الفصل الفصل 29 · THE FIRST PROMOTION

. THE FIRST PROMOTION

He knew his age, he knew his department, and he is rich.

_The Forerunner_.

Julien had not emerged from the deep reverie in which the episode in

the cathedral had plunged him, when the severe abbé Pirard summoned him.

"M. the abbé Chas-Bernard has just written in your favour. I am on

the whole sufficiently satisfied with your conduct. You are extremely

imprudent and irresponsible without outward signs of it. However, up

to the present, you have proved yourself possessed of a good and even

generous heart. Your intellect is superior. Taking it all round, I see

in you a spark which one must not neglect.

"I am on the point of leaving this house after fifteen years of work.

My crime is that I have left the seminarists to their free will, and

that I have neither protected nor served that secret society of which

you spoke to me at the Confessional. I wish to do something for you

before I leave. I would have done so two months earlier, for you

deserve it, had it not been for the information laid against you as

the result of the finding in your trunk of Amanda Binet's address. I

will make you New and Old Testament tutor. Julien was transported with

gratitude and evolved the idea of throwing himself on his knees and

thanking God. He yielded to a truer impulse, and approaching the abbé

Pirard, took his hand and pressed it to his lips.

"What is the meaning of this?" exclaimed the director angrily, but

Julien's eyes said even more than his act.

The abbé Pirard looked at him in astonishment, after the manner of a

man who has long lost the habit of encountering refined emotions. The

attention deceived the director. His voice altered.

"Well yes, my child, I am attached to you. Heaven knows that I have

been so in spite of myself. I ought to show neither hate nor love to

anyone. I see in you something which offends the vulgar. Jealousy and

calumny will pursue you in whatever place Providence may place you.

Your comrades will never behold you without hate, and if they pretend

to like you, it will only be to betray you with greater certainty. For

this there is only one remedy. Seek help only from God, who, to punish

you for your presumption, has cursed you with the inevitable hatred

of your comrades. Let your conduct be pure. That is the only resource

which I can see for you. If you love truth with an irresistible

embrace, your enemies will sooner or later be confounded."

It had been so long since Julien had heard a friendly voice that he

must be forgiven a weakness. He burst out into tears.

The abbé Pirard held out his arms to him. This moment was very sweet

to both of them. Julien was mad with joy. This promotion was the first

which he had obtained. The advantages were immense. To realise them one

must have been condemned to pass months on end without an instant's

solitude, and in immediate contact with comrades who were at the best

importunate, and for the most part insupportable. Their cries alone

would have sufficed to disorganise a delicate constitution. The noise

and joy of these peasants, well-fed and well-clothed as they were,

could only find a vent for itself, or believe in its own completeness

when they were shouting with all the strength of their lungs.

Now Julien dined alone, or nearly an hour later than the other

seminarists. He had a key of the garden and could walk in it when no

one else was there.

Julien was astonished to perceive that he was now hated less. He, on

the contrary, had been expecting that their hate would become twice as

intense. That secret desire of his that he should not be spoken to,

which had been only too manifest before, and had earned him so many

enemies, was no longer looked upon as a sign of ridiculous haughtiness.

It became, in the eyes of the coarse beings who surrounded him, a just

appreciation of his own dignity. The hatred of him sensibly diminished,

above all among the youngest of his comrades, who were now his pupils,

and whom he treated with much politeness. Gradually he obtained his own

following. It became looked upon as bad form to call him Martin Luther.

But what is the good of enumerating his friends and his enemies? The

whole business is squalid, and all the more squalid in proportion to

the truth of the picture. And yet the clergy supply the only teachers

of morals which the people have. What would happen to the people

without them? Will the paper ever replace the cure?

Since Julien's new dignity, the director of the seminary made a point

of never speaking to him without witnesses. These tactics were prudent,

both for the master and for the pupil, but above all it was meant for

a test. The invariable principle of that severe Jansenist Pirard was

this--"if a man has merit in your eyes, put obstacles in the way of

all he desires, and of everything which he undertakes. If the merit is

real, he will manage to overthrow or get round those obstacles."

