feat_summary_path: finished_summaries/cliffnotes/The Red and the Black/section_6_part_0.txt
feat_book_id: The Red and the Black.part 1.chapters 25-27
feat_summary_id: chapters 25-27
feat_summary: {"name": "Chapters 25-27", "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20201128052739/https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/r/the-red-and-the-black/summary-and-analysis/part-1-chapters-2527", "summary": "Julien is admitted to the presence of the rector, Father Pirard, by an extremely ugly porter. This impression of ugliness and the fright given by the sternness of Pirard cause Julien to faint. Pirard agrees to give him a full scholarship in recognition of the recommendation from his dear friend Chelan. Julien obviously impresses Pirard favorably by his knowledge of scripture and Latin and by the clarity and insight of his answers. Julien is taken to his cell, where he falls into a deep sleep. His first meeting with Pirard has given him to believe that the seminary is taken seriously by the students. Julien fails miserably in his attempt to succeed by brilliant achievement. He also has erred by requesting Pirard as his confessor instead of the rector's Jesuit enemy. Julien learns that to distinguish himself and gain acceptance among his fellows, he must appear stupid, materialistic, and docile. The Jesuit Castanede has found Armanda's address in Julien's luggage and has denounced him to Pirard. Confronted by the rector, Julien lies successfully and exonerates himself. It is the baseness, vulgarity, and ugliness of his adversaries -- his fellow seminarians -- that cause him to flinch and become discouraged in his struggle. His attempts to win them are without success. The description of the ideal awaiting the young priests as preached by Father Castanede revolts Julien: It consists of being well-fed, of vegetating in a parish surrounded by all the physical comforts. His eloquence proves to be another reason for alienation from his fellows, and he must often defend himself against physical attacks.", "analysis": "Verrieres was protected by walls, figuratively speaking, that Julien succeeded in climbing; now he enters another \"prison,\" the seminary, which he must also conquer. In direct contrast to his imagined conquest of Armanda in the cafe, Julien's interview with Pirard is a confrontation that overwhelms and terrifies him. His sensitive nature shuts out ugliness by rendering him unconscious. Again Stendhal omits Julien's brilliant, concise answers to Pirard's interrogation, although we learn that Julien's answers evoke Pirard's admiration for him. The keenness of Stendhal's psychological observation is noted in the brief statement occurring at the end of the interview, which casts light on Julien's frame of mind in retrospect: \"Julien looked down and saw his trunk directly in front of him; he had been looking at it for three hours without recognizing it.\" Moments of intense emotional strain prevent us from evaluating objectively a situation except in retrospect. The prison-like nature of the seminary is emphasized by fleeting views of the outside world, caught by Julien through a window, both during the grueling interview with Pirard and later in his cell. This glimpse of \"high places\" -- mountains, in this instance -- serves to reassure Julien and is inspirational to him in this crisis. Just as Julien blundered in his attempt to seduce Mme. de Renal, he will blunder in his attempt to succeed in the seminary. The cafe scene served to mark his progress as a seducer, evidence that he had gained experience and wisdom from the experiences in Verrieres. Here, however, is a new field of experience, and his evaluation of the interview with Pirard gives him a false sense of security, causing him to fail miserably in his first few weeks in the seminary. He thought that his usual hypocritical mask was the one to assume, but he soon discovers that he has assumed the wrong mask. It is not excellence that is required of the young, would-be priests but rather submission, obedience, and docility. Even in the seminary, Julien is an outsider, a pariah, because of his superior nature. He has great difficulty trying to perfect a mask of stupidity. Note, however, his progress in the second interview with Pirard. Stendhal admits the reader into a complicity with Julien in the following way: Julien cleverly utilizes the two incidents that had occurred during his first day in Besancon, taking from each what he needs to substantiate his lie to Pirard. Stendhal does not make any comment on this operation. Julien utilizes, then, the potential of Stendhal's logic. Julien's self-imposed campaign of austerity has borne fruits, however, since in not leaving the seminary, he has avoided a worse fate. He has succeeded, again, in spite of himself."}
text: CHAPTER XXV
  
  THE SEMINARY
  
  
          Three hundred and thirty-six dinners at eighty-five
          centimes. Three hundred and thirty-six suppers at fifty
          centimes. Chocolate to those who are entitled to it. How
          much profit can be made on the contract?--_Valenod of
          Besancon_.
  
  
  He saw in the distance the iron gilt cross on the door. He approached
  slowly. His legs seemed to give way beneath him. "So here is this hell
  upon earth which I shall be unable to leave."
  
  Finally he made up his mind to ring. The noise of the bell reverberated
  as though through a solitude. At the end of ten minutes a pale man,
  clothed in black, came and opened the door. Julien looked at him, and
  immediately lowered his eyes. This porter had a singular physiognomy.
  The green projecting pupils of his eyes were as round as those of a
  cat. The straight lines of his eyebrows betokened the impossibility of
  any sympathy. His thin lips came round in a semicircle over projecting
  teeth. None the less, his physiognomy did not so much betoken crime
  as rather that perfect callousness which is so much more terrifying
  to the young. The one sentiment which Julien's rapid gaze surmised in
  this long and devout face was a profound contempt for every topic of
  conversation which did not deal with things celestial. Julien raised
  his eyes with an effort, and in a voice rendered quavering by the
  beating of his heart explained that he desired to speak to M. Pirard,
  the director of the Seminary. Without saying a word the man in black
  signed to him to follow. They ascended two stories by a large staircase
  with a wooden rail, whose warped stairs inclined to the side opposite
  the wall, and seemed on the point of falling. A little door with a
  big cemetery cross of white wood painted black at the top was opened
  with difficulty, and the porter made him enter a dark low room, whose
  whitewashed walls were decorated with two big pictures blackened by
  age. In this room Julien was left alone. He was overwhelmed. His heart
  was beating violently. He would have been happy to have ventured to
  cry. A silence of death reigned over the whole house.
  
