A man of genius or a trickster says
to himself, "I did wrong." Self-interest and native talent are the
only infallible and lucid guides. Now the Abbe Birotteau, whose
goodness amounted to stupidity, whose knowledge was only, as it were,
plastered on him by dint of study, who had no experience whatever of
the world and its ways, who lived between the mass and the
confessional, chiefly occupied in dealing the most trivial matters of
conscience in his capacity of confessor to all the schools in town and
to a few noble souls who rightly appreciated him,--the Abbe Birotteau
must be regarded as a great child, to whom most of the practices of
social life were utterly unknown. And yet, the natural selfishness of
all human beings, reinforced by the selfishness peculiar to the
priesthood and that of the narrow life of the provinces had
insensibly, and unknown to himself, developed within him. If any one
had felt enough interest in the good man to probe his spirit and prove
to him that in the numerous petty details of his life and in the
minute duties of his daily existence he was essentially lacking in the
self-sacrifice he professed, he would have punished and mortified
himself in good faith. But those whom we offend by such unconscious
selfishness pay little heed to our real innocence; what they want is
vengeance, and they take it. Thus it happened that Birotteau, weak
brother that he was, was made to undergo the decrees of that great
distributive Justice which goes about compelling the world to execute
its judgments,--called by ninnies "the misfortunes of life.
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