The First StepHe knew his times, he knew his departement, and he is rich.
Le PrecurseurJulien had not yet recovered from the profound abstraction in whichthe incident in the Cathedral had plunged him, when one morning thegrim abbe Pirard sent for him.
'Here is M. l'abbe Chas-Bernard writing to me to commend you. I amquite satisfied with your conduct as a whole. You are extremely imprudent and indeed stupid, without showing it; however, up to thepresent your heart is sound and even generous; your intellect is abovethe average. Taking you all in all, I see a spark in you which must not beneglected.
'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 theirown judgment, and of having neither protected nor unmasked thatsecret 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 twomonths ago, for you deserve it, but for the accusation based upon the address of Amanda Binet, which was found in your possession. I appointyou tutor in the New and Old Testaments.'
Julien, in a transport of gratitude, quite thought of falling on his kneesand thanking God; but he yielded to a more genuine impulse. He wentup 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'seyes were even more eloquent than his action.
The abbe Pirard gazed at him in astonishment, like a man who, in thecourse of long years, has fallen out of the way of meeting with delicateemotions. This attention pierced the Director's armour; his voicechanged.
'Ah, well! Yes, my child, I am attached to you. Heaven knows that it isentirely against my will. I ought to be just, and to feel neither hatred norlove for anyone. Your career will be difficult. I see in you something thatoffends the common herd. Jealousy and calumny will pursue you. Inwhatever place Providence may set you, your companions will never seteyes on you without hating you; and if they pretend to love you, it willbe in order to betray you the more surely. For this there is but one remedy: have recourse only to God, who has given you, to punish you foryour presumption, this necessity of being hated; let your conduct bepure; that is the sole resource that I can see for you. If you hold fast to thetruth with an invincible embrace, sooner or later your enemies will beput to confusion."It was so long since Julien had heard a friendly voice, that we mustforgive him a weakness: he burst into tears. The abbe Pirard opened hisarms to embrace him; the moment was very precious to them both.
Julien was wild with joy; this promotion was the first that he had obtained; the advantages were immense. In order to realise them, one musthave been condemned to pass whole months without a moment'ssolitude, and in immediate contact with companions at best tiresome,and mostly intolerable. Their shouts alone would have been enough tocreate disorder in a sensitive organism. The boisterous joy of these peasants well fed and well dressed, could find expression, thought itself complete only when they were shouting with the full force of their lungs.
Now Julien dined by himself, or almost so, an hour later than the restof the seminarists. He had a key to the garden, and might walk there atthe hours when it was empty.
Greatly to his surprise, Julien noticed that they hated him less; he hadbeen expecting, on the contrary, an intensification of their hatred. Thatsecret desire that no one should speak to him, which was all too apparent and had made him so many enemies, was no longer a sign of absurdpride. In the eyes of the coarse beings among whom he lived, it was aproper sense of his own dignity. Their hatred diminished perceptibly, especially among the youngest of his companions, now become his pupils,whom he treated with great courtesy. In course of time he had even supporters; it became bad form to call him Martin Luther.
But why speak of his friends, his enemies? It is all so ugly, and all themore ugly, the more accurately it is drawn from life. These are howeverthe only teachers of ethics that the people have, and without them where should we be? Will the newspaper ever manage to take the place of theparish priest?
Since Julien's promotion, the Director of the Seminary made a point ofnever speaking to him except in the presence of witnesses. This was onlyprudent, in the master's interest as well as the pupil's; but more thananything else it was a test. The stern Jansenist Pirard's invariable principle was: 'Has a man any merit in your eyes? Place an obstacle in theway of everything that he desires, everything that he undertakes. If hismerit be genuine, he will certainly be able to surmount or thrust asideyour obstacles.'
It was the hunting season. Fouque took it into his head to send to theSeminary a stag and a boar in the name of Julien's family. The dead animals were left lying in the passage, between kitchen and refectory.
