1862
LES MISERABLES
by Victor Hugo
Translated by Charles E. Wilbour
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)
PREFACE
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So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a
social condemnation, which, in the face of civilisation,
artificially creates hells on earth, and complicates a destiny that is
divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age-
the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation,
and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night- are not
solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be
possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of
view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, books like this
cannot be useless.
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Hauteville House, 1862.
FANTINE
BOOK FIRST - AN UPRIGHT MAN
I
M. MYRIEL
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IN 1815, M. Charles Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of D__. He
was a man of seventy-five, and had occupied the bishopric of D__ since
1806. Although it in no manner concerns, even in the remotest
degree, what we have to relate, it may not be useless, were it only
for the sake of exactness in all things, to notice here the reports
and gossip which had arisen on his account from the time of his
arrival in the diocese.
Be it true or false, what is said about men often has as much
influence upon their lives, and especially upon their destinies, as
what they do.
M. Myriel was the son of a counsellor of the Parlement of Aix; of
the rank given to the legal profession. His father, intending him to
inherit his place, had contracted a marriage for him at the early
age of eighteen or twenty, according to a widespread custom among
parliamentary families. Charles Myriel, notwithstanding this marriage,
had, it was said, been an object of much attention. His person was
admirably moulded; although of slight figure, he was elegant and
graceful; all the earlier part of his life had been devoted to the
world and to its pleasures. The revolution came, events crowded upon
each other; the parliamentary families, decimated, hunted, and
pursued, were soon dispersed. M. Charles Myriel, on the first outbreak
of the revolution, emigrated to Italy. His wife died there of a lung
complaint with which she had been long threatened. They had no
children. What followed in the fate of M. Myriel? The decay of the old
French society, the fall of his own family, the tragic sights of
'93, still more fearful, perhaps, to the exiles who beheld them from
afar, magnified by fright- did these arouse in him ideas of
renunciation and of solitude? Was he, in the midst of one of the
reveries or emotions which then consumed his life, suddenly attacked
by one of those mysterious and terrible blows which sometimes
overwhelm, by smiting to the heart, the man whom public disasters
could not shake, by aiming at life or fortune? No one could have
answered; all that was known was that when he returned from Italy he
was a priest.
In 1804, M. Myriel was cure of B__ (Brignolles). He was then an
old man, and lived in the deepest seclusion.
Near the time of the coronation, a trifling matter of business
belonging to his curacy- what it was, is not now known precisely- took
him to Paris.
Among other personages of authority he went to Cardinal Fesch on
behalf of his parishioners.
One day, when the emperor had come to visit his uncle, the worthy
cure, who was waiting in the ante-room, happened to be on the way of
his Majesty. Napoleon noticing that the old man looked at him with a
certain curiousness, turned around and said brusquely:
"Who is this goodman who looks at me?"
"Sire," said Myriel, "you behold a good man, and I a great man. Each
of us may profit by it."
That evening the emperor asked the cardinal the name of the cure,
and some time afterwards M. Myriel was overwhelmed with surprise on
learning that he had been appointed Bishop of D__.
Beyond this, no one knew how much truth there was in the stories
which passed current concerning the first portion of M. Myriel's life.
But few families had known the Myriels before the revolution.
M. Myriel had to submit to the fate of every new-comer in a small
town, where there are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to
think. He had to submit, although he was bishop, and because he was
bishop. But after all, the gossip with which his name was connected,
was only gossip: noise, talk, words, less than words- palabres, as
they say in the forcible language of the South.
Be that as it may, after nine years of episcopacy, and of
residence in D__, all these stories, topics of talk, which engross
at first petty towns and petty people, were entirely forgotten. Nobody
would have dared to speak of, or even to remember them.
When M. Myriel came to D__ he was accompanied by an old lady,
Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister, ten years younger than
himself.
Their only domestic was a woman of about the same age as
Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was called Madame Magloire, and who,
after having been the servant of M. le cure, now took the double title
of femme de chambre of Mademoiselle and housekeeper of Monseigneur.
Mademoiselle Baptistine was a tall, pale, thin, sweet person. She
fully realised the idea which is expressed by the word
"respectable;" for it seems as if it were necessary that a woman
should be a mother to be venerable. She had never been pretty; her
whole life, which had been but a succession of pious works, had
produced upon her a kind of transparent whiteness, and in growing
old she had acquired what may be called the beauty of goodness. What
had been thinness in her youth had become in maturity transparency,
and this etherialness permitted gleams of the angel within. She was
more a spirit than a virgin mortal. Her form was shadow-like, hardly
enough body to convey the thought of sex- a little earth containing
a spark- large eyes, always cast down; a pretext for a soul to
remain on earth.
Madame Magloire was a little, white, fat, jolly, bustling old woman,
always out of breath, caused first by her activity, and then by the
asthma.
M. Myriel, upon his arrival, was installed in his episcopal palace
with the honours ordained by the imperial decrees, which class the
bishop next in rank to the field-marshal. The mayor and the
president made him the first visit, and he, on his part, paid like
honour to the general and the prefect.
The installation being completed, the town was curious to see its
bishop at work.
II
M. MYRIEL BECOMES MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU
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THE bishop's palace at D__ was contiguous to the hospital: the
palace was a spacious and beautiful edifice, built of stone near the
beginning of the last century by Monseigneur Henri Pujet, a doctor
of theology of the Faculty of Paris, abbe of Simore, who was bishop of
D__ in 1712. The palace was in truth a lordly dwelling: there was an
air of grandeur about everything, the apartments of the bishop, the
saloons, the chambers, the court of honour, which was very large, with
arched walks after the antique Florentine style; and a garden
planted with magnificent trees.
In the dining hall was a long, superb gallery, which was level
with the ground, opening upon the garden; Monseigneur Henri Pujet
had given a grand banquet on the 29th of July, 1714, to Monseigneur
Charles Brulart de Genlis, archbishop, Prince d'Embrun, Antoine de
Mesgrigny, capuchin, bishop of Grasse, Philippe de Vendome,
grand-prior de France, the Abbe de Saint Honore de Lerins, Francois de
Berton de Grillon, lord bishop of Vence, Cesar de Sabran de
Forcalquier, lord bishop of Glandeve, and Jean Soanen, priest of the
oratory, preacher in ordinary to the king, lord bishop of Senez; the
portraits of these seven reverend personages decorated the hall, and
this memorable date, July 29th, 1714, appeared in letters of gold on a
white marble tablet.
The hospital was a low, narrow, one story building with a small
garden.
Three days after the bishop's advent he visited the hospital; when
the visit was ended, he invited the director to oblige him by coming
to the palace.
"Monsieur," he said to the director of the hospital, "how many
patients have you?"
"Twenty-six monseigneur."
"That is as I counted them," said the bishop.
"The beds," continued the director, "are very much crowded."
"I noticed it."
"The wards are but small chambers, and are not easily ventilated."
"It seems so to me."
"And then, when the sun does shine, the garden is very small for the
convalescents."
"That was what I was thinking."
"Of epidemics we have had typhus fever this year; two years ago we
had military fever, sometimes one hundred patients, and we did not
know what to do."
"That occurred to me."
"What can we do, monseigneur?" said the director; "we must be
resigned."
This conversation took place in the dining gallery on the ground
floor.
The bishop was silent a few moments: then he turned suddenly towards
the director.
"Monsieur," he said, "how many beds do you think this hall alone
would contain?"
"The dining hall of monseigneur!" exclaimed the director, stupefied.
The bishop ran his eyes over the hall, seemingly taking measure
and making calculations.
"It will hold twenty beds," said he to himself; then raising his
voice, he said:
"Listen, Monsieur Director, to what I have to say. There is
evidently a mistake here. There are twenty-six of you in five or six
small rooms: there are only three of us, and space for sixty. There is
a mistake, I tell you. You may have my house and I have yours. Restore
mine to me; you are at home."
Next day the twenty-six poor invalids were installed in the bishop's
palace, and the bishop was in the hospital.
M. Myriel had no property, his family having been impoverished by
the revolution. His sister had a life estate of five hundred francs,
which in the vicarage sufficed for her personal needs. M. Myriel
received from the government as bishop a salary of fifteen thousand
francs. The day on which he took up his residence in the hospital
building, he resolved to appropriate this sum once for all to the
following uses. We copy the schedule then written by him.
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Schedule for the Regulation of my Household Expenses
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"For the little seminary, fifteen hundred livres.
Mission congregation, one hundred livres.
For the Lazaristes of Montdidier, one hundred livres.
Congregation of the Saint-Esprit, one hundred and fifty livres.
Seminary of foreign missions in Paris, two hundred livres.
Religious establishments in the Holy Land, one hundred livres.
Maternal charitable societies, three hundred livres.
For that of Arles, fifty livres.
For the amelioration of prisons, four hundred livres.
For the relief and deliverance of prisoners, five hundred livres.
For the liberation of fathers of families imprisoned for debt, one
thousand livres.
Additions to the salaries of poor schoolmasters of the diocese,
two thousand livres.
Public storehouse of Hautes-Alpes, one hundred livres.
Association of the ladies of D__ of Manosque and Sisteron for
the gratuitous instruction of poor girls, fifteen hundred livres.
For the poor, six thousand livres.
My personal expenses, one thousand livres.
Total, fifteen thousand livres."
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M. Myriel made no alteration in this plan during the time he held
the see of D__; he called it, as will be seen, the regulation of
his household expenses.
Mademoiselle Baptistine accepted this arrangement with entire
submission; M. Myriel was to her at once her brother and her bishop,
her companion by ties of blood and her superior by ecclesiastical
authority. She loved and venerated him unaffectedly; when he spoke,
she listened; when he acted, she gave him her co-operation. Madame
Magloire, however, their servant, grumbled a little. The bishop, as
will be seen, had reserved but a thousand francs; this added to the
income of Mademoiselle Baptistine, gave them a yearly independence
of fifteen hundred francs, upon which the three old people subsisted.
Thanks, however, to the rigid economy of Madame Magloire, and the
excellent management of Mademoiselle Baptistine, whenever a curate
came to D__, the bishop found means to extend to him his hospitality.
About three months after the installation, the bishop said one
day, "With all this I am very much cramped." "I think so too," said
Madame Magloire: "Monseigneur has not even asked for the sum due him
by the department for his carriage expenses in town, and in his
circuits in the diocese. It was formerly the custom with all bishops."
"Yes!" said the bishop; "you are right, Madame Magloire."
He made his application.
Some time afterwards the conseil-general took his claim into
consideration and voted him an annual stipend of three thousand francs
under this head: "Allowance to the bishop for carriage expenses, and
travelling expenses for pastoral visits."
The bourgeoisie of the town were much excited on the subject, and in
regard to it a senator of the empire, formerly a member of the Council
of Five Hundred, an advocate of the Eighteenth Brumaire, now
provided with a rich senatorial seat near D__, wrote to M. Bigot de
Preameneu, Minister of Public Worship, a fault-finding, confidential
epistle, from which we make the following extract:-
"Carriage expenses! What can he want of it in a town of less than
4000 inhabitants? Expenses of pastoral visits! And what good do they
do, in the first place; and then, how is it possible to travel by post
in this mountain region? There are no roads; he can go only on
horseback. Even the bridge over the Durance at Chateau-Arnoux is
scarcely passable for oxcarts. These priests are always so; avaricious
and miserly. This one played the good apostle at the outset: now he
acts like the rest; he must have a carriage and post-chaise. He must
have luxury like the old bishops. Bah! this whole priesthood! Monsieur
le Comte, things will never be better till the emperor delivers us
from these macaroni priests. Down with the pope! (Matters were getting
embroiled with Rome.) As for me, I am for Caesar alone," etc., etc.,
etc.
