The two men in black bowed in their turn.
“On the contrary,” replied Aramis, “your opinion will be very valuable. The question is this: Monsieur the Principal thinks that my thesis ought to be dogmatic and didactic.”
“Your thesis! Are you then making a thesis?”
“Without doubt,” replied the Jesuit. “In the examination which precedes ordination, a thesis is always a requisite.”
“Ordination!” cried D’Artagnan, who could not believe what the hostess and Bazin had successively told him; and he gazed, half stupefied, upon the three persons before him.
“Now,” continued Aramis, taking the same graceful position in his easy chair that he would have assumed in bed, and complacently examining his hand, which was as white and plump as that of a woman, and which he held in the air to cause the blood to descend, “now, as you have heard, D’Artagnan, Monsieur the Principal is desirous that my thesis should be dogmatic, while I, for my part, would rather it should be ideal. This is the reason why Monsieur the Principal has proposed to me the following subject, which has not yet been treated upon, and in which I perceive there is matter for magnificent elaboration—‘Utraque manus in benedicendo clericis inferioribus necessaria est.’”
D’Artagnan, whose erudition we are well acquainted with, evinced no more interest on hearing this quotation than he had at that of M. de Tréville in allusion to the gifts he pretended that D’Artagnan had received from the Duke of Buckingham.
“Which means,” resumed Aramis, that he might perfectly understand, “‘The two hands are indispensable for priests of the inferior orders, when they bestow the benediction.’”
“An admirable subject!” cried the Jesuit.
“Admirable and dogmatic!” repeated the curate, who, about as strong as D’Artagnan with respect to Latin, carefully watched the Jesuit in order to keep step with him, and repeated his words like an echo.