WORKS RESEMBLING WORDS.
The Bishop's conversation was affable and lively. He condescended to
the level of the two old females who spent their life near him, and
when he laughed it was a schoolboy's laugh. Madame Magloire was fond
of calling him "Your Grandeur." One day he rose from his easy chair
and went to fetch a book from his library: as it was on one of the top
shelves, and as the Bishop was short, he could not reach it "Madame
Magloire," he said, "bring me a chair, for my Grandeur does not rise to
that shelf."
One of his distant relatives, the Countess de Lô, rarely let an
opportunity slip to enumerate in his presence what she called the
"hopes" of her three sons. She had several very old relatives close to
death's door, of whom her sons were the natural heirs. The youngest
of the three would inherit from a great-aunt 100,000 francs a year;
the second would succeed to his uncle's dukedom, the third to his
grandfather's peerage. The Bishop generally listened in silence to this
innocent and pardonable maternal display. Once, however, he seemed more
dreamy than usual, while Madame de Lô was repeating all the details
of their successions and "hopes." She broke off somewhat impatiently.
"Good gracious, cousin," she said, "what are you thinking, about?" "I
am thinking," said the Bishop, "of something singular, which, if my
memory is right, is in St. Augustine. Place your hopes in the man to
whom it is impossible to succeed."
On another occasion, receiving a letter announcing the death of a
country gentleman, in which, in addition to the dignities of the
defunct, all the feudal and noble titles of all his relatives were
recorded,--"What a back death has! what an admirable burthen of titles
he is made lightly to bear," he exclaimed, "and what sense men must
possess thus to employ the tomb in satisfying their vanity."
He displayed at times a gentle raillery, which nearly always contained
a serious meaning. During one Lent a young vicar came to D---- and
preached at the cathedral. He was rather eloquent, and the subject of
his sermon was charity. He invited the rich to give to the needy in
order to escape hell, which he painted in the most frightful way he
could, and reach paradise, which he made desirable and charming. There
was among the congregation a rich, retired merchant, somewhat of a
usurer, who had acquired two million francs by manufacturing coarse
cloths, serges, and caddis. In his whole life-time M. Géborand had
never given alms to a beggar, but after this sermon it was remarked
that he gave every Sunday a sou to the old women begging at the
cathedral gate. There were six of them to share it. One day the Bishop
saw him bestowing his charity, and said to his sister, with a smile,
"Look at M. Géborand buying heaven for a sou."
When it was a question of charity he would not let himself be rebuffed
even by a refusal, and at such times made remarks which caused people
to reflect. Once he was collecting for the poor in a drawing-room
of the town. The Marquis de Champtercier was present, a rich old
avaricious man, who contrived to be at once ultra-Royalist and
ultra-Voltairian. This variety has existed. The Bishop on reaching him
touched his arm, "Monsieur le Marquis, you must give me something." The
Marquis turned and answered dryly: "I have my own poor, Monseigneur."
"Give them to me," said the Bishop. One day he delivered the following
sermon at the cathedral:--
"My very dear brethren, my good friends, there are in France thirteen
hundred and twenty thousand peasants' houses which have only three
openings; eighteen hundred and seventeen thousand which have only two
openings, the door and the window; and, lastly, three hundred and
forty-six thousand cabins which have only one opening, the door, and
this is because of a thing called the door and window tax. Just place
poor families, aged women and little children, in these houses, and
then see the fevers and maladies! Alas! God gives men fresh air, and
the law sells it to them. I do not accuse the law, but I bless God. In
the Isère, in the Var, in the two Alps, Upper and Lower, the peasants
have not even trucks, but carry manure on their backs: they have no
candles, and burn resinous logs and pieces of rope steeped in pitch. It
is the same through all the high parts of Dauphiné. They make bread for
six months, and bake it with dried cow-dung. In winter they break this
bread with axes and steep it in water for four-and-twenty hours before
they can eat it. Brethren, have pity, see how people suffer around you!"