  At the end of a quarter of an hour, which seemed a whole day to him,
  the sinister looking porter reappeared on the threshold of a door at
  the other end of the room, and without vouchsafing a word, signed to
  him to advance. He entered into a room even larger than the first,
  and very badly lighted. The walls also were whitened, but there was
  no furniture. Only in a corner near the door Julien saw as he passed
  a white wooden bed, two straw chairs, and a little pinewood armchair
  without any cushions. He perceived at the other end of the room, near a
  small window with yellow panes decorated with badly kept flower vases,
  a man seated at a table, and covered with a dilapidated cassock. He
  appeared to be in a temper, and took one after the other a number of
  little squares of paper, which he arranged on his table after he had
  written some words on them. He did not notice Julien's presence. The
  latter did not move, but kept standing near the centre of the room in
  the place where the porter, who had gone out and shut the door, had
  left him.
  
  Ten minutes passed in this way: the badly dressed man kept on writing
  all the time. Julien's emotion and terror were so great that he thought
  he was on the point of falling. A philosopher would have said, possibly
  wrongly, "It is a violent impression made by ugliness on a soul
  intended by nature to love the beautiful."
  
  The man who was writing lifted up his head. Julien only perceived it
  after a moment had passed, and even after seeing it, he still remained
  motionless, as though struck dead by the terrible look of which he
  was the victim. Julien's troubled eyes just managed to make out a
  long face, all covered with red blotches except the forehead, which
  manifested a mortal pallor. Two little black eyes, calculated to
  terrify the most courageous, shone between these red cheeks and that
  white forehead. The vast area of his forehead was bounded by thick,
  flat, jet black hair.
  
  "Will you come near, yes or no?" said the man at last, impatiently.
  
  Julien advanced with an uneasy step, and at last, paler than he had
  ever been in his life and on the point of falling, stopped three paces
  from the little white wooden table which was covered with the squares
  of paper.
  
  "Nearer," said the man.
  
  Julien advanced still further, holding out his hand, as though trying
  to lean on something.
  
  "Your name?"
  
  "Julien Sorel."
  
  "You are certainly very late," said the man to him, as he rivetted
  again on him that terrible gaze.
  
  Julien could not endure this look. Holding out his hand as though to
  support himself, he fell all his length along the floor.
  
  The man rang. Julien had only lost the use of his eyes and the power of
  movement. He heard steps approaching.
  
  He was lifted up and placed on the little armchair of white wood. He
  heard the terrible man saying to the porter,
  
  "He has had an epileptic fit apparently, and this is the finishing
  touch."
  
  When Julien was able to open his eyes, the man with the red face was
  going on with his writing. The porter had disappeared. "I must have
  courage," said our hero to himself, "and above all, hide what I feel."
  He felt violently sick. "If anything happens to me, God knows what they
  will think of me."
  
  Finally the man stopped writing and looked sideways at Julien.
  
  "Are you in a fit state to answer me?"
  
  "Yes, sir," said Julien in an enfeebled voice.
  
  "Ah, that's fortunate."
  
  The man in black had half got up, and was looking impatiently for a
  letter in the drawer of his pinewood table, which opened with a grind.
  He found it, sat down slowly, and looking again at Julien in a manner
  calculated to suck out of him the little life which he still possessed,
  said,
  
  "You have been recommended to me by M. Chelan. He was the best cure in
  the diocese; he was an upright man if there ever was one, and my friend
  for thirty years."
  
  "Oh. It's to M. Pirard then that I have the honour of speaking?" said
  Julien in a dying voice.
  
  "Apparently," replied the director of the seminary, as he looked at him
  disagreeably.
  
  The glitter of his little eyes doubled and was followed by an
  involuntary movement of the muscles of the corner of the mouth. It
  was the physiognomy of the tiger savouring in advance the pleasure of
  devouring its prey.
  
  "Chelan's letter is short," he said, as though speaking to himself.
  "_Intelligenti pauca_. In the present time it is impossible to write
  too little." He read aloud:--
  
          "I recommend to you Julien Sorel of this parish, whom
          I baptized nearly twenty years ago, the son of a rich
          carpenter who gives him nothing. Julien will be a
          remarkable worker in the vineyard of the Lord. He lacks
          neither memory nor intelligence; he has some faculty
          for reflection. Will he persevere in his calling? Is he
          sincere?"
  
  "Sincere," repeated the abbe Pirard with an astonished air, looking at
  Julien. But the abbe's look was already less devoid of all humanity.
  "Sincere," he repeated, lowering his voice, and resuming his reading:--
  
          "I ask you for a stipend for Julien Sorel. He will earn
          it by passing the necessary examinations. I have taught
          him a little theology, that old and good theology of the
          Bossuets, the Arnaults, and the Fleury's. If the person
          does not suit you, send him back to me. The director
          of the workhouse, whom you know well, offers him eight
          hundred to be tutor to his children. My inner self is
          tranquil, thanks to God. I am accustoming myself to the
          terrible blow, 'Vale et me ama.'"
  
  The abbe Pirard, speaking more slowly as he read the signature,
  pronounced with a sigh the word, "Chelan."
  
  "He is tranquil," he said, "in fact his righteousness deserves such a
  recompense. May God grant it to me in such a case." He looked up to
  heaven and made the sign of the cross. At the sight of that sacred sign
  Julien felt an alleviation of the profound horror which had frozen him
  since his entry into the house.
  
  "I have here three hundred and twenty-one aspirants for the most holy
  state," said the abbe Pirard at last, in a tone, which though severe,
  was not malicious; "only seven or eight have been recommended to me by
  such men as the abbe Chelan; so you will be the ninth of these among
  the three hundred and twenty-one. But my protection means neither
  favour nor weakness, it means doubled care, and doubled severity
  against vice. Go and lock that door."
  
