CHAPTER XXV
THE SEMINARY
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,
"He has had an epileptic fit apparently, and this is the finishing touch."
When Julien was able to open his eyes, the man with the red face was going on with his writing. The porter had disappeared. "I must have courage," said our hero to himself, "and above all, hide what I feel." He felt violently sick. "If anything happens to me, God knows what they will think of me."
Finally the man stopped writing and looked sideways at Julien.
"Are you in a fit state to answer me?"
"Yes, sir," said Julien in an enfeebled voice.
"Ah, that's fortunate."
The man in black had half got up, and was looking impatiently for a letter in the drawer of his pinewood table, which opened with a grind. He found it, sat down slowly, and looking again at Julien in a manner calculated to suck out of him the little life which he still possessed, said,
"You have been recommended to me by M. Chélan. He was the best curé in the diocese; he was an upright man if there ever was one, and my friend for thirty years."
"Oh. It's to M. Pirard then that I have the honour of speaking?" said Julien in a dying voice.
"Apparently," replied the director of the seminary, as he looked at him disagreeably.
The glitter of his little eyes doubled and was followed by an involuntary movement of the muscles of the corner of the mouth. It was the physiognomy of the tiger savouring in advance the pleasure of devouring its prey.
"Chélan's letter is short," he said, as though speaking to himself. "Intelligenti pauca. In the present time it is impossible to write too little." He read aloud:—
"I recommend to you Julien Sorel of this parish, whom I baptized nearly twenty years ago, the son of a rich carpenter who gives him nothing. Julien will be a remarkable worker in the vineyard of the Lord. He lacks neither memory nor intelligence: he has some faculty for reflection. Will he persevere in his calling? Is he sincere?"
"Sincere," repeated the abbé Pirard with an astonished air, looking at Julien. But the abbé's look was already less devoid of all humanity. "Sincere," he repeated, lowering his voice, and resuming his reading:—
"I ask you for a stipend for Julien Sorel. He will earn it by passing the necessary examinations. I have taught him a little theology, that old and good theology of the Bossuets, the Arnaults, and the Fleury's. If the person does not suit you, send him back to me. The director of the workhouse, whom you know well, offers him eight hundred to be tutor to his children. My inner self is tranquil, thanks to God. I am accustoming myself to the terrible blow, 'Vale et me ama.'"
The abbé Pirard, speaking more slowly as he read the signature, pronounced with a sigh the word, "Chélan."
"He is tranquil," he said, "in fact his righteousness deserves such a recompense. May God grant it to me in such a case." He looked up to heaven and made the sign of the cross. At the sight of that sacred sign Julien felt an alleviation of the profound horror which had frozen him since his entry into the house.
"I have here three hundred and twenty-one aspirants for the most holy state," said the abbé Pirard at last, in a tone, which though severe, was not malicious; "only seven or eight have been recommended to me by such men as the abbé Chélan; so you will be the ninth of these among the three hundred and twenty-one. But my protection means neither favour nor weakness, it means doubled care, and doubled severity against vice. Go and lock that door."
Julian made an effort to walk, and managed not to fall. He noticed that a little window near the entrance door looked out on to the country. He saw the trees; that sight did him as much good as the sight of old friends.
"'Loquerisne linquam latinam?'" (Do you speak Latin?) said the abbé Pirard to him as he came back.
"'Ita, pater optime,'" (Yes, excellent Father) answered Julien, recovering himself a little. But it was certain that nobody in the world had ever appeared to him less excellent than had M. Pirard for the last half hour.
The conversation continued in Latin. The expression in the abbé's eyes softened. Julien regained some self-possession. "How weak I am," he thought, "to let myself be imposed on by these appearances of virtue. The man is probably nothing more than a rascal, like M. Maslon," and Julien congratulated himself on having hidden nearly all his money in his boots.
The abbé Pirard examined Julien in theology; he was surprised at the extent of his knowledge, but his astonishment increased when he questioned him in particular on sacred scriptures. But when it came to questions of the doctrines of the Fathers, he perceived that Julien scarcely even knew the names of Saint Jerome, Saint Augustin, Saint Bonaventure, Saint Basile, etc., etc.