A Provençal by birth, he easily accustomed himself to all the dialects
of the South: this greatly pleased the people, and had done no little
in securing him admission to all minds. He was, as it were, at home
in the hut and on the mountain. He could say the grandest things in
the most vulgar idioms, and as he spoke all languages he entered all
hearts. However, he was the same to people of fashion as to the lower
classes.
He never condemned anything hastily or without taking the circumstances
into calculation. He would say, Let us look at the road by which the
fault has come. Being, as he called himself with a smile, an ex-sinner,
he had none of the intrenchments of rigorism, and, careless of the
frowns of the unco' good, professed loudly a doctrine which might be
summed up nearly as follows,--
"Man has upon him the flesh which is at once his burden and his
temptation. He carries it with him and yields to it. He must watch,
restrain, and repress it, and only obey it in the last extremity. In
this obedience there may still be a fault: but the fault thus committed
is venial. It is a fall, but a fall on the knees, which may end in
prayer. To be a saint is the exception, to be a just man is the rule.
Err, fail, sin, but be just. The least possible amount of sin is the
law of man: no sin at all is the dream of angels. All that is earthly
is subjected to sin, for sin is a gravitation."
When he saw everybody cry out and grow indignant, all of a sudden, he
would say with a smile, "Oh! oh, it seems as if this is a great crime
which all the world is committing. Look at the startled hypocrites,
hastening to protest and place themselves under cover."
He was indulgent to the women and the poor on whom the weight of
human society presses. He would say, "The faults of women, children,
servants, the weak, the indigent, and the ignorant are the fault of
husbands, fathers, masters, the strong, the rich, and the learned." He
also said, "Teach the ignorant as much as you possibly can: society is
culpable for not giving instruction gratis, and is responsible for the
night it produces. This soul is full of darkness, and sin is committed,
but the guilty person is not the man who commits the sin, but he who
produces the darkness."
As we see, he had a strange manner, peculiarly his own, of judging
things. I suspect that he obtained it from the Gospels. He one day
heard in a drawing-room the story of a trial which was shortly to take
place. A wretched man, through love of a woman and a child he had by
her, having exhausted his resources, coined false money, which at
that period was an offence punished by death. The woman was arrested
while issuing the first false piece manufactured by the man. She was
detained, but there was no proof against her. She alone could accuse
her lover and ruin him by confessing. She denied. They pressed her, but
she adhered to her denial. Upon this, the attorney for the crown had
an idea: he feigned infidelity on the lover's part, and contrived, by
cleverly presenting the woman with fragments of letters, to persuade
her that she had a rival, and that the man was deceiving her. Then,
exasperated by jealousy, she denounced her lover, confessed everything,
proved everything. The man was ruined, and would shortly be tried with
his accomplice at Aix. The story was told, and everybody was delighted
at the magistrate's cleverness. By bringing jealousy into play he
brought out the truth through passion, and obtained justice through
revenge. The Bishop listened to all this in silence, and when it was
ended he asked: "Where will this man and woman be tried?" "At the
assizes." Then he continued, "And where will the attorney for the crown
be tried?"
A tragical event occurred at D----. A man was condemned to death for
murder. He was a wretched fellow, not exactly educated, not exactly
ignorant, who had been a mountebank at fairs and a public writer. The
trial attracted the attention of the towns-people. On the eve of the
day fixed for the execution the prison chaplain was taken ill, and
a priest was wanted to assist the sufferer in his last moments. The
Curé was sent for, and it seems that he refused, saying, "It is no
business of mine, I have nothing to do with the mountebank, I am ill
too, and besides, that is not my place." This answer was carried to
the Bishop, who said, "The Curé is right, it is not his place, it is
mine." He went straight to the prison, entered the mountebank's cell,
called him by name, took his hand, and spoke to him. He spent the whole
day with him, forgetting sleep and food while praying to God for the
soul of the condemned man. He told him the best truths, which are the
most simple. He was father, brother, friend--bishop only to bless.
He taught him everything, while reassuring and consoling him. This
man was about to die in desperation: death was to him like an abyss,
and he shuddered as he stood on its gloomy brink. He was not ignorant
enough to be completely indifferent, and his condemnation, which was a
profound shock, had here and there broken through that partition which
separates us from the mystery of things, and which we call life. He
peered incessantly out of this world through these crevices, and only
saw darkness; but the Bishop showed him a light.
