Part 18

It was the hunting season. Fouqué had the idea of sending to the seminary a stag and a wild boar on behalf of Julien's parents. The dead animals were laid in the passage between the kitchen and the refectory. It was there that all the seminarians saw them as they went to dinner. It was a great object of curiosity. The wild boar, dead though it was, frightened the youngest; they touched its tusks. Nothing else was talked about for a week.

This gift, which ranked Julien's family among that part of society which must be respected, dealt a mortal blow to envy. He acquired a superiority sanctioned by wealth. Chazel and the most distinguished of the seminarians made advances to him, and would almost have complained to him that he had not warned them of his parents' fortune, and had thus exposed them to lack respect for money.

There was a conscription from which Julien was exempt as a seminarian. This circumstance moved him deeply. So the moment is gone forever when, twenty years earlier, a heroic life would have begun for me.

He was walking alone in the seminary garden; he heard the masons working on the boundary wall speaking among themselves.

"Well! we've got to go, here's a new conscription."

"In the time of the other one, that was fine; a mason became an officer, became a general; we've seen that."

"Go see now! only the wretches go. Whoever has means stays in the country."

"Born poor, stays poor, that's all."

"Ah, but is it really true, what they say, that the other one is dead?" said a third mason.

"It's the big shots who say so, see; the other one scared them."

"What a difference, how the work went in his time! And to think he was betrayed by his marshals! That takes a traitor!"

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

The only king the people have kept in memory!

The time of the examinations arrived. Julien answered brilliantly; he saw that Chazel himself sought to display all his knowledge.

On the first day, the examiners appointed by the famous grand vicar of Frilair were very annoyed at having always to place first, or at most second, on their list, this Julien Sorel, who was signaled to them as Abbé Pirard's favorite. There were bets in the seminary that in the list of the general examination Julien would have number one, which carried the honor of dining with Monseigneur the bishop. But at the end of a session in which the Fathers of the Church had been discussed, an adroit examiner, after questioning Julien on Saint Jerome and his passion for Cicero, came to speak of Horace, Virgil, and the other profane authors. Unknown to his comrades, Julien had learned by heart a great number of passages from these authors. Carried away by his successes, he forgot where he was, and, at the repeated request of the examiner, recited and paraphrased with fire several odes of Horace. After letting him dig his own grave for twenty minutes, the examiner suddenly changed countenance and reproached him bitterly for the time he had wasted on these profane studies, and the useless or criminal ideas he had put into his head.

"I am a fool, sir, and you are right," said Julien with a modest air, recognizing the adroit stratagem of which he was the victim.

This ruse of the examiner was thought foul, even at the seminary, which did not prevent M. l'abbé de Frilair, that clever man who had so shrewdly organized the network of the Besançon congregation, and whose dispatches to Paris made judges, prefect, and even the general officers of the garrison tremble, from placing, with his powerful hand, the number 198 beside Julien's name. He had the joy of mortifying his enemy, the Jansenist Pirard.

For ten years his great business had been to take from him the direction of the seminary. This abbé, following for himself the plan of conduct he had indicated to Julien, was sincere, pious, without intrigue, attached to his duties. But heaven, in its wrath, had given him that bilious temperament made to feel injuries and hatred profoundly. None of the outrages addressed to him were lost on that ardent soul. He would a hundred times have given his resignation, but he believed himself useful in the post where Providence had placed him. I prevent the progress of Jesuitism and idolatry, he said to himself.

At the time of the examinations, it was perhaps two months since he had spoken to Julien, and yet he was ill for eight days when, on receiving the official letter announcing the result of the competition, he saw the number 198 placed beside the name of this pupil whom he regarded as the glory of his house. The only consolation for that severe character was to concentrate upon Julien all his means of surveillance. It was with rapture that he discovered in him neither anger, nor plans of vengeance, nor discouragement.

Some weeks later, Julien started on receiving a letter; it bore the Paris postmark. At last, he thought, Mme de Rênal remembers her promises. A gentleman signing Paul Sorel and calling himself his relative sent him a draft for five hundred francs. It was added that if Julien continued to study the good Latin authors successfully, a similar sum would be sent to him each year.

It is she, it is her kindness! said Julien, touched. She wishes to console me; but why not a single word of friendship?

He was mistaken about this letter; Mme de Rênal, guided by her friend Mme Derville, was wholly given up to her deep remorse. In spite of herself, she often thought of the singular being whose meeting had overturned her existence, but she carefully refrained from writing to him.

If we spoke the language of the seminary, we might recognize a miracle in this sending of five hundred francs, and say that it was by M. de Frilair himself that heaven served to make this gift to Julien.

