1.F.1.11. A RESTRICTION
WE should incur a great risk of deceiving ourselves, were
we to conclude from this that Monseigneur Welcome was "a
philosophical bishop," or a "patriotic cure." His meeting,
which may almost be designated as his union, with conventionary
G., left behind it in his mind a sort of astonishment, which
rendered him still more gentle. That is all.
Although Monseigneur Bienvenu was far from being a politician,
this is, perhaps, the place to indicate very briefly what
his attitude was in the events of that epoch, supposing that
Monseigneur Bienvenu ever dreamed of having an attitude.
Let us, then, go back a few years.
Some time after the elevation of M. Myriel to the episcopate,
the Emperor had made him a baron of the Empire, in company
with many other bishops. The arrest of the Pope took
place, as every one knows, on the night of the 5th to the 6th
of July, 1809; on this occasion, M. Myriel was summoned by
Napoleon to the synod of the bishops of France and Italy convened
at Paris. This synod was held at Notre-Dame, and
assembled for the first time on the 15th of June, 1811, under
the presidency of Cardinal Fesch. M. Myriel was one of the
ninety-five bishops who attended it. But he was present only
at one sitting and at three or four private conferences. Bishop
of a mountain diocese, living so very close to nature, in rusticity
and deprivation, it appeared that he imported among
these eminent personages, ideas which altered the temperature
of the assembly. He very soon returned to D. He was interrogated
as to this speedy return, and he replied:
"I embarrassed
them. The outside air penetrated to them through
me. I produced on them the effect of an open door."
On another occasion he said, "What would you have?
Those gentlemen are princes. I am only a poor peasant
bishop."
The fact is that he displeased them. Among other strange
things, it is said that he chanced to remark one evening, when
he found himself at the house of one of his most notable colleagues:
"What beautiful clocks! What beautiful carpets!
What beautiful liveries! They must be a great trouble. I
would not have all those superfluities, crying incessantly in
my ears: 'There are people who are hungry! There are
people who are cold! There are poor people! There are poor
people!'"
Let us remark, by the way, that the hatred of luxury is not
an intelligent hatred. This hatred would involve the hatred
of the arts. Nevertheless, in churchmen, luxury is wrong,
except in connection with representations and ceremonies. It
seems to reveal habits which have very little that is charitable
about them. An opulent priest is a contradiction. The priest
must keep close to the poor. Now, can one come in contact
incessantly night and day with all this distress, all these misfortunes,
and this poverty, without having about one's own
person a little of that misery, like the dust of labor? Is it
possible to imagine a man near a brazier who is not warm?
Can one imagine a workman who is working near a furnace,
and who has neither a singed hair, nor blackened nails, nor a
drop of sweat, nor a speck of ashes on his face? The first
proof of charity in the priest, in the bishop especially, is
poverty.
This is, no doubt, what the Bishop of D. thought.
It must not be supposed, however, that he shared what
we call the "ideas of the century" on certain delicate points.
He took very little part in the theological quarrels of the
moment, and maintained silence on questions in which
Church and State were implicated; but if he had been
strongly pressed, it seems that he would have been found to be
an ultramontane rather than a gallican. Since we are making
a portrait, and since we do not wish to conceal anything,
we are forced to add that he was glacial towards Napoleon
in his decline. Beginning with 1813, he gave in his adherence
to or applauded all hostile manifestations. He refused
to see him, as he passed through on his return from the
island of Elba, and he abstained from ordering public prayers
for the Emperor in his diocese during the Hundred Days.
Besides his sister, Mademoiselle Baptistine, he had two
brothers, one a general, the other a prefect. He wrote to
both with tolerable frequency. He was harsh for a time
towards the former, because, holding a command in Provence
at the epoch of the disembarkation at Cannes, the general
had put himself at the head of twelve hundred men and had
pursued the Emperor as though the latter had been a person
whom one is desirous of allowing to escape. His correspondence
with the other brother, the ex-prefect, a fine,
worthy man who lived in retirement at Paris, Rue Cassette,
remained more affectionate.