It was the hunting season. It had occurred to Fouqué to send a stag

and a boar to the seminary as though they came from Julien's parents.

The dead animals were put down on the floor between the kitchen and

the refectory. It was there that they were seen by all the seminarists

on their way to dinner. They constituted a great attraction for their

curiosity. The boar, dead though it was, made the youngest ones feel

frightened. They touched its tusks. They talked of nothing else for a

whole week.

This gift, which raised Julien's family to the level of that class

of society which deserves respect, struck a deadly blow at all

jealousy. He enjoyed a superiority, consecrated by fortune. Chazel,

the most distinguished of the seminarists, made advances to him, and

always reproached him for not having previously apprised them of his

parents' position and had thus involved them in treating money without

sufficient respect. A conscription took place, from which Julien, in

his capacity as seminarist, was exempt. This circumstance affected him

profoundly. "So there is just passed for ever that moment which, twenty

years earlier, would have seen my heroic life begin. He was walking

alone in the seminary garden. He heard the masons who were walling up

the cloister walls talking between themselves.

"Yes, we must go. There's the new conscription. When _the other_ was

alive it was good business. A mason could become an officer then, could

become a general then. One has seen such things."

"You go and see now. It's only the ragamuffins who leave for the army.

Any one _who has anything_ stays in the country here."

"The man who is born wretched stays wretched, and there you are."

"I say, is it true what they say, that the other is dead?" put in the

third mason.

"Oh well, it's the '_big men_' who say that, you see. The other one

made them afraid."

"What a difference. How the fortification went ahead in his time. And

to think of his being betrayed by his own marshals."

This conversation consoled Julien a little. As he went away, he

repeated with a sigh:

"_Le seul roi dont le peuple a gardé la mémoire._"

The time for the examination arrived. Julien answered brilliantly. He

saw that Chazel endeavoured to exhibit all his knowledge. On the first

day the examiners, nominated by the famous Grand Vicar de Frilair, were

very irritated at always having to put first, or at any rate second,

on their list, that Julien Sorel, who had been designated to them as

the Benjamin of the Abbé Pirard. There were bets in the seminary that

Julien would come out first in the final list of the examination, a

privilege which carried with it the honour of dining with my Lord

Bishop. But at the end of a sitting, dealing with the fathers of the

Church, an adroit examiner, having first interrogated Julien on Saint

Jerome and his passion for Cicero, went on to speak about Horace,

Virgil and other profane authors. Julien had learnt by heart a great

number of passages from these authors without his comrades' knowledge.

Swept away by his successes, he forgot the place where he was, and

recited in paraphrase with spirit several odes of Horace at the

repeated request of the examiner. Having for twenty minutes given him

enough rope to hang himself, the examiner changed his expression, and

bitterly reproached him for the time he had wasted on these profane

studies, and the useless or criminal ideas which he had got into his

head.

"I am a fool, sir. You are right," said Julien modestly, realising the

adroit stratagem of which he was the victim.

This examiner's dodge was considered dirty, even at the seminary, but

this did not prevent the abbé de Frilair, that adroit individual who

had so cleverly organised the machinery of the Besançon congregation,

and whose despatches to Paris put fear into the hearts of judges,

prefect, and even the generals of the garrison, from placing with

his powerful hand the number 198 against Julien's name. He enjoyed

subjecting his enemy, Pirard the Jansenist, to this mortification.

His chief object for the last ten years had been to deprive him of the

headship of the seminary. The abbé, who had himself followed the plan

which he had indicated to Julien, was sincere, pious, devoted to his

duties and devoid of intrigue, but heaven in its anger had given him

that bilious temperament which is by nature so deeply sensitive to

insults and to hate. None of the insults which were addressed to him

was wasted on his burning soul. He would have handed in his resignation

a hundred times over, but he believed that he was useful in the place

where Providence had set him. "I prevent the progress of Jesuitism and

Idolatry," he said to himself.