  Julian made an effort to walk, and managed not to fall. He noticed that
  a little window near the entrance door looked out on to the country.
  He saw the trees; that sight did him as much good as the sight of old
  friends.
  
  "'Loquerisne linquam latinam?'" (Do you speak Latin?) said the abbe
  Pirard to him as he came back.
  
  "'Ita, pater optime,'" (Yes, excellent Father) answered Julien,
  recovering himself a little. But it was certain that nobody in the
  world had ever appeared to him less excellent than had M. Pirard for
  the last half hour.
  
  The conversation continued in Latin. The expression in the abbe's eyes
  softened. Julien regained some self-possession. "How weak I am," he
  thought, "to let myself be imposed on by these appearances of virtue.
  The man is probably nothing more than a rascal, like M. Maslon," and
  Julien congratulated himself on having hidden nearly all his money in
  his boots.
  
  The abbe Pirard examined Julien in theology; he was surprised at
  the extent of his knowledge, but his astonishment increased when he
  questioned him in particular on sacred scriptures. But when it came to
  questions of the doctrines of the Fathers, he perceived that Julien
  scarcely even knew the names of Saint Jerome, Saint Augustin, Saint
  Bonaventure, Saint Basile, etc., etc.
  
  "As a matter of fact," thought the abbe Pirard, "this is simply that
  fatal tendency to Protestantism for which I have always reproached
  Chelan. A profound, and only too profound knowledge of the Holy
  Scriptures."
  
  (Julien had just started speaking to him, without being questioned on
  the point, about the real time when Genesis, the Pentateuch, etc., has
  been written).
  
  "To what does this never-ending reasoning over the Holy Scriptures lead
  to?" thought the abbe Pirard, "if not to self-examination, that is to
  say, the most awful Protestantism. And by the side of this imprudent
  knowledge, nothing about the Fathers to compensate for that tendency."
  
  But the astonishment of the director of the seminary was quite
  unbounded when having questioned Julien about the authority of the
  Pope, and expecting to hear the maxims of the ancient Gallican Church,
  the young man recited to him the whole book of M. de Maistre "Strange
  man, that Chelan," thought the abbe Pirard. "Did he show him the book
  simply to teach him to make fun of it?"
  
  It was in vain that he questioned Julien and endeavoured to guess if
  he seriously believed in the doctrine of M. de Maistre. The young man
  only answered what he had learnt by heart. From this moment Julien was
  really happy. He felt that he was master of himself. After a very long
  examination, it seemed to him that M. Pirard's severity towards him was
  only affected. Indeed, the director of the seminary would have embraced
  Julien in the name of logic, for he found so much clearness, precision
  and lucidity in his answers, had it not been for the principles of
  austere gravity towards his theology pupils which he had inculcated in
  himself for the last fifteen years.
  
  "Here we have a bold and healthy mind," he said to himself, "but corpus
  debile" (the body is weak).
  
  "Do you often fall like that?" he said to Julien in French, pointing
  with his finger to the floor.
  
  "It's the first time in my life. The porter's face unnerved me," added
  Julien, blushing like a child. The abbe Pirard almost smiled.
  
  "That's the result of vain worldly pomp. You are apparently accustomed
  to smiling faces, those veritable theatres of falsehood. Truth is
  austere, Monsieur, but is not our task down here also austere? You must
  be careful that your conscience guards against that weakness of yours,
  too much sensibility to vain external graces."
  
  "If you had not been recommended to me," said the abbe Pirard, resuming
  the Latin language with an obvious pleasure, "If you had not been
  recommended by a man, by the abbe Chelan, I would talk to you the vain
  language of that world, to which it would appear you are only too well
  accustomed. I would tell you that the full stipend which you solicit
  is the most difficult thing in the world to obtain. But the fifty-six
  years which the abbe Chelan has spent in apostolic work have stood him
  in poor stead if he cannot dispose of a stipend at the seminary."
  
  After these words, the abbe Pirard recommended Julien not to enter any
  secret society or congregation without his consent.
  
  "I give you my word of honour," said Julien, with all an honest man's
  expansion of heart. The director of the seminary smiled for the first
  time.
  
  "That expression is not used here," he said to him. "It is too
  reminiscent of that vain honour of worldly people, which leads them to
  so many errors and often to so many crimes. You owe me obedience by
  virtue of paragraph seventeen of the bull Unam Eccesiam of St. Pius the
  Fifth. I am your ecclesiastical superior. To hear in this house, my
  dear son, is to obey. How much money, have you?"
  
  ("So here we are," said Julien to himself, "that was the reason of the
  'my very dear son')."
  
  "Thirty-five francs, my father."
  
  "Write out carefully how you use that money. You will have to give me
  an account of it."
  
  This painful audience had lasted three hours. Julien summoned the
  porter.
  
  "Go and install Julien Sorel in cell No. 103," said the abbe Pirard to
  the man.
  
  As a great favour he let Julien have a place all to himself. "Carry his
  box there," he added.
  
  Julien lowered his eyes, and recognised his box just in front of him.
  He had been looking at it for three hours and had not recognised it.
  
  As he arrived at No. 103, which was a little room eight feet square on
  the top story of the house, Julien noticed that it looked out on to the
  ramparts, and he perceived beyond them the pretty plain which the Doubs
  divides from the town.
  
  "What a charming view!" exclaimed Julien. In speaking like this he did
  not feel what the words actually expressed. The violent sensations
  which he had experienced during the short time that he had been at
  Besancon had absolutely exhausted his strength. He sat down near the
  window on the one wooden chair in the cell, and fell at once into a
  profound sleep. He did not hear either the supper bell or the bell for
  benediction. They had forgotten him. When the first rays of the sun
  woke him up the following morning, he found himself lying on the floor.
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER XXVI
  
  THE WORLD, OR WHAT THE RICH LACK
  
  
          I am alone in the world. No one deigns to spare me
          a thought. All those whom I see make their fortune,
          have an insolence and hardness of heart which I do not
          feel in myself. They hate me by reason of kindness
          and good-humour. Oh, I shall die soon, either from
          starvation or the unhappiness of seeing men so hard of
          heart.--_Young_.
  