There all the seminarists saw them on their way to dinner. They arousedmuch interest. The boar, although stone dead, frightened the youngerboys; they fingered his tusks. Nothing else was spoken of for a week.
This present, which classified Julien's family in the section of societythat one must respect, dealt a mortal blow to jealousy. It was a form ofsuperiority consecrated by fortune. Chazel and the most distinguished ofthe seminarists made overtures to him, and almost complained to himthat he had not warned them of his parents' wealth, and had thus betrayed them into showing a want of respect for money.
There was a conscription from which Julien was exempt in his capacityas a seminarist. This incident moved him deeply. 'And so there haspassed now for ever the moment at which, twenty years ago, a heroic lifewould have begun for me!'
Walking by himself in the Seminary garden, he overheard a conversation between two masons who were at work upon the enclosing wall.
'Ah, well! One will have to go, here's another conscription.'
In the other man's days, well and good! A stone mason became an officer, and became a general, that has been known.'
'Look what it's like now! Only the beggars go. A man with the wherewithal stays at home.'
'The man who is born poor stays poor, and that's all there is to it.'
'Tell me, now, is it true what people say, that the other is dead?' put ina third mason.
'It's the big ones who say that, don't you see? They were afraid of theother.'
'What a difference, how well everything went in his time! And to thinkthat he was betrayed by his Marshals! There must always be a traitorsomewhere!'
This conversation comforted Julien a little. As he walked away he repeated to himself with a sigh:
'The only King whose memory the people cherish still!'
The examinations came round. Julien answered the questions in a brilliant manner; he saw that Chazel himself was seeking to display thewhole extent of his knowledge.
On the first day, the examiners appointed by the famous Vicar-Generalde Frilair greatly resented having always to place first, or at the verymost second on their list this Julien Sorel who had been pointed out tothem as the favourite of the abbe Pirard. Wagers were made in the Seminary that in the aggregate list of the examinations, Julien would occupythe first place, a distinction that carried with it the honour of dining withthe Bishop. But at the end of one session, in which the subject had beenthe Fathers of the Church, a skilful examiner, after questioning Julienupon Saint Jerome, and his passion for Cicero, began to speak of Horace,Virgil and other profane authors. Unknown to his companions, Julienhad learned by heart a great number of passages from these authors.
Carried away by his earlier successes, he forgot where he was and, at therepeated request of the examiner, recited and paraphrased with enthusiasm several odes of Horace. Having let him sink deeper and deeper fortwenty minutes, suddenly the examiner's face changed, and he delivereda stinging rebuke to Julien for having wasted his time in these profanestudies, and stuffed his head with useless if not criminal thoughts.
'I am a fool, Sir, and you are right,' said Julien with a modest air, as hesaw the clever stratagem by which he had been taken in.
This ruse on the examiner's part was considered a dirty trick, even inthe Seminary, though this did not prevent M. l'abbe de Frilair, that cleverman, who had so ably organised the framework of the Bisontine Congregation, and whose reports to Paris made judges, prefect, and even the general officers of the garrison tremble, from setting, with his powerfulhand, the number 198 against Julien's name. He was delighted thus tomortify his enemy, the Jansenist Pirard.
For the last ten years his great ambition had been to remove Pirardfrom control of the Seminary. That cleric, following in his own conductthe principles which he had outlined to Julien, was sincere, devout, innocent of intrigue, devoted to his duty. But heaven, in its wrath, had given him that splenetic temperament, bound to feel deeply insults and hatred.
Not one of the affronts that were put upon him was lost upon his ardentspirit. He would have offered his resignation a hundred times, but he believed that he was of use in the post in which Providence had placedhim. 'I prevent the spread of Jesuitry and idolatry,' he used to say tohimself.
