3 books to know Napoleonic Wars. Leo Tolstoy

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СКАЧАТЬ that he who possesses a good coat! My comrades have a definite vocation; that is to say, they see in the ecclesiastical calling a long continuation of this happiness: dining well and having a warm coat in winter.’

      Julien happened to hear a young seminarist, endowed with imagination, say to his companion:

      ‘Why should not I become Pope like Sixtus v, who was a swineherd?’

      ‘They make none but Italians Popes,’ replied the friend; ‘but they’ll draw lots among us, for sure, to fill places as Vicars–General and Canons, and perhaps Bishops. M. P—— the Bishop of Chalons, is the son of a cooper; that is my father’s trade.’

      One day, in the middle of a lesson in dogma, the abbe Pirard sent for Julien. The poor young fellow was delighted to escape from the physical and moral atmosphere in which he was plunged.

      Julien found himself greeted by the Director in the manner which had so frightened him on the day of his joining the Seminary.

      ‘Explain to me what I see written upon this playing card,’ he said to him, looking at him in such a way as to make him wish that the earth would open and swallow him.

      Julien read:

      ‘Amanda Binet, at the Giraffe cafe, before eight o’clock. Say you are from Genlis, and a cousin of my mother.’

      Julien perceived the immensity of the danger; the abbe Castanede’s police had stolen the address from him.

      ‘The day on which I came here,’ he replied, gazing at the abbe Pirard’s forehead, for he could not face his terrible eye, ‘I was trembling with fear: M. Chelan had told me that this was a place full of tale-bearing and spite of all sorts; spying and the accusation of one’s comrades are encouraged here. Such is the will of heaven, to show life as it is to young priests, and to inspire in them a disgust with the world and its pomps.’

      ‘And it is to me that you make these fine speeches’— the abbe Pirard was furious. ‘You young rascal!’

      ‘At Verrieres,’ Julien went on calmly, ‘my brothers used to beat me when they had any reason to be jealous of me . . . ’

      ‘To the point! Get to the point!’ cried M. Pirard, almost beside himself.

      Without being the least bit in the world intimidated, Julien resumed his narrative.

      ‘On the day of my coming to Besancon, about noon, I felt hungry, I went into a cafe. My heart was filled with repugnance for so profane a spot; but I thought that my luncheon would cost me less there than at an inn. A lady, who seemed to be the mistress of the place, took pity on my raw looks. “Besancon is full of wicked people,” she told me, “I am afraid for you, Sir. If you find yourself in any trouble, come to me, send a message to me before eight o’clock. If the porters at the Seminary refuse to take your message, say that you are my cousin, and come from Genlis . . . ”’

      ‘All this farrago will have to be investigated,’ exclaimed the abbe Pirard who, unable to remain in one place, was striding up and down the room.

      ‘You will go back to your cell!’

      The abbe accompanied Julien and locked him in. He himself at once proceeded to examine his trunk, in the bottom of which the fatal card had been carefully concealed. Nothing was missing from the trunk, but several things had been disarranged; and yet the key never left his possession. ‘How fortunate,’ Julien said to himself, ‘that during the time of my blindness I never made use of the permission to leave the building, which M. Castanede so frequently offered me with a generosity which I now understand. Perhaps I might have been so foolish as to change my clothes and pay the fair Amanda a visit, I should have been ruined. When they despaired of making any use of their information in that way, so as not to waste it they have used it to denounce me.

      A couple of hours later, the Director sent for him.

      ‘You have not lied,’ he said to him, looking at him less severely; ‘but to keep such an address is an imprudence the serious nature of which you cannot conceive. Unhappy boy! In ten years, perhaps, it will redound to your hurt.’

      Chapter 27

      FIRST EXPERIENCE OF Life

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      The present moment, by God! is the ark of the Lord. Woe betide the man who lays his hand upon it.

      DIDEROT

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      THE READER WILL KINDLY excuse our giving but few clear and precise details of this epoch in Julien’s life. Not that we lack them, far from it; but perhaps the life he led in the Seminary is too black for the modest colouring which we have sought to preserve in these pages. People who have been made to suffer by certain things cannot be reminded of them without a horror which paralyses every other pleasure, even that to be found in reading a story.

      Julien met with little success in his attempts at hypocrisy in action; he passed through moments of disgust and even of complete discouragement. He was utterly unsuccessful, and that moreover in a vile career. The slightest help from without would have sufficed to restore his morale, the difficulty to be overcome was not great; but he was alone, as lonely as a vessel abandoned in mid-ocean. ‘And if I should succeed,’ he said to himself; ‘to have to spend my whole life in such evil company! Gluttons who think of nothing but the ham omelette they are going to devour at dinner, or men like the abbe Castanede, to whom no crime is too black! They will rise to power; but at what a price, great God!

      ‘Man’s will is powerful, I see it written everywhere; but is it sufficiently so to overcome such repulsion? The task of great men has always been easy; however terrible was their danger, it was beautiful in their eyes; and who but myself can realise the ugliness of all that surrounds me?’

      This was the most trying moment in his life. It was so easy for him to enlist in one of the fine regiments that were stationed at Besancon! He might become a teacher of Latin; he wanted so little to keep himself alive! But then, no career, no future for his imagination: it was a living death. Here is a detailed account of one of his wretched days.

      ‘My presumption has so often flattered itself upon my being different from the other young peasants! Well, I have lived long enough to see that difference breeds hatred,’ he said to himself one morning. This great truth had just been revealed to him by one of his most annoying failures. He had laboured for a week to make himself agreeable to a student who lived in the odour of sanctity. He was walking with him in the courtyard, listening submissively to idiocies that sent him to sleep as he walked. Suddenly a storm broke, the thunder growled, and the saintly student exclaimed, thrusting him rudely away:

      ‘Listen, each for himself in this world, I have no wish to be struck by lightning: God may blast you as an infidel, another Voltaire.’

      His teeth clenched with rage and his eyes opened towards the sky furrowed by streaks of lightning: ‘I should deserve to be submerged, were I to let myself sleep during the storm!’ cried Julien. ‘Let us attempt the conquest of some other drudge.’

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