CHAPTER XXIX . THE FIRST PROMOTION
He knew his age, he knew his department, and he is rich. — The Forerunner .
Julien had not emerged from the deep reverie in which the episode in the cathedral had plunged him, when the severe abbé Pirard summoned him.
"M. the abbé Chas-Bernard has just written in your favour. I am on the whole sufficiently satisfied with your conduct. You are extremely imprudent and irresponsible without outward signs of it. However, up to the present, you have proved yourself possessed of a good and even generous heart. Your intellect is superior. Taking it all round, I see in you a spark which one must not neglect.
"I am on the point of leaving this house after fifteen years of work. My crime is that I have left the seminarists to their free will, and that I have n
