The Bishop had recovered his usual pleasant amiability and charming manner. Just at this moment Abbé Surin put his handsome head through the doorway.
'No, my child,' said the Bishop to him, 'I shall not dictate that letter to you. I have no further need of you, and you can go.'
'Abbé Fenil is here,' muttered the young priest.
'Oh, very well, let him wait!'
Monseigneur Rousselot winced slightly; but he spoke to his secretary with an almost ludicrous expression of decision, and looked at Abbé Faujas with a glance of intelligence.
'See! go out this way,' he said to him, as he opened a door that was hidden behind a curtain.
He kept the priest standing on the threshold for a moment, and continued to look at him with a smile on his face.
'Fenil will be furious,' said he; 'but you will promise to defend me against him if he is too hard upon me! I am making him your enemy, I warn you of that. I am counting upon you, too, to prevent the re-election of the Marquis de Lagrifoul. Ah! it is upon you that I am leaning now, my dear Monsieur Faujas.'
He waved his white hand to the Abbé, and then returned with an appearance of perfect unconcern to the warmth of his study. The priest had remained bowing, feeling surprised at the quite feminine ease with which the Bishop changed his master and yielded to the stronger side. And only now did he begin to feel that Monseigneur Rousselot had been secretly laughing at him, even as he laughed at Abbé Fenil in that downy armchair of his where he read his Horace.
About ten o'clock on the following Thursday, just when the fashionable folks of Plassans were treading on each other's toes in the Rougons' green drawing-room, Abbé Faujas appeared at the door. He looked tall and majestic, there was a bright colour on his cheeks, and he wore a delicate cassock that glistened like satin. His face was still grave, though there was a slight smile upon it, just the pleasant turn of the lips that was necessary to light up his stern countenance with a ray of cheerfulness.