At the time of the examinations, it was perhaps nearly two months

since he had spoken to Julien, and nevertheless, he was ill for eight

days when, on receipt of the official letter announcing the result of

the competition, he saw the number 198 placed beside the name of that

pupil whom he regarded as the glory of his town. This stern character

found his only consolation in concentrating all his surveillance on

Julien. He was delighted that he discovered in him neither anger, nor

vindictiveness, nor discouragement.

Julien felt a thrill some months afterwards when he received a letter.

It bore the Paris post-mark. Madame de Rênal is remembering her

promises at last, he thought. A gentleman who signed himself Paul

Sorel, and who said that he was his relative, sent him a letter of

credit for five hundred francs. The writer went on to add that if

Julien went on to study successfully the good Latin authors, a similar

sum would be sent to him every year.

"It is she. It is her kindness," said Julien to himself, feeling quite

overcome. "She wishes to console me. But why not a single word of

affection?"

He was making a mistake in regard to this letter, for Madame de Rênal,

under the influence of her friend, Madame Derville, was abandoning

herself absolutely to profound remorse. She would often think, in

spite of herself, of that singular being, the meeting with whom had

revolutionized her life. But she carefully refrained from writing to

him.

If we were to talk the terminology of the seminary, we would be able

to recognise a miracle in the sending of these five hundred francs and

to say that heaven was making use of Monsieur de Frilair himself in

order to give this gift to Julien. Twelve years previously the abbé de

Frilair had arrived in Besançon with an extremely exiguous portmanteau,

which, according to the story, contained all his fortune. He was now

one of the richest proprietors of the department. In the course of his

prosperity, he had bought the one half of an estate, while the other

half had been inherited by Monsieur de la Mole. Consequently there was

a great lawsuit between these two personages.

M. le Marquis de la Mole felt that, in spite of his brilliant life at

Paris and the offices which he held at Court, it would be dangerous to

fight at Besançon against the Grand Vicar, who was reputed to make and

unmake prefects.

Instead of soliciting a present of fifty thousand francs which could

have been smuggled into the budget under some name or other, and of

throwing up this miserable lawsuit with the abbé Frilair over a matter

of fifty thousand francs, the marquis lost his temper. He thought

he was in the right, absolutely in the right. Moreover, if one is

permitted to say so, who is the judge who has not got a son, or at any

rate a cousin to push in the world?

In order to enlighten the blindest minds the abbé de Frilair took

the carriage of my Lord the Bishop eight days after the first decree

which he obtained, and went himself to convey the cross of the Legion

of Honour to his advocate. M. de la Mole, a little dumbfounded at

the demeanour of the other side, and appreciating also that his own

advocates were slackening their efforts, asked advice of the abbé

Chélan, who put him in communication with M. Pirard.

At the period of our story the relations between these two men had

lasted for several years. The abbé Pirard imported into this affair

his characteristic passion. Being in constant touch with the Marquis's

advocates, he studied his case, and finding it just, he became quite

openly the solicitor of M. de la Mole against the all-powerful Grand

Vicar. The latter felt outraged by such insolence, and on the part of a

little Jansenist into the bargain.

"See what this Court nobility who pretend to be so powerful really

are," would say the abbé de Frilair to his intimates. M. de la Mole has

not even sent a miserable cross to his agent at Besançon, and will let

him be tamely turned out. None the less, so they write me, this noble

peer never lets a week go by without going to show off his blue ribbon

in the drawing-room of the Keeper of Seal, whoever it may be.

