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In 1815, M. Charles-François-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D—— He was
an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the see
of D—— since 1806.

Although this detail has no connection whatever with the real substance
of what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous, if merely
for the sake of exactness in all points, to mention here the various
rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him from the
very moment when he arrived in the diocese. True or false, that which
is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and
above all in their destinies, as that which they do. M. Myriel was the
son of a councillor of the Parliament of Aix; hence he belonged to the
nobility of the bar. It was said that his father, destining him to be
the heir of his own post, had married him at a very early age, eighteen
or twenty, in accordance with a custom which is rather widely prevalent
in parliamentary families. In spite of this marriage, however, it was
said that Charles Myriel created a great deal of talk. He was well
formed, though rather short in stature, elegant, graceful, intelligent;
the whole of the first portion of his life had been devoted to the
world and to gallantry.

The Revolution came; events succeeded each other with precipitation;
the parliamentary families, decimated, pursued, hunted down, were
dispersed. M. Charles Myriel emigrated to Italy at the very beginning
of the Revolution. There his wife died of a malady of the chest, from
which she had long suffered. He had no children. What took place next
in the fate of M. Myriel? The ruin of the French society of the olden
days, the fall of his own family, the tragic spectacles of ’93, which
were, perhaps, even more alarming to the emigrants who viewed them from
a distance, with the magnifying powers of terror,—did these cause the
ideas of renunciation and solitude to germinate in him? Was he, in the
midst of these distractions, these affections which absorbed his life,
suddenly smitten with one of those mysterious and terrible blows which
sometimes overwhelm, by striking to his heart, a man whom public
catastrophes would not shake, by striking at his existence and his
fortune? No one could have told: all that was known was, that when he
returned from Italy he was a priest.

In 1804, M. Myriel was the Curé of B—— [Brignolles]. He was already
advanced in years, and lived in a very retired manner.

About the epoch of the coronation, some petty affair connected with his
curacy—just what, is not precisely known—took him to Paris. Among other
powerful persons to whom he went to solicit aid for his parishioners
was M. le Cardinal Fesch. One day, when the Emperor had come to visit
his uncle, the worthy Curé, who was waiting in the anteroom, found
himself present when His Majesty passed. Napoleon, on finding himself
observed with a certain curiosity by this old man, turned round and
said abruptly:—

“Who is this good man who is staring at me?”


“Sire,” said M. Myriel, “you are looking at a good man, and I at a
great man. Each of us can profit by it.”


That very evening, the Emperor asked the Cardinal the name of the Curé,
and some time afterwards M. Myriel was utterly astonished to learn that
he had been appointed Bishop of D——

What truth was there, after all, in the stories which were invented as
to the early portion of M. Myriel’s life? No one knew. Very few
families had been acquainted with the Myriel family before the
Revolution.

M. Myriel had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town,
where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think.
He was obliged to undergo it although he was a bishop, and because he
was a bishop. But after all, the rumors with which his name was
connected were rumors only,—noise, sayings, words; less than
words—_palabres_, as the energetic language of the South expresses it.

However that may be, after nine years of episcopal power and of
residence in D——, all the stories and subjects of conversation which
engross petty towns and petty people at the outset had fallen into
profound oblivion. No one would have dared to mention them; no one
would have dared to recall them.

M. Myriel had arrived at D—— accompanied by an elderly spinster,
Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister, and ten years his junior.

Their only domestic was a female servant of the same age as
Mademoiselle Baptistine, and named Madame Magloire, who, after having
been _the servant of M. le Curé_, now assumed the double title of maid
to Mademoiselle and housekeeper to Monseigneur.

Mademoiselle Baptistine was a long, pale, thin, gentle creature; she
realized the ideal expressed by the word “respectable”; for it seems
that a woman must needs be a mother in order to be venerable. She had
never been pretty; her whole life, which had been nothing but a
succession of holy deeds, had finally conferred upon her a sort of
pallor and transparency; and as she advanced in years she had acquired
what may be called the beauty of goodness. What had been leanness in
her youth had become transparency in her maturity; and this diaphaneity
allowed the angel to be seen. She was a soul rather than a virgin. Her
person seemed made of a shadow; there was hardly sufficient body to
provide for sex; a little matter enclosing a light; large eyes forever
drooping;—a mere pretext for a soul’s remaining on the earth.

Madame Magloire was a little, fat, white old woman, corpulent and
bustling; always out of breath,—in the first place, because of her
activity, and in the next, because of her asthma.

On his arrival, M. Myriel was installed in the episcopal palace with
the honors required by the Imperial decrees, which class a bishop
immediately after a major-general. The mayor and the president paid the
first call on him, and he, in turn, paid the first call on the general
and the prefect.

The installation over, the town waited to see its bishop at work.



CHAPTER II—M. MYRIEL BECOMES M. WELCOME


The episcopal palace of D—— adjoins the hospital.

The episcopal palace was a huge and beautiful house, built of stone at
the beginning of the last century by M. Henri Puget, Doctor of Theology
of the Faculty of Paris, Abbé of Simore, who had been Bishop of D—— in
1712. This palace was a genuine seignorial residence. Everything about
it had a grand air,—the apartments of the Bishop, the drawing-rooms,
the chambers, the principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks
encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens
planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb
gallery which was situated on the ground floor and opened on the
gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My
Lords Charles Brûlart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince d’Embrun; Antoine
de Mesgrigny, the capuchin, Bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vendôme,
Grand Prior of France, Abbé of Saint Honoré de Lérins; François de
Berton de Crillon, bishop, Baron de Vence; César de Sabran de
Forcalquier, bishop, Seignor of Glandève; and Jean Soanen, Priest of
the Oratory, preacher in ordinary to the king, bishop, Seignor of
Senez. The portraits of these seven reverend personages decorated this
apartment; and this memorable date, the 29th of July, 1714, was there
engraved in letters of gold on a table of white marble.

The hospital was a low and narrow building of a single story, with a
small garden.

Three days after his arrival, the Bishop visited the hospital. The
visit ended, he had the director requested to be so good as to come to
his house.

“Monsieur the director of the hospital,” said he to him, “how many sick
people have you at the present moment?”


“Twenty-six, Monseigneur.”


“That was the number which I counted,” said the Bishop.

“The beds,” pursued the director, “are very much crowded against each
other.”


“That is what I observed.”


“The halls are nothing but rooms, and it is with difficulty that the
air can be changed in them.”


“So it seems to me.”


“And then, when there is a ray of sun, the garden is very small for the
convalescents.”


“That was what I said to myself.”


“In case of epidemics,—we have had the typhus fever this year; we had
the sweating sickness two years ago, and a hundred patients at
times,—we know not what to do.”


“That is the thought which occurred to me.”


“What would you have, Monseigneur?” said the director. “One must resign
one’s self.”


This conversation took place in the gallery dining-room on the ground
floor.

The Bishop remained silent for a moment; then he turned abruptly to the
director of the hospital.

“Monsieur,” said he, “how many beds do you think this hall alone would
hold?”


“Monseigneur’s dining-room?” exclaimed the stupefied director.

The Bishop cast a glance round the apartment, and seemed to be taking
measures and calculations with his eyes.

“It would hold full twenty beds,” said he, as though speaking to
himself. Then, raising his voice:—

“Hold, Monsieur the director of the hospital, I will tell you
something. There is evidently a mistake here. There are thirty-six of
you, in five or six small rooms. There are three of us here, and we
have room for sixty. There is some mistake, I tell you; you have my
house, and I have yours. Give me back my house; you are at home here.”


On the following day the thirty-six patients were installed in the
Bishop’s palace, and the Bishop was settled in the hospital.

M. Myriel had no property, his family having been ruined by the
Revolution. His sister was in receipt of a yearly income of five
hundred francs, which sufficed for her personal wants at the vicarage.
M. Myriel received from the State, in his quality of bishop, a salary
of fifteen thousand francs. On the very day when he took up his abode
in the hospital, M. Myriel settled on the disposition of this sum once
for all, in the following manner. We transcribe here a note made by his
own hand:—

NOTE ON THE REGULATION OF MY HOUSEHOLD EXPENSES.

For the little seminary . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    1,500 livres
Society of the  mission . . . . . . . . . . . . . .      100   ”
 For the Lazarists of Montdidier . . . . . . . . . .      100   ”
 Seminary for foreign missions in Paris  . . . . . .      200   ”
 Congregation of the Holy Spirit . . . . . . . . . .      150   ”
 Religious establishments of the Holy Land . . . . .      100   ”
 Charitable maternity societies  . . . . . . . . . .      300   ”
 Extra, for that of Arles  . . . . . . . . . . . . .       50   ”
 Work for the amelioration of prisons  . . . . . . .      400   ”
 Work for the relief and delivery of prisoners . . .      500   ”
 To liberate fathers of families incarcerated for debt  1,000   ”
 Addition to the salary of the poor teachers of the
diocese  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    2,000   ”
 Public granary of the Hautes-Alpes  . . . . . . . .      100   ”
 Congregation of the ladies of D——, of Manosque, and of
Sisteron, for the gratuitous instruction of poor
girls  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    1,500   ”
 For the poor  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    6,000   ”
 My personal expenses  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .    1,000   ”
 ———
Total  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   15,000   ”


M. Myriel made no change in this arrangement during the entire period
that he occupied the see of D—— As has been seen, he called it
_regulating his household expenses_.

This arrangement was accepted with absolute submission by Mademoiselle
Baptistine. This holy woman regarded Monseigneur of D—— as at one and
the same time her brother and her bishop, her friend according to the
flesh and her superior according to the Church. She simply loved and
venerated him. When he spoke, she bowed; when he acted, she yielded her
adherence. Their only servant, Madame Magloire, grumbled a little. It
will be observed that Monsieur the Bishop had reserved for himself only
one thousand livres, which, added to the pension of Mademoiselle
Baptistine, made fifteen hundred francs a year. On these fifteen
hundred francs these two old women and the old man subsisted.

And when a village curate came to D——, the Bishop still found means to
entertain him, thanks to the severe economy of Madame Magloire, and to
the intelligent administration of Mademoiselle Baptistine.

One day, after he had been in D—— about three months, the Bishop said:—

“And still I am quite cramped with it all!”


“I should think so!” exclaimed Madame Magloire. “Monseigneur has not
even claimed the allowance which the department owes him for the
expense of his carriage in town, and for his journeys about the
diocese. It was customary for bishops in former days.”


“Hold!” cried the Bishop, “you are quite right, Madame Magloire.”


And he made his demand.