This application, on the other hand, pleased Madame Magloire
exceedingly. "Good," said she to Mademoiselle Baptistine; "Monseigneur
began with others, but he has found at last that he must end by taking
care of himself. He has arranged all his charities, and so now here
are three thousand francs for us."
The same evening the bishop wrote and gave to his sister a note
couched in these terms:
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Carriage and Travelling Expenses
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"For beef broth for the hospital, fifteen hundred livres.
For the Aix Maternal Charity Association, two hundred and fifty
livres.
For the Draguignan Maternal Charity Association, two hundred and
fifty livres.
For Foundlings, five hundred livres.
For Orphans, five hundred livres.
Total, three thousand livres."
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Such was the budget of M. Myriel.
In regard to the official perquisites, marriage licenses,
dispensations, private baptisms, and preaching, consecrations of
churches or chapels, marriages, etc., the bishop gathered them from
the wealthy with as much exactness as he dispensed them to the poor.
In a short time donations of money began to come in; those who had
and those who had not, knocked at the bishop's door; some came to
receive alms and others to bestow them, and in less than a year he had
become the treasurer of all the benevolent, and the dispenser to all
the needy. Large sums passed through his hands; nevertheless he
changed in no wise his mode of life, nor added the least luxury to his
simple fare.
On the contrary, as there is always more misery among the lower
classes than there is humanity in the higher, everything was given
away, so to speak, before it was received, like water on thirsty soil;
it was well that money came to him, for he never kept any; and besides
he robbed himself. It being the custom that all bishops should put
their baptismal names at the head of their orders and pastoral
letters, the poor people of the district had chosen by a sort of
affectionate instinct, from among the names of the bishop, that
which was expressive to them, and they always called him Monseigneur
Bienvenu. We shall follow their example and shall call him thus;
besides, this pleased him. "I like this name," said he; "Bienvenu
counterbalances Monseigneur."
We do not claim that the portrait which we present here is a true
one; we say only that it resembles him.
III
GOOD BISHOP- HARD BISHOPRIC
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THE bishop, after converting his carriage into alms, none the less
regularly made his round of visits, and in the diocese of D__ this was
a wearisome task. There was very little plain, a good deal of
mountain; and hardly any roads, as a matter of course; thirty-two
curacies, forty-one vicarages, and two hundred and eighty-five
subcuracies. To visit all these is a great labour, but the bishop went
through with it. He travelled on foot in his own neighbourhood, in a
cart when he was in the plains, and in a cacolet, a basket
strapped on the back of a mule, when in the mountains. The two women
usually accompanied him, but when the journey was too difficult for
them he went alone.
One day he arrived at Senez, formerly the seat of a bishopric,
mounted on an ass. His purse was very empty at the time, and would not
permit any better conveyance. The mayor of the city came to receive
him at the gate of the episcopal residence, and saw him dismount
from his ass with astonishment and mortification. Several of the
citizens stood near by, laughing. "Monsieur Mayor," said the bishop,
"and Messieurs citizens, I see what astonishes you; you think that
it shows a good deal of pride for a poor priest to use the same
conveyance which was used by Jesus Christ. I have done it from
necessity, I assure you, and not from vanity."
In his visits he was indulgent and gentle, and preached less than he
talked. He never used far-fetched reasons, or examples. To the
inhabitants of one region he would cite the example of a neighboring
region. In the cantons where the necessitous were treated with
severity he would say, "Look at the people of Briancon. They have
given to the poor, and to widows and orphans, the right to mow their
meadows three days before any one else. When their houses are in ruins
they rebuild them without cost. And so it is a country blessed of God.
For a whole century they have not had a single murderer."
In villages where the people were greedy for gain at harvest time,
he would say, "Look at Embrun. If a father of a family, at harvest
time, has his sons in the army, and his daughters at service in the
city, and he is sick, the priest recommends him in his sermons, on
Sunday, after mass, the whole population of the village, men, women,
and children, go into the poor man's field and harvest his crop, and
put the straw and the grain into his granary." To families divided
by questions of property and inheritance, he would say, "See the
mountaineers of Devolny, a country so wild that the nightingale is not
heard there once in fifty years. Well now, when the father dies, in
a family, the boys go away to seek their fortunes, and leave the
property to the girls, so that they may get husbands." In those
cantons where there was a taste for the law, and where the farmers
were ruining themselves with stamped paper, he would say, "Look at
those good peasants of the valley of Queyras. There are three thousand
souls there. Why, it is like a little republic! Neither judge nor
constable is known there. The mayor does everything. He apportions the
impost, taxes each one according to his judgment, decides their
quarrels without charge, distributes their patrimony without fees,
gives judgment without expense; and he is obeyed, because he is a just
man among simple-hearted men." In the villages which he found
without a schoolmaster, he would again hold up the valley of
Queyras. "Do you know how they do?" he would say. "As a little
district of twelve or fifteen houses cannot always support a
teacher, they have schoolmasters that are paid by the whole valley,
who go around from village to village, passing a week in this place;
and ten days in that, and give instruction. These masters attend the
fairs, where I have seen them. They are known by quills which they
wear in their hatband. Those who teach only how to read have one
quill; those who teach reading arithmetic have two; and those who
teach reading, arithmetic, and Latin, have three; the latter are
esteemed great scholars. But what a shame to be ignorant! Do like
the people of Queyras."
In such fashion would he talk, gravely and paternally, in default of
examples he would invent parables, going straight to his object,
with few phrases and many images, which was the very eloquence of
Jesus Christ, convincing and persuasive.
IV
WORKS ANSWERING WORDS
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His conversation was affable and pleasant. He adapted himself to the
capacity of the two old women who lived with him, but when he laughed,
it was the laugh of a school-boy.
Madame Magloire usually called him Your Greatness. One day he rose
from his arm-chair, and went to his library for a book. It was upon
one of the upper shelves, and as the bishop was rather short, he could
not reach it. "Madame Magloire," said he, "bring me a chair. My
greatness does not extend to this shelf."
One of his distant relatives, the Countess of Lo, rarely let an
occasion escape of enumerating in his presence what she called "the
expectations" of her three sons. She had several relatives, very old
and near their death, of whom her sons were the legal heirs. The
youngest of the three was to receive from a great-aunt a hundred
thousand livres in the funds; the second was to take the title of duke
from his uncle; the eldest would succeed to the peerage of his
grandfather. The bishop commonly listened in silence to these innocent
and pardonable maternal displays. Once, however, he appeared more
dreamy than was his custom, while Madame de Lo rehearsed the detail of
all these successions and all these "expectations." Stopping suddenly,
with some impatience, she exclaimed, "My goodness, cousin, what are
you thinking about?" "I am thinking," said the bishop, "of a strange
thing which is, I believe, in St. Augustine: 'Place your
expectations on him to whom there is no succession!'"
On another occasion, when he received a letter announcing the
decease of a gentleman of the country, in which were detailed, at
great length, not only the dignities of the departed, but the feudal
and titular honours of all his relatives, he exclaimed: "What a
broad back has death! What a wondrous load of titles will he
cheerfully carry and what hardihood must men have who will thus use
the tomb to feed their vanity!"
At times he made use of gentle raillery, which was almost always
charged with serious ideas. Once, during Lent, a young vicar came to
D__, and preached in the cathedral. The subject of his sermon was
charity, and he treated it very eloquently. He called upon the rich to
give alms to the poor, if they would escape the tortures of hell,
which he pictured in the most fearful colours, and enter that paradise
which he painted as so desirable and inviting. There was a retired
merchant of wealth in the audience, a little given to usury, M.
Geborand, who had accumulated an estate of two millions in the
manufacture of coarse cloths and serges. Never, in the whole course of
his life, had M. Geborand given alms to the unfortunate; but from
the date of this sermon it was noticed that he gave regularly, every
Sunday, a penny to the old beggar women at the door of the
cathedral. There were six of them to share it. The bishop chanced to
see him one day, as he was performing this act charity, and said to
his sister, with a smile, "See Monsieur Geborand, buying a penny-worth
of paradise."
When soliciting aid for any charity, he was not silenced by a
refusal; he was at no loss for words that would set the hearers
thinking. One day, he was receiving alms for the poor in a parlour
in the city, where the Marquis of Champtercier, who was old, rich, and
miserly, was present. The marquis managed to be, at the same time,
an ultra-royalist and an ultra-Voltairian, a species of which he was
not the only representative. The bishop coming to him in turn, touched
his arm and said, "Monsieur le Marquis, you must give me something."
The marquis turned and answered drily, "Monseigneur, I have my own
poor." "Give them to me,". said the bishop.
One day he preached this sermon in the cathedral:-
"My very dear brethren, my good friends, there are in France
thirteen hundred and twenty thousand peasants' cottages that have
but three openings; eighteen hundred and seventeen thousand that
have two, the door and one window; and finally, three hundred and
forty-six thousand cabins, with only one opening- the door. And this
is in consequence of what is called the excise upon doors and windows.
In these poor families, among the aged women and little children,
dwelling in these huts, how abundant is fever and disease? Alas! God
gives light to men; the law sells it. I do not blame the law, but I
bless God. In Isere, in Var, and in the Upper and the Lower Alps,
the peasants have not even wheelbarrows, they carry the manure on
their backs; they have no candles, but burn pine knots, and bits of
rope soaked in pitch. And the same is the case all through the upper
part of Dauphine. They make bread once in six months, and bake it with
the refuse of the fields. In the winter it becomes so hard that they
cut it up with an axe, and soak it for twenty-four hours, before
they can eat it. My brethren, be compassionate; behold how much
suffering there is around you."
Born a Provencal, he had easily made himself familiar with all the
patois of the south. He would say, "Eh, be! moussu, ses sage?" as in
Lower Languedoc; "Onte anaras passa?" as in the Lower Alps; "Puerte
un bouen montou embe un bouen froumage grase," as in Upper
Dauphine. This pleased the people greatly, and contributed not a
little to giving him ready access to their hearts. He was the same
in a cottage and on the mountains as in his own house. He could say
the grandest things in the most common language; and as he spoke all
dialects, his words entered the souls of all.
Moreover, his manners with the rich were the same as with the poor.
He condemned nothing hastily, or without taking account of
circumstances. He would say, "Let us see the way in which the fault
came to pass."
Being, as he smilingly described himself, an ex-sinner, he had
none of the inaccessibility of a rigorist, and boldly professed,
even under the frowning eyes of the ferociously virtuous, a doctrine
which may be stated nearly as follows:-
"Man has a body which is at once his burden and his temptation. He
drags it along, and yields to it.
"He ought to watch over it, to keep it in bounds; to repress it, and
only to obey it at the last extremity. It may be wrong to obey even
then, but if so, the fault is venial. It is a fall, but a fall upon
the knees, which may end in prayer.
"To be a saint is the exception; to be upright is the rule. Err,
falter, sin, but be upright.
