The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830
It was the hunting season. It had occurred to Fouqué to send a stag
and a boar to the seminary as though they came from Julien's parents.
The dead animals were put down on the floor between the kitchen and
the refectory. It was there that they were seen by all the seminarists
on their way to dinner. They constituted a great attraction for their
curiosity. The boar, dead though it was, made the youngest ones feel
frightened. They touched its tusks. They talked of nothing else for a
whole week.
This gift, which raised Julien's family to the level of that class
of society which deserves respect, struck a deadly blow at all
jealousy. He enjoyed a superiority, consecrated by fortune. Chazel,
the most distinguished of the seminarists, made advances to him, and
always reproached him for not having previously apprised them of his
parents' position and had thus involved them in treating money without
sufficient respect. A conscription took place, from which Julien, in
his capacity as seminarist, was exempt. This circumstance affected him
profoundly. "So there is just passed for ever that moment which, twenty
years earlier, would have seen my heroic life begin. He was walking
alone in the seminary garden. He heard the masons who were walling up
the cloister walls talking between themselves.
"Yes, we must go. There's the new conscription. When _the other_ was
alive it was good business. A mason could become an officer then, could
become a general then. One has seen such things."
"You go and see now. It's only the ragamuffins who leave for the army.
Any one _who has anything_ stays in the country here."
"The man who is born wretched stays wretched, and there you are."
"I say, is it true what they say, that the other is dead?" put in the
third mason.
"Oh well, it's the '_big men_' who say that, you see. The other one
made them afraid."
"What a difference. How the fortification went ahead in his time. And
to think of his being betrayed by his own marshals."
This conversation consoled Julien a little. As he went away, he
repeated with a sigh:
"_Le seul roi dont le peuple a gardé la mémoire._"
The time for the examination arrived. Julien answered brilliantly. He
saw that Chazel endeavoured to exhibit all his knowledge. On the first
day the examiners, nominated by the famous Grand Vicar de Frilair, were
very irritated at always having to put first, or at any rate second,
on their list, that Julien Sorel, who had been designated to them as
the Benjamin of the Abbé Pirard. There were bets in the seminary that
Julien would come out first in the final list of the examination, a
privilege which carried with it the honour of dining with my Lord
Bishop. But at the end of a sitting, dealing with the fathers of the
Church, an adroit examiner, having first interrogated Julien on Saint
Jerome and his passion for Cicero, went on to speak about Horace,
Virgil and other profane authors. Julien had learnt by heart a great
number of passages from these authors without his comrades' knowledge.
Swept away by his successes, he forgot the place where he was, and
recited in paraphrase with spirit several odes of Horace at the
repeated request of the examiner. Having for twenty minutes given him
enough rope to hang himself, the examiner changed his expression, and
bitterly reproached him for the time he had wasted on these profane
studies, and the useless or criminal ideas which he had got into his
head.
"I am a fool, sir. You are right," said Julien modestly, realising the
adroit stratagem of which he was the victim.
This examiner's dodge was considered dirty, even at the seminary, but
this did not prevent the abbé de Frilair, that adroit individual who
had so cleverly organised the machinery of the Besançon congregation,
and whose despatches to Paris put fear into the hearts of judges,
prefect, and even the generals of the garrison, from placing with
his powerful hand the number 198 against Julien's name. He enjoyed
subjecting his enemy, Pirard the Jansenist, to this mortification.
His chief object for the last ten years had been to deprive him of the
headship of the seminary. The abbé, who had himself followed the plan
which he had indicated to Julien, was sincere, pious, devoted to his
duties and devoid of intrigue, but heaven in its anger had given him
that bilious temperament which is by nature so deeply sensitive to
insults and to hate. None of the insults which were addressed to him
was wasted on his burning soul. He would have handed in his resignation
a hundred times over, but he believed that he was useful in the place
where Providence had set him. "I prevent the progress of Jesuitism and
Idolatry," he said to himself.
At the time of the examinations, it was perhaps nearly two months
since he had spoken to Julien, and nevertheless, he was ill for eight
days when, on receipt of the official letter announcing the result of
the competition, he saw the number 198 placed beside the name of that
pupil whom he regarded as the glory of his town. This stern character
found his only consolation in concentrating all his surveillance on
Julien. He was delighted that he discovered in him neither anger, nor
vindictiveness, nor discouragement.
Julien felt a thrill some months afterwards when he received a letter.
It bore the Paris post-mark. Madame de Rênal is remembering her
promises at last, he thought. A gentleman who signed himself Paul
Sorel, and who said that he was his relative, sent him a letter of
credit for five hundred francs. The writer went on to add that if
Julien went on to study successfully the good Latin authors, a similar
sum would be sent to him every year.
"It is she. It is her kindness," said Julien to himself, feeling quite
overcome. "She wishes to console me. But why not a single word of
affection?"
