Page:The red and the black (1916).djvu/201

Rh not to enter any secret society or congregation without his consent.

"I give you my word of honour," said Julien, with all an honest man's expansion of heart. The director of the seminary smiled for the first time.

"That expression is not used here," he said to him. "It is too reminiscent of that vain honour of worldly people, which leads them to so many errors and often to so many crimes. You owe me obedience by virtue of paragraph seventeen of the bull Unam Eccesiam of St. Pius the Fifth. I am your ecclesiastical superior. To hear in this house, my dear son, is to obey. How much money, have you?"

("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 abbé 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 Besançon 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.