In spite of all the energy of the abbé Pirard, and although M. de la

Mole was always on the best of terms with the minister of justice, and

above all with his officials, the best that he could achieve after six

careful years was not to lose his lawsuit right out. Being as he was

in ceaseless correspondence with the abbé Pirard in connection with an

affair in which they were both passionately interested, the Marquis

came to appreciate the abbé's particular kind of intellect. Little by

little, and in spite of the immense distance in their social positions,

their correspondence assumed the tone of friendship. The abbé Pirard

told the Marquis that they wanted to heap insults upon him till he

should be forced to hand in his resignation. In his anger against what,

in his opinion, was the infamous stratagem employed against Julien, he

narrated his history to the Marquis.

Although extremely rich, this great lord was by no means miserly. He

had never been able to prevail on the abbé Pirard to accept even the

reimbursement of the postal expenses occasioned by the lawsuit. He

seized the opportunity of sending five hundred francs to his favourite

pupil. M. de la Mole himself took the trouble of writing the covering

letter. This gave the abbé food for thought. One day the latter

received a little note which requested him to go immediately on an

urgent matter to an inn on the outskirts of Besançon. He found there

the steward of M. de la Mole.

"M. le Marquis has instructed me to bring you his carriage," said the

man to him. "He hopes that after you have read this letter you will

find it convenient to leave for Paris in four or five days. I will

employ the time in the meanwhile in asking you to be good enough to

show me the estates of M. le Marquis in the Franche-Comté, so that I

can go over them."

The letter was short:--

"Rid yourself, my good sir, of all the chicanery of the

provinces and come and breathe the peaceful atmosphere

of Paris. I send you my carriage which has orders to

await your decision for four days. I will await you

myself at Paris until Tuesday. You only require to say

so, monsieur, to accept in your own name one of the best

livings in the environs of Paris. The richest of your

future parishioners has never seen you, but is more

devoted than you can possibly think: he is the Marquis

de la Mole."

Without having suspected it, the stern abbé Pirard loved this seminary,

peopled as it was by his enemies, but to which for the past fifteen

years he had devoted all his thoughts. M. de la Mole's letter had

the effect on him of the visit of the surgeon come to perform a

difficult but necessary operation. His dismissal was certain. He made

an appointment with the steward for three days later. For forty-eight

hours he was in a fever of uncertainty. Finally he wrote to the M. de

la Mole, and composed for my Lord the Bishop a letter, a masterpiece of

ecclesiastical style, although it was a little long; it would have been

difficult to have found more unimpeachable phrases, and ones breathing

a more sincere respect. And nevertheless, this letter, intended as it

was to get M. de Frilair into trouble with his patron, gave utterance

to all the serious matters of complaint, and even descended to the

little squalid intrigues which, having been endured with resignation

for six years, were forcing the abbé Pirard to leave the diocese.

They stole his firewood, they poisoned his dog, etc., etc.

Having finished this letter he had Julien called. Like all the other

seminarists, he was sleeping at eight o'clock in the evening.

"You know where the Bishop's Palace is," he said to him in good

classical Latin. "Take this letter to my Lord. I will not hide from

you that I am sending you into the midst of the wolves. Be all ears

and eyes. Let there be no lies in your answers, but realise that the

man questioning you will possibly experience a real joy in being able

to hurt you. I am very pleased, my child, at being able to give you

this experience before I leave you, for I do not hide from you that the

letter which you are bearing is my resignation."

Julien stood motionless. He loved the abbé Pirard. It was in vain that

prudence said to him,

"After this honest man's departure the Sacré-Cœur party will disgrace

me and perhaps expel me."

He could not think of himself. He was embarrassed by a phrase which he

was trying to turn in a polite way, but as a matter of fact he found

himself without the brains to do so.

"Well, my friend, are you not going?"

"Is it because they say, monsieur," answered Julian timidly, "that you

have put nothing on one side during your long administration. I have

six hundred francs."

His tears prevented him from continuing.

"_That also will be noticed,_" said the ex-director of the seminary

coldly. "Go to the Palace. It is getting late."

