5 1793–94.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: A Procession
word. He's worked hard, yes, and he's happy," Julien said to himself, "and he's been putting away a lot of this first-class wine. What a man! What an example for me! He's way ahead of all the others." (He'd learned this slangy talk from the old surgeon-major.) As the Sanctus of the high mass began, Julien said he'd like to put on a surplice and follow behind the bishop in this marvelous procession. "The thieves, my dear, the thieves!" cried Father Chas. "You're not thinking about the thieves! The procession will go out of the church, and it will be empty—but we'll watch over it, you and I. We'll be very lucky if there aren't a couple of yards missing from that beautiful braid, wrapped around the base of the pillars. That was yet another gift from Madame de Rubempré. It came from her great-grandfather, the famous count: it's pure gold, my dear," the priest added, bending toward Julien's ear and speaking very softly, plainly very excited, "not some kind of fake. You keep watch on the north aisle: don't leave it for an instant. I'll take the middle aisle and the whole central part. Keep an eye on the confessionals: that's where the women hide, the ones who spy for the thieves. They watch for the very second our backs are turned." As he finished speaking, the bells sounded a quarter to twelve, and the great clock could be heard as well. It gave a great peal. All these clear, solemn sounds moved Julien. His mind no longer felt tied to the earth. The scent of incense, and of the rose petals that little children, dressed as Saint John, had strewn in front of the holy tabernacle, completed his excited state. All that the clock's somber tolling should have awakened in Julien, really, was the thought of twenty men toiling for half a franc, helped perhaps by fifteen or twenty of the faithful. He should have contemplated the ropes and their wear and tear, as well as the vulnerable wooden portions of the building, and the risky state of the clock itself, which fell down every other century, and he should at the very least have thought of some way of paying the bell ringers less, or of paying them by an indulgence or two, or some other blessing drawn from the Church's rich treasure, and thereby keeping its cash resources intact. But instead of these wise reflections, Julien's soul, exalted by these clear, bold sounds, wandered in imaginary places. He'll never make a good priest, nor a great administrator. Souls stirred like this are good, at best, for making artists. Here, Julien's vanity bursts into the full light of day. Perhaps fifty of his fellow seminarians—whom public opinion had made mindful of living reality, as had the Jacobinism6 showing itself to them, lying in ambush behind every bush—would have heard the great clock and thought of nothing but the bell ringers' wages. They would then have considered, with all of Barême's7 mathematical genius, whether the extent of public emotion justified what the bell ringers were paid. Had Julien cared to think about the cathedral's material interests, his imagination might even have soared so far that it could have devised a way to save forty francs of Church funds, and how to avoid expenses of twenty-five pence. All this time, on the most beautiful day the world has ever seen, the procession proceeded slowly through Besançon, pausing at the temporary altars built, in competition, one with the other, by the authorities, and the church remained profoundly silent. It was in half darkness, and there was a pleasant, cool freshness; the fragrance of flowers and the scent of incense still hung in the air. The hushed quiet, the deep solitude, the cool freshness of the long aisles—everything made Julien's daydreaming sweeter. He was not worried about Father Chas, who would not