1.F.1.6. WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM
THE house in which he lived consisted, as we have said, of
a ground floor, and one story above; three rooms on the
ground floor, three chambers on the first, and an attic above.
Behind the house was a garden, a quarter of an acre in extent.
The two women occupied the first floor; the Bishop was
lodged below. The first room, opening on the street, served
him as dining-room, the second was his bedroom, and the third
his oratory. There was no exit possible from this oratory, except
by passing through the bedroom, nor from the bedroom,
without passing through the dining-room. At the end of the
suite, in the oratory, there was a detached alcove with a bed,
for use in cases of hospitality. The Bishop offered this bed to
country curates whom business or the requirements of their
parishes brought to D.
The pharmacy of the hospital, a small building which had
been added to the house, and abutted on the garden, had been
transformed into a kitchen and cellar. In addition to this,
there was in the garden a stable, which had formerly been the
kitchen of the hospital, and in which the Bishop kept two cows.
No matter what the quantity of milk they gave, he invariably
sent half of it every morning to the sick people in the
hospital.
"I am paying my tithes," he said.
His bedroom was tolerably large, and rather difficult to
warm in bad weather. As wood is extremely dear at D., he hit
upon the idea of having a compartment of boards constructed
in the cow-shed. Here he passed his evenings during seasons
of severe cold: he called it his
winter salon.
In this winter salon, as in the dining-room, there was no
other furniture than a square table in white wood, and four
straw-seated chairs. In addition to this the dining-room was
ornamented with an antique sideboard, painted pink, in water
colors. Out of a similar sideboard, properly draped with
white napery and imitation lace, the Bishop had constructed
the altar which decorated his oratory.
His wealthy penitents and the sainted women of D. had
more than once assessed themselves to raise the money for a
new altar for Monseigneur's oratory; on each occasion he had
taken the money and had given it to the poor. "The most
beautiful of altars," he said, "is the soul of an unhappy
creature consoled and thanking God."
In his oratory there were two straw prie-Dieu, and there was
an arm-chair, also in straw, in his bedroom. When, by chance,
he received seven or eight persons at one time, the prefect, or
the general, or the staff of the regiment in garrison, or several
pupils from the little seminary, the chairs had to be fetched
from the winter salon in the stable, the prie-Dieu from the
oratory, and the arm-chair from the bedroom: in this way as
many as eleven chairs could be collected for the visitors. A
room was dismantled for each new guest.
lt sometimes happened that there were twelve in the party;
the Bishop then relieved the embarrassment of the situation by
standing in front of the chimney if it was winter, or by strolling
in the garden if it was summer.
There was still another chair in the detached alcove, but the
straw was half gone from it, and it had but three legs, so that
it was of service only when propped against the wall. Mademoiselle
Baptistine bad also in her own room a very large easy-chair
of wood, which had formerly been gilded, and which was
covered with flowered pekin; but they had been obliged to
hoist this bergere up to the first story through the window, as
the staircase was too narrow; it could not, therefore, be reckoned
among the possibilities in the way of furniture.
Mademoiselle Baptistine's ambition had been to be able to
purchase a set of drawing-room furniture in yellow Utrecht
velvet, stamped with a rose pattern, and with mahogany in
swan's neck style, with a sofa. But this would have cost five
hundred francs at least, and in view of the fact that she had
only been able to lay by forty-two francs and ten sous for this
purpose in the course of five years, she had ended by renouncing
the idea. However, who is there who has attained his
ideal?
Nothing is more easy to present to the imagination than the
Bishop's bedchamber. A glazed door opened on the garden;
opposite this was the bed, — a hospital bed of iron, with a canopy
of green serge; in the shadow of the bed, behind a curtain,
were the utensils of the toilet, which still betrayed the elegant
habits of the man of the world: there were two doors, one
near the chimney, opening into the oratory; the other near the
bookcase, opening into the dining-room. The bookcase was a
large cupboard with glass doors filled with books; the chimney
was of wood painted to represent marble, and habitually without
fire. In the chimney stood a pair of firedogs of iron, ornamented
above with two garlanded vases, and flutings which
had formerly been silvered with silver leaf, which was a sort
of episcopal luxury; above the chimney-piece hung a crucifix
of copper, with the silver worn off, fixed on a background of
threadbare velvet in a wooden frame from which the gilding
had fallen; near the glass door a large table with an inkstand,
loaded with a confusion of papers and with huge volumes;
before the table an arm-chair of straw; in front of the bed a
prie-Dieu, borrowed from the oratory.
Two portraits in oval frames were fastened to the wall on
each side of the bed. Small gilt inscriptions on the plain surface
of the cloth at the side of these figures indicated that
the portraits represented, one the Abbe of Chaliot, bishop of
Saint Claude; the other, the Abbe Tourteau, vicar-general of
Agde, abbe of Grand-Champ, order of Citeaux, diocese of
Chartres. When the Bishop succeeded to this apartment,
after the hospital patients, he had found these portraits there,
and had left them. They were priests, and probably donors —
two reasons for respecting them. All that he knew about
these two persons was, that they had been appointed by the
king, the one to his bishopric, the other to his benefice, on the
same day, the 27th of April, 1785. Madame Magloire having
taken the pictures down to dust, the Bishop had discovered
these particulars written in whitish ink on a little square of
paper, yellowed by time, and attached to the back of the portrait
of the Abbe of Grand-Champ with four wafers.
