Part 15

--Madam, this is the first time in my life I have come to Besançon; I should like very much, paying for it, to have a loaf of bread and a cup of coffee.

The young lady smiled a little and then blushed; she feared, for this handsome young man, the ironic attention and the jests of the billiard players. He would be frightened and not appear again.

--Sit here near me, she said, showing him a marble table, almost entirely hidden by the enormous mahogany counter that juts out into the room.

The young lady leaned over the counter, which gave her the opportunity to display a superb waist. Julien noticed it, and all his ideas changed. The beautiful young lady had just placed before him a cup, some sugar, and a small loaf. She hesitated to call a waiter for some coffee, well understanding that with the waiter's arrival her tete-a-tete with Julien would come to an end.

Julien, pensive, compared this gay and blonde beauty to certain memories that often troubled him. The thought of the passion of which he had been the object almost entirely removed his timidity. The beautiful young lady had but an instant; she read it in Julien's glances.

--That pipe smoke makes you cough, come and breakfast tomorrow before eight in the morning; then I am almost alone.

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

--Amanda Binet.

--Will you allow me to send you, in an hour, a small parcel as big as this?

The beautiful Amanda reflected a little.

--I am watched: what you ask of me may compromise me; nevertheless I am going to write my address on a card, which you will place on your parcel. Send it to me boldly.

--My name is Julien Sorel, said the young man; I have neither relatives nor acquaintances in Besançon.

--Ah! I understand, she said with joy; you have come for the law school?

--Alas! no, replied Julien; they are sending me to the seminary.

The most complete discouragement extinguished Amanda's features; she called a waiter: she had courage now. The waiter poured coffee for Julien, without looking at him.

Amanda received money at the counter; Julien was proud to have dared to speak: there was a dispute at one of the billiard tables. The shouts and contradictions of the players, resounding in that immense room, made a racket that astonished Julien. Amanda was dreamy and lowered her eyes.

--If you wish, mademoiselle, he said to her suddenly with assurance, I shall say that I am your cousin?

This little air of authority pleased Amanda. He is not a young man of no account, she thought. She said to him very quickly, without looking at him, for her eye was busy seeing if anyone was approaching the counter:

--I am from Genlis, near Dijon; say that you are also from Genlis, and a cousin of my mother.

--I shall not fail to do so.

--Every Thursday at five o'clock in summer, the seminarians pass here in front of the cafe.

--If you think of me when I pass, have a bouquet of violets in your hand.

Amanda looked at him with a surprised air; that glance changed Julien's courage into temerity; nevertheless he blushed deeply in saying to her:

--I feel that I love you with the most violent love.

--Speak lower, she said with a frightened air. Julien thought of recalling the phrases from a mismatched volume of the Nouvelle Heloise, which he had found at Vergy. His memory served him well; for ten minutes he had been reciting the Nouvelle Heloise to Mlle Amanda, delighted, he was happy in his bravery, when suddenly the beautiful Franc-Comtoise assumed an icy air. One of her lovers appeared at the door of the cafe.

He approached the counter, whistling and walking with his shoulders; he looked at Julien. At once Julien's imagination, always in extremes, was filled only with ideas of a duel. He paled greatly, moved his cup away, took on an assured manner, and looked very attentively at his rival. As the rival lowered his head while familiarly pouring himself a glass of brandy on the counter, with a glance Amanda ordered Julien to lower his eyes. He obeyed, and, for two minutes, remained motionless in his place, pale, resolved and thinking only of what was going to happen; he was truly fine in that instant. The rival had been astonished by Julien's eyes; his glass of brandy swallowed at a draught, he said a word to Amanda, placed his two hands in the side pockets of his heavy overcoat, and approached a billiard table blowing and looking at Julien. The latter rose, transported with anger; but he did not know how to go about being insolent. He placed his small parcel, and, with the most swaggering air he could, walked toward the billiard table.

In vain did prudence tell him: But with a duel upon arriving at Besançon, the ecclesiastical career is lost.

What does it matter, it shall not be said that I fail an insolent man.

Amanda saw his courage, it made a pretty contrast with the naivete of his manners; in an instant, she preferred him to the big young man in the overcoat. She rose, and, while appearing to follow with her eye someone passing in the street, she came rapidly to place herself between him and the billiard table:

--Do not look askance at that gentleman, he is my brother-in-law.

--What do I care? he looked at me.

--Do you wish to make me unhappy? No doubt he looked at you, perhaps he will even come to speak to you. I told him you are a relative of my mother, and that you are arriving from Genlis. He is Franc-Comtois and has never gone beyond Dole, on the Burgundy road; so say what you will, fear nothing.

Julien still hesitated, she added very quickly, her tavern-keeper's imagination supplying her with lies in abundance:

--No doubt he looked at you, but it was at the moment when he asked me who you were; he is a man who is familiar with everyone, he did not mean to insult you.

