But this embarrassment would have been nothing if he had only known how to vent his temper otherwise than by the giving of a blow, for if it had come to a matter of fisticuffs, his enormous rival would have beaten him and then cleared out.
"There is not much difference between a seminary and a prison," said Julien to himself, "for a poor devil like me, without protectors and without money.
I must leave my civilian clothes in some inn, where I can put my black suit on again.
If I ever manage to get out of the seminary for a few hours, I shall be able to see Mdlle. Amanda again in my lay clothes." This reasoning was all very fine. Though Julien passed in front of all the inns, he did not dare to enter a single one.
Finally, as he was passing again before the Hotel des Ambassadeurs, his anxious eyes encountered those of a big woman, still fairly young, with a high colour, and a gay and happy air.
He approached her and told his story.
"Certainly, my pretty little abbe," said the hostess of the Ambassadeurs to him, "I will keep your lay clothes for you, and I will even have them regularly brushed. In weather like this, it is not good to leave a suit of cloth without touching it."
She took a key, and conducted him herself to a room, and advised him to make out a note of what he was leaving.
"Good heavens. How well you look like that, M. the abbe Sorel," said the big woman to him when he came down to the kitchen.
I will go and get a good dinner served up to you, and she added in a low voice, "It will only cost twenty sous instead of the fifty which everybody else pays, for one must really take care of your little purse strings."
"I have ten louis," Julien replied with certain pride.
"Oh, great heavens," answered the good hostess in alarm.
"Don't talk so loud, there are quite a lot of bad characters in Besancon.
They'll steal all that from you in less than no time, and above all, never go into the cafe s, they are filled with bad characters."
"Indeed," said Julien, to whom those words gave food for thought.
"Don't go anywhere else, except to my place. I will make coffee for you.
Remember that you will always find a friend here, and a good dinner for twenty sous. So now you understand, I hope.
Go and sit down at table, I will serve you myself."
"I shan't be able to eat," said Julien to her.
"I am too upset. I am going to enter the seminary, as I leave you."
The good woman, would not allow him to leave before she had filled his pockets with provisions.
Finally Julien took his road towards the terrible place.
The hostess was standing at the threshold, and showed him the way. _____
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,