The Red and the Black

by Stendhal

  “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 Taciti).”

  On hearing these words, they all congratulated Julien enviously, not only on the magnificent present which he had received from my lord, but also on the two hours’ conversation with which he had been honoured. They knew even its minutest details. From that moment envy ceased completely. They courted him basely. The Abbé Castanède, who had manifested towards him the most extreme insolence the very day before, came and took his arm and invited him to breakfast.

  By some fatality in Julien’s character, while the insolence of these coarse creatures had occasioned him great pain, their baseness afforded him disgust, but no pleasure.

  Towards mid-day the Abbé Pirard took leave of his pupils, but not before addressing to them a severe admonition.

  “Do you wish for the honours of the world,” he said to them, “for all the social advantages, for the pleasure of commanding pleasures, of setting the laws at defiance, and the pleasure of being insolent with impunity to all? Or do you wish for your eternal salvation? The most backward of you have only got to open your eyes to distinguish the true ways.”

  He had scarcely left before the devotees of the Sacré Coeur de Jesus went into the chapel to intone a Te Deum. Nobody in the seminary took the ex-director’s admonition seriously.

  “He shows a great deal of temper because he is losing his job,” was what was said in every quarter.

  Not a single seminarist was simple enough to believe in the voluntary resignation of a position which put him into such close touch with the big contractors.

  The Abbé Pirard went and established himself in the finest inn at Besançon, and making an excuse of business which he had not got, insisted on passing a couple of days there. The Bishop had invited him to dinner, and in order to chaff his Grand Vicar de Frilair, endeavoured to make him shine. They were at dessert when the extraordinary intelligence arrived from Paris that the Abbé Pirard had been appointed to the magnificent living of N.——four leagues from Paris. The good prelate congratulated him upon it. He saw in the whole affair a piece of good play which put him in a good temper and gave him the highest opinion of the Abbé’s talents. He gave him a magnificent Latin certificate, and enjoined silence on the Abbé de Frilair, who was venturing to remonstrate.

  The same evening, my Lord conveyed his admiration to the Marquise de Rubempré. This was great news for fine Besançon society. They abandoned themselves to all kinds of conjectures over this extraordinary favour. They already saw the Abbé Pirard a Bishop. The more subtle brains thought M. de la Mole was a minister, and indulged on this day in smiles at the imperious airs that M. the Abbé de Frilair adopted in society.

  The following day the Abbé Pirard was almost mobbed in the streets, and the tradesmen came to their shop doors when he went to solicit an interview with the judges who had had to try the Marquis’s lawsuit. For the first time in his life he was politely received by them. The stern Jansenist, indignant as he was with all that he saw, worked long with the advocates whom he had chosen for the Marquis de la Mole, and left for Paris. He was weak enough to tell two or three college
friends who accompanied him to the carriage whose armorial bearings they admired, that after having administered the Seminary for fifteen years he was leaving Besançon with five hundred and twenty francs of savings. His friends kissed him with tears in their eyes, and said to each other,

  “The good Abbé could have spared himself that lie. It is really too ridiculous.”

  The vulgar, blinded as they are by the love of money, were constitutionally incapable of understanding that it was in his own sincerity that the Abbé Pirard had found the necessary strength to fight for six years against Marie Alacoque, the Sacré Coeur de Jesus, the Jesuits and his Bishop.

  XXX. An Ambitious Man

  There is only one nobility, the title of duke; a marquis is ridiculous; the word duke makes one turn round.

  Edinburgh Review

  The Marquis de la Mole received the Abbé Pirard without any of those aristocratic mannerisms whose very politeness is at the same time so impertinent to one who understands them. It would have been a waste of time, and the Marquis was sufficiently expeditious in big affairs to have no time to lose.

  He had been intriguing for six months to get both the King and people to accept a minister who, as a matter of gratitude, was to make him a Duke. The Marquis had been asking his Besançon advocate for years on end for a clear and precise summary of his Franche-Comté lawsuits. How could the celebrated advocate explain to him what he did not understand himself? The little square of paper which the Abbé handed him explained the whole matter.

  “My dear Abbé,” said the Marquis to him, having got through in less than five minutes all polite formulæ of personal questions. “My dear Abbé, in the midst of my pretended prosperity I lack the time to occupy myself seriously with two little matters which are rather important, my family and my affairs. I manage the fortune of my house on a large scale. I can carry it far. I manage my pleasures, and that is the first consideration in my eyes,” he added, as he saw a look of astonishment in the Abbé Pirard’s eyes. Although a man of common sense, the Abbé was surprised to hear a man talk so frankly about his pleasures.

  “Work doubtless exists in Paris,” continued the great lord, “but it is perched on the fifth story, and as soon as I take anyone up, he takes an apartment on the second floor, and his wife starts a day at home; the result is no more work and no more efforts except either to be, or appear to be, a society man. That is the only thing they bother about, as soon as they have got their bread and butter.

  “For my lawsuits, yes, for every single one of them, I have, to put it plainly, advocates who quarrel to death. One died of consumption the day before yesterday. Taking my business all round, would you believe, monsieur, that for three years I have given up all hope of finding a man who deigns, during the time he is acting as my clerk, to give a little serious thought to what he is doing. Besides, all this is only a preliminary.

  “I respect you and would venture to add that, although I only see you for the first time to-day, I like you. Will you be my secretary at a salary of eight hundred francs or even double? I shall still be the gainer by it, I swear to you, and I will manage to reserve that fine living for you for the day when we shall no longer be able to agree.” The Abbé refused, but the genuine embarrassment in which he saw the Marquis suggested an idea to him towards the end of the conversation.