On the morrow, when they came to fetch the condemned man, the Bishop
was with him. He followed him, and showed himself to the mob in his
purple cassock, and with the episcopal cross round his neck, side by
side with this rope-bound wretch. He entered the cart with him, he
mounted the scaffold with him. The sufferer, so gloomy and crushed on
the previous day, was radiant; he felt that his soul was reconciled,
and he hoped for heaven. The Bishop embraced him, and at the moment
when the knife was about to fall, said: "The man whom his fellow-men
kill, God resuscitates. He whom his brothers expel finds the Father
again. Pray, believe, enter into life! The Father is there!" When he
descended from the scaffold there was something in his glance which
made the people open a path for him; it was impossible to say whether
his pallor or his serenity were the more admirable. On returning to
the humble abode, which he called smilingly his palace, he said to his
sister: "I have just been officiating pontifically."
As the most sublime things are often those least understood, there were
persons in the town who said, in commenting on the Bishop's conduct,
"It is affectation." This, however, was only the talk of drawing-rooms;
the people who do not regard holy actions with suspicion were affected,
and admired. As for the Bishop, the sight of the guillotine was a shock
to him, and it was long ere he recovered from it.
The scaffold, in fact, when it stands erect before you, has something
about it that hallucinates. We may feel a certain amount of
indifference about the punishment of death, not express an opinion,
and say yes or no, so long as we have never seen a guillotine; but
when we have come across one the shock is violent, and we must decide
either for or against. Some admire it, like De Maistre, others execrate
it, like Beccaria. The guillotine is the concretion of the law, it
calls itself _vindicta_; it is not neutral, and does not allow you to
remain neutral. The person who perceives it shudders with the most
mysterious of shudders. All the social questions raise their notes of
interrogation round this cutter. The scaffold is a vision, it is not
carpenter's work, it is not a machine, it is not a lifeless mechanism
made of wood, steel, and ropes. It seems to be a species of being
possessing a gloomy intuition; you might say that the wood-work lives,
that the machine hears, that the mechanism understands, that the wood,
the steel, and the ropes, have a volition. In the frightful reverie
into which its presence casts the mind the scaffold appears terrible,
and mixed up with what it does. The scaffold is the accomplice of the
executioner; it devours, it eats flesh and drinks blood. The scaffold
is a species of monster, manufactured by the judge and the carpenter,
a spectre that seems to live a sort of horrible life made up of all
the death it has produced. Hence the impression was terrible and
deep; on the day after the execution, and for many days beyond, the
Bishop appeared crushed. The almost violent serenity of the mournful
moment had departed; the phantom of social justice haunted him. He who
usually returned from all his duties with such radiant satisfaction
seemed to be reproaching himself. At times he soliloquized, and
stammered unconnected sentences in a low voice. Here is one which his
sister overheard and treasured up: "I did not believe that it was so
monstrous. It is wrong to absorb oneself in the divine law so greatly
as no longer to perceive the human law. Death belongs to God alone. By
what right do men touch that unknown thing?"
With time these impressions were attenuated, and perhaps effaced. Still
it was noticed that from this period the Bishop avoided crossing the
execution square.
M. Myriel might be called at any hour to the bedside of the sick and
the dying. He was not ignorant that his greatest duty and greatest
labor lay there. Widowed or orphaned families had no occasion to send
for him, for he came of himself. He had the art of sitting down and
holding his tongue for hours by the side of a man who had lost the wife
he loved, or of a mother bereaved of her child. As he knew the time to
be silent, he also knew the time to speak. What an admirable consoler
he was! he did not try to efface grief by oblivion, but to aggrandize
and dignify it by hope. He would say: "Take care of the way in which
you turn to the dead. Do not think of that which perishes. Look
fixedly, and you will perceive the living light of your beloved dead in
heaven." He knew that belief is healthy, and he sought to counsel and
calm the desperate man by pointing out to him the resigned man, and to
transform the grief that gazes at a grave by showing it the grief that
looks at a star.