The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830
la Mole, and composed for my Lord the Bishop a letter, a masterpiece of
ecclesiastical style, although it was a little long; it would have been
difficult to have found more unimpeachable phrases, and ones breathing
a more sincere respect. And nevertheless, this letter, intended as it
was to get M. de Frilair into trouble with his patron, gave utterance
to all the serious matters of complaint, and even descended to the
little squalid intrigues which, having been endured with resignation
for six years, were forcing the abbé Pirard to leave the diocese.
They stole his firewood, they poisoned his dog, etc., etc.
Having finished this letter he had Julien called. Like all the other
seminarists, he was sleeping at eight o'clock in the evening.
"You know where the Bishop's Palace is," he said to him in good
classical Latin. "Take this letter to my Lord. I will not hide from
you that I am sending you into the midst of the wolves. Be all ears
and eyes. Let there be no lies in your answers, but realise that the
man questioning you will possibly experience a real joy in being able
to hurt you. I am very pleased, my child, at being able to give you
this experience before I leave you, for I do not hide from you that the
letter which you are bearing is my resignation."
Julien stood motionless. He loved the abbé Pirard. It was in vain that
prudence said to him,
"After this honest man's departure the Sacré-Cœur party will disgrace
me and perhaps expel me."
He could not think of himself. He was embarrassed by a phrase which he
was trying to turn in a polite way, but as a matter of fact he found
himself without the brains to do so.
"Well, my friend, are you not going?"
"Is it because they say, monsieur," answered Julian timidly, "that you
have put nothing on one side during your long administration. I have
six hundred francs."
His tears prevented him from continuing.
"_That also will be noticed,_" said the ex-director of the seminary
coldly. "Go to the Palace. It is getting late."
Chance would so have it that on that evening, the abbé de Frilair
was on duty in the salon of the Palace. My lord was dining with the
prefect, so it was to M. de Frilair himself that Julien, though he did
not know it, handed the letter.
Julien was astonished to see this abbé boldly open the letter which was
addressed to the Bishop. The face of the Grand Vicar soon expressed
surprise, tinged with a lively pleasure, and became twice as grave
as before. Julien, struck with his good appearance, found time to
scrutinise him while he was reading. This face would have possessed
more dignity had it not been for the extreme subtlety which appeared
in some features, and would have gone to the fact of actually denoting
falseness if the possessor of this fine countenance had ceased
to school it for a single minute. The very prominent nose formed
a perfectly straight line and unfortunately gave to an otherwise
distinguished profile, a curious resemblance to the physiognomy of
a fox. Otherwise this abbé, who appeared so engrossed with Monsieur
Pirard's resignation, was dressed with an elegance which Julien had
never seen before in any priest and which pleased him exceedingly.
It was only later that Julien knew in what the special talent of the
abbé de Frilair really consisted. He knew how to amuse his bishop,
an amiable old man made for Paris life, and who looked upon Besançon
as exile. This Bishop had very bad sight, and was passionately fond
of fish. The abbé de Frilair used to take the bones out of the fish
which was served to my Lord. Julien looked silently at the abbé who
was rereading the resignation when the door suddenly opened with a
noise. A richly dressed lackey passed in rapidly. Julien had only
time to turn round towards the door. He perceived a little old man
wearing a pectoral cross. He prostrated himself. The Bishop addressed a
benevolent smile to him and passed on. The handsome abbé followed him
and Julien was left alone in the salon, and was able to admire at his
leisure its pious magnificence.
The Bishop of Besançon, a man whose spirit had been tried but
not broken by the long miseries of the emigration, was more than
seventy-five years old and concerned himself infinitely little with
what might happen in ten years' time.
"Who is that clever-looking seminarist I think I saw as I passed?" said
the Bishop. "Oughtn't they to be in bed according to my regulations."
"That one is very wide-awake I assure you, my Lord, and he brings
great news. It is the resignation of the only Jansenist residing in
your diocese, that terrible abbé Pirard realises at last that we mean
business."
"Well," said the Bishop with a laugh. "I challenge you to replace him
with any man of equal worth, and to show you how much I prize that man,
I will invite him to dinner for to-morrow."
The Grand Vicar tried to slide in a few words concerning the choice of
a successor. The prelate, who was little disposed to talk business,
said to him.
"Before we install the other, let us get to know a little of the
circumstances under which the present one is going. Fetch me this
seminarist. The truth is in the mouth of children."
Julien was summoned. "I shall find myself between two inquisitors,"
he thought. He had never felt more courageous. At the moment when he
entered, two valets, better dressed than M. Valenod himself, were
undressing my lord. That prelate thought he ought to question Julien
on his studies before questioning him about M. Pirard. He talked a
little theology, and was astonished. He soon came to the humanities,
to Virgil, to Horace, to Cicero. "It was those names," thought Julien,
that earned me my number 198. I have nothing to lose. Let us try
and shine. He succeeded. The prelate, who was an excellent humanist
himself, was delighted.
