THE BISHOP FACES A NEW LIGHT.
At a period rather later than the date of the letter just quoted he
did a thing which the whole town declared to be even more venturesome
than his trip in the mountains among the bandits. A man lived alone in
the country near D----: this man, let us out with the great word at
once, was an ex-conventionalist, of the name of G----. People talked
about him in the little world of D---- with a species of horror. A
conventionalist, only think of that! Those men existed at the time
when people "thou-ed" one another and were called citizens. This man
was almost a monster: he had not voted for the King's death, but had
done all but that, and was a quasi-regicide. How was it that this man
had not been tried by court-martial, on the return of the legitimate
princes? They need not have cut his head off, for clemency is all right
and proper, but banishment for life would have been an example, and so
on. Moreover, he was an atheist, like all those men. It was the gossip
of geese round a vulture.
And was this G---- a vulture? Yes, if he might be judged by his
ferocious solitude. As he had not voted the King's death, he was not
comprised in the decree of exile, and was enabled to remain in France.
He lived about three miles from the town, far from every village, every
road, in a nook of a very wild valley. He had there, so it was said, a
field, a hut, a den. He had no neighbors, not even passers-by; since
he had lived in the valley the path leading to it had become overgrown
with grass. People talked of the spot as of the hangman's house. Yet
the Bishop thought of it, and from time to time gazed at a spot on the
horizon where a clump of trees pointed out the old conventionalist's
valley, and said "There is a soul there alone," and he added to
himself, "I owe him a visit."
But, let us confess it, this idea, which at the first blush was
natural, seemed to him after a moment's reflection strange and
impossible, almost repulsive. For, in his heart, he shared the general
impression, and the conventionalist inspired him, without his being
able to account for it, with that feeling which is the border line of
hatred, and which is so well expressed by the word "estrangement."
Still the shepherd ought not to keep aloof from a scabby sheep; but
then what a sheep it was! The good Bishop was perplexed; at times he
started in that direction, but turned back. One day a rumor spread
in the town, that a shepherd boy who waited on G---- in his den, had
come to fetch a doctor: the old villain was dying, paralysis was
overpowering him, and he could not last out the night. Happy release!
some added.
The Bishop took his stick, put on his overcoat to hide his well-worn
cassock, as well as to protect him against the night breeze which would
soon rise, and set out. The sun had almost attained the horizon when
the Bishop reached the excommunicated spot. He perceived with a certain
heart-beating that he was close to the wild beast's den. He strode
across a ditch, clambered over a hedge, entered a neglected garden,
and suddenly perceived the cavern behind some shrubs. It was a low,
poor-looking hut, small and clean, with a vine nailed over the front.
In front of the door an old white-haired man, seated in a worn-out
wheel-chair, was smiling in the sun. By his side stood a boy, who
handed him a pot of milk. While the Bishop was looking at him the old
man uplifted his voice. "Thanks," he said, "I want nothing further,"
and his smile was turned from the sun to rest on the boy.
The Bishop stepped forward, and at the noise of his footsteps the
seated man turned his head, and his face expressed all the surprise it
is possible to feel after a long life.
"Since I have lived here," he said, "you are the first person who has
come to me. Who may you be, sir?"
The Bishop answered, "My name is Bienvenu Myriel."
"I have heard that name uttered. Are you not he whom the peasants call
Monseigneur Welcome?"
"I am."
The old man continued, with a half-smile, "In that case you are my
Bishop?"
"A little."
"Come in, sir."
The conventionalist offered his hand to the Bishop, but the Bishop did
not take it--he confined himself to saying,--
"I am pleased to see that I was deceived. You certainly do not look
ill."
"I am about to be cured, sir," the old man said; then after a pause he
added, "I shall be dead in three hours. I am a bit of a physician, and
know in what way the last hour comes. Yesterday only my feet were cold;
to-day the chill reached my knees; now I can feel it ascending to my
waist, and when it reaches the heart I shall stop. The sun is glorious,
is it not? I had myself wheeled out in order to take a farewell glance
at things. You can talk to me, for it does not weary me. You have done
well to come and look at a dying man, for it is proper that there
should be witnesses. People have their fancies, and I should have liked
to go on till dawn. But I know that I can hardly last three hours.
