1.F.1.4. WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS
His conversation was gay and affable. He put himself on a
level with the two old women who had passed their lives beside
him. When he laughed, it was the laugh of a schoolboy.
Madame Magloire liked to call him Your Grace [Votre Grandeur].
One day he rose from his arm-chair, and went to his
library in search of a book. This book was on one of the upper
shelves. As the bishop was rather short of stature, he could
not reach it. "Madame Magloire," said he, "fetch me a chair.
My greatness [grandeur] does not reach as far as that shelf."
One of his distant relatives, Madame la Comtesse de Lo,
rarely allowed an opportunity to escape of enumerating, in his
presence, what she designated as "the expectations" of her
three sons. She had numerous relatives, who were very old
and near to death, and of whom her sons were the natural
heirs. The youngest of the three was to receive from a grand-aunt
a good hundred thousand livres of income; the second
was the heir by entail to the title of the Duke, his uncle; the
eldest was to succeed to the peerage of his grandfather. The
Bishop was accustomed to listen in silence to these innocent
and pardonable maternal boasts. On one occasion, however,
he appeared to be more thoughtful than usual, while Madame
de Lo was relating once again the details of all these inheritances
and all these "expectations." She interrupted herself
impatiently: "Mon Dieu, cousin! What are you thinking
about?" "I am thinking," replied the Bishop, "of a singular
remark, which is to be found, I believe, in St. Augustine, —
'Place your hopes in the man from whom you do not
inherit.' "
At another time, on receiving a notification of the decease of
a gentleman of the country-side, wherein not only the dignities
of the dead man, but also the feudal and noble qualifications of
all his relatives, spread over an entire page: "What a stout
back Death has!" he exclaimed. "What a strange burden of
titles is cheerfully imposed on him, and how much wit must
men have, in order thus to press the tomb into the service of
vanity!"
He was gifted, on occasion, with a gentle raillery, which
almost always concealed a serious meaning. In the course of
one Lent, a youthful vicar came to D., and preached in the
cathedral. He was tolerably eloquent. The subject of his sermon
was charity. He urged the rich to give to the poor, in
order to avoid hell, which he depicted in the most frightful
manner of which he was capable, and to win paradise, which he
represented as charming and desirable. Among the audience
there was a wealthy retired merchant, who was somewhat of a
usurer, named M. Geborand, who had amassed two millions in
the manufacture of coarse cloth, serges, and woollen galloons.
Never in his whole life had M. Geborand bestowed alms on any
poor wretch. After the delivery of that sermon, it was observed
that he gave a sou every Sunday to the poor old beggar-women
at the door of the cathedral. There were six of them to
share it. One day the Bishop caught sight of him in the act
of bestowing this charity, and said to his sister, with a smile,
"There is M. Geborand purchasing paradise for a sou."
When it was a question of charity, he was not to be rebuffed
even by a refusal, and on such occasions he gave utterance to
remarks which induced reflection. Once he was begging for
the poor in a drawing-room of the town; there was present the
Marquis de Champtercier, a wealthy and avaricious old man,
who contrived to be, at one and the same time, an ultra-royalist
and an ultra-Voltairian. This variety of man has actually
existed. When the Bishop came to him, he touched his
arm,
"You must give me something, M. le Marquis." The
Marquis turned round and answered dryly,
"I have poor
people of my own, Monseigneur." "Give them to me," replied
the Bishop.
One day he preached the following sermon in the cathedral: —
"My very dear brethren, my good friends, there are thirteen
hundred and twenty thousand peasants' dwellings in
France which have but three openings; eighteen hundred and
seventeen thousand hovels which have but two openings, the
door and one window; and three hundred and forty-six thousand
cabins besides which have but one opening, the door. And
this arises from a thing which is called the tax on doors and
windows. Just put poor families, old women and little children,
in those buildings, and behold the fevers and maladies
which result! Alas! God gives air to men; the law sells it
to them. I do not blame the law, but I bless God. In the department
of the Isere, in the Var, in the two departments
of the Alpes, the Hautes, and the Basses, the peasants have
not even wheelbarrows; they transport their manure on the
backs of men; they have no candles, and they burn resinous
sticks, and bits of rope dipped in pitch. That is the state of
affairs throughout the whole of the hilly country of Dauphine.
They make bread for six months at one time; they bake it with
dried cow-dung. In the winter they break this bread up with
an axe, and they soak it for twenty-four hours, in order to
render it eatable. My brethren, have pity! behold the suffering
on all sides of you!"
