The Red and the Black (40 page)

terror from becoming so directly involved in the fate of another person.

'You will also encounter', he added with the same bad grace, as if
fulfilling a painful duty, 'you will also encounter her ladyship the
Marquise de La Mole. She's a tall, fair-haired woman, pious, haughty,
exquisitely polite and even more of a nonentity. She's the daughter of
the old Duc de Chaulnes, so renowned for his aristocratic prejudices.
This great lady is a kind of compendium in high relief of what
constitutes the essential character of women of her rank.
She
doesn't conceal the fact that having ancestors who fought in the
Crusades is the only asset she values. Money comes a long way behind:
does that surprise you? We're not in the provinces any more, dear
fellow.

'In her salon you will hear a number of great lords speaking of our princes in tones of striking flippancy. Whereas M
^me
de La Mole lowers her voice in respect every time she names a
prince and especially a princess. I shouldn't advise you to say in her
presence that Philip II
^*
or Henry VIII were monsters. They were KINGS, which gives them
inalienable rights to claim respect from everyone, especially from
individuals of no birth such as you and me. Nevertheless', Father
Pirard added, 'we are priests, for she will take you to be one; in
this capacity, she considers us as menservants necessary to her
salvation.'

'Father,' said Julien, 'it seems to me that I shall not spend long in Paris.'

'That's fine! But you must be aware that the only way to fortune, for
a man of our cloth, is through great lords. With that indefinable
trait in your character which remains a mystery, at least to me, if you
don't make your fortune, you'll be persecuted; there's no middle way
for you. Don't be deceived. Men see that they cause you no pleasure in
conversing with you; in a country like ours where social values are
what count, you are heading for misfortune if you don't win people's
respect.

'What would have become of
you at Besançon if it hadn't been for this whim of the Marquis de La
Mole? One day you will understand just how extraordinary what he is
doing on your behalf is, and, if you aren't a monster, you will be

-247-

eternally grateful to him and his family. How many poor priests, more
learned than you, have lived for years in Paris on the fifteen sous
from their regular mass and the ten sous from their disputations at
the Sorbonne!... Remember what I told you last winter about the early
years of the unruly Cardinal Dubois.
^*
Could your pride make you imagine, by any chance, that you are more talented than he was?

'Take me, for instance, a quiet and undistinguished man: I was
expecting to die in my seminary; I was childish enough to become
attached to it. Well! I was about to be removed from office when I
handed in my resignation. Do you know how much my fortune amounted to?
I had five hundred and twenty francs of capital, no more no less; not
a single friend, and scarcely two or three acquaintances. M. de La
Mole, whom I'd never set eyes on, got me out of this tight spot; he
only had to breathe the word, and I was offered a living where all the
parishioners are well-to-do-folk, above vulgar vices, and the
income makes me feel ashamed, it's so disproportionate to the amount
of work I do. I've only been speaking to you at such length in order
to knock a bit of sense into that head of yours.

'There's something else: I have the misfortune to be shorttempered;
it's possible that you and I may cease to be on speaking terms.

'If the haughty ways of the marquise or her son's bad jokes make
their household totally unbearable for you, I advise you to finish
your studies in some seminary thirty leagues from Paris, preferably to
the north rather than the south. In the north there is more
civilization, and fewer injustices; and', he added, lowering his
voice, 'I have to confess that the proximity of Parisian newspapers
frightens petty tyrants.

'If we
continue to take pleasure in each other's company, and the marquis's
household doesn't suit you, I offer you a post as my curate, and I'll
give you a half-share of what the parish brings in. I owe you this and
more besides', he added, interrupting Julien's expressions of thanks,
'for the most unusual offer you made me in Besançon. If instead of
five hundred and twenty francs I had had nothing, you would have
saved me.'

Father Pirard had abandoned his cruel tone of voice. To his

-248-

great shame, Julien felt tears coming into his eyes; he was dying to
fling himself into his friend's arms; he couldn't refrain from saying
to him, with as manly an air as he could muster:

'I've been loathed by my father ever since the cradle; it was one of
my great afflictions; but I shan't complain about my luck any more;
I've found a new father in you, sir.'