Some time afterwards the General Council took this demand under
consideration, and voted him an annual sum of three thousand francs,
under this heading: _Allowance to M. the Bishop for expenses of
carriage, expenses of posting, and expenses of pastoral visits._

This provoked a great outcry among the local burgesses; and a senator
of the Empire, a former member of the Council of the Five Hundred which
favored the 18 Brumaire, and who was provided with a magnificent
senatorial office in the vicinity of the town of D——, wrote to M. Bigot
de Préameneu, the minister of public worship, a very angry and
confidential note on the subject, from which we extract these authentic
lines:—

“Expenses of carriage? What can be done with it in a town of less than
four thousand inhabitants? Expenses of journeys? What is the use of
these trips, in the first place? Next, how can the posting be
accomplished in these mountainous parts? There are no roads. No one
travels otherwise than on horseback. Even the bridge between Durance
and Château-Arnoux can barely support ox-teams. These priests are all
thus, greedy and avaricious. This man played the good priest when he
first came. Now he does like the rest; he must have a carriage and a
posting-chaise, he must have luxuries, like the bishops of the olden
days. Oh, all this priesthood! Things will not go well, M. le Comte,
until the Emperor has freed us from these black-capped rascals. Down
with the Pope! [Matters were getting embroiled with Rome.] For my part,
I am for Cæsar alone.” Etc., etc.

On the other hand, this affair afforded great delight to Madame
Magloire. “Good,” said she to Mademoiselle Baptistine; “Monseigneur
began with other people, but he has had to wind up with himself, after
all. He has regulated all his charities. Now here are three thousand
francs for us! At last!”


That same evening the Bishop wrote out and handed to his sister a
memorandum conceived in the following terms:—

EXPENSES OF CARRIAGE AND CIRCUIT.

For furnishing meat soup to the patients in the hospital. 1,500 livres
For the maternity charitable society of Aix . . . . . . .   250   ”
 For the maternity charitable society of Draguignan  . . .   250   ”
 For foundlings  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   500   ”
 For orphans   . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   500   ”
 ——-
Total  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000   ”


Such was M. Myriel’s budget.

As for the chance episcopal perquisites, the fees for marriage bans,
dispensations, private baptisms, sermons, benedictions, of churches or
chapels, marriages, etc., the Bishop levied them on the wealthy with
all the more asperity, since he bestowed them on the needy.

After a time, offerings of money flowed in. Those who had and those who
lacked knocked at M. Myriel’s door,—the latter in search of the alms
which the former came to deposit. In less than a year the Bishop had
become the treasurer of all benevolence and the cashier of all those in
distress. Considerable sums of money passed through his hands, but
nothing could induce him to make any change whatever in his mode of
life, or add anything superfluous to his bare necessities.

Far from it. As there is always more wretchedness below than there is
brotherhood above, all was given away, so to speak, before it was
received. It was like water on dry soil; no matter how much money he
received, he never had any. Then he stripped himself.

The usage being that bishops shall announce their baptismal names at
the head of their charges and their pastoral letters, the poor people
of the country-side had selected, with a sort of affectionate instinct,
among the names and prenomens of their bishop, that which had a meaning
for them; and they never called him anything except Monseigneur
Bienvenu [Welcome]. We will follow their example, and will also call
him thus when we have occasion to name him. Moreover, this appellation
pleased him.

“I like that name,” said he. “Bienvenu makes up for the Monseigneur.”


We do not claim that the portrait herewith presented is probable; we
confine ourselves to stating that it resembles the original.




CHAPTER III—A HARD BISHOPRIC FOR A GOOD BISHOP


The Bishop did not omit his pastoral visits because he had converted
his carriage into alms. The diocese of D—— is a fatiguing one. There
are very few plains and a great many mountains; hardly any roads, as we
have just seen; thirty-two curacies, forty-one vicarships, and two
hundred and eighty-five auxiliary chapels. To visit all these is quite
a task.

The Bishop managed to do it. He went on foot when it was in the
neighborhood, in a tilted spring-cart when it was on the plain, and on
a donkey in the mountains. The two old women accompanied him. When the
trip was too hard for them, he went alone.

One day he arrived at Senez, which is an ancient episcopal city. He was
mounted on an ass. His purse, which was very dry at that moment, did
not permit him any other equipage. The mayor of the town came to
receive him at the gate of the town, and watched him dismount from his
ass, with scandalized eyes. Some of the citizens were laughing around
him. “Monsieur the Mayor,” said the Bishop, “and Messieurs Citizens, I
perceive that I shock you. You think it very arrogant in a poor priest
to ride an animal which was used by Jesus Christ. I have done so from
necessity, I assure you, and not from vanity.”


In the course of these trips he was kind and indulgent, and talked
rather than preached. He never went far in search of his arguments and
his examples. He quoted to the inhabitants of one district the example
of a neighboring district. In the cantons where they were harsh to the
poor, he said: “Look at the people of Briançon! They have conferred on
the poor, on widows and orphans, the right to have their meadows mown
three days in advance of every one else. They rebuild their houses for
them gratuitously when they are ruined. Therefore it is a country which
is blessed by God. For a whole century, there has not been a single
murderer among them.”


In villages which were greedy for profit and harvest, he said: “Look at
the people of Embrun! If, at the harvest season, the father of a family
has his son away on service in the army, and his daughters at service
in the town, and if he is ill and incapacitated, the curé recommends
him to the prayers of the congregation; and on Sunday, after the mass,
all the inhabitants of the village—men, women, and children—go to the
poor man’s field and do his harvesting for him, and carry his straw and
his grain to his granary.” To families divided by questions of money
and inheritance he said: “Look at the mountaineers of Devolny, a
country so wild that the nightingale is not heard there once in fifty
years. Well, when the father of a family dies, the boys go off to seek
their fortunes, leaving the property to the girls, so that they may
find husbands.” To the cantons which had a taste for lawsuits, and
where the farmers ruined themselves in stamped paper, he said: “Look at
those good peasants in the valley of Queyras! There are three thousand
souls of them. Mon Dieu! it is like a little republic. Neither judge
nor bailiff is known there. The mayor does everything. He allots the
imposts, taxes each person conscientiously, judges quarrels for
nothing, divides inheritances without charge, pronounces sentences
gratuitously; and he is obeyed, because he is a just man among simple
men.” To villages where he found no schoolmaster, he quoted once more
the people of Queyras: “Do you know how they manage?” he said. “Since a
little country of a dozen or fifteen hearths cannot always support a
teacher, they have schoolmasters who are paid by the whole valley, who
make the round of the villages, spending a week in this one, ten days
in that, and instruct them. These teachers go to the fairs. I have seen
them there. They are to be recognized by the quill pens which they wear
in the cord of their hat. Those who teach reading only have one pen;
those who teach reading and reckoning have two pens; those who teach
reading, reckoning, and Latin have three pens. But what a disgrace to
be ignorant! Do like the people of Queyras!”


Thus he discoursed gravely and paternally; in default of examples, he
invented parables, going directly to the point, with few phrases and
many images, which characteristic formed the real eloquence of Jesus
Christ. And being convinced himself, he was persuasive.




CHAPTER IV—WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS


His conversation was gay and affable. He put himself on a level with
the two old women who had passed their lives beside him. When he
laughed, it was the laugh of a schoolboy. Madame Magloire liked to call
him Your Grace [_Votre Grandeur_]. One day he rose from his armchair,
and went to his library in search of a book. This book was on one of
the upper shelves. As the bishop was rather short of stature, he could
not reach it. “Madame Magloire,” said he, “fetch me a chair. My
greatness [_grandeur_] does not reach as far as that shelf.”


One of his distant relatives, Madame la Comtesse de Lô, rarely allowed
an opportunity to escape of enumerating, in his presence, what she
designated as “the expectations” of her three sons. She had numerous
relatives, who were very old and near to death, and of whom her sons
were the natural heirs. The youngest of the three was to receive from a
grandaunt a good hundred thousand livres of income; the second was the
heir by entail to the title of the Duke, his uncle; the eldest was to
succeed to the peerage of his grandfather. The Bishop was accustomed to
listen in silence to these innocent and pardonable maternal boasts. On
one occasion, however, he appeared to be more thoughtful than usual,
while Madame de Lô was relating once again the details of all these
inheritances and all these “expectations.” She interrupted herself
impatiently: “Mon Dieu, cousin! What are you thinking about?” “I am
thinking,” replied the Bishop, “of a singular remark, which is to be
found, I believe, in St. Augustine,—‘Place your hopes in the man from
whom you do not inherit.’”


At another time, on receiving a notification of the decease of a
gentleman of the country-side, wherein not only the dignities of the
dead man, but also the feudal and noble qualifications of all his
relatives, spread over an entire page: “What a stout back Death has!”
he exclaimed. “What a strange burden of titles is cheerfully imposed on
him, and how much wit must men have, in order thus to press the tomb
into the service of vanity!”


He was gifted, on occasion, with a gentle raillery, which almost always
concealed a serious meaning. In the course of one Lent, a youthful
vicar came to D——, and preached in the cathedral. He was tolerably
eloquent. The subject of his sermon was charity. He urged the rich to
give to the poor, in order to avoid hell, which he depicted in the most
frightful manner of which he was capable, and to win paradise, which he
represented as charming and desirable. Among the audience there was a
wealthy retired merchant, who was somewhat of a usurer, named M.
Géborand, who had amassed two millions in the manufacture of coarse
cloth, serges, and woollen galloons. Never in his whole life had M.
Géborand bestowed alms on any poor wretch. After the delivery of that
sermon, it was observed that he gave a sou every Sunday to the poor old
beggar-women at the door of the cathedral. There were six of them to
share it. One day the Bishop caught sight of him in the act of
bestowing this charity, and said to his sister, with a smile, “There is
M. Géborand purchasing paradise for a sou.”


When it was a question of charity, he was not to be rebuffed even by a
refusal, and on such occasions he gave utterance to remarks which
induced reflection. Once he was begging for the poor in a drawing-room
of the town; there was present the Marquis de Champtercier, a wealthy
and avaricious old man, who contrived to be, at one and the same time,
an ultra-royalist and an ultra-Voltairian. This variety of man has
actually existed. When the Bishop came to him, he touched his arm,
_“You must give me something, M. le Marquis.”_ The Marquis turned round
and answered dryly, _“I have poor people of my own, Monseigneur.” “Give
them to me,”_ replied the Bishop.

One day he preached the following sermon in the cathedral:—

“My very dear brethren, my good friends, there are thirteen hundred and
twenty thousand peasants’ dwellings in France which have but three
openings; eighteen hundred and seventeen thousand hovels which have but
two openings, the door and one window; and three hundred and forty-six
thousand cabins besides which have but one opening, the door. And this
arises from a thing which is called the tax on doors and windows. Just
put poor families, old women and little children, in those buildings,
and behold the fevers and maladies which result! Alas! God gives air to
men; the law sells it to them. I do not blame the law, but I bless God.
In the department of the Isère, in the Var, in the two departments of
the Alpes, the Hautes, and the Basses, the peasants have not even
wheelbarrows; they transport their manure on the backs of men; they
have no candles, and they burn resinous sticks, and bits of rope dipped
in pitch. That is the state of affairs throughout the whole of the
hilly country of Dauphiné. They make bread for six months at one time;
they bake it with dried cow-dung. In the winter they break this bread
up with an axe, and they soak it for twenty-four hours, in order to
render it eatable. My brethren, have pity! behold the suffering on all
sides of you!”


