1.F.1.5. MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU MADE HIS CASSOCKS LAST TOO
LONG
The private life of M. Myriel was filled with the same
thoughts as his public life. The voluntary poverty in which
the Bishop of D. lived, would have been a solemn and charming
sight for any one who could have viewed it close at
hand.
Like all old men, and like the majority of thinkers, he slept
little. This brief slumber was profound. In the morning he
meditated for an hour, then he said his mass, either at the
cathedral or in his own house. His mass said, he broke his
fast on rye bread dipped in the milk of his own cows. Then
he set to work.
A Bishop is a very busy man: he must every day receive the
secretary of the bishopric, who is generally a canon, and nearly
every day his vicars-general. He has congregations to reprove,
privileges to grant, a whole ecclesiastical library to examine,
— prayer-books, diocesan catechisms, books of hours, etc., —
charges to write, sermons to authorize, cures and mayors to
reconcile, a clerical correspondence, an administrative correspondence;
on one side the State, on the other the Holy See;
and a thousand matters of business.
What time was left to him, after these thousand details
of business, and his offices and his breviary, he bestowed first
on the necessitous, the sick, and the afflicted; the time which
was left to him from the afflicted, the sick, and the necessitous,
he devoted to work. Sometimes he dug in his garden; again,
he read or wrote. He had but one word for both these kinds of
toil; he called them
gardening. "The mind is a garden,"
said he.
Towards mid-day, when the weather was fine, he went forth
and took a stroll in the country or in town, often entering
lowly dwellings. He was seen walking alone, buried in
his own thoughts, his eyes cast down, supporting himself
on his long cane, clad in his wadded purple garment of
silk, which was very warm, wearing purple stockings inside
his coarse shoes, and surmounted by a flat hat which
allowed three golden tassels of large bullion to droop from
its three points.
It was a perfect festival wherever he appeared. One would
have said that his presence had something warming and luminous
about it. The children and the old people came out to
the doorsteps for the Bishop as for the sun. He bestowed his
blessing, and they blessed him. They pointed out his house
to any one who was in need of anything.
Here and there he halted, accosted the little boys and girls,
and smiled upon the mothers. He visited the poor so long as
he had any money; when he no longer had any, he visited the
rich.
As he made his cassocks last a long while, and did not wish
to have it noticed, he never went out in the town without his
wadded purple cloak. This inconvenienced him somewhat in
summer.
On his return, he dined. The dinner resembled his breakfast.
At
half-past eight in the evening he supped with his sister,
Madame Magloire standing behind them and serving them at
table. Nothing could be more frugal than this repast. If,
however, the Bishop had one of his cures to supper, Madame
Magloire took advantage of the opportunity to serve Monseigneur
with some excellent fish from the lake, or with some fine
game from the mountains. Every cure furnished the pretext
for a good meal: the Bishop did not interfere. With that exception,
his ordinary diet consisted only of vegetables boiled in
water, and oil soup. Thus it was said in the town, when the
Bishop does not indulge in the cheer of a cure, he indulges in
the cheer of a trappist.
After supper he conversed for half an hour with Mademoiselle
Baptistine and Madame Magloire; then he retired to his
own room and set to writing, sometimes on loose sheets, and
again on the margin of some folio. He was a man of letters
and rather learned. He left behind him five or six very curious
manuscripts; among others, a dissertation on this verse in
Genesis, In the beginning, the spirit of God floated upon the
waters. With this verse he compares three texts: the Arabic
verse which says, The winds of God blew; Flavius Josephus
who says, A wind from above was precipitated upon the earth;
and finally, the Chaldaic paraphrase of Onkelos, which renders
it, A wind coming from God blew upon the face of the waters.
In another dissertation, he examines the theological works of
Hugo, Bishop of Ptolemais, great-grand-uncle to the writer of
this book, and establishes the fact, that to this bishop must
be attributed the divers little works published during the last
century, under the pseudonym of Barleycourt.
Sometimes, in the midst of his reading, no matter what the
book might be which he had in his hand, he would suddenly
fall into a profound meditation, whence he only emerged to
write a few lines on the pages of the volume itself. These lines
have often no connection whatever with the book which contains
them. We now have under our eyes a note written by
him on the margin of a quarto entitled Correspondence of
Lord Germain with Generals Clinton, Cornwallis, and the Admirals
on the American station. Versailles, Poincot, bookseller;
and Paris, Pissot, bookseller, Quai des Augustins.
Here is the note: —
"Oh, you who are!
"Ecclesiastes calls you the All-powerful; the Maccabees call
you the Creator; the Epistle to the Ephesians calls you liberty;
Baruch calls you Immensity; the Psalms call you Wisdom
and Truth; John calls you Light; the Books of Kings
call you Lord; Exodus calls you Providence; Leviticus, Sanctity;
Esdras, Justice; the creation calls you God; man calls
you Father; but Solomon calls you Compassion, and that is the
most beautiful of all your names."
Toward nine o'clock in the evening the two women retired
and betook themselves to their chambers on the first floor,
leaving him alone until morning on the ground floor.
It is necessary that we should, in this place, give an exact
idea of the dwelling of the Bishop of D.