At the prefect's dinner, a young girl who was justly celebrated,
had recited the poem of the Madeleine. He was in the mood to talk
literature, and very quickly forgot the abbé Pirard and his affairs
to discuss with the seminarist whether Horace was rich or poor. The
prelate quoted several odes, but sometimes his memory was sluggish,
and then Julien would recite with modesty the whole ode: the fact
which struck the bishop was that Julien never deviated from the
conversational tone. He spoke his twenty or thirty Latin verses as
though he had been speaking of what was taking place in his own
seminary. They talked for a long time of Virgil, or Cicero, and the
prelate could not help complimenting the young seminarist. "You could
not have studied better."
"My Lord," said Julien, "your seminary can offer you 197 much less
unworthy of your high esteem."
"How is that?" said the Prelate astonished by the number.
"I can support by official proof just what I have had the honour of
saying before my lord. I obtained the number 198 at the seminary's
annual examination by giving accurate answers to the very questions
which are earning me at the present moment my lord's approbation.
"Ah, it is the Benjamin of the abbé Pirard," said the Bishop with a
laugh, as he looked at M. de Frilair. "We should have been prepared
for this. But it is fair fighting. Did you not have to be woken up, my
friend," he said, addressing himself to Julien. "To be sent here?"
"Yes, my Lord. I have only been out of the seminary alone once in my
life to go and help M. the abbé Chas-Bernard decorate the cathedral on
Corpus Christi day.
"Optime," said the Bishop. "So, it is you who showed proof of so much
courage by placing the bouquets of feathers on the baldachin. They
make me shudder. They make me fear that they will cost some man his
life. You will go far, my friend, but I do not wish to cut short your
brilliant career by making you die of hunger."
And by the order of the Bishop, biscuits and wine were brought in, to
which Julien did honour, and the abbé de Frilair, who knew that his
Bishop liked to see people eat gaily and with a good appetite, even
greater honour.
The prelate, more and more satisfied with the end of his evening,
talked for a moment of ecclesiastical history. He saw that Julien did
not understand. The prelate passed on to the moral condition of the
Roman Empire under the system of the Emperor Constantine. The end of
paganism had been accompanied by that state of anxiety and of doubt
which afflicts sad and jaded spirits in the nineteenth century. My Lord
noticed Julien's ignorance of almost the very name of Tacitus. To the
astonishment of the prelate, Julien answered frankly that that author
was not to be found in the seminary library.
"I am truly very glad," said the Bishop gaily, "You relieve me of an
embarrassment. I have been trying for the last five minutes to find a
way of thanking you for the charming evening which you have given me in
a way that I could certainly never have expected. I did not anticipate
finding a teacher in a pupil in my seminary. Although the gift is not
unduly canonical, I want to give you a Tacitus." The prelate had eight
volumes in a superior binding fetched for him, and insisted on writing
himself on the title page of the first volume a Latin compliment to
Julien Sorel. The Bishop plumed himself on his fine Latinity. He
finished by saying to him in a serious tone, which completely clashed
with the rest of the conversation.
"Young man, if you are good, you will have one day the best living in
my diocese, and one not a hundred leagues from my episcopal palace, but
you must be good."
Laden with his volumes, Julien left the palace in a state of great
astonishment as midnight was striking.
My Lord had not said a word to him about the abbé Pirard. Julien was
particularly astonished by the Bishop's extreme politeness. He had had
no conception of such an urbanity in form combined with so natural an
air of dignity. Julien was especially struck by the contrast on seeing
again the gloomy abbé Pirard, who was impatiently awaiting him.
"Quid tibi dixerunt (What have they said to you)?" he cried out to him
in a loud voice as soon as he saw him in the distance. "Speak French,
and repeat my Lord's own words without either adding or subtracting
anything," said the ex-Director of the seminary in his harsh tone,
and with his particularly inelegant manners, as Julien got slightly
confused in translating into Latin the speeches of the Bishop.
"What a strange present on the part of the Bishop to a young
seminarist," he ventured to say as he turned over the leaves of the
superb Tacitus, whose gilt edges seemed to horrify him.
Two o'clock was already striking when he allowed his favourite pupil to
retire to his room after an extremely detailed account.
"Leave me the first volume of your Tacitus," he said to him. "Where
is my Lord Bishop's compliment? This Latin line will serve as your
lightning-conductor in this house after my departure."
Erit tibi, fili mi, successor meus tanquam leo querens quem devoret.
(For my successor will be to you, my son, like a ravening lion seeking
someone to devour).
The following morning Julien noticed a certain strangeness in
the manner in which his comrades spoke to him. It only made him
more reserved. "This," he thought, "is the result of M. Pirard's
resignation. It is known over the whole house, and I pass for his
favourite. There ought logically to be an insult in their demeanour."
But he could not detect it. On the contrary, there was an absence of
hate in the eyes of all those he met along the corridors. "What is the
meaning of this? It is doubtless a trap. Let us play a wary game."
Finally the little seminarist said to him with a laugh,
"Cornelii Taciti opera omnia (complete works of Tacitus)."
On hearing these words, they all congratulated Julien enviously, not