ons; acts, with
acts. In short, we must struggle. Can we remain still and idle, when our
Holy Father is imprisoned in a den of thieves?

The time has come. We are fighting for our very existence, we must close
the ranks, take count of ourselves, and above all see on what and on whom
we can count. Let us see what we can expect from you? What do you ask? You
wish to come to the town? I warn you that it will be hard, if you intend to
do what I expect of you.

--The trouble does not frighten me, Monseigneur.

--You will have a difficult parish. You will have to run foul of a thousand
different interests, and not give the slightest pretext for slander. You
understand me? There are five or six influential Liberals whose wives or
daughters you must win over adroitly, and at any cost--at any cost, you
understand. Do you feel yourself qualified for this work? Are you the man
we need?

--I will try, Monseigneur.

--You will try. That is not on answer. It is not enough to try; you most
succeed. We are surrounded with men who commit nothing but follies, while
intending to do well. Hell, you know, is paved with good intentions.

He looked at Marcel attentively, and the latter asked himself if this were
really the man he had heard, only a few moments before, talking lightly
with a little girl.

--You have good manners, continued the Bishop; you are intelligent, I know.
You will succeed therefore, if you intend it seriously. Our misfortune is,
that we are encumbered with dull and stupid peasants, whom the Seminary has
been able only partly to refine, and who render us ridiculous. You must
certainly have gone to sleep in your village?

--No, Monseigneur, I have worked.

--We shall see that. And what sort of people are they? Do they perform
their religious duties?

--A good and hard-working population.

--Do they perform their religious duties?

--Yes. Monseigneur, I was satisfied with them.

--What society?

--Very little. The lawyer, the doctor....

--Right-thinking?

--Tolerably so.

--And the women?

--Much the same as all country-folk, ignorant and narrow-minded.

--No, you were not the man needed there. You would lose your time and your
powers. I will send one of those brutes of whom I have just been speaking.
Well, go; you can tell the Abbe Ridoux that you will have the cure. Come
again to-morrow. I even think it will be useless for you to return to
Althausen.

LXXXVII.

THE SEMINARY.

"I