The Red and the Black (32 page)

stupid hypocrisy; nothing made him more enemies. 'Look at this
bourgeois, look at this stuck-up prig,' they said, who pretends to
scorn the finest sustenance, sausages with sauerkraut! Shame on the
swine! the snob! the creature of damnation.

Alas! the ignorance of these young peasants, my fellows, is an
immense advantage to them, exclaimed Julien in moments of
discouragement. On their arrival in the seminary the teacher doesn't
have to rid them of the fearful number of worldly ideas that I bring
with me and they read on my face, try as I may.

The most boorish of the little peasants who arrived at the seminary
were studied by Julien with a degree of attention bordering on envy.
At the point where they were stripped of their coarse woollen jackets
and put into black habits, all they had in the way of education was an
immense and limitless respect for
dry and liquid
assets, as the expression goes in the Franche-Comté.

This is the sacramental and heroic way of expressing the sublime idea of
cash.

Happiness for these seminarists, as for the heroes of Voltaire's
novels, consists chiefly in dining well. Julien found in nearly all of
them an innate respect for any man wearing a suit of
fine cloth.
This sentiment appreciates at its true value, and even below, the
distributive justice
that is meted out by our courts. 'What can you win', they would often repeat among themselves, 'from fighting a
big 'un
in court?'

This is the term used in the Jura valleys to designate a wealthy man.
You can just imagine their respect for the wealthiest entity of all:
the Government!

Not to smile with
respect at the very name of the prefect is viewed by the peasants in
the Franche-Comté as rashness: and rashness, where the poor man is
concerned, is swiftly punished by a shortage of bread.

Having been choked, as it were, at the outset by a feeling of scorn,
Julien ended up experiencing pity: it was a frequent occurrence for
the fathers of the majority of his companions to return home to their
cottages on winter evenings to find neither bread, nor chestnuts nor
potatoes. It's hardly surprising, then, Julien reflected, if their
idea of a happy man is first and

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foremost someone who has just had a good dinner, and next someone who
owns a good set of clothes! My fellow students have a firm vocation,
that is to say they regard the priesthood as a long continuation of
this happiness: to dine well and have warm clothes in winter.

Once, Julien happened to hear a young seminarist with the gift of imagination say to his companion:

'Why shouldn't I become pope like Sixtus V who kept swine?'

'They only make Italians pope,' replied the friend; 'but they'll draw
lots among us, that's for sure, for posts as vicargeneral, canon and
maybe bishop. Father P-----, the Bishop of Chélons, is a cooper's son:
that's my father's trade.'

One day,
in the middle of a dogma class, Father Pirard summoned Julien to his
presence. The poor young man was delighted to leave the physical and
moral atmosphere he was plunged in.

Julien was greeted with the same reception in the master's study as
had so terrified him on the day he entered the seminary.

'Explain to me what is written on this playing card,' he said to him with a look such as to make him sink into the ground.

Julien read:

Amanda, Binet, at the Café de la Girafe, before eight o'clock. Claim to be from Genlis, and my mother's cousin.

Julien saw what immense danger he was in; Father Castanède's police had stolen this address from him.

'The day I set foot here', he replied staring at Father Pirard's
forehead, for he could not bear his terrible gaze, 'I was in fear and
trembling: Father Chélan had told me it was a place full of sneaking
and beastliness of all kinds; spying and denunciation among friends are
encouraged here. This is the wish of heaven, to show young priests
what life is really like, and to fill them with aversion for the world
and its pomp.'

'Are you lecturing me!' exclaimed Father Pirard in fury. 'You young scoundrel!'

'In Verrières', Julien went on unmoved, 'my brothers beat me when they had reason to be jealous of me...'

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'Come to the point! Come to the point!' shouted Father Pirard, almost beside himself.

Not in the least intimidated, Julien resumed his narrative.

