hundred and twenty-one. But my protection means neither favour nor weakness, it means doubled care, and doubled severity against vice. Go and lock that door."
Julian made an effort to walk, and managed not to fall. He noticed that a little window near the entrance door looked out on to the country. He saw the trees; that sight did him as much good as the sight of old friends.
"'Loquerisne linquam latinam?'" (Do you speak Latin?) said the abbé Pirard to him as he came back.
"'Ita, pater optime,'" (Yes, excellent Father) answered Julien, recovering himself a little. But it was certain that nobody in the world had ever appeared to him less excellent than had M. Pirard for the last half hour.
The conversation continued in Latin. The expression in the abbé's eyes softened. Julien regained some self-possession. "How weak I am," he thought, "to let myself be imposed on by these appearances of virtue. The man is probably nothing more than a rascal, like M. Maslon," and Julien congratulated himself on having hidden nearly all his money in his boots.
The abbé Pirard examined Julien in theology; he was surprised at the extent of his knowledge, but his astonishment increased when he questioned him in particular on sacred scriptures. But when it came to questions of the doctrines of the Fathers, he perceived that Julien scarcely even knew the names of Saint Jerome, Saint Augustin, Saint Bonaventure, Saint Basile, etc., etc.
"As a matter of fact," thought the abbé Pirard, "this is simply that fatal tendency to Protestantism for which I have always reproached Chélan. A profound, and only too profound knowledge of the Holy Scriptures."
(Julien had just started speaking to him, without being questioned on the point, about the real time when Genesis, the Pentateuch, etc., has been written).
"To what does this never-ending reasoning over the Holy Scriptures lead to?" thought the abbé Pirard, "if not to self-examination, that is to say, the most awful Protestantism. And by the side of this imprudent knowledge, nothing about the Fathers to compensate for that tendency."
But the astonishment of the director of the seminary was quite unbounded when having questioned Julien about the