At the time of the examinations, it was perhaps two months since hehad spoken to Julien, and yet he was ill for a week, when, on receivingthe official letter announcing the result of the competition, he saw thenumber 198 set against the name of that pupil whom he regarded as theglory of his establishment. The only consolation for this stern characterwas to concentrate upon Julien all the vigilance at his command. He wasdelighted to find in him neither anger nor thoughts of revenge, nordiscouragement.
Some weeks later, Julien shuddered on receiving a letter; it bore theParis postmark. 'At last,' he thought, 'Madame de Renal has rememberedher promises.' A gentleman who signed himself Paul Sorel, and professed to be related to him, sent him a bill of exchange for five hundredfrancs. The writer added that if Julien continued to study with successthe best Latin authors, a similar sum would be sent to him every year.
'It is she, it is her bounty!' Julien said to himself with emotion, 'shewishes to comfort me; but why is there not one word of affection?'
He was mistaken with regard to the letter; Madame de Renal, underthe influence of her friend Madame Derville, was entirely absorbed inher own profound remorse. In spite of herself, she often thought of thestrange creature whose coming into her life had so upset it, but shewould never have dreamed of writing to him.
If we spoke the language of the Seminary, we might see a miracle inthis windfall of five hundred francs, and say that it was M. de Frilairhimself that heaven had employed to make this gift to Julien.
Twelve years earlier, M. l'abbe de Frilair had arrived at Besancon withthe lightest of portmanteaux, which, the story went, contained his entirefortune. He now found himself one of the wealthiest landowners in theDepartment. In the course of his growing prosperity he had purchasedone half of an estate of which the other half passed by inheritance to M.
de La Mole. Hence a great lawsuit between these worthies.
Despite his brilliant existence in Paris, and the posts which he held atcourt, the Marquis de La Mole felt that it was dangerous to fight down atBesancon against a Vicar-General who was reputed to make and unmake Prefects. Instead of asking for a gratuity of fifty thousand francs, disguised under some head or other that would pass in the budget, and allowing M. de Frilair to win this pettifogging action for fifty thousandfrancs, the Marquis took offence. He believed that he had a case: a finereason!
For, if we may be so bold as to say it: what judge is there who has not ason, or at least a cousin to help on in the world?
To enlighten the less clear-sighted, a week after the first judgment thathe obtained, M. l'abbe de Frilair took the Bishop's carriage, and went inperson to convey the Cross of the Legion of Honour to his counsel. M. deLa Mole, somewhat dismayed by the bold front assumed by the otherside, and feeling that his own counsel were weakening, asked the adviceof the abbe Chelan, who put him in touch with M. Pirard.
At the date of our story they had been corresponding thus for someyears. The abbe Pirard dashed into the business with all the force of hispassionate nature. In constant communication with the Marquis's counsel, he studied his case, and finding him to be in the right, openly declared himself a partisan of the Marquis de La Mole against the allpowerful Vicar-General. The latter was furious at such insolence, andcoming from a little Jansenist to boot!
'You see what these court nobles are worth who claim to have suchpower!' the abbe de Frilair would say to his intimates; 'M. de La Mole hasnot sent so much as a wretched Cross to his agent at Besancon, and is going to allow him to be deprived of his post without a murmur. And yet,my friends write to me, this noble peer never allows a week to passwithout going to show off his blue riband in the drawing-room of theKeeper of the Seals, for what that is worth.'
In spite of all M. Pirard's activity, and albeit M. de La Mole was alwayson the best of terms with the Minister of Justice and still more with hisofficials, all that he had been able to achieve, after six years of constanteffort, was to avoid actually losing his case.
In ceaseless correspondence with the abbe Pirard, over an affair whichthey both pursued with passion, the Marquis came in time to appreciatethe abbe's type of mind. Gradually, despite the immense gulf betweentheir social positions, their correspondence took on a tone of friendship.
The abbe Pirard told the Marquis that his enemies were seeking to obligehim, by their insults, to offer his resignation. In the anger which he felt atthe infamous stratagem (according to him) employed against Julien, herelated the latter's story to the Marquis.