Twelve years earlier, M. l'abbé de Frilair had arrived at Besançon with a very small portmanteau, which, according to chronicle, contained all his fortune. He now found himself one of the richest landowners of the department. In the course of his prosperities he had bought half of an estate, the other part of which fell by inheritance to M. de La Mole. Hence a great lawsuit between these personages.

Despite his brilliant existence in Paris, and the posts he held at Court, M. le marquis de La Mole felt that it was dangerous to struggle at Besançon against a grand vicar who passed for making and unmaking prefects. Instead of soliciting a gratuity of fifty thousand francs, disguised under some name admitted by the budget, and abandoning to the abbé de Frilair that paltry suit of fifty thousand francs, the marquis took offense. He believed himself in the right: a fine right!

Now, if it is permitted to say so: what judge is there who has not a son, or at least a cousin, to push in the world?

To enlighten the most blind, eight days after the first judgment he obtained, M. l'abbé de Frilair took Monseigneur the bishop's carriage, and went himself to pin the cross of the Legion of Honor on his lawyer. M. de La Mole, somewhat stunned by his adversary's bearing, and feeling his lawyers weaken, asked advice of the abbé Chélan, who put him in relation with M. Pirard.

These relations had lasted several years at the epoch of our story. The abbé Pirard carried his passionate character into this affair. Seeing constantly the marquis's lawyers, he studied his cause, and finding it just, he became openly the solicitor of the marquis de La Mole against the all-powerful grand vicar. The latter was outraged at the insolence—and on the part of a little Jansenist still!

"See what this nobility of heart is, that pretends to be so powerful!" said the abbé de Frilair to his intimates. "M. de La Mole has not even sent a miserable cross to his agent at Besançon, and will let him be flatly dismissed. And yet, I am told, this noble peer lets no week pass without going to display his blue ribbon in the salon of the keeper of the seals, whoever he may be."

Despite all the activity of the abbé Pirard, and though M. de La Mole was always on the best terms with the minister of Justice and above all with his bureaus, all that he had been able to do, after six years of care, was not absolutely to lose his suit.

Constantly in correspondence with the abbé Pirard, over an affair which they both followed with passion, the marquis ended by appreciating the abbé's turn of mind. Little by little, despite the immense distance of social positions, their correspondence took the tone of friendship. The abbé Pirard told the marquis that they wished to force him, by dint of slights, to give his resignation. In the anger inspired in him by the infamous stratagem, as he called it, employed against Julien, he spoke of the young man to the marquis.

Though very rich, this great lord was not avaricious. In his life he had not been able to make the abbé Pirard accept even the reimbursement of the postage expenses occasioned by the suit. He seized the idea of sending five hundred francs to his favorite pupil.

M. de La Mole took the trouble to write the letter of sending himself. That made him think of the abbé.

One day the latter received a little note which, for a pressing affair, urged him to come without delay to an inn in the suburb of Besançon. There he found M. de La Mole's steward.

"M. the marquis has charged me to bring you his carriage," said this man. "He hopes that, after reading this letter, it will suit you to leave for Paris in four or five days. I shall employ the time you will kindly indicate to me in touring the marquis's lands in Franche-Comté. After that, on the day that suits you, we shall set out for Paris."

The letter was short:

"Free yourself, my dear sir, from all provincial pettifogging; come breathe a tranquil air in Paris. I send you my carriage, which has orders to await your decision for four days. I shall await you myself in Paris until Tuesday. I need but a yes from you, sir, to accept in your name one of the best cures in the environs of Paris. The richest of your future parishioners has never seen you, but is devoted to you more than you can believe; it is the marquis de La Mole."

Without suspecting it, the severe abbé Pirard loved this seminary peopled with his enemies, and to which, for fifteen years, he had devoted all his thoughts. M. de La Mole's letter was for him like the appearance of the surgeon charged with a cruel and necessary operation. His dismissal was certain. He made an appointment with the steward three days thence.

For forty-eight hours he had the fever of uncertainty. At last, he wrote to M. de La Mole, and composed for Monseigneur the bishop a letter, a masterpiece of ecclesiastical style, but a little long. It would have been difficult to find more irreproachable phrases breathing a more sincere respect. And yet this letter, destined to give M. de Frilair a difficult hour before his patron, articulated all the serious grounds of complaint, and descended to the petty dirty annoyances which, after being endured with resignation for six years, forced abbé Pirard to leave the diocese.

They stole his wood in his wood-shed, they poisoned his dog, etc., etc.

This letter finished, he had Julien awakened, who at eight in the evening was already asleep, as were all the seminarians.

"You know where the bishop's palace is?" he said to him in fine Latin style. "Carry this letter to Monseigneur. I shall not hide from you that I am sending you among wolves. Be all eyes and all ears. No lying in your answers; but reflect that he who questions you might perhaps feel a real joy in being able to harm you. I am glad, my child, to give you this experience before leaving you, for I do not hide from you that the letter you are carrying is my resignation."

