sound stirred Julien deeply. His imagination rose from the ground.
The odour of the incense and of the rose leaves strewn before the Blessed Sacrament by children dressed as little Saint Johns, intensified his excitement.
The sober note of the bell ought to have suggested to Julien only the thought of the work of a score of men earning fifty centimes, and assisted perhaps by fifteen or twenty of the faithful. He ought to have thought of the wear and tear of the ropes, of the timber, of the danger from the bell itself which fell every two hundred years, and to have planned some way of diminishing the wage of the ringers, or of paying them with some indulgence or other favour drawn from the spiritual treasury of the Church, with no strain upon her purse.
In place of these sage reflections, Julien’s soul, excited by these rich and virile sounds, was straying through imaginary space. Never will he make either a good priest or a great administrator. Souls that are moved thus are capable at most of producing an artist. Here Julien’s presumption breaks out in the full light of day. Fifty, perhaps, of his fellow seminarists, made attentive to the realities of life by the public hatred and Jacobinism which, they are told, is lurking behind every hedge, on hearing the big bell of the Cathedral, would have thought only of the wages paid to the ringers. They would have applied the genius of a Bareme to determine the question whether the degree of emotion aroused in the public was worth the money given to the ringers. Had Julien chosen to give his mind to the material interests of the Cathedral, his imagination flying beyond its goal would have thought of saving forty francs for the Chapter, and would have let slip the opportunity of avoiding an outlay of twenty-five centimes.
While, in the most perfect weather ever seen, the procession wound its way slowly through Besancon, and halted at the glittering stations which all the local authorities had vied with one another in erecting, the church remained wrapped in a profound silence. A suffused light, an agreeable coolness reigned in it; it was still balmy with the fragrance of flowers and incense.
The silence, the profound solitude, the coolness of the long aisles, made Julien’s musings all the sweeter. He had no fear of being disturbed by the abbe Chas, who was occupied in another part of the building. His soul had almost quitted its mortal envelope, which was strolling at a slow pace along the north aisle committed to his charge. He was all the more at rest, since he was certain that there was nobody in the confessionals save a few devout women; he saw without observing.
His distraction was nevertheless half conquered by the sight of two women extremely well dressed who were kneeling, one of them in a confessional, the other, close beside her, upon a chair. He saw without observing them; at the same time, whether from a vague sense of his duty, or from admiration of the plain but noble attire of these ladies, he remarked that there was no priest in that confessional. ‘It is strange,’ he thought, ‘that these beautiful ladies are not kneeling before some station, if they are religious; or placed in good seats in the front of some balcony, if they are fashionable. How well cut that gown is! What grace!’ He slackened his pace in order to see their faces.
The one who was kneeling in the confessional turned her head slightly on hearing the sound of Julien’s step amid the prevailing silence. All at once she gave a little cry, and fainted.
As her strength left her, this kneeling lady fell back; her friend, who was close at hand, hastened to the rescue. At the same time Julien caught sight of the shoulders of the lady who had fallen back. A rope of large seed pearls, well known to him, caught his eye. What was his state when he recognised the hair of Madame de Renal! It was she. The lady who was trying to hold up her head, and to arrest her fall, was Madame Derville. Julien, beside himself with emotion, sprang forward; Madame de Renal’s fall would perhaps have brought down her friend if he had not supported them. He saw Madame de Renal’s head, pale, absolutely devoid of consciousness, drooping upon her shoulder. He helped Madame Derville to prop that charming head against the back of a straw chair; he was on his knees.
Madame Derville turned and recognised him.
‘Fly, Sir, fly!’ she said to him in accents of the most burning anger. ‘On no account must she see you again. The sight of you must indeed fill her with horror, she was so happy before you came! Your behaviour is atrocious. Fly; be off with you, if you have any shame left.’
This speech was uttered with such authority, and Julien felt so weak at the moment, that he withdrew. ‘She always hated me,’ he said to himself, thinking of Madame Derville.
At that moment, the nasal chant of the leading priests in the procession rang through the church; the procession was returning. The abbe Chas–Bernard called repeatedly to Julien, who at first did not hear him: finally he came and led him by the arm from behind a pillar where Julien had taken refuge more dead than alive. He wished to present him to the Bishop.
‘You are feeling unwell, my child,’ said the abbe, seeing him so pale and almost unable to walk; ‘you have been working too hard.’ The abbe gave him his arm. ‘Come, sit down here, on the sacristan’s little stool, behind me; I shall screen you.’ They were now by the side of the main door. ‘Calm yourself, we have still a good twenty minutes before Monseigneur appears. Try to recover yourself; when he passes, I shall hold you up, for I am strong and vigorous, in spite of my age.’
But when the Bishop passed, Julien was so tremulous that the abbe Chas abandoned the idea of presenting him.
‘Do not worry yourself about it,’ he told him, ‘I shall find another opportunity.’
That evening, he sent down to the chapel of the Seminary ten pounds of candles, saved, he said, by Julien’s efforts and the rapidity with which he extinguished them. Nothing could have been farther from the truth. The poor boy was himself extinguished; he had not had a thought in his head after seeing Madame de Renal.
Chapter 29
THE FIRST STEP
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He knew his times, he knew his departement, and he is rich.
Le Precurseur
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JULIEN HAD NOT YET recovered from the profound abstraction in which the incident in the Cathedral had plunged him, when one morning the grim abbe Pirard sent for him.
‘Here is M. l’abbe Chas–Bernard writing to me to commend you. I am quite satisfied with your conduct as a whole. You are extremely imprudent and indeed stupid, without showing it; however, up to the present your heart is sound and even generous; your intellect is above the average. Taking you all in all, I see a spark in you which must not be neglected.
‘After fifteen years of labour, I am on the eve of leaving this establishment: my crime is that of having allowed the seminarists to use their own judgment, and of having neither protected nor unmasked that secret society of which you have spoken to me at the stool of penitence. Before I go, I wish to do something for you; I should have acted two months ago, for you deserve it, but for the accusation based upon the address of Amanda Binet, which was found in your possession. I appoint you tutor in the New and Old Testaments.’
Julien, in a transport of gratitude, quite thought of falling on his knees and thanking God; but he yielded to a more genuine impulse. He went up to the abbe Pirard and took his hand, which he raised to his lips.
‘What is this?’ cried the Director in a tone of annoyance; but Julien’s eyes were even more eloquent than his action.
The abbe Pirard gazed at him in astonishment, like a man who, in the course of long years, has fallen out of the way of meeting with delicate emotions. This attention pierced the Director’s armour; his voice changed.
‘Ah, well! Yes, my child, I am attached to you. Heaven knows that it is entirely against my will. I ought