It will be night, but, after all, what matter? Finishing is a simple
affair, and daylight is not necessary for it. Be it so, I will die by
star-light."
Then he turned to the lad:
"Go to bed. You sat up the other night, and must be tired."
The boy went into the cabin; the old man looked after him, and added,
as if speaking to himself,--
"While he is sleeping I shall die; the two slumbers can keep each other
company."
The Bishop was not so moved as we might imagine he would be. He did not
think that he saw God in this way of dying: and--let us out with it, as
the small contradictions of great hearts must also be indicated--he,
who at times laughed so heartily at his grandeur, was somewhat annoyed
at not being called Monseigneur, and was almost tempted to reply,
Citizen. He felt an inclination for coarse familiarity, common enough
with doctors and priests, but to which he was not accustomed. This man
after all, this conventionalist, this representative of the people,
had been a mighty one of the earth: for the first time in his life,
perhaps, the Bishop felt disposed to sternness.
The Republican, in the mean while, regarded him with modest cordiality,
in which, perhaps, could be traced that humility which is so becoming
in a man who is on the point of returning to the dust. The Bishop,
on his side, though he generally guarded against curiosity, which
according to him was akin to insult, could not refrain from examining
the conventionalist with an attention which, as it did not emanate from
sympathy, would have pricked his conscience in the case of any other
man. The conventionalist produced the effect upon him of being beyond
the pale of the law, even the law of charity.
G----, calm, almost upright, and possessing a sonorous voice, was one
of those grand octogenarians who are the amazement of the physiologist.
The Revolution possessed many such men, proportioned to the age. The
thoroughly tried man could be seen in him, and, though so near his end,
he had retained all the signs of health. There was something which
would disconcert death in his bright glance, his firm accent, and the
robust movement of his shoulders: Azrael, the Mohammedan angel of the
tomb, would have turned back fancying that he had mistaken the door.
G---- seemed to be dying because he wished to do so; there was liberty
in his agony, and his legs alone, by which the shadows clutched him,
were motionless. While the feet were dead and cold, the head lived
with all the power of life and appeared in full light. G---- at this
awful moment resembled the king in the Oriental legend, flesh above
and marble below. The Bishop sat down on a stone and began rather
abruptly:--
"I congratulate you," he said, in the tone people employ to reprimand;
"_at least_ you did not vote the King's death."
The Republican did not seem to notice the covert bitterness of this
remark, _at least_; he replied, without a smile on his face,--
"Do not congratulate me, sir: I voted the death of the tyrant." It was
the accent of austerity opposed to that of sternness.
"What do you mean?" the Bishop continued.
"I mean that man has a tyrant, Ignorance, and I voted for the end of
that tyrant which engendered royalty, which is the false authority,
while knowledge is the true authority. Man must only be governed by
knowledge."
"And by his conscience," the Bishop added.
"That is the same thing. Conscience is the amount of innate knowledge
we have in us."
Monseigneur Welcome listened in some surprise to this language, which
was very novel to him. The Republican continued,--
"As for Louis XVI. I said No. I do not believe that I have the right to
kill a man, but I feel the duty of exterminating a tyrant, and I voted
for the end of the tyrant. That is to say, for the end of prostitution
for women; the end of slavery for men; and the end of night for
children. In voting for the Republic I voted for all this: I voted for
fraternity, concord, the Dawn! I aided in the overthrow of errors and
prejudices, and such an overthrow produces light; we hurled down the
old world, and that vase of wretchedness, by being poured over the
human race, became an urn of joy."
"Mingled joy," said the Bishop.
"You might call it a troubled joy, and now, after that fatal return
of the past which is called 1814, a departed joy. Alas! the work was
incomplete, I grant; we demolished the ancient régime in facts, but
were not able to suppress it completely in ideas. It is not sufficient
to destroy abuses, but morals must also be modified. Though the mill no
longer exists, the wind still blows."
