M.Lantaigne, principal of the high seminary, was working in his study, the whitewashed walls of which were three parts covered by deal shelves loaded with the dark bindings of his working library, the whole of Migne’s Patrologie, and cheap editions of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Baronius and Bossuet. A Virgin in the manner of Mignard surmounted the door, with a dusty sprig of box sticking out of the old gilt frame. Uninviting horsehair chairs stood on the red tiles in front of the windows, through which the stale smell of the refectory ascended to the cotton window-curtains.

The principal, bending over his little walnut-wood desk, was turning over the pages of the registers handed him by AbbÉ Perruque, the master of method, who stood at his side.

“I see,” said M. Lantaigne, “that again this week a hoard of sweetmeats has been discovered in a pupil’s room. Such infractions are far too often repeated.” In fact, the students of the seminary made a practice of hiding cakes of chocolate among their school-books. This was what they called theology Menier. They used to meet in a room at night, by twos or threes, to discuss it.

M. Lantaigne begged the master of method to use unfaltering severity.

“This disorder is deplorable in that it may involve the most serious misconduct.”

He asked for the register of the rhetoric class. But when M. Perruque had handed it to him, he looked away from it. His heart swelled at the idea that sacred rhetoric was taught by this Guitrel, a man with neither morals nor learning. He sighed within himself:

“When will the scales fall from the Cardinal-Archbishop’s eyes, that he may see the unworthiness of this priest?”

Then, tearing himself from this bitter thought only to plunge into the bitterness of another:

“And PiÉdagnel?” he asked.

For two years Firmin PiÉdagnel had caused incessant anxiety to the head of the seminary. The only son of a cobbler who kept his stall between two buttresses of Saint-ExupÈre, he was, through the brightness of his intelligence, the most brilliant pupil in the house. Of placid temperament, he had a very fair report for conduct. The timidity of his character and the weakness of his constitution seemed a good safeguard for his moral purity. But he had neither the instinct for theology nor the vocation for the priesthood. His very faith was unstable. With his great spiritual knowledge, M. Lantaigne had no inordinate fear of those violent crises among his young Levites, which, often salutary, are to be allayed by grace. He dreaded, on the contrary, the indifference of a placidly intractable mind. He almost despaired of a soul to whom doubt was light and bearable and whose thoughts flowed to irreligion by a natural inclination. Such a one the shoemaker’s clever son showed himself to be. M. Lantaigne had one day unexpectedly chanced, by one of those brusque wiles which were natural to him, to plumb the depths of this nature, double-faced through its courtesy. He perceived with consternation that from the teaching at the seminary Firmin had only acquired an elegant Latin style, skill in sophistry, and a kind of sentimental mysticism. From that time Firmin had appeared to him as a being weak and formidable, pitiable and noxious. Yet he loved this lad, loved him tenderly, to infatuation. In spite of his disappointment it pleased him that he should be the honour, the glory of the seminary. He loved in Firmin the charm of his mind, the subtle harmony of his style, and even the tenderness of those pale, short-sighted eyes, like bruises under the quivering eyelids. He sometimes took pleasure in seeing in him one of the victims of this AbbÉ Guitrel, whose intellectual and moral poverty must (so he firmly believed) injure and depress an intelligent and quick-sighted pupil. He flattered himself that, if better trained in the future, Firmin, although too weak ever to give to the Church one of those powerful leaders whom she so much needs, would at least produce for religion, perhaps, a PÉreyve or a Gerbet, one of those priests who carry into the priesthood the heart of a young mother. But, incapable of long self-flattery, M. Lantaigne speedily rejected this unlikely hope and saw in this lad a GuÉroult, a Renan. And the sweat of anguish chilled his forehead. His fear was lest, in rearing such pupils, he might be training formidable enemies of the truth.

He knew that it was in the temple itself that the hammers were forged which overthrew it. He very often said: “Such is the power of theological discipline that it alone is capable of rearing great reprobates; an unbeliever who has not passed through our hands is powerless and without weapons for evil. It is within our walls that they imbibe all knowledge, even that of blasphemy.” From the mass of the students he only demanded industry and integrity, feeling certain that these would make good parish priests of them. But in his finest students he feared curiosity, pride, the impious boldness of the intellect, and even the qualities that brought the angels to perdition.

“Monsieur Perruque,” said he brusquely, “let us see the notes on PiÉdagnel.”

The master of method, with his thumb moistened at his lips, turned over the leaves of the register, and then pointed out with his great dirt-encircled forefinger the lines traced on the margin of the book:

M. PiÉdagnel holds thoughtless conversations.

M. PiÉdagnel gives way to depression.

M. PiÉdagnel refuses to take any physical exercise.

The director read and shook his head. He turned the leaf and continued reading:

M. PiÉdagnel has written a poor essay on the unity of the faith.

At this AbbÉ Lantaigne burst out:

“Unity—that is just what he will never grasp! And yet it is the idea above all others which ought to be impressed on the priest’s mind. For I do not fear to affirm that this conception is entirely of God, and, as it were, His most vivid manifestation among men.”

He turned his hollow, gloomy gaze towards AbbÉ Perruque.

“This subject of the unity of the faith, Monsieur Perruque, is my touchstone by which I try the spirits. The simplest minds, if they do not fail in sincerity, draw logical conclusions from the idea of unity; and the most able derive an admirable philosophy from this principle. In the pulpit, Monsieur Perruque, I have three times handled the unity of the faith, and the wealth of the subject still amazes me.”

