1.F.1.3. A HARD BISHOPRIC FOR A GOOD BISHOP
THE Bishop did not omit his pastoral visits because he had
converted his carriage into alms. The diocese of D. is a
fatiguing one. There are very few plains and a great many
mountains; hardly any roads, as we have just seen; thirty-two
curacies, forty-one vicarships, and two hundred and
eighty-five auxiliary chapels. To visit all these is quite a task.
The Bishop managed to do it. He went on foot when it was in
the neighborhood, in a tilted spring-cart when it was on the
plain, and on a donkey in the mountains. The two old women
accompanied him. When the trip was too hard for them, he
went alone.
One day he arrived at Senez, which is an ancient episcopal
city. He was mounted on an ass. His purse, which was very
dry at that moment, did not permit him any other equipage.
The mayor of the town came to receive him at the gate of the
town, and watched him dismount from his ass, with scandalized
eyes. Some of the citizens were laughing around him.
"Monsieur the Mayor," said the Bishop, "and Messieurs Citizens,
I perceive that I shock you. You think it very arrogant
in a poor priest to ride an animal which was used by Jesus
Christ. I have done so from necessity, I assure you, and not
from vanity."
In the course of these trips he was kind and indulgent, and
talked rather than preached. He never went far in search of
his arguments and his examples. He quoted to the inhabitants
of one district the example of a neighboring district.
In the cantons where they were harsh to the poor, he said:
"Look at the people of Briancon! They have conferred on the
poor, on widows and orphans, the right to have their meadows
mown three days in advance of every one else. They rebuild
their houses for them gratuitously when they are ruined.
Therefore it is a country which is blessed by God. For a
whole century, there has not been a single murderer among
them."
In villages which were greedy for profit and harvest, he
said: "Look at the people of Embrun! If, at the harvest
season, the father of a family has his son away on service in
the army, and his daughters at service in the town, and if he
is ill and incapacitated, the cure recommends him to the prayers
of the congregation; and on Sunday, after the mass, all the
inhabitants of the village — men, women, and children — go to
the poor man's field and do his harvesting for him, and carry
his straw and his grain to his granary." To families divided
by questions of money and inheritance he said: "Look at the
mountaineers of Devolny, a country so wild that the nightingale
is not heard there once in fifty years. Well, when the
father of a family dies, the boys go off to seek their fortunes,
leaving the property to the girls, so that they may find husbands."
To the cantons which had a taste for lawsuits, and
where the farmers ruined themselves in stamped paper, he
said: "Look at those good peasants in the valley of Queyras!
There are three thousand souls of them. Mon Dieu! it is like
a little republic. Neither judge nor bailiff is known there.
The mayor does everything. He allots the imposts, taxes each
person conscientiously, judges quarrels for nothing, divides inheritances
without charge, pronounces sentences gratuitously;
and he is obeyed, because he is a just man among simple men."
To villages where he found no schoolmaster, he quoted once
more the people of Queyras: "Do you know how they manage?"
he said. "Since a little country of a dozen or fifteen
hearths cannot always support a teacher, they have schoolmasters
who are paid by the whole valley, who make the round
of the villages, spending a week in this one, ten days in
that, and instruct them. These teachers go to the fairs.
I have seen them there. They are to be recognized by the
quill pens which they wear in the cord of their hat.
Those who teach reading only have one pen; those who
teach reading and reckoning have two pens; those who
teach reading, reckoning, and Latin have three pens. But
what a disgrace to be ignorant! Do like the people of
Queyras!"
Thus he discoursed gravely and paternally; in default of
examples, he invented parables, going directly to the point,
with few phrases and many images, which characteristic
formed the real eloquence of Jesus Christ. And being convinced
himself, he was persuasive.