3 Rousseau's sentimental romance of 1761. The novel was an immediate success and continued to be widely read for generations.
The Red and the Black
street, in front of the café, for an entire hour, watching everyone who came out. The rude fellow did not appear, and Julien left. He'd been in Besançon for no more than a few hours, and he'd already mastered one of his qualms. In spite of his gout, the old surgeon-major, once upon a time, had given him a few fencing lessons; that was the only knowledge Julien possessed, of which his anger could make any use. But that difficulty would not have mattered, had he known how to show his anger except by striking out with his hands—and, if it had come to a fistfight, his rival, an enormous man, would have thrashed him and left him lying flat on the floor. "For a poor devil like me," Julien said to himself, "without protectors and without money, there won't be much difference between a seminary and a prison. I've got to store my clothing in an inn, where I can change into my black clothing. If I ever get to leave the seminary for an hour or two, I might very well—wearing my bourgeois clothes—get to see Miss Amanda again." It was all very logical, but Julien walked by every inn he saw, not daring to enter any of them. At last, when he went by the Ambassador Hotel for the second time, his worried glance met that of a fat woman, still fairly young, very red-faced, who seemed cheerful and pleasant. He went over to her and told his story. "Of course, my handsome little priest," she told him, "I'll hold on to your bourgeois clothes, and I'll even keep them well dusted. At this time of year, it's not a good idea to leave clothes untouched." She took down a key and personally conducted him to a room, suggesting he make a list of what he was leaving. "Good Lord! How fine you look like that, Father Sorel," said the fat woman when he came down to the kitchen. "I'm going to give you a good dinner. And," she added in a soft voice, "it's only going to cost you twenty pence, instead of the fifty everyone else has to pay, because we really have to be nice to that little purse of yours." "I've got two hundred francs," said Julien rather proudly. "Ah, my God!" said the good lady, startled. "Don't talk so loud: there are lots of bad eggs in Besançon. They'd rob you of that in no time at all. Stay out of the cafés, especially: they're full of crooks." "Really!" said Julien, her words giving him something to think about. "Don't ever go anywhere but right here; I'll make you coffee. Remember, this is where you'll always find yourself a friend and a good dinner, and for twenty pence; that's saying something, it seems to me. Right? Now go sit down at the table, and I'll serve you myself." "I couldn't eat a thing," Julien told her. "I'm too nervous. When I leave here, I'll go right to the seminary." The good woman wouldn't let him go until she'd stuffed his pockets with food. Finally, Julien set out on his terrifying path. Standing in her doorway, she gave him directions.
Three hundred and thirty-six lunches at 83 pence, three hundred and thirty-six dinners at 28 pence, a cup of hot chocolate for those entitled to it: how much can I make on my bid? —Valenod, From Besançon He could see, from a distance, the gilded iron cross over the door. He walked toward it, slowly. He felt as if his legs were giving way underneath him. "Here is hell on Earth, which I'll never be able to leave!" He finally decided to ring the bell. The sound echoed, as if in some lonely place. After ten minutes, a pale man, dressed in black, came to let him in. Julien looked at him and immediately lowered his eyes. The porter's face was exceedingly strange. His bulging green eyes were round as a cat's; the fixed line of his eyebrows proclaimed a complete absence of human empathy; his thin lips formed a tight semicircle over his teeth, which stuck out. These were not criminal features, but indicative of the total insensitivity which, for young people, can be even more frightening. The only emotion Julien's rapid glance could imagine on this narrow, pietistic face was profound contempt for anything anyone said to him, except words about heaven's eternal concerns. It was hard for Julien to raise his eyes and explain, his heart throbbing and his voice trembling, that he'd like to speak to Father Pirard, director of the seminary. Without speaking a word, the black figure motioned him to follow along. They went up two stories, via a broad staircase with wooden banisters; the crooked steps slanted so sharply, on the side away from the wall, that they seemed about to collapse. A small door, hard to open—above it a great graveyard cross made of pine painted black—finally swung to, and the porter led Julien into a low-ceilinged, dark room, its whitewashed walls decorated by two large, time-blackened pictures. There, Julien was abandoned, deeply dismayed, his heart beating violently; had he dared, he would have wept. A silence like death prevailed all through the building. A quarter of an hour later, which seemed to him an entire day, the ominous-looking porter reappeared, standing on the threshold of a door at the other end of the room; not troubling himself to speak, he signaled Julien to come. Our hero walked into a room even larger than the first, and even less well lit. Once again, the walls were whitewashed, but there was no furniture. Except that, in the corner nearest the door, Julien had seen a pine-board bed, two straw chairs, and a small armchair, also of pine, which had no cushions. At the far end of the room, near a small, yellow-paned window, there were some dirty flowerpots, and he saw a man in a shabby cassock, seated at a table. Apparently angry, he was plucking up a great many slips of paper, one after the other, writing a few words on each, and then arranging them on the table in front of him. He was not aware of Julien's presence. The young man stayed more or less in the middle of the room, motionless, exactly where the porter—who had now gone out and shut the door—had left him. Ten minutes passed; the badly dressed man kept on writing. Julien's sense of shock, and his terror, mounted; he felt on the point of fainting away. A philosopher might have said, perhaps incorrectly: "This is the violent impression made by that which is ugly on a soul fashioned for the love of beauty." The man who'd been writing lifted his head. It took Julien a moment to notice and, even after that, he remained as motionless as if the awful glance now directed at him had struck him dead. His anxious eyes could barely make out a narrow face covered with red spots, except on the forehead, which displayed a deadly pallor. Between the reddened cheeks and the white forehead shone two small black eyes, designed for frightening the bravest of men. The immense curve of the forehead was set off by a thick mop of straight hair, black as jade. "Are you coming over here, yes or no?" the man said impatiently.