"You demolished: it may be useful, but I distrust a demolition
complicated with passion."
"Right has its passion, Sir Bishop, and that passion is an element
of progress. No matter what may be said, the French Revolution is
the most powerful step taken by the human race since the advent of
Christ. It may be incomplete, but it was sublime. It softened minds, it
calmed, appeased, and enlightened, and it spread civilization over the
world. The French Revolution was good, for it was the consecration of
humanity."
The Bishop could not refrain from muttering,--"Yes? '93!"
The Republican drew himself up with almost mournful solemnity, and
shouted, as well as a dying man could shout,--
"Ah! there we have it! I have been waiting for that. A cloud had been
collecting for fifteen hundred years, and at the end of that period it
burst: you are condemning the thunder-clap."
The Bishop, without perhaps confessing it to himself, felt that the
blow had gone home; still he kept a good countenance, and answered,--
"The judge speaks in the name of justice; the priest speaks in that of
pity, which is only a higher form of justice. A thunder-clap must not
deceive itself."
And he added as he looked fixedly at the conventionalist,--
"And Louis XVII.?"
The Republican stretched forth his hand and seized the Bishop's arm.
"Louis XVII. Let us consider. Whom do you weep for? Is it the innocent
child? in that case I weep with you. Is it the royal child? in that
case I must ask leave to reflect. For me, the thought of the brother
of Cartouche, an innocent lad, hung up under the armpits in the Place
de Grève until death ensued, for the sole crime of being Cartouche's
brother, is not less painful than the grandson of Louis XV., the
innocent boy martyrized in the Temple Tower for the sole crime of being
the grandson of Louis XV."
"I do not like such an association of names, sir," said the Bishop.
"Louis XV.? Cartouche? On behalf of which do you protest?"
There was a moment's silence; the Bishop almost regretted having come,
and yet felt himself vaguely and strangely shaken. The conventionalist
continued,--
"Ah! sir priest, you do not like the crudities of truth, but Christ
loved them; he took a scourge and swept the temple. His lightning lash
was a rough discourser of truths. When he exclaimed, 'Suffer little
children to come unto me,' he made no distinction among them. He made
no difference between the dauphin of Barabbas and the dauphin of Herod.
Innocence is its own crown, and does not require to be a Highness; it
is as august in rags as when crowned with _fleurs de lis_."
"That is true," said the Bishop in a low voice.
"You have named Louis XVII.," the conventionalist continued; "let us
understand each other. Shall we weep for all the innocents, martyrs,
and children of the lowest as of the highest rank? I am with you there,
but as I said, in that case we must go back beyond '93, and begin our
tears before Louis XVII. I will weep over the children of the kings
with you, provided that you weep with me over the children of the
people."
"I weep for all," said the Bishop.
"Equally!" G---- exclaimed; "and if the balance must be uneven, let it
be on the side of the people, as they have suffered the longest."
There was again a silence, which the Republican broke. He rose on his
elbow, held his chin with his thumb and forefinger, as a man does
mechanically when he is interrogating and judging, and fixed on the
Bishop a glance full of all the energy of approaching death. It was
almost an explosion.
"Yes, sir; the people have suffered for a long time. But let me ask
why you have come to question and speak to me about Louis XVII.? I
do not know you. Ever since I have been in this country I have lived
here alone, never setting my foot across the threshold, and seeing
no one but the boy who attends to me. Your name, it is true, has
vaguely reached me, and I am bound to say that it was pronounced
affectionately, but that means nothing, for clever people have so many
ways of making the worthy, simple folk believe in them. By the bye, I
did not hear the sound of your coach; you doubtless left it down there
behind that clump of trees at the cross roads. I do not know you,
I tell you; you have informed me that you are the Bishop, but that
teaches me nothing as to your moral character. In a word--I repeat my
question, Who are you? You are a bishop, that is to say, a prince of
the Church, one of those gilded, escutcheoned annuitants who have fat
prebends--the Bishopric of D----, with 15,000 francs income, 10,000
francs fees, or a total of 25,000 francs,--who have kitchens, liveries,
keep a good table, and eat water-fowl on a Friday; who go about, with
lackeys before and behind, in a gilded coach, in the name of the
Saviour who walked barefoot! You are a prelate; you have, like all the
rest, income, palace, horses, valets, a good table, and like all the
rest you enjoy them: that is all very well, but it says either too
much or too little; it does not enlighten me as to your intrinsic and
essential value when you come with the probable intention of bringing
me wisdom. To whom am I speaking--who are you?"