"To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. To live
without sin is the dream of an angel. Everything terrestrial is
subject to sin. Sin is a gravitation."
When he heard many exclaiming, and expressing great indignation
against anything, "Oh! oh!" he would say, smiling. "It would seem that
this is a great crime, of which they are all guilty. How frightened
hypocrisy hastens to defend itself, and to get under cover."
He was indulgent towards women, and towards the poor, upon whom
the weight of society falls most heavily; and said: "The faults of
women, children, and servants, of the feeble, the indigent and the
ignorant, are the faults of their husbands, fathers, and masters, of
the strong, the rich, and the wise." At other times, he said, "Teach
the ignorant as much as you can; society is culpable in not
providing instruction for all, and it must answer for the night
which it produces. If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be
committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who
causes the darkness."
As we see, he had a strange and peculiar way of judging things. I
suspect that he acquired it from the Gospel.
In company one day he heard an account of a criminal case that was
about to be tried. A miserable man, through love for a woman and for
the child she had borne him, had been making false coin, his means
being exhausted. At that time counterfeiting was still punished with
death. The woman was arrested for passing the first piece that he
had made. She was held a prisoner, but there was no proof against
her lover. She alone could testify against him, and convict him by her
confession. She denied his guilt. They insisted, but she was obstinate
in her denial. In this state of the case, the procureur du roi
devised a shrewd plan. He represented to her that her lover was
unfaithful, and by means of fragments of letters skilfully put
together, succeeded in persuading the unfortunate woman that she had a
rival, and that this man had deceived her. At once exasperated by
jealousy, she denounced her lover, confessed all, and proved his
guilt. He was to be tried in a few days, at Aix, with his
accomplice, and his conviction was certain. The story was told, and
everybody was in ecstasy at the adroitness of the officer. In bringing
to light by means of anger, and justice had sprung from revenge. The
bishop listened to all this in silence. When it was finished he asked:
"Where are this man and woman to be tried?"
"At the Assizes."
"And where is the procureur du roi to be tried?"
A tragic event occurred at D__. A man had been condemned to death
for murder. The unfortunate prisoner was a poorly educated, but not
entirely ignorant man, who had been a juggler at fairs, and a public
letter-writer. The people were greatly interested in the trial. The
evening before the day fixed for the execution of the condemned, the
almoner of the prison fell ill. A priest was needed to attend the
prisoner in his last moments. The cure was sent for, but he refused to
go, saying, "That does not concern me. I have nothing to do with
such drudgery, or with that mountebank; besides, I am sick myself; and
moreover it is not my place." When this reply was reported to the
bishop, he said, "The cure is right. It is not his place, it is mine."
He went, on the instant, to the prison, went down into the dungeon
of the "mountebank," called him by his name, took him by the hand, and
talked with him. He passed the whole day with him, forgetful of food
and sleep, praying to God for the soul of the condemned, and exhorting
the condemned to join with him. He spoke to him the best truths, which
are the simplest. He was father, brother, friend; bishop for
blessing only. He taught him everything by encouraging and consoling
him. This man would have died in despair. Death, for him, was like
an abyss. Standing shivering upon the dreadful brink, he recoiled with
horror. He was not ignorant enough to be indifferent. The terrible
shock of his condemnation had in some sort broken here and there
that wall which separates us from the mystery of things beyond, and
which we call life. Through these fatal breaches, he was constantly
looking beyond this world, and he could see nothing but darkness;
the bishop showed him the light.
On the morrow when they came for the poor man, the bishop was with
him. He followed him, and showed himself to the eyes of the crowd in
his violet camail, with his bishop's cross about his neck, side by
side with the miserable being, who was bound with cords.
He mounted the cart with him, he ascended the scaffold with him. The
sufferer, so gloomy and so horror-stricken in the evening, was now
radiant with hope. He felt that his soul was reconciled, and he
trusted in God. The bishop embraced him, and at the moment when the
axe was about to fall, he said to him, "whom man kills, him God
restoreth to life; whom his brethren put away, he findeth the
Father. Pray, believe, enter into life! The Father is there." When
he descended from the scaffold, something in his look made the
people fall back. It would be hard to say which was the most
wonderful, his paleness or his serenity. As he entered the humble
dwelling which he smilingly called his palace, he said to his
sister, "I have been officiating pontifically."
As the most sublime things are often least comprehended, there
were those in the city who said, in commenting upon the bishop's
conduct, that it was affectation, but such ideas were confined to
the upper classes. The people, who do not look for unworthy motives in
holy works, admired and were softened.
As to the bishop, the sight of the guillotine was a shock to him,
from which it was long before he recovered.
The scaffold, indeed, when it is prepared and set up, has the effect
of a hallucination. We may be indifferent to the death penalty, and
may not declare ourselves, yes or no, so long as we have not seen a
guillotine with our own eyes. But when we see one, the shock is
violent, and we are compelled to decide and take part, for or against.
Some admire it, like Le Maistre; others execrate it, like Beccaria.
The guillotine is the concretion of the law; it is called the Avenger;
It is not neutral and does not permit you to remain neutral. He who
sees it quakes with the most mysterious of tremblings. All social
questions set up their points of interrogation about this axe. The
scaffold is vision. The scaffold is not a mere frame, the scaffold
is not a machine, the scaffold is not an inert piece of mechanism made
of wood, of iron, and of ropes. It seems a sort of being which had
some sombre origin of which we can have no idea; one would say that
this frame sees, that this machine understands, that this mechanism
comprehends; that this wood, this iron, and these ropes, have a
will. In the fearful reverie into which its presence casts the soul,
the awful apparition of the scaffold confounds itself with its
horrid work. The scaffold becomes the accomplice of the executioner;
it devours, it eats flesh, and it drinks blood. The scaffold is a sort
of monster created by the judge and the workman, a spectre which seems
to live with a kind of unspeakable life, drawn from all the death
which it has wrought.
Thus the impression was horrible and deep; on the morrow of the
execution, and for many days, the bishop appeared to be overwhelmed.
The almost violent calmness of the fatal moment had disappeared; the
phantom of social justice took possession of him. He, who ordinarily
looked back upon all his actions with a satisfaction so radiant, now
seemed to be a subject of self-reproach. By times he would talk to
himself, and in an undertone mutter dismal monologues. One evening his
sister overheard and preserved the following: "I did not believe
that it could be so monstrous. It is wrong to be so absorbed in the
divine law as not to perceive the human law. Death belongs to God
alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?"
With the lapse of time these impressions faded away, and were
probably effaced. Nevertheless it was remarked that the bishop ever
after avoided passing by the place of execution.
M. Myriel could be called at all hours to the bedside of the sick
and the dying. He well knew that there was his highest duty and his
greatest work. Widowed or orphan families had no need to send for him;
he came of himself. He would sit silent for long hours by the side
of a man who had lost the wife whom he loved, or of a mother who had
lost her child. As he knew the time for silence, he knew also the time
for speech. Oh, admirable consoler! he did not seek to drown grief
in oblivion, but to exalt and to dignify it by hope. He would say, "Be
careful of the way in which you think of the dead. Think not of what
might have been. Look steadfastly and you shall see the living glory
of your well-beloved dead in the depths of heaven." He believed that
faith is healthful. He sought to counsel and to calm the despairing
man by pointing out to him the man of resignation, and to transform
the grief which looks down into the grave by showing it the grief
which looks up to the stars.
V
HOW MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU MADE HIS CASSOCK LAST SO LONG
-
THE private life of M. Myriel was full of the same thoughts as his
public life. To one who could have seen it on the spot, the
voluntary poverty in which the Bishop of D__ lived, would have been
a serious as well as a pleasant sight.
Like all old men, and like most thinkers, he slept but little, but
that little was sound. In the morning he devoted an hour to
meditation, and then said mass, either at the cathedral, or in his own
house. After mass he took his breakfast of rye bread and milk, and
then went to work.
A bishop is a very busy man; he must receive the report of the clerk
of the diocese, ordinarily a prebendary, every day; and nearly every
day his grand vicars. He has congregations to superintend, licenses to
grant, all ecclesiastical bookselling to examine, parish and
diocesan catechisms, prayer-books, etc., charges to write,
preachings to authorise, cures and mayors to make peace between, a
clerical correspondence, an administrative correspondence, on the
one hand the government, on the other the Holy See, a thousand matters
of business.
What time these various affairs and his devotions and his breviary
left him, he gave first to the needy, the sick, and the afflicted;
what time the afflicted, the sick, and the needy left him, he gave
to labour. Sometimes he used a spade in his garden, and sometimes he
read and wrote. He had but one name for these two kinds of labour;
he called them gardening. "The spirit is a garden," said he.
Towards noon, when the weather was good, he would go out and walk in
the fields, or in the city, often visiting the cottages and cabins. He
would be seen plodding along, wrapt in his thoughts, his eyes bent
down, resting upon his long cane, wearing his violet doublet, wadded
so as to be very warm, violet stockings and heavy shoes, and his
flat hat, from the three corners of which hung the three golden grains
of spikenard.
His coming made a fete. One would have said that he dispensed warmth
and light as he passed along. Old people and children would come to
their doors for the bishop as they would for the sun. He blessed,
and was blessed in return. Whoever was in need of anything was shown
the way to his house.
Now and then he would stop and talk to the little boys and girls-
and give a smile to their mothers. When he had money his visits were
to the poor; when he had none, he visited the rich.
As he made his cassock last a very long time, in order that it might
not be perceived, he never went out into the city without his violet
doublet. In summer this was rather irksome.
On his return he dined. His dinner was like his breakfast.
At half-past eight in the evening he took supper with his sister,
Madame Magloire standing behind them and waiting on the table. Nothing
could be more frugal than this meal. If, however, the bishop had one
of his cures to supper, Madame Magloire improved the occasion to serve
her master with some excellent fish from the lakes, or some fine
game from the mountain. Every cure was a pretext for a fine meal;
the bishop did not interfere. With these exceptions, there was
rarely seen upon his table more than boiled vegetables, or bread
warmed with oil. And so it came to be a saying in the city, "When
the bishop does not entertain a cure, he entertains a Trappist."
After supper he would chat for half an hour with Mademoiselle
Baptistine and Madame Magloire, and then go to his own room and write,
sometimes upon loose sheets, sometimes on the margin of one of his
folios. He was a well-read and even a learned man. He has left five or
six very curious manuscripts behind him; among them is a
dissertation upon this passage in Genesis: In the beginning the
spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. He contrasts this
with three other versions; the Arabic, which has: the winds of God
blew; Flavius Josephus, who says: a wind from on high fell upon
all the earth; and finally the Chaldean paraphrase of Onkelos,
which reads: a wind coming from God blew upon the face of the
waters. In another dissertation, he examines the theological work
of Hugo, Bishop of Ptolemais, a distant relative of the writer of this
book, and proves that sundry little tracts, published in the last
century under the pseudonym of Barleycourt, should be attributed to
that prelate.
Sometimes in the midst of his reading, no matter what book he
might have in his hands, he would suddenly fall into deep
meditation, and when it was over, would write a few lines on
whatever page was open before him. These lines often have no
connection with the book in which they are written. We have under
our own eyes a note written by him upon the margin of a quarto
volume entitled: "Correspondance du Lord Germain avec les gereraux
Clinton, Cornwallis, et les amiraux de la Station de l'Amerique. A
Versailles, chez Poincot, Libraire, et a Paris, chez Pissot, Quai
des Augustins."
