3 books to know Napoleonic Wars. Leo Tolstoy

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СКАЧАТЬ pater optime (Yes, excellent Father),’ replied Julien, who was beginning to come to himself. Certainly nobody in the world had appeared to him less excellent than M. Pirard, during the last half-hour.

      The conversation continued in Latin. The expression in the abbe’s eyes grew gentler; Julien recovered a certain coolness. ‘How weak I am,’ he thought, ‘to let myself be imposed upon by this show of virtue! This man will be simply a rascal like M. Maslon’; and Julien congratulated himself on having hidden almost all his money in his boots.

      The abbe Pirard examined Julien in theology, and was surprised by the extent of his knowledge. His astonishment increased when he questioned him more particularly on the Holy Scriptures. But when he came to questions touching the doctrine of the Fathers, he discovered that Julien barely knew the names of Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine, Saint Bonaventure, Saint Basil, etc., etc.

      ‘In fact,’ thought the abbe Pirard, ‘here is another instance of that fatal tendency towards Protestantism which I have always had to rebuke in Chelan. A thorough, a too thorough acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures.’

      (Julien had just spoken to him, without having been questioned on the subject, of the true date of authorship of Genesis, the Pentateuch, etc.)

      ‘To what does all this endless discussion of the Holy Scriptures lead,’ thought the abbe Pirard, ‘if not to private judgment, that is to say to the most fearful Protestantism? And, in conjunction with this rash learning, nothing about the Fathers that can compensate for this tendency.’

      But the astonishment of the Director of the Seminary knew no bounds when, questioning Julien as to the authority of the Pope, and expecting the maxims of the ancient Gallican church, he heard the young man repeat the whole of M. de Maistre’s book.

      ‘A strange man, Chelan,’ thought the abbe Pirard; ‘has he given him this book to teach him to laugh at it?’

      In vain did he question Julien, trying to discover whether he seriously believed the doctrine of M. de Maistre. The young man could answer him only by rote. From this moment, Julien was really admirable, he felt that he was master of himself. After a prolonged examination it seemed to him that M. Pirard’s severity towards him was no more than an affectation. Indeed, but for the rule of austere gravity which, for the last fifteen years, he had imposed on himself in dealing with his pupils in theology, the Director of the Seminary would have embraced Julien in the name of logic, such clarity, precision, and point did he find in the young man’s answers.

      ‘This is a bold and healthy mind,’ he said to himself, ‘but corpus debile(a frail body).

      ‘Do you often fall like that?’ he asked Julien in French, pointing with his finger to the floor.

      ‘It was the first time in my life; the sight of the porter’s face paralysed me,’ Julien explained, colouring like a child.

      The abbe Pirard almost smiled.

      ‘Such is the effect of the vain pomps of this world; you are evidently accustomed to smiling faces, positive theatres of falsehood. The truth is austere, Sir. But is not our task here below austere also? You will have to see that your conscience is on its guard against this weakness: Undue sensibility to vain outward charms.

      ‘Had you not been recommended to me,’ said the abbe Pirard, returning with marked pleasure to the Latin tongue, ‘had you not been recommended to me by a man such as the abbe Chelan, I should address you in the vain language of this world to which it appears that you are too well accustomed. The entire bursary for which you apply is, I may tell you, the hardest thing in the world to obtain. But the abbe Chelan has earned little, by fifty-six years of apostolic labours, if he cannot dispose of a bursary at the Seminary.’

      After saying these words, the abbe Pirard advised Julien not to join any secret society or congregation without his consent.

      ‘I give you my word of honour,’ said Julien with the heartfelt warmth of an honest man.

      The Director of the Seminary smiled for the first time.

      ‘That expression is not in keeping here,’ he told him; ‘it is too suggestive of the vain honour of men of the world, which leads them into so many errors and often into crime. You owe me obedience in virtue of the seventeenth paragraph of the Bull Unam Ecclesiam of Saint Pius V. I am your ecclesiastical superior. In this house to hear, my dearly beloved son, is to obey. How much money have you?’

      (‘Now we come to the point,’ thought Julien, ‘this is the reason of the “dearly beloved son”.’)

      ‘Thirty-five francs, Father.’

      ‘Keep a careful note of how you spend your money; you will have to account for it to me.’

      This exhausting interview had lasted three hours. Julien was told to summon the porter.

      ‘Put Julien Sorel in cell number 103,’ the abbe Pirard told the man.

      As a special favour, he was giving Julien a room to himself.

      ‘Take up his trunk,’ he added.

      Julien lowered his eyes and saw his trunk staring him in the face; he had been looking at it for three hours and had never seen it.

      On arriving at No. 103, which was a tiny room eight feet square on the highest floor of the building, Julien observed that it looked out towards the ramparts, beyond which one saw the smiling plain which the Doubs divides from the city.

      ‘What a charming view!’ exclaimed Julien; in speaking thus to himself he was not conscious of the feeling implied by his words. The violent sensations he had experienced in the short time that he had spent in Besancon had completely drained his strength. He sat down by the window on the solitary wooden chair that was in his cell, and at once fell into a profound slumber. He did not hear the supper bell, nor that for Benediction; he had been forgotten.

      When the first rays of the sun awakened him next morning, he found himself lying upon the floor.

      Chapter 26

      THE WORLD, OR WHAT the Rich Lack

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      I AM ALONE ON EARTH, no one deigns to think of me. All the people I see making their fortunes have a brazenness and a hard-heartedness which I do not sense in myself. Ah! I shall soon be dead, either of hunger, or from the sorrow of finding men so hard.

      YOUNG

      He made haste to brush his coat and to go downstairs; he was late. An under-master rebuked him severely; instead of seeking to excuse himself, Julien crossed his arms on his breast:

      ‘Peccavi, pater optime (I have sinned, I confess my fault, O Father),’ he said with a contrite air.

      This was a most successful beginning. The sharp wits among the seminarists saw that they had to deal with a man who was not new to the game. The recreation hour came, Julien saw himself the object of general curiosity. But they found in him merely reserve and silence. Following the maxims that he had laid down for himself, he regarded his three СКАЧАТЬ