BY WHOM THE HOUSE WAS GUARDED.
The house the Bishop resided in consisted, as we have said, of a ground
floor and one above it, three rooms on the ground, three bed-rooms on
the first floor, and above them a store-room. Behind the house was
a quarter of an acre of garden. The two females occupied the first
floor, and the Bishop lodged below. The first room, which opened on
the street, served him as dining-room, the second as bed-room, the
third as oratory. You could not get out of the oratory without passing
through the bed-room, or out of the bed-room without passing through
the sitting-room. At the end of the oratory was a closed alcove with a
bed, for any one who stayed the night, and the Bishop offered this bed
to country curés whom business or the calls of their parish brought to
D----.
The hospital surgery, a small building added to the house and built on
a part of the garden, had been transformed into kitchen and cellar.
There was also in the garden a stable, which had been the old hospital
kitchen, and in which the Bishop kept two cows. Whatever the quantity
of milk they yielded, he invariably sent one half every morning to the
hospital patients. "I am paying my tithes," he was wont to say.
His room was rather spacious, and very difficult to heat in the cold
weather. As wood is excessively dear at D----, he hit on the idea
of partitioning off with planks a portion of the cow-house. Here he
spent his evenings during the great frosts, and called it his "winter
drawing-room." In this room, as in the dining-room, there was no
other furniture but a square deal table and four straw chairs. The
dining-room was also adorned with an old buffet stained to imitate
rosewood. The Bishop had made the altar which decorated his oratory out
of a similar buffet, suitably covered with white cloths and imitation
lace. His rich penitents and the religious ladies of D---- had often
subscribed to pay for a handsome new altar for Monseigneur's oratory;
each time he took the money and gave it to the poor. "The finest of all
altars," he would say, "is the soul of an unhappy man who is consoled
and thanks God."
There were in his oratory two straw priedieus, and an arm-chair, also
of straw, in his bed-room. When he by chance received seven or eight
persons at the same time, the Prefect, the General, the staff of the
regiment quartered in the town, or some pupils of the Lower Seminary,
it was necessary to fetch the chairs from the winter drawing-room, the
priedieus from the oratory, and the easy chair from the bed-room: in
this way as many as eleven seats could be collected for the visitors.
At each new visit a room was unfurnished. It happened at times that
there would be twelve; in such a case the Bishop concealed the
embarrassing nature of the situation by standing before the chimney if
it were winter, or walking up and down the room were it summer.
There was also another chair in the alcove, but it was half robbed of
the straw, and had only three legs to stand on, so that it could only
be used when resting against a wall. Mlle. Baptistine also had in her
bed-room a very large settee of wood, which had once been gilt and
covered with flowered chintz, but it had been necessary to raise this
settee to the first floor through the window, owing to the narrowness
of the stairs: and hence it could not be reckoned on in any emergency.
It had been Mlle. Baptistine's ambition to buy drawing-room furniture
of mahogany and covered with yellow Utrecht velvet, but this would have
cost at least 500 francs, and seeing that she had only succeeded in
saving for this object 42 francs 5 sous in five years, she gave up the
idea. Besides, who is there that ever attains his ideal?
Nothing more simple can be imagined than the Bishop's bed-room. A
long window opening on the garden; opposite the bed, an iron hospital
bed with a canopy of green serge; in the shadow of the bed, behind a
curtain, toilet articles, still revealing the old elegant habits of the
man of fashion; two doors, one near the chimney leading to the oratory,
the other near the library leading to the dining-room. The library
was a large glass case full of books; the chimney of wood, painted to
imitate marble, was habitually fireless; in the chimney were a pair
of iron andirons ornamented with two vases, displaying garlands and
grooves which had once been silvered, which was a species of episcopal
luxury; over the chimney a crucifix of unsilvered copper fastened to
threadbare black velvet, in a frame which had lost its gilding; near
the window was a large table with an inkstand, loaded with irregularly
arranged papers and heavy tomes; before the table the straw arm-chair;
in front of the bed a priedieu borrowed from the oratory.
Two portraits, in oval frames, hung on the wall on either side of
the bed. Small gilded inscriptions on the neutral tinted ground of
the canvas by the side of the figures indicated that the portraits
represented, one the Abbé de Chaliot, Bishop of St. Claude; the other
the Abbé Tourteau, Vicar-general of Agde, and Abbé of Grand Champs,
belonging to the Cistertian order in the diocese of Chartres. The
Bishop, on succeeding to the hospital infirmary, found the pictures
there and left them. They were priests, probably donors,--two motives
for him to respect them. All he knew of the two personages was that
they had been nominated by the King, the one to his bishopric, the
other to his benefice, on the same day, April 27, 1785. Madame Magloire
having unhooked the portraits to remove the dust, the Bishop found this
circumstance recorded in faded ink on a small square of paper which
time had turned yellow, and fastened by four wafers behind the portrait
of the Abbé of Grand Champs.
