Chapter summary
The narrator warns that he will say little about this dark period. Julien Sorel, who barely progresses in the hypocrisy of gestures, goes through the greatest trial of his life, considering enlisting or becoming a Latin teacher, and discovers what difference hatred makes when a fellow student reputed for holiness repels him at the first thunder. Father Castanède teaches that government has legitimate power only by delegation from the pope. The fellow students talk only of fat parishes and of rabbits given to the maids of old curés, and Julien, who tries to make use of Maistre's book on the pope, earns the nickname Martin Luther for his logic. Isolated like a mangy sheep, he even arms himself with an iron compass against the stronger fellow students who wanted to beat him.
Analysis
Julien weighs enlisting or becoming a Latin teacher, but draws back because leaving would mean losing the career he imagines. He stays, and pays the price: the hatred of his fellow students comes from what sets him apart, reasoning where he is expected to obey. Isolated, he even arms himself with an iron compass against the stronger ones who wanted to beat him. What holds him there is the image of himself in the future, not faith.
The despondency of Julien at the seminary (see the seminary at Besançon): He could become a Latin teacher; he needed so little to live on! But then, goodbye career, goodbye the future of his imagination: it was like dying. Here are the details of one of his sad days.
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