2 The defeat at Leipzig (October 1813) and the victory at Montmirail (February 1814) were part of Napoleon's long and ultimately doomed efforts to preserve his throne after the disastrous campaign against Russia (1812).
The Red and the Black
soon at Upper Bray, which lay along the heights of a singularly lovely hill. "Enthusiasm multiplies these peasants," he thought. "Verrières is totally clogged, but here are more than ten thousand more, swarming around this old church." Half ruined by revolutionary vandalism,3 it had been magnificently rebuilt, since the Restoration of the Monarchy, and there was already talk about miracles. Julien found Father Chélan, who first sharply rebuked him, and then gave him a cassock and a white overrobe. Julien quickly dressed himself and followed Father Chélan, who went looking for the young Bishop of Agde. He was Monsieur de La Mole's nephew, recently elevated to the post, and was supposed to display the relic to the king. But the bishop could not be found. The priests grew impatient. They awaited their leader in the old church's dark, Gothic cloister. Forty-eight priests had been brought together, thus figuratively reconstituting the old Canonical Chapter of Upper Bray, which before the Revolution had been composed of forty- eight members. After three-quarters of an hour discussing the bishop's youthfulness, the priests thought it appropriate that the dean of the chapter seek out the lord bishop, informing him that the king would soon be arriving, so he had better come to the cloister right away. Father Chélan's great age had made him the dean. Despite his testiness to Julien, he indicated that the young man was to accompany him. Julien wore his surplice extremely well. Employing a style of ecclesiastical grooming about which I know nothing, he had smoothed down his beautiful hair so that it lay entirely flat, though by an oversight (which increased Father Chélan's ill humor), under the long folds of his cassock he was visibly still wearing his guard of honor spurs. When they reached the bishop's chamber, the great man's servants, festooned with decorations, curtly replied to the old priest that His Lordship could not be seen. And they made fun of him, when Father Chélan tried to explain that, given his status as dean of the noble Canonical Chapter of Upper Bray, he was entitled to be admitted to the presiding bishop's presence whenever he liked. Julien was too haughty not to be shocked by these lackeys' insolence. He began to go from one door to another, through the old church's interior, trying every door he met with. One small door opened at his touch, and he found himself in the middle of an anteroom full of His Lordship's valets, all wearing black and wearing gold chains around their necks. Seeing how urgent he was, these gentlemen thought he'd been sent for by the bishop and allowed him to proceed. A few more steps, and Julien found himself in a huge Gothic hall, extremely dark, paneled in black oak; with a single exception, the high-pointed Gothic windows had been bricked over. There had been no attempt to disguise this coarse bricklaying, which was in sad contrast to the archaic beauty of the woodwork. The two longer walls of the hall, famous among Burgundy's antiquarians, and which Duke Charles the Bold had erected, about 1470, in expiation of one or another sin, were furnished with wooden stalls, richly carved. All the mysteries of the Apocalypse were there, portrayed by wood painted in various colors. Julien was moved by this melancholy magnificence, so disfigured by bare bricks and untouched white plaster. He stopped, silent. At the far end of the hall, near the one window through which daylight penetrated, he saw a large swing-mounted mirror, framed in mahogany. A young man in a purple cassock and a lace overrobe, his head bare, was standing three steps from the glass. It seemed an odd furnishing for such a place; clearly, it had been brought from town. Julien noted how the young man was frowning; the mirror showed him making the sign of the cross with his right hand, in utter gravity.