He had at his window an antique curtain of heavy woollen stuff, which
had grown so old that Madame Magloire, in order to avoid the expense
of a new one, was obliged to make a large seam in the very middle of
it. The seam formed a cross, and the Bishop often drew attention to
it. "How pleasant that is," he would say. All the rooms in the house,
ground floor and first floor, were white-washed, which is a barrack and
hospital fashion. Still, some years later, Madame Magloire discovered,
as we shall see further on, paintings under the white-washed paper, in
Mlle. Baptistine's bed-room. The rooms were paved with red bricks which
were washed every week, and there were straw mats in front of all the
beds. This house, moreover, managed by two females, was exquisitely
clean from top to bottom. This was the only luxury the Bishop allowed
himself, for, as he said, "It takes nothing from the poor." We must
allow, however, that of the old property there still remained six
silver spoons and forks and a soup-ladle, which Madame Magloire daily
saw with delight shining splendidly on the coarse white table-cloth.
And as we are here depicting the Bishop of D---- as he was, we must
add that he had said, more than once, "I do not think I could give up
eating with silver." To this plate must be added two heavy candlesticks
of massive silver, which the Bishop inherited from a great-aunt. These
branched candlesticks each held two wax candles, and usually figured on
the Bishop's chimney. When he had any one to dinner, Madame Magloire
lit the candles and placed the two candlesticks on the table. There was
in the Bishop's bed-room, at the head of his bed, a small cupboard in
the wall, in which Madame Magloire each night placed the plate and the
large ladle. I am bound to add that the key was never taken out.
The garden, spoiled to some extent by the ugly buildings to which we
have referred, was composed of four walks, radiating round a cesspool;
another walk ran all round the garden close to the surrounding white
wall. Between these walks were four box-bordered squares. In three of
them Madame Magloire grew vegetables; in the fourth the Bishop had
placed flowers; here and there were a few fruit-trees. Once Madame
Magloire had said, with a sort of gentle malice, "Monseigneur, although
you turn everything to use, here is an unemployed plot. It would be
better to have lettuces there than bouquets." "Madame Magloire," the
Bishop answered, "you are mistaken; the beautiful is as useful as the
useful." He added, after a moment's silence, "More so, perhaps."
This square, composed of three or four borders, occupied the Bishop
almost as much as his books did. He liked to spend an hour or two
there, cutting, raking, and digging holes in which he placed seeds.
He was not so hostile to insects as a gardener would have liked.
However, he made no pretensions to botany; he was ignorant of groups
and solidism; he did not make the slightest attempt to decide between
Tournefort and the natural method; he was not a partisan either of
Jussieu or Linnæus. He did not study plants, but he loved flowers. He
greatly respected the professors, but he respected the ignorant even
more; and without ever failing in this respect, he watered his borders
every summer evening with a green-painted tin pot.
The house had not a single door that locked. The door of the
dining-room, which, as we said, opened right on the cathedral square,
had formerly been adorned with bolts and locks like a prison gate.
The Bishop had all this iron removed, and the door was only hasped
either night or day: the first passer-by, no matter the hour, had only
to push it. At the outset the two females had been greatly alarmed
by this never-closed door; but the Bishop said to them, "Have bolts
placed on the doors of your rooms if you like." In the end they shared
his confidence, or at least affected to do so: Madame Magloire alone
was from time to time alarmed. As regards the Bishop, his idea is
explained, or at least indicated, by these three lines, which he wrote
on the margin of a Bible: "This is the distinction: the physician's
doors must never be closed, the priest's door must always be open." On
another book, entitled "Philosophy of Medical Science," he wrote this
other note: "Am I not a physician like them? I also have my patients:
in the first place, I have theirs, whom they call the sick, and then I
have my own, whom I call the unhappy." Elsewhere he also wrote: "Do not
ask the name of the man who seeks a bed from you, for it is before all
the man whom his name embarrasses that needs an asylum."
It came about that a worthy curé--I forget whether it were he of
Couloubroux or he of Pompierry--thought proper to ask him one day,
probably at the instigation of Madame Magloire, whether Monseigneur
was quite certain that he was not acting to some extent imprudently by
leaving his door open day and night for any who liked to enter, and
if he did not fear lest some misfortune might happen in a house so
poorly guarded. The Bishop tapped his shoulder with gentle gravity, and
said to him, "Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui
custodiunt eam."
Then he spoke of something else. He was fond of saying too, "There is
the Priest's bravery as well as that of the Colonel of Dragoons. The
only thing is that ours must be quiet."