Although extremely rich, this great nobleman was not in the least amiser. He had never once been able to make the abbe Pirard accept somuch as the cost of postage occasioned by the lawsuit. He took the opportunity to send five hundred francs to the abbe's favourite pupil.
M. de La Mole took the trouble to write the covering letter with hisown hand. This set him thinking of the abbe.
One day the latter received a short note in which he was requested tocall at once, upon urgent business, at an inn on the outskirts of Besancon.
There he found M. de La Mole's steward.
'M. le Marquis has instructed me to bring you his carriage,' he was informed. 'He hopes that after you have read this letter, you will find itconvenient to start for Paris, in four or five days from now. I am going toemploy the time which you will be so kind as to indicate to me in visiting the estates of M. le Marquis in the Franche-Comte. After which, onwhatever day suits you, we shall start for Paris.'
The letter was brief:
'Rid yourself, my dear Sir, of all these provincial bickerings, come andbreathe a calmer air in Paris. I am sending you my carriage, which hasorders to await your decision for four days. I shall wait for you myself, inParis, until Tuesday. It requires only the word yes, from you, Sir, tomake me accept in your name one of the best livings in the neighbourhood of Paris. The wealthiest of your future parishioners has never seteyes on you, but is devoted to you more warmly than you can suppose;he is the Marquis de La Mole.'
Without knowing it, the stern abbe Pirard loved this Seminary,peopled with his enemies, to which, for fifteen years, he had devoted allhis thoughts. M. de La Mole's letter was to him like the sudden appearance of a surgeon with the duty of performing a painful but necessaryoperation. His dismissal was certain. He gave the steward an appointment, in three days' time.
For the next forty-eight hours, he was in a fever of uncertainty. Finally,he wrote to M. de La Mole and composed, for the Bishop's benefit, a letter, a masterpiece of ecclesiastical diction, though a trifle long. It wouldhave been difficult to find language more irreproachable, or breathing amore sincere respect. And yet this letter, intended to give M. de Frilair atrying hour with his patron, enumerated all the serious grounds for complaint and descended to the sordid little pinpricks which, after he hadborne them, with resignation, for six years, were forcing the abbe Pirardto leave the diocese.
They stole the wood from his shed, they poisoned his dog, etc., etc.
This letter written, he sent to awaken Julien who, at eight o'clock in theevening, was already asleep, as were all the seminarists.
'You know where the Bishop's Palace is?' he said to him in the bestLatin; 'take this letter to Monseigneur. I shall not attempt to conceal fromyou that I am sending you amongst wolves. Be all eyes and ears. No prevarication in your answers; but remember that the man who is questioning you would perhaps take a real delight in trying to harm you. I amglad, my child, to give you this experience before I leave you, for I do notconceal from you that the letter which you are taking contains myresignation.'
Julien did not move; he was fond of the abbe Pirard. In vain mightprudence warn him:
'After this worthy man's departure, the Sacred Heart party will degrade and perhaps even expel me.'
He could not think about himself. What embarrassed him was a sentence which he wished to cast in a polite form, but really he was incapable of using his mind.
'Well, my friend, aren't you going?'
'You see, Sir, they say,' Julien began timidly, 'that during your long administration here, you have never put anything aside. I have six hundredfrancs.'
Tears prevented him from continuing.
'That too will be noticed,' said the ex-Director of the Seminary coldly.
'Go to the Palace, it is getting late.'
As luck would have it, that evening M. l'abbe de Frilair was in attendance in the Bishop's parlour; Monseigneur was dining at the Prefecture.
So that it was to M. de Frilair himself that Julien gave the letter, but hedid not know who he was.
Julien saw with astonishment that this priest boldly opened the letteraddressed to the Bishop. The fine features of the Vicar-General soon revealed a surprise mingled with keen pleasure, and his gravity increased.