Born a Provencal, he easily familiarized himself with the
dialect of the south. He said, "En be! moussu, ses sage?" as
in lower Languedoc; "Onte anaras passa?" as in the Basses-Alpes;
"Puerte un bouen moutu embe un bouen fromage
grase," as in upper Dauphine. This pleased the people
extremely, and contributed not a little to win him access to all
spirits. He was perfectly at home in the thatched cottage and
in the mountains. He understood how to say the grandest
things in the most vulgar of idioms. As he spoke all tongues,
he entered into all hearts.
Moreover, he was the same towards people of the world
and towards the lower classes. He condemned nothing in
haste and without taking circumstances into account. He
said, "Examine the road over which the fault has passed."
Being, as he described himself with a smile, an ex-sinner,
he
had none of the asperities of austerity, and he professed, with
a good deal of distinctness, and without the frown of the ferociously
virtuous, a doctrine which may be summed up as follows: —
"Man has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden
and his temptation. He drags it with him and yields to it.
He must watch it, cheek it, repress it, and obey it only at the
last extremity. There may be some fault even in this obedience;
but the fault thus committed is venial; it is a fall, but a
fall on the knees which may terminate in prayer.
"To be a saint is the exception; to be an upright man is the
rule. Err, fall, sin if you will, but be upright.
"The least possible sin is the law of man. No sin at all is
the dream of the angel. All which is terrestrial is subject to
sin. Sin is a gravitation."
When he saw everyone exclaiming very loudly, and growing
angry very quickly, "Oh! oh!" he said, with a smile; "to all
appearance, this is a great crime which all the world commits.
These are hypocrisies which have taken fright, and
are in haste to make protest and to put themselves under
shelter."
He was indulgent towards women and poor people, on whom
the burden of human society rest. He said, "The faults of
women, of children, of the feeble, the indigent, and the ignorant,
are the fault of the husbands, the fathers, the masters,
the strong, the rich, and the wise."
He said, moreover, "Teach those who are ignorant as many
things as possible; society is culpable, in that it does not afford
instruction gratis; it is responsible for the night which it produces.
This soul is full of shadow; sin is therein committed.
The guilty one is not the person who has committed the sin,
but the person who has created the shadow."
It will be perceived that he had a peculiar manner of his
own of judging things: I suspect that he obtained it from the
Gospel.
One day he heard a criminal case, which was in preparation
and on the point of trial, discussed in a drawing-room.
A wretched man, being at the end of his resources, had
coined counterfeit money, out of love for a woman, and for
the child which he had had by her. Counterfeiting was still
punishable with death at that epoch. The woman had been
arrested in the act of passing the first false piece made by the
man. She was held, but there were no proofs except against
her. She alone could accuse her lover, and destroy him by her
confession. She denied; they insisted. She persisted in her
denial. Thereupon an idea occurred to the attorney for the
crown. He invented an infidelity on the part of the lover, and
succeeded, by means of fragments of letters cunningly presented,
in persuading the unfortunate woman that she had a
rival, and that the man was deceiving her. Thereupon, exasperated
by jealousy, she denounced her lover, confessed all,
proved all.
The man was ruined. He was shortly to be tried at Aix
with his accomplice. They were relating the matter, and each
one was expressing enthusiasm over the cleverness of the
magistrate. By bringing jealousy into play, he had caused
the truth to burst forth in wrath, he had educed the justice of
revenge. The Bishop listened to all this in silence. When
they had finished, he inquired, —
"Where are this man and woman to be tried?"
"At the Court of Assizes."
He went on, "And where will the advocate of the crown be
tried?"
A tragic 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 writer for the public. The town took a great interest
in the trial. On the eve of the day fixed for the execution
of the condemned man, the chaplain of the prison fell ill.
A priest was needed to attend the criminal in his last moments.
They sent for the cure. It seems that he refused to
come, saying, "That is no affair of mine. I have nothing to
do with that unpleasant task, and with that mountebank:
I, too, am ill; and besides, it is not my place." This reply
was reported to the Bishop, who said,
"Monsieur le Cure is
right: it is not his place; it is mine."
He went instantly to the prison, descended to the cell of the
"mountebank," called him by name, took him by the hand,
and spoke to him. He passed the entire day with him, forgetful
of food and sleep, praying to God for the soul of the condemned
man, and praying the condemned man for his own.
He told him the best truths, which are also the most simple.
He was father, brother, friend; he was bishop only to bless.
He taught him everything, encouraged and consoled him.
