Obviously, things are not going to be the same after this. He’ll not forget how they got together, conspired against him, condemned him in the local press as an anti-clerical troublemaker. Him? The abbot’s protégé? The Bishop’s golden boy? Very well. If that’s how they want to see him, he will not trouble from now on to make things easy for his colleagues, to be so very helpful and polite. It is a fault, that persistent itch to have people think well of him.