Born a Provençal, he easily familiarized himself with the dialect of
the south. He said, _“En bé! moussu, sés sagé?”_ as in lower Languedoc;
_“Onté anaras passa?”_ as in the Basses-Alpes; _“Puerte un bouen moutu
embe un bouen fromage grase,”_ as in upper Dauphiné. This pleased the
people extremely, and contributed not a little to win him access to all
spirits. He was perfectly at home in the thatched cottage and in the
mountains. He understood how to say the grandest things in the most
vulgar of idioms. As he spoke all tongues, he entered into all hearts.

Moreover, he was the same towards people of the world and towards the
lower classes. He condemned nothing in haste and without taking
circumstances into account. He said, “Examine the road over which the
fault has passed.”


Being, as he described himself with a smile, an _ex-sinner_, he had
none of the asperities of austerity, and he professed, with a good deal
of distinctness, and without the frown of the ferociously virtuous, a
doctrine which may be summed up as follows:—

“Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and his
temptation. He drags it with him and yields to it. He must watch it,
check it, repress it, and obey it only at the last extremity. There may
be some fault even in this obedience; but the fault thus committed is
venial; it is a fall, but a fall on the knees which may terminate in
prayer.

“To be a saint is the exception; to be an upright man is the rule. Err,
fall, sin if you will, but be upright.

“The least possible sin is the law of man. No sin at all is the dream
of the angel. All which is terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a
gravitation.”


When he saw everyone exclaiming very loudly, and growing angry very
quickly, “Oh! oh!” he said, with a smile; “to all appearance, this is a
great crime which all the world commits. These are hypocrisies which
have taken fright, and are in haste to make protest and to put
themselves under shelter.”


He was indulgent towards women and poor people, on whom the burden of
human society rest. He said, “The faults of women, of children, of the
feeble, the indigent, and the ignorant, are the fault of the husbands,
the fathers, the masters, the strong, the rich, and the wise.”


He said, moreover, “Teach those who are ignorant as many things as
possible; society is culpable, in that it does not afford instruction
gratis; it is responsible for the night which it produces. This soul is
full of shadow; sin is therein committed. The guilty one is not the
person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the
shadow.”


It will be perceived that he had a peculiar manner of his own of
judging things: I suspect that he obtained it from the Gospel.

One day he heard a criminal case, which was in preparation and on the
point of trial, discussed in a drawing-room. A wretched man, being at
the end of his resources, had coined counterfeit money, out of love for
a woman, and for the child which he had had by her. Counterfeiting was
still punishable with death at that epoch. The woman had been arrested
in the act of passing the first false piece made by the man. She was
held, but there were no proofs except against her. She alone could
accuse her lover, and destroy him by her confession. She denied; they
insisted. She persisted in her denial. Thereupon an idea occurred to
the attorney for the crown. He invented an infidelity on the part of
the lover, and succeeded, by means of fragments of letters cunningly
presented, in persuading the unfortunate woman that she had a rival,
and that the man was deceiving her. Thereupon, exasperated by jealousy,
she denounced her lover, confessed all, proved all.

The man was ruined. He was shortly to be tried at Aix with his
accomplice. They were relating the matter, and each one was expressing
enthusiasm over the cleverness of the magistrate. By bringing jealousy
into play, he had caused the truth to burst forth in wrath, he had
educed the justice of revenge. The Bishop listened to all this in
silence. When they had finished, he inquired,—

“Where are this man and woman to be tried?”


“At the Court of Assizes.”


He went on, “And where will the advocate of the crown be tried?”


A tragic event occurred at D—— A man was condemned to death for murder.
He was a wretched fellow, not exactly educated, not exactly ignorant,
who had been a mountebank at fairs, and a writer for the public. The
town took a great interest in the trial. On the eve of the day fixed
for the execution of the condemned man, the chaplain of the prison fell
ill. A priest was needed to attend the criminal in his last moments.
They sent for the curé. It seems that he refused to come, saying, “That
is no affair of mine. I have nothing to do with that unpleasant task,
and with that mountebank: I, too, am ill; and besides, it is not my
place.” This reply was reported to the Bishop, who said, _“Monsieur le
Curé is right: it is not his place; it is mine.”_

He went instantly to the prison, descended to the cell of the
“mountebank,” called him by name, took him by the hand, and spoke to
him. He passed the entire day with him, forgetful of food and sleep,
praying to God for the soul of the condemned man, and praying the
condemned man for his own. He told him the best truths, which are also
the most simple. He was father, brother, friend; he was bishop only to
bless. He taught him everything, encouraged and consoled him. The man
was on the point of dying in despair. Death was an abyss to him. As he
stood trembling on its mournful brink, he recoiled with horror. He was
not sufficiently ignorant to be absolutely indifferent. His
condemnation, which had been a profound shock, had, in a manner, broken
through, here and there, that wall which separates us from the mystery
of things, and which we call life. He gazed incessantly beyond this
world through these fatal breaches, and beheld only darkness. The
Bishop made him see light.

On the following day, when they came to fetch the unhappy wretch, the
Bishop was still there. He followed him, and exhibited himself to the
eyes of the crowd in his purple camail and with his episcopal cross
upon his neck, side by side with the criminal bound with cords.

He mounted the tumbril with him, he mounted the scaffold with him. The
sufferer, who had been so gloomy and cast down on the preceding day,
was radiant. He felt that his soul was reconciled, and he hoped in God.
The Bishop embraced him, and at the moment when the knife was about to
fall, he said to him: “God raises from the dead him whom man slays; he
whom his brothers have rejected finds his Father once more. Pray,
believe, enter into life: the Father is there.” When he descended from
the scaffold, there was something in his look which made the people
draw aside to let him pass. They did not know which was most worthy of
admiration, his pallor or his serenity. On his return to the humble
dwelling, which he designated, with a smile, as _his palace_, he said
to his sister, _“I have just officiated pontifically.”_

Since the most sublime things are often those which are the least
understood, there were people in the town who said, when commenting on
this conduct of the Bishop, _“It is affectation.”_

This, however, was a remark which was confined to the drawing-rooms.
The populace, which perceives no jest in holy deeds, was touched, and
admired him.

As for the Bishop, it was a shock to him to have beheld the guillotine,
and it was a long time before he recovered from it.

In fact, when the scaffold is there, all erected and prepared, it has
something about it which produces hallucination. One may feel a certain
indifference to the death penalty, one may refrain from pronouncing
upon it, from saying yes or no, so long as one has not seen a
guillotine with one’s own eyes: but if one encounters one of them, the
shock is violent; one is forced to decide, and to take part for or
against. Some admire it, like de Maistre; others execrate it, like
Beccaria. The guillotine is the concretion of the law; it is called
_vindicate_; it is not neutral, and it does not permit you to remain
neutral. He who sees it shivers with the most mysterious of shivers.
All social problems erect their interrogation point around this
chopping-knife. The scaffold is a vision. The scaffold is not a piece
of carpentry; the scaffold is not a machine; the scaffold is not an
inert bit of mechanism constructed of wood, iron and cords.

It seems as though it were a being, possessed of I know not what sombre
initiative; one would say that this piece of carpenter’s work saw, that
this machine heard, that this mechanism understood, that this wood,
this iron, and these cords were possessed of will. In the frightful
meditation into which its presence casts the soul the scaffold appears
in terrible guise, and as though taking part in what is going on. The
scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats
flesh, it drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort of monster fabricated by
the judge and the carpenter, a spectre which seems to live with a
horrible vitality composed of all the death which it has inflicted.

Therefore, the impression was terrible and profound; on the day
following the execution, and on many succeeding days, the Bishop
appeared to be crushed. The almost violent serenity of the funereal
moment had disappeared; the phantom of social justice tormented him.
He, who generally returned from all his deeds with a radiant
satisfaction, seemed to be reproaching himself. At times he talked to
himself, and stammered lugubrious monologues in a low voice. This is
one which his sister overheard one evening and preserved: “I did not
think that it was so monstrous. It is wrong to become absorbed in the
divine law to such a degree as not to perceive human law. Death belongs
to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?”


In course of time these impressions weakened and probably vanished.
Nevertheless, it was observed that the Bishop thenceforth avoided
passing the place of execution.

M. Myriel could be summoned at any hour to the bedside of the sick and
dying. He did not ignore the fact that therein lay his greatest duty
and his greatest labor. Widowed and orphaned families had no need to
summon him; he came of his own accord. He understood how to sit down
and hold his peace for long hours beside the man who had lost the wife
of his love, of the mother who had lost her child. As he knew the
moment for silence he knew also the moment for speech. Oh, admirable
consoler! He sought not to efface sorrow by forgetfulness, but to
magnify and dignify it by hope. He said:—

“Have a care of the manner in which you turn towards the dead. Think
not of that which perishes. Gaze steadily. You will perceive the living
light of your well-beloved dead in the depths of heaven.” He knew that
faith is wholesome. He sought to counsel and calm the despairing man,
by pointing out to him the resigned man, and to transform the grief
which gazes upon a grave by showing him the grief which fixes its gaze
upon a star.




CHAPTER V—MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU MADE HIS CASSOCKS LAST TOO LONG


The private life of M. Myriel was filled with the same thoughts as his
public life. The voluntary poverty in which the Bishop of D—— lived,
would have been a solemn and charming sight for any one who could have
viewed it close at hand.

Like all old men, and like the majority of thinkers, he slept little.
This brief slumber was profound. In the morning he meditated for an
hour, then he said his mass, either at the cathedral or in his own
house. His mass said, he broke his fast on rye bread dipped in the milk
of his own cows. Then he set to work.

A Bishop is a very busy man: he must every day receive the secretary of
the bishopric, who is generally a canon, and nearly every day his
vicars-general. He has congregations to reprove, privileges to grant, a
whole ecclesiastical library to examine,—prayer-books, diocesan
catechisms, books of hours, etc.,—charges to write, sermons to
authorize, curés and mayors to reconcile, a clerical correspondence, an
administrative correspondence; on one side the State, on the other the
Holy See; and a thousand matters of business.

What time was left to him, after these thousand details of business,
and his offices and his breviary, he bestowed first on the necessitous,
the sick, and the afflicted; the time which was left to him from the
afflicted, the sick, and the necessitous, he devoted to work. Sometimes
he dug in his garden; again, he read or wrote. He had but one word for
both these kinds of toil; he called them _gardening_. “The mind is a
garden,” said he.

Towards midday, when the weather was fine, he went forth and took a
stroll in the country or in town, often entering lowly dwellings. He
was seen walking alone, buried in his own thoughts, his eyes cast down,
supporting himself on his long cane, clad in his wadded purple garment
of silk, which was very warm, wearing purple stockings inside his
coarse shoes, and surmounted by a flat hat which allowed three golden
tassels of large bullion to droop from its three points.

