by Stendhal
The movements of his eyes, for instance, gave him a great deal of trouble. Not without reason do the inhabitants of such places keep theirs lowered to the ground. What presumption I had in Verrières! Julien said to himself; I thought I was living, when all I was doing was preparing myself for life; here I am at last in the world as I shall find it for as long as I play this part, surrounded with real enemies. What a tremendous strain, he went on--maintaining this hypocrisy every minute of the day; it makes the labours of Hercules pale in comparison. The Hercules of modern times is Sixtus V, * who for fifteen whole years succeeded by his modesty in deceiving forty cardinals who had known him as fiery and haughty throughout the whole of his youth.
Learning counts for nothing here! he reflected in disgust; progress in dogma, in sacred history, etc., only receives lipservice. Everything that is said on this matter is designed to ensnare crazy idiots like me. Alas! my only merit lay in my rapid progress, in the way I grasped this rubbish. Can it be that in the end their assessment of my achievement is the right one? Do they judge it as I do? And I was foolish enough to be proud of it. The top marks I always get have only served to make dogged enemies for me. Chazel, who is more learned than I am, always throws some blunder or other into his essays which puts him down to fiftieth place; if he comes first, it's because he isn't thinking. Ah! how useful one word, just a single word from Father Pirard would have been to me!
From the moment Julien was disabused, the long exercises in ascetic piety such as rosary five times a week, canticles to the Sacred Heart, etc., etc., which he used to find so deadly boring, became his most interesting moments of action. By reflecting severely about himself, and trying above all not to exaggerate his own capabilities, Julien did not aspire from the outset, like the seminarists who served as models to the others, to use every moment to perform significant actions, that is, ones proving a kind of Christian perfection. In a seminary,
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there is a way of eating a boiled egg which declares the progress made in devotional life.
Would the reader, who is perhaps smiling, kindly deign to remember all the faux pas made by the Abbé Delille * in eating an egg when invited to breakfast with a great lady at the Court of Louis XIV.
Julien attempted first of all to achieve the non culpa, that is the state of a young seminarist whose way of walking, moving his arms, eyes, etc. do not, it is true, indicate anything worldly, but do not yet reveal a being absorbed by the idea of the other world and the pure nothingness of this one.
Julien was constantly coming across sentences written in charcoal on the walls of the corridors, such as: 'What are sixty years of trials, set against an eternity of bliss or an eternity of boiling oil in hell?' He did not despise them any more; he realized that they had to be kept constantly before his eyes. What shall I be doing all my life? he would ask himself; selling the faithful their place in heaven. How is this place to be made manifest to them? By the difference between my outward appearance and that of a layman.
After several months of unfaltering application, Julien still looked as if he were thinking. His way of moving his eyes and holding his mouth did not betoken implicit faith ready to believe and to uphold anything, even at the cost of martyrdom. Julien was annoyed to see himself outshone in this art by the most boorish peasants. There were good reasons why they did not look as if they were thinking.
What endless trouble he took to attain that facial expression of fervent and blind faith, ready to believe and suffer anything, that is so often encountered in monasteries in Italy, and of which Guercino * has left us laymen such perfect models in his church paintings. 1
On high feast days the seminarists were served sausages with sauerkraut. Julien's neighbours at table noticed that he was indifferent to this delight; that was one of his first crimes. His companions took this as an odious characteristic of the most
____________________ 1 See, in the Louvre, François, Duke of Aquitaine laying down his breastplate and putting on a monk's habit, n. 1130. [ Stendhal's note. ].
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stupid hypocrisy; nothing made him more enemies. 'Look at this bourgeois, look at this stuck-up prig,' they said, who pretends to scorn the finest sustenance, sausages with sauerkraut! Shame on the swine! the snob! the creature of damnation.
Alas! the ignorance of these young peasants, my fellows, is an immense advantage to them, exclaimed Julien in moments of discouragement. On their arrival in the seminary the teacher doesn't have to rid them of the fearful number of worldly ideas that I bring with me and they read on my face, try as I may.
The most boorish of the little peasants who arrived at the seminary were studied by Julien with a degree of attention bordering on envy. At the point where they were stripped of their coarse woollen jackets and put into black habits, all they had in the way of education was an immense and limitless respect for dry and liquid assets, as the expression goes in the Franche-Comté.
This is the sacramental and heroic way of expressing the sublime idea of cash.
Happiness for these seminarists, as for the heroes of Voltaire's novels, consists chiefly in dining well. Julien found in nearly all of them an innate respect for any man wearing a suit of fine cloth. This sentiment appreciates at its true value, and even below, the distributive justice that is meted out by our courts. 'What can you win', they would often repeat among themselves, 'from fighting a big 'un in court?'
This is the term used in the Jura valleys to designate a wealthy man. You can just imagine their respect for the wealthiest entity of all: the Government!
Not to smile with respect at the very name of the prefect is viewed by the peasants in the Franche-Comté as rashness: and rashness, where the poor man is concerned, is swiftly punished by a shortage of bread.
