The Red and the Black (34 page)

He knew his times, he knew his département, and he is now rich.

THE PRECURSOR
^*

JULIEN had not yet emerged from the trance-like state into which he
had been plunged by the incident in the cathedral, when he was
summoned one morning by the stern Father Pirard.

'I have just had a letter from Father Chas-Bernard speaking well of
you. I am reasonably pleased with your behaviour in general. You are
extremely rash and even scatterbrained-despite appearances; however so
far, your heart has been in the right place, and it's even a generous
one; you have a superior mind. All in all, I detect a spark in you
that mustn't be neglected.

'After
fifteen years' toil, I am on the point of leaving this establishment:
my crime is to have let the seminarists go their own way, and to have
neither protected nor worked against the secret society you spoke to
me about in the confessional. Before leaving, I want to do something
for you; I should have acted two months ago, for you deserve it, had
you not been denounced on account of Amanda Binet's address that was
found in your room. I am making you an instructor for the New and the
Old Testament.'

Overwhelmed with
gratitude, Julien did think of flinging himself to his knees and
thanking God; but he yielded to a more spontaneous impulse. He went up
to Father Pirard, took his hand and raised it to his lips.

'What's all this?' exclaimed the master, looking displeased; but Julien's eyes spoke even more revealingly than his gesture.

Father Pirard looked at him in astonishment, like a man who for many a
long year has been out of the habit of encountering delicate
emotions. This attention betrayed the master; his voice altered.

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'Well yes, there it is, my boy, I've grown attached to you. Heaven
knows that it really is in spite of myself. I should be just, and have
neither hatred nor love for anyone. Your career will be difficult. I
detect in you something offensive to the vulgar. You will be dogged by
jealousy and slander. Wherever Providence may put you, your
companions will never see you without hating you; and if they pretend
to like you, it will be to betray you all the more surely. There's
only one remedy for this: have no recourse to anyone but God, who has
made it necessary for you to be hated as a punishment for your
presumption; let your conduct be pure; it's the only resource I can
see for you. If you hold fast to the truth with an invincible embrace,
sooner or later your enemies will be confounded.'

It was so long since Julien had heard a friendly voice that he must
be forgiven for an act of weakness: he broke down in tears. Father
Pirard held out his arms to him; it was a truly comforting moment for
both of them.

Julien was wild with
delight; this promotion was the first to come his way; the benefits
were immense. To have any conception of them, you have to have been
condemned to spend months on end without a moment to yourself, in
direct contact with contemporaries who are importunate at the very
least and for the most part intolerable. Their shouts alone would have
been enough to unsettle a delicate constitution. The rowdy glee of
these well-fed, well-dressed peasants was incapable of expressing
itself unassisted, and did not consider itself complete unless they
were shouting with all the lungpower they could muster.

Now Julien dined alone, or virtually so, an hour later than the other
seminarists. He had a key to the garden and could go for walks there
at times when it was deserted.

To his
great astonishment, Julien observed that the others hated him less;
he was expecting, quite on the contrary, that the hatred would
increase. His secret desire not to be spoken to, which was only too
apparent and won him so many enemies, was no longer a mark of
ridiculous disdain. In the eyes of the boorish creatures who
surrounded him, it was a rightful sense of his own dignity. The hatred
grew noticeably less, especially among his younger fellow seminarists
who had

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become his pupils and were treated by him with considerable courtesy.
Gradually he even acquired some supporters; it became bad form to
call him Martin Luther.

But what's the point of naming his friends and his enemies! All
that
is sordid, and it's all the more sordid, the more genuine the
vocation. Yet men like this are the only moral teachers available to
the common people, and how would the latter fare without them? Will
newspapers ever succeed in replacing priests?

Since Julien's new promotion, the master of the seminary made a point
of never speaking to him without witnesses. This conduct was a
measure of prudence for master as well as disciple; but it was above
all an
ordeal
. The unvarying principle of the strict Jansenist
Pirard was: Is a man worthy in your eyes? Put obstacles in the way of
everything he desires, everything he undertakes. If his worth is
genuine, he will find the means to overturn or get round the
obstacles.