"As a matter of fact," thought the abbé Pirard, "this is simply that fatal tendency to Protestantism for which I have always reproached Chélan. A profound, and only too profound knowledge of the Holy Scriptures."
(Julien had just started speaking to him, without being questioned on the point, about the real time when Genesis, the Pentateuch, etc., has been written).
"To what does this never-ending reasoning over the Holy Scriptures lead to?" thought the abbé Pirard, "if not to self-examination, that is to say, the most awful Protestantism. And by the side of this imprudent knowledge, nothing about the Fathers to compensate for that tendency."
But the astonishment of the director of the seminary was quite unbounded when having questioned Julien about the authority of the Pope, and expecting to hear the maxims of the ancient Gallican Church, the young man recited to him the whole book of M. de Maistre. "Strange man, that Chélan," thought the abbé Pirard. "Did he show him the book simply to teach him to make fun of it?"
It was in vain that he questioned Julien and endeavoured to guess if he seriously believed in the doctrine of M. de Maistre. The young man only answered what he had learnt by heart. From this moment Julien was really happy. He felt that he was master of himself. After a very long examination, it seemed to him that M. Pirard's severity towards him was only affected. Indeed, the director of the seminary would have embraced Julien in the name of logic, for he found so much clearness, precision and lucidity in his answers, had it not been for the principles of austere gravity towards his theology pupils which he had inculcated in himself for the last fifteen years.
"Here we have a bold and healthy mind," he said to himself, "but corpus debile" (the body is weak).
"Do you often fall like that?" he said to Julien in French, pointing with his finger to the floor.
"It's the first time in my life. The porter's face unnerved me," added Julien, blushing like a child. The abbé Pirard almost smiled.
"That's the result of vain worldly pomp. You are apparently accustomed to smiling faces, those veritable theatres of falsehood. Truth is austere, Monsieur, but is not our task down here also austere? You must be careful that your conscience guards against that weakness of yours, too much sensibility to vain external graces."
"If you had not been recommended to me," said the abbé Pirard, resuming the Latin language with an obvious pleasure, "If you had not been recommended by a man, by the abbé Chélan, I would talk to you the vain language of that world, to which it would appear you are only too well accustomed. I would tell you that the full stipend which you solicit is the most difficult thing in the world to obtain. But the fifty-six years which the abbé Chélan has spent in apostolic work have stood him in poor stead if he cannot dispose of a stipend at the seminary."
After these words, the abbée Pirard recommended Julien not to enter any secret society or congregation without his consent.
"I give you my word of honour," said Julien, with all an honest man's expansion of heart. The director of the seminary smiled for the first time.
"That expression is not used here," he said to him. "It is too reminiscent of that vain honour of worldly people, which leads them to so many errors and often to so many crimes. You owe me obedience by virtue of paragraph seventeen of the bull Unam Eccesiam of St. Pius the Fifth. I am your ecclesiastical superior. To hear in this house, my dear son, is to obey. How much money, have you?"
("So here we are," said Julien to himself, "that was the reason of the 'my very dear son')."
"Thirty-five francs, my father."
"Write out carefully how you use that money. You will have to give me an account of it."
This painful audience had lasted three hours. Julien summoned the porter.
"Go and install Julien Sorel in cell No. 103," said the abbé Pirard to the man.
As a great favour he let Julien have a place all to himself. "Carry his box there," he added.
Julien lowered his eyes, and recognised his box just in front of him. He had been looking at it for three hours and had not recognised it.
As he arrived at No. 103, which was a little room eight feet square on the top story of the house, Julien noticed that it looked out on to the ramparts, and he perceived beyond them the pretty plain which the Doubs divides from the town.
"What a charming view!" exclaimed Julien. In speaking like this he did not feel what the words actually expressed. The violent sensations which he had experienced during the short time that he had been at Besançon had absolutely exhausted his strength. He sat down near the window on the one wooden chair in the cell, and fell at once into a profound sleep. He did not hear either the supper bell or the bell for benediction. They had forgotten him. When the first rays of the sun woke him up the following morning, he found himself lying on the floor.