Denis, besides his intercourse with humble relatives, was now asked to dine with the neighboring clergymen, and frequently made one at their parties.  In the beginning, his high opinion and awe of the clerical character kept him remarkably dull and sheepish.  Many an excellent joke was cracked at his expense; and often did he ask himself what Phadrick Murray, his father’s family, or his acquaintances in general, would say, if they saw his learning and his logic so villanously degraded.  In proportion, however, as conviviality developed among his reverend friends many defects, opinions, and failings, which he never suspected them to possess, so did he begin to gather courage and facility of expression.  By degrees he proceeded modestly from the mild and timid effort at wit to the steadier nerve of moderate confidence—­another step brought him to the indifference of a man who can bear an unsuccessful attempt at pleasantry, without being discomposed; the third and last stage advanced him to downright assurance, which having reached, he stopped at nothing.  From this forward he began to retort upon his clerical companions, who found that the sheepish youth whom they had often made ridiculous, possessed skill, when properly excited, to foil them at their own weapons.  He observed many things in their convivial meetings.  The holy man, whom his flock looked upon as a being of the highest sanctity, when lit up into fun and frolic, Denis learned to estimate at his just value.  He thought, besides, that a person resolved to go to heaven, had as good a chance of being saved by the direct mercy of God, as through the ministration of men, whose only spiritual advantage over himself consisted in the mere fact of being in orders.  To be sure, he saw the usual exceptions among them that are to be found among every other class; but he drew his conclusions from the general rule.  All this, however, failed in removing that fundamental principle of honest superstition in which he had been trained.  The clergymen whom he saw were only a few who constituted the great body of the church; but when the long and sanctified calendar of saints and miracles opened upon him, there still remained enough to throw a dim and solemn charm of shadowy pomp around the visions of a mind naturally imaginative.

Messengers were once more sent abroad, to inform their friends of his triumph, who, on ascertaining that his journey was fixed for an early day, lost no time in pouring in, each with some gift suited to their circumstances.  Some of these were certainly original, the appropriateness having been in every case determined by the wealth or poverty, ignorance, or knowledge, of those who offered them.  Some poor relation, for instance, brought him a shirt or two of materials so coarse, that to wear it in a college would be out of the question; others offered him a pair of brogues, much too vulgar for the society he was about to enter; others, again, would present him with books—­for