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202 before you came. Your conduct is atrocious. Flee! Take yourself off if you have any shame left."

These words were spoken with so much authority, and Julien felt so weak, that he did take himself off. "She always hated me," he said to himself, thinking of Madame Derville. At the same moment the nasal chanting of the first priests in the procession which was now coming back resounded in the church. The abbé Chas-Bernard called Julien, who at first did not hear him, several times. He came at last and took his arm behind a pillar where Julien had taken refuge more dead than alive. He wanted to present him to the Bishop.

"Are you feeling well, my child?" said the abbé to him, seeing him so pale, and almost incapable of walking. "You have worked too much." The abbé gave him his arm. "Come, sit down behind me here, on the little seat of the dispenser of holy water; I will hide you."

They were now beside the main door.

"Calm yourself. We have still a good twenty minutes before Monseigneur appears. Try and pull yourself together. I will lift you up when he passes, for in spite of my age, I am strong and vigorous."

Julien was trembling so violently when the Bishop passed, that the abbé Chas gave up the idea of presenting him.

"Do not take it too much to heart," he said. "I will find another opportunity."

The same evening he had six pounds of candles which had been saved, he said, by Julien's carefulness, and by the promptness with which he had extinguished them, carried to the seminary chapel. Nothing could have been nearer the truth. The poor boy was extinguished himself. He had not had a single thought after meeting Madame de Rênal.