And this is the note:
"Oh Thou who art!
"Ecclesiastes names thee the Almighty; Maccabees names thee Creator;
the Epistle to the Ephesians names thee Liberty; Baruch names thee
Immensity; the Psalms name thee Wisdom and Truth; John names thee
Light; the book of Kings names thee Lord; Exodus calls thee
Providence; Leviticus, Holiness; Esdras, Justice; Creation calls
thee God; man names thee Father; but Solomon names thee Compassion,
and that is the most beautiful of all thy names."
Towards nine o'clock in the evening the two women were accustomed to
retire to their chambers in the second story, leaving him until
morning alone upon the lower floor.
Here it is necessary that we should give an exact idea of the
dwelling of the Bishop of D__.
VI
HOW HE PROTECTED HIS HOUSE
-
THE house which he occupied consisted, as we have said, of a
ground floor and a second story; three rooms on the ground floor,
three on the second story, and an attic above. Behind the house was
a garden of about a quarter of an acre. The two women occupied the
upper floor; the bishop lived below. The first room, which opened upon
the street, was his dining-room, the second was his bedroom, and the
third his oratory. You could not leave the oratory without passing
through the bedroom, and to leave the bedroom you must pass through
the dining-room. At one end of the oratory there was an alcove
closed in, with a bed for occasions of hospitality. The Bishop kept
this bed for the country cures when business or the wants of their
parish brought them to D__.
The pharmacy of the hospital, a little building adjoining the
house and extending into the garden, had been transformed into a
kitchen and cellar.
There was also a stable in the garden, which was formerly the
hospital kitchen, where the bishop now kept a couple of cows, and
invariably, every morning, he sent half the milk they gave to the sick
at the hospital. "I pay my tithes" said he.
His room was quite large, and was difficult to warm in bad
weather. As wood is very dear at D__, he conceived the idea of
having a room partitioned off from the cow-stable with a tight plank
ceiling. in the coldest weather he passed his evenings there, and
called it his winter parlour.
In this winter parlour, as in the dining-room, the only furniture
was a square white wooden table, and four straw chairs. The
dining-room, however, was furnished with an old sideboard stained red.
A similar sideboard, suitably draped with white linen and imitation
lace, served for the altar which decorated the oratory.
His rich penitents and the pious women of D__ had often
contributed the money for a beautiful new altar for monseigneur's
oratory; he had always taken the money and given it to the poor.
"The most beautiful of altars," said he, "is the soul of an unhappy
man who is comforted and thanks God."
In his oratory he had two prie-dieu straw chairs, and an
arm-chair, also of straw, in the bedroom. When he happened to have
seven or eight visitors at once, the prefect, or the general, or the
major of the regiment in the garrison, or some of the pupils of the
little seminary, he was obliged to go to the stable for the chairs
that were in the winter parlour, to the oratory for the prie-dieu, and
to the bedroom for the arm-chair; in this way he could get together as
many as eleven seats for his visitors. At each new visit a room was
stripped.
It happened sometimes that there were twelve; then the bishop
concealed the embarrassment of the situation by standing before the
fire if it were winter, or by walking in the garden if it were summer.
There was another chair in the stranger's alcove, but it had lost
half its straw, and had but three legs, so that it could be used
only standing against the wall. Mademoiselle Baptistine had also, in
her room, a very large wooden easy-chair, that had once been red and
covered with flowered silk, but as it had to be taken into her room
through the window, the stairway being too narrow, it could not be
counted among the movable furniture.
It had been the ambition of Mademoiselle Baptistine to be able to
buy a parlour lounge, with cushions of Utrecht velvet, roses on a
yellow ground, while the mahogany should be in the form of swans'
necks. But this would have cost at least five hundred francs, and as
she had been able to save only forty-two francs and ten sous for the
purpose in five years, she had finally given it up. But who ever
does attain to his ideal?
Nothing could be plainer in its arrangements than the bishop's
bed-chamber. A window, which was also a door, opening upon the garden;
facing this, the bed, an iron hospital-bed, with green serge curtains;
in the shadow of the bed, behind a screen, the toilet utensils,
still betraying the elegant habits of the man of the world; two doors,
one near the chimney, leading into the oratory, the other near the
book-case, opening into the dining-room. The book-case, a large closet
with glass doors, filled with books; the fire-place, cased with wood
painted to imitate marble, usually without fire; in the fireplace, a
pair of andirons ornamented with two vases of flowers, once plated
with silver, which was a kind of episcopal luxury; above the
fire-place, a copper crucifix, from which the silver was worn off,
fixed upon a piece of thread-bare black velvet in a wooden frame
from which the gilt was almost gone; near the window, a large table
with an inkstand, covered with confused papers and heavy volumes. In
front of the table was the straw arm-chair, and before the bed, a
prie-dieu from the oratory.
Two portraits in oval frames hung on the wall on either side of
the bed. Small gilt inscriptions upon the background of the canvas
indicated that the portraits represented, one, the Abbe de Chaliot,
bishop of Saint Claude, the other, the Abbe Tourteau, vicar-general of
Agde, abbe of Grandchamps, order of Citeaux, diocese of Chartres.
The bishop found these portraits when he succeeded to the hospital
patients in this chamber, and left them untouched. They were
priests, and probably donors to the hospital- two reasons why he
should respect them. All that he knew of these two personages was that
they had been named by the king, the one to his bishopric, the other
to his living, on the same day, the 27th of April, 1785. Madame
Magloire having taken down the pictures to wipe off the dust, the
bishop had found this circumstance written in a faded ink upon a
little square piece of paper, yellow with time, stuck with four wafers
on the back of the portrait of the Abbe of Grandchamps.
He had at his window an antique curtain of coarse woolen stuff,
which finally became so old that, to save the expense of a new one,
Madame Magloire was obliged to put a large patch in the very middle of
it. This patch was in the form of a cross. The bishop often called
attention to it. "How fortunate that is," he would say.
Every room in the house, on the ground floor as well as in the upper
story, without exception, was white-washed, as is the custom in
barracks and in hospitals.
However, in later years, as we shall see by-and-by, Madame
Magloire found, under the wall paper, some paintings which decorated
the apartment of Mademoiselle Baptistine. Before it was a hospital;
the house had been a sort of gathering-place for the citizens, at
which time these decorations were introduced. The floors of the
chambers were paved with red brick, which were scoured every week, and
before the beds straw matting was spread. In all respects the house
was kept by the two women exquisitely neat from top to bottom. This
was the only luxury that the bishop would permit. He would say, "That
takes nothing from the poor."
We must confess that he still retained of what he had formerly,
six silver dishes and a silver soup ladle, which Madame Magloire
contemplated every day with new joy as they shone on the coarse,
white, linen table-cloth. And as we are drawing the portrait of the
Bishop of D__ just as he was, we must add that he had said, more
than once, "It would be difficult for me to give up eating from
silver."
With this silver ware should be counted two large, massive silver
candlesticks which he inherited from a great-aunt. These
candlesticks held two wax-candles, and their place was upon the
bishop's mantel. When he had any one to dinner, Madame Magloire
lighted the two candles and placed the two candlesticks upon the
table.
There was in the bishop's chamber, at the head of his bed, a small
cupboard in which Madame Magloire placed the six silver dishes and the
great ladle every evening. But the key was never taken out of it.
The garden, which was somewhat marred by the unsightly structures of
which we have spoken, was laid out with four walks, crossing at the
drain-well in the centre. There was another walk round the garden,
along the white wall which enclosed it. These walks left four square
plats which were bordered with box. In three of them Madame Magloire
cultivated vegetables; in the fourth the bishop had planted flowers,
and here and there were a few fruit trees. Madame Magloire once said
to him with a kind of gentle reproach: "Monseigneur, you are always
anxious to make everything useful, but yet here is a plat that is of
no use. It would be much better to have salads there than bouquets."
"Madame Magloire," replied the bishop, "you are mistaken. The
beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a moment's
silence, "perhaps more so."
This plat, consisting of three or four beds, occupied the bishop
nearly as much as his books. He usually passed an hour or two there,
trimming, weeding, and making holes here and there in the ground,
and planting seeds. He was as much averse to insects as a gardener
would have wished. He made no pretentions to botany, and knew
nothing of groups or classification; he did not care in the least to
decide between Tournefort and the natural method; he took no part,
either for the utricles against the cotyledons, or for Jussieu against
Linnaeus. He did not study plants, he loved flowers. He had much
respect for the learned, but still more for the ignorant; and, while
he fulfilled his duty in both these respects, he watered his beds
every summer evening with a tin watering-pot painted green.
Not a door in the house had a lock. The door of the dining-room
which, we have mentioned, opened into the cathedral grounds, was
formerly loaded with bars and bolts like the door of a prison. The
bishop had had all this iron-work taken off, and the door, by night;
as well as by day, was closed only with a latch. The passer-by,
whatever might be the hour, could open it with a simple push. At first
the two women had been very much troubled at the door, being never
locked; but Monseigneur de D__ said to them: "Have bolts on your own
doors, if you like." They shared his confidence at last, or at least
acted as if they shared it. Madame Magloire alone had occasional
attacks of fear. As to the bishop, the reason for this is explained,
or at least pointed at in these three lines written by him on the
margin of a Bible: "This is the shade of meaning; the door of a
physician should never be closed; the door of a priest should always
be open."
In another book, entitled "Philosophie de la Science Medicale," he
wrote this further note: "Am I not a physician as well as they? I also
have my patients; first I have theirs, whom they call the sick; and
then I have my own, whom I call the unfortunate."
Yet again he had written: "Ask not the name of him who asks you
for a bed. It is especially he whose name is a burden to him, who
has need of an asylum."
It occurred to a worthy cure, I am not sure whether it was the
cure of Couloubroux or the cure of Pomprierry, to ask him one day;
probably at the instigation of Madame Magloire, if monseigneur were
quite sure that there was not a degree of imprudence in leaving his
door, day and night, at the mercy of whoever might wish to enter,
and if he did not fear that some evil would befall a house so poorly
defended. The bishop touched him gently on the shoulder, and said:
"Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui custodiunt
eam." *
-
* Unless God protects a house, they who guard it, watch in vain.
-
And then he changed the subject.
He very often said: "There is a bravery for the priest as well as
a bravery for the colonel of dragoons." "Only," added he, "ours should
be quiet."
VII
CRAVATTE
-
THIS is the proper place for an incident which we must not omit, for
it is one of those which most clearly shows what manner of the
Bishop of D__ was.
After the destruction of the band of Gaspard Bes, which had infested
the gorges of Ollivolles, one of his lieutenants, Cravatte, took
refuge in the mountains. He concealed himself for some time with his
bandits, the remnant of the troop of Gaspard Bes, in the county of
Nice, then made his way to Piedmont, and suddenly reappeared in France
in the neighbourhood of Barcelonnette. He was first seen at
Jauziers, then at Tuiles. He concealed himself in the caverns of the
Joug de l'Aigle, from which he made descents upon the hamlets and
villages by the ravines of Ubaye and Ubayette.