It was the hunting season.
Fouqué had the idea of sending a stag and a wild boar on behalf of
Julien's family. The dead animals were left in the passage between the
kitchen and the refectory. That was where all the seminarists saw
them on their way in to dinner. They were an object of great
curiosity. For all that it was dead, the boar frightened the younger
ones; they fingered its tusks. No one talked of anything else for a
week.

This gift, which put Julien's
family into the segment of society deserving respect, dealt envy a
deadly blow. He was a superior being to whom fortune had given her
accolade. Chazel and the most distinguished among the seminarists made
overtures to him, and might almost have complained to him that he had
not informed them of his family's wealth, and had thus put them at
risk of failing to show due respect for money.

The army came round for conscripts; Julien, as a seminarist, was
exempt. He was deeply stirred by this incident. So there's an end for
ever to the moment when, twenty years ago, a heroic life would have
begun for me!

He was walking alone in
the seminary garden, and he overhead a conversation between some
stonemasons who were working on the boundary wall.

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'That's it then, better be off, they're doin' another conscription.'

'
Last
time round, what a doddle! there was masons becomin' officers, becomin' generals, I'm tellin' yer.'

'An' just look at it now! Only beggars goin' off. Anyone with the
means
stays back 'ome.'

'If you're born poor as a church mouse, you stay that way-that's all there is to it.'

'Talkin' of that, is it true what they're sayin', that
he's
dead?' asked a third mason, joining in.

'It's the big 'uns are sayin' that, see! They were right scared of
him
.'

'What a difference; work was work in his day! And to think he was betrayed by his marshals! Talk of traitors!'

This conversation consoled Julien somewhat. As he moved away he repeated to himself with a sigh:

The only king remembered by the crowd!
^*

The season for examinations came round. Julien answered brilliantly;
he observed that Chazel himself was trying to display all his
learning.

On the first day, the
examiners appointed by the notorious vicar-general de Frilair were
exceedingly put out to find themselves constantly having to give first
place on their lists, or at the very least second, to this Julien
Sorel who had been pointed out to them as the blue-eyed boy of Father
Pirard. Bets were laid in the seminary that Julien would be put first
on the final ranking list, which carried with it the honour of
dining with Monsignor the bishop. But at the end of a session bearing
on the Church Fathers, a clever examiner who had questioned Julien on
St Jerome and his passion for Cicero moved on to Horace, Virgil and
the other profane writers. Unknown to his fellows, Julien had learned
off by heart a large number of passages from these authors. Carried
away by his success he forgot where he was, and at the examiner's
repeated insistence, he recited and paraphrased several of Horace's
odes with great ardour. After letting him plait a rope for his own
neck for some twenty minutes, the examiner suddenly changed
countenance and sourly reproached him for the time he had

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wasted on these profane studies, and the useless or criminal ideas with which he had filled his head.

'I am a fool, sir, you are quite right,' said Julien with a humble
air, recognizing the clever strategy that had trapped him.

The examiner's ploy was considered a dirty trick, even at the
seminary, but this did not prevent Father de Frilair--that clever
operator who had so skilfully organized the network of the
Congregation in Besançon, and whose despatches to Paris struck fear
into the hearts of judges, prefect and even the general staff of the
garrison--from putting the number 198 in his powerful hand against
Julien's name. He was delighted at this chance to mortify his enemy
the Jansenist Pirard.

For ten years
his overriding concern had been to take the mastership of the seminary
from him. Father Pirard, who followed for himself the plan of conduct
he had outlined to Julien, was sincere, pious, devoid of intrigue,
attached to his duties. But heaven in its wrath had endowed him with a
bilious temperament, of the kind that is deeply affected by insults
and hatred. None of the slights intended for him were lost on this
fiery soul. He would have handed in his resignation time and time
again, but he believed himself to be of some use in the post in which
Providence had placed him. I am preventing the spread of Jesuitism and
idolatry, he told himself.

At the
time of the examinations he had not spoken to Julien for as long as
two months, and yet he was ill for a week when, on receiving the
official letter announcing the ranking in the examination, he saw the
number 198 opposite the name of the pupil he regarded as the star of
the establishment. The only consolation for this stern character came
in concentrating all his means of surveillance on Julien. He was
overjoyed to discover in him neither anger, nor plans for revenge, nor
loss of morale.