He was making a mistake in regard to this letter, for Madame de Rênal,
under the influence of her friend, Madame Derville, was abandoning
herself absolutely to profound remorse. She would often think, in
spite of herself, of that singular being, the meeting with whom had
revolutionized her life. But she carefully refrained from writing to
him.
If we were to talk the terminology of the seminary, we would be able
to recognise a miracle in the sending of these five hundred francs and
to say that heaven was making use of Monsieur de Frilair himself in
order to give this gift to Julien. Twelve years previously the abbé de
Frilair had arrived in Besançon with an extremely exiguous portmanteau,
which, according to the story, contained all his fortune. He was now
one of the richest proprietors of the department. In the course of his
prosperity, he had bought the one half of an estate, while the other
half had been inherited by Monsieur de la Mole. Consequently there was
a great lawsuit between these two personages.
M. le Marquis de la Mole felt that, in spite of his brilliant life at
Paris and the offices which he held at Court, it would be dangerous to
fight at Besançon against the Grand Vicar, who was reputed to make and
unmake prefects.
Instead of soliciting a present of fifty thousand francs which could
have been smuggled into the budget under some name or other, and of
throwing up this miserable lawsuit with the abbé Frilair over a matter
of fifty thousand francs, the marquis lost his temper. He thought
he was in the right, absolutely in the right. Moreover, if one is
permitted to say so, who is the judge who has not got a son, or at any
rate a cousin to push in the world?
In order to enlighten the blindest minds the abbé de Frilair took
the carriage of my Lord the Bishop eight days after the first decree
which he obtained, and went himself to convey the cross of the Legion
of Honour to his advocate. M. de la Mole, a little dumbfounded at
the demeanour of the other side, and appreciating also that his own
advocates were slackening their efforts, asked advice of the abbé
Chélan, who put him in communication with M. Pirard.
At the period of our story the relations between these two men had
lasted for several years. The abbé Pirard imported into this affair
his characteristic passion. Being in constant touch with the Marquis's
advocates, he studied his case, and finding it just, he became quite
openly the solicitor of M. de la Mole against the all-powerful Grand
Vicar. The latter felt outraged by such insolence, and on the part of a
little Jansenist into the bargain.
"See what this Court nobility who pretend to be so powerful really
are," would say the abbé de Frilair to his intimates. M. de la Mole has
not even sent a miserable cross to his agent at Besançon, and will let
him be tamely turned out. None the less, so they write me, this noble
peer never lets a week go by without going to show off his blue ribbon
in the drawing-room of the Keeper of Seal, whoever it may be.
In spite of all the energy of the abbé Pirard, and although M. de la
Mole was always on the best of terms with the minister of justice, and
above all with his officials, the best that he could achieve after six
careful years was not to lose his lawsuit right out. Being as he was
in ceaseless correspondence with the abbé Pirard in connection with an
affair in which they were both passionately interested, the Marquis
came to appreciate the abbé's particular kind of intellect. Little by
little, and in spite of the immense distance in their social positions,
their correspondence assumed the tone of friendship. The abbé Pirard
told the Marquis that they wanted to heap insults upon him till he
should be forced to hand in his resignation. In his anger against what,
in his opinion, was the infamous stratagem employed against Julien, he
narrated his history to the Marquis.
Although extremely rich, this great lord was by no means miserly. He
had never been able to prevail on the abbé Pirard to accept even the
reimbursement of the postal expenses occasioned by the lawsuit. He
seized the opportunity of sending five hundred francs to his favourite
pupil. M. de la Mole himself took the trouble of writing the covering
letter. This gave the abbé food for thought. One day the latter
received a little note which requested him to go immediately on an
urgent matter to an inn on the outskirts of Besançon. He found there
the steward of M. de la Mole.
"M. le Marquis has instructed me to bring you his carriage," said the
man to him. "He hopes that after you have read this letter you will
find it convenient to leave for Paris in four or five days. I will
employ the time in the meanwhile in asking you to be good enough to
show me the estates of M. le Marquis in the Franche-Comté, so that I
can go over them."
The letter was short:--
"Rid yourself, my good sir, of all the chicanery of the
provinces and come and breathe the peaceful atmosphere
of Paris. I send you my carriage which has orders to
await your decision for four days. I will await you
myself at Paris until Tuesday. You only require to say
so, monsieur, to accept in your own name one of the best
livings in the environs of Paris. The richest of your
future parishioners has never seen you, but is more
devoted than you can possibly think: he is the Marquis
de la Mole."
Without having suspected it, the stern abbé Pirard loved this seminary,
peopled as it was by his enemies, but to which for the past fifteen
years he had devoted all his thoughts. M. de la Mole's letter had
the effect on him of the visit of the surgeon come to perform a
difficult but necessary operation. His dismissal was certain. He made
an appointment with the steward for three days later. For forty-eight
hours he was in a fever of uncertainty. Finally he wrote to the M. de