Julien's eye followed the supposed brother-in-law; he saw him buy a number at the pool that was being played at the billiard table farthest from the two. Julien heard his loud voice crying, in a threatening tone: I take the bet. He passed quickly behind Mlle Amanda, and took a step toward the billiard table. Amanda seized him by the arm:

--Come pay me first, she said to him.

That is fair, thought Julien; she is afraid I will leave without paying. Amanda was as agitated as he and very red; she gave him change as slowly as she could, while repeating to him in a low voice:

--Leave the cafe this instant, or I love you no more; and yet, I love you well.

Julien did indeed leave, but slowly. Is it not my duty, he repeated to himself, to go look in my turn, blowing, at this coarse person? This uncertainty kept him for an hour on the boulevard in front of the cafe; he watched to see if his man came out. He did not appear, and Julien went away.

He had been in Besançon only a few hours, and already he had won himself a remorse. The old surgeon-major had formerly given him, despite his gout, some fencing lessons; such was all the skill Julien found in the service of his anger. But this embarrassment would have been nothing had he known how to get angry otherwise than by giving a slap, and if it came to fisticuffs, his rival, an enormous man, would have beaten him and then left him there.

For a poor devil like me, said Julien, without protectors and without money, there will not be much difference between a seminary and a prison; I must leave my civilian clothes at some inn, where I shall take up my black habit again. If ever I manage to get out of the seminary for a few hours, I can very well, with my civilian clothes, see Mlle Amanda again. This reasoning was fine; but Julien, passing in front of all the inns, dared not enter any.

At last, as he passed again in front of the Hotel des Ambassadeurs, his anxious eyes met those of a stout woman, still rather young, high-colored, with a happy and gay air. He approached her and told her his story.

--Certainly, my pretty little abbe, said the hostess of the Ambassadeurs, I shall keep your civilian clothes for you and even have them dusted often. At this time of year, it does no good to leave a woolen coat untouched. She took a key and led him herself to a room, recommending him to write the list of what he left.

--Good Lord! how well you look like that, Abbé Sorel, said the stout woman, when he came down to the kitchen; I am going to have a good dinner served to you, and, she added in a low voice, it will cost you only twenty sous instead of the fifty that everyone pays; for one must spare your little purse.

--I have ten louis, replied Julien, with a certain pride.

--Ah! good Lord! replied the good hostess, alarmed; do not speak so loud; there are many bad characters in Besançon. They will steal that from you in no time. Above all, never enter the cafes, they are full of bad characters.

--Really! said Julien, to whom this word gave food for thought.

--Never come except to me, I shall have coffee made for you. Remember that you will always find here a friend and a good dinner at twenty sous, that is speaking plainly, I hope. Go and sit down to table, I am going to serve you myself.

--I could not eat, he said to her; I am too moved, I am going to enter the seminary, on leaving you.

The good woman let him depart only after having filled his pockets with provisions. At last Julien made his way toward the terrible place; the hostess, from her doorway, pointed out the route.

CHAPTER XXV

THE SEMINARY

Three hundred thirty-six dinners at 83 centimes three hundred thirty-six suppers at 38 centimes; chocolate for whom; of right; how much is there to gain on the bid?

THE VALENOD OF BESANCON.

He saw from afar the gilded iron cross above the door; he approached slowly, his legs seemed to give way beneath him. So this is that hell on earth, from which I shall not be able to escape! At last he decided to ring. The sound of the bell rang out, as in a solitary place. After ten minutes a pale man, dressed in black, came to open to him. Julien looked at him and immediately lowered his eyes. He found in this porter a singular physiognomy. The protruding and green pupil of his eyes rounded itself like that of a cat; the immobile contours of his eyelids announced the impossibility of all sympathy, his thin lips developed in a semicircle over teeth that projected forward. However this physiognomy did not show crime but rather that perfect insensibility which inspires far more terror in youth. The only sentiment that Julien's rapid glance could divine on that long devotional face was a profound contempt for all that one might wish to speak to him of, and which would not be the interest of heaven.

Julien raised his eyes with effort, and in a voice made trembling by the beating of his heart, he explained that he wished to speak to M. Pirard, the director of the seminary. Without saying a word, the black-clad man signed to him to follow. They climbed two flights by a wide staircase with a wooden banister, whose warped steps leaned quite away from the wall, and seemed ready to fall. A small door, surmounted by a large cemetery cross of white wood painted black, was opened with difficulty and the porter let him into a dark and low room, whose walls whitewashed with lime were adorned with two large paintings blackened by time. There, Julien was left alone; he was overwhelmed, his heart beat violently, he would have been happy to dare to weep. A deathly silence reigned throughout the house.

