by Stendhal
The height of the walls, the depth of the ditches, the terrible aspect of the cannons had been engrossing him for several hours when he passed before the great café on the boulevard. He was motionless with wonder; it was in vain that he read the word caf, written in big characters above the two immense doors. He could not believe his eyes. He made an effort to overcome his timidity. He dared to enter, and found himself in a hall twenty or thirty yards long, and with a ceiling at least twenty feet high. To-day, everything had a fascination for him.
Two games of billiards were in progress. The waiters were crying out the scores. The players ran round the tables encumbered by spectators. Clouds of tobacco smoke came from everybody’s mouth, and enveloped them in a blue haze. The high stature of these men, their rounded shoulders, their heavy gait, their enormous whiskers, the long tailed coats which covered them, everything combined to attract Julien’s attention. These noble children of the antique Bisontium only spoke at the top of their voice. They gave themselves terrible martial airs. Julien stood still and admired them. He kept thinking of the immensity and magnificence of a great capital like Besançon. He felt absolutely devoid of the requisite courage to ask one of those haughty looking gentlemen, who were crying out the billiard scores, for a cup of coffee.
But the young lady at the bar had noticed the charming face of this young civilian from the country, who had stopped three feet from the stove with his little parcel under his arm, and was looking at the fine white plaster bust of the King. This young lady, a big Franc-comtoise, very well made, and dressed with the elegance suitable to the prestige of the café, had already said two or three times in a little voice not intended to be heard by any one except Julien, “Monsieur, Monsieur.” Julien’s eyes encountered big blue eyes full of tenderness, and saw that he was the person who was being spoken to.
He sharply approached the bar and the pretty girl, as though he had been marching towards the enemy. In this great manœuvre the parcel fell.
What pity will not our provincial inspire in the young lycée scholars of Paris, who, at the early age of fifteen, know already how to enter a café with so distinguished an air? But these children who have such style at fifteen turn commonplace at eighteen. The impassioned timidity which is met with in the provinces, sometimes manages to master its own nervousness, and thus trains the will. “I must tell her the truth,” thought Julien, who was becoming courageous by dint of conquering his timidity as he approached this pretty girl, who deigned to address him.
“Madame, this is the first time in my life that I have come to Besançon. I should like to have some bread and a cup of coffee in return for payment.”
The young lady smiled a little, and then blushed. She feared the ironic attention and the jests of the billiard players might be turned against this pretty young man. He would be frightened and would not appear there again.
“Sit here near me,” she said to him, showing him a marble table almost completely hidden by the enormous mahogany counter which extended into the hall.
The young lady leant over the counter, and had thus an opportunity of displaying a superb figure. Julien noticed it. All his ideas changed. The pretty young lady had just placed before him a cup, some sugar, and a little roll. She hesitated to call a waiter for the coffee, as she realised that his arrival would put an end to her tete-a-tete with Julien.
Julien was pensively comparing this blonde and merry beauty with certain memories which would often thrill him. The thought of the passion of which he had been the object, nearly freed him from all his timidity. The pretty young woman had only one moment to save the situation. She read it in Julien’s looks.
“This pipe smoke makes you cough; come and have breakfast to-morrow before eight o’clock in the morning. I am practically alone then.”
“What is your name?” said Julien, with the caressing smile of happy timidity.
“Amanda Binet.”
“Will you allow me to send you within an hour’s time a little parcel about as big as this?”
The beautiful Amanda reflected a little.
“I am watched. What you ask may compromise me. All the same, I will write my address on a card, which you will put on your parcel. Send it boldly to me.”
“My name is Julien Sorel,” said the young man. “I have neither relatives nor acquaintances at Besançon.”
“Ah, I understand,” she said joyfully. “You come to study law.”
“Alas, no,” answered Julien, “I am being sent to the Seminary.”
The most complete discouragement damped Amanda’s features. She called a waiter. She had courage now. The waiter poured out some coffee for Julien without looking at him.
Amanda was receiving money at the counter. Julien was proud of having dared to speak: a dispute was going on at one of the billiard tables. The cries and the protests of the players resounded over the immense hall, and made a din which astonished Julien. Amanda was dreamy, and kept her eyes lowered.
“If you like, Mademoiselle,” he said to her suddenly with assurance, “I will say that I am your cousin.”
This little air of authority pleased Amanda. “He’s not a mere nobody,” she thought. She spoke to him very quickly, without looking at him, because her eye was occupied in seeing if anybody was coming near the counter.
“I come from Genlis, near Dijon. Say that you are also from Genlis and are my mother’s cousin.”
“I shall not fail to do so.”
“All the gentlemen who go to the Seminary pass here before the café every Thursday in the summer at five o’clock.”
“If you think of me when I am passing, have a bunch of violets in your hand.”
Amanda looked at him with an astonished air. This look changed Julien’s courage into audacity. Nevertheless, he reddened considerably, as he 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 Heloise which he had found at Vergy. His memory served him in good stead. For ten minutes he recited the Nouville Héloise to the delighted Mademoiselle Amanda. He was happy on the strength of his own bravery, when suddenly the beautiful Franc-contoise 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 w
ant 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-comtois, and has never gone beyond Dôle on 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 Mademoiselle 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 to see 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 Mlle. 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.
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 discerned 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 t
hese 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 riveted 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,