  
  He hastened to brush his clothes and run down. He was late. Instead of
  trying to justify himself Julien crossed his arms over his breast.
  
  "Peccavi pater optime (I have sinned, I confess my fault, oh, my
  father)," he said with a contrite air.
  
  This first speech was a great success. The clever ones among the
  seminarists saw that they had to deal with a man who knew something
  about the elements of the profession. The recreation hour arrived, and
  Julien saw that he was the object of general curiosity, but he only
  manifested reserved silence. Following the maxims he had laid down for
  himself, he considered his three hundred and twenty-one comrades as
  enemies. The most dangerous of all in his eyes was the abbe Pirard. A
  few days afterwards Julien had to choose a confessor, and was given a
  list.
  
  "Great heavens! what do they take me for?" he said to himself. "Do they
  think I don't understand what's what?" Then he chose the abbe Pirard.
  
  This step proved decisive without his suspecting it.
  
  A little seminarist, who was quite young and a native of Verrieres, and
  who had declared himself his friend since the first day, informed him
  that he would probably have acted more prudently if he had chosen M.
  Castanede, the sub-director of the seminary.
  
  "The abbe Castanede is the enemy of Pirard, who is suspected of
  Jansenism," added the little seminarist in a whisper. All the first
  steps of our hero were, in spite of the prudence on which he plumed
  himself, as much mistakes as his choice of a confessor. Misled as he
  was by all the self-confidence of a man of imagination, he took his
  projects for facts, and believed that he was a consummate hypocrite.
  His folly went so far as to reproach himself for his success in this
  kind of weakness.
  
  "Alas, it is my only weapon," he said to himself. "At another period I
  should have earned my livelihood by eloquent deeds in the face of the
  enemy."
  
  Satisfied as he was with his own conduct, Julien looked around him. He
  found everywhere the appearance of the purest virtue.
  
  Eight or ten seminarists lived in the odour of sanctity, and had
  visions like Saint Theresa, and Saint Francis, when he received his
  stigmata on Mount _Vernia_ in the Appenines. But it was a great secret
  and their friends concealed it. These poor young people who had
  visions were always in the infirmary. A hundred others combined an
  indefatigable application to a robust faith. They worked till they fell
  ill, but without learning much. Two or three were distinguished by a
  real talent, amongst others a student of the name of Chazel, but both
  they and Julien felt mutually unsympathetic.
  
  The rest of these three hundred and twenty-one seminarists consisted
  exclusively of coarse persons, who were by no means sure of
  understanding the Latin words which they kept on repeating the livelong
  day. Nearly all were the sons of peasants, and they preferred to gain
  their livelihood by reciting some Latin words than by ploughing the
  earth. It was after this examination of his colleagues that Julien,
  during the first few days, promised himself a speedy success.
  
  "Intelligent people are needed in every service," he said to himself,
  "for, after all, there is work to be done. I should have been a
  sergeant under Napoleon. I shall be a grand vicar among these future
  cures."
  
  "All these poor devils," he added, "manual labourers as they have been
  since their childhood, have lived on curded milk and black bread up
  till they arrived here. They would only eat meat five or six times a
  year in their hovels. Like the Roman soldiers who used to find war the
  time of rest, these poor peasants are enchanted with the delights of
  the seminary."
  
  Julien could never read anything in their gloomy eyes but the
  satisfaction of physical craving after dinner, and the expectation
  of sensual pleasure before the meal. Such were the people among whom
  Julien had to distinguish himself; but the fact which he did not know,
  and which they refrained from telling him, was that coming out first
  in the different courses of dogma, ecclesiastical history, etc., etc.,
  which are taken at the seminary, constituted in their eyes, neither
  more nor less than a splendid sin.
  
  Since the time of Voltaire and two-chamber Government, which is at
  bottom simply distrust and personal self-examination, and gives the
  popular mind that bad habit of being suspicious, the Church of France
  seems to have realised that books are its real enemies. It is the
  submissive heart which counts for everything in its eyes. It suspects,
  and rightly so, any success in studies, even sacred ones. What is to
  prevent a superior man from crossing over to the opposite side like
  Sieyes or Gregory. The trembling Church clings on to the Pope as its
  one chance of safety. The Pope alone is in a position to attempt to
  paralyse all personal self-examination, and to make an impression by
  means of the pompous piety of his court ceremonial on the bored and
  morbid spirit of fashionable society.
  
  Julien, as he began to get some glimpse of these various truths,
  which are none the less in total contradiction to all the official
  pronouncements of any seminary, fell into a profound melancholy. He
  worked a great deal and rapidly succeeded in learning things which were
  extremely useful to a priest, extremely false in his own eyes, and
  devoid of the slightest interest for him. He felt there was nothing
  else to do.
  
  "Am I then forgotten by the whole world," he thought. He did not know
  that M. Pirard had received and thrown into the fire several letters
  with the Dijon stamp in which the most lively passion would pierce
  through the most formal conventionalism of style. "This love seems to
  be fought by great attacks of remorse. All the better," thought the
  abbe Pirard. "At any rate this lad has not loved an infidel woman."
  
  One day the abbe Pirard opened a letter which seemed half-blotted out
  by tears. It was an adieu for ever. "At last," said the writer to
  Julien, "Heaven has granted me the grace of hating, not the author of
  my fall, but my fall itself. The sacrifice has been made, dear one, not
  without tears as you see. The safety of those to whom I must devote
  my life, and whom you love so much, is the decisive factor. A just
  but terrible God will no longer see His way to avenge on them their
  mother's crimes. Adieu, Julien. Be just towards all men." The end of
  the letter was nearly entirely illegible. The writer gave an address at
  Dijon, but at the same time expressed the hope that Julien would not
  answer, or at any rate would employ language which a reformed woman
  could read without blushing. Julien's melancholy, aggravated by the
  mediocre nourishment which the contractor who gave dinners at thirteen
  centimes per head supplied to the seminary, began to affect his health,
  when Fouque suddenly appeared in his room one morning.
  
