The Red and the Black (35 page)

'His lordship the marquis has instructed me to bring you his
barouche,' the man told him. 'He hopes that having read this letter
you will see fit to leave for Paris, in four or five days' time. I
shall use such time as you are good enough to specify in visiting his
lordship's lands in the Franche-Comté. After which, on the day that
suits you, we shall leave for Paris.'

The letter was short:

Rid yourself, my dear sir, of all the tiresome cares of the provinces;
come and breathe some calm air, in Paris. I am sending you my
carriage, which has orders to await your resolve for four days. I shall
await you myself in Paris until Tuesday. All that I need, sir, is for
you to say 'yes', and I shall accept in your name one of the best
livings in the neighbourhood of Paris. The richest of your future
parishioners has never set eyes on you, but is more devoted to you
than you can possibly imagine; he is the Marquis de La Mole.

Without realizing it, the stern Father Pirard loved this seminary
rife with his enemies, which had been the focus of all his thoughts
for the past fifteen years. M. de La Mole's letter was like the
appearance of the surgeon called in to perform a cruel and necessary
operation. It was certain that he would be dismissed from his office.
He arranged to meet the steward three days hence.

For forty-eight hours he was in a fever of uncertainty. Eventually he
wrote to M. de La Mole and drafted a letter to Monsignor the bishop, a
masterpiece of ecclesiastical prose, if rather lengthy. It would have
been difficult to couch it in a more irreproachable style, or one
exuding more sincere respect. And yet this letter, intended to give
Father de Frilair an uncomfortable hour in the presence of his
superior, voiced all the subjects of serious complaint, and went into
the instances of sordid petty harassment which, though endured with
resignation for six years, were now forcing Father Pirard to leave the
diocese.

His firewood was stolen from his woodpile, his dog was poisoned, etc., etc.

Once the letter was finished, he sent someone to wake Julien who, at
eight in the evening, was already asleep like all the seminarists.

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'You know where the bishop's palace is?' he said to him in stylish
Latin. 'Take this letter to Monsignor. I shall not conceal from you
that I am sending you in among the wolves. Be all eyes and ears. No
lying in your answers; but bear in mind that anyone questioning you
might well take genuine delight in being able to do you harm. I am
indeed glad, my boy, to give you this experience before leaving you,
for I make no secret of it to you: the letter you bear is my
resignation.'

Julien stood there
motionless, he was fond of Father Pirard. It was to no avail that the
voice of prudence said to him: once this upright man has left, the
Sacred Heart faction will demote me and maybe even expel me.

He was unable to think of himself. What was bothering him was a
sentence he was trying to phrase politely, and he felt genuinely at a
loss how to do it.

'What's up, dear fellow, aren't you going?'

'You see, Father,' said Julien timidly, 'I gather that in all your
long period of administration, you haven't put any savings by. I've
got six hundred francs.'

Tears prevented him from going on.

'This too will be noted,'
said the ex-master of the seminary coldly. 'Off you go to the bishop's palace, it's getting late.'

Chance had it that Father de Frilair was on duty in the bishop's
parlour that evening; Monsignor was dining at the prefecture. So
Julien handed the letter to Father de Frilair himself, but without
knowing who it was.

Julien was
astonished to see this priest boldly opening the letter addressed to
the bishop. The handsome face of the vicargeneral soon expressed a
mixture of surprise and keen pleasure, and became even more grave.
While he was reading, Julien, who was struck by his prepossessing
countenance, had time to study it. It was a face which would have had
more gravity about it, had it not been for the extreme cunning which
showed in certain features, and might even have reached the point of
signifying untrustworthiness if the owner of this fine face had ceased
for an instant to keep it under control. The long projecting nose
formed a single, perfectly straight line, and unfortunately gave to
what was in other respects a highly distinguished profile the
unmistakable likeness of a fox. Be

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that as it may, this priest who seemed so taken up by Father Pirard's
resignation was attired with an elegance that Julien found much to
his liking, and had never encountered in a priest before.

Julien only discovered later what Father de Frilair's special talent
was. He knew how to amuse his bishop, an amiable old man who was cut
out for life in Paris, and viewed Besançon as a place of exile. The
bishop had very poor eyesight and passionately loved fish. Father de
Frilair took the bones out of the fish served up to Monsignor.

