4 Or Garde des Sceaux, effectively the minister of justice.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The First Forward Step
Rich as he was, the noble lord was no miser. He could never persuade Father Pirard to accept so much as reimbursement for the lawsuit's postal expenses. He leaped at the idea of sending five hundred francs to the priest's favorite pupil. Monsieur de La Mole set himself to writing the letter of transmittal. And this made him think about Father Pirard. One day, the good priest received a brief note, asking him to call, on urgent business and without delay, at an inn on the outskirts of Besançon. There he found the Marquis de La Mole's steward. "Monsieur de La Mole has commissioned me to bring you his closed carriage," said the man. "He hopes that, after reading the letter he sends you, by me, you'll agree to leave for Paris in four or five days. I propose to use this time, the duration of which you will be so good as to make known to me, in checking on the marquis's properties, here in Franche-Comté. After which, on whatever day is convenient for you, we will leave for Paris." The letter was short: Shake off, my dear sir, all the difficulties of provincial life; come breathe the calm air of Paris. I send you my carriage, which has been ordered to await, for four days, your fixing the day of departure. I myself will wait for you, here in Paris, until Tuesday. All I would need from you, sir, is a "yes," in order to accept, in your name, one of the best parishes in the vicinity of Paris. The richest of your future parishioners has never seen you, but he is more devoted to you than you might believe. He is the Marquis de La Mole. Without suspecting it, harsh Father Pirard had loved the seminary, full of his enemies; he had consecrated to it, for fifteen years, all his thoughts. Monsieur de La Mole's letter seemed to him like the arrival of a surgeon, come to perform a painful, necessary operation. His dismissal was certain. He told the steward to return in three days. For forty-eight hours, he was in a frenzy of doubt. In the end, he wrote to Monsieur de La Mole and composed a letter for the bishop, a masterpiece of ecclesiastical prose, though a trifle long. It would have been difficult to find language equally beyond reproach and exuding a more sincere respect. And at the same time, this letter, intended to give Father de Frilair a difficult hour, in dealing with his immediate superior, spelled out all the matters of grave complaint, and got down to the dirty little tricks which, after enduring them all, resignedly, for six years, were forcing Father Pirard to leave the diocese. Wood had been stolen from his woodshed; his dog had been poisoned; etc., etc. Having finished this letter, he had Julien awakened: at eight o'clock, he was already asleep, as were all the seminarians. "Do you know where the bishop's palace is located?" he asked in the very best Latin. "Bring him this letter. I will not conceal the fact that I am sending you into a pack of wolves. Be all eyes and all ears. Let there be no lies when you are asked questions, but be aware that those who question you may perhaps truly relish the power to do you harm. I am very pleased, my child, to give you this experience before I leave you: I will not hide from you that the letter you're carrying is my resignation." Julien did not move; he loved Father Pirard. Discretion tried to tell him: "Once this honest man leaves, the Sacred Heart people are going to take away my post, and may even expel me." He could not think of himself. What made matters awkward was something he wanted to say politely, but in fact he could not focus his mind. "Well, my dear! Aren't you going?" "I've heard it said, sir," Julien began shyly, "that all through your long administration you've never saved a thing. I've got six hundred francs."
The Red and the Black
His tears kept him from continuing. "That will be noted, too," the former director of the seminary declared coldly. "Go to the bishop's. It's getting late." As luck would have it, that night Father de Frilair was on duty in the bishop's drawing room. The bishop was dining with the governor. Although Julien did not know it, it was thus to Father de Frilair himself that he delivered the letter. Julien watched, astonished, as this priest boldly opened a letter addressed to the bishop. The vicar-general's handsome face first expressed surprise, mixed with lively pleasure, and then became extremely somber. While he was reading, Julien—struck by his fine appearance— had the time to consider him more carefully. His face might have seemed a good deal more sober, had it not been for the sharp keenness notable in certain of its features, so marked that they would have been an indication of duplicity, if the possessor of so handsome an appearance had ever, even for an instant, stopped thinking of himself. His nose, quite prominent, was shaped in an unbroken straight line, creating a profile—though otherwise eminently distinguished—unfortunately and irremediably like that of a fox. For the rest, this ecclesiastic, who seemed so utterly absorbed in Father Pirard's letter of resignation, was dressed with an elegance that Julien found most attractive, and that he had never seen on any other priest. Julien was not aware, until afterward, of Father de Frilair's special gift. He knew how to amuse his bishop, a pleasant old fellow, made for life in Paris, who regarded Besançon as a place of exile. The bishop's eyesight was very bad, and he was most passionately fond of fish. Father de Frilair filleted every fish served to His Lordship. Julien was watching, silently, as the priest read the letter once again, when suddenly the door was noisily thrown open. A richly dressed servant passed rapidly through the room. Julien barely had time to turn toward the door; he saw a little old man wearing a large cross on his breast. He dropped to his knees and lowered his head: the bishop gave him a kindly smile and continued on his way. The handsome priest followed him, and Julien was left alone in the drawing room, where he was able to admire, at his leisure, its pious magnificence. The Bishop of Besançon, a man whose spirit had been sorely tried, but not snuffed out, by the long, hard years of life abroad5 during the Revolution, was over seventy-five and not particularly concerned about what might happen in ten years' time. "Who is this seminarian, with such a lively face, whom I seemed to see as I went by?" the bishop asked. "Aren't they supposed to be asleep by now, according to the rules I laid down?" "This one is wide-awake, I assure you, my lord, and he is the bearer of wonderful tidings: a letter of resignation from the only Jansenist still in your diocese. Terrible Father Pirard finally managed to take the hint." "Ah!" said the bishop, laughing. "I challenge you to replace him with someone just as good. And to show you how good the man truly is, I'm inviting him to dinner, tomorrow." The vicar-general tried to slip in a few words about who that successor might be. The bishop, not much interested in business matters, at the moment, said: "Before we put someone else in, let's learn a little about why this one is going out. Bring that seminarian in here: truth comes from the mouths of babes."