Having been choked, as it were, at the outset by a feeling of scorn, Julien ended up experiencing pity: it was a frequent occurrence for the fathers of the majority of his companions to return home to their cottages on winter evenings to find neither bread, nor chestnuts nor potatoes. It's hardly surprising, then, Julien reflected, if their idea of a happy man is first and
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foremost someone who has just had a good dinner, and next someone who owns a good set of clothes! My fellow students have a firm vocation, that is to say they regard the priesthood as a long continuation of this happiness: to dine well and have warm clothes in winter.
Once, Julien happened to hear a young seminarist with the gift of imagination say to his companion:
'Why shouldn't I become pope like Sixtus V who kept swine?'
'They only make Italians pope,' replied the friend; 'but they'll draw lots among us, that's for sure, for posts as vicargeneral, canon and maybe bishop. Father P-----, the Bishop of Chélons, is a cooper's son: that's my father's trade.'
One day, in the middle of a dogma class, Father Pirard summoned Julien to his presence. The poor young man was delighted to leave the physical and moral atmosphere he was plunged in.
Julien was greeted with the same reception in the master's study as had so terrified him on the day he entered the seminary.
'Explain to me what is written on this playing card,' he said to him with a look such as to make him sink into the ground.
Julien read:
Amanda, Binet, at the Café de la Girafe, before eight o'clock. Claim to be from Genlis, and my mother's cousin.
Julien saw what immense danger he was in; Father Castanède's police had stolen this address from him.
'The day I set foot here', he replied staring at Father Pirard's forehead, for he could not bear his terrible gaze, 'I was in fear and trembling: Father Chélan had told me it was a place full of sneaking and beastliness of all kinds; spying and denunciation among friends are encouraged here. This is the wish of heaven, to show young priests what life is really like, and to fill them with aversion for the world and its pomp.'
'Are you lecturing me!' exclaimed Father Pirard in fury. 'You young scoundrel!'
'In Ver
rières', Julien went on unmoved, 'my brothers beat me when they had reason to be jealous of me...'
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'Come to the point! Come to the point!' shouted Father Pirard, almost beside himself.
Not in the least intimidated, Julien resumed his narrative.
'The day I arrived in Besançon, at about midday, I was hungry and went into a café. My heart was filled with repugnance for such a profane place; but I thought my breakfast would cost me less there than in an inn. A lady who appeared to be the mistress of the establishment took pity on my novice's look. "Besançon is full of good-for-nothings," she said to me, "I'm afraid for you, sir. If you were to land in any trouble, appeal to me, get a message to me before eight o'clock. If the porters at the seminary refuse to run your errand, say you are my cousin and a native of Genlis..."'
'I'll have the truth of all this blarney checked,' exclaimed Father Pirard, who was unable to stand still and was pacing about the room.
'To his cell at once!'
The priest followed Julien and locked him in. The latter at once began going through his trunk, where he kept the fatal card hidden like a treasure at the bottom. Nothing was missing from the trunk, but a number of things had been disturbed; yet the key never left his person. How fortunate, said Julien to himself, that during the time I was blind to the set-up, I never accepted leave to go out, which Father Castanède was always offering me with a kindness I now understand. I might perhaps have been weak enough to change my clothes and go and call on the lovely Amanda; I'd have brought about my own ruin. When they despaired of exploiting the information in this way, then in order not to waste it, they used it as it stands as a means of denouncing me.
Two hours later the master summoned him.
'You were not telling lies,' he said to him with a look that was less severe; 'but keeping an address like that is an act of imprudence of a gravity you cannot conceive. Wretched child! In ten years' time, perhaps, you will suffer for it.'
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CHAPTER 27
First experience of life
The present moment, by God! is the ark of the Lord. Woe betide him who touches it.
DIDEROT *
THE reader will obligingly allow us to give very few clear and precise facts about this period in Julien's life. Not that they are lacking, far from it; but what he lives through in the seminary is perhaps too black for the moderate tones we have sought to preserve in these pages. One's contemporaries who undergo certain ordeals cannot recall them without experiencing a horror which paralyses any other pleasure, even that of reading a story.
Julien had little success with his attempts at hypocrisy in the matter of gesture; he fell into bouts of repugnance and even of total demoralization. He wasn't succeeding, and in a lousy career, what's more. The least little bit of outside help would have sufficed to restore his morale--the difficulty to be overcome was not that great--but he was alone like a frail craft abandoned in the middle of the ocean. And even if I did succeed, he told himself, think of having to spend a lifetime in such bad company! Gluttons who only think about the bacon omelette they'll wolf down at dinner, or men like Father Castanède for whom no crime is too black! They'll rise to power; but God Almighty, at what price!
The will of man is powerful, I read this everywhere; but is it sufficient to overcome repugnance like this? The task of great men has been easy up till now; however terrible the danger, they saw beauty in it; and who can understand, apart from me, the ugliness of everything surrounding me?