It was a perfect festival wherever he appeared. One would have said
that his presence had something warming and luminous about it. The
children and the old people came out to the doorsteps for the Bishop as
for the sun. He bestowed his blessing, and they blessed him. They
pointed out his house to any one who was in need of anything.

[Illustration: The Comforter]

Here and there he halted, accosted the little boys and girls, and
smiled upon the mothers. He visited the poor so long as he had any
money; when he no longer had any, he visited the rich.

As he made his cassocks last a long while, and did not wish to have it
noticed, he never went out in the town without his wadded purple cloak.
This inconvenienced him somewhat in summer.

On his return, he dined. The dinner resembled his breakfast.

At half-past eight in the evening he supped with his sister, Madame
Magloire standing behind them and serving them at table. Nothing could
be more frugal than this repast. If, however, the Bishop had one of his
curés to supper, Madame Magloire took advantage of the opportunity to
serve Monseigneur with some excellent fish from the lake, or with some
fine game from the mountains. Every curé furnished the pretext for a
good meal: the Bishop did not interfere. With that exception, his
ordinary diet consisted only of vegetables boiled in water, and oil
soup. Thus it was said in the town, _when the Bishop does not indulge
in the cheer of a curé, he indulges in the cheer of a trappist_.

After supper he conversed for half an hour with Mademoiselle Baptistine
and Madame Magloire; then he retired to his own room and set to
writing, sometimes on loose sheets, and again on the margin of some
folio. He was a man of letters and rather learned. He left behind him
five or six very curious manuscripts; among others, a dissertation on
this verse in Genesis, _In the beginning, the spirit of God floated
upon the waters_. With this verse he compares three texts: the Arabic
verse which says, _The winds of God blew;_ Flavius Josephus who says,
_A wind from above was precipitated upon the earth;_ and finally, the
Chaldaic paraphrase of Onkelos, which renders it, _A wind coming from
God blew upon the face of the waters_. In another dissertation, he
examines the theological works of Hugo, Bishop of Ptolemaïs,
great-grand-uncle to the writer of this book, and establishes the fact,
that to this bishop must be attributed the divers little works
published during the last century, under the pseudonym of Barleycourt.

Sometimes, in the midst of his reading, no matter what the book might
be which he had in his hand, he would suddenly fall into a profound
meditation, whence he only emerged to write a few lines on the pages of
the volume itself. These lines have often no connection whatever with
the book which contains them. We now have under our eyes a note written
by him on the margin of a quarto entitled _Correspondence of Lord
Germain with Generals Clinton, Cornwallis, and the Admirals on the
American station. Versailles, Poinçot, book-seller; and Paris, Pissot,
bookseller, Quai des Augustins._

Here is the note:—

“Oh, you who are!

“Ecclesiastes calls you the All-powerful; the Maccabees call you the
Creator; the Epistle to the Ephesians calls you liberty; Baruch calls
you Immensity; the Psalms call you Wisdom and Truth; John calls you
Light; the Books of Kings call you Lord; Exodus calls you Providence;
Leviticus, Sanctity; Esdras, Justice; the creation calls you God; man
calls you Father; but Solomon calls you Compassion, and that is the
most beautiful of all your names.”


Toward nine o’clock in the evening the two women retired and betook
themselves to their chambers on the first floor, leaving him alone
until morning on the ground floor.

It is necessary that we should, in this place, give an exact idea of
the dwelling of the Bishop of D——




CHAPTER VI—WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM


The house in which he lived consisted, as we have said, of a ground
floor, and one story above; three rooms on the ground floor, three
chambers on the first, and an attic above. Behind the house was a
garden, a quarter of an acre in extent. The two women occupied the
first floor; the Bishop was lodged below. The first room, opening on
the street, served him as dining-room, the second was his bedroom, and
the third his oratory. There was no exit possible from this oratory,
except by passing through the bedroom, nor from the bedroom, without
passing through the dining-room. At the end of the suite, in the
oratory, there was a detached alcove with a bed, for use in cases of
hospitality. The Bishop offered this bed to country curates whom
business or the requirements of their parishes brought to D——

The pharmacy of the hospital, a small building which had been added to
the house, and abutted on the garden, had been transformed into a
kitchen and cellar. In addition to this, there was in the garden a
stable, which had formerly been the kitchen of the hospital, and in
which the Bishop kept two cows. No matter what the quantity of milk
they gave, he invariably sent half of it every morning to the sick
people in the hospital.

_“I am paying my tithes,”_ he said.

His bedroom was tolerably large, and rather difficult to warm in bad
weather. As wood is extremely dear at D——, he hit upon the idea of
having a compartment of boards constructed in the cow-shed. Here he
passed his evenings during seasons of severe cold: he called it his
_winter salon_.

In this winter salon, as in the dining-room, there was no other
furniture than a square table in white wood, and four straw-seated
chairs. In addition to this the dining-room was ornamented with an
antique sideboard, painted pink, in water colors. Out of a similar
sideboard, properly draped with white napery and imitation lace, the
Bishop had constructed the altar which decorated his oratory.

His wealthy penitents and the sainted women of D—— had more than once
assessed themselves to raise the money for a new altar for
Monseigneur’s oratory; on each occasion he had taken the money and had
given it to the poor. “The most beautiful of altars,” he said, “is the
soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thanking God.”


In his oratory there were two straw prie-Dieu, and there was an
armchair, also in straw, in his bedroom. When, by chance, he received
seven or eight persons at one time, the prefect, or the general, or the
staff of the regiment in garrison, or several pupils from the little
seminary, the chairs had to be fetched from the winter salon in the
stable, the prie-Dieu from the oratory, and the armchair from the
bedroom: in this way as many as eleven chairs could be collected for
the visitors. A room was dismantled for each new guest.

It sometimes happened that there were twelve in the party; the Bishop
then relieved the embarrassment of the situation by standing in front
of the chimney if it was winter, or by strolling in the garden if it
was summer.

There was still another chair in the detached alcove, but the straw was
half gone from it, and it had but three legs, so that it was of service
only when propped against the wall. Mademoiselle Baptistine had also in
her own room a very large easy-chair of wood, which had formerly been
gilded, and which was covered with flowered pekin; but they had been
obliged to hoist this bergère up to the first story through the window,
as the staircase was too narrow; it could not, therefore, be reckoned
among the possibilities in the way of furniture.

Mademoiselle Baptistine’s ambition had been to be able to purchase a
set of drawing-room furniture in yellow Utrecht velvet, stamped with a
rose pattern, and with mahogany in swan’s neck style, with a sofa. But
this would have cost five hundred francs at least, and in view of the
fact that she had only been able to lay by forty-two francs and ten
sous for this purpose in the course of five years, she had ended by
renouncing the idea. However, who is there who has attained his ideal?

Nothing is more easy to present to the imagination than the Bishop’s
bedchamber. A glazed door opened on the garden; opposite this was the
bed,—a hospital bed of iron, with a canopy of green serge; in the
shadow of the bed, behind a curtain, were the utensils of the toilet,
which still betrayed the elegant habits of the man of the world: there
were two doors, one near the chimney, opening into the oratory; the
other near the bookcase, opening into the dining-room. The bookcase was
a large cupboard with glass doors filled with books; the chimney was of
wood painted to represent marble, and habitually without fire. In the
chimney stood a pair of firedogs of iron, ornamented above with two
garlanded vases, and flutings which had formerly been silvered with
silver leaf, which was a sort of episcopal luxury; above the
chimney-piece hung a crucifix of copper, with the silver worn off,
fixed on a background of threadbare velvet in a wooden frame from which
the gilding had fallen; near the glass door a large table with an
inkstand, loaded with a confusion of papers and with huge volumes;
before the table an armchair of straw; in front of the bed a prie-Dieu,
borrowed from the oratory.

Two portraits in oval frames were fastened to the wall on each side of
the bed. Small gilt inscriptions on the plain surface of the cloth at
the side of these figures indicated that the portraits represented, one
the Abbé of Chaliot, bishop of Saint Claude; the other, the Abbé
Tourteau, vicar-general of Agde, abbé of Grand-Champ, order of Cîteaux,
diocese of Chartres. When the Bishop succeeded to this apartment, after
the hospital patients, he had found these portraits there, and had left
them. They were priests, and probably donors—two reasons for respecting
them. All that he knew about these two persons was, that they had been
appointed by the king, the one to his bishopric, the other to his
benefice, on the same day, the 27th of April, 1785. Madame Magloire
having taken the pictures down to dust, the Bishop had discovered these
particulars written in whitish ink on a little square of paper,
yellowed by time, and attached to the back of the portrait of the Abbé
of Grand-Champ with four wafers.

At his window he had an antique curtain of a coarse woollen stuff,
which finally became so old, that, in order to avoid the expense of a
new one, Madame Magloire was forced to take a large seam in the very
middle of it. This seam took the form of a cross. The Bishop often
called attention to it: “How delightful that is!” he said.

All the rooms in the house, without exception, those on the ground
floor as well as those on the first floor, were white-washed, which is
a fashion in barracks and hospitals.

However, in their latter years, Madame Magloire discovered beneath the
paper which had been washed over, paintings, ornamenting the apartment
of Mademoiselle Baptistine, as we shall see further on. Before becoming
a hospital, this house had been the ancient parliament house of the
Bourgeois. Hence this decoration. The chambers were paved in red
bricks, which were washed every week, with straw mats in front of all
the beds. Altogether, this dwelling, which was attended to by the two
women, was exquisitely clean from top to bottom. This was the sole
luxury which the Bishop permitted. He said, _“That takes nothing from
the poor.”_

It must be confessed, however, that he still retained from his former
possessions six silver knives and forks and a soup-ladle, which Madame
Magloire contemplated every day with delight, as they glistened
splendidly upon the coarse linen cloth. And since we are now painting
the Bishop of D—— as he was in reality, we must add that he had said
more than once, “I find it difficult to renounce eating from silver
dishes.”


To this silverware must be added two large candlesticks of massive
silver, which he had inherited from a great-aunt. These candlesticks
held two wax candles, and usually figured on the Bishop’s
chimney-piece. When he had any one to dinner, Madame Magloire lighted
the two candles and set the candlesticks on the table.

In the Bishop’s own chamber, at the head of his bed, there was a small
cupboard, in which Madame Magloire locked up the six silver knives and
forks and the big spoon every night. But it is necessary to add, that
the key was never removed.

The garden, which had been rather spoiled by the ugly buildings which
we have mentioned, was composed of four alleys in cross-form, radiating
from a tank. Another walk made the circuit of the garden, and skirted
the white wall which enclosed it. These alleys left behind them four
square plots rimmed with box. In three of these, Madame Magloire
cultivated vegetables; in the fourth, the Bishop had planted some
flowers; here and there stood a few fruit-trees. Madame Magloire had
once remarked, with a sort of gentle malice: “Monseigneur, you who turn
everything to account, have, nevertheless, one useless plot. It would
be better to grow salads there than bouquets.” “Madame Magloire,”
retorted the Bishop, “you are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as
the useful.” He added after a pause, “More so, perhaps.”