'Come now, come now,' said the priest in some embarrassment; then
added, hitting very aptly upon the sort of remark that the master of a
seminary would make: 'You must never say
luck,
my boy, always say
Providence
.'

The hackney cab stopped; the coachman lifted the bronze knocker on an
enormous door: it was the HOTEL DE LA MOLE; and so that passers-by
should be in no doubt about it, these words could be read on a black
marble plaque above the door.

This
piece of affectation did not go down well with Julien. They're so
afraid of Jacobins! They see Robespierre and his cart
^*
behind every hedge--to the point where it's quite ridiculous, yet
there they go labelling their houses so that when there's an uprising
the rabble can recognize and plunder them. He imparted this thought to
Father Pirard.

'Ah! poor boy, you will soon be my curate. What an appalling idea you've just had!'

'It seems as simple as anything to me,' said Julien.

The gravity of the porter and especially the cleanliness of the
courtyard had filled him with admiration. It was a beautiful sunny
day.

'What magnificent architecture!' he said to his friend.

It was one of those houses with very flat fronts in the Faubourg Saint-Germain,
^*
built around the time of Voltaire's death.
^*
Never have fashion and beauty been so far apart.

-249-

Ridiculous and touching memory: the salon where one made one's first
appearance at eighteen, alone and without patronage! A woman's glance
was enough to intimidate me. The harder I tried to please, the more
awkward I became. I got quite the wrong ideas about everything; either
I was confiding with no justification; or I saw a man as an enemy
because he had looked at me gravely. But at that time, in the midst
of the terrible misfortunes caused by my shyness, how really fine a
fine day was!

KANT
^*

JULIEN stood dumbfounded in the middle of the courtyard.

'Do try to look as if you had your wits about you,' said Father
Pirard; 'you have these horrible ideas, and then you act just like a
child! What's happened to Horace's nil mirari?
^*
(Never show any enthusiasm.) Just think that this tribe of lackeys,
on seeing you established here, will try to make fun of you; they
will see in you an equal who has been unjustly put above them. Beneath
outward appearances of good nature, kind advice, and a desire to
guide you, they will try to get you to put your foot in it in a big
way.'

'I defy them to,' said Julien, biting his lip, and he resumed all his wariness.

The rooms which these gentlemen went through on the first floor
before reaching the marquis's study would have seemed to you, my good
reader, as dismal as they were magnificent. Were you to be offered
them just as they are, you would refuse to inhabit them; they are a
land of yawns and of dreary argument. They increased Julien's delight.
How can anyone be unhappy, he thought, who inhabits so splendid a
realm!

At length the gentlemen
reached the ugliest of the rooms in this superb suite: it had scarcely
any daylight. There they found a small thin man, with bright eyes and
a fair wig. Father Pirard turned to Julien and introduced him. It was
the

-250-

marquis. Julien had great difficulty in recognizing him, he had such
an air of civility about him. He no longer looked like the great lord
of lofty mien whom he remembered from Bray-leHaut Abbey. It seemed to
Julien that his wig had far too much hair in it. Thanks to this
impression he was not in the least intimidated. This descendant of
Henry III's friend
^*
struck him at first as having a rather unimpressive appearance. He
was exceedingly thin and never kept still. But Julien soon observed
that the marquis's civility was far more agreeable to his interlocutor
than even the Bishop of Besançon's. The interview was over in three
minutes. As they went out, Father Pirard said to Julien:

'You stared at the marquis as if he were a picture. I'm no great
expert in what these people call politeness--you'll soon know more
about it than I do--but all the same, the boldness of your gaze struck
me as far from polite.'

They had got back into a hackney cab again; the driver stopped near
the boulevard. Father Pirard showed Julien into a suite of large
rooms. Julien noticed that there was no furniture. He was looking at a
magnificent gilded clock depicting a subject he thought highly
indecent, when a most elegant gentleman came up to him wreathed in
smiles. Julien made a half-bow.

The
gentleman smiled and put his hand on his shoulder. Julien started and
leapt backwards. He flushed with anger. Father Pirard, despite his
gravity, laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. The gentleman was
a tailor.

