Vicar of Tours
Over twenty years before Anthony Trollope wrote The Warden, in which the gentle but unfortunate Rev. Septimus Harding becomes the prey of an investigative journalist, in 1831 Balzac published his Vicar of Tours. There too, a mild-mannered priest becomes the prey of powerful enemies, ecclesiastical, social and political. Abbé Birotteau is no intellectual giant, but he does try to get along with others honestly, and suffers when they take advantage of his shortcomings. ( Nicholas Clifford)