—­Don’t worry me.  Are you the first-comer?  See, my dear fellow, you really must get this into your head, that in order to succeed in our profession, evangelical virtues are more detrimental than useful, and that there are two things indispensable:  first to have a good outside show, to stir yourself and to know how to intrigue to the utmost.  As for talent, that is an accessory which can do no harm, but after all, it is merely an accessory.  Now, you have a good outside show; you have more talent than is necessary, there is only one thing in which you are faulty, you are not sufficiently intriguing.  Well, I will be so for you, and I will stir myself up for you.  Success wholly lies in that.

You say that a bishopric is not for the first-comer.  You make me laugh.  Look at ours, Monseigneur Collard; what transcendant genius does he possess?  Is not his morality somewhat elastic, and his virtues very doubtful?  But he has a magnificent head, and that from all time has pleased the world in general and the women in particular.  Ah, the women, my dear friend, the women! you do not know what a weight they are in the scales of our destinies, and in the choice of our superiors.  I know something about it, and if I had had a smaller nose and a better-made mouth, I should not be now Cure of St. Nicholas.  But I am ugly and they despise me.  How many I know who owe their cross and their mitre to the way in which they say in the pulpit, “my sisters”, and to the amiable manner in which they receive the confessions of influential sheep.

—­You confess, uncle, that it is abominable.

—­I confess that it is in human nature, that is all I confess.  Is it not logical to befriend people whose appearance pleases you, rather than those whose face is disagreeable to you?  Good Heavens, it has always been the case since the commencement of the world.  All that you could say on the subject would not make the slightest change.  Let us therefore profit by our advantages when we have advantages, and leave fruitless jeremiads to the foolish and envious.

—­Birth also counts for much in our fortune.

—­Often, but not always.  Look at Collard again, who is the son of a journeyman baker.

—­He has that in common with Pope Benedict XII.

—­Yes, but he has that only.  Therefore, since it is neither his birth, nor his genius, nor his virtues which have helped him on, it is then something else.

—­In fact, ecclesiastical history abounds in similar instances.  Men, starting from the most humble condition, have attained the supreme dignity:  Benedict XI had tended sheep, the great Sixtus V was a swineherd, Urban VI was the son of a cobbler, Alexander V had been a beggar.

—­And a host of others of the same feather.  Well, that ought to encourage you who are the son neither of a cobbler, or of a pig-seller.

—­Would to heaven that I were a cobbler or a shepherd myself; I could have married according to my taste and have become the worthy father of a family, an honest artisan rather than a bad Cure.