The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830
said to her. "I feel that I love you with the most violent love."
"Speak in lower tones," she said to him with a frightened air.
Julien was trying to recollect phrases out of a volume of the _Nouvelle
Héloise_ which he had found at Vergy. His memory served him in good
stead. For ten minutes he recited the _Nouvelle Héloise_ to the
delighted Mademoiselle Amanda. He was happy on the strength of his own
bravery, when suddenly the beautiful Franc-comtoise assumed an icy
air. One of her lovers had appeared at the café door. He approached
the bar, whistling, and swaggering his shoulders. He looked at Julien.
The latter's imagination, which always indulged in extremes, suddenly
brimmed over with ideas of a duel. He paled greatly, put down his
cup, assumed an assured demeanour, and considered his rival very
attentively. As this rival lowered his head, while he familiarly poured
out on the counter a glass of brandy for himself, Amanda ordered Julien
with a look to lower his eyes. He obeyed, and for two minutes kept
motionless in his place, pale, resolute, and only thinking of what was
going to happen. He was truly happy at this moment. The rival had been
astonished by Julien's eyes. Gulping down his glass of brandy, he said
a few words to Amanda, placed his two hands in the pockets of his big
tail coat, and approached the billiard table, whistling, and looking at
Julien. The latter got up transported with rage, but he did not know
what to do in order to be offensive. He put down his little parcel, and
walked towards the billiard table with all the swagger he could muster.
It was in vain that prudence said to him, "but your ecclesiastical
career will be ruined by a duel immediately on top of your arrival at
Besançon."
"What does it matter. It shall never be said that I let an insolent
fellow go scot free."
Amanda saw his courage. It contrasted prettily with the simplicity of
his manners. She instantly preferred him to the big young man with the
tail coat. She got up, and while appearing to be following with her eye
somebody who was passing in the street, she went and quickly placed
herself between him and the billiard table.
"Take care not to look askance at that gentleman. He is my
brother-in-law."
"What does it matter? He looked at me."
"Do you want to make me unhappy? No doubt he looked at you, why it may
be he is going to speak to you. I told him that you were a relative of
my mother, and that you had arrived from Genlis. He is a Franc-contois,
and has never gone beyond Dôleon the Burgundy Road, so say what you
like and fear nothing."
Julien was still hesitating. Her barmaid's imagination furnished her
with an abundance of lies, and she quickly added.
"No doubt he looked at you, but it was at a moment when he was asking
me who you were. He is a man who is boorish with everyone. He did not
mean to insult you."
Julien's eye followed the pretended brother-in-law. He saw him buy a
ticket for the pool, which they were playing at the further of the
two billiard tables. Julien heard his loud voice shouting out in a
threatening tone, "My turn to play."
He passed sharply before Madame Amanda, and took a step towards the
billiard table. Amanda seized him by the arm.
"Come and pay me first," she said to him.
"That is right," thought Julien. "She is frightened that I shall leave
without paying." Amanda was as agitated as he was, and very red. She
gave him the change as slowly as she could, while she repeated to him,
in a low voice,
"Leave the café this instant, or I shall love you no more, and yet I do
love you very much."
Julien did go out, but slowly. "Am I not in duty bound," he repeated
to himself, "to go and stare at that coarse person in my turn?" This
uncertainty kept him on the boulevard in the front of the café for an
hour; he kept looking if his man was coming out. He did not come out,
and Julien went away.
He had only been at Besançon some hours, and already he had overcome
one pang of remorse. The old surgeon-major had formerly given him some
fencing lessons, in spite of his gout. That was all the science which
Julien could enlist in the service of his anger. But this embarrassment
would have been nothing if he had only known how to vent his temper
otherwise than by the giving of a blow, for if it had come to a matter
of fisticuffs, his enormous rival would have beaten him and then
cleared out.
"There is not much difference between a seminary and a prison," said
Julien to himself, "for a poor devil like me, without protectors and
without money. I must leave my civilian clothes in some inn, where I
can put my black suit on again. If I ever manage to get out of the
seminary for a few hours, I shall be able to see Mdlle. Amanda again in
my lay clothes." This reasoning was all very fine. Though Julien passed
in front of all the inns, he did not dare to enter a single one.
Finally, as he was passing again before the Hôtel des Ambassadeurs, his
anxious eyes encountered those of a big woman, still fairly young, with
a high colour, and a gay and happy air. He approached her and told his
story.
"Certainly, my pretty little abbé," said the hostess of the
Ambassadeurs to him, "I will keep your lay clothes for you, and I will
even have them regularly brushed. In weather like this, it is not good
to leave a suit of cloth without touching it." She took a key, and
conducted him herself to a room, and advised him to make out a note of
what he was leaving.
"Good heavens. How well you look like that, M. the abbé Sorel," said
the big woman to him when he came down to the kitchen. I will go and
get a good dinner served up to you, and she added in a low voice, "It
will only cost twenty sous instead of the fifty which everybody else
pays, for one must really take care of your little purse strings."