  "I have been able to get in at last. I have duly been five times to
  Besancon in order to see you. Could never get in. I put someone by the
  door to watch. Why the devil don't you ever go out?"
  
  "It is a test which I have imposed on myself."
  
  "I find you greatly changed, but here you are again. I have just
  learned from a couple of good five franc pieces that I was only a fool
  not to have offered them on my first journey."
  
  The conversation of the two friends went on for ever. Julien changed
  colour when Fouque said to him,
  
  "Do you know, by the by, that your pupils' mother has become positively
  devout."
  
  And he began to talk in that off-hand manner which makes so singular an
  impression on the passionate soul, whose dearest interests are being
  destroyed without the speaker having the faintest suspicion of it.
  
  "Yes, my friend, the most exalted devoutness. She is said to make
  pilgrimages. But to the eternal shame of the abbe Maslon, who has
  played the spy so long on that poor M. Chelan, Madame de Renal would
  have nothing to do with him. She goes to confession to Dijon or
  Besancon."
  
  "She goes to Besancon," said Julien, flushing all over his forehead.
  
  "Pretty often," said Fouque in a questioning manner.
  
  "Have you got any _Constitutionnels_ on you?"
  
  "What do you say?" replied Fouque.
  
  "I'm asking if you've got any _Constitutionnels_?" went on Julien
  in the quietest tone imaginable. "They cost thirty sous a number here."
  
  "What!" exclaimed Fouque. "Liberals even in the seminary! Poor France,"
  he added, assuming the abbe Maslon's hypocritical voice and sugary tone.
  
  This visit would have made a deep impression on our hero, if he had not
  been put on the track of an important discovery by some words addressed
  to him the following day by the little seminarist from Verrieres.
  Julien's conduct since he had been at the seminary had been nothing but
  a series of false steps. He began to make bitter fun of himself.
  
  In point of fact the important actions in his life had been cleverly
  managed, but he was careless about details, and cleverness in a
  seminary consists in attention to details. Consequently, he had already
  the reputation among his comrades of being a _strong-minded person._ He
  had been betrayed by a number of little actions.
  
  He had been convicted in their eyes of this enormity, _he thought and
  judged for himself_ instead of blindly following authority and example.
  The abbe Pirard had been no help to him. He had not spoken to him
  on a single occasion apart from the confessional, and even there he
  listened more than he spoke. Matters would have been very different if
  he had chosen the abbe Castanede. The moment that Julien realised his
  folly, he ceased to be bored. He wished to know the whole extent of the
  evil, and to effect this emerged a little from that haughty obstinate
  silence with which he had scrupulously rebuffed his comrades. It was
  now that they took their revenge on him. His advances were welcomed by
  a contempt verging on derision. He realised that there had not been one
  single hour from the time of his entry into the seminary, particularly
  during recreation time, which had not resulted in affecting him one
  way or another, which had not increased the number of his enemies, or
  won for him the goodwill of some seminarist who was either sincerely
  virtuous or of a fibre slightly less coarse than that of the others.
  The evil to repair was infinite, and the task very difficult.
  Henceforth, Julien's attention was always on guard. The problem before
  him was to map out a new character for himself.
  
  The moving of his eyes for example, occasioned him a great deal of
  trouble. It is with good reason that they are carried lowered in these
  places.
  
  "How presumptuous I was at Verrieres," said Julien to himself. "I
  thought I lived; I was only preparing for life, and here I am at last
  in the world such as I shall find it, until my part comes to an end,
  surrounded by real enemies. What immense difficulties," he added,
  "are involved in keeping up this hypocrisy every single minute. It is
  enough to put the labours of Hercules into the shade. The Hercules of
  modern times is the Pope Sixtus Quintus, who deceived by his modesty
  fifteen years on end forty Cardinals who had seen the liveliness and
  haughtiness of his whole youth.
  
  "So knowledge is nothing here," he said to himself with disgust.
  "Progress in doctrine, in sacred history, etc., only seem to count.
  Everything said on those subjects is only intended to entrap fools like
  me. Alas my only merit consists in my rapid progress, and in the way in
  which I grasp all their nonsense. Do they really value those things at
  their true worth? Do they judge them like I do. And I had the stupidity
  to be proud of my quickness. The only result of my coming out top has
  been to give me inveterate enemies. Chazel, who really knows more than
  I do, always throws some blunder in his compositions which gets him put
  back to the fiftieth place. If he comes out first, it is only because
  he is absent-minded. O how useful would one word, just one word, of M.
  Pirard, have been to me."
  
  As soon as Julien was disillusioned, the long exercises in ascetic
  piety, such as the attendances in the chapel five times a week, the
  intonation of hymns at the chapel of the Sacre Coeur, etc., etc.,
  which had previously seemed to him so deadly boring, became his most
  interesting opportunities for action. Thanks to a severe introspection,
  and above all, by trying not to overdo his methods, Julien did not
  attempt at the outset to perform significant actions (that is to say,
  actions which are proof of a certain Christian perfection) like those
  seminarists who served as a model to the rest.
  
  Seminarists have a special way, even of eating a poached egg, which
  betokens progress in the devout life.
  
  The reader who smiles at this will perhaps be good enough to remember
  all the mistakes which the abbe Delille made over the eating of an egg
  when he was invited to breakfast with a lady of the Court of Louis XVI.
  