He even pushed as far as Embrun, and one night broke into the
cathedral and stripped the sacristy. His robberies desolated the
country. The gendarmes were put upon his trail, but in vain. He always
escaped; sometimes by forcible resistance. He was a bold wretch. In
the midst of all this terror; the bishop arrived. He was making his
visit to Chastelar. The mayor came to see him and urged him to turn
back. Cravatte held the mountains as far as Arche and beyond; it would
be dangerous even with an escort. It would expose three or four poor
gendarmes to useless danger.
"And so," said the bishop, "I intend to go without an escort."
"Do not think of such a thing," exclaimed the mayor.
"I think so much of it, that I absolutely refuse the gendarmes,
and I am going to start in an hour."
"To start?"
"To start."
"Alone?"
"Alone."
"Monseigneur, you will not do it."
"There is on the mountain," replied the bishop, "a humble little
commune, that I have not seen for three years; and they are good
friends of mine, kind and honest peasants. They own one goat out of
thirty that they pasture. They make pretty woolen thread of various
colours, and they play their mountain airs upon small six-holed
flutes. They need some one occasionally to tell them of the goodness
of God. What would they say of a bishop who was afraid? What would
they say if I should not go there?"
"But, monseigneur, the brigands?"
"True," said the bishop, "I am thinking of that. You are right. I
may meet them. They too must need some one to tell them of the
goodness of God."
"Monseigneur, but it is a band! a pack of wolves!"
"Monsieur Mayor, perhaps Jesus has made me the keeper of that very
flock. Who knows the ways of providence?"
"Monseigneur, they will rob you."
"I have nothing."
"They will kill you."
"A simple old priest who passes along muttering his prayer? No,
no; what good would it do them?"
"Oh, my good sir, suppose you should meet them!"
"I should ask them for alms for my poor."
"Monseigneur, do not go. In the name of heaven! you are exposing
your life."
"Monsieur Mayor," said the bishop, "that is just it. I am not in the
world to care for my life, but for souls."
He would not be dissuaded. He set out, accompanied only by a
child, who offered to go as his guide. His obstinacy was the talk of
the country, and all dreaded the result.
He would not take along his sister, or Madame Magloire. He crossed
the mountain on a mule, met no one, and arrived safe and sound among
his "good friends" the shepherds. He remained there a fortnight,
preaching, administering the holy rites, teaching and exhorting.
When he was about to leave, he resolved to chant a Te Deum with
pontifical ceremonies. He talked with the cure about it. But what
could be done? there was no episcopal furniture. They could only place
at his disposal a paltry village sacristy with a few old robes of
worn-out damask, trimmed with imitation-galloon.
"No matter," said the bishop. "Monsieur le cure, at the sermon
announce our Te Deum. That will take care of itself."
All the neighbouring churches were ransacked, but the assembled
magnificence of these humble parishes could not have suitably
clothed a single cathedral singer.
While they were in this embarrassment, a large chest was brought
to the parsonage, and left for the bishop by two unknown horsemen, who
immediately rode away. 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 raiment stolen a
month before from the treasures of Our Lady of Embrun. In the chest
was a paper on which were written these words: "Cravatte to
Monseigneur Bienvenu."
"I said that it would take care of itself," said the bishop. Then he
added with a smile: "To him who is contented with a cure's surplice,
God sends an archbishop's cope."
"Monseigneur," murmured the cure, with a shake of the head and a
smile, "God- or the devil."
The bishop looked steadily upon the cure, and replied with
authority: "God!"
When he returned to Chastelar, all along the road, the people came
with curiosity to see him. At the parsonage in Chastelar he found
Mademoiselle Baptistine and Madame Magloire waiting for him, and he
said to his sister, "Well, was I not right? the poor priest went among
those poor mountaineers with empty hands; he comes back with hands
filled. I went forth placing my trust in God alone; I bring back the
treasures of a cathedral."
In the evening before going to bed he said further: "Have no fear of
robbers or murderers. Such dangers are without, and are but petty.
We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the
real murderers. The great dangers are within us. What matters it
what threatens our heads or our purses? Let us think only of what
threatens our souls."
Then turning to his sister: "My sister, a priest should never take
any precaution against a neighbour. What his neighbour does, God
permits. Let us confine ourselves to prayer to God when we think
that danger hangs over us. Let us beseech him, not for ourselves,
but that our brother may not fall into crime on our account."
To sum up, events were rare in his life. We relate those we know of;
but usually he passed his life in always doing the same things at
the same hours. A month of his year was like an hour of his day.
As to what became of the "treasures" of the Cathedral of Embrun,
it would embarrass us to be questioned on that point. There were among
them very fine things, and very tempting, and very good to steal for
the benefit of the unfortunate. Stolen they had already been by
others. Half the work was done; it only remained to change the
course of the theft, and to make it turn to the side of the poor. We
can say nothing more on the subject. Except that, there was found
among the bishop's papers a rather obscure note, which is possibly
connected with this affair, that reads as follows: "The question
is, whether this ought to be returned to the cathedral or to the
hospital."
VIII
AFTER DINNER PHILOSOPHY
-
THE senator heretofore referred to was an intelligent man, who had
made his way in life with a directness of purpose which paid no
attention to all those stumbling-blocks which constitute obstacles
in men's path, known as conscience, sworn faith, justice, and duty; he
had advanced straight to his object without once swerving in the
line of his advancement and his interest. He had been formerly a
procureur, mollified by success, and was not a bad man at all, doing
all the little kindnesses that he could to his sons, sons-in-law,
and relatives generally, and even to his friends; having prudently
taken the pleasant side of life, and availed himself of all the
benefits which were thrown in his way. Everything else appeared to him
very stupid. He was sprightly, and just enough of a scholar to think
himself a disciple of Epicurus, while possibly he was only a product
of Pigault-Lebrun. He laughed readily and with gusto at infinite and
eternal things, and at the "crotchets of the good bishop." He
laughed at them sometimes, with a patronising air, before M. Myriel
himself, who listened.
At some semi-official ceremony, Count *** (this senator) and M.
Myriel remained to dinner with the prefect. At dessert, the senator, a
little elevated, though always dignified, exclaimed:
"Parbleu, Monsieur Bishop; let us talk. It is difficult for a
senator and a bishop to look each other in the eye without winking. We
are two augurs. I have a confession to make to you; I have my
philosophy."
"And you are right," answered the bishop. "As one makes his
philosophy, so he rests. You are on a purple bed, Monsieur Senator."
The senator, encouraged by this, proceeded:-
"Let us be good fellows."
"Good devils, even," said the bishop.
"I assure you," resumed the senator, "that the Marquis d'Argens,
Pyrrho, Hobbes, and M. Naigeon are not rascals. I have all my
philosophers in my library, gilt-edged."
"Like yourself, Monsieur le Comte," interrupted the bishop.
The senator went on:-
"I hate Diderot; he is an idealogist, a demagogue, and a
revolutionist, at heart believing in God, and more bigoted than
Voltaire. Voltaire mocked at Needham, and he was wrong; for
Needham's eels prove that God is useless. A drop of vinegar in a
spoonful of flour supplied the fiat lux. Suppose the drop greater
and the spoonful larger, and you have the world. Man is the eel.
Then what is the use of an eternal Father? Monsieur Bishop, the
Jehovah hypothesis tires me. It is good for nothing except to
produce people with scraggy bodies and empty heads. Down with this
great All, who torments me! Hail, Zero! who leaves me quiet. Between
us, to open my heart, and confess to my pastor, as I ought, I will
confess that I have common sense. My head is not turned with your
Jesus, who preaches in every corn-field renunciation and
self-sacrifice. It is the advice of a miser to beggars.
Renunciation, for what? Self-sacrifice, to what? I do not see that one
wolf immolates himself for the benefit of another wolf. Let us
dwell, then, with nature. We are at the summit, and let us have a
higher philosophy. What is the use of being in a higher position if we
can't see further than another man's nose? Let us live gaily; for life
is all we have. That man has another life, elsewhere, above, below,
anywhere- I don't believe a single word of it. Ah! I am recommended to
self-sacrifice and renunciation, that I should take care what I do;
that I must break my head over questions of good and evil, justice and
injustice; over the fas and the nefas. Why? Because I shall have
to render an account for my acts. When? After death. What a fine
dream! After I am dead it will take fine fingers to pinch me. I should
like to see a shade grasp a handful of ashes. Let us who are
initiated, and have raised the skirt of Isis, speak the truth; there
is neither good nor evil; there is only vegetation. Let us seek for
the real; let us dig into everything. Let us go to the bottom. We
should scent out the truth, dig in the earth for it, and seize upon
it. Then it gives you exquisite joy; then you grow strong, and
laugh. I am firmly convinced, Monsieur Bishop, that the immortality of
man is a will-o'-the-wisp. Oh! charming promise. Trust it if you will!
Adam's letter of recommendation! We have souls, and are to become
angels, with blue wings to our shoulders. Tell me, now, isn't it
Tertullian who says that the blessed will go from one star to another?
Well, we shall be the grasshoppers of the skies. And then we shall see
God. Tut tut tut. All these heavens are silly. God is a monstrous
myth. I shouldn't say that in the Moniteur, of course, but I whisper
it among my friends. Inter pocula. To sacrifice earth to paradise is
to leave the substance for the shadow. I am not so stupid as to be the
dupe of the Infinite. I am nothing; I call myself Count Nothing,
senator. Did I exist before my birth? No. Shall I, after my death? No.
What am I? A little dust, aggregated by an organism. What have I to do
on this earth! I have the choice to suffer or to enjoy. Where will
suffering lead me? To nothing. But I shall have suffered. Where will
enjoyment lead me? To nothing. But I shall have enjoyed. My choice
is made. I must eat or be eaten, and I choose to eat. It is better
to be the tooth than the grass. Such is my philosophy. After which, as
I tell you, there is the grave-digger- the pantheon for us- but
all fall into the great gulf- the end; finis; total liquidation.
This is the vanishing point. Death is dead, believe me. I laugh at the
idea that there is any one there that has anything to say to me. It is
an invention of nurses: Bugaboo for children; Jehovah for men. No, our
morrow is night. Beyond the tomb are only equal nothings. You have
been Sardanapalus, or you have been Vincent de Paul- that amounts to
the same nothing. That is the truth of it. Let us live, then, above
all things; use your personality while you have it. In fact, I tell
you, Monsieur Bishop, I have my philosophy, and I have my
philosophers. I do not allow myself to be entangled with nonsense. But
it is necessary there should be something for those who are below
us, the bare-foots, knife-grinders, and other wretches. Legends and
chimeras are given them to swallow, about the soul, immortality,
paradise, and the stars. They munch that; they spread it on their
dry bread. He who has nothing besides, has the good God- that is the
least good he can have. I make no objection to it, but I keep Monsieur
Naigeon for myself. The good God is good for the people."
The bishop clapped his hands.
"That is the idea," he exclaimed. "This materialism is an
excellent thing, and truly marvellous; reject it who will. Ah! when
one has it, he is a dupe no more; he does not stupidly allow himself
to be exiled like Cato, or stoned like Stephen, or burnt alive like
Joan of Arc. Those who have succeeded in procuring this admirable
materialism have the happiness of feeling that they are irresponsible,
and of thinking that they can devour everything in quietness-
places, sinecures, honours, power rightly or wrongly acquired,
lucrative recantations, useful treasons, savoury capitulations of
conscience, and that they will enter their graves with their digestion
completed. How agreeable it is! I do not say that for you, Monsieur
Senator. Nevertheless, I cannot but felicitate you. You great lords
have, you say, a philosophy of your own, for your special benefit-
exquisite, refined, accessible to the rich alone; good with all
sauces, admirably seasoning the pleasures of life. This philosophy
is found at great depths, and brought up by special search. But you
are good princes, and you are quite willing that the belief in the
good God should be the philosophy of the people, much as goose with
onions is the turkey with truffles of the poor."
