"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 abbe 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 abbe 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 abbe 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 abbe 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.