This plot, consisting of three or four beds, occupied the Bishop almost
as much as did his books. He liked to pass an hour or two there,
trimming, hoeing, and making holes here and there in the earth, into
which he dropped seeds. He was not as hostile to insects as a gardener
could have wished to see him. Moreover, he made no pretensions to
botany; he ignored groups and consistency; he made not the slightest
effort to decide between Tournefort and the natural method; he took
part neither with the buds against the cotyledons, nor with Jussieu
against Linnæus. He did not study plants; he loved flowers. He
respected learned men greatly; he respected the ignorant still more;
and, without ever failing in these two respects, he watered his
flower-beds every summer evening with a tin watering-pot painted green.

The house had not a single door which could be locked. The door of the
dining-room, which, as we have said, opened directly on the cathedral
square, had formerly been ornamented with locks and bolts like the door
of a prison. The Bishop had had all this ironwork removed, and this
door was never fastened, either by night or by day, with anything
except the latch. All that the first passer-by had to do at any hour,
was to give it a push. At first, the two women had been very much tried
by this door, which was never fastened, but Monsieur de D—— had said to
them, “Have bolts put on your rooms, if that will please you.” They had
ended by sharing his confidence, or by at least acting as though they
shared it. Madame Magloire alone had frights from time to time. As for
the Bishop, his thought can be found explained, or at least indicated,
in the three lines which he wrote on the margin of a Bible, “This is
the shade of difference: the door of the physician should never be
shut, the door of the priest should always be open.”


On another book, entitled _Philosophy of the Medical Science_, he had
written this other note: “Am not I a physician like them? I also have
my patients, and then, too, I have some whom I call my unfortunates.”


Again he wrote: “Do not inquire the name of him who asks a shelter of
you. The very man who is embarrassed by his name is the one who needs
shelter.”


It chanced that a worthy curé, I know not whether it was the curé of
Couloubroux or the curé of Pompierry, took it into his head to ask him
one day, probably at the instigation of Madame Magloire, whether
Monsieur was sure that he was not committing an indiscretion, to a
certain extent, in leaving his door unfastened day and night, at the
mercy of any one who should choose to enter, and whether, in short, he
did not fear lest some misfortune might occur in a house so little
guarded. The Bishop touched his shoulder, with gentle gravity, and said
to him, _“Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui
custodiunt eam,” Unless the Lord guard the house, in vain do they watch
who guard it._

Then he spoke of something else.

He was fond of saying, “There is a bravery of the priest as well as the
bravery of a colonel of dragoons,—only,” he added, “ours must be
tranquil.”





CHAPTER VII—CRAVATTE


It is here that a fact falls naturally into place, which we must not
omit, because it is one of the sort which show us best what sort of a
man the Bishop of D—— was.

After the destruction of the band of Gaspard Bès, who had infested the
gorges of Ollioules, one of his lieutenants, Cravatte, took refuge in
the mountains. He concealed himself for some time with his bandits, the
remnant of Gaspard Bès’s troop, in the county of Nice; then he made his
way to Piédmont, and suddenly reappeared in France, in the vicinity of
Barcelonette. He was first seen at Jauziers, then at Tuiles. He hid
himself in the caverns of the Joug-de-l’Aigle, and thence he descended
towards the hamlets and villages through the ravines of Ubaye and
Ubayette.

He even pushed as far as Embrun, entered the cathedral one night, and
despoiled the sacristy. His highway robberies laid waste the
country-side. The gendarmes were set on his track, but in vain. He
always escaped; sometimes he resisted by main force. He was a bold
wretch. In the midst of all this terror the Bishop arrived. He was
making his circuit to Chastelar. The mayor came to meet him, and urged
him to retrace his steps. Cravatte was in possession of the mountains
as far as Arche, and beyond; there was danger even with an escort; it
merely exposed three or four unfortunate gendarmes to no purpose.

“Therefore,” said the Bishop, “I intend to go without escort.”


“You do not really mean that, Monseigneur!” exclaimed the mayor.

“I do mean it so thoroughly that I absolutely refuse any gendarmes, and
shall set out in an hour.”


“Set out?”


“Set out.”


“Alone?”


“Alone.”


“Monseigneur, you will not do that!”


“There exists yonder in the mountains,” said the Bishop, “a tiny
community no bigger than that, which I have not seen for three years.
They are my good friends, those gentle and honest shepherds. They own
one goat out of every thirty that they tend. They make very pretty
woollen cords of various colors, and they play the mountain airs on
little flutes with six holes. They need to be told of the good God now
and then. What would they say to a bishop who was afraid? What would
they say if I did not go?”


“But the brigands, Monseigneur?”


“Hold,” said the Bishop, “I must think of that. You are right. I may
meet them. They, too, need to be told of the good God.”


“But, Monseigneur, there is a band of them! A flock of wolves!”


“Monsieur le maire, it may be that it is of this very flock of wolves
that Jesus has constituted me the shepherd. Who knows the ways of
Providence?”


“They will rob you, Monseigneur.”


“I have nothing.”


“They will kill you.”


“An old goodman of a priest, who passes along mumbling his prayers?
Bah! To what purpose?”


“Oh, mon Dieu! what if you should meet them!”


“I should beg alms of them for my poor.”


“Do not go, Monseigneur. In the name of Heaven! You are risking your
life!”


“Monsieur le maire,” said the Bishop, “is that really all? I am not in
the world to guard my own life, but to guard souls.”


They had to allow him to do as he pleased. He set out, accompanied only
by a child who offered to serve as a guide. His obstinacy was bruited
about the country-side, and caused great consternation.

He would take neither his sister nor Madame Magloire. He traversed the
mountain on mule-back, encountered no one, and arrived safe and sound
at the residence of his “good friends,” the shepherds. He remained
there for a fortnight, preaching, administering the sacrament,
teaching, exhorting. When the time of his departure approached, he
resolved to chant a _Te Deum_ pontifically. He mentioned it to the
curé. But what was to be done? There were no episcopal ornaments. They
could only place at his disposal a wretched village sacristy, with a
few ancient chasubles of threadbare damask adorned with imitation lace.

“Bah!” said the Bishop. “Let us announce our _Te Deum_ from the pulpit,
nevertheless, Monsieur le Curé. Things will arrange themselves.”


They instituted a search in the churches of the neighborhood. All the
magnificence of these humble parishes combined would not have sufficed
to clothe the chorister of a cathedral properly.

While they were thus embarrassed, a large chest was brought and
deposited in the presbytery for the Bishop, by two unknown horsemen,
who departed on the instant. The chest was opened; it contained a cope
of cloth of gold, a mitre ornamented with diamonds, an archbishop’s
cross, a magnificent crosier,—all the pontifical vestments which had
been stolen a month previously from the treasury of Notre Dame
d’Embrun. In the chest was a paper, on which these words were written,
_“From Cravatte to Monseigneur Bienvenu.”_

“Did not I say that things would come right of themselves?” said the
Bishop. Then he added, with a smile, “To him who contents himself with
the surplice of a curate, God sends the cope of an archbishop.”


“Monseigneur,” murmured the curé, throwing back his head with a smile.
“God—or the Devil.”


The Bishop looked steadily at the curé, and repeated with authority,
“God!”


When he returned to Chastelar, the people came out to stare at him as
at a curiosity, all along the road. At the priest’s house in Chastelar
he rejoined Mademoiselle Baptistine and Madame Magloire, who were
waiting for him, and he said to his sister: “Well! was I in the right?
The poor priest went to his poor mountaineers with empty hands, and he
returns from them with his hands full. I set out bearing only my faith
in God; I have brought back the treasure of a cathedral.”


That evening, before he went to bed, he said again: “Let us never fear
robbers nor murderers. Those are dangers from without, petty dangers.
Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the
real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves. What matters it
what threatens our head or our purse! Let us think only of that which
threatens our soul.”


Then, turning to his sister: “Sister, never a precaution on the part of
the priest, against his fellow-man. That which his fellow does, God
permits. Let us confine ourselves to prayer, when we think that a
danger is approaching us. Let us pray, not for ourselves, but that our
brother may not fall into sin on our account.”


However, such incidents were rare in his life. We relate those of which
we know; but generally he passed his life in doing the same things at
the same moment. One month of his year resembled one hour of his day.

As to what became of “the treasure” of the cathedral of Embrun, we
should be embarrassed by any inquiry in that direction. It consisted of
very handsome things, very tempting things, and things which were very
well adapted to be stolen for the benefit of the unfortunate. Stolen
they had already been elsewhere. Half of the adventure was completed;
it only remained to impart a new direction to the theft, and to cause
it to take a short trip in the direction of the poor. However, we make
no assertions on this point. Only, a rather obscure note was found
among the Bishop’s papers, which may bear some relation to this matter,
and which is couched in these terms, _“The question is, to decide
whether this should be turned over to the cathedral or to the
hospital.”_




CHAPTER VIII—PHILOSOPHY AFTER DRINKING


The senator above mentioned was a clever man, who had made his own way,
heedless of those things which present obstacles, and which are called
conscience, sworn faith, justice, duty: he had marched straight to his
goal, without once flinching in the line of his advancement and his
interest. He was an old attorney, softened by success; not a bad man by
any means, who rendered all the small services in his power to his
sons, his sons-in-law, his relations, and even to his friends, having
wisely seized upon, in life, good sides, good opportunities, good
windfalls. Everything else seemed to him very stupid. He was
intelligent, and just sufficiently educated to think himself a disciple
of Epicurus; while he was, in reality, only a product of
Pigault-Lebrun. He laughed willingly and pleasantly over infinite and
eternal things, and at the “crotchets of that good old fellow the
Bishop.” He even sometimes laughed at him with an amiable authority in
the presence of M. Myriel himself, who listened to him.

On some semi-official occasion or other, I do not recollect what,
Count*** [this senator] and M. Myriel were to dine with the prefect. At
dessert, the senator, who was slightly exhilarated, though still
perfectly dignified, exclaimed:—

“Egad, Bishop, let’s have a discussion. It is hard for a senator and a
bishop to look at each other without winking. We are two augurs. I am
going to make a confession to you. I have a philosophy of my own.”


“And you are right,” replied the Bishop. “As one makes one’s
philosophy, so one lies on it. You are on the bed of purple, senator.”


The senator was encouraged, and went on:—

“Let us be good fellows.”


“Good devils even,” said the Bishop.

“I declare to you,” continued the senator, “that the Marquis d’Argens,
Pyrrhon, Hobbes, and M. Naigeon are no rascals. I have all the
philosophers in my library gilded on the edges.”


“Like yourself, Count,” interposed the Bishop.

