Monseigneur carries so large an ink-horn in his pocket. "Don't you see
that's his dagger?" says the chatterbox. "Everyone carries a dagger when
he goes to parliament."

"That's a pleasant way of officiating," says Ornik; and he goes away
very astonished.

He traverses France, and enlightens himself from town to town; thence he
passes into Italy. When he is in the Pope's territory, he meets one of
those bishops with a thousand crowns income, walking on foot. Ornik was
very polite; he offers him a place in his cambiature. "You are doubtless
on your way to comfort some sick man, Monseigneur?"

"Sir, I am on my way to my master's."

"Your master? that is Jesus Christ, doubtless?"

"Sir, it is Cardinal Azolin; I am his almoner. He pays me very poorly;
but he has promised to place me in the service of Donna Olimpia, the
favourite sister-in-law _di nostro signore_."

"What! you are in the pay of a cardinal? But do you not know that there
were no cardinals in the time of Jesus Christ and St. John?"

"Is it possible?" cried the Italian prelate.

"Nothing is more true; you have read it in the Gospel."

"I have never read it," answered the bishop; "all I know is Our Lady's
office."

"I tell you there were neither cardinals nor bishops, and when there
were bishops, the priests were their equals almost, according to
Jerome's assertions in several places."

"Holy Virgin," said the Italian. "I knew nothing about it: and the
popes?"

"There were not any popes any more than cardinals."

The good bishop crossed himself; he thought he was with an evil spirit,
and jumped out of the cambiature.

_BOOKS_

You despise them, books, you whose whole life is plunged in the vanities
of ambition and in the search for pleasure or in idleness; but think
that the whole of the known universe, with the exception of the savage
races is governed by books alone. The whole of Africa right to Ethiopia
and Nigritia obeys the book of the Alcoran, after having staggered under
the book of the Gospel. China is ruled by the moral book of Confucius; a
greater part of India by the book of the Veidam. Persia was governed for
centuries by the books of one of the Zarathustras.

If you have a law-suit, your goods, your honour, your life even depends
on the interpretation of a book which you never read.

_Robert the Devil_, the _Four Sons of Aymon_, the _Imaginings of Mr.
Oufle_, are books also; but it is with books as with men; the very sma