("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.