3 books to know Napoleonic Wars. Leo Tolstoy

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СКАЧАТЬ his friends, his enemies? It is all so ugly, and all the more ugly, the more accurately it is drawn from life. These are however the only teachers of ethics that the people have, and without them where should we be? Will the newspaper ever manage to take the place of the parish priest?

      Since Julien’s promotion, the Director of the Seminary made a point of never speaking to him except in the presence of witnesses. This was only prudent, in the master’s interest as well as the pupil’s; but more than anything else it was a test. The stern Jansenist Pirard’s invariable principle was: ‘Has a man any merit in your eyes? Place an obstacle in the way of everything that he desires, everything that he undertakes. If his merit be genuine, he will certainly be able to surmount or thrust aside your obstacles.’

      It was the hunting season. Fouque took it into his head to send to the Seminary a stag and a boar in the name of Julien’s family. The dead animals were left lying in the passage, between kitchen and refectory. There all the seminarists saw them on their way to dinner. They aroused much interest. The boar, although stone dead, frightened the younger boys; they fingered his tusks. Nothing else was spoken of for a week.

      This present, which classified Julien’s family in the section of society that one must respect, dealt a mortal blow to jealousy. It was a form of superiority consecrated by fortune. Chazel and the most distinguished of the seminarists made overtures to him, and almost complained to him that he had not warned them of his parents’ wealth, and had thus betrayed them into showing a want of respect for money.

      There was a conscription from which Julien was exempt in his capacity as a seminarist. This incident moved him deeply. ‘And so there has passed now for ever the moment at which, twenty years ago, a heroic life would have begun for me!’

      Walking by himself in the Seminary garden, he overheard a conversation between two masons who were at work upon the enclosing wall.

      ‘Ah, well! One will have to go, here’s another conscription.’

      In the other man’s days, well and good! A stone mason became an officer, and became a general, that has been known.’

      ‘Look what it’s like now! Only the beggars go. A man with the wherewithal stays at home.’

      ‘The man who is born poor stays poor, and that’s all there is to it.’

      ‘Tell me, now, is it true what people say, that the other is dead?’ put in a third mason.

      ‘It’s the big ones who say that, don’t you see? They were afraid of the other.’

      ‘What a difference, how well everything went in his time! And to think that he was betrayed by his Marshals! There must always be a traitor somewhere!’

      This conversation comforted Julien a little. As he walked away he repeated to himself with a sigh:

      ‘The only King whose memory the people cherish still!’

      The examinations came round. Julien answered the questions in a brilliant manner; he saw that Chazel himself was seeking to display the whole extent of his knowledge.

      On the first day, the examiners appointed by the famous Vicar–General de Frilair greatly resented having always to place first, or at the very most second on their list this Julien Sorel who had been pointed out to them as the favourite of the abbe Pirard. Wagers were made in the Seminary that in the aggregate list of the examinations, Julien would occupy the first place, a distinction that carried with it the honour of dining with the Bishop. But at the end of one session, in which the subject had been the Fathers of the Church, a skilful examiner, after questioning Julien upon Saint Jerome, and his passion for Cicero, began to speak of Horace, Virgil and other profane authors. Unknown to his companions, Julien had learned by heart a great number of passages from these authors. Carried away by his earlier successes, he forgot where he was and, at the repeated request of the examiner, recited and paraphrased with enthusiasm several odes of Horace. Having let him sink deeper and deeper for twenty minutes, suddenly the examiner’s face changed, and he delivered a stinging rebuke to Julien for having wasted his time in these profane studies, and stuffed his head with useless if not criminal thoughts.

      ‘I am a fool, Sir, and you are right,’ said Julien with a modest air, as he saw the clever stratagem by which he had been taken in.

      This ruse on the examiner’s part was considered a dirty trick, even in the Seminary, though this did not prevent M. l’abbe de Frilair, that clever man, who had so ably organised the framework of the Bisontine Congregation, and whose reports to Paris made judges, prefect, and even the general officers of the garrison tremble, from setting, with his powerful hand, the number 198 against Julien’s name. He was delighted thus to mortify his enemy, the Jansenist Pirard.

      For the last ten years his great ambition had been to remove Pirard from control of the Seminary. That cleric, following in his own conduct the principles which he had outlined to Julien, was sincere, devout, innocent of intrigue, devoted to his duty. But heaven, in its wrath, had given him that splenetic temperament, bound to feel deeply insults and hatred. Not one of the affronts that were put upon him was lost upon his ardent spirit. He would have offered his resignation a hundred times, but he believed that he was of use in the post in which Providence had placed him. ‘I prevent the spread of Jesuitry and idolatry,’ he used to say to himself.

      At the time of the examinations, it was perhaps two months since he had spoken to Julien, and yet he was ill for a week, when, on receiving the official letter announcing the result of the competition, he saw the number 198 set against the name of that pupil whom he regarded as the glory of his establishment. The only consolation for this stern character was to concentrate upon Julien all the vigilance at his command. He was delighted to find in him neither anger nor thoughts of revenge, nor discouragement.

      Some weeks later, Julien shuddered on receiving a letter; it bore the Paris postmark. ‘At last,’ he thought, ‘Madame de Renal has remembered her promises.’ A gentleman who signed himself Paul Sorel, and professed to be related to him, sent him a bill of exchange for five hundred francs. The writer added that if Julien continued to study with success the best Latin authors, a similar sum would be sent to him every year.

      ‘It is she, it is her bounty!’ Julien said to himself with emotion, ‘she wishes to comfort me; but why is there not one word of affection?’

      He was mistaken with regard to the letter; Madame de Renal, under the influence of her friend Madame Derville, was entirely absorbed in her own profound remorse. In spite of herself, she often thought of the strange creature whose coming into her life had so upset it, but she would never have dreamed of writing to him.

      If we spoke the language of the Seminary, we might see a miracle in this windfall of five hundred francs, and say that it was M. de Frilair himself that heaven had employed to make this gift to Julien.

      Twelve years earlier, M. l’abbe de Frilair had arrived at Besancon with the lightest of portmanteaux, which, the story went, contained his entire fortune. He now found himself one of the wealthiest landowners in the Department. In the course of his growing prosperity he had purchased one half of an estate of which the other half passed by inheritance to M. de La Mole. Hence a great lawsuit between these worthies.

      Despite his brilliant existence in Paris, and the posts which he held at court, the Marquis de La Mole felt that it was dangerous to fight down at Besancon against a Vicar–General who was reputed to make and unmake Prefects. Instead of asking for a gratuity of fifty thousand francs, disguised under some head or other that would pass in the budget, and allowing M. de Frilair to win this pettifogging action for fifty thousand СКАЧАТЬ