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194. "It is particularly appropriate to say of a curé," he said to the pupils who formed a ring round him, "that the place is worth as much as the man is worth. I myself have known parishes in the mountains where the surplice fees were worth more than that of many town livings. There was quite as much money, without counting the fat capons, the eggs, fresh butter, and a thousand and one pleasant details, and there the curé is indisputably the first man. There is not a good meal to which he is not invited, fêted, etc."

Castanède had scarcely gone back to his room before the pupils split up into knots. Julien did not form part of any of them; he was left out like a black sheep. He saw in every knot a pupil tossing a coin in the air, and if he managed to guess right in this game of heads or tails, his comrades would decide that he would soon have one of those fat livings.

Anecdotes ensued. A certain young priest, who had scarcely been ordained a year, had given a tame rabbit to the maidservant of an old curé, and had succeeded in being asked to be his curate. In a few months afterwards, for the curé had quickly died, he had replaced him in that excellent living. Another had succeeded in getting himself designated as a successor to a very rich town living, by being present at all the meals of an old, paralytic curé, and by dexterously carving his poultry. The seminarists, like all young people, exaggerated the effect of those little devices, which have an element of originality, and which strike the imagination.

"I must take part in these conversations," said Julien to himself. When they did not talk about sausages and good livings, the conversation ran on the worldly aspect of ecclesiastical doctrine, on the differences of bishops and prefects, of mayors and curés. Julien caught sight of the conception of a second god, but of a god who was much more formidable and much more powerful than the other one. That second god was the Pope. They said among themselves, in a low voice, however, and when they were quite sure that they would not be heard by Pirard, that the reason for the Pope not taking the trouble of nominating all the prefects and mayors of France, was that he had entrusted that duty to the King of France by entitling him a senior son of the Church.

It was about this time that Julien thought he could exploit, for the benefit of his own reputation, his knowledge of De