but who know also how to beg, who feel little scruple at making a whole
diocese dance attendance in their person, who are connecting links
between the sacristy and diplomacy, who are abbes rather than priests,
prelates rather than bishops. Happy those who approach them! Being
persons of influence, they create a shower about them, upon the
assiduous and the favored, and upon all the young men who understand
the art of pleasing, of large parishes, prebends, archidiaconates,
chaplaincies, and cathedral posts, while awaiting episcopal honors. As
they advance themselves, they cause their satellites to progress also;
it is a whole solar system on the march. Their radiance casts a gleam
of purple over their suite. Their prosperity is crumbled up behind
the scenes, into nice little promotions. The larger the diocese of the
patron, the fatter the curacy for the favorite. And then, there is Rome.
A bishop who understands how to become an archbishop, an archbishop who
knows how to become a cardinal, carries you with him as conclavist;
you enter a court of papal jurisdiction, you receive the pallium, and
behold! you are an auditor, then a papal chamberlain, then monsignor,
and from a Grace to an Eminence is only a step, and between the Eminence
and the Holiness there is but the smoke of a ballot. Every skull-cap may
dream of the tiara. The priest is nowadays the only man who can become a
king in a regular manner; and what a king! the supreme king. Then what a
nursery of aspirations is a seminary! How many blushing choristers,
how many youthful abbes bear on their heads Perrette's pot of milk!
Who knows how easy it is for ambition to call itself vocation? in good
faith, perchance, and deceiving itself, devotee that it is.

Monseigneur Bienvenu, poor, humble, retiring, was not accounted among
the big mitres. This was plain from the complete absence of young
priests about him. We have seen that he "did not take" in Paris. Not a
single future dreamed of engrafting itself on this solitary old man.
Not a single sprouting ambition committed the folly of putting forth its
foliage in his shadow. His canons and grand-vicars were good old men,
rather vulgar like himself, walled up like him in this diocese, without
exit to a cardinalship, and who resembled their bishop, with this
difference, that they were finished and he was completed. The
impossibility of growing great under Monseigneur Bienvenu was so well
understood, that no sooner had the