Eight or ten seminarists lived in the odour of sanctity, and had visions like Saint Theresa, and Saint Francis, when he received his stigmata on Mount _Vernia_ in the Appenines. But it was a great secret and their friends concealed it. These poor young people who had visions were always in the infirmary. A hundred others combined an indefatigable application to a robust faith. They worked till they fell ill, but without learning much. Two or three were distinguished by a real talent, amongst others a student of the name of Chazel, but both they and Julien felt mutually unsympathetic. The rest of these three hundred and twenty-one seminarists consisted exclusively of coarse persons, who were by no means sure of understanding the Latin words which they kept on repeating the livelong day. Nearly all were the sons of peasants, and they preferred to gain their livelihood by reciting some Latin words than by ploughing the earth. It was after this examination of his colleagues that Julien, during the first few days, promised himself a speedy success. "Intelligent people are needed in every service," he said to himself, "for, after all, there is work to be done. I should have been a sergeant under Napoleon. I shall be a grand vicar among these future curés." "All these poor devils," he added, "manual labourers as they have been since their childhood, have lived on curded milk and black bread up till they arrived here. They would only eat meat five or six times a year in their hovels. Like the Roman soldiers who used to find war the time of rest, these poor peasants are enchanted with the delights of the seminary." Julien could never read anything in their gloomy eyes but the satisfaction of physical craving after dinner, and the expectation of sensual pleasure before the meal. Such were the people among whom Julien had to distinguish himself; but the fact which he did not know, and which they refrained from telling him, was that coming out first in the different courses of dogma, ecclesiastical history, etc., etc., which are taken at the seminary, constituted in their eyes, neither more nor less than a splendid sin. Since the time of Voltaire and two-chamber Government, which is at bottom simply distrust and personal self-examination, and gives the popular mind that bad habit of being suspicious, the Church of France seems to have realised that books are its real enemies. It is the submissive heart which counts for everything in its eyes. It suspects, and rightly so, any success in studies, even sacred ones. What is to prevent a superior man from crossing over to the opposite side like Sièyes or Gregory. The trembling Church clings on to the Pope as its one chance of safety. The Pope alone is in a position to attempt to paralyse all personal self-examination, and to make an impression by means of the pompous piety of his court ceremonial on the bored and morbid spirit of fashionable society.