Chance would so have it that on that evening, the abbé de Frilair

was on duty in the salon of the Palace. My lord was dining with the

prefect, so it was to M. de Frilair himself that Julien, though he did

not know it, handed the letter.

Julien was astonished to see this abbé boldly open the letter which was

addressed to the Bishop. The face of the Grand Vicar soon expressed

surprise, tinged with a lively pleasure, and became twice as grave

as before. Julien, struck with his good appearance, found time to

scrutinise him while he was reading. This face would have possessed

more dignity had it not been for the extreme subtlety which appeared

in some features, and would have gone to the fact of actually denoting

falseness if the possessor of this fine countenance had ceased

to school it for a single minute. The very prominent nose formed

a perfectly straight line and unfortunately gave to an otherwise

distinguished profile, a curious resemblance to the physiognomy of

a fox. Otherwise this abbé, who appeared so engrossed with Monsieur

Pirard's resignation, was dressed with an elegance which Julien had

never seen before in any priest and which pleased him exceedingly.

It was only later that Julien knew in what the special talent of the

abbé de Frilair really consisted. He knew how to amuse his bishop,

an amiable old man made for Paris life, and who looked upon Besançon

as exile. This Bishop had very bad sight, and was passionately fond

of fish. The abbé de Frilair used to take the bones out of the fish

which was served to my Lord. Julien looked silently at the abbé who

was rereading the resignation when the door suddenly opened with a

noise. A richly dressed lackey passed in rapidly. Julien had only

time to turn round towards the door. He perceived a little old man

wearing a pectoral cross. He prostrated himself. The Bishop addressed a

benevolent smile to him and passed on. The handsome abbé followed him

and Julien was left alone in the salon, and was able to admire at his

leisure its pious magnificence.

The Bishop of Besançon, a man whose spirit had been tried but

not broken by the long miseries of the emigration, was more than

seventy-five years old and concerned himself infinitely little with

what might happen in ten years' time.

"Who is that clever-looking seminarist I think I saw as I passed?" said

the Bishop. "Oughtn't they to be in bed according to my regulations."

"That one is very wide-awake I assure you, my Lord, and he brings

great news. It is the resignation of the only Jansenist residing in

your diocese, that terrible abbé Pirard realises at last that we mean

business."

"Well," said the Bishop with a laugh. "I challenge you to replace him

with any man of equal worth, and to show you how much I prize that man,

I will invite him to dinner for to-morrow."

The Grand Vicar tried to slide in a few words concerning the choice of

a successor. The prelate, who was little disposed to talk business,

said to him.

"Before we install the other, let us get to know a little of the

circumstances under which the present one is going. Fetch me this

seminarist. The truth is in the mouth of children."

Julien was summoned. "I shall find myself between two inquisitors,"

he thought. He had never felt more courageous. At the moment when he

entered, two valets, better dressed than M. Valenod himself, were

undressing my lord. That prelate thought he ought to question Julien

on his studies before questioning him about M. Pirard. He talked a

little theology, and was astonished. He soon came to the humanities,

to Virgil, to Horace, to Cicero. "It was those names," thought Julien,

that earned me my number 198. I have nothing to lose. Let us try

and shine. He succeeded. The prelate, who was an excellent humanist

himself, was delighted.

At the prefect's dinner, a young girl who was justly celebrated,

had recited the poem of the Madeleine. He was in the mood to talk

literature, and very quickly forgot the abbé Pirard and his affairs

to discuss with the seminarist whether Horace was rich or poor. The

prelate quoted several odes, but sometimes his memory was sluggish,

and then Julien would recite with modesty the whole ode: the fact

which struck the bishop was that Julien never deviated from the

conversational tone. He spoke his twenty or thirty Latin verses as

though he had been speaking of what was taking place in his own

seminary. They talked for a long time of Virgil, or Cicero, and the

prelate could not help complimenting the young seminarist. "You could

not have studied better."

