That is the expression current in the valleys of the Jura to express a rich man. One can judge of their respect for the richest entity of all--the government. Failure to smile deferentially at the mere name of M. the Prefect is regarded as an imprudence in the eyes of the Franche-Comté peasant, and imprudence in poor people is quickly punished by lack of bread. After having been almost suffocated at first by his feeling of contempt, Julien eventually experienced a feeling of pity; it often happened that the fathers of most of his comrades would enter their hovel in winter evenings and fail to find there either bread, chestnuts or potatoes. "What is there astonishing then?" Julien would say to himself, "if in their eyes the happy man is in the first place the one who has just had a good dinner, and in the second place the one who possesses a good suit? My comrades have a lasting vocation, that is to say, they see in the ecclesiastical calling a long continuance of the happiness of dining well and having a warm suit." Julien happened to hear a young imaginative seminarist say to his companion. "Why shouldn't I become Pope like Sixtus Quintus who kept pigs?" "They only make Italians Popes," answered his friend. "But they will certainly draw lots amongst us for the great vicarships, canonries and perhaps bishoprics. M. P---- Bishop of Châlons, is the son of a cooper. That's what my father is." One day, in the middle of a theology lesson, the Abbé Pirard summoned Julien to him. The young fellow was delighted to leave the dark, moral atmosphere in which he had been plunged. Julien received from the director the same welcome which had frightened him so much on the first day of his entry. "Explain to me what is written on this playing card?" he said, looking at him in a way calculated to make him sink into the earth. Julien read: "Amanda Binet of the Giraffe Café before eight o'clock. Say you're from Genlis, and my mother's cousin." Julien realised the immense danger. The spies of the abbé Castanède had stolen the address. "I was trembling with fear the day I came here," he answered, looking at the abbé Pirard's forehead, for he could not endure that terrible gaze. "M. Chélan told me that this is a place of informers and mischief-makers of all kinds, and that spying and tale-bearing by one comrade on another was encouraged by the authorities. Heaven wishes it to be so, so as to show life such as it is to the young priests, and fill them with disgust for the world and all its pomps." "And it's to me that you make these fine speeches," said the abbé Pirard furiously. "You young villain." "My brothers used to beat me at Verrières," answered Julien coldly, "When they had occasion to be jealous of me." "Indeed, indeed," exclaimed M. Pirard, almost beside himself. Julien went on with his story without being in the least intimidated:--