Who He Is
Abbé of the seminary at Besançon who receives, examines and protects Julien Sorel, and who later goes to Paris in the service of the Marquis de La Mole. In Chapter 29 of Book I he is described as someone who treats Julien without calculation, despite his severity, and as the first to tell him the truth about what awaits him.
Trajectory
In Chapter 25 of Book I, he receives Julien without noticing his presence for ten minutes.
Julien's arrival at the seminary, before Abbé Pirard:
The man did not notice Julien's presence. Julien stood motionless in the middle of the room, where the porter had left him before closing the door on his way out. Ten minutes passed; the shabbily dressed man was still writing. Julien's emotion and terror were so great that he felt he might collapse at any moment. A philosopher would have said, perhaps mistakenly: Here is the violent impression of ugliness upon a soul made to love what is beautiful.
He examines him, is surprised by his command of Scripture, and finds strange the ignorance of the Church Fathers, which he attributes to Abbé Chélan.
The theology examination with Abbé Pirard:
Abbé Pirard subjected Julien to an examination in theology, and was surprised by the extent of his knowledge. His astonishment grew when he questioned him on Holy Scripture. But when he came to questions about the doctrines of the Church Fathers, he realized that Julien barely knew the names of Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine, Saint Bonaventure, Saint Basil, etc., etc. Indeed, thought Abbé Pirard, here is the fatal tendency toward Protestantism that I have always reproached in Chélan. A profound and excessively profound knowledge of Holy Scripture.
He accepts Julien because of Chélan, warns him against secret societies, and, on Julien's departure from the seminary, tells him bluntly what awaits him.
Pirard, despite his severity, is the one who treats Julien without calculation: he accepted him because of Abbé Chélan, warned him against secret societies, and now tells him plainly. He is the strictest of them all, and the first to tell Julien the truth about what awaits him:
your companions will never look at you without hating you; if they pretend to love you, it will be only to betray you the better.
Julien, who counts his classmates as enemies and Pirard as the most dangerous of them all, chooses him as his confessor.
Julien at the seminary, among enemies:
Following the maxims he had set himself, he considered his three hundred and twenty-one classmates his enemies, the most dangerous of them all being Abbé Pirard. A few days later, Julien had to choose a confessor, and a list was presented to him. Ah, my God! What do they take me for?, he thought. Do they imagine I don't know where I am treading? He chose Abbé Pirard.
His dispute with Abbé de Frilair is one of factions, and each names the other in the vocabulary of his faction.
Abbé Pirard himself names what drives him, in a thought the book does not leave implicit:
I am preventing the progress of Jesuitism and idolatry, he thought.
The adversary returns the accusation in the same factional vocabulary:
This one felt outraged by the insolence, and coming from a mere little Jansenist, at that!
With a letter from Father Chas-Bernard in his favor, he promotes Julien to tutor in the New and Old Testaments. In the general examination, Frilair demotes Julien to 198th place out of revenge against Pirard.
The reach of the net that sets up this revenge is described without euphemism:
that skillful man who had so wisely organized the network of the Besançon congregation, and whose letters to Paris made judges, the governor and even the officers of the garrison tremble, had written with his own hand the number 198 beside Julien's name.
About to fall for not having taken sides in the factional dispute, he promotes Julien before leaving, hands his own resignation to the bishop, and, at parting, leaves him a warning in Latin about his successor.
Pirard keeps the first volume of Tacitus, whose dedication by the bishop will be Julien's lightning rod at the seminary, and takes his leave with a warning in Latin about his successor:
Erit tibi, fili mi, successor meus tanquam leo quœrens quem devoret.(For you, my son, my successor will be like a raging lion, seeking someone to devour.)
Once in Paris, in the service of the marquis, whom he had defended for years in the lawsuit against Frilair, he suggests Julien as secretary.
In Chapter 1 of Book II, he instructs Julien about the house that awaits him.
Ch. I. Abbé Pirard describing the La Mole family:
He has two sons, a daughter, and a son of nineteen, elegant beyond compare, an eccentric who never knows at noon what he will do at two o'clock.
He leaves Julien alone in Paris for two days before introducing him to the marquise, and, once in the La Mole house, warns him that the marquis does not like scribblers: whoever writes a page in French on serious matters earns his resentment. It is among Pirard's Jansenists that Julien meets Count Altamira.
In Chapter 34 of Book II, it is at his presbytery that Julien hides while the marquis resists the marriage to Mathilde, and in Chapter 35 of Book II he is the one who brings Julien the marquis's twenty thousand francs, now addressed to Monsieur de La Vernaye.
Themes Embodied
The standard themes that run through him are Religion, Education and training, and Politics.
Pirard's protection and Frilair's persecution reach Julien together: the 198th place in the examination is a revenge against the protector, not against the pupil. And Julien's road to Paris stays within the same quarrel, because the master to whom Pirard takes him is the man who has a lawsuit against Frilair.
Relationships
- Julien Sorel: the pupil he examines, accepts, promotes and sends on to Paris.
- Abbé Chélan: on whose recommendation he accepts Julien, and whom he reproaches for his tendency toward Protestantism.
- Abbé de Frilair: the factional adversary, who calls him a mere little Jansenist.
- Marquis de La Mole: the nobleman he serves and whom he defends in the inheritance lawsuit.