While he was reading, Julien, struck by his good looks, had time to examine him. It was a face that would have had more gravity but for theextreme subtlety that appeared in certain of its features, and would actually have suggested dishonesty, if the owner of that handsome face hadceased for a moment to control it. The nose, which was extremely prominent, formed an unbroken and perfectly straight line, and gave unfortunately to a profile that otherwise was most distinguished, an irremediable resemblance to the mask of a fox. In addition, this abbe whoseemed so greatly interested in M. Pirard's resignation, was dressed withan elegance that greatly pleased Julien, who had never seen its like onany other priest.
It was only afterwards that Julien learned what was the abbe deFrilair's special talent. He knew how to amuse his Bishop, a pleasant oldman, made to live in Paris, who regarded Besancon as a place of exile.
This Bishop was extremely short-sighted, and passionately fond of fish.
The abbe de Frilair used to remove the bones from the fish that was setbefore Monseigneur.
Julien was silently watching the abbe as he read over again the letter ofresignation, when suddenly the door burst open. A lackey, richly attired,passed rapidly through the room. Julien had barely time to turn towardsthe door; he saw a little old man, wearing a pectoral cross. He fell on hisknees: the Bishop bestowed a kind smile upon him as he passed throughthe room. The handsome abbe followed him, and Julien was left alone inthis parlour, the pious magnificence of which he could now admire at hisleisure.
The Bishop of Besancon, a man of character, tried, but not crushed bythe long hardships of the Emigration, was more than seventy-five, andcared infinitely little about what might happen in the next ten years.
'Who is that clever-looking seminarist, whom I seemed to see as Ipassed?' said the Bishop. 'Ought they not, by my orders, to be in theirbeds at this hour?'
'This one is quite wide awake, I assure you, Monseigneur, and hebrings great news: the resignation of the only Jansenist left in your diocese. That terrible abbe Pirard understands at last the meaning of a hint.'
'Well,' said the Bishop with a laugh, 'I defy you to fill his place with aman of his quality. And to show you the value of the man, I invite him todine with me tomorrow.'
The Vicar-General wished to insinuate a few words as to the choice ofa successor. The prelate, little disposed to discuss business, said to him:
'Before we put in the next man, let us try to discover why this one isgoing. Fetch me in that seminarist, the truth is to be found in the mouthsof babes.'
Julien was summoned: 'I shall find myself trapped between two inquisitors,' he thought. Never had he felt more courageous.
At the moment of his entering the room, two tall valets, better dressedthan M. Valenod himself, were disrobing Monseigneur. The prelate, before coming to the subject of M. Pirard, thought fit to question Julienabout his studies. He touched upon dogma, and was amazed. Presentlyhe turned to the Humanities, Virgil, Horace, Cicero. 'Those names,'
thought Julien, 'earned me my number 198. I have nothing more to lose,let us try to shine.' He was successful; the prelate, an excellent humanisthimself, was enchanted.
At dinner at the Prefecture, a girl, deservedly famous, had recited thepoem of La Madeleine. 6 He was in the mood for literary conversation,and at once forgot the abbe Pirard and everything else, in discussingwith the seminarist the important question, whether Horace had beenrich or poor. The prelate quoted a number of odes, but at times hismemory began to fail him, and immediately Julien would recite the entire ode, with a modest air; what struck the Bishop was that Julien neverdeparted from the tone of the conversation; he said his twenty or thirtyLatin verses as he would have spoken of what was going on in his Seminary. A long discussion followed of Virgil and Cicero. At length the prelate could not refrain from paying the young seminarist a compliment.
'It would be impossible to have studied to better advantage.'
'Monseigneur,' said Julien, 'your Seminary can furnish you with onehundred and ninety-seven subjects far less unworthy of your esteemedapproval.'
'How so?' said the prelate, astonished at this figure.
'I can support with official proof what I have the honour to say beforeMonseigneur.