"My Lord," said Julien, "your seminary can offer you 197 much less

unworthy of your high esteem."

"How is that?" said the Prelate astonished by the number.

"I can support by official proof just what I have had the honour of

saying before my lord. I obtained the number 198 at the seminary's

annual examination by giving accurate answers to the very questions

which are earning me at the present moment my lord's approbation.

"Ah, it is the Benjamin of the abbé Pirard," said the Bishop with a

laugh, as he looked at M. de Frilair. "We should have been prepared

for this. But it is fair fighting. Did you not have to be woken up, my

friend," he said, addressing himself to Julien. "To be sent here?"

"Yes, my Lord. I have only been out of the seminary alone once in my

life to go and help M. the abbé Chas-Bernard decorate the cathedral on

Corpus Christi day.

"Optime," said the Bishop. "So, it is you who showed proof of so much

courage by placing the bouquets of feathers on the baldachin. They

make me shudder. They make me fear that they will cost some man his

life. You will go far, my friend, but I do not wish to cut short your

brilliant career by making you die of hunger."

And by the order of the Bishop, biscuits and wine were brought in, to

which Julien did honour, and the abbé de Frilair, who knew that his

Bishop liked to see people eat gaily and with a good appetite, even

greater honour.

The prelate, more and more satisfied with the end of his evening,

talked for a moment of ecclesiastical history. He saw that Julien did

not understand. The prelate passed on to the moral condition of the

Roman Empire under the system of the Emperor Constantine. The end of

paganism had been accompanied by that state of anxiety and of doubt

which afflicts sad and jaded spirits in the nineteenth century. My Lord

noticed Julien's ignorance of almost the very name of Tacitus. To the

astonishment of the prelate, Julien answered frankly that that author

was not to be found in the seminary library.

"I am truly very glad," said the Bishop gaily, "You relieve me of an

embarrassment. I have been trying for the last five minutes to find a

way of thanking you for the charming evening which you have given me in

a way that I could certainly never have expected. I did not anticipate

finding a teacher in a pupil in my seminary. Although the gift is not

unduly canonical, I want to give you a Tacitus." The prelate had eight

volumes in a superior binding fetched for him, and insisted on writing

himself on the title page of the first volume a Latin compliment to

Julien Sorel. The Bishop plumed himself on his fine Latinity. He

finished by saying to him in a serious tone, which completely clashed

with the rest of the conversation.

"Young man, if you are good, you will have one day the best living in

my diocese, and one not a hundred leagues from my episcopal palace, but

you must be good."

Laden with his volumes, Julien left the palace in a state of great

astonishment as midnight was striking.

My Lord had not said a word to him about the abbé Pirard. Julien was

particularly astonished by the Bishop's extreme politeness. He had had

no conception of such an urbanity in form combined with so natural an

air of dignity. Julien was especially struck by the contrast on seeing

again the gloomy abbé Pirard, who was impatiently awaiting him.

"Quid tibi dixerunt (What have they said to you)?" he cried out to him

in a loud voice as soon as he saw him in the distance. "Speak French,

and repeat my Lord's own words without either adding or subtracting

anything," said the ex-Director of the seminary in his harsh tone,

and with his particularly inelegant manners, as Julien got slightly

confused in translating into Latin the speeches of the Bishop.

"What a strange present on the part of the Bishop to a young

seminarist," he ventured to say as he turned over the leaves of the

superb Tacitus, whose gilt edges seemed to horrify him.

Two o'clock was already striking when he allowed his favourite pupil to

retire to his room after an extremely detailed account.

"Leave me the first volume of your Tacitus," he said to him. "Where

is my Lord Bishop's compliment? This Latin line will serve as your

lightning-conductor in this house after my departure."

Erit tibi, fili mi, successor meus tanquam leo querens quem devoret.

(For my successor will be to you, my son, like a ravening lion seeking

someone to devour).

