From this institution he passed to the Collège de Tessé, which belonged to the Diocese of Le Mans, where, while teaching in one of the middle grades, he continued his own ecclesiastical studies.

The Abbé Bercy, an Orientalist of some distinction, whose notice he attracted at Le Mans and later at Tessé, advised him to make scriptural exegesis his special study.

In, or soon after May, 1843, Meignan returned to Paris to be numbered among the clergy of the archdiocese, but was soon (1845) obliged to visit Rome for the good of his health, which had become impaired.

[1] Here again he was helped by the interest and advice of many eminent men, of Giovanni Perrone and Olympe-Philippe Gerbet, as well as by the teaching of Carlo Passaglia, Francis Xavier Patrizi, and Augustin Theiner.

Between this period and 1861, when he became professor of Sacred Scripture at the Sorbonne, he filled various academical positions in the Archdiocese of Paris, of which Georges Darboy made him vicar-general in 1863.