'The day I arrived in Besançon, at about midday, I was hungry and
went into a café. My heart was filled with repugnance for such a
profane place; but I thought my breakfast would cost me less there
than in an inn. A lady who appeared to be the mistress of the
establishment took pity on my novice's look. "Besançon is full of
good-for-nothings," she said to me, "I'm afraid for you, sir. If you
were to land in any trouble, appeal to me, get a message to me before
eight o'clock. If the porters at the seminary refuse to run your
errand, say you are my cousin and a native of Genlis..."'

'I'll have the truth of all this blarney checked,' exclaimed Father
Pirard, who was unable to stand still and was pacing about the room.

'To his cell at once!'

The priest followed Julien and locked him in. The latter at once
began going through his trunk, where he kept the fatal card hidden
like a treasure at the bottom. Nothing was missing from the trunk, but
a number of things had been disturbed; yet the key never left his
person. How fortunate, said Julien to himself, that during the time I
was blind to the set-up, I never accepted leave to go out, which
Father Castanède was always offering me with a kindness I now
understand. I might perhaps have been weak enough to change my clothes
and go and call on the lovely Amanda; I'd have brought about my own
ruin. When they despaired of exploiting the information in this way,
then in order not to waste it, they used it as it stands as a means
of denouncing me.

Two hours later the master summoned him.

'You were not telling lies,' he said to him with a look that was less
severe; 'but keeping an address like that is an act of imprudence of a
gravity you cannot conceive. Wretched child! In ten years' time,
perhaps, you will suffer for it.'

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The present moment, by God! is the ark of the Lord. Woe betide him who touches it.

DIDEROT
^*

THE reader will obligingly allow us to give very few clear and
precise facts about this period in Julien's life. Not that they are
lacking, far from it; but what he lives through in the seminary is
perhaps too black for the moderate tones we have sought to preserve in
these pages. One's contemporaries who undergo certain ordeals cannot
recall them without experiencing a horror which paralyses any other
pleasure, even that of reading a story.

Julien had little success with his attempts at hypocrisy in the
matter of gesture; he fell into bouts of repugnance and even of total
demoralization. He wasn't succeeding, and in a lousy career, what's
more. The least little bit of outside help would have sufficed to
restore his morale--the difficulty to be overcome was not that
great--but he was alone like a frail craft abandoned in the middle of
the ocean. And even if I did succeed, he told himself, think of having
to spend a lifetime in such bad company! Gluttons who only think
about the bacon omelette they'll wolf down at dinner, or men like
Father Castanède for whom no crime is too black! They'll rise to
power; but God Almighty, at what price!

The will of man is powerful, I read this everywhere; but is it
sufficient to overcome repugnance like this? The task of great men has
been easy up till now; however terrible the danger, they saw beauty
in it; and who can understand, apart from me, the ugliness of
everything surrounding me?

This was
the most taxing moment of his life. It would be so easy for him to
enlist in one of the fine regiments garrisoned in Besançon! He could
become a Latin teacher; he needed so little to live on! But that would
mean goodbye to his career, to

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any future for his imagination: it was death. Here is a detailed account of a typical dreary day.

In my presumption I congratulated myself so often on being different
from the other young peasants! Well, I've lived long enough to see
that
difference breeds hatred,
he said to himself one morning.
This great truth had just been brought home to him by one of his most
stinging failures. He had worked away for a week at currying favour
with a pupil who lived in the odour of sanctity. He had walked round
the recreation ground with him, listening submissively to a load of
rubbish fit to send anyone to sleep. Suddenly a storm blew up, there
was a crash of thunder and the saintly pupil shouted out, pushing
Julien rudely away:

'Listen, it's everyone for himself in this world; I don't want to be
blasted by thunder: God may strike you down for impiety, like a
Voltaire.'

Gritting his
teeth in rage and looking wide-eyed at the lightning-rent sky: I'd
deserve to go under if I fall asleep during the storm! exclaimed
Julien. Let's try and win over another prig.