"I have ten louis," Julien replied with certain pride.
"Oh, great heavens," answered the good hostess in alarm. "Don't talk
so loud, there are quite a lot of bad characters in Besançon. They'll
steal all that from you in less than no time, and above all, never go
into the cafés, they are filled with bad characters."
"Indeed," said Julien, to whom those words gave food for thought.
"Don't go anywhere else, except to my place. I will make coffee for
you. Remember that you will always find a friend here, and a good
dinner for twenty sous. So now you understand, I hope. Go and sit down
at table, I will serve you myself."
"I shan't be able to eat," said Julien to her. "I am too upset. I am
going to enter the seminary, as I leave you." The good woman, would not
allow him to leave before she had filled his pockets with provisions.
Finally Julien took his road towards the terrible place. The hostess
was standing at the threshold, and showed him the way.
CHAPTER XXV
THE SEMINARY
Three hundred and thirty-six dinners at eighty-five
centimes. Three hundred and thirty-six suppers at fifty
centimes. Chocolate to those who are entitled to it. How
much profit can be made on the contract?--_Valenod of
Besançon_.
He saw in the distance the iron gilt cross on the door. He approached
slowly. His legs seemed to give way beneath him. "So here is this hell
upon earth which I shall be unable to leave."
Finally he made up his mind to ring. The noise of the bell reverberated
as though through a solitude. At the end of ten minutes a pale man,
clothed in black, came and opened the door. Julien looked at him, and
immediately lowered his eyes. This porter had a singular physiognomy.
The green projecting pupils of his eyes were as round as those of a
cat. The straight lines of his eyebrows betokened the impossibility of
any sympathy. His thin lips came round in a semicircle over projecting
teeth. None the less, his physiognomy did not so much betoken crime
as rather that perfect callousness which is so much more terrifying
to the young. The one sentiment which Julien's rapid gaze surmised in
this long and devout face was a profound contempt for every topic of
conversation which did not deal with things celestial. Julien raised
his eyes with an effort, and in a voice rendered quavering by the
beating of his heart explained that he desired to speak to M. Pirard,
the director of the Seminary. Without saying a word the man in black
signed to him to follow. They ascended two stories by a large staircase
with a wooden rail, whose warped stairs inclined to the side opposite
the wall, and seemed on the point of falling. A little door with a
big cemetery cross of white wood painted black at the top was opened
with difficulty, and the porter made him enter a dark low room, whose
whitewashed walls were decorated with two big pictures blackened by
age. In this room Julien was left alone. He was overwhelmed. His heart
was beating violently. He would have been happy to have ventured to
cry. A silence of death reigned over the whole house.
At the end of a quarter of an hour, which seemed a whole day to him,
the sinister looking porter reappeared on the threshold of a door at
the other end of the room, and without vouchsafing a word, signed to
him to advance. He entered into a room even larger than the first,
and very badly lighted. The walls also were whitened, but there was
no furniture. Only in a corner near the door Julien saw as he passed
a white wooden bed, two straw chairs, and a little pinewood armchair
without any cushions. He perceived at the other end of the room, near a
small window with yellow panes decorated with badly kept flower vases,
a man seated at a table, and covered with a dilapidated cassock. He
appeared to be in a temper, and took one after the other a number of
little squares of paper, which he arranged on his table after he had
written some words on them. He did not notice Julien's presence. The
latter did not move, but kept standing near the centre of the room in
the place where the porter, who had gone out and shut the door, had
left him.
Ten minutes passed in this way: the badly dressed man kept on writing
all the time. Julien's emotion and terror were so great that he thought
he was on the point of falling. A philosopher would have said, possibly
wrongly, "It is a violent impression made by ugliness on a soul
intended by nature to love the beautiful."
The man who was writing lifted up his head. Julien only perceived it
after a moment had passed, and even after seeing it, he still remained
motionless, as though struck dead by the terrible look of which he
was the victim. Julien's troubled eyes just managed to make out a
long face, all covered with red blotches except the forehead, which
manifested a mortal pallor. Two little black eyes, calculated to
terrify the most courageous, shone between these red cheeks and that
white forehead. The vast area of his forehead was bounded by thick,
flat, jet black hair.
"Will you come near, yes or no?" said the man at last, impatiently.
Julien advanced with an uneasy step, and at last, paler than he had
ever been in his life and on the point of falling, stopped three paces
from the little white wooden table which was covered with the squares
of paper.
"Nearer," said the man.
Julien advanced still further, holding out his hand, as though trying
to lean on something.
"Your name?"
"Julien Sorel."
"You are certainly very late," said the man to him, as he rivetted
again on him that terrible gaze.
Julien could not endure this look. Holding out his hand as though to
support himself, he fell all his length along the floor.
The man rang. Julien had only lost the use of his eyes and the power of
movement. He heard steps approaching.
He was lifted up and placed on the little armchair of white wood. He
heard the terrible man saying to the porter,