  Julien first tried to arrive at the state of _non culpa_, that is
  to say the state of the young seminarist whose demeanour and manner
  of moving his arms, eyes, etc. while in fact without any trace of
  worldliness, do not yet indicate that the person is entirely absorbed
  by the conception of the other world, and the idea of the pure
  nothingness of this one.
  
  Julien incessantly found such phrases as these charcoaled on the walls
  of the corridors. "What are sixty years of ordeals balanced against
  an eternity of delights or any eternity of boiling oil in hell?" He
  despised them no longer. He realised that it was necessary to have them
  incessantly before his eyes. "What am I going to do all my life," he
  said to himself. "I shall sell to the faithful a place in heaven. How
  am I going to make that place visible to their eyes? By the difference
  between my appearance and that of a layman."
  
  After several months of absolutely unremitting application, Julien
  still had the appearance of thinking. The way in which he would move
  his eyes and hold his mouth did not betoken that implicit faith which
  is ready to believe everything and undergo everything, even at the cost
  of martyrdom. Julien saw with anger that he was surpassed in this by
  the coarsest peasants. There was good reason for their not appearing
  full of thought.
  
  What pains did he not take to acquire that facial expression of blindly
  fervent faith which is found so frequently in the Italian convents,
  and of which Le Guerchin has left such perfect models in his Church
  pictures for the benefit of us laymen.
  
  On feast-days, the seminarists were regaled with sausages and cabbage.
  Julien's table neighbours observed that he did not appreciate this
  happiness. That was looked upon as one of his paramount crimes.
  His comrades saw in this a most odious trait, and the most foolish
  hypocrisy. Nothing made him more enemies.
  
  "Look at this bourgeois, look at this stuck-up person," they would
  say, "who pretends to despise the best rations there are, sausages and
  cabbage, shame on the villain! The haughty wretch, he is damned for
  ever."
  
  "Alas, these young peasants, who are my comrades, find their ignorance
  an immense advantage," Julien would exclaim in his moments of
  discouragement. "The professor has not got to deliver them on their
  arrival at the seminary from that awful number of worldly ideas which I
  brought into it, and which they read on my face whatever I do."
  
  Julien watched with an attention bordering on envy the coarsest of the
  little peasants who arrived at the seminary. From the moment when they
  were made to doff their shabby jackets to don the black robe, their
  education consisted of an immense and limitless respect for _hard
  liquid cash_ as they say in Franche-Comte.
  
  That is the consecrated and heroic way of expressing the sublime idea
  of current money.
  
  These seminarists, like the heroes in Voltaire's novels, found their
  happiness in dining well. Julien discovered in nearly all of them
  an innate respect for the man who wears a suit of good cloth. This
  sentiment appreciates the distributive justice, which is given us at
  our courts, at its value or even above its true value. "What can one
  gain," they would often repeat among themselves, "by having a law suit
  with 'a big man?'"
  
  That is the expression current in the valleys of the Jura to express
  a rich man. One can judge of their respect for the richest entity
  of all--the government. Failure to smile deferentially at the mere
  name of M. the Prefect is regarded as an imprudence in the eyes of
  the Franche-Comte peasant, and imprudence in poor people is quickly
  punished by lack of bread.
  
  After having been almost suffocated at first by his feeling of
  contempt, Julien eventually experienced a feeling of pity; it often
  happened that the fathers of most of his comrades would enter their
  hovel in winter evenings and fail to find there either bread, chestnuts
  or potatoes.
  
  "What is there astonishing then?" Julien would say to himself, "if in
  their eyes the happy man is in the first place the one who has just had
  a good dinner, and in the second place the one who possesses a good
  suit? My comrades have a lasting vocation, that is to say, they see
  in the ecclesiastical calling a long continuance of the happiness of
  dining well and having a warm suit."
  
  Julien happened to hear a young imaginative seminarist say to his
  companion.
  
  "Why shouldn't I become Pope like Sixtus Quintus who kept pigs?"
  
  "They only make Italians Popes," answered his friend. "But they will
  certainly draw lots amongst us for the great vicarships, canonries and
  perhaps bishoprics. M. P---- Bishop of Chalons, is the son of a cooper.
  That's what my father is."
  
  One day, in the middle of a theology lesson, the Abbe Pirard summoned
  Julien to him. The young fellow was delighted to leave the dark, moral
  atmosphere in which he had been plunged. Julien received from the
  director the same welcome which had frightened him so much on the first
  day of his entry.
  
  "Explain to me what is written on this playing card?" he said, looking
  at him in a way calculated to make him sink into the earth.
  
  Julien read:
  
  "Amanda Binet of the Giraffe Cafe before eight o'clock. Say you're from
  Genlis, and my mother's cousin."
  
  Julien realised the immense danger. The spies of the abbe Castanede had
  stolen the address.
  
  "I was trembling with fear the day I came here," he answered, looking
  at the abbe Pirard's forehead, for he could not endure that terrible
  gaze. "M. Chelan told me that this is a place of informers and
  mischief-makers of all kinds, and that spying and tale-bearing by one
  comrade on another was encouraged by the authorities. Heaven wishes it
  to be so, so as to show life such as it is to the young priests, and
  fill them with disgust for the world and all its pomps."
  
  "And it's to me that you make these fine speeches," said the abbe
  Pirard furiously. "You young villain."
  
  "My brothers used to beat me at Verrieres," answered Julien coldly,
  "When they had occasion to be jealous of me."
  
  "Indeed, indeed," exclaimed M. Pirard, almost beside himself.
  
  Julien went on with his story without being in the least intimidated:--
  
  "The day of my arrival at Besancon I was hungry, and I entered a
  cafe. My spirit was full of revulsion for so profane a place, but I
  thought that my breakfast would cost me less than at an inn. A lady,
  who seemed to be the mistress of the establishment, took pity on my
  inexperience. 'Besancon is full of bad characters,' she said to me. 'I
  fear something will happen to you, sir. If some mishap should occur to
  you, have recourse to me and send to my house before eight o'clock. If
  the porters of the seminary refuse to execute your errand, say you are
  my cousin and a native of Genlis.'"
  