The senator resumed:—

“I hate Diderot; he is an ideologist, a declaimer, and a revolutionist,
a believer in God at bottom, and more bigoted than Voltaire. Voltaire
made sport of Needham, and he was wrong, for Needham’s eels prove that
God is useless. A drop of vinegar in a spoonful of flour paste supplies
the _fiat lux_. Suppose the drop to be larger and the spoonful bigger;
you have the world. Man is the eel. Then what is the good of the
Eternal Father? The Jehovah hypothesis tires me, Bishop. It is good for
nothing but to produce shallow people, whose reasoning is hollow. Down
with that great All, which torments me! Hurrah for Zero which leaves me
in peace! Between you and me, and in order to empty my sack, and make
confession to my pastor, as it behooves me to do, I will admit to you
that I have good sense. I am not enthusiastic over your Jesus, who
preaches renunciation and sacrifice to the last extremity. ’Tis the
counsel of an avaricious man to beggars. Renunciation; why? Sacrifice;
to what end? I do not see one wolf immolating himself for the happiness
of another wolf. Let us stick to nature, then. We are at the top; let
us have a superior philosophy. What is the advantage of being at the
top, if one sees no further than the end of other people’s noses? Let
us live merrily. Life is all. That man has another future elsewhere, on
high, below, anywhere, I don’t believe; not one single word of it. Ah!
sacrifice and renunciation are recommended to me; I must take heed to
everything I do; I must cudgel my brains over good and evil, over the
just and the unjust, over the _fas_ and the _nefas_. Why? Because I
shall have to render an account of my actions. When? After death. What
a fine dream! After my death it will be a very clever person who can
catch me. Have a handful of dust seized by a shadow-hand, if you can.
Let us tell the truth, we who are initiated, and who have raised the
veil of Isis: there is no such thing as either good or evil; there is
vegetation. Let us seek the real. Let us get to the bottom of it. Let
us go into it thoroughly. What the deuce! let us go to the bottom of
it! We must scent out the truth; dig in the earth for it, and seize it.
Then it gives you exquisite joys. Then you grow strong, and you laugh.
I am square on the bottom, I am. Immortality, Bishop, is a chance, a
waiting for dead men’s shoes. Ah! what a charming promise! trust to it,
if you like! What a fine lot Adam has! We are souls, and we shall be
angels, with blue wings on our shoulder-blades. Do come to my
assistance: is it not Tertullian who says that the blessed shall travel
from star to star? Very well. We shall be the grasshoppers of the
stars. And then, besides, we shall see God. Ta, ta, ta! What twaddle
all these paradises are! God is a nonsensical monster. I would not say
that in the _Moniteur_, egad! but I may whisper it among friends.
_Inter pocula_. To sacrifice the world to paradise is to let slip the
prey for the shadow. Be the dupe of the infinite! I’m not such a fool.
I am a nought. I call myself Monsieur le Comte Nought, senator. Did I
exist before my birth? No. Shall I exist after death? No. What am I? A
little dust collected in an organism. What am I to do on this earth?
The choice rests with me: suffer or enjoy. Whither will suffering lead
me? To nothingness; but I shall have suffered. Whither will enjoyment
lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have enjoyed myself. My choice is
made. One must eat or be eaten. I shall eat. It is better to be the
tooth than the grass. Such is my wisdom. After which, go whither I push
thee, the grave-digger is there; the Pantheon for some of us: all falls
into the great hole. End. _Finis_. Total liquidation. This is the
vanishing-point. Death is death, believe me. I laugh at the idea of
there being any one who has anything to tell me on that subject. Fables
of nurses; bugaboo for children; Jehovah for men. No; our to-morrow is
the night. Beyond the tomb there is nothing but equal nothingness. You
have been Sardanapalus, you have been Vincent de Paul—it makes no
difference. That is the truth. Then live your life, above all things.
Make use of your _I_ while you have it. In truth, Bishop, I tell you
that I have a philosophy of my own, and I have my philosophers. I don’t
let myself be taken in with that nonsense. Of course, there must be
something for those who are down,—for the barefooted beggars,
knife-grinders, and miserable wretches. Legends, chimæras, the soul,
immortality, paradise, the stars, are provided for them to swallow.
They gobble it down. They spread it on their dry bread. He who has
nothing else has the good God. That is the least he can have. I oppose
no objection to that; but I reserve Monsieur Naigeon for myself. The
good God is good for the populace.”


The Bishop clapped his hands.

“That’s talking!” he exclaimed. “What an excellent and really
marvellous thing is this materialism! Not every one who wants it can
have it. Ah! when one does have it, one is no longer a dupe, one does
not stupidly allow one’s self to be exiled like Cato, nor stoned like
Stephen, nor burned alive like Jeanne d’Arc. Those who have succeeded
in procuring this admirable materialism have the joy of feeling
themselves irresponsible, and of thinking that they can devour
everything without uneasiness,—places, sinecures, dignities, power,
whether well or ill acquired, lucrative recantations, useful
treacheries, savory capitulations of conscience,—and that they shall
enter the tomb with their digestion accomplished. How agreeable that
is! I do not say that with reference to you, senator. Nevertheless, it
is impossible for me to refrain from congratulating you. You great
lords have, so you say, a philosophy of your own, and for yourselves,
which is exquisite, refined, accessible to the rich alone, good for all
sauces, and which seasons the voluptuousness of life admirably. This
philosophy has been extracted from the depths, and unearthed by special
seekers. But you are good-natured princes, and you do not think it a
bad thing that belief in the good God should constitute the philosophy
of the people, very much as the goose stuffed with chestnuts is the
truffled turkey of the poor.”





CHAPTER IX—THE BROTHER AS DEPICTED BY THE SISTER


In order to furnish an idea of the private establishment of the Bishop
of D——, and of the manner in which those two sainted women subordinated
their actions, their thoughts, their feminine instincts even, which are
easily alarmed, to the habits and purposes of the Bishop, without his
even taking the trouble of speaking in order to explain them, we cannot
do better than transcribe in this place a letter from Mademoiselle
Baptistine to Madame the Vicomtess de Boischevron, the friend of her
childhood. This letter is in our possession.

D——, Dec. 16, 18—. MY GOOD MADAM: Not a day passes without our speaking
of you. It is our established custom; but there is another reason
besides. Just imagine, while washing and dusting the ceilings and
walls, Madam Magloire has made some discoveries; now our two chambers
hung with antique paper whitewashed over, would not discredit a château
in the style of yours. Madam Magloire has pulled off all the paper.
There were things beneath. My drawing-room, which contains no
furniture, and which we use for spreading out the linen after washing,
is fifteen feet in height, eighteen square, with a ceiling which was
formerly painted and gilded, and with beams, as in yours. This was
covered with a cloth while this was the hospital. And the woodwork was
of the era of our grandmothers. But my room is the one you ought to
see. Madam Magloire has discovered, under at least ten thicknesses of
paper pasted on top, some paintings, which without being good are very
tolerable. The subject is Telemachus being knighted by Minerva in some
gardens, the name of which escapes me. In short, where the Roman ladies
repaired on one single night. What shall I say to you? I have Romans,
and Roman ladies [here occurs an illegible word], and the whole train.
Madam Magloire has cleaned it all off; this summer she is going to have
some small injuries repaired, and the whole revarnished, and my chamber
will be a regular museum. She has also found in a corner of the attic
two wooden pier-tables of ancient fashion. They asked us two crowns of
six francs each to regild them, but it is much better to give the money
to the poor; and they are very ugly besides, and I should much prefer a
round table of mahogany.

I am always very happy. My brother is so good. He gives all he has to
the poor and sick. We are very much cramped. The country is trying in
the winter, and we really must do something for those who are in need.
We are almost comfortably lighted and warmed. You see that these are
great treats.

My brother has ways of his own. When he talks, he says that a bishop
ought to be so. Just imagine! the door of our house is never fastened.
Whoever chooses to enter finds himself at once in my brother’s room. He
fears nothing, even at night. That is his sort of bravery, he says.

He does not wish me or Madame Magloire feel any fear for him. He
exposes himself to all sorts of dangers, and he does not like to have
us even seem to notice it. One must know how to understand him.

He goes out in the rain, he walks in the water, he travels in winter.
He fears neither suspicious roads nor dangerous encounters, nor night.

Last year he went quite alone into a country of robbers. He would not
take us. He was absent for a fortnight. On his return nothing had
happened to him; he was thought to be dead, but was perfectly well, and
said, “This is the way I have been robbed!” And then he opened a trunk
full of jewels, all the jewels of the cathedral of Embrun, which the
thieves had given him.

When he returned on that occasion, I could not refrain from scolding
him a little, taking care, however, not to speak except when the
carriage was making a noise, so that no one might hear me.

At first I used to say to myself, “There are no dangers which will stop
him; he is terrible.” Now I have ended by getting used to it. I make a
sign to Madam Magloire that she is not to oppose him. He risks himself
as he sees fit. I carry off Madam Magloire, I enter my chamber, I pray
for him and fall asleep. I am at ease, because I know that if anything
were to happen to him, it would be the end of me. I should go to the
good God with my brother and my bishop. It has cost Madam Magloire more
trouble than it did me to accustom herself to what she terms his
imprudences. But now the habit has been acquired. We pray together, we
tremble together, and we fall asleep. If the devil were to enter this
house, he would be allowed to do so. After all, what is there for us to
fear in this house? There is always some one with us who is stronger
than we. The devil may pass through it, but the good God dwells here.

This suffices me. My brother has no longer any need of saying a word to
me. I understand him without his speaking, and we abandon ourselves to
the care of Providence. That is the way one has to do with a man who
possesses grandeur of soul.

I have interrogated my brother with regard to the information which you
desire on the subject of the Faux family. You are aware that he knows
everything, and that he has memories, because he is still a very good
royalist. They really are a very ancient Norman family of the
generalship of Caen. Five hundred years ago there was a Raoul de Faux,
a Jean de Faux, and a Thomas de Faux, who were gentlemen, and one of
whom was a seigneur de Rochefort. The last was Guy-Étienne-Alexandre,
and was commander of a regiment, and something in the light horse of
Bretagne. His daughter, Marie-Louise, married Adrien-Charles de
Gramont, son of the Duke Louis de Gramont, peer of France, colonel of
the French guards, and lieutenant-general of the army. It is written
Faux, Fauq, and Faoucq.

Good Madame, recommend us to the prayers of your sainted relative,
Monsieur the Cardinal. As for your dear Sylvanie, she has done well in
not wasting the few moments which she passes with you in writing to me.
She is well, works as you would wish, and loves me.

That is all that I desire. The souvenir which she sent through you
reached me safely, and it makes me very happy. My health is not so very
bad, and yet I grow thinner every day. Farewell; my paper is at an end,
and this forces me to leave you. A thousand good wishes.

BAPTISTINE.

P.S. Your grand nephew is charming. Do you know that he will soon be
five years old? Yesterday he saw some one riding by on horseback who
had on knee-caps, and he said, “What has he got on his knees?” He is a
charming child! His little brother is dragging an old broom about the
room, like a carriage, and saying, “Hu!”