At the end of a quarter of an hour, which seemed to him a day, the sinister-faced porter reappeared on the threshold of a door at the other end of the room, and, without deigning to speak, signed to him to advance. He entered a room even larger than the first and very poorly lit. The walls also were whitewashed, but there was no furniture. Only in a corner near the door, Julien saw in passing a white wood bed, two straw chairs, and a small armchair of fir planks without cushion. At the other end of the room, near a small window with yellowed panes furnished with flower vases kept filthily, he perceived a man seated before a table, and covered with a tattered cassock; he seemed angry, and took up one after another a multitude of small squares of paper which he arranged on his table, after having written a few words on them. He did not notice Julien's presence. The latter stood motionless in the middle of the room, where the porter had left him, and who had gone out closing the door.

Ten minutes passed thus, the poorly dressed man kept writing. Julien's emotion and terror were such that it seemed to him he was about to fall. A philosopher would have said, perhaps mistakenly: It is the violent impression of ugliness on a soul made to love what is beautiful.

The man who was writing raised his head; Julien noticed it only after a moment, and even, after having seen him, he remained still, as if struck dead by the terrible glance of which he was the object. Julien's troubled eyes barely distinguished a long face entirely covered with red spots, except on the forehead, which showed a deathly pallor. Between those red cheeks and that white forehead, shone two small black eyes made to frighten the bravest. The vast contour of that forehead was marked by thick, flat hair of jet black.

--Will you approach, yes or no? said this man at last with impatience.

Julien advanced with an unsteady step, and at last, ready to fall and pale as he had never been in his life, he stopped three paces from the small white wood table covered with squares of paper.

--Closer, said the man.

Julien advanced again, extending his hand, as if seeking to lean on something.

--Your name?

--Julien Sorel.

--You have been long in coming, he was told, fixing on him again a terrible eye.

Julien could not bear this glance, extending his hand as if to support himself, he fell full length on the floor.

The man rang. Julien had lost only the use of his eyes and the strength to move; he heard steps approaching. He was lifted up, placed on the small white wood armchair. He heard the terrible man say to the porter:

--He falls in a fit apparently, that was all that was needed.

When Julien could open his eyes, the red-faced man continued to write; the porter had disappeared. One must have courage, said our hero to himself, and above all hide what I feel: he felt a violent nausea; if an accident befalls me, God knows what they will think of me. At last the man ceased writing, and looking at Julien sideways:

--Are you in a state to answer me.

--Yes, sir, said Julien, in a weakened voice.

--Ah! that is fortunate.

The black-clad man had half risen and was searching impatiently for a letter in the drawer of his fir table, which opened creaking. He found it, sat down slowly, and looking again at Julien, with an air to tear from him the little life that remained:

--You are recommended to me by M. Chelan, who was the best curate of the diocese, a virtuous man if ever there was one, and my friend for thirty years.

--Ah! it is to M. Pirard that I have the honor of speaking, said Julien in a dying voice.

--Apparently, replied the director of the seminary, looking at him with ill humor.

There was an increase of brightness in his small eyes, followed by an involuntary movement of the muscles at the corners of the mouth. It was the physiognomy of the tiger tasting in advance the pleasure of devouring his prey.

--Chélan's letter is brief, he said, as if speaking to himself. _Intelligenti pauca_; in these times, one cannot write too little. He read aloud:

«I send you Julien Sorel from this parish, whom I baptized almost twenty years ago; son of a wealthy carpenter, but who gives him nothing. Julien will be a remarkable worker in the vineyard of the Lord. Memory and intelligence are not lacking, there is reflection. Will his vocation be lasting? is it sincere?»

--_Sincere!_ repeated Abbé Pirard, with a surprised air, and looking at Julien; but already the abbé's glance was less devoid of all humanity; _sincere!_ he repeated lowering his voice and resuming his reading:

«I ask you for Julien Sorel a scholarship; he will merit it by undergoing the necessary examinations. I have shown him a little theology, that old and good theology of the Bossuets, the Arnaults, the Fleurys. If this subject does not suit you, send him back to me; the director of the poorhouse, whom you know well, offers him eight hundred francs to be tutor to his children.--My household is tranquil, thanks to God. I am becoming accustomed to the terrible blow. _Vale et me ama_.»

Abbé Picard, slowing his voice as he read the signature, pronounced with a sigh the word _Chélan_.

--He is tranquil, he said; indeed his virtue merited that reward; may God grant it to me, if need be!

He looked at the sky and made the sign of the cross. At the sight of that sacred sign, Julien felt diminish the profound horror which, since his entrance into that house, had frozen him.

--I have here three hundred twenty-one aspirants to the most holy state, said Abbé Pirard at last, in a severe but not unkind tone; only seven or eight are recommended to me by men such as Abbé Chélan; thus among the three hundred twenty-one, you are going to be the ninth. But my protection is neither favor nor weakness; it is a redoubling of care and severity against vice. Go lock that door with the key.