The bell rang for Father Castanède's Church History class. These
young peasants who lived in such fear of the harsh toil and the
poverty of their fathers learned that day from Father Castanède that
the Government, that most fearsome of creatures in their eyes, only
exercised real and legitimate power because this had been delegated to
it by God's vicar on earth.

'Make yourselves worthy of the pope's kindnesses by the sanctity of your lives, and by your obedience; be
like a rod in his hands,
'
he went on, 'and you will obtain a superb post where you will command
like a leader, remote from all interference; a permanent post with a
third of the salary paid by the Government and two-thirds by the
faithful, who are educated by your preaching.'

At the end of the class Father Castanède stopped in the recreation ground.

'It is indeed appropriate to say of a parsh priest: the worth of the
office is no more nor less than that of the holder,' he said to the
pupils who were standing in a circle round him. 'I have known, as sure
as you see me here, certain mountain

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parishes where the perks were worth more than those of many a town
priest. There was as much money, not to mention fat capons, eggs,
fresh butter and countless little luxuries; and in places like that,
the priest is incontrovertibly cock of the roost: no one gives a good
meal without inviting him, honouring him, etc.'

No sooner had Father Castanède gone up to his room than the pupils
split off into groups. Julien was not included in any; he was left out
like a black sheep. In every group he saw a pupil toss a coin in the
air, and if he guessed right in the game of heads or tails, his
fellows concluded that he would soon have one of these parishes rich
in perks.

Then came the anecdotes.
Such and such a young priest who, after scarcely a year's ordination,
had offered a domesticated rabbit to an old priest's housekeeper, had
got himself chosen as curate, and only a few months later--for the old
priest very soon died--he had taken over his excellent parish for
him. Another had succeeded in getting himself appointed successor to
the parish in an exceedingly prosperous country town by attending the
palsied old priest's every meal, and carving up his chickens for him
with style.

The seminarists, like
young men in any career, exaggerate the effect of these little ways
and means that seem to be magic and catch the imagination.

I must, thought Julien, get the hang of these conversations. When
they were not discussing sausages and good parishes, they talked about
the worldly side of ecclesiastical doctrines; about rifts between
bishops and prefects, mayors and parish priests. Julien saw the idea
of a second God appearing, but this was a far more fearsome and more
powerful God than the other: this second God was the pope. They said
amongst themselves, but in lowered voices, and when they were quite
sure of not being overheard by Father Pirard, that if the pope does
not go to the trouble of appointing all the prefects and all the
mayors in France, this is because he has entrusted this task to the
King of France by naming him the Firstborn Son of the Church.

It was about this time that Julien decided there was some advantage to his reputation to be derived from Joseph deMaistre

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Maistre's book
On the Pope
.
He most certainly astonished his fellows; but it was yet another
disaster. He aroused their enmity by expounding their own opinions
better than they could themselves. Father Chélan had been unwise on
Julien's account, just as he was on his own. Having given him the
habit of arguing straight and not being taken in by idle words, he
had neglected to tell him that in someone who is not highly regarded,
this habit is a crime; for all sound arguments cause offence.

Julien's eloquence thus became a fresh crime on his record. By
concentrating their thoughts on him, his fellow students came up with a
single expression to sum up all the horror he aroused in them: they
nicknamed him MARTIN LUTHER; chiefly, they said, on account of that
infernal logic of his which makes him so proud.

A number of young seminarists had fresher complexions and could well
be considered more handsome than Julien, but he had white hands and
could not conceal certain habits of personal cleanliness. This asset
did not count as one in the dreary house into which Fate had cast him.
The dirty peasants he lived among declared that he had very decadent
morals. We are afraid of wearying the reader with an account of our
hero's countless misfortunes. For instance, some of the toughest of
his fellows tried to adopt the habit of thrashing him; he was obliged
to arm himself with an iron compass and announce-by means of signs,
though--that he would make use of it. Signs cannot serve to such
advantage in a spy's report as words can.

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