Thus Monseigneur Bienvenu also had his hour of party
spirit, his hour of bitterness, his cloud. The shadow of the
passions of the moment traversed this grand and gentle spirit
occupied with eternal things. Certainly, such a man would
have done well not to entertain any political opinions. Let
there be no mistake as to our meaning: we are not confounding
what is called "political opinions" with the grand aspiration
for progress, with the sublime faith, patriotic, democratic,
humane, which in our day should be the very foundation
of every generous intellect. Without going deeply into
questions which are only indirectly connected with the subject
of this book, we will simply say this: It would have been
well if Monseigneur Bienvenu had not been a Royalist, and
if his glance had never been, for a single instant, turned
away from that serene contemplation in which is distinctly
discernible, above the fictions and the hatreds of this world,
above the stormy vicissitudes of human things, the beaming
of those three pure radiances, truth, justice, and charity.
While admitting that it was not for a political office that
God created Monseigneur Welcome, we should have understood
and admired his protest in the name of right and
liberty, his proud opposition, his just but perilous resistance
to the all-powerful Napoleon. But that which pleases us in
people who are rising pleases us less in the case of people
who are falling. We only love the fray so long as there is
danger, and in any case, the combatants of the first hour
have alone the right to be the exterminators of the last. He
who has not been a stubborn accuser in prosperity should
hold his peace in the face of ruin. The denunciator of success
is the only legitimate executioner of the fall. As for
us, when Providence intervenes and strikes, we let it work.
1812 commenced to disarm us. In 1813 the cowardly breach
of silence of that taciturn legislative body, emboldened by
catastrophe, possessed only traits which aroused indignation.
And it was a crime to applaud, in 1814, in the presence of
those marshals who betrayed; in the presence of that senate
which passed from one dunghill to another, insulting after
having deified; in the presence of that idolatry which was
loosing its footing and spitting on its idol, — it was a duty
to turn aside the head. In 1815, when the supreme disasters
filled the air, when France was seized with a shiver at their
sinister approach, when Waterloo could be dimly discerned
opening before Napoleon, the mournful acclamation of the
army and the people to the condemned of destiny had nothing
laughable in it, and, after making all allowance for the despot,
a heart like that of the Bishop of D, ought not perhaps to
have failed to recognize the august and touching features
presented by the embrace of a great nation and a great man
on the brink of the abyss.
With this exception, he was in all things just, true, equitable,
intelligent, humble and dignified, beneficent and kindly,
which is only another sort of benevolence. He was a priest,
a sage, and a man. It must be admitted, that even in the
political views with which we have just reproached him, and
which we are disposed to judge almost with severity, he was
tolerant and easy, more so, perhaps, than we who are speaking
here. The porter of the town-hall had been placed there
by the Emperor. He was an old non-commissioned officer of
the old guard, a member of the Legion of Honor at Austerlitz,
as much of a Bonapartist as the eagle. This poor fellow
occasionally let slip inconsiderate remarks, which the law
then stigmatized as seditious speeches. After the imperial
profile disappeared from the Legion of Honor, he never
dressed himself in his regimentals, as he said, so that he
should not be obliged to wear his cross. He had himself
devoutly removed the imperial effigy from the cross which
Napoleon had given him; this made a hole, and he would not
put anything in its place. "I will die," he said, "rather
than wear the three frogs upon my heart!" He liked to
scoff aloud at Louis XVIII. "The gouty old creature in
English gaiters!" he said; "let him take himself off to
Prussia with that queue of his." He was happy to combine
in the same imprecation the two things which he most
detested, Prussia and England. He did it so often that he
lost his place. There he was, turned out of the house, with
his wife and children, and without bread. The Bishop sent
for him, reproved him gently, and appointed him beadle in
the cathedral.
In the course of nine years Monseigneur Bienvenu had,
by dint of holy deeds and gentle manners, filled the town of
D.with a sort of tender and filial reverence. Even his conduct
towards Napoleon had been accepted and tacitly pardoned,
as it were, by the people, the good and weakly flock
who adored their emperor, but loved their bishop.