My Lord had not said a word to him about the abbe 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 abbe 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 abbe Castanede, 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 abbe 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 Sacre C?ur de Jesus 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 abbe Pirard went and established himself in the finest inn at Besancon, 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 abbe 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 abbe's talents.
He gave him a magnificent Latin certificate, and enjoined silence on the abbe de Frilair, who was venturing to remonstrate.
The same evening, my Lord conveyed his admiration to the Marquise de Rubempre.
This was great news for fine Besancon society.
They abandoned themselves to all kinds of conjectures over this extraordinary favour. They already saw the abbe 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 abbe de Frilair adopted in society.
The following day the abbe 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 Besancon with five hundred and twenty francs of savings.
His friends kissed him with tears in their eyes, and said to each other,
"The good abbe could have spared himself that lie.