The man was on the point of dying in despair. Death was an
abyss to him. As he stood trembling on its mournful brink, he
recoiled with horror. He was not sufficiently ignorant to be
absolutely indifferent. His condemnation, which had been a
profound shock, had, in a manner, broken through, here and
there, that wall which separates us from the mystery of things,
and which we call life. He gazed incessantly beyond this
world through these fatal breaches, and beheld only darkness.
The Bishop made him see light.
On the following day, when they came to fetch the unhappy
wretch, the Bishop was still there. He followed him, and
exhibited himself to the eyes of the crowd in his purple camail
and with his episcopal cross upon his neck, side by side with
the criminal bound with cords.
He mounted the tumbril with him, he mounted the scaffold
with him. The sufferer, who had been so gloomy and cast
down on the preceding day, was radiant. He felt that his
soul was reconciled, and he hoped in God. The Bishop embraced
him, and at the moment when the knife was about to
fall, he said to him: "God raises from the dead him whom
man slays; he whom his brothers have rejected finds his
Father once more. Pray, believe, enter into life: the Father
is there." When he descended from the scaffold, there was
something in his look which made the people draw aside to let
him pass. They did not know which was most worthy of admiration,
his pallor or his serenity. On his return to the
humble dwelling, which he designated, with a smile, as
his
palace, he said to his sister,
"I have just officiated pontifically."
Since
the most sublime things are often those which are the
least understood, there were people in the town who said, when
commenting on this conduct of the Bishop, "It is affectation."
This,
however, was a remark which was confined to the
drawing-rooms. The populace, which perceives no jest in holy
deeds, was touched, and admired him.
As for the Bishop, it was a shock to him to have beheld the
guillotine, and it was a long time before he recovered from it.
In fact, when the scaffold is there, all erected and prepared,
it has something about it which produces hallucination. One
may feel a certain indifference to the death penalty, one may
refrain from pronouncing upon it, from saying yes or no, so
long as one has not seen a guillotine with one's own eyes: but
if one encounters one of them, the shock is violent; one is
forced to decide, and to take part for or against. Some admire
it, like de Maistre; others execrate it, like Beccaria. The
guillotine is the concretion of the law; it is called vindicte;
it is not neutral, and it does not permit you to remain neutral.
He who sees it shivers with the most mysterious of shivers.
All social problems erect their interrogation point around this
chopping-knife. The scaffold is a vision. The scaffold is not
a piece of carpentry; the scaffold is not a machine; the scaffold
is not an inert bit of mechanism constructed of wood,
iron and cords.
It seems as though it were a being, possessed of I know not
what sombre initiative; one would say that this piece of carpenter's
work saw, that this machine heard, that this mechanism
understood, that this wood, this iron, and these cords were
possessed of will. In the frightful meditation into which its
presence casts the soul the scaffold appears in terrible guise,
and as though taking part in what is going on. The scaffold is
the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats flesh, it
drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort of monster fabricated by
the judge and the carpenter, a spectre which seems to live
with a horrible vitality composed of all the death which it has
inflicted.
Therefore, the impression was terrible and profound; on the
day following the execution, and on many succeeding days, the
Bishop appeared to be crushed. The almost violent serenity of
the funereal moment had disappeared; the phantom of social
justice tormented him. He, who generally returned from all
his deeds with a radiant satisfaction, seemed to be reproaching
himself. At times he talked to himself, and stammered lugubrious
monologues in a low voice. This is one which his sister
overheard one evening and preserved: "I did not think that
it was so monstrous. It is wrong to become absorbed in the
divine law to such a degree as not to perceive human law.
Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that
unknown thing?"
In course of time these impressions weakened and probably
vanished. Nevertheless, it was observed that the Bishop
thenceforth avoided passing the place of execution.
M. Myriel could be summoned at any hour to the bedside of
the sick and dying. He did not ignore the fact that therein
lay his greatest duty and his greatest labor. Widowed and
orphaned families had no need to summon him; he came of his
own accord. He understood how to sit down and hold his
peace for long hours beside the man who had lost the wife of
his love, of the mother who had lost her child. As he knew the
moment for silence he knew also the moment for speech. Oh,
admirable consoler! He sought not to efface sorrow by forgetfulness,
but to magnify and dignify it by hope. He said: —
"Have a care of the manner in which you turn towards the
dead. Think not of that which perishes. Gaze steadily. You
will perceive the living light of your well-beloved dead in the
depths of heaven." He knew that faith is wholesome. He
sought to counsel and calm the despairing man, by pointing
out to him the resigned man, and to transform the grief which
gazes upon a grave by showing him the grief which fixes its
gaze upon a star.