The Red and the Black (31 page)

All the first moves made by our hero who thought himself so cautious
were, like the choice of a confessor, acts of sheer thoughtlessness.
Led astray by all the presumptuousness of an imaginative young man, he
took his intentions for facts and believed himself to be a consummate
hypocrite. His folly led him so far as to reproach himself with his
successes in this art born of weakness.

Alas! It's my only weapon! In another age, he said to himself,
eloquent actions in the face of the enemy would have been my way of
earning my living.

Satisfied with his conduct, Julien looked around him; everywhere he saw outward signs of the purest virtue.

Nine or ten seminarists lived in the odour of sanctity and had
visions like St Theresa and St Francis when he received the stigmata
on Mount Verna
^*
in the Apennines. But it was a great secret, their friends concealed
it. These poor youths with visions were nearly always in the
infirmary. Some hundred others combined a robust faith with tireless
application. They made themselves ill from overwork, but failed to
learn much. Two or three stood out from the rest through genuine
talent, among their number a certain Chazel; but Julien felt remote
from them, and they from him.

The
remainder of the three hundred and twenty-one seminarists were nothing
but boorish individuals who could not be relied on to understand the
Latin words they repeated day in day out. Almost all of them were
peasants' sons who preferred to earn their living by reciting a
handful of Latin words than by tilling the soil. It was this
observation that allowed Julien right from the start to forecast rapid
success for himself. In any form of service there is a need for
people of intelligence, he reflected, for after all there's a job to
be done. Under Napoleon I'd have been a sergeant; among these future
parish priests, I shall be a vicar-general.

All these poor devils, he went on, have been manual labourers since
childhood, and lived on junket and black bread until arriving here. In
their cottages they only ate meat five or six times a year. Like
Roman soldiers who considered war to be a time for rest, these boorish
peasants are thrilled with the delights of the seminary.

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The only thing Julien ever read in their dour gaze was the
satisfaction of physical need after dinner and the anticipation of
physical pleasure before the meal. It was among people like these that
he had to distinguish himself; but what Julien did not know, and
everyone was careful not to tell him, was that to be first in the
various classes in dogma, ecclesiastical history etc., etc. that are
attended in a seminary, constituted in their eyes nothing less than a
sin of pride
. Since Voltaire, since the institution of government by two Chambers,
^*
which is basically nothing more than
mistrust
and
independent scrutiny,
and gives the mind of nations the bad habit of being mistrustful,
the Church of France seems to have grasped that books are her real
enemies.
^*
Submission of the heart is everything in her eyes. Success in
studies, even sacred ones, is suspect in her eyes, and rightly so. Who
is to prevent the superior man from going over to the other side like
Sieyès
^*
or Grégoire!
^*
The Church clings in trembling to the pope as if he were the only
chance of salvation. The pope alone can try to paralyse individual
scrutiny by the pious pomp of his Court ceremonies, and to make an
impression on the sick and weary minds of worldly folk.

Julien half-perceived these various truths, which all the words
uttered in a seminary none the less go to belie, and he fell into a
bout of profound melancholy. He worked very hard, and soon succeeded
in learning things of great use to a priest, but totally false in his
eyes, and of no interest to him whatsoever. He believed there was
nothing else for him to do.

So have I
been forgotten by everyone on earth? he wondered. He was unaware that
Father Pirard had received and cast into the fire one or two letters
with a Dijon postmark, in which despite the conventions of the most
proper style, signs of the most ardent passion showed through. Great
remorse seemed to be wrestling with this love. So much the better,
thought Father Pirard; at least the woman this young man once loved
isn't an impious one.

One day
Father Pirard opened a letter which seemed half obliterated by tears;
it was an eternal farewell. 'At last', said the writer to Julien,

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Heaven has granted me the grace to hate not the agent of my sin, for
he will always be what I hold most dear in the world, but my sin in
itself. The sacrifice is made, my dear. And not without tears, as you
can see. The salvation of those I am committed to--ones you loved so
dearly--overrides everything else. A just but terrible God will not any
longer be able to avenge on them their mother's crimes. Farewell,
Julien, be just towards your fellow men.

This last part of this letter was almost totally illegible. The
writer gave an address in Dijon, and yet hoped that Julien would never
answer, or at least would do so in words that a woman who had
returned to the path of virtue could hear without blushing.

Julien's melancholy, compounded by the indifferent food supplied to
the seminary by the purveyor of dinners at eightythree centimes, was
beginning to affect his health, when one morning Fouqué suddenly
appeared in his room.

'At last I've
managed to get inside. I've come to Besançon five times--no fault of
yours--just in order to see you. Stony faces every time. I posted
someone at the seminary door; why the devil don't you ever go out?'

'It's an ordeal I've imposed on myself.'

'You seem to me to have changed a lot. At last I'm setting eyes on
you again. Two five-franc coins in fine silver have just taught me
that I was a mere idiot not to have produced them on the very first
visit.'

The conversation between the two friends was endless. Julien changed colour when Fouqué said to him:

'By the way, have you heard? Your pupils' mother has fallen into excesses of devotional piety.'

And he spoke in that casual tone which makes such a strange
impression on passionate beings whose dearest concerns are being
thrown into turmoil unbeknown to the speaker.

'Yes, my good friend, the most fanatical piety. They say she goes on
pilgrimages. But to the eternal shame of Father Maslon who spied on
poor Father Chélan for so long, M
^me
de Rênal would have none of him. She goes to confession in Dijon or Besançon.'

