In fine, this priest, vicious but politic, sceptical
yet learned, treacherous yet amiable, weak in appearance yet as
vigorous physically as intellectually, was so genuinely useful to his
pupil, so complacent to his vices, so fine a calculator of all kinds
of strength, so profound when it was needful to make some human
reckoning, so youthful at table, at Frascati, at--I know not where,
that the grateful Henri de Marsay was hardly moved at aught in 1814,
except when he looked at the portrait of his beloved bishop, the only
personal possession which the prelate had been able to bequeath him
(admirable type of the men whose genius will preserve the Catholic,
Apostolic, and Roman Church, compromised for the moment by the
feebleness of its recruits and the decrepit age of its pontiffs; but
if the church likes!).
The continental war prevented young De Marsay from knowing his real
father. It is doubtful whether he was aware of his name. A deserted
child, he was equally ignorant of Madame de Marsay. Naturally, he had
little regret for his putative father. As for Mademoiselle de Marsay,
his only mother, he built for her a handsome little monument in Pere
Lachaise when she died. Monseigneur de Maronis had guaranteed to this
old lady one of the best places in the skies, so that when he saw her
die happy, Henri gave her some egotistical tears; he began to weep on
his own account. Observing this grief, the abbe dried his pupil's
tears, bidding him observe that the good woman took her snuff most
offensively, and was becoming so ugly and deaf and tedious that he
ought to return thanks for her death.
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