IX
THE BROTHER PORTRAYED BY THE SISTER
-
To afford an idea of the household of the Bishop of D__, and the
manner in which these two good women subordinated their actions,
thoughts, even their womanly instincts, so liable to disturbance, to
the habits and projects of the bishop, so that he had not even to
speak, in order to express them; we cannot do better than to copy here
a letter from Mademoiselle Baptistine to Madame la Viscontesse de
Boischevron, the friend of her childhood. This letter is in our
possession:-
-
D__, Dec. 16th, 18__.
"MY DEAR MADAME: Not a day passes that we do not speak of you;
that is customary enough with us; but we have now another reason.
Would you believe that in washing and dusting the ceilings and
walls, Madame Magloire has made some discoveries? At present, our
two chambers, which were hung with old paper, whitewashed, would not
disparage a chateau in the style of your own. Madame Magloire has torn
off all the paper: it had something underneath. My parlour, where
there is no furniture and which we use to dry clothes in, is fifteen
feet high, eighteen feet square, and has a ceiling, once painted and
gilded, with beams like those of your house. This was covered with
canvas during the time it was used as a hospital; and then we have
wainscoating of the time of our grandmothers. But it is my own room
which you ought to see. Madame Magloire has discovered beneath at
least ten thicknesses of paper some pictures, which, though not
good, are quite endurable. Telemachus received on horseback, by
Minerva, is one; and then again, he is in the gardens- I forget
their name; another is where the Roman ladies resorted for a single
night. I could say much more; I have Romans, men and women [here a
word is illegible], and all their retinue. Madame Magloire has
cleaned it all, and this summer she is going to repair some little
damages, and varnish it, and my room will be a veritable museum. She
also found in a corner of the storehouse two pier tables of antique
style; they asked two crowns of six livres to regild them, but it is
far better to give that to the poor; besides that they are very
ugly, and I much prefer a round mahogany table.
"I am always happy: my brother is so good: he gives all he has to
the poor and sick. We are full of cares: the weather is very severe in
the winter, and one must do something for those who lack. We at
least are warmed and lighted, and you know those are great comforts.
"My brother has his peculiarities; when he talks he says that a
bishop ought to be thus. Just think of it that the door is never
closed. Come in who will, he is at once my brother's guest; he fears
nothing, not even in the night; he says that is his form of bravery.
"He wishes me not to fear for him, nor that Madame Magloire
should; he exposes himself to every danger, and prefers that we should
not even seem to be aware of it; one must know how to understand him.
"He goes out in the rain, walks through the water, travels in
winter, he has no fear of darkness, or dangerous roads, or of those he
may meet.
"Last year he went all alone into a district infested with
robbers. He would not take us. He was gone a fortnight, and when he
came back, though we had thought him dead, nothing had happened to
him, and he was quite well. He said: 'See, how they have robbed me!'
And he opened a trunk in which he had the jewels of the Embrun
Cathedral which the robbers had given him.
"Upon that occasion, on the return, I could not keep from scolding
him a little, taking care only to speak while the carriage made a
noise, so that no one could hear us.
"At first I used to say to myself, he stops for no danger, he is
incorrigible. But now I have become used to it. I make signs to Madame
Magloire that she shall not oppose him, and he runs what risks he
chooses. I call away Madame Magloire; I go to my room, pray for him,
and fall asleep. I am calm, for I know very well that if any harm
happened to him, it would be my death: I should go away to the good
Father with my brother and my bishop. Madame Magloire has had more
difficulty in getting used to what she calls his imprudence. Now the
thing is settled: we pray together; we are afraid together, and we
go to sleep. Should Satan even come into the house, no one would
interfere. After all, what is there to fear in this house? There is
always One with us who is the strongest: Satan may visit our house,
but the good God inhabits it.
"That is enough for me. My brother has no need now even to speak a
word. I understand him without his speaking, and we commend
ourselves to Providence.
"It must be so with a man whose soul is so noble.
"I asked my brother for the information which you requested
respecting the Faux family. You know how well he knows about it, and
how much he remembers, for he was always a very good royalist, and
this is really a very old Norman family, of the district of Caen.
There are five centuries of a Raoul de Faux, Jean de Faux, and
Thomas de Faux, who were of the gentry, one of whom was a lord of
Rochefort. The last was Guy Etienne Alexandre, who was a cavalry
colonel, and held some rank in the light horse of Brittany. His
daughter Marie Louise married Adrien Charles de Gramont, son of Duke
Louis de Gramont, a peer of France, colonel of the Gardes
Francaises, and lieutenant-general of the army. It is written Faux,
Fauq, and Faouq.
"Will you not, my dear madame, ask for us the prayers of your holy
relative, Monsieur le Cardinal? As to your precious Sylvanie, she
has done well not to waste the short time that she is with you in
writing to me. She is well, you say; studies according to your wishes,
and loves me still. That is all I could desire. Her remembrance,
through you, reached me, and I was glad to receive it. My health is
tolerably good; still I grow thinner every day.
"Farewell: my paper is filled and I must stop. With a thousand
good wishes,
"BAPTISTINE.
-
"P.S.- Your little nephew is charming; do you remember that he
will soon be five years old? He saw a horse pass yesterday on which
they had put knee-caps, and he cried out: 'What is that he has got
on his knees?' The child is so pretty. His little brother drags an old
broom about the room for a carriage, and says, hi!"
-
As this letter shows, these two women knew how to conform to the
bishop's mode of life, with that woman's tact which understands a
man better than he can comprehend himself. Beneath the gentle and
frank manner of the Bishop of D__, which never changed, he sometimes
performed great, daring, even grand acts, without seeming to be
aware of it himself. They trembled, but did not interfere. Sometimes
Madame Magloire would venture a remonstrance beforehand: never at
the time, or afterwards; no one ever disturbed him by word or token in
an action once begun. At certain times, when he had no need to say it,
when, perhaps, he was hardly conscious of it, so complete was his
artlessness, they vaguely felt that he was acting as bishop, and at
such periods they were only two shadows in the house. They waited on
him passively, and if to obey was to disappear, they disappeared. With
charming and instinctive delicacy they knew that obtrusive
attentions would annoy him; so even when they thought him in danger,
they understood, I will not say his thought, but his nature rather, to
the degree of ceasing to watch over him. They entrusted him to God's
keeping.
Besides, Baptistine said, as we have seen, that his death would be
hers. Madame Magloire did not say so, but she knew it.
X
THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN UNKNOWN LIGHT
-
A LITTLE while before the date of the letter quoted in the preceding
pages, the bishop performed an act, which the whole town thought far
more perilous than his excursion across the mountains infested by
the bandits.
In the country near D__, there was a man who lived alone. This
man, to state the startling fact without preface, had been a member of
the National Convention. His name was G__.
The little circle of D__ spoke of the conventionist with a certain
sort of horror. A conventionist, think of it; that was in the time
when folks thee-and-thoued one another, and said "citizen." This man
came very near being a monster; he had not exactly voted for the
execution of the king, but almost; he was half a regicide, and had
been a terrible creature altogether. How was it, then, on the return
of the legitimate princes, that they had not arraigned this man before
the provost court? He would not have been beheaded, perhaps, but
even if clemency were necessary he might have been banished for
life; in fact, an example, etc. etc. Besides, he was an atheist, as
all those people are. Babblings of geese against a vulture!
But was this G__ a vulture? Yes, if one should judge him by the
savageness of his solitude. As he had not voted for the king's
execution, he was not included in the sentence of exile, and could
remain in France.
He lived about an hour's walk from the town, far from any hamlet
or road, in a secluded ravine of a very wild valley. It was said he
had a sort of resting-place there, a hole, a den. He had no neighbours
or even passers-by. Since he had lived there the path which fed to the
place had become overgrown, and people spoke of it as of the house
of a hangman.
From time to time, however, the bishop reflectingly gazed upon the
horizon at the spot where a clump of trees indicated the ravine of the
aged conventionist, and he would say: "There lives a soul which is
alone." And in the depths of his thought he would add "I owe him a
visit."
But this idea, we must confess, though it appeared natural at first,
yet, after a few moments reflection, seemed strange, impracticable,
and almost repulsive. For at heart he shared the general impression,
and the conventionist inspired him, he knew not how, with that
sentiment which is the fringe of hatred, and which the word "aversion"
so well expresses.
However, the shepherd should not recoil from the diseased sheep. Ah!
but what a sheep!
The good bishop was perplexed: sometimes he walked in that
direction, but he returned.
At last, one day the news was circulated in the town that the
young herdsboy who served the conventionist G__ in his retreat, had
come for a doctor; that the old wretch was dying, that he was
motionless, and could not live through the night. "Thank God!" added
many.
The bishop took his cane, put on his overcoat, because his cassock
was badly worn, as we have said, and besides the night wind was
evidently rising, and set out.
The sun was setting; it had nearly touched the horizon when the
bishop reached the accursed spot. He felt a certain quickening of
the pulse as he drew near the den. He jumped over a ditch, cleared a
hedge, made his way through a brush fence, found himself in a
dilapidated garden, and after a bold advance across the open ground,
suddenly, behind some high brushwood, he discovered the retreat.
It was a low, poverty-stricken hut, small and clean, with a little
vine nailed up in front.
Before the door in an old chair on rollers, there sat a man with
white hair, looking with smiling gaze upon the setting sun.
The young herdsboy stood near him, handing him a bowl of milk.
While the bishop was looking, the old man raised his voice.
"Thank you," he said, "I shall need nothing more;" and his smile
changed from the sun to rest upon the boy.
The bishop stepped forward. At the sound of his footsteps the old
man turned his head, and his face expressed as much surprise as one
can feel after a long life.
"This is the first time since I have lived here," said he, "that I
have had a visitor. Who are you, monsieur?"
"My name is Bienvenu-Myriel," the bishop replied.
"Bienvenu-Myriel? I have heard that name before. Are you he whom the
people call Monseigneur Bienvenu?"
"I am."
The old man continued half-smiling. "Then you are my bishop?"
"Possibly."
"Come in, monsieur."
The conventionist extended his hand to the bishop, but he did not
take it. He only said:
"I am glad to find that I have been misinformed. You do not appear
to me very ill."
"Monsieur," replied the old man, "I shall soon be better."
He paused and said:
"I shall be dead in three hours."
Then he continued:
"I am something of a physician; I know the steps by which death
approaches; yesterday my feet only were cold; to-day the cold has
crept to my knees, now it has reached the waist; when it touches the
heart, all will be over. The sunset is lovely, is it not? I had myself
wheeled out to get a final look at nature. You can speak to me; that
will not tire me. You do well to come to see a man who is dying. It is
good that these moments should have witnesses. Every one has his
fancy; I should like to live until the dawn, but I know I have
scarcely life for three hours. It will be night, but what matters
it: to finish is a very simple thing. One does not need morning for
that. Be it so: I shall die in the starlight."