Julien remained motionless; he loved the abbé Pirard. Prudence might well tell him: After this honest man's departure, the party of the Sacred Heart will degrade me and perhaps expel me.

He could not think of himself. What embarrassed him was a phrase he wished to arrange in a polite manner, and really he could not find the wit for it.

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

"It is that they say, sir," said Julien timidly, "that during your long administration you have laid nothing aside. I have six hundred francs."

Tears kept him from continuing.

"That too shall be noted," said the ex-director of the seminary coldly. "Go to the bishop's palace; it is getting late."

Chance willed that, that evening, M. l'abbé de Frilair was on duty in the salon of the bishop's palace; Monseigneur was dining at the prefecture. It was therefore to M. de Frilair himself that Julien delivered the letter, but he did not know him.

Julien saw with astonishment this abbé boldly open the letter addressed to the bishop. The fine face of the grand vicar soon expressed a surprise mingled with lively pleasure, and redoubled in gravity. While he read, Julien, struck by his good looks, had time to examine him. This face would have had more gravity without the extreme finesse which appeared in certain features, and which would have gone so far as to denote falseness if the possessor of that handsome visage had ceased for an instant to attend to it. The very prominent nose formed a single perfectly straight line, and gave, unfortunately, to a profile otherwise highly distinguished, an irremediable resemblance to the physiognomy of a fox. For the rest, this abbé, who seemed so occupied with M. Pirard's resignation, was dressed with an elegance that pleased Julien greatly, and which he had never seen on any priest.

Julien was not to know until later what was the special talent of the abbé de Frilair. He knew how to amuse his bishop, an amiable old man, made for the sojourn of Paris, and who regarded Besançon as an exile. This bishop had very poor sight and loved fish passionately. The abbé de Frilair removed the bones from the fish served to Monseigneur.

Julien was looking in silence at the abbé who was rereading the resignation, when suddenly the door opened with a crash. A richly dressed lackey passed rapidly. Julien had only time to turn toward the door; he caught sight of a little old man wearing a pectoral cross. He prostrated himself: the bishop addressed him a smile of kindness, and passed. The handsome abbé followed him, and Julien remained alone in the salon, whose pious magnificence he could at leisure admire.

The bishop of Besançon, a man of tried but not extinguished wit, despite the long miseries of emigration, was more than seventy-five years old, and concerned himself infinitely little with what would happen in ten years.

"What is that seminarian, with the shrewd eye, that I think I saw passing?" said the bishop. "Ought they not, by my rule, to be in bed at this hour?"

"This one is wide awake, I assure you, Monseigneur, and he brings great news: it is the resignation of the only Jansenist remaining in your diocese. This terrible abbé Pirard at last understands what speaking means."

"Well!" said the bishop with a malicious smile, "I defy you to replace him with a man who equals him. And to show you all the worth of this man, I invite him to dinner for tomorrow."

The grand vicar wished to slip in a few words on the choice of a successor. The prelate, little disposed to speak of business, said to him:

"Before bringing in the other, let us know a little how this one goes. Have that seminarian sent for; truth is in the mouths of children."

Julien was called: I am going to find myself between two inquisitors, he thought. Never had he felt more courage.

At the moment he entered, two great valets de chambre, better dressed than M. Valenod himself, were undressing Monseigneur. This prelate, before coming to M. Pirard, thought fit to question Julien on his studies. He spoke a little of dogma, and was astonished. Soon he came to the humanities, to Virgil, to Horace, to Cicero. Those names, thought Julien, won me my number 198. I have nothing to lose, let us try to shine. He succeeded; the prelate, an excellent humanist himself, was delighted.

At the prefecture dinner, a justly celebrated young girl had recited the poem of the Magdalene. He was in the mood to talk literature and quickly forgot abbé Pirard and all affairs to discuss, with the seminarian, the question whether Horace was rich or poor. The prelate cited several odes, but sometimes his memory was lazy, and at once Julien recited the whole ode, with a modest air; what struck the bishop was that Julien did not depart from the tone of conversation, he said his twenty or thirty Latin verses as he would have spoken of what was happening in his seminary. They spoke at length of Virgil, of Cicero. At last the prelate could not refrain from complimenting the young seminarian.

"It is impossible to have made better studies."

"Monseigneur," said Julien, "your seminary can offer you a hundred ninety-seven subjects far less unworthy of your high approbation."

"How so?" said the prelate, astonished at this figure.

"I can support with an official proof what I have the honor to say before Monseigneur. At the annual examination of the seminary, answering precisely on the matters which, at this moment, win me the approbation of Monseigneur, I obtained number 198."

"Ah! it is the favorite of abbé Pirard," cried the bishop laughing and looking at M. de Frilair; "we should have expected it; but it is fair war. Is it not, my friend," he added, addressing Julien, "that you were made to get up to be sent here?"