The following morning Julien noticed a certain strangeness in

the manner in which his comrades spoke to him. It only made him

more reserved. "This," he thought, "is the result of M. Pirard's

resignation. It is known over the whole house, and I pass for his

favourite. There ought logically to be an insult in their demeanour."

But he could not detect it. On the contrary, there was an absence of

hate in the eyes of all those he met along the corridors. "What is the

meaning of this? It is doubtless a trap. Let us play a wary game."

Finally the little seminarist said to him with a laugh,

"Cornelii Taciti opera omnia (complete works of Tacitus)."

On hearing these words, they all congratulated Julien enviously, not

only on the magnificent present which he had received from my lord, but

also on the two hours' conversation with which he had been honoured.

They knew even its minutest details. From that moment envy ceased

completely. They courted him basely. The abbé Castanède, who had

manifested towards him the most extreme insolence the very day before,

came and took his arm and invited him to breakfast.

By some fatality in Julien's character, while the insolence of these

coarse creatures had occasioned him great pain, their baseness afforded

him disgust, but no pleasure.

Towards mid-day the abbé Pirard took leave of his pupils, but not

before addressing to them a severe admonition.

"Do you wish for the honours of the world," he said to them. "For all

the social advantages, for the pleasure of commanding pleasures, of

setting the laws at defiance, and the pleasure of being insolent with

impunity to all? Or do you wish for your eternal salvation? The most

backward of you have only got to open your eyes to distinguish the true

ways."

He had scarcely left before the devotees of the _Sacré Cœur de Jésus_

went into the chapel to intone a Te Deum. Nobody in the seminary took

the ex-director's admonition seriously.

"He shows a great deal of temper because he is losing his job," was

what was said in every quarter.

Not a single seminarist was simple enough to believe in the voluntary

resignation of a position which put him into such close touch with the

big contractors.

The abbé Pirard went and established himself in the finest inn at

Besançon, and making an excuse of business which he had not got,

insisted on passing a couple of days there. The Bishop had invited

him to dinner, and in order to chaff his Grand Vicar de Frilair,

endeavoured to make him shine. They were at dessert when the

extraordinary intelligence arrived from Paris that the abbé Pirard had

been appointed to the magnificent living of N. ---- four leagues from

Paris. The good prelate congratulated him upon it. He saw in the whole

affair a piece of good play which put him in a good temper and gave him

the highest opinion of the abbé's talents. He gave him a magnificent

Latin certificate, and enjoined silence on the abbé de Frilair, who was

venturing to remonstrate.

The same evening, my Lord conveyed his admiration to the Marquise de

Rubempré. This was great news for fine Besançon society. They abandoned

themselves to all kinds of conjectures over this extraordinary favour.

They already saw the abbé Pirard a Bishop. The more subtle brains

thought M. de la Mole was a minister, and indulged on this day in

smiles at the imperious airs that M. the abbé de Frilair adopted in

society.

The following day the abbé Pirard was almost mobbed in the streets,

and the tradesmen came to their shop doors when he went to solicit an

interview with the judges who had had to try the Marquis's lawsuit. For

the first time in his life he was politely received by them. The stern

Jansenist, indignant as he was with all that he saw, worked long with

the advocates whom he had chosen for the Marquis de la Mole, and left

for Paris. He was weak enough to tell two or three college friends who

accompanied him to the carriage whose armorial bearings they admired,

that after having administered the Seminary for fifteen years he was

leaving Besançon with five hundred and twenty francs of savings. His

friends kissed him with tears in their eyes, and said to each other,

"The good abbé could have spared himself that lie. It is really too

ridiculous."

The vulgar, blinded as they are by the love of money, were

constitutionally incapable of understanding that it was in his own

sincerity that the abbé Pirard had found the necessary strength to

fight for six years against Marie Alacoque, the _Sacré Cœur de Jésus_,

the Jesuits and his Bishop.