The old man turned towards the herdsboy:
"Little one, go to bed: thou didst watch the other night: thou art
weary."
The child went into the hut.
The old man followed him with his eyes, and added, as if speaking to
himself: "While he is sleeping, I shall die: the two slumbers keep fit
company."
The bishop was not as much affected as he might have been: it was
not his idea of godly death; we must tell all for the little
inconsistencies of great souls should be mentioned; he who had laughed
so heartily at "His Highness," was still slightly shocked at not being
called monseigneur, and was almost tempted to answer "citizen." He
felt a desire to use the brusque familiarity common enough with
doctors and priests, but which was not customary with him.
This conventionist after all, this representative of the people, had
been a power on the earth; and perhaps for the first time in his
life the bishop felt himself in a humour to be severe. The
conventionist, however, treated him with a modest consideration and
cordiality, in which perhaps might have been discerned that humility
which is befitting to one so nearly dust unto dust.
The bishop, on his part, although he generally kept himself free
from curiosity, which to his idea was almost offensive, could not
avoid examining the conventionist with an attention for which, as it
had not its source in sympathy, his conscience would have condemned
him as to any other man; but a conventionist he looked upon as an
outlaw, even to the law of charity.
G__, with his self-possessed manner, erect figure, and vibrating
voice, was one of those noble octogenarians who are the marvel of
the physiologist. The revolution produced many of these men equal to
the epoch: one felt that here was a tested man. Though so near
death, he preserved all the appearance of health. His bright
glances, his firm accent, and the muscular movements of his
shoulders seemed almost sufficient to disconcert death. Azrael, the
Mahometan angel of the sepulchre, would have turned back, thinking
he had mistaken the door. G__ appeared to be dying because he wished
to die. There was freedom in his agony; his legs only were
paralysed; his feet were cold and dead, but his head lived in full
power of life and light. At this solemn moment G__ seemed like the
king in the oriental tale, flesh above and marble below. The bishop
seated himself upon a stone near by. The beginning of their
conversation was ex abrupto:
"I congratulate you," he said, in a tone of reprimand. "At least you
did not vote for the execution of the king."
The conventionist did not seem to notice the bitter emphasis
placed upon the words "at least." The smiles vanished from his face,
and he replied:
"Do not congratulate me too much, monsieur; I did vote for the
destruction of the tyrant."
And the tone of austerity confronted the tone of severity.
"What do you mean?" asked the bishop.
"I mean that man has a tyrant, Ignorance. I voted for the
abolition of that tyrant. That tyrant has begotten royalty, which is
authority springing from the False, while science is authority
springing from the True. Man should be governed by science."
"And conscience," added the bishop.
"The same thing: conscience is innate knowledge that we have."
Monsieur Bienvenu listened with some amazement to this language,
novel as it was to him.
The conventionist went on:
"As to Louis XVI.: I said no. I do not believe that I have the right
to kill a man, but I feel it a duty to exterminate evil. I voted for
the downfall of the tyrant; that is to say, for the abolition of
prostitution for woman, of slavery for man, of night for the child. In
voting for the republic I voted for that: I voted for fraternity,
for harmony, for light. I assisted in casting down prejudices and
errors: their downfall brings light! We caused the old world to
fall; the old world, a vase of misery, reversed, becomes an urn of joy
to the human race."
"Joy alloyed," said the bishop.
"You might say joy troubled, and, at present, after this fatal
return of the blast which we call 1814, joy disappeared. Alas! the
work was imperfect I admit; we demolished the ancient order of
things physically, but not entirely in the idea. To destroy abuses
is not enough; habits must be changed. The windmill has gone, but
the wind is there yet."
"You have demolished. To demolish may be useful, but I distrust a
demolition effected in anger!"
"Justice has its anger, Monsieur Bishop, and the wrath of justice is
an element of progress. Whatever may be said matters not, the French
revolution is the greatest step in advance taken by mankind since
the advent of Christ; incomplete it may be, but it is sublime. It
loosened all the secret bonds of society, it softened all hearts, it
calmed, appeased, enlightened; it made the waves of civilisation to
flow over the earth; it was good. The French revolution is the
consecration of humanity."
The bishop could not help murmuring: "Yes, '93!"
The conventionist raised himself in his chair with a solemnity
well nigh mournful, and as well as a dying person could exclaim, he
exclaimed:
"Ah! you are there! '93! I was expecting that. A cloud had been
forming for fifteen hundred years; at the end of fifteen centuries
it burst. You condemn the thunderbolt."
Without perhaps acknowledging it to himself, the bishop felt that he
had been touched; however, he made the best of it, and replied:
"The judge speaks in the name of justice, the priest in the name
of pity, which is only a more exalted justice. A thunderbolt should
not be mistaken."
And he added, looking fixedly at the conventionist; "Louis XVII?"
The conventionist stretched out his hand and seized the bishop's
arm.
"Louis XVII. Let us see! For whom do you weep?- for the innocent
child? It is well; I weep with you. For the royal child? I ask time to
reflect. To my view the brother of Cartouche, an innocent child,
hung by a rope under his arms in the Place de Greve till he died,
for the sole crime of being the brother of Cartouche, is no less sad
sight than the grandson of Louis XV., an innocent child, murdered in
the tower of the Temple for the sole crime of being the grandson of
Louis XV."
"Monsieur," said the bishop, "I dislike this coupling of names."
"Cartouche or Louis XV.; for which are you concerned?"
There was a moment of silence; the bishop regretted almost that he
had come, and yet he felt strangely and inexplicably moved.
The conventionist resumed: "Oh, Monsieur Priest! you do not love the
harshness of the truth, but Christ loved it. He took a scourge and
purged the temple; his flashing whip was a rude speaker of truths;
when he said 'Sinite parvulos,' he made no distinctions among the
little ones. He was not pained at coupling the dauphin of Barabbas
with the dauphin of Herod. Monsieur, innocence is its own crown!
Innocence has only to act to be noble! She is as august in rags as
in the fleur de lys."
"That is true," said the bishop, in a low tone.
"I repeat," continued the old man; "you have mentioned Louis XVII.
Let us weep together for all the innocent, for all the martyrs, for
all the children, for the low as well as for the high. I am one of
them, but then, as I have told you, we must go further back than
'93, and our tears must begin before Louis XVII. I will weep for the
children of kings with you, if you will weep with me for the little
ones of the people."
"I weep for all," said the bishop.
"Equally," exclaimed G__, "and if the balance inclines, let it be on
the side of the people; they have suffered longer."
There was silence again, broken at last by the old man. He raised
himself upon one elbow, took a pinch of his cheek between his thumb
and his bent forefinger, as one does mechanically in questioning and
forming an opinion, and addressed the bishop with a look full of all
the energies of agony. It was almost an anathema.
"Yes, Monsieur, it is for a long time that the people have been
suffering, and then, sir, that is not all; why do you come to question
me and to speak to me of Louis XVII.? I do not know you. Since I
have been in this region I have lived within these walls alone,
never passing beyond them, seeing none but this child who helps me.
Your name, has, it is true, reached me confusedly, and I must say
not very indistinctly, but that matters not. Adroit men have so many
ways of imposing upon this good simple people. For instance I did
not hear the sound of your carriage. You left it doubtless behind
the thicket, down there at the branching of the road. You have told me
that you were the bishop, but that tells me nothing about your moral
personality. Now, then, I repeat my question- Who are you? You are a
bishop, a prince of the church, one of those men who are covered
with gold, with insignia, and with wealth, who have fat livings- the
see of D__, fifteen thousand francs regular, ten thousand francs
contingent, total twenty-five thousand francs- who have kitchens,
who have retinues, who give good dinners, who eat moor-hens on Friday,
who strut about in your gaudy coach, like peacocks, with lackeys
before and lackeys behind, and who have palaces, and who roll in
your carriages in the name of Jesus Christ who went bare-footed. You
are a prelate; rents, palaces, horses, valets, a good table, all the
sensualities of life, you have these like all the rest, and you
enjoy them like all the rest; very well, but that says too much or not
enough; that does not enlighten me as to your intrinsic worth, that
which is peculiar to yourself, you who come probably with the claim of
bringing me wisdom. To whom am I speaking? Who are you?"
The bishop bowed his head and replied, "Vermis sum."
"A worm of the earth in a carriage!" grumbled the old man.
It was the turn of the conventionist to be haughty, and of the
bishop to be humble.
The bishop replied with mildness:
"Monsieur, be it so. But explain to me how my carriage, which is
there a few steps behind the trees, how my good table and the
moor-fowl that I eat on Friday, how my twenty-five thousand livres
of income, how my palace and my lackeys prove that pity is not a
virtue, that kindness is not a duty, and that '93 was not inexorable?"
The old man passed his hand across his forehead as if to dispel a
cloud.
"Before answering you," said he, "I beg your pardon. I have done
wrong, monsieur; you are in my house, you are my guest. I owe you
courtesy. You are discussing my ideas; it is fitting that I confine
myself to combating your reasoning. Your riches and your enjoyments
are advantages that I have over you in the debate, but it is not in
good taste to avail myself of them. I promise you to use them no
more."
"I thank you," said the bishop.
G__ went on:
"Let us get back to the explanation that you asked of me. Where were
we? What were you saying to me? that '93 was inexorable?"
"Inexorable, yes," said the bishop. "What do you think of Marat
clapping his hands at the guillotine?"
"What do you think of Bossuet chanting the Te Deum over the
dragonnades?"
The answer was severe, but it reached its aim with the keenness of a
dagger. The bishop was staggered, no reply presented itself; but it
shocked him to hear Bossuet spoken of in that manner. The best men
have their fetishes, and sometimes they feel almost crushed at the
little respect that logic shows them.
The conventionist began to gasp; the agonising asthma, which mingles
with the latest breath, made his voice broken; nevertheless, his
soul yet appeared perfectly lucid in his eyes. He continued:
"Let us have a few more words here and there- I would like it.
Outside of the revolution which, taken as a whole, is an immense human
affirmation, '93, alas! is a reply. You think it inexorable, but the
whole monarchy, monsieur? Carrier is a bandit; but what name do you
give to Montrevel? Fouquier-Tainville is a wretch; but what is your
opinion of Lamoignon Baville? Maillard is frightful, but Saulx
Tavannes, if you please? Le pere Duchene is ferocious, but what
epithet will you furnish me for le pere Letellier?
Jourdan-Coupe-Tete is a monster, but less than the Marquis of Louvois.
Monsieur, monsieur, I lament Marie Antoinette, archduchess and
queen, but I lament also that poor Huguenot woman who, in 1685,
under Louis le Grand, monsieur, while nursing her child, was
stripped to the waist and tied to a post, while her child was held
before her; her breast swelled with milk and her heart with anguish;
the little one, weak and famished, seeing the breast, cried with
agony; and the executioner said to the woman, to the nursing mother,
'Recant!' giving her the choice between the death of her child and the
death of her conscience. What say you to this Tantalus torture adapted
to a mother? Monsieur, forget not this; the French revolution had
its reasons. Its wrath will be pardoned by the future; its result is a
better world. From its most terrible blows comes a caress for the
human race. I must be brief. I must stop. I have too good a cause; and
I am dying."
And, ceasing to look at the bishop, the old man completed his idea
in these few tranquil words:
"Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When
they are over, this is recognised: that the human race has been
harshly treated, but that it has advanced."