Julien made an effort to walk and succeeded in not falling. He noticed that a small window, near the entrance door, looked out on the countryside. He looked at the trees; that view did him good, as if he had glimpsed old friends.

--_Loquerisne linguam latinam?_ (Do you speak Latin?) said Abbé Pirard, as he came back.

--_Ita, pater optime_ (Yes, my excellent father), replied Julien, coming a little to himself. Certainly never had a man in the world seemed less excellent to him than M. Pirard, for the past half hour.

The conversation continued in Latin. The expression of the abbé's eyes softened; Julien regained some composure. How weak I am, he thought, to let myself be imposed upon by these appearances of virtue! this man will simply be a knave like M. Maslon; and Julien congratulated himself on having hidden almost all his money in his boots.

Abbé Pirard examined Julien on theology; he was surprised at the extent of his knowledge. His astonishment increased when he questioned him in particular on the holy scriptures. But when he came to questions on the doctrine of the Fathers, he perceived that Julien was almost ignorant even of the names of Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine, Saint Bonaventure, Saint Basil, etc., etc.

Indeed, thought Abbé Pirard, here is that fatal tendency to Protestantism which I have always reproached Chélan for. A thorough and too thorough knowledge of the holy scriptures.

(Julien had just spoken to him, without being questioned on the subject, of the true time when Genesis, the Pentateuch, etc., had been written.)

Where does this infinite reasoning on the holy scriptures lead, thought Abbé Pirard, if not to personal examination, that is to say to the most frightful Protestantism? And beside this imprudent science, nothing on the Fathers that could compensate for this tendency.

But the astonishment of the director of the seminary knew no bounds, when, questioning Julien on the authority of the Pope, and expecting the maxims of the old Gallican church, the young man recited to him the whole book of M. de Maistre.

A singular man this Chélan, thought Abbé Pirard; did he show him this book to teach him to mock it?

In vain did he question Julien to try to guess if he seriously believed in the doctrine of M. de Maistre. The young man answered only with his memory. From that moment, Julien was truly very well, he felt that he was master of himself. After a very long examination, it seemed to him that M. Pirard's severity toward him was no longer anything but affected. Indeed, without the principles of austere gravity which, for fifteen years, he had imposed on himself toward his theology students, the director of the seminary would have embraced Julien in the name of logic, so much clarity, precision and neatness did he find in his answers.

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

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

--It is the first time in my life, the porter's face had frozen me, added Julien blushing like a child.

Abbé Pirard almost smiled.

--That is the effect of the vain pomps of the world, you are accustomed apparently to smiling faces, true theaters of falsehood. Truth is austere, sir. But is not our task here below austere also? It will be necessary to watch that your conscience guard itself against this weakness: _Too much sensibility to the vain graces of the exterior._

If you were not recommended to me, said Abbé Pirard, resuming the Latin tongue with marked pleasure, if you were not recommended to me by a man such as Abbé Chélan, I would speak to you the vain language of that world to which you seem too accustomed. The whole scholarship you solicit, I would tell you, is the most difficult thing in the world to obtain. But Chélan has merited little, by fifty-six years of apostolic labors, if he cannot dispose of a scholarship at the seminary.

After these words, Abbé Pirard recommended to Julien that he enter into no society or secret congregation without his consent.

--I give you my word of honor, said Julien with the openheartedness of an honest man.

The director of the seminary smiled for the first time.

--That phrase is not in order here, he said to him, it recalls too much the vain honor of people of the world which leads them to so many faults, and often to crimes. You owe me holy obedience, by virtue of paragraph seventeen of the bull _Unam ecclesiam_ of Saint Pius V. I am your ecclesiastical superior. In this house, to hear, my very dear son, is to obey. How much money do you have?

Here we are, said Julien to himself; it was for this that the very dear son was.

--Thirty-five francs, my father.

--Write carefully the use of that money; you will have to account to me for it.

This painful session had lasted three hours; Julien called the porter.

--Take Julien Sorel to cell no. 103, said Abbé Pirard to that man.

By a great distinction, he granted Julien separate lodging.

--Carry his trunk there, he added.

Julien lowered his eyes and saw his trunk precisely in front of him; he had been looking at it for three hours, and had not recognized it.

On arriving at no. 103 (it was a small chamber of eight feet square, on the top floor of the house), Julien remarked that it looked out on the ramparts, and beyond one glimpsed the pretty plain which the Doubs separates from the city.

What a charming view! cried Julien; in thus speaking to himself, he did not feel what these words expressed. The sensations so violent that he had experienced in the short time he had been at Besançon, had entirely exhausted his strength. He sat near the window on the only wooden chair that was in his cell, and fell at once into a deep sleep. He did not hear the supper bell, nor that of vespers; he had been forgotten.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”