As will be perceived from this letter, these two women understood how
to mould themselves to the Bishop’s ways with that special feminine
genius which comprehends the man better than he comprehends himself.
The Bishop of D——, in spite of the gentle and candid air which never
deserted him, sometimes did things that were grand, bold, and
magnificent, without seeming to have even a suspicion of the fact. They
trembled, but they let him alone. Sometimes Madame Magloire essayed a
remonstrance in advance, but never at the time, nor afterwards. They
never interfered with him by so much as a word or sign, in any action
once entered upon. At certain moments, without his having occasion to
mention it, when he was not even conscious of it himself in all
probability, so perfect was his simplicity, they vaguely felt that he
was acting as a bishop; then they were nothing more than two shadows in
the house. They served him passively; and if obedience consisted in
disappearing, they disappeared. They understood, with an admirable
delicacy of instinct, that certain cares may be put under constraint.
Thus, even when believing him to be in peril, they understood, I will
not say his thought, but his nature, to such a degree that they no
longer watched over him. They confided him to God.

Moreover, Baptistine said, as we have just read, that her brother’s end
would prove her own. Madame Magloire did not say this, but she knew it.




CHAPTER X—THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN UNKNOWN LIGHT


At an epoch a little later than the date of the letter cited in the
preceding pages, he did a thing which, if the whole town was to be
believed, was even more hazardous than his trip across the mountains
infested with bandits.

In the country near D—— a man lived quite alone. This man, we will
state at once, was a former member of the Convention. His name was G——

Member of the Convention, G—— was mentioned with a sort of horror in
the little world of D—— A member of the Convention—can you imagine such
a thing? That existed from the time when people called each other
_thou_, and when they said “citizen.” This man was almost a monster. He
had not voted for the death of the king, but almost. He was a
quasi-regicide. He had been a terrible man. How did it happen that such
a man had not been brought before a provost’s court, on the return of
the legitimate princes? They need not have cut off his head, if you
please; clemency must be exercised, agreed; but a good banishment for
life. An example, in short, etc. Besides, he was an atheist, like all
the rest of those people. Gossip of the geese about the vulture.

Was G—— a vulture after all? Yes; if he were to be judged by the
element of ferocity in this solitude of his. As he had not voted for
the death of the king, he had not been included in the decrees of
exile, and had been able to remain in France.

He dwelt at a distance of three-quarters of an hour from the city, far
from any hamlet, far from any road, in some hidden turn of a very wild
valley, no one knew exactly where. He had there, it was said, a sort of
field, a hole, a lair. There were no neighbors, not even passers-by.
Since he had dwelt in that valley, the path which led thither had
disappeared under a growth of grass. The locality was spoken of as
though it had been the dwelling of a hangman.

Nevertheless, the Bishop meditated on the subject, and from time to
time he gazed at the horizon at a point where a clump of trees marked
the valley of the former member of the Convention, and he said, “There
is a soul yonder which is lonely.”


And he added, deep in his own mind, “I owe him a visit.”


But, let us avow it, this idea, which seemed natural at the first
blush, appeared to him after a moment’s reflection, as strange,
impossible, and almost repulsive. For, at bottom, he shared the general
impression, and the old member of the Convention inspired him, without
his being clearly conscious of the fact himself, with that sentiment
which borders on hate, and which is so well expressed by the word
estrangement.

Still, should the scab of the sheep cause the shepherd to recoil? No.
But what a sheep!

The good Bishop was perplexed. Sometimes he set out in that direction;
then he returned.

Finally, the rumor one day spread through the town that a sort of young
shepherd, who served the member of the Convention in his hovel, had
come in quest of a doctor; that the old wretch was dying, that
paralysis was gaining on him, and that he would not live over
night.—“Thank God!” some added.

The Bishop took his staff, put on his cloak, on account of his too
threadbare cassock, as we have mentioned, and because of the evening
breeze which was sure to rise soon, and set out.

The sun was setting, and had almost touched the horizon when the Bishop
arrived at the excommunicated spot. With a certain beating of the
heart, he recognized the fact that he was near the lair. He strode over
a ditch, leaped a hedge, made his way through a fence of dead boughs,
entered a neglected paddock, took a few steps with a good deal of
boldness, and suddenly, at the extremity of the waste land, and behind
lofty brambles, he caught sight of the cavern.

It was a very low hut, poor, small, and clean, with a vine nailed
against the outside.

Near the door, in an old wheel-chair, the armchair of the peasants,
there was a white-haired man, smiling at the sun.

Near the seated man stood a young boy, the shepherd lad. He was
offering the old man a jar of milk.

While the Bishop was watching him, the old man spoke: “Thank you,” he
said, “I need nothing.” And his smile quitted the sun to rest upon the
child.

The Bishop stepped forward. At the sound which he made in walking, the
old man turned his head, and his face expressed the sum total of the
surprise which a man can still feel after a long life.

“This is the first time since I have been here,” said he, “that any one
has entered here. Who are you, sir?”


The Bishop answered:—

“My name is Bienvenu Myriel.”


“Bienvenu Myriel? I have heard that name. Are you the man whom the
people call Monseigneur Welcome?”


“I am.”


The old man resumed with a half-smile

“In that case, you are my bishop?”


“Something of that sort.”


“Enter, sir.”


The member of the Convention extended his hand to the Bishop, but the
Bishop did not take it. The Bishop confined himself to the remark:—

“I am pleased to see that I have been misinformed. You certainly do not
seem to me to be ill.”


“Monsieur,” replied the old man, “I am going to recover.”


He paused, and then said:—

“I shall die three hours hence.”


Then he continued:—

“I am something of a doctor; I know in what fashion the last hour draws
on. Yesterday, only my feet were cold; to-day, the chill has ascended
to my knees; now I feel it mounting to my waist; when it reaches the
heart, I shall stop. The sun is beautiful, is it not? I had myself
wheeled out here to take a last look at things. You can talk to me; it
does not fatigue me. You have done well to come and look at a man who
is on the point of death. It is well that there should be witnesses at
that moment. One has one’s caprices; I should have liked to last until
the dawn, but I know that I shall hardly live three hours. It will be
night then. What does it matter, after all? Dying is a simple affair.
One has no need of the light for that. So be it. I shall die by
starlight.”


The old man turned to the shepherd lad:—

“Go to thy bed; thou wert awake all last night; thou art tired.”


The child entered the hut.

The old man followed him with his eyes, and added, as though speaking
to himself:—

“I shall die while he sleeps. The two slumbers may be good neighbors.”


The Bishop was not touched as it seems that he should have been. He did
not think he discerned God in this manner of dying; let us say the
whole, for these petty contradictions of great hearts must be indicated
like the rest: he, who on occasion, was so fond of laughing at “His
Grace,” was rather shocked at not being addressed as Monseigneur, and
he was almost tempted to retort “citizen.” He was assailed by a fancy
for peevish familiarity, common enough to doctors and priests, but
which was not habitual with him. This man, after all, this member of
the Convention, this representative of the people, had been one of the
powerful ones of the earth; for the first time in his life, probably,
the Bishop felt in a mood to be severe.

Meanwhile, the member of the Convention had been surveying him with a
modest cordiality, in which one could have distinguished, possibly,
that humility which is so fitting when one is on the verge of returning
to dust.

The Bishop, on his side, although he generally restrained his
curiosity, which, in his opinion, bordered on a fault, could not
refrain from examining the member of the Convention with an attention
which, as it did not have its course in sympathy, would have served his
conscience as a matter of reproach, in connection with any other man. A
member of the Convention produced on him somewhat the effect of being
outside the pale of the law, even of the law of charity. G——, calm, his
body almost upright, his voice vibrating, was one of those
octogenarians who form the subject of astonishment to the physiologist.
The Revolution had many of these men, proportioned to the epoch. In
this old man one was conscious of a man put to the proof. Though so
near to his end, he preserved all the gestures of health. In his clear
glance, in his firm tone, in the robust movement of his shoulders,
there was something calculated to disconcert death. Azrael, the
Mohammedan angel of the sepulchre, would have turned back, and thought
that he had mistaken the door. G—— seemed to be dying because he willed
it so. There was freedom in his agony. His legs alone were motionless.
It was there that the shadows held him fast. His feet were cold and
dead, but his head survived with all the power of life, and seemed full
of light. G——, at this solemn moment, resembled the king in that tale
of the Orient who was flesh above and marble below.

There was a stone there. The Bishop sat down. The exordium was abrupt.

“I congratulate you,” said he, in the tone which one uses for a
reprimand. “You did not vote for the death of the king, after all.”


The old member of the Convention did not appear to notice the bitter
meaning underlying the words “after all.” He replied. The smile had
quite disappeared from his face.

“Do not congratulate me too much, sir. I did vote for the death of the
tyrant.”


It was the tone of austerity answering the tone of severity.

“What do you mean to say?” resumed the Bishop.

“I mean to say that man has a tyrant,—ignorance. I voted for the death
of that tyrant. That tyrant engendered royalty, which is authority
falsely understood, while science is authority rightly understood. Man
should be governed only by science.”


“And conscience,” added the Bishop.

“It is the same thing. Conscience is the quantity of innate science
which we have within us.”


Monseigneur Bienvenu listened in some astonishment to this language,
which was very new to him.

The member of the Convention resumed:—

“So far as Louis XVI. was concerned, I said ‘no.’ I did not think that
I had the right to kill a man; but I felt it my duty to exterminate
evil. I voted the end of the tyrant, that is to say, the end of
prostitution for woman, the end of slavery for man, the end of night
for the child. In voting for the Republic, I voted for that. I voted
for fraternity, concord, the dawn. I have aided in the overthrow of
prejudices and errors. The crumbling away of prejudices and errors
causes light. We have caused the fall of the old world, and the old
world, that vase of miseries, has become, through its upsetting upon
the human race, an urn of joy.”


“Mixed joy,” said the Bishop.

“You may say troubled joy, and to-day, after that fatal return of the
past, which is called 1814, joy which has disappeared! Alas! The work
was incomplete, I admit: we demolished the ancient regime in deeds; we
were not able to suppress it entirely in ideas. To destroy abuses is
not sufficient; customs must be modified. The mill is there no longer;
the wind is still there.”


“You have demolished. It may be of use to demolish, but I distrust a
demolition complicated with wrath.”


“Right has its wrath, Bishop; and the wrath of right is an element of
progress. In any case, and in spite of whatever may be said, the French
Revolution is the most important step of the human race since the
advent of Christ. Incomplete, it may be, but sublime. It set free all
the unknown social quantities; it softened spirits, it calmed,
appeased, enlightened; it caused the waves of civilization to flow over
the earth. It was a good thing. The French Revolution is the
consecration of humanity.”


The Bishop could not refrain from murmuring:—

“Yes? ’93!”