'At the annual examination of the Seminary, answering questionsupon these very subjects which have earned me, at this moment,Monseigneur's approval, I received the number 198.'
'Ah! This is the abbe Pirard's favourite,' exclaimed the Bishop, with alaugh, and with a glance at M. de Frilair; 'we ought to have expected this;but it is all in fair play. Is it not the case, my friend,' he went on, turningto Julien, 'that they waked you from your sleep to send you here?'
'Yes, Monseigneur. I have never left the Seminary alone in my life butonce, to go and help M. l'abbe Chas-Bernard to decorate the Cathedral,on the feast of Corpus Christi.'
6.A poem by Delphine Gay 'Optime,' said the Bishop; 'what, it was you that showed such greatcourage, by placing the bunches of plumes on the baldachino? Theymake me shudder every year; I am always afraid of their costing me aman's life. My friend, you will go far; but I do not wish to cut short yourcareer, which will be brilliant, by letting you die of hunger.'
And, on an order from the Bishop, the servants brought in biscuits andMalaga wine, to which Julien did honour, and even more so than abbeFrilair, who knew that his Bishop liked to see him eat cheerfully andwith a good appetite.
The prelate, growing more and more pleased with the close of hisevening, spoke for a moment of ecclesiastical history. He saw that Juliendid not understand. He then passed to the moral conditions of the Roman Empire, under the Emperors of the Age of Constantine. The lastdays of paganism were accompanied by that state of uneasiness anddoubt which, in the nineteenth century, is disturbing sad and wearyminds. Monseigneur remarked that Julien seemed hardly to know eventhe name of Tacitus.
Julien replied with candour, to the astonishment of the prelate, thatthis author was not to be found in the library of the Seminary.
'I am really delighted to hear it,' said the Bishop merrily. 'You relieveme of a difficulty; for the last ten minutes, I have been trying to think of away of thanking you for the pleasant evening which you have given me,and certainly in a most unexpected manner. Although the gift is scarcelycanonical, I should like to give you a set of Tacitus.'
The prelate sent for eight volumes handsomely bound, and insistedupon writing with his own hand, on the title-page of the first, a Latin inscription to Julien Sorel. The Bishop prided himself on his fine Latinity;he ended by saying to him, in a serious tone, completely at variance withhis tone throughout the rest of the conversation:
'Young man, if you are wise, you shall one day have the best living inmy diocese, and not a hundred leagues from my episcopal Palace; butyou must be wise.'
Julien, burdened with his volumes, left the Palace, in great bewilderment, as midnight was striking.
Monseigneur had not said a word to him about the abbe Pirard. Julienwas astonished most of all by the extreme politeness shown him by theBishop. He had never imagined such an urbanity of form, combinedwith so natural an air of dignity. He was greatly struck by the contrast when he set eyes once more on the sombre abbe Pirard, who awaitedhim with growing impatience.
'Quid tibi dixerunt? (What did they say to you?)' he shouted at the topof his voice, the moment Julien came within sight.
Then, as Julien found some difficulty in translating the Bishop's conversation into Latin:
'Speak French, and repeat to me Monseigneur's own words, withoutadding or omitting anything,' said the ex-Director of the Seminary, in hisharsh tone and profoundly inelegant manner.
'What a strange present for a Bishop to make to a young seminarist,' hesaid as he turned the pages of the sumptuous Tacitus, the gilded edges ofwhich seemed to fill him with horror.
Two o'clock was striking when, after a detailed report of everything,he allowed his favourite pupil to retire to his own room.
'Leave me the first volume of your Tacitus, which contains theBishop's inscription,' he said to him. 'That line of Latin will be your lightning conductor in this place, when I have gone.
'Erit tibi, fili mi, successor meus tanquam leo quaerens quern devoret. (Mysuccessor will be to you, my son, as a lion seeking whom he maydevour.)'