  “I have left in the depths of my seminary a poor young man who, if I mistake not, will be harshly persecuted. If he were only a simple monk he would be already in pace. So far this young man only knows Latin and the Holy Scriptures, but it is not impossible that he will one day exhibit great talent, either for preaching or the guiding of souls. I do not know what he will do, but he has the sacred fire. He may go far. I thought of giving him to our Bishop, if we had ever had one who was a little of your way of considering men and things.”

  “What is your young man’s extraction?” said the Marquis.

  “He is said to be the son of a carpenter in our mountains. I rather believe he is the natural son of some rich man. I have seen him receive an anonymous or pseudonymous letter with a bill of exchange for five hundred francs.”

  “Oh, it is Julien Sorel,” said the Marquis.

  “How do you know his name?” said the Abbé, in astonishment, reddening at his question.

  “That’s what I’m not going to tell you,” answered the Marquis.

  “Well,” replied the Abbé, “you might try making him your secretary. He has energy. He has a logical mind. In a word, it’s worth trying.”

  “Why not?” said the Marquis. “But would he be the kind of man to allow his palm to be greased by the Prefect of Police or any one else and then spy on me? That is only my objection.”

  After hearing the favourable assurances of the Abbé Pirard, the Marquis took a thousand-franc note.

  “Send this journey money to Julien Sorel. Let him come to me.”

  “One sees at once,” said the Abbé Pirard, “that you live in Paris. You do not know the tyranny which weighs us poor provincials down, and particularly those priests who are not friendly to the Jesuits. They will refuse to let Julien Sorel leave. They will manage to cloak themselves in the most clever excuses. They will answer me that he is ill, that his letters were lost in the post, etc., etc.”

  “I will get a letter from the minister to the Bishop, one of these days,” answered the Marquis.

  “I was forgetting to warn you of one thing,” said the Abbé. “This young man, though of low birth, has a high spirit. He will be of no use if you madden his pride. You will make him stupid.”

  “That pleases me,” said the Marquis. “I will make him my son’s comrade. Will that be enough for you?”

  Some time afterwards, Julien received a letter in an unknown writing, and bearing the Chlon postmark. He found in it a draft on a Besançon merchant, and instructions to present himself at Paris without delay. The letter was signed in a fictitious name, but Julien had felt a thrill in opening it. A leaf of a tree had fallen down at his feet. It was the agreed signal between himself and the Abbé Pirard.

  Within an hour’s time, Julien was summoned to the Bishop’s Palace, where he found himself welcomed with a quite paternal benevolence. My lord quoted Horace and at the same time complimented him very adroitly on the exalted destiny which awaited him in Paris in such a way as to elicit an explanation by way of thanks. Julien was unable to say anything, simply because he did not know anything, and my lord showed him much consideration. One of the little priests in the bishopric wrote to the mayor, who hastened to bring in person a signed passport, where the name of the traveller had been left in blank.

  Before midnight of the same evening, Julien was at Fouqué’s. His friend’s shrewd mind was more astonished than pleased with the future which seemed to await his friend.

  “You will finish up,” said that Liberal voter, “with a place in the Government, which will compel you to take some step which will be calumniated. It will only be by your own disgrace that I shall have news of you. Remember that, even from the financial standpoint, it is better to earn a hundred louis in a good timber business, of which one is his own master, than to receive four thousand francs from a Government, even though it were that of King Solomon.”

  Julien saw nothing in this except the pettiness of spirit of a country bourgeois. At last he was going to make an appearance in the theatre of great events. Everything was over-shadowed in his eyes by the happiness of going to Paris, which he imagined to be populated by people of intellect, full of intrigues and full of hypocrisy, but as polite as the Bishop of Besançon and the Bishop of Agde. He represented to his friend that he was deprived of any free choice in the matter by the Abbé Pirard’s letter.

  The following day he arrived at Verrières about noon. He felt the happiest of men for he counted on seeing Madame de Rênal again. He went first to his protector the good Abbé Chélan. He met with a severe welcome.

  “Do you think you are under any obligation to me?” said M. Chélan to him, without answ
ering his greeting. “You will take breakfast with me. During that time I will have a horse hired for you and you will leave Verrières without seeing anyone.”

  “Hearing is obeying,” answered Julien with a demeanour smacking of the seminary, and the only questions now discussed were theology and classical Latin.

  He mounted his horse, rode a league, and then perceiving a wood and not seeing any one who could notice him enter, he plunged into it. At sunset, he sent away the horse. Later, he entered the cottage of a peasant, who consented to sell him a ladder and to follow him with it to the little wood which commands the Cours de la Fidelité at Verrières.

  “I have been following a poor mutineer of a conscript . . . or a smuggler,” said the peasant as he took leave of him, “but what does it matter? My ladder has been well paid for, and I myself have done a thing or two in that line.”

  The night was very black. Towards one o’clock in the morning, Julien, laden with his ladder, entered Verrières. He descended as soon as he could into the bed of the stream, which is banked within two walls, and traverses M. de Rênal’s magnificent gardens at a depth of ten feet. Julien easily climbed up the ladder. “How will the watch dogs welcome me,” he thought. “It all turns on that.” The dogs barked and galloped towards him, but he whistled softly and they came and caressed him. Then climbing from terrace to terrace he easily managed, although all the grills were shut, to get as far as the window of Madame de Rênal’s bedroom which, on the garden side, was only eight or six feet above the ground. There was a little heart shaped opening in the shutters which Julien knew well. To his great disappointment, this little opening was not illuminated by the flare of a little night-light inside.