The Red and the Black
Julien took a shaky step and, finally, pale and ready to topple to the floor, as he'd never before been in all his life, he got within three feet of the little pine table covered with slips of paper. "Nearer," said the man. Julien came closer, stretching out his hand, as if trying to prop himself up on something. "Your name?" "Julien Sorel." "You're good and late," he was told, and again the frightening eyes peered at him. Julien couldn't endure this stare. He started to extend his hand, as if to keep himself upright, then fell full length on the wooden floor. The man rang the porter's bell. Julien could not see, and he could not move, but he heard approaching steps. He was picked up and set in the small white wooden armchair. He heard the awful voice saying to the porter: "He appears to have had an epileptic fit. That's all we need." When Julien was able to open his eyes, the red-faced man was writing; the porter had disappeared. "Be brave," our hero told himself, "and above all hide how I feel." He was feeling exceedingly nauseated. "If anything happens, God only knows what they'll think of me." Finally, the man stopped writing and, out of the corner of his eye, looked at Julien. "Are you well enough to answer me?" "Yes, sir," said Julien, his voice weak. "Ah, that's good." The man in black lifted himself partly out of his chair and impatiently rummaged through the drawer in his pine table, which creaked when he pulled on it. He found the letter he was looking for, slowly sat himself back down and looked at Julien, once again, as if to wrench out of him what little life he retained: "You've been recommended to me by Father Chélan, who was the best parish priest in the whole diocese, a virtuous man if ever there was one, and for thirty years my friend." "Ah! I have the honor of speaking to Father Pirard," said Julien, his voice fading away. "So it would seem," replied the director of the seminary, looking at him testily. The light in his tiny eyes grew brighter, and then there was an involuntary twitching of the muscles in the corners of his mouth. It was the face of a tiger, salivating as he contemplated devouring his prey. "Chélan's letter is brief," he said, as if talking to himself. "Intelligenti pauca, good minds don't need a lot of words. The way things are going, these days, it would be hard to write briefly enough." He read out loud: "I send you Julien Sorel, of this parish, who twenty years ago I baptized, son of a rich carpenter who provides him with nothing. Julien will be a remarkable laborer in the vineyards of the Lord. His memory, his mind, are in no way deficient. He knows how to think. Will his vocation be an enduring one? Is it sincere? "Sincere!" repeated Father Pirard, astonished, looking over at Julien. But his glance was already less empty of all human feeling. "Sincere!" he said once more, in a low voice, and then returned to his reading: "I ask you to give Julien a scholarship. He will deserve it, once he's been given the required examinations. I have taught him some theology, the good old theology of Bossuet, of
Arnauld, of Fleury.1 If he seems to you unsuitable, send him back to me: the director of the Pauper's Bureau, with whom you are well acquainted, has offered him eight hundred francs as a tutor for his children. My spirit is tranquil, for which God be thanked. I am getting used to the terrible blow. Vale et me ama, farewell, and think well of me." Moderating his voice as he read the signature, Father Pirard sighed as he pronounced the word Chélan. "He's calm," said he. "Indeed, his virtues deserve such a reward. May God grant me as much!" He looked upward and made the sign of the cross. Seeing this sacred gesture, Julien felt a lessening of the profound horror with which, ever since he'd entered this building, he'd been frozen over. "I have here three hundred and twenty-one aspirants for the holiest of professions," Father Pirard said at last, his voice severe but not unpleasant. "Only seven or eight have been recommended to me by people like Father Chélan. Accordingly, among those three hundred and twenty-one, you will be the ninth. But my patronage is neither favoritism nor indulgence, but redoubled carefulness and severity against sin. Go lock that door." Julien forced himself to walk to the door, and then come back, without falling. He noticed that a small window, right alongside the door, opened onto country fields. He looked out at the trees; it did him good, like seeing old friends. "Loquerisne linguam latinam? Do you speak Latin?" Father Pirard asked, when he returned. "Ita, pater optime. Yes, kind Father," answered Julien, beginning to come back to himself. Surely, no man in the world had ever seemed to him less kind than Father Pirard, half an hour earlier. The interview continued, in Latin. The priest's eyes softened; Julien began to recover his confidence. "How weak I am," he thought, "to let myself be imposed on by these shows of virtue! This man will be a rascal, just like Father Maslon." And Julien congratulated himself for having hidden almost all his money in his boots. Father Pirard examined him in theology, and was surprised by the extent of his knowledge. His surprise was even greater when he examined Julien on the Holy Scriptures. But when he turned to questions about the teachings of the Fathers, he saw that Julien did not even know the names of Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine, Saint Bonaventura, Saint Basil, etc., etc.2 "Really," he thought, "here is exactly that fatal tendency to Protestantism, for which I've always scolded Chélan: deep, deep knowledge—almost too deep—of the Scriptures." (Julien had just been speaking, without having been questioned on the subject, about the actual dates at which Genesis, the Pentateuch, etc., had been written.) "What's the point to this endless scrutiny of the Holy Scriptures," thought Father Pirard, "if it isn't an inquiry into a person's conscience? In other words, the most ghastly