This was the most taxing moment of his life. It would be so easy for him to enlist in one of the fine regiments garrisoned in Besançon! He could become a Latin teacher; he needed so little to live on! But that would mean goodbye to his career, to
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any future for his imagination: it was death. Here is a detailed account of a typical dreary day.
In my presumption I congratulated myself so often on being different from the other young peasants! Well, I've lived long enough to see that difference breeds hatred, he said to himself one morning. This great truth had just been brought home to him by one of his most stinging failures. He had worked away for a week at currying favour with a pupil who lived in the odour of sanctity. He had walked round the recreation ground with him, listening submissively to a load of rubbish fit to send anyone to sleep. Suddenly a storm blew up, there was a crash of thunder and the saintly pupil shouted out, pushing Julien rudely away:
'Listen, it's everyone for himself in this world; I don't want to be blasted by thunder: God may strike you down for impiety, like a Voltaire.'
Gritting his teeth in rage and looking wide-eyed at the lightning-rent sky: I'd deserve to go under if I fall asleep during the storm! exclaimed Julien. Let's try and win over another prig.
The bell rang for Father Castanède's Church History class. These young peasants who lived in such fear of the harsh toil and the poverty of their fathers learned that day from Father Castanède that the Government, that most fearsome of creatures in their eyes, only exercised real and legitimate power because this had been delegated to it by God's vicar on earth.
'Make yourselves worthy of the pope's kindnesses by the sanctity of your lives, and by your obedience; be like a rod in his hands,' he went on, 'and you will obtain a superb post where you will command like a leader, remote from all interference; a permanent post with a third of the salary paid by the Government and two-thirds by the faithful, who are educated by your preaching.'
At the end of the class Father Castanède stopped in the recreation ground.
'It is indeed appropriate to say of a parsh priest: the worth of the office is no more nor less than that of the holder,' he said to the pupils who were standing in a circle round him. 'I have known, as sure as you see me here, certain mountain
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parishes where the perks were worth more than those of many a town priest. There was as much money, not to mention fat capons, eggs, fresh butter and countless little luxuries; and in places like that, the priest is incontrovertibly cock of the roost: no one gives a good meal without inviting him, honouring him, etc.'
No sooner had Father Castanède gone up to his room than the pupils split off into groups. Julien was not included in any; he was left out like a black sheep. In every group he saw a pupil toss a coin in the air, and if he guessed right in the game of heads or tails, his fellows concluded that he would soon have one of these parishes rich in perks.
Then came the anecdotes. Such and such a young priest who, after scarcely a year's ordination, had offered a domesticated rabbit to an old priest's housekeeper, had got himself chosen as curate, and only a few months later--for the old priest very soon died--he had taken over his excellent parish for him. Another had succeeded in getting himself appointed successor to the parish in an exceedingly prosperous country town by attending the palsied old priest's every meal, and carving up his chickens for him with style.
The seminarists, like young men in any career, exaggerate the effect of these little ways and means that seem to be magic and catch the imagination.
I must, thought Julien, get the hang of these conversations. When they were not discussing sausages and good parishes, they talked about the worldly side of ecclesiastical doctrines; about rifts between bishops and prefects, mayors and parish priests. Julien saw the idea of a second God appearing, but this was a far more fearsome and more powerful God than the other: this second God was the pope. They said amongst themselves, but in lowered voices, and when they were quite sure of not being overheard by Father Pirard, that if the pope does not go to the trouble of appointing all the prefects and all the mayors in France, this is because he has entrusted this task to the King of France by naming him the Firstborn Son of the Church.
It was about this time that Julien decided there was some advantage to his reputation to be derived from Joseph deMaistre
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Maistre's book On the Pope. He most certainly astonished his fellows; but it was yet an
other disaster. He aroused their enmity by expounding their own opinions better than they could themselves. Father Chélan had been unwise on Julien's account, just as he was on his own. Having given him the habit of arguing straight and not being taken in by idle words, he had neglected to tell him that in someone who is not highly regarded, this habit is a crime; for all sound arguments cause offence.
Julien's eloquence thus became a fresh crime on his record. By concentrating their thoughts on him, his fellow students came up with a single expression to sum up all the horror he aroused in them: they nicknamed him MARTIN LUTHER; chiefly, they said, on account of that infernal logic of his which makes him so proud.
A number of young seminarists had fresher complexions and could well be considered more handsome than Julien, but he had white hands and could not conceal certain habits of personal cleanliness. This asset did not count as one in the dreary house into which Fate had cast him. The dirty peasants he lived among declared that he had very decadent morals. We are afraid of wearying the reader with an account of our hero's countless misfortunes. For instance, some of the toughest of his fellows tried to adopt the habit of thrashing him; he was obliged to arm himself with an iron compass and announce-by means of signs, though--that he would make use of it. Signs cannot serve to such advantage in a spy's report as words can.
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CHAPTER 28
A procession
Every heart was moved. The presence of God seemed to have come down into these narrow Gothic streets, bedecked on every side and Liberally strewn with sand by the good offices of the faithful.
YOUNG