At his window he had an antique curtain of a coarse woollen
stuff, which finally became so old, that, in order to avoid the
expense of a new one, Madame Magloire was forced to take
a large seam in the very middle of it. This seam took the
form of a cross. The Bishop often called attention to it:
"How delightful that is!" he said.
All the rooms in the house, without exception, those on the
ground floor as well as those on the first floor, were whitewashed,
which is a fashion in barracks and hospitals.
However, in their latter years, Madame Magloire discovered
beneath the paper which had been washed over, paintings,
ornamenting the apartment of Mademoiselle Baptistine, as
we shall see further on. Before becoming a hospital, this
house had been the ancient parliament house of the Bourgeois.
Hence this decoration. The chambers were paved in red
bricks, which were washed every week, with straw mats in
front of all the beds. Altogether, this dwelling, which was attended
to by the two women, was exquisitely clean from top
to bottom. This was the sole luxury which the Bishop permitted.
He said, "That takes nothing from the poor."
It must be confessed, however, that he still retained from his
former possessions six silver knives and forks and a soup-ladle,
which Madame Magloire contemplated every day with
delight, as they glistened splendidly upon the coarse linen
cloth. And since we are now painting the Bishop of D.
as he was in reality, we must add that he had said more than
once, "I find it difficult to renounce eating from silver
dishes."
To this silverware must be added two large candlesticks of
massive silver, which he had inherited from a great-aunt.
These candlesticks held two wax candles, and usually figured
on the Bishop's chimney-piece. When he had any one to
dinner, Madame Magloire lighted the two candles and set the
candlesticks on the table.
In the Bishop's own chamber, at the head of his bed, there
was a small cupboard, in which Madame Magloire locked up
the six silver knives and forks and the big spoon every night.
But it is necessary to add, that the key was never removed.
The garden, which had been rather spoiled by the ugly
buildings which we have mentioned, was composed of four
alleys in cross-form, radiating from a tank. Another walk
made the circuit of the garden, and skirted the white wall
which enclosed it. These alleys left behind them four square
plots rimmed with box. In three of these, Madame Magloire
cultivated vegetables; in the fourth, the Bishop had planted
some flowers; here and there stood a few fruit-trees. Madame
Magloire had once remarked, with a sort of gentle malice:
"Monseigneur, you who turn everything to account, have,
nevertheless, one useless plot. It would be better to grow
salads there than bouquets." "Madame Magloire," retorted the
Bishop, "you are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the
useful." He added after a pause, "More so, perhaps."
This plot, consisting of three or four beds, occupied the
Bishop almost as much as did his books. He liked to pass an
hour or two there, trimming, hoeing, and making holes here
and there in the earth, into which he dropped seeds. He was
not as hostile to insects as a gardener could have wished to
see him. Moreover, he made no pretensions to botany; he
ignored groups and consistency; he made not the slightest
effort to decide between Tournefort and the natural method;
he took part neither with the buds against the cotyledons, nor
with Jussieu against Linnaeus. He did not study plants; he
loved flowers. He respected learned men greatly; he respected
the ignorant still more; and, without ever failing in these two
respects, he watered his flower-beds every summer evening
with a tin watering-pot painted green.
The house had not a single door which could be locked. The
door of the dining-room, which, as we have said, opened directly
on the cathedral square, had formerly been ornamented
with locks and bolts like the door of a prison. The Bishop
had had all this ironwork removed, and this door was never
fastened, either by night or by day, with anything except the
latch. All that the first passerby had to do at any hour, was
to give it a push. At first, the two women had been very
much tried by this door, which was never fastened, but Monsieur
de D. had said to them, "Have bolts put on your rooms,
if that will please you." They had ended by sharing his confidence,
or by at least acting as though they shared it.
Madame Magloire alone had frights from time to time. As
for the Bishop, his thought can be found explained, or at
least indicated, in the three lines which he wrote on the
margin of a Bible, "This is the shade of difference: the door
of the physician should never be shut, the door of the priest
should always be open."
On another book, entitled Philosophy of the Medical
Science, he had written this other note: "Am not I a physician
like them? I also have my patients, and then, too,
I have some whom I call my unfortunates."
Again he wrote: "Do not inquire the name of him who
asks a shelter of you. The very man who is embarrassed by
his name is the one who needs shelter."
It chanced that a worthy cure, I know not whether it was
the cure of Couloubroux or the cure of Pompierry, took it
into his head to ask him one day, probably at the instigation
of Madame Magloire, whether Monsieur was sure that he was
not committing an indiscretion, to a certain extent, in leaving
his door unfastened day and night, at the mercy of any one
who should choose to enter, and whether, in short, he did not
fear lest some misfortune might occur in a house so little
guarded. The Bishop touched his shoulder, with gentle gravity,
and said to him,
"Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in
vanum vigilant qui custodiunt eam," Unless the Lord guard
the house, in vain do they watch who guard it.
Then he spoke of something else.
He was fond of saying, "There is a bravery of the priest as
well as the bravery of a colonel of dragoons, — only," he
added, "ours must be tranquil."