10 The work of Louis Moreri (1643–80).

"You have no experience of this sort of contempt; it manifests itself only in exaggerated compliments. If you were a fool, you could take it at face value. If you're eager to make your fortune, you ought to let it take you in." "When I can't tolerate that sort of thing anymore," said Julien, "will I look like an ingrate if I go back to my little cell, number one oh three?" "Of course," said Father Pirard. "All the fawners and flatterers who fill the house will slander you, but me, I will be there. Adsum qui feci, I'm the one who did it. I'll say it was entirely my decision." Julien had been hurt by the bitter, almost nasty voice in which Father Pirard had been speaking. This virtually ruined, for him, the priest's last response. The truth is that Father Pirard felt qualms of conscience about his affection for Julien, and he experienced a kind of religious terror, interfering so directly in another person's fate. "You will also be seeing," he added, with the same unpleasantness, as if fulfilling a painful duty, "you'll also be seeing the Marquise de La Mole. She's a tall, blonde woman, pious, haughty, perfectly polite, and still more completely insignificant. She's the old Duke of Chaulnes's11 daughter, a man celebrated for his aristocratic prejudices. This great lady is more or less a three-dimensional epitome of what, at bottom, the women of her rank truly are. She makes no attempt to conceal, indeed, that having had ancestors who journeyed out on the Crusades is the only form of honor she values. Money didn't come until much later: Does that surprise you? We're no longer in the provinces, my friend. "You will find, in her drawing room, a number of great lords who speak of our present royalty with a curious kind of indulgence. Madame de La Mole herself lowers her voice, most respectfully, whenever she speaks of a prince and especially of a princess. I would not advise you to say, in her presence, that Philip II or Henry VIII12 were monsters. They were kings, which gives them imperishable right to everyone's respect, and above all to the respect of those who do not have high birth, like you and me. However," Father Pirard added, "we are priests—for she will take you to be one. Given this title, she considers us a form of house servant necessary to her salvation." "It seems to me, sir," said Julien, "that I won't be in Paris for long." "Fine. But note that, for anyone wearing our sort of clothing, no fortune is available except through these great lords. With that indefinable something—indefinable, at least, by me—which I find in your nature, if you do not make your fortune, you will be persecuted. For you, there is no middle way. Don't deceive yourself. People see you're not pleased when they speak to you. In a country as social as ours, you dedicate yourself to misfortune if you do not earn respect. "What would you have become, in Besançon, absent this caprice of the Marquis de La Mole? Someday you'll understand just how odd it is, what he is doing for you, and unless you're a monster you'll be eternally grateful to him and his family. How many poor priests, more learned than you, have lived in Paris for years, on fifteen pence a day for the masses they say and ten pence a day for the classes they give at the Sorbonne! ... Remember what I told you, last winter, about the early years of that rascal, Cardinal Dubois. Does your pride persuade you, by any chance, that you're more talented than him?