The conventionist thought that he had borne down successively one
after the other all the interior intrenchments of the bishop. There
was one left, however, and from this, the last resource of Monseigneur
Bienvenu's resistance, came forth these words, in which nearly all the
rudeness of the exordium reappeared.
"Progress ought to believe in God. The good cannot have an impious
servitor. An atheist is an evil leader of the human race."
The old representative of the people did not answer. He was
trembling. He looked up into the sky, and a tear gathered slowly in
his eye. When the lid was full, the tear rolled down his livid
cheek, and he said, almost stammering, low, and talking to himself,
his eye lost in the depths:
"O thou! O ideal! thou alone dost exist!"
The bishop felt a kind of inexpressible emotion.
After brief silence, the old man raised his finger towards heaven,
and said:
"The infinite exists. It is there. If the infinite had no me,
the me would be its limit; it would not be the infinite; in other
words, it would not be. But it is. Then it has a me. This me of
the infinite is God."
The dying man pronounced these last words in a loud voice, and
with a shudder of ecstasy, as if he saw some one. When he ceased,
his eyes closed. The effort had exhausted him. It was evident that
he had lived through in one minute the few hours that remained to him.
What he had said had brought him near to him who is in death. The last
moment was at hand.
The bishop perceived it, time was pressing. He had come as a priest;
from extreme coldness he had passed by degrees to extreme emotion;
he looked upon those closed eyes, he took that old, wrinkled and icy
hand, and drew closer to the dying man.
"This hour is the hour of God. Do you not think it would be a source
of regret, if we should have met in vain?"
The conventionist re-opened his eyes. Calmness was imprinted upon
his face, where there had been a cloud.
"Monsieur Bishop," said he, with a deliberation which perhaps came
still more from the dignity of his soul than from the ebb of his
strength, "I have passed my life in meditation, study, and
contemplation. I was sixty years old when my country called me, and
ordered me to take part in her affairs. I obeyed. There were abuses, I
fought them; there were tyrannies, I destroyed them; there were rights
and principles, I proclaimed and confessed them. The soil was invaded,
I defended it; France was threatened, I offered her my breast. I was
not rich; I am poor. I was one of the masters of the state, the vaults
of the bank were piled with specie, so that we had to strengthen the
walls or they would have fallen under the weight of gold and of
silver; I dined in the Rue de l'Arbre-Sec at twenty-two sous for the
meal. I succoured the oppressed, I solaced the suffering. True, I tore
the drapery from the altar; but it was to staunch the wounds of the
country. I have always supported the forward march of the human race
towards the light, and I have sometimes resisted a progress which
was without pity. I have, on occasion, protected my own adversaries,
your friends. There is at Peteghem in Flanders, at the very place
where the Merovingian kings had their summer palace, a monastery of
Urbanists, the Abbey of Sainte Claire in Beaulieu, which I saved in
1793; I have done my duty according to my strength, and the good
that I could. After which I was hunted, hounded, pursued,
persecuted, slandered, railed at, spit upon, cursed, proscribed. For
many years now, with my white hairs, I have perceived that many people
believed they had a right to despise me; to the poor, ignorant crowd I
have the face of the damned, and I accept, hating no man myself, the
isolation of hatred. Now I am eighty-six years old; I am about to die.
What have you come to ask of me?"
"Your benediction," said the bishop. And he fell upon his knees.
When the bishop raised his head, the face of the old man had
become august. He had expired.
The bishop went home deeply absorbed in thought. He spent the
whole night in prayer. The next day, some persons, emboldened by
curiosity, tried to talk with him of the conventionist G__; he
merely pointed to Heaven.
From that moment he redoubled his tenderness and brotherly love
for the weak and the suffering.
Every allusion to "that old scoundrel G__," threw him into a strange
reverie. No one could say that the passage of that soul before his own
and the reflex of that grand conscience upon his own had not had its
effect upon his approach to perfection.
This "pastoral visit" was of course an occasion for criticism by the
little local coteries of the place.
"Was the bed-side of such a man as that the place for a bishop? Of
course he could expect no conversion there. All these revolutionists
are backsliders. Then why go there? What had he been there to see?
He must have been very curious to see a soul carried away by the
devil."
One day a dowager, of that impertinent variety who think
themselves witty, addressed this sally to him. "Monseigneur, people
ask when your Grandeur will have the red bonnet." "Oh! ho! that is a
high colour," replied the bishop. "Luckily those who despise it in a
bonnet, venerate it in a hat."
XI
A QUALIFICATION
-
WE should be very much deceived if we supposed from this that
Monseigneur Bienvenu was "a philosopher bishop," or "a patriot
cure." His meeting, which we might almost call his communion with
the conventionist G__, left him in a state of astonishment which
rendered him still more charitable; that was all.
Although Monseigneur Bienvenu was anything but a politician, we
ought here perhaps to point out very briefly his position in
relation to the events of the day, if we may suppose, that Monseigneur
Bienvenu ever thought of having a position.
For this we must go back a few years.
Some time after the elevation of M. Myriel to the episcopacy, the
emperor made him a baron of the empire, at the same time with
several other bishops. The arrest of the pope took place, as we
know, on the night of the 5th of July, 1809; on that occasion, M.
Myriel was called by Napoleon to the synod of the bishops of France
and Italy, convoked at Paris. This synod was held at Notre Dame, and
commenced its sessions on the 15th of June, 1811, under the presidency
of Cardinal Fesch. M. Myriel was one of the ninety-five bishops who
were present. But he attended only one sitting, and three or four
private conferences. Bishop of a mountain diocese, living so near to
nature, in rusticity and privation, he seemed to bring among these
eminent personages ideas that changed the temperature of the synod. He
returned very soon to D__. When asked about this sudden return, he
answered: "I annoyed them. The free air went in with me. I had the
effect of an open door."
Another time, he said: "What would you have? Those prelates are
princes. I am only a poor peasant bishop."
The fact is, that he was disliked. Among other strange things, he
had dropped the remark one evening when he happened to be at the house
of one of his colleagues of the highest rank: "What fine clocks!
fine carpets! fine liveries! This must be very uncomfortable. Oh!
how unwilling I should be to have all these superfluities crying for
ever in my ears: 'There are people who hunger! there are people who
are cold! there are poor! there are poor!'"
We must say, by the way, that the hatred of luxury is not an
intelligent hatred. It implies a hatred of the arts. Nevertheless,
among churchmen, beyond their rites and ceremonies, luxury is a crime.
It seems to disclose habits which are not truly charitable. A
wealthy priest is a contradiction. He ought to keep himself near the
poor. But, who can be in contact continually, by night as well as day,
with all distresses, all misfortunes, all privations, without taking
upon himself a little of that holy poverty, like the dust of a
journey? Can you imagine a man near a fire, who does not feel warm?
Can you imagine a labourer working constantly at a furnace, who has
not a hair burned, nor a nail blackened, nor a drop of sweat, nor a
speck of ashes on his face? The first proof of charity in a priest,
and especially a bishop, is poverty.
That is doubtless the view which the Bishop of D__ took of it.
It must not be thought, however, that he took part in the delicate
matters which would be called "the ideas of the age." He had little to
do with the theological quarrels of the moment, and kept his peace
on questions where the church and the state were compromised; but if
he had been pressed, he would have been found rather Ultramontane than
Gallican. As we are drawing a portrait, and can make no concealment,
we are compelled to add that he was very cool, towards Napoleon in the
decline of his power. After 1813, he acquiesced in, or applauded all
the hostile manifestations. He refused to see him as he passed on
his return from the island of Elba, and declined to order in his
diocese public prayers for the emperor during the Hundred Days.
Besides his sister, Mademoiselle Baptistine, he had two brothers;
one, a general, the other, a prefect. He wrote occasionally to both.
He felt a coolness towards the first, because, being in a command in
Provence, at the time of the landing at Cannes, the general placed
himself at the head of twelve hundred men, and pursued the emperor
as if he wished to let him escape. His correspondence was more
affectionate with the other brother, the ex-prefect, a brave and
worthy man, who lived in retirement at Paris in the Rue Cassette.
Even Monseigneur Bienvenu then had his hour of party spirit, his
hour of bitterness, his clouds. The shadow of the passions of the
moment passed over this great and gentle spirit in its occupation with
eternal things. Certainly, such a man deserved to escape political
opinions. Let no one misunderstand our idea; we do not confound what
are called "political opinions" with that grand aspiration after
progress, with that sublime patriotic, democratic, and human faith,
which, in our days, should be the very foundation of all generous
intelligence. Without entering into questions which have only an
indirect bearing upon the subject of this book, we simply say: it
would have been well if Monseigneur Bienvenu had not been a
royalist, and if his eyes had never been turned for a single instant
from that serene contemplation where, steadily shining, above the
fictions and the hatreds of this world, above the stormy ebb and
flow of human affairs, are seen those three pure luminaries, Truth,
Justice, and Charity.
Although we hold that it was not for a political function that God
created Monseigneur Bienvenu, we could have understood and admired a
protest in the name of right and liberty, a fierce opposition, a
perilous and just resistance to Napoleon when he was all-powerful. But
what is pleasing to us towards those who are rising, is less
pleasing towards those who are falling. We do not admire the combat
when there is no danger; and in any case, the combatants of the
first hour have alone the right to be the exterminators in the last.
He who has not been a determined accuser during prosperity, ought to
hold his peace in the presence of adversity. He only who denounces the
success at one time has a right to proclaim the justice of the
downfall. As for ourselves, when providence intervened and struck
the blow, we took no part; 1812 began to disarm us. In 1813, the
cowardly breach of silence on the part of that taciturn Corps
Legislatif, emboldened by catastrophe, was worthy only of indignation,
and it was base to applaud it; in 1814, from those traitorous
marshals, from that senate passing from one baseness to another,
insulting where they had defied, from that idolatry recoiling and
spitting upon its idol, it was a duty to turn away in disgust; in
1815, when the air was filled with the final disasters, when France
felt the thrill of their sinister approach, when Waterloo could
already be dimly perceived opening before Napoleon, the sorrowful
acclamations of the army and of the people to the condemned of
destiny, were no subjects for laughter; and making every reservation
as to the despot, a heart like that of the Bishop of D__ ought not
perhaps to have refused to see what was august and touching, on the
brink of the abyss, in the last embrace of a great nation and a
great man.
To conclude: he was always and in everything just, true,
equitable, intelligent, humble, and worthy, beneficent, and
benevolent, which is another beneficence. He was a priest, a sage, and
a man. We must say even that in those political opinions which we have
been criticising, and which we are disposed to judge almost
severely, he was tolerant and yielding, perhaps more than we, who
now speak. The doorkeeper of the City Hall had been placed there by
the emperor. He was an old subaltern officer of the Old Guard, a
legionary of Austerlitz, and as staunch a Bonapartist as the eagle.
This poor fellow sometimes thoughtlessly allowed words to escape him
which the law at that time defined as seditious matters. Since the
profile of the emperor had disappeared from the Legion of Honour, he
had never worn his badge, as he said, that he might not be compelled
to bear his cross. In his devotion he had himself removed the imperial
effigy from the cross that Napoleon had given him; it left a hole, and
he would put nothing in its place. "Better die," said he, "than
wear the three toads over |
