“Do you often fall like that?” he said to Julien in French, pointing with his finger to the floor.
“It’s the first time in my life. The porter’s face unnerved me,” added Julien, blushing like a child. The abbé Pirard almost smiled.
“That’s the result of vain worldly pomp. You are apparently accustomed to smiling faces, those veritable theatres of falsehood. Truth is austere, Monsieur, but is not our task down here also austere? You must be careful that your conscience guards against that weakness of yours, too much sensibility to vain external graces.”
“If you had not been recommended to me,” said the abbé Pirard, resuming the Latin language with an obvious pleasure, “If you had not been recommended by a man, by the abbé Chélan, I would talk to you the vain language of that world, to which it would appear you are only too well accustomed. I would tell you that the full stipend which you solicit is the most difficult thing in the world to obtain. But the fifty-six years which the abbé Chélan has spent in apostolic work have stood him in poor stead if he cannot dispose of a stipend at the seminary.”
After these words, the abbé Pirard recommended Julien not to enter any secret society or congregation without his consent.
“I give you my word of honour,” said Julien, with all an honest man’s expansion of heart. The director of the seminary smiled for the first time.
“That expression is not used here,” he said to him. “It is too reminiscent of that vain honour of worldly people, which leads them to so many errors and often to so many crimes. You owe me obedience by virtue of paragraph seventeen of the bull Unam Eccesiam of St. Pius the Fifth. I am your ecclesiastical superior. To hear in this house, my dear son, is to obey. How much money, have you?”
(“So here we are,” said Julien to himself, “that was the reason of the ‘my very dear son’).”
“Thirty-five francs, my father.”
“Write out carefully how you use that money. You will have to give me an account of it.”