When Guillaume was elected, he said to the young Maffres, with a grin:
'Well, you owe me a couple of bottles of champagne now. You see that the Curé does all that I want. I have a little machine to tickle him with in a sensitive place, and then he begins to laugh, my boys, and he can't refuse me anything.'
'Well, it doesn't seem as though he were very fond of you, anyhow,' said Alphonse; 'he looks very sourly at you.'
'Pooh! that's because I tickled him too hard. You will see that we shall soon be the best friends in the world.'
Abbé Faujas did, indeed, seem to have an affection for the doctor's son. He declared that this young man wanted guiding with a very gentle hand. In a short time Guillaume became the moving spirit of the club. He invented amusements, showed them how to make kirsch-water punch, and led young fellows fresh from college into all sorts of dissipation. His pleasant vices gave him enormous influence. While the organ was pealing above the billiard-room, he drank away, and gathered round him the sons of the most respectable people in Plassans, making them almost choke with laughter at his broad stories. The club now got into a very fast way, indulging in doubtful topics of conversation in all the corners. Abbé Faujas, however, appeared quite unconscious of it. Guillaume said that he had a splendid noddle, teeming with the greatest thoughts.
'The Abbé may be a bishop whenever he likes,' he remarked. 'He has already refused a living in Paris. He wants to stay at Plassans; he has taken a liking to the place. I should like to nominate him as deputy. He's the sort of man we want in the Chamber! But he would never consent; he is too modest. Still it would be a good thing to take his advice when the elections are at hand. We may trust anything that he tells us. He wouldn't deceive anybody.'
Meantime, Lucien Delangre remained the serious man of the club. He showed great deference to Abbé Faujas, and won the group of studious young men over to the priest's side. He frequently walked with him to the club, talking to him with much animation, but subsiding into silence as soon as they entered the general room.
On leaving the café established beneath the Church of the Minimes, the Abbé regularly went to the Home of the Virgin. He arrived there during play-time, and made his appearance with a smiling face upon the steps of the playground. Thereupon the girls surrounded him, and disputed with each other for the possession of his pockets, in which some sacred pictures or chaplets or medals that had been blessed were always to be found. Those big girls quite worshipped him as he tapped them gently on their cheeks and told them to be good, at which they broke into sly smiles. The Sisters often complained to him that the children confided to their care were utterly unmanageable, that they fought, tore each other's hair, and did even worse things. The Abbé, however, regarded their offences as mere peccadilloes, and as a rule simply reproved the more turbulent girls in the chapel, whence they emerged in a more submissive frame of mind. Occasionally he made some rather graver piece of misconduct a pretext for sending for the parents, whom he sent away again quite touched by his kindness and good-nature. In this wise the young scapegraces of the Home of the Virgin gained him the hearts of the poor families of Plassans. When they went home in the evening, they told the most wonderful things about his reverence the Curé. It was no uncommon occurrence to find a couple of them in some secluded corner of the ramparts on the point of coming to blows to decide which of them his reverence liked the better.
'Those young hussies represent from two to three thousand votes,' Trouche thought to himself, as from the window he watched Abbé Faujas showing himself so amiable.