1.F.1.14. WHAT HE THOUGHT
ONE last word.
Since this sort of details might, particularly at the present
moment, and to use an expression now in fashion, give to the
Bishop of D. a certain "pantheistical" physiognomy, and
induce the belief, either to his credit or discredit, that he
entertained one of those personal philosophies which are
peculiar to our century, which sometimes spring up in solitary
spirits, and there take on a form and grow until they usurp
the place of religion, we insist upon it, that not one of those
persons who knew Monseigneur Welcome would have thought
himself authorized to think anything of the sort. That which
enlightened this man was his heart. His wisdom was made
of the light which comes from there.
No systems; many works. Abstruse speculations contain
vertigo; no, there is nothing to indicate that he risked his
mind in apocalypses. The apostle may be daring, but the
bishop must be timid. He would probably have felt a scruple
at sounding too far in advance certain problems which are,
in a manner, reserved for terrible great minds. There is a
sacred horror beneath the porches of the enigma; those gloomy
openings stand yawning there, but something tells you, you,
a passerby in life, that you must not enter. Woe to him
who penetrates thither!
Geniuses in the impenetrable depths of abstraction and pure
speculation, situated, so to speak, above all dogmas, propose
their ideas to God. Their prayer audaciously offers discussion.
Their adoration interrogates. This is direct religion, which
is full of anxiety and responsibility for him who attempts its
steep cliffs.
Human meditation has no limits. At his own risk and
peril, it analyzes and digs deep into its own bedazzlement.
One might almost say, that by a sort of splendid reaction, it
with it dazzles nature; the mysterious world which surrounds
us renders back what it has received; it is probable that the
contemplators are contemplated. However that may be, there
are on earth men who — are they men? — perceive distinctly at
the verge of the horizons of revery the heights of the absolute,
and who have the terrible vision of the infinite mountain.
Monseigneur Welcome was one of these men; Monseigneur
Welcome was not a genius. He would have feared those
sublimities whence some very great men even, like Swedenborg
and Pascal, have slipped into insanity. Certainly, these
powerful reveries have their moral utility, and by these arduous
paths one approaches to ideal perfection. As for him, he
took the path which shortens, — the Gospel's.
He did not attempt to impart to his chasuble the folds of
Elijah's mantle; he projected no ray of future upon the dark
groundswell of events; he did not see to condense in flame the
light of things; he had nothing of the prophet and nothing of
the magician about him. This humble soul loved, and that
was all.
That he carried prayer to the pitch of a superhuman aspiration
is probable: but one can no more pray too much than one
can love too much; and if it is a heresy to pray beyond the
texts, Saint Theresa and Saint Jerome would be heretics.
He inclined towards all that groans and all that expiates.
The universe appeared to him like an immense malady;
everywhere he felt fever, everywhere he heard the sound of
suffering, and, without seeking to solve the enigma, he strove
to dress the wound. The terrible spectacle of created things
developed tenderness in him; he was occupied only in finding
for himself, and in inspiring others with the best way to compassionate
and relieve. That which exists was for this good
and rare priest a permanent subject of sadness which sought
consolation.
There are men who toil at extracting gold; he toiled at the
extraction of pity. Universal misery was his mine. The
sadness which reigned everywhere was but an excuse for unfailing
kindness. Love each other; he declared this to be
complete, desired nothing further, and that was the whole of
his doctrine. One day, that man who believed himself to be
a "philosopher," the senator who has already been alluded to,
said to the Bishop: "Just survey the spectacle of the world:
all war against all; the strongest has the most wit. Your love
each other is nonsense." — "Well," replied Monseigneur Welcome,
without contesting the point, "if it is nonsense, the soul
should shut itself up in it, as the pearl in the oyster." Thus
he shut himself up, he lived there, he was absolutely satisfied
with it, leaving on one side the prodigious questions which
attract and terrify, the fathomless perspectives of abstraction,
the precipices of metaphysics — all those profundities which
converge, for the apostle in God, for the atheist in nothingness;
destiny, good and evil, the way of being against being,
the conscience of man, the thoughtful somnambulism of the
animal, the transformation in death, the recapitulation of
existences which the tomb contains, the incomprehensible
grafting of successive loves on the persistent
I, the essence,
the substance, the Nile, and the Ens, the soul, nature, liberty,
necessity; perpendicular problems, sinister obscurities, where
lean the gigantic archangels of the human mind; formidable
abysses, which Lucretius, Manou, Saint Paul, Dante, contemplate
with eyes flashing lightning, which seems by its
steady gaze on the infinite to cause stars to blaze forth there.
Monseigneur Bienvenu was simply a man who took note of
the exterior of mysterious questions without scrutinizing them,
and without troubling his own mind with them, and who
cherished in his own soul a grave respect for darkness.