"What do you say?" replied Fouqué.
"I'm asking if you've got any Constitutionnels?" went on Julien in the quietest tone imaginable. "They cost thirty sous a number here."
"What!" exclaimed Fouqué. "Liberals even in the seminary! Poor France," he added, assuming the abbé Maslon's hypocritical voice and sugary tone.
This visit would have made a deep impression on our hero, if he had not been put on the track of an important discovery by some words addressed to him the following day by the little seminarist from Verrières. Julien's conduct since he had been at the seminary had been nothing but a series of false steps. He began to make bitter fun of himself.
In point of fact the important actions in his life had been cleverly managed, but he was careless about details, and cleverness in a seminary consists in attention to details. Consequently, he had already the reputation among his comrades of being a strong-minded person. He had been betrayed by a number of little actions.
He had been convicted in their eyes of this enormity, he thought and judged for himself instead of blindly following authority and example. The abbé Pirard had been no help to him. He had not spoken to him on a single occasion apart from the confessional, and even there he listened more than he spoke. Matters would have been very different if he had chosen the abbé Castanède. The moment that Julien realised his folly, he ceased to be bored. He wished to know the whole extent of the evil, and to effect this emerged a little from that haughty obstinate silence with which he had scrupulously rebuffed his comrades. It was now that they took their revenge on him. His advances were welcomed by a contempt verging on derision. He realised that there had not been one single hour from the time of his entry into the seminary, particularly during recreation time, which had not resulted in affecting him one way or another, which had not increased the number of his enemies, or won for him the goodwill of some seminarist who was either sincerely virtuous or of a fibre slightly less coarse than that of the others. The evil to repair was infinite, and the task very difficult. Henceforth, Julien's attention was always on guard. The problem before him was to map out a new character for himself.
