Julien leaves thinking he's scored a romantic victory. Before going to the seminary, Julien asks an older woman to watch his clothes for him. He wants access to them in case he goes back to meet the girl from the cafe.

Julien visits the military installation in Besancon before reporting to the seminary. He stops at a cafe, and his fancy is taken by the barmaid, Armanda, who recognizes his obvious embarrassment at the strangeness of this large city. The arrival of one of her lovers nearly incites Julien to challenge him to a duel, but on the insistence of Armanda, Julien leaves the cafe. He stops at an inn to leave his clothes in the safekeeping of the landlady, then courageously starts out for the seminary.

This transitional chapter introduces Julien to the city of Besancon, where the next stage of his education will take place. The cafe scene will reappear in the second part of the novel in a slightly different form but will produce the same effect. Here, the young, inexperienced country boy ventures into a big city cafe. Stendhal creates for him an almost quixotic episode, where Julien may give heroic proportions to a trivial incident: Drawing from his experience as lover, Julien places himself abruptly in the role of Don Juan with Armanda, and his sudden declaration of love to the barmaid is reminiscent of a previous one, pronounced with less sureness but with as much hypocrisy to Mme. de Renal. After his brief and audacious visit to the fortress overlooking Besancon, where he has again evoked an imaginary military career, it is here in a cafe that he almost spontaneously gives form to his aggressiveness in an imagined amorous adventure. The arrival of Armanda's lover is but a part of this mock-heroic adventure, immediately awakening in Julien the sense of honor of the knight errant, who, without the intervention of Armanda, would have challenged his supposed "rival." The scenes preliminary to Julien's arrival at the seminary should recall to the reader Julien's visit to the church prior to his entrance at the home of the Renals. In both, Julien is play-acting, rehearsing, in a sense, for his big scene. He musters up his courage, measures it, or rather "takes its temperature," to assure himself in advance that he will not fall short of the ideal performance required in a new and challenging situation. Note that the "glance" is the basis of the real and imagined adventure that Stendhal narrates, and he gives Julien almost magical powers of self-extrication. Communication by the "glance" seems to be one of the secretive codes designed to protect the integrity of the superior being. As was predicted by the priest Chelan, Julien's merit will endanger him because of the envy it inspires in others. Therefore, it is not surprising that Julien seeks protection in women from his enemies. In this short chapter, the two incidents present women as a defense against the world. Lover  and Mother  are irresistibly attracted to Julien and would protect him. Even though his method is improvisational, Stendhal relies on "preparation" for the development of plot: This interlude will have served also as the basis of a subsequent plot devised by Julien's enemies to destroy him in the seminary.


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.

Julien goes to the door of the seminary, where he's greeted by a man who's so mean and ugly looking that it's tough to look him in the eye. The man takes Julien into an inner room to a man who's writing at a desk. The man at the desk eventually looks up. This is Father Pirard, one of the dudes who'll now be in charge of Julien. The guy practically interrogates Julien and makes him super nervous. He also lays out all the strict rules of the seminary. It turns out that Father Chelan from Verrieres has asked for Julien to have a scholarship into the seminary. Pirard respects the man a lot, so he agrees, although he's not sure whether Julien is totally sincere about entering the priesthood. And he's right to be suspicious. The man is impressed and pleased that Julien speaks fluent Latin. Pirard is also pleased that Julien seems to know his theology pretty well. When asked about how much money he has brought to the seminary, Julien lies. He doesn't want the priests to know in case he goes out some night and drops a bunch of money at a bar. Father Pirard shows Julien to his room.


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."

When lunchtime comes at the seminary, everyone is curious about Julien. They're impressed that he can already read and speak Latin. Julien doesn't realize that during these days, he receives several letters that Father Pirard throws into a fire because he doesn't like the passion in them. Maybe they're from Madame de Renal. One day, one of these letters says farewell forever. Again, Julien never receives it. Julien's friend Fouqe bribes his way into the seminary and asks Julien why he never goes out. Julien has meanwhile gotten himself a reputation as a free thinker, which is a horrible thing inside the seminary. Julien finally becomes aware of just how closely people watch one another in adult society. He spends the next few months trying to change his appearance and body language, but he can't stop looking like a freethinker. One day, Father Pirard calls on Julien and confronts him with the card he took from Besancon with the cafe waitress' name on it. The card also contains instructions about how Julien can secretly meet with this girl. It looks bad, but Julien says he never acted on the card, since it can be proven that he's never left the sight of the seminary priests. Pirard agrees, but still says it was a bad idea to keep this card, since it suggests that Julien still thinks about romantic meetings with girls.


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.

Julien goes around flashing his knowledge and intelligence so freely that people start to nickname him Martin Luther, after the man who read the Bible very closely and helped create Protestantism as a breakoff from Catholicism. In other words, the other students question Julien's loyalty to the "true" faith of Catholicism. On several occasions, Julien's classmates try to beat him up. But he has a metal tool he uses as a weapon and he keeps fending them off.


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.

Julien tries to stays out of his classmates' way, but it's difficult because he can't hide how smart he is. There's really only one guy on his side, and that's one of his teachers named Father Chas-Bernard. One day, Chas-Bernard asks for Julien's help with decorating a church. Julien is such a good climber that he hangs decorations from places in the church everyone else is afraid to go. Chas-Bernard takes this as a sign of Julien's strong faith. When he sits down to talk with Chas-Bernard that night, Julien realizes that there's lots to admire in the man. He has always followed his core values without worrying about what the people around him think. Chas-Bernard tells Julien that he needs his help to guard some of the church decorations during the next ceremony. It seems that thieves have lots of dirty tricks for stealing some of the more expensive ones. During the ceremony, Julien takes his post to guard the decorations. But he gets distracted by a pair of women who go into the confessional booths along one side of the church. When one of them turns their head, he realizes that she is none other than his former lover, Madame de Renal. When she sees Julien, Madame cries out and faints. The other woman is Madame Derville, who recognizes Julien and tells him to go away. She says that Madame de Renal has been doing well ever since Julien left Verrieres. When Father Chas pulls him back to work, Julien is so startled that he seems ill.