  "I will have all this chatter verified," exclaimed the abbe Pirard,
  unable to stand still, and walking about the room.
  
  "Back to the cell."
  
  The abbe followed Julien and locked him in. The latter immediately
  began to examine his trunk, at the bottom of which the fatal cards had
  been so carefully hidden. Nothing was missing in the trunk, but several
  things had been disarranged. Nevertheless, he had never been without
  the key. What luck that, during the whole time of my blindness, said
  Julien to himself, I never availed myself of the permission to go out
  that Monsieur Castanede would offer me so frequently, with a kindness
  which I now understand. Perhaps I should have had the weakness to have
  changed my clothes and gone to see the fair Amanda, and then I should
  have been ruined. When they gave up hope of exploiting that piece of
  information for the accomplishment of his ruin, they had used it to
  inform against him. Two hours afterwards the director summoned him.
  
  "You did not lie," he said to him, with a less severe look, "but
  keeping an address like that is an indiscretion of a gravity which you
  are unable to realise. Unhappy child! It may perhaps do you harm in ten
  years' time."
  
  
  
  
  
  CHAPTER XXVII
  
  FIRST EXPERIENCE OF LIFE
  
  
          The present time, Great God! is the ark of the Lord;
          cursed be he who touches it.--_Diderot_.
  
  
  The reader will kindly excuse us if we give very few clear and definite
  facts concerning this period of Julien's life. It is not that we
  lack facts; quite the contrary. But it may be that what he saw in
  the seminary is too black for the medium colour which the author
  has endeavoured to preserve throughout these pages. Those of our
  contemporaries who have suffered from certain things cannot remember
  them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that
  of reading a tale.
  
  Julien achieved scant success in his essays at hypocritical gestures.
  He experienced moments of disgust, and even of complete discouragement.
  He was not a success, even in a a vile career. The slightest help
  from outside would have sufficed to have given him heart again, for
  the difficulty to overcome was not very great, but he was alone, like
  a derelict ship in the middle of the ocean. "And when I do succeed,"
  he would say to himself, "think of having to pass a whole lifetime in
  such awful company, gluttons who have no thought but for the large
  omelette which they will guzzle at dinner-time, or persons like the
  abbe Castanede, who finds no crime too black! They will attain power,
  but, great heavens! at what cost.
  
  "The will of man is powerful, I read it everywhere, but is it enough to
  overcome so great a disgust? The task of all the great men was easy by
  comparison. However terrible was the danger, they found it fine, and
  who can realise, except myself, the ugliness of my surroundings?"
  
  This moment was the most trying in his whole life. It would have been
  so easy for him to have enlisted in one of the fine regiments at the
  garrison of Besancon. He could have become a Latin master. He needed so
  little for his subsistence, but in that case no more career, no more
  future for his imagination. It was equivalent to death. Here is one of
  his sad days in detail:
  
  "I have so often presumed to congratulate myself on being different
  from the other young peasants! Well, I have lived enough to realise
  that _difference engenders hate_," he said to himself one morning.
  This great truth had just been borne in upon him by one of his most
  irritating failures. He had been working for eight days at teaching a
  pupil who lived in an odour of sanctity. He used to go out with him
  into the courtyard and listen submissively to pieces of fatuity enough
  to send one to sleep standing. Suddenly the weather turned stormy. The
  thunder growled, and the holy pupil exclaimed as he roughly pushed him
  away.
  
  "Listen! Everyone for himself in this world. I don't want to be burned
  by the thunder. God may strike you with lightning like a blasphemer,
  like a Voltaire."
  
  "I deserve to be drowned if I go to sleep during the storm," exclaimed
  Julien, with his teeth clenched with rage, and with his eyes opened
  towards the sky now furrowed by the lightning. "Let us try the conquest
  of some other rogue."
  
  The bell rang for the abbe Castanede's course of sacred history. That
  day the abbe Castanede was teaching those young peasants already
  so frightened by their father's hardships and poverty, that the
  Government, that entity so terrible in their eyes, possessed no real
  and legitimate power except by virtue of the delegation of God's vicar
  on earth.
  
  "Render yourselves worthy, by the holiness of your life and by your
  obedience, of the benevolence of the Pope. Be _like a stick in his
  hands_," he added, "and you will obtain a superb position, where you
  will be far from all control, and enjoy the King's commands, a position
  from which you cannot be removed, and where one-third of the salary
  is paid by the Government, while the faithful who are moulded by your
  preaching pay the other two-thirds."
  
  Castanede stopped in the courtyard after he left the lesson-room. "It
  is particularly appropriate to say of a cure," he said to the pupils
  who formed a ring round him, "that the place is worth as much as the
  man is worth. I myself have known parishes in the mountains where the
  surplice fees were worth more than that of many town livings. There was
  quite as much money, without counting the fat capons, the eggs, fresh
  butter, and a thousand and one pleasant details, and there the cure is
  indisputably the first man. There is not a good meal to which he is not
  invited, feted, etc."
  
  Castanede had scarcely gone back to his room before the pupils split up
  into knots. Julien did not form part of any of them; he was left out
  like a black sheep. He saw in every knot a pupil tossing a coin in the
  air, and if he managed to guess right in this game of heads or tails,
  his comrades would decide that he would soon have one of those fat
  livings.
  
  Anecdotes ensued. A certain young priest, who had scarcely been
  ordained a year, had given a tame rabbit to the maidservant of an old
  cure, and had succeeded in being asked to be his curate. In a few
  months afterwards, for the cure had quickly died, he had replaced him
  in that excellent living. Another had succeeded in getting himself
  designated as a successor to a very rich town living, by being present
  at all the meals of an old, paralytic cure, and by dexterously carving
  his poultry. The seminarists, like all young people, exaggerated the
  effect of those little devices, which have an element of originality,
  and which strike the imagination.
  