A few weeks later Julien was startled at the sight of a letter he received: it bore a Paris postmark. At last, he thought M
^me
de Rênal has remembered her promises. A gentleman signing himself
Paul Sorel and claiming to be a relative of his was sending him a note
of hand worth five hundred francs. The writer added that if Julien
continued to study the good Latin

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authors with the same success, a similar sum would be sent to him every year.

She'
s done it, it's
her
kindness! thought Julien, overcome with tenderness, she wants to
console me; but why isn't there a single word of friendship?

He was wrong about the letter: M
^me
de Rênal, guided by her friend M
^me
Derville, was wholly engrossed in her deep remorse. In spite of
herself she did often think of the strange being who had come into her
life and thrown it into turmoil, but the last thing she would have
done was write to him.

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

Twelve years previously, the Abbé de Frilair had arrived in Besançon
with the slimmest of portmanteaux which, according to rumour,
contained all this worldly wealth. He was now one of the richest
landowners in the département. In the course of this rise to
prosperity, he had bought one half of a piece of land, the other
portion of which fell by inheritance to M. de La Mole. Hence a great
lawsuit between these characters.

In
spite of his dazzling existence in Paris and the offices he held at
Court, the Marquis de La Mole sensed that it was dangerous to fight a
vicar-general in Besançon who had the reputation of making and
unmaking prefects. Instead of soliciting a bribe to the tune of fifty
thousand francs, disguised under some heading or other allowed by the
budget, and conceding to the Abbé de Frilair this paltry lawsuit worth
fifty thousand francs, the marquis took umbrage. He believed
himself to be in the right--indubitably in the right!

Now if it is permitted to say so: what judge does not have a son or at least a cousin who needs help to get on in the world?

To enlighten those who are really blind, the Abbé de Frilair took
Monsignor the bishop's carriage and went in person to give the cross
of the Legion of Honour to his barrister. M. de La Mole, somewhat
thrown by the posture of his opponent, and sensing that his lawyers
were weakening, sought advice from Father Chélan, who put him in touch
with Father Pirard.

These contacts had been going on for several years at the

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time of our story. Father Pirard threw his passionate character into
this affair. In constant touch with the marquis's lawyers he studied
his case and, finding justice on his side, went about openly
canvassing support for the Marquis de La Mole against the all-powerful
vicar-general. The latter was outraged at the impertinence of it, and
coming from a little Jansenist, what's more!

'Just take a look at this Court nobility which thinks itself so
powerful!' Father de Frilair would say to his intimate acquaintance. 'M.
de La Mole didn't even send a wretched cross to his agent in
Besançon, and he'll let him fall from office just like that. And yet,
so I gather from letters, this noble peer doesn't let a week pass
without going to show off his Blue Sash
^*
in the Lord Chancellor's salon, whoever he happens to be.'

Despite all Father Pirard's activity, and the fact that M. de La Mole
was always on the best of terms with the Minister of Justice and more
particularly his departments, all that he had managed to achieve
after six years' effort was not losing his case outright.

In constant correspondence with Father Pirard over a matter they both
pursued with passionate interest, the marquis eventually came to
appreciate the priest's cast of mind. Gradually, despite the great gulf
between their social positions, their correspondence took on a tone of
friendship. Father Pirard told the marquis of the attempts to force
him by a succession of public affronts to resign his position. In his
anger at the infamous strategy, as he saw it, that had been deployed
against Julien, he recounted his story to the marquis.

Although exceedingly rich, this great lord was no miser. Not once had
he been able to get Father Pirard to accept anything, not even
reimbursement of the postal charges incurred for the lawsuit. He
seized upon the idea of sending five hundred francs to his favourite
pupil.

M. de La Mole took the trouble to write the accompanying letter himself. This made him think of the priest.

One day, the latter received a short note which entreated him, on a
pressing matter, to make his way forthwith to an inn in the suburbs of
Besançon
. There he found M. de La Mole's steward.

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