'I'm giving you your
freedom again for two days,' the priest told Julien as they went out;
'only then can you be introduced to M
^me
de La Mole. Anyone
else would watch over you as if you were a girl during these first
moments of your sojourn in this new Babylon. Go and sin right away, if
sin is to be your fate, and I shall be delivered from the weakness
that makes me concerned about you. The day after tomorrow, in the
morning, this tailor will have two suits brought to you; you will give
five francs to the boy who fits them. And by the way, don't let
these Parisians come to know the sound of your voice. If you say a
word, they'll discover the secret of making fun of you. They have a
way of it. Be at my lodgings at noon the day after

-251-

tomorrow... Go on, go and sin... I was forgetting, go and order some
boots, some shirts and a hat from the addresses noted here.'

Julien was looking at the handwriting.

'It's the marquis's hand,' said Father Pirard; 'he's an active man
who foresees everything, and who prefers to do things himself than to
give orders. He's taking you on in order for you to spare him this
kind of bother. Will you have sufficient wits to carry out properly
all the things that this quick thinker will indicate to you by the
merest hints? Only the future will tell: watch out for yourself!'

Julien presented himself without a single word to the tradesmen
indicated by the addresses; he noticed that this caused him to be
received with respect, and the bootmaker wrote his name down in his
book as M. Julien de Sorel.

At the Père-Lachaise cemetery,
^*
a most obliging gentleman, who turned out to be even more liberal in
his remarks, volunteered to point out to Julien the tomb of Marshal
Ney,
^*
deprived of the honour of an epitaph by a clever piece of politics.
But when he parted from this liberal who, with tears in his eyes,
almost clasped him in his arms, Julien no longer had his watch on him.
This was the experience that had enriched Julien when at noon two
days later he presented himself to Father Pirard; the latter looked
hard at him.

'Perhaps you are going
to become a fop,' said the priest severely. Julien looked like a very
young man in high mourning; as a matter of fact, it suited him very
well, but the good priest was too much of a provincial himself to see
that Julien still had that way of moving his shoulders which in the
provinces denotes both elegance and self-importance. On seeing Julien,
the marquis judged his graces so differently from Father Pirard that
he asked him:

'Would you have any objection to M. Sorel's taking dancing lessons?'

The priest was rooted to the spot.

'No,' he replied at last, 'Julien isn't a priest.'

Running up a little hidden staircase two steps at a time, the marquis went himself to settle our hero into a pretty-looking

-252-

attic looking out over the huge garden of the house. He asked him how many shirts he had obtained from the linener.

'Two,' replied Julien, intimidated to see such a great lord stoop to details of this kind.

'Fine,' went on the marquis with a serious air and a curt and
imperious note in his voice which set Julien thinking. 'Fine! Get
another twenty-two shirts. Here's the first quarterly instalment of your
salary.'

As he went down from the
attic, the marquis called out to an old man: 'Arsène, you will attend
to M. Sorel's wants.' A few minutes later, Julien found himself alone
in a magnificent library; it was a delectable moment. So as not to be
caught unawares in this state of emotion, he went and hid in a little
dark corner; from there he cast his rapturous gaze over the shining
spines of the books: I shall be able to read all this, he said to
himself. And how could I dislike it here? M. de Rênal would have
believed himself dishonoured for ever if he had done one hundredth of
the things the Marquis de La Mole has just done for me.

But let's see what fair copies I've got to do. Once the work was
finished, Julien dared to approach the books; he almost danced for joy
on finding an edition of Voltaire. He ran and opened the library door
in order not to be taken by surprise. Then he gave himself the
pleasure of opening each one of the eighty volumes. They were
magnificently bound, it was the work of the best craftsman in London.
This was more than enough to bring Julien to a pitch of admiration.

An hour later, the marquis came in, looked at Julien's work and noticed with astonishment that Julien wrote
possible
with a single
s: posible.
^*
Could everything Father Pirard told me about his learning be pure
fabrication! Deeply disappointed, the marquis said to him gently:

'You're a bit unsure of your spelling, aren't you?'

'That's right,' said Julien without thinking in the very least about
the damage he was doing himself; he was touched by the marquis's
displays of kindness, which reminded him of the arrogant tone of M. de
Rênal.

I'm wasting my time over this whole experiment with a

-253-