The member of the Convention straightened himself up in his chair with
an almost lugubrious solemnity, and exclaimed, so far as a dying man is
capable of exclamation:—

“Ah, there you go; ’93! I was expecting that word. A cloud had been
forming for the space of fifteen hundred years; at the end of fifteen
hundred years it burst. You are putting the thunderbolt on its trial.”


The Bishop felt, without, perhaps, confessing it, that something within
him had suffered extinction. Nevertheless, he put a good face on the
matter. He replied:—

“The judge speaks in the name of justice; the priest speaks in the name
of pity, which is nothing but a more lofty justice. A thunderbolt
should commit no error.” And he added, regarding the member of the
Convention steadily the while, “Louis XVII.?”


The conventionary stretched forth his hand and grasped the Bishop’s
arm.

“Louis XVII.! let us see. For whom do you mourn? is it for the innocent
child? very good; in that case I mourn with you. Is it for the royal
child? I demand time for reflection. To me, the brother of Cartouche,
an innocent child who was hung up by the armpits in the Place de Grève,
until death ensued, for the sole crime of having been the brother of
Cartouche, is no less painful than the grandson of Louis XV., an
innocent child, martyred in the tower of the Temple, for the sole crime
of having been grandson of Louis XV.”


“Monsieur,” said the Bishop, “I like not this conjunction of names.”


“Cartouche? Louis XV.? To which of the two do you object?”


A momentary silence ensued. The Bishop almost regretted having come,
and yet he felt vaguely and strangely shaken.

The conventionary resumed:—

“Ah, Monsieur Priest, you love not the crudities of the true. Christ
loved them. He seized a rod and cleared out the Temple. His scourge,
full of lightnings, was a harsh speaker of truths. When he cried,
_‘Sinite parvulos,’_ he made no distinction between the little
children. It would not have embarrassed him to bring together the
Dauphin of Barabbas and the Dauphin of Herod. Innocence, Monsieur, is
its own crown. Innocence has no need to be a highness. It is as august
in rags as in fleurs de lys.”


“That is true,” said the Bishop in a low voice.

“I persist,” continued the conventionary G—— “You have mentioned Louis
XVII. to me. Let us come to an understanding. Shall we weep for all the
innocent, all martyrs, all children, the lowly as well as the exalted?
I agree to that. But in that case, as I have told you, we must go back
further than ’93, and our tears must begin before Louis XVII. I will
weep with you over the children of kings, provided that you will weep
with me over the children of the people.”


“I weep for all,” said the Bishop.

“Equally!” exclaimed conventionary G——; “and if the balance must
incline, let it be on the side of the people. They have been suffering
longer.”


Another silence ensued. The conventionary was the first to break it. He
raised himself on one elbow, took a bit of his cheek between his thumb
and his forefinger, as one does mechanically when one interrogates and
judges, and appealed to the Bishop with a gaze full of all the forces
of the death agony. It was almost an explosion.

“Yes, sir, the people have been suffering a long while. And hold! that
is not all, either; why have you just questioned me and talked to me
about Louis XVII.? I know you not. Ever since I have been in these
parts I have dwelt in this enclosure alone, never setting foot outside,
and seeing no one but that child who helps me. Your name has reached me
in a confused manner, it is true, and very badly pronounced, I must
admit; but that signifies nothing: clever men have so many ways of
imposing on that honest goodman, the people. By the way, I did not hear
the sound of your carriage; you have left it yonder, behind the coppice
at the fork of the roads, no doubt. I do not know you, I tell you. You
have told me that you are the Bishop; but that affords me no
information as to your moral personality. In short, I repeat my
question. Who are you? You are a bishop; that is to say, a prince of
the church, one of those gilded men with heraldic bearings and
revenues, who have vast prebends,—the bishopric of D—— fifteen thousand
francs settled income, ten thousand in perquisites; total, twenty-five
thousand francs,—who have kitchens, who have liveries, who make good
cheer, who eat moor-hens on Friday, who strut about, a lackey before, a
lackey behind, in a gala coach, and who have palaces, and who roll in
their carriages in the name of Jesus Christ who went barefoot! You are
a prelate,—revenues, palace, horses, servants, good table, all the
sensualities of life; you have this like the rest, and like the rest,
you enjoy it; it is well; but this says either too much or too little;
this does not enlighten me upon the intrinsic and essential value of
the man who comes with the probable intention of bringing wisdom to me.
To whom do I speak? Who are you?”


The Bishop hung his head and replied, _“Vermis sum_—I am a worm.”


“A worm of the earth in a carriage?” growled the conventionary.

It was the conventionary’s turn to be arrogant, and the Bishop’s to be
humble.

The Bishop resumed mildly:—

“So be it, sir. But explain to me how my carriage, which is a few paces
off behind the trees yonder, how my good table and the moor-hens which
I eat on Friday, how my twenty-five thousand francs income, how my
palace and my lackeys prove that clemency is not a duty, and that ’93
was not inexorable.”


The conventionary passed his hand across his brow, as though to sweep
away a cloud.

“Before replying to you,” he said, “I beseech you to pardon me. I have
just committed a wrong, sir. You are at my house, you are my guest, I
owe you courtesy. You discuss my ideas, and it becomes me to confine
myself to combating your arguments. Your riches and your pleasures are
advantages which I hold over you in the debate; but good taste dictates
that I shall not make use of them. I promise you to make no use of them
in the future.”


“I thank you,” said the Bishop.

G—— resumed.

“Let us return to the explanation which you have asked of me. Where
were we? What were you saying to me? That ’93 was inexorable?”


“Inexorable; yes,” said the Bishop. “What think you of Marat clapping
his hands at the guillotine?”


“What think you of Bossuet chanting the _Te Deum_ over the
dragonnades?”


The retort was a harsh one, but it attained its mark with the
directness of a point of steel. The Bishop quivered under it; no reply
occurred to him; but he was offended by this mode of alluding to
Bossuet. The best of minds will have their fetiches, and they sometimes
feel vaguely wounded by the want of respect of logic.

The conventionary began to pant; the asthma of the agony which is
mingled with the last breaths interrupted his voice; still, there was a
perfect lucidity of soul in his eyes. He went on:—

“Let me say a few words more in this and that direction; I am willing.
Apart from the Revolution, which, taken as a whole, is an immense human
affirmation, ’93 is, alas! a rejoinder. You think it inexorable, sir;
but what of the whole monarchy, sir? Carrier is a bandit; but what name
do you give to Montrevel? Fouquier-Tainville is a rascal; but what is
your opinion as to Lamoignon-Bâville? Maillard is terrible; but
Saulx-Tavannes, if you please? Duchêne senior is ferocious; but what
epithet will you allow me for the elder Letellier? Jourdan-Coupe-Tetê
is a monster; but not so great a one as M. the Marquis de Louvois. Sir,
sir, I am sorry for Marie Antoinette, archduchess and queen; but I am
also sorry for that poor Huguenot woman, who, in 1685, under Louis the
Great, sir, while with a nursing infant, was bound, naked to the waist,
to a stake, and the child kept at a distance; her breast swelled with
milk and her heart with anguish; the little one, hungry and pale,
beheld that breast and cried and agonized; the executioner said to the
woman, a mother and a nurse, ‘Abjure!’ giving her her choice between
the death of her infant and the death of her conscience. What say you
to that torture of Tantalus as applied to a mother? Bear this well in
mind sir: the French Revolution had its reasons for existence; its
wrath will be absolved by the future; its result is the world made
better. From its most terrible blows there comes forth a caress for the
human race. I abridge, I stop, I have too much the advantage; moreover,
I am dying.”


And ceasing to gaze at the Bishop, the conventionary concluded his
thoughts in these tranquil words:—

“Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are
over, this fact is recognized,—that the human race has been treated
harshly, but that it has progressed.”


The conventionary doubted not that he had successively conquered all
the inmost intrenchments of the Bishop. One remained, however, and from
this intrenchment, the last resource of Monseigneur Bienvenu’s
resistance, came forth this reply, wherein appeared nearly all the
harshness of the beginning:—

“Progress should believe in God. Good cannot have an impious servitor.
He who is an atheist is but a bad leader for the human race.”


The former representative of the people made no reply. He was seized
with a fit of trembling. He looked towards heaven, and in his glance a
tear gathered slowly. When the eyelid was full, the tear trickled down
his livid cheek, and he said, almost in a stammer, quite low, and to
himself, while his eyes were plunged in the depths:—

“O thou! O ideal! Thou alone existest!”


The Bishop experienced an indescribable shock.

After a pause, the old man raised a finger heavenward and said:—

“The infinite is. He is there. If the infinite had no person, person
would be without limit; it would not be infinite; in other words, it
would not exist. There is, then, an _I_. That _I_ of the infinite is
God.”


The dying man had pronounced these last words in a loud voice, and with
the shiver of ecstasy, as though he beheld some one. When he had
spoken, his eyes closed. The effort had exhausted him. It was evident
that he had just lived through in a moment the few hours which had been
left to him. That which he had said brought him nearer to him who is in
death. The supreme moment was approaching.

The Bishop understood this; time pressed; it was as a priest that he
had come: from extreme coldness he had passed by degrees to extreme
emotion; he gazed at those closed eyes, he took that wrinkled, aged and
ice-cold hand in his, and bent over the dying man.

“This hour is the hour of God. Do you not think that it would be
regrettable if we had met in vain?”


The conventionary opened his eyes again. A gravity mingled with gloom
was imprinted on his countenance.

“Bishop,” said he, with a slowness which probably arose more from his
dignity of soul than from the failing of his strength, “I have passed
my life in meditation, study, and contemplation. I was sixty years of
age when my country called me and commanded me to concern myself with
its affairs. I obeyed. Abuses existed, I combated them; tyrannies
existed, I destroyed them; rights and principles existed, I proclaimed
and confessed them. Our territory was invaded, I defended it; France
was menaced, I offered my breast. I was not rich; I am poor. I have
been one of the masters of the state; the vaults of the treasury were
encumbered with specie to such a degree that we were forced to shore up
the walls, which were on the point of bursting beneath the weight of
gold and silver; I dined in Dead Tree Street, at twenty-two sous. I
have succored the oppressed, I have comforted the suffering. I tore the
cloth from the altar, it is true; but it was to bind up the wounds of
my country. I have always upheld the march forward of the human race,
forward towards the light, and I have sometimes resisted progress
without pity. I have, when the occasion offered, protected my own
adversaries, men of your profession. And there is at Peteghem, in
Flanders, at the very spot where the Merovingian kings had their summer
palace, a convent of Urbanists, the Abbey of Sainte Claire en Beaulieu,
which I saved in 1793. I have done my duty according to my powers, and
all the good that I was able. After which, I was hunted down, pursued,
persecuted, blackened, jeered at, scorned, cursed, proscribed. For many
years past, I with my white hair have been conscious that many people
think they have the right to despise me; to the poor ignorant masses I
present the visage of one damned. And I accept this isolation of
hatred, without hating any one myself. Now I am eighty-six years old; I
am on the point of death. What is it that you have come to ask of me?”