On the following morning, Julien detected something strange in themanner in which his companions addressed him. This made him all themore reserved. 'Here,' he thought, 'we have the effect of M. Pirard'sresignation. It is known throughout the place, and I am supposed to behis favourite. There must be an insult behind this attitude'; but he couldnot discover it. There was, on the contrary, an absence of hatred in theeyes of all whom he encountered in the dormitories. 'What can thismean? It is doubtless a trap, we are playing a close game.' At length theyoung seminarist from Verrieres said to him with a laugh: 'Cornelii Tacitiopera omnia (Complete Works of Tacitus).'
At this speech, which was overheard, all the rest seemed to vie withone another in congratulating Julien, not only upon the magnificentpresent which he had received from Monseigneur, but also upon the twohours of conversation with which he had been honoured. It was commonknowledge, down to the most trifling details. From this moment, therewas no more jealousy; everyone paid court to him most humbly; theabbe Castanede who, only yesterday, had treated him with the utmostinsolence, came to take him by the arm and invited him to luncheon.
Owing to a weakness in Julien's character, the insolence of these coarsecreatures had greatly distressed him; their servility caused him disgustand no pleasure.
Towards midday, the abbe Pirard took leave of his pupils, not withoutfirst delivering a severe allocution. 'Do you seek the honours of thisworld,' he said to them, 'all social advantages, the pleasure of commanding men, that of defying the laws and of being insolent to all men withimpunity? Or indeed do you seek your eternal salvation? The most ignorant among you have only to open their eyes to distinguish betweenthe two paths.'
No sooner had he left than the devotees of the Sacred Heart of Jesuswent to chant a Te Deum in the chapel. Nobody in the Seminary took thelate Director's allocution seriously. 'He is very cross at being dismissed,'
was what might be heard on all sides. Not one seminarist was simpleenough to believe in the voluntary resignation of a post which providedso many opportunities for dealing with the big contractors.
The abbe Pirard took up his abode in the best inn in Besancon; and onthe pretext of some imaginary private affairs, proposed to spend acouple of days there.
The Bishop invited him to dinner, and, to tease his Vicar-General, deFrilair, endeavoured to make him shine. They had reached the dessertwhen there arrived from Paris the strange tidings that the abbe Pirardwas appointed to the splendid living of N ——, within four leagues ofthe capital. The worthy prelate congratulated him sincerely. He saw inthe whole affair a well played game which put him in a good humourand gave him the highest opinion of the abbe's talents. He bestowedupon him a magnificent certificate in Latin, and silenced the abbe de Frilair, who ventured to make remonstrances.
That evening, Monseigneur carried his admiration to the drawing-room of the Marquise de Rubempre. It was a great piece of news for theselect society of Besancon; people were lost in conjectures as to the meaning of this extraordinary favour. They saw the abbe Pirard a Bishopalready. The sharper wits supposed M. de La Mole to have become aMinister, and allowed themselves that evening to smile at the imperiousairs which M. l'abbe de Frilair assumed in society.
Next morning, the abbe Pirard was almost followed through thestreets, and the tradesmen came out to their shop-doors when he went tobeg an audience of the Marquis's judges. For the first time, he was received by them with civility. The stern Jansenist, indignant at everything that he saw around him, spent a long time at work with the counselwhom he had chosen for the Marquis de La Mole, and then left for Paris.
He was so foolish as to say to two or three lifelong friends who escortedhim to the carriage and stood admiring its heraldic blason, that after governing the Seminary for fifteen years he was leaving Besancon with fivehundred and twenty francs in savings. These friends embraced him withtears in their eyes, and then said to one another: The good abbe mighthave spared himself that lie, it is really too absurd.'
The common herd, blinded by love of money, were not fitted to understand that it was in his sincerity that the abbe Pirard had found thestrength to fight single-handed for six years against Marie Alacoque, theSacred Heart of Jesus, the Jesuits and his Bishop.