3 Saint Theresa Avila and Saint Francis of Assisi.
Chapter Twenty-Six: The World, or What the Rich Man is Missing
long. Virtually all were from peasant families, and vastly preferred earning their bread by repeating a few Latin phrases than by sweating it out of the soil. Seeing this, quite early on, Julien was confident of swift success. "In every form of labor, people with brains are necessary," he told himself, "because when it comes down to it, there's work to be done. Under Napoleon, I might have been a sergeant. Among these future priests, I'll be the pope. All these poor devils," he added, "day laborers from their childhood on, have been living—until they got here—on sour milk and black bread. In their straw-roofed huts, they ate meat only five or six times a year. Like the Roman soldiers, for whom war was a peaceful time, these clumsy peasants are fascinated by the seminary's delights." All Julien ever saw in their bleak eyes was sheer physical satisfaction, after the midday meal, and the physical pleasure of anticipating another meal. These were the people from whom he had to make himself stand out—but what Julien didn't know, and they were careful never to tell him, was that to place first in every class on dogma, on church history, etc., etc., was in their eyes nothing more than the sin of vanity. Ever since Voltaire, ever since the division of government into two chambers (which is fundamentally nothing but mistrust and self-examination, creating in the populace the destructive spirit of suspicion), the French Church appears to have understood that its true enemies were books. In its eyes, surrender of the heart is everything. Success in the acquisition of learning, even sacred learning, is for the Church highly questionable—and rightly so. What will keep superior men from going over to the enemy, as did Sieyès during the Revolution, or the liberal politician, Grégoire!4 Trembling, the Church clings to the pope as its only chance for salvation. Only the pope can put the fear of God into self-examination and, by the pious, ceremonious displays of the Papal Court, make an impression on the weary, sick spirits of people all over the world. Half grasping these various truths (which everything said in his classes, however, tended to refute), Julien fell into a deep melancholy. He worked hard, and rapidly acquired things extremely useful for a priest, though in his eyes distinctly false and of no interest whatever. "Has the whole world forgotten me?" he thought. He did not know that Father Pirard had already received, and thrown into the fire, several letters postmarked in Dijon, on the pages of which, despite their highly proper language, he perceived intense passion. Equally intense remorse appeared to struggle against that love. "So much the better," thought Father Pirard. "Certainly, it's at least better than having been in love with an impious woman." One day, he opened a letter, apparently half erased by tears, which was an eternal farewell. "Finally," the writer said to Julien, "heaven has granted me its grace and given me hate—not for the author of my sin, who for me will always be that which is dearest in the whole world, but for my sin itself. The sacrifice has been accomplished, my dear. It has not been without tears, as you can see. The salvation of those for whom I am responsible, and for whom you felt such love, is what has accomplished this. A just but terrible God can no longer take revenge on them, for their mother's sins. Farewell, Julien: be just to everyone." The last lines of this letter were absolutely illegible. There was an address in Dijon, but there was every expectation that Julien would not be replying, or at least that he would be making use of words that a woman returned to virtuous living could hear without blushing.