Julien was silently watching the priest rereading the letter of
resignation when the door suddenly burst open. A richly dressed
footman hurried through; Julien only had time to turn round towards
the door; he caught sight of a little old man wearing a pectoral
cross. He prostrated himself: the bishop gave him a kindly smile and
passed on. The handsome priest followed him, and Julien remained alone
in the parlour to admire its pious splendour at his leisure.

The Bishop of Besançon, a man of intelligence who had been sorely
tried but not broken by the long hardships of the Emigration,
^*
was over seventy-five and supremely indifferent to what would happen in ten years' time.

'Who is that seminarist with a discerning look in his eye that I
think I glimpsed as I passed?' asked the bishop. 'Aren't they all
supposed, according to my rule, to be in bed at this hour?'

'This particular one is wide awake, I can promise you, Monsignor, and
he brings great news: the resignation of the sole remaining Jansenist
in your diocese. The terrible Father Pirard has at last got the
message.'

'Has he indeed!' said the
bishop with a laugh, 'I defy you to replace him with anyone his equal.
And to demonstrate the extent of his worth, I shall invite him to
dine with me tomorrow.'

The
vicar-general attempted to put in a few words on the choice of a
successor. The prelate, disinclined to talk business, said to him:

'Before ushering in the next one, let's find out a bit about how this
one comes to be leaving. Send for that seminarist: the truth is found
in the mouths of babes.'

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Julien was summoned: I'm going to find myself between two inquisitors, he thought. He had never felt braver.

When he entered, two tall valets attired more elegantly than M.
Valenod himself were in the process of disrobing Monsignor. The prelate
saw fit to question Julien on his studies before getting on to the
subject of Father Pirard. He talked a bit about dogma and was
astonished. He soon moved on to the humanities, to Virgil, Horace and
Cicero. Those names, thought Julien, earned me my 198th place. I've
nothing to lose, let's try a brilliant performance. He succeeded; the
prelate, himself an excellent humanist, was delighted.

At dinner at the prefecture a young girl of well-deserved reputation had recited her poem about Mary Magdalene.
^*
The bishop was well launched on the subject of literature, and soon
forgot Father Pirard and all matters of business in the interests of
debating with the seminarist whether Horace was rich or poor. The
prelate quoted several odes, but at times his memory was sluggish and
Julien immediately recited the whole ode with a demure air; what
struck the bishop was that Julien maintained a conversational tone
throughout; he uttered his twenty or thirty lines of Latin as if he
were talking about what went on in his seminary. They talked at length
about Virgil and Cicero. At the end the prelate could not resist
complimenting the young seminarist.

'It would be impossible to improve on the education you have received.'

'Monsignor,' said Julien, 'your seminary can offer you a hundred and
ninety-seven candidates far less unworthy than myself of your esteemed
approbation.'

'How can this be?' asked the prelate, astonished at this figure.

'I can supply official proof to back what I am most humbly claiming
in front of Monsignor. In the annual examination at the seminary, when
I replied on the very subjects which now earn me Monsignor's
approbation, I was put in 198th place.'

'Ah! he's Father Pirard's little blue-eyed boy!' exclaimed the
bishop, laughing and turning to Father de Frilair. 'We should have
expected as much; but that's fair play. I'm right in

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thinking, am I not, my boy,' he added turning to Julien, 'that they woke you up to send you here?'

'Yes, Monsignor. I've only ever been out of the seminary once on my
own, and that was to go and help Father ChasBernard adorn the cathedral
on Corpus Christi day.'

'Optime,'
said the bishop; 'so you were the one who showed such courage in
putting the bunches of feathers up on the canopy, were you? They make
me tremble every year; I'm always afraid they'll cost me a man's life.
My boy, you will go far; but I don't wish to halt your career, which
will be a brilliant one, by starving you to death.'

And on the bishop's orders, biscuits were brought in with some Malaga
wine; Julien did honour to them, and Father de Frilair even more so,
knowing how his bishop loved to see people tucking in with good cheer.

The prelate, feeling more and more
pleased with the way his evening was ending, spoke for a moment on
ecclesiastical history. He noted a complete lack of understanding in
Julien. The prelate moved on to the moral state of the Roman Empire
under the emperors in Constantine's century. The end of paganism was
accompanied by the same state of anxiety and doubt which afflicts
gloomy and bored minds in the nineteenth century. Monsignor observed
that Julien had scarcely even heard of Tacitus.