The Bishop bowed his head, and answered, "I am a worm."
"A worm in a carriage!" the Republican growled.
It was his turn to be haughty, the Bishop's to be humble; the latter
continued gently,--
"Be it so, sir. But explain to me how my coach, which is a little
way off behind the trees, my good table, and the water-fowl I eat on
Friday, my palace, my income, and my footmen, prove that pity is not a
virtue, that clemency is not a duty, and that '93 was not inexorable."
The Republican passed his hand over his forehead, as if to remove a
cloud.
"Before answering you," he said, "I must ask you to forgive me. I was
in the wrong, sir, for you are in my house and my guest. You discuss
my ideas, and I must restrict myself to combating your reasoning. Your
wealth and enjoyments are advantages which I have over you in the
debate, but courtesy bids me not employ them. I promise not to do so
again."
"I thank you," said the Bishop.
G---- continued: "Let us return to the explanation you asked of me.
Where were we? What was it you said, that '93 was inexorable?"
"Yes, inexorable," the Bishop said; "what do you think of Marat
clapping his hands at the guillotine?"
"What do you think of Bossuet singing a Te Deum over the Dragonnades?"
The response was harsh, but went to its mark with the rigidity of a
Minié bullet. The Bishop started, and could not parry it, but he was
hurt by this way of mentioning Bossuet. The best minds have their
fetishes, and at times feel vaguely wounded by any want of respect on
the part of logic. The conventionalist was beginning to gasp; that
asthma which is mingled with the last breath affected his voice; still
he retained perfect mental clearness in his eyes. He continued,--
"Let us say a few words more on this head. Beyond the Revolution,
which, taken in its entirety, is an immense human affirmation, '93,
alas, is a reply. You consider it inexorable, but what was the whole
monarchy? Carrier is a bandit, but what name do you give to Montrevel?
Fouquier Tainville is a scoundrel, but what is your opinion about
Lamoignon-Bâville? Maillard is frightful, but what of Saulx-Tavannes,
if you please? Father Duchêne is ferocious, but what epithet will you
allow me for Père Letellier? Jourdan Coupe-Tête is a monster, but less
so than the Marquis de Louvois. I pity Marie Antoinette, Archduchess
and Queen, but I also pity the poor Huguenot woman who, in 1685, while
suckling her child, was fastened, naked to the waist, to a stake, while
her infant was held at a distance. Her breast was swollen with milk,
her heart with agony; the babe, hungry and pale, saw that breast and
screamed for it, and the hangman said to the wife, mother, and nurse,
'Abjure!' giving her the choice between the death of her infant and the
death of her conscience. What do you say of this punishment of Tantalus
adapted to a woman? Remember this carefully, sir, the French Revolution
had its reasons, and its wrath will be absolved by the future. Its
result is a better world; and a caress for the human race issues
from its most terrible blows. I must stop, for the game is all in my
favor--besides, I am dying."
And ceasing to regard the Bishop, the Republican finished his thought
with the following few calm words,--
"Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions, but when they
are ended, this fact is recognized; the human race has been chastised,
but it has moved onwards."
The Republican did not suspect that he had carried in turn every one
of the Bishop's internal intrenchments. One still remained, however,
and from this, the last resource of Monseigneur's resistance, came this
remark, in which all the roughness of the commencement was perceptible.
"Progress must believe in God, and the good cannot have impious
servants. A man who is an atheist is a bad guide for the human race."