He resumed his reading:

M. PiÉdagnel has compiled a note-book, which has been found in his desk, and which contains, written in M. PiÉdagnel’s own hand, extracts from different love-poems, composed by Leconte de Lisle and Paul Verlaine, as well as by several other loose writers, and the choice of the extracts betrays excessive profligacy both of the mind and the senses.

He shut the register and pushed it away roughly. “What we lack nowadays,” sighed he, “is neither learning nor intelligence; it is the theological mind.”

“Monsieur,” said AbbÉ Perruque, “the steward wants to know if you can receive him at once. The contract with Lafolie for butcher’s meat expires on the fifteenth of this month, and they are waiting for your decision before renewing an arrangement upon which the house can scarcely plume itself. For you cannot fail to have remarked the bad quality of the beef supplied by Lafolie.”

“Tell the steward to come in,” said M. Lantaigne. And, left alone, he put his head in his hands and sighed:

“O quando finieris et quando cessabis, universa vanitas mundi?[A] Far from Thee, O God, we are but wandering shadows. There are no greater crimes than those committed against the unity of the faith. Vouchsafe to lead the world back to this blessed unity!”

When, during the recreation hour after the midday meal, the principal crossed the courtyard, the seminarists were playing a game of football. On the gravelled playground there was a great commotion of ruddy heads poised on stalks like black knife-handles, the jerky gestures of puppets, and shouts and cries in all the rustic dialects of the diocese. The master of method, AbbÉ Perruque, his cassock tucked up, was joining in the game with the zest of a cloistered peasant, drunk with air and exercise, and in athletic style was kicking from the toe of his buckled shoe the huge ball covered with its leather quarters. At sight of the principal the players stopped. M. Lantaigne made a sign to them to continue. He followed the grove of stunted acacia trees that fringes the courtyard on the side towards the ramparts and the country. Half-way along he met three pupils who, arm in arm, were walking up and down as they talked. Since they usually spent the recreation hours in this way, they were called the peripatetics. M. Lantaigne called one of them, the shortest, a pale-faced lad, with slightly stooping shoulders, a refined and mocking mouth, and timid eyes. He did not hear at first, and his neighbour had to nudge him with an elbow and say to him:

“PiÉdagnel, the principal is calling you.”

At this PiÉdagnel approached AbbÉ Lantaigne and bowed to him with a half-graceful clumsiness.

“My child,” said the principal to him, “you will be so good as to be my server at mass to-morrow.”

The young man blushed. It was a coveted honour to serve the principal’s mass.

AbbÉ Lantaigne, his breviary under his arm, went out by the little door that opens on the fields and took the customary road in his walks, a dusty track edged with nettles and thistles that follows the ramparts.

He was thinking:

“What will become of this poor child, if he is suddenly expelled, ignorant of any sort of manual labour, weak, delicate, and timid? And what grief there will be in his infirm father’s shop!”

He walked along over the flints of the barren road. Having reached the mission cross, he took off his hat, wiped the perspiration from his forehead with his silk handkerchief, and said in a low voice:

“Oh God, inspire me to act according to Thy interests, whatever it may cost my paternal heart!”

At half-past six next morning AbbÉ Lantaigne was saying the concluding words of the mass in the bare, deserted chapel.

In front of a side-altar a solitary old sacristan was setting paper flowers in porcelain vases, beneath the gilt statue of Saint Joseph. A grey, rainy daylight poured sadly through the blurred window-panes. The celebrant, upright at the left of the high altar, was reading the last Gospel.

“Et Verbum caro factum est,” said he, bending his knees.

Firmin PiÉdagnel, who was serving the mass, knelt at the same time on the step where stood the bell; then he rose and, after the last responses, preceded the priest into the sacristy. AbbÉ Lantaigne set down the chalice with the corporal and waited for the server to help him remove his priestly vestments. Firmin PiÉdagnel, being sensitive to the mysterious influences of things, felt the charm of this scene, so simple and yet so sacred. His soul, suffused with tender unction, tasted with a kind of joy the familiar grandeur of the priesthood. Never had he felt so deeply the desire to be a priest and in his turn to celebrate the holy sacrifice. Having kissed and carefully folded up the alb and chasuble, he bowed before AbbÉ Lantaigne ere retiring. The head of the seminary, who had resumed his great-coat, made a sign to him to stay, and looked at him with such nobility and kindness that the young man received the look as a favour and a blessing. After a long silence:

“My child,” said M. Lantaigne, “whilst celebrating this mass which I asked you to serve, I prayed God to give me the strength to send you away. My prayer has been granted. You are no longer a member of this household.”

As he took in these words, Firmin was stupefied. It seemed to him that the flooring was giving way beneath his feet. Through eyes big with tears, he vaguely saw the lonely road, the rain, a life darkened with misery and toil, the fate of a lost child terrified by its own weakness and timidity. He looked at M. Lantaigne. The resolute gentleness, the quiet strength, the calmness of this man revolted him. Suddenly a feeling was born and grew in him, a feeling that sustained and strengthened him, a hatred of the priest, a deathless and fruitful hatred, a hatred to fill a whole life. Without uttering a word, he went with great strides out of the sacristy.