Julien replied candidly, much to the prelate's astonishment, that
this author was not to be found in the library at the seminary.

'I am highly delighted,' said the bishop gaily. 'This gets me out of a
spot: for the past ten minutes I've been trying to think of a way to
thank you for the agreeable evening you have procured me, and most
unexpectedly, I'm sure. I was not expecting to find a learned doctor
in one of the pupils at my seminary. Even though the gift may not be
all that canonical, I wish to give you a set of Tacitus.'

The prelate had eight superbly bound volumes brought to him, and
insisted on inscribing the title-page of the first one in his own hand
with a compliment in latin for Julien Sorel. The bishop prided
himself on his fine latin; his last words to him

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were spoken in a serious tone which marked a complete contrast with the rest of the conversation:

'Young man,
if you behave well
,
one day you will have the best living in my diocese, and not a
hundred leagues from my bishop's palace either; but you must
behave well
.'

Weighed down with his books, Julien left the bishop's palace in great astonishment as midnight was striking.

Monsignor had not said a word to him about Father Pirard. Julien was
particularly astonished at the extreme civility of the bishop. He
could not conceive of such urbanity of manner allied with so natural
an air of dignity. Julien was particularly struck by the contrast when
he saw the sombre Father Pirard again, waiting impatiently for him.

'
Quid tibi dixerunt
?' (What did they say to you?) he bellowed out at him, as soon as he caught sight of him.

When Julien stumbled a little over translating into Latin what the bishop had said:

'Speak in your own tongue, and repeat Monsignor's exact words,
without adding or suppressing anything,' said the exmaster of the
seminary with his harsh voice and his profoundly inelegant manners.

'What a strange present from a bishop to a young seminarist!' he said
as he leafed through the splendid Tacitus, seemingly appalled by the
gold leaf.

Two o'clock was striking when, after a fully detailed account, he allowed his favourite pupil to go back to his room.

'Leave me the first volume of your Tacitus with Monsignor the
bishop's flattering dedication,' he said to him. 'That line of Latin
will act as your lightning-conductor in this house after I am gone.
Erit tibi, fili mi, successor meus tamquam leo quœrens quem devoret
. (For to you, my son, my successor will be as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.)

The following morning Julien found something odd about the way his
companions spoke to him. It made him all the more reserved. So this is
the effect of Father Pirard's resignation. The whole establishment
knows about it, and I'm thought of as his favourite. There must be an
element of insult in this way of behaving; but he was unable to detect
it. On the contrary, there was an absence of hatred in the eyes of
everyone

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he encountered going through the dormitories: What does this mean? It
must be a trap, let's play things carefully. Eventually the little
seminarist from Verrières said to him with a laugh:
Cornelii Taciti opera omnia
(the complete works of Tacitus).

At these words, which were overheard, it seemed as if they were all
trying to outdo one another in their compliments to Julien--not only
on the magnificent present he had received from Monsignor, but also on
the two-hour long conversation with which he had been honoured. They
knew everything, right down to the smallest details. From that moment
on, there was no more envy; they curried servile favour with him:
Father Castanède, who only the previous day had been the ultimate in
rudeness to him, came up to him and took him by the arm to invite him
to lunch.

Through a fatal flaw in
Julien's character, the insolence of these boorish creatures had hurt
him deeply; their servility revolted him and gave him no pleasure.

About midday, Father Pirard said farewell to his pupils, making a
point of delivering a stern speech to them. 'Do you want worldly
honours', he said to them, 'and every kind of social advantage, the
pleasure of commanding others, of holding the law in contempt, and of
getting away with being insolent to everyone? Or do you want your
eternal salvation? The least alert among you have only to open your
eyes to tell these two paths apart.'

No sooner had he left than the devout followers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
^*
went off to the chapel to strike up a
Te Deum
.
No one in the seminary took the ex-master's speech seriously. 'He's
very miffed at being dismissed,' was the comment in all quarters; not a
single seminarist was simpleminded enough to believe that anyone could
voluntarily renounce a post which offered so many contacts with big
suppliers.

Father Pirard went and
installed himself in the finest inn in Besançon; and purporting to
have some (non-existent) business to attend to, he determined to spend
two days there.

The bishop had
invited him to dine; and to tease his vicargeneral de Frilair, he was
trying to show him off to his best advantage. They were in the middle
of the sweet course when

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