"I! I am the same to-day as on all other days."
"No."
"A simple mirror of the people I am with. You laugh, and I laugh; you are rude, so am I."
"Well! I confess I was preoccupied."
"Really!"
"Can you not be indulgent to a man who has so much work on his shoulders? Governing this priory is like governing a province: remember, I command two hundred men."
"Ah! it is too much indeed for a servant of God."
"Ah! you are ironical, M. Briquet. Have you lost all your Christian charity? I think you are envious, really."
"Envious! of whom?"
"Why, you say to yourself, Dom Modeste Gorenflot is rising—he is on the ascending scale."