  "I must take part in these conversations," said Julien to himself. When
  they did not talk about sausages and good livings, the conversation ran
  on the worldly aspect of ecclesiastical doctrine, on the differences of
  bishops and prefects, of mayors and cures. Julien caught sight of the
  conception of a second god, but of a god who was much more formidable
  and much more powerful than the other one. That second god was the
  Pope. They said among themselves, in a low voice, however, and when
  they were quite sure that they would not be heard by Pirard, that
  the reason for the Pope not taking the trouble of nominating all the
  prefects and mayors of France, was that he had entrusted that duty to
  the King of France by entitling him a senior son of the Church.
  
  It was about this time that Julien thought he could exploit, for the
  benefit of his own reputation, his knowledge of De Maistre's book
  on the Pope. In point of fact, he did astonish his comrades, but it
  was only another misfortune. He displeased them by expounding their
  own opinions better than they could themselves. Chelan had acted as
  imprudently for Julien as he had for himself. He had given him the
  habit of reasoning correctly, and of not being put off by empty words,
  but he had neglected to tell him that this habit was a crime in the
  person of no importance, since every piece of logical reasoning is
  offensive.
  
  Julien's command of language added consequently a new crime to his
  score. By dint of thinking about him, his colleagues succeeded in
  expressing the horror with which he would inspire them by a single
  expression; they nicknamed him Martin Luther, "particularly," they
  said, "because of that infernal logic which makes him so proud."
  
  Several young seminarists had a fresher complexion than Julien, and
  could pass as better-looking, but he had white hands, and was unable to
  conceal certain refined habits of personal cleanliness. This advantage
  proved a disadvantage in the gloomy house in which chance had cast
  him. The dirty peasants among whom he lived asserted that he had very
  abandoned morals. We fear that we may weary our reader by a narration
  of the thousand and one misfortunes of our hero. The most vigorous of
  his comrades, for example, wanted to start the custom of beating him.
  He was obliged to arm himself with an iron compass, and to indicate,
  though by signs, that he would make use of it. Signs cannot figure in a
  spy's report to such good advantage as words.
  
  
  
  
  
  
feat_summary_name: Chapters 25-27
target: Julien is admitted to the presence of the rector, Father Pirard, by an extremely ugly porter. This impression of ugliness and the fright given by the sternness of Pirard cause Julien to faint. Pirard agrees to give him a full scholarship in recognition of the recommendation from his dear friend Chelan. Julien obviously impresses Pirard favorably by his knowledge of scripture and Latin and by the clarity and insight of his answers. Julien is taken to his cell, where he falls into a deep sleep. His first meeting with Pirard has given him to believe that the seminary is taken seriously by the students. Julien fails miserably in his attempt to succeed by brilliant achievement. He also has erred by requesting Pirard as his confessor instead of the rector's Jesuit enemy. Julien learns that to distinguish himself and gain acceptance among his fellows, he must appear stupid, materialistic, and docile. The Jesuit Castanede has found Armanda's address in Julien's luggage and has denounced him to Pirard. Confronted by the rector, Julien lies successfully and exonerates himself. It is the baseness, vulgarity, and ugliness of his adversaries -- his fellow seminarians -- that cause him to flinch and become discouraged in his struggle. His attempts to win them are without success. The description of the ideal awaiting the young priests as preached by Father Castanede revolts Julien: It consists of being well-fed, of vegetating in a parish surrounded by all the physical comforts. His eloquence proves to be another reason for alienation from his fellows, and he must often defend himself against physical attacks.
feat_summary_analysis: Verrieres was protected by walls, figuratively speaking, that Julien succeeded in climbing; now he enters another "prison," the seminary, which he must also conquer. In direct contrast to his imagined conquest of Armanda in the cafe, Julien's interview with Pirard is a confrontation that overwhelms and terrifies him. His sensitive nature shuts out ugliness by rendering him unconscious. Again Stendhal omits Julien's brilliant, concise answers to Pirard's interrogation, although we learn that Julien's answers evoke Pirard's admiration for him. The keenness of Stendhal's psychological observation is noted in the brief statement occurring at the end of the interview, which casts light on Julien's frame of mind in retrospect: "Julien looked down and saw his trunk directly in front of him; he had been looking at it for three hours without recognizing it." Moments of intense emotional strain prevent us from evaluating objectively a situation except in retrospect. The prison-like nature of the seminary is emphasized by fleeting views of the outside world, caught by Julien through a window, both during the grueling interview with Pirard and later in his cell. This glimpse of "high places" -- mountains, in this instance -- serves to reassure Julien and is inspirational to him in this crisis. Just as Julien blundered in his attempt to seduce Mme. de Renal, he will blunder in his attempt to succeed in the seminary. The cafe scene served to mark his progress as a seducer, evidence that he had gained experience and wisdom from the experiences in Verrieres. Here, however, is a new field of experience, and his evaluation of the interview with Pirard gives him a false sense of security, causing him to fail miserably in his first few weeks in the seminary. He thought that his usual hypocritical mask was the one to assume, but he soon discovers that he has assumed the wrong mask. It is not excellence that is required of the young, would-be priests but rather submission, obedience, and docility. Even in the seminary, Julien is an outsider, a pariah, because of his superior nature. He has great difficulty trying to perfect a mask of stupidity. Note, however, his progress in the second interview with Pirard. Stendhal admits the reader into a complicity with Julien in the following way: Julien cleverly utilizes the two incidents that had occurred during his first day in Besancon, taking from each what he needs to substantiate his lie to Pirard. Stendhal does not make any comment on this operation. Julien utilizes, then, the potential of Stendhal's logic. Julien's self-imposed campaign of austerity has borne fruits, however, since in not leaving the seminary, he has avoided a worse fate. He has succeeded, again, in spite of himself.