The ex-representative of the people did not reply. He trembled, looked
up to the sky, and a tear slowly collected in his eye. When the lid was
full the tear ran down his livid cheek, and he said in a low, shaking
voice, as if speaking to himself,--
"Oh thou! oh ideal! thou alone existest!"
The Bishop had a sort of inexpressible commotion; after a silence the
old man raised a finger to heaven and said,--
"The infinite is. It is there. If the infinite had not a me, the I
would be its limit; it would not be infinite; in other words, it would
not be. But it is. Hence it has a me. This I of the infinite is God."
The dying man uttered these words in a loud voice, and with a shudder
of ecstasy as if he saw some one. When he had spoken his eyes closed,
for the effort had exhausted him. It was evident that he had lived in
one minute the few hours left him. The supreme moment was at hand. The
Bishop understood it; he had come here as a priest, and had gradually
passed from extreme coldness to extreme emotion; he looked at these
closed eyes, he took this wrinkled and chilly hand and bent down over
the dying man.
"This hour is God's. Would you not consider it matter of regret if we
had met in vain?"
The Republican opened his eyes again; a gravity which suggested the
shadow of death was imprinted on his countenance.
[Illustration: "'YOUR BLESSING,' SAID THE BISHOP, AND KNELT DOWN"]
"Monsieur le Bishop," he said, with a slowness produced perhaps more by
the dignity of the soul than by failing of his strength, "I have spent
my life in meditation, contemplation, and study. I was sixty years of
age when my country summoned me and ordered me to interfere in its
affairs. I obeyed. There were abuses, and I combated them; tyranny, and
I destroyed it; rights and principles, and I proclaimed and confessed
them; the territory was invaded, and I defended it; France was menaced,
and I offered her my chest; I was not rich, and I am poor. I was one
of the masters of the State; the bank cellars were so filled with
specie that it was necessary to prop up the walls, which were ready to
burst through the weight of gold and silver, but I dined in the Rue de
l'Arbre Sec, at two-and-twenty sous a head. I succored the oppressed. I
relieved the suffering. I tore up the altar cloth, it is true, but it
was to stanch the wounds of the country. I ever supported the onward
march of the human race towards light, and I at times resisted pitiless
progress. When opportunity served, I protected my adversaries, men of
your class. And there is at Peteghem in Flanders, on the same site
where the Merovingian Kings had their summer palace, a monastery of
Urbanists, the Abbey of St. Claire en Beaulieu, which I saved in 1793.
I did my duty according to my strength, and what good I could. After
which I was driven out, tracked, pursued, persecuted, maligned, mocked,
spat upon, accursed, and proscribed. For many years I have felt that
persons believed they had a right to despise me. My face has been held
accursed by the poor ignorant mob, and, while hating no one, I accepted
the isolation of hatred. Now, I am eighty-six years of age and on the
point of death; what have you come to ask of me?"
"Your blessing!" said the Bishop, and knelt: down. When the Bishop
raised his head again, the conventionalist's countenance had become
august: he had just expired. The Bishop returned home absorbed in the
strangest thoughts, and spent the whole night in prayer. On the morrow
curious worthies tried to make him talk about G---- the Republican, but
he only pointed to heaven. From this moment he redoubled his tenderness
and fraternity for the little ones and the suffering.
Any allusion to "that old villain of a G----" made him fall into a
singular reverie; no one could say that the passing of that mind before
his, and the reflection that great conscience cast upon his, had not
something to do with this approach to perfection. This "pastoral visit"
nearly created a stir among the small local coteries.
"Was it a bishop's place to visit the death-bed of such a man? It
was plain that he had no conversion to hope for, for all these
Revolutionists are relapsed! Then why go? what had he to see there? He
must have been very curious to see the fiend carry off a soul."
One day a Dowager, of the impertinent breed which believes itself
witty, asked him this question, "Monseigneur, people are asking when
your Grandeur will have the red cap?" "Oh, oh!" the Bishop answered,
"that is an ominous color. Fortunately those who despise it in a cap
venerate it in a hat."