"Yes, Monseigneur. I left the seminary alone but once in my life, to help M. l'abbé Chas-Bernard adorn the cathedral, on Corpus Christi day."

"Optime," said the bishop; "what, it is you who showed such courage, in placing the plumes on the canopy? They make me shudder every year; I always fear they will cost me a man's life. My friend, you will go far; but I do not wish to arrest your career, which will be brilliant, by making you die of hunger."

And at the bishop's order, biscuits and Malaga wine were brought, of which Julien did honor, and still more the abbé de Frilair, who knew that his bishop liked to see one eat gaily and with good appetite.

The prelate, more and more pleased with the end of his evening, spoke a moment of ecclesiastical history. He saw that Julien did not understand. The prelate passed to the moral state of the Roman Empire, under the emperors of the century of Constantine. The end of paganism was accompanied by that state of uneasiness and doubt which, in the nineteenth century, desolates gloomy and bored minds. Monseigneur remarked that Julien was almost ignorant even of the name of Tacitus.

Julien answered with candor, to the astonishment of his bishop, that this author was not to be found in the seminary library.

"I am truly glad of it," said the bishop gaily. "You have been getting me out of embarrassment for ten minutes; I was seeking a way to thank you for the agreeable evening you have procured me, and certainly in a very unforeseen manner. I did not expect to find a doctor in a pupil of my seminary. Though the gift is not too canonical, I wish to give you a Tacitus."

The prelate had eight superbly bound volumes brought, and wished to write himself, on the title of the first, a Latin compliment for Julien Sorel. The bishop prided himself on fine Latinity; he ended by saying to him, in a serious tone, which contrasted wholly with that of the rest of the conversation:

"Young man, if you are wise, you will one day have the best cure of my diocese, and not a hundred leagues from my episcopal palace; but you must be wise."

Julien, loaded with his volumes, left the bishop's palace much astonished, as midnight struck.

Monseigneur had not said a word to him of the abbé Pirard. Julien was above all astonished at the extreme politeness of the bishop. He had no idea of such urbanity of manner, joined to an air of dignity so natural. Julien was especially struck by the contrast on seeing again the gloomy abbé Pirard, who awaited him with impatience.

"Quid tibi dixerunt?" (What did they say to you?) he cried in a loud voice, as far off as he caught sight of him.

Julien being somewhat confused in translating the bishop's speeches into Latin:

"Speak French, and repeat Monseigneur's very words, adding nothing, nor omitting anything," said the ex-director of the seminary, with his harsh tone and his profoundly inelegant manners.

"What a strange gift on the part of a bishop to a young seminarian!" said he, leafing through the superb Tacitus, whose gilded edge seemed to fill him with horror.

Two o'clock was striking when, after a very detailed account, he permitted his favorite pupil to return to his room.

"Leave me the first volume of your Tacitus, where is Monseigneur the bishop's compliment," he said. "That Latin line will be your lightning-rod in this house, after my departure.

Erit tibi fili mi, successor meus tanquam leo quoerens quem devoret. (For to you, my son, my successor shall be as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.)"

The next morning Julien found something strange in the manner in which his comrades spoke to him. He was but the more reserved. There, he thought, is the effect of M. Pirard's resignation. It is known throughout the house, and I pass for his favorite. There must be insult in these ways; but he could not see it there. On the contrary, there was absence of hatred in the eyes of all those he met along the dormitories: What does this mean? It is a snare no doubt, let us play close. At last the little seminarian from Verrières said to him laughing:

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

At this word, which was heard by all, as if in emulation they complimented Julien, not only on the magnificent gift he had received from Monseigneur, but also on the two-hour conversation with which he had been honored. They knew even the smallest details. From that moment there was no more envy; they courted him basely: the abbé Castanède, who, the day before, was of the last insolence toward him, came to take him by the arm and invited him to breakfast.

By a fatality of Julien's character, the insolence of these coarse beings had caused him much pain; their baseness caused him disgust and no pleasure.

Toward noon, the abbé Pirard left his pupils, not without addressing them a severe allocution. "Do you want the honors of the world," he said to them, "all social advantages, the pleasure of commanding, that of mocking the laws and being insolent with impunity toward all? Or do you want your eternal salvation? The least advanced among you need but open their eyes to distinguish the two roads."

Scarcely had he gone out than the devotees of the Sacred Heart of Jesus went to intone a Te Deum in the chapel. No seminarian took seriously the ex-director's allocution. He is much out of humor at his dismissal, they said on all sides. Not a single seminarian had the simplicity to believe in the voluntary resignation of a post which gave such relations with big suppliers.

The abbé Pirard went to lodge at the finest inn in Besançon; and under pretext of business he had not, wished to spend two days there.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”