'She comes to Besançon?' asked Julien, flushing all over his brow.

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'Pretty often,' replied Fouqué with a questioning look.

'Have you got any copies of
Le Constitutionnel
on you?'

'What did you say?'

'I'm asking if you've got any copies of the
Le Constitutionnel
, Julien went on in the calmest of voices. 'They sell for thirty sous each here.'

'What! liberals, even in the seminary!' exclaimed Fouqué. 'Poor
France!' he added, adopting the hypocritical voice and the dulcet
tones of Father Maslon.

This visit
would have made a deep impression on our hero if, on the very next
day, something said to him by the little seminarist from Verrières who
struck him as immature had not led him to make an important
discovery. Since his arrival in the seminary, Julien's conduct had
been nothing but a succession of false moves. He laughed bitterly at
himself.

If the truth be told, the
important actions in his life were skilfully conducted; but he did not
pay attention to details, and the clever operators in a seminary only
look at details. So he already had the reputation among his
contemporaries of being a
free thinker
. He had been betrayed by a host of petty actions.

In their eyes he was guilty of this monstrous vice:
he thought and formed opinions independently,
instead of blindly following
authority
and example. Father Pirard had been of no help to him; he had not
addressed a single word to him outside the confessional, where in any
case he listened more than he spoke. Matters would have been very
different if he had chosen Father Castanède.

As soon as Julien perceived his folly, he ceased to be bored. He
determined to discover the full extent of the damage and, to this
effect, he emerged to some degree from the haughty and obstinate
silence with which he rebuffed his fellows. This was the moment for
them to get their revenge on him. His advances were met with a scorn
which verged on derision. He recognized that since his arrival in the
seminary there had not been a single hour, especially during
recreations, which had not told either for or against him, which had
not increased the number of his enemies, or won him the goodwill of
some seminarist of sincere virtue or slightly less boorish than the

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others. The damage to be made good was immense, the task exceedingly
difficult. From then on Julien's attention was constantly on the
watch; he had to map out a completely new character for himself.

The movements of his eyes, for instance, gave him a great deal of
trouble. Not without reason do the inhabitants of such places keep
theirs lowered to the ground. What presumption I had in Verrières!
Julien said to himself; I thought I was living, when all I was doing
was preparing myself for life; here I am at last in the world as I
shall find it for as long as I play this part, surrounded with real
enemies. What a tremendous strain, he went on--maintaining this
hypocrisy every minute of the day; it makes the labours of Hercules
pale in comparison. The Hercules of modern times is Sixtus V,
^*
who for fifteen whole years succeeded by his modesty in deceiving
forty cardinals who had known him as fiery and haughty throughout the
whole of his youth.

Learning counts
for nothing here! he reflected in disgust; progress in dogma, in
sacred history, etc., only receives lipservice. Everything that is said
on this matter is designed to ensnare crazy idiots like me. Alas! my
only merit lay in my rapid progress, in the way I grasped this
rubbish. Can it be that in the end their assessment of my achievement
is the right one? Do they judge it as I do? And I was foolish enough
to be proud of it. The top marks I always get have only served to
make dogged enemies for me. Chazel, who is more learned than I am,
always throws some blunder or other into his essays which puts him
down to fiftieth place; if he comes first, it's because he isn't
thinking. Ah! how useful one word, just a single word from Father
Pirard would have been to me!

From
the moment Julien was disabused, the long exercises in ascetic piety
such as rosary five times a week, canticles to the Sacred Heart, etc.,
etc., which he used to find so deadly boring, became his most
interesting moments of action. By reflecting severely about himself,
and trying above all not to exaggerate his own capabilities, Julien
did not aspire from the outset, like the seminarists who served as
models to the others, to use every moment to perform
significant
actions, that is, ones proving a kind of Christian perfection. In a seminary,

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there is a way of eating a boiled egg which declares the progress made in devotional life.

Would the reader, who is perhaps smiling, kindly deign to remember all the
faux pas
made by the Abbé Delille
^*
in eating an egg when invited to breakfast with a great lady at the Court of Louis XIV.

Julien attempted first of all to achieve the
non culpa
,
that is the state of a young seminarist whose way of walking, moving
his arms, eyes, etc. do not, it is true, indicate anything worldly,
but do not yet reveal a being absorbed by the idea of the other world
and the
pure nothingness
of this one.

Julien was constantly coming across sentences written in charcoal on
the walls of the corridors, such as: 'What are sixty years of trials,
set against an eternity of bliss or an eternity of boiling oil in
hell?' He did not despise them any more; he realized that they had to
be kept constantly before his eyes. What shall I be doing all my life?
he would ask himself; selling the faithful their place in heaven. How
is this place to be made manifest to them? By the difference between
my outward appearance and that of a layman.

After several months of unfaltering application, Julien still looked as if he were
thinking.
His way of moving his eyes and holding his mouth did not betoken
implicit faith ready to believe and to uphold anything, even at the
cost of martyrdom. Julien was annoyed to see himself outshone in this
art by the most boorish peasants. There were good reasons why they did
not look as if they were thinking.

What endless trouble he took to attain that facial expression of
fervent and blind faith, ready to believe and suffer anything, that is
so often encountered in monasteries in Italy, and of which Guercino
*
has left us laymen such perfect models in his church paintings.
¹

On high feast days the seminarists were served sausages with
sauerkraut. Julien's neighbours at table noticed that he was
indifferent to this delight; that was one of his first crimes. His
companions took this as an odious characteristic of the most

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