Although his life as priest had been spotless up to then, his brethren held
aloof from him, for there was a bad mark against him at the Bishop's
Palace. It had been attached at the commencement of his career. He was one
of those catechumens on whom from the very first the most brilliant hopes
are founded. Knowledge, intelligence, respectful obedience, appearance of
piety, sympathetic face, everything was present in him.

The Bishop, a frivolous old man, a great lover of little girls, who
combined the sinecure of his bishopric with that of almoner to a
second-hand empress, whose name will remain celebrated in the annals of
devout gallantry or of gallant devotion, the Bishop, a worthy pastor for
such a sheep, passed the greater portion of his time in the intrigues of
petticoats and sacristies, and left to the young secretary the care of
matters spiritual.

It was he who, like Gil-Blas, composed the mandates and sometimes the
sermons of Monseigneur.

This confidence did not fail to arouse secret storms in the episcopal
guest-chamber.

A Grand-Vicar, jealous of the influence which the young Abbé was assuming
over his master's mind, had resolved upon his dismissal and fall.

With a church-man's tortuous diplomacy, he pried into the young man's
heart, as yet fresh and inexperienced.

He insinuated himself into the most hidden recesses of his conscience,
seized, so to say, in their flight the timid fleeting transports of his
thought, of his vigorous imagination, and soon discovered with secret