1.F.2.12. THE BISHOP WORKS
THE next morning at sunrise Monseigneur Bienvenu was
strolling in his garden. Madame Magloire ran up to him in
utter consternation.
"Monseigneur, Monseigneur!" she exclaimed, "does your
Grace know where the basket of silver is?"
"Yes," replied the Bishop.
"Jesus the Lord be blessed!" she resumed; "I did not know
what had become of it."
The Bishop had just picked up the basket in a flower-bed.
He presented it to Madame Magloire.
"Here it is."
"Well!" said she. "Nothing in it! And the silver?"
"Ah," returned the Bishop, "so it is the silver which
troubles you? I don't know where it is."
"Great, good God! It is stolen! That man who was here
last night has stolen it."
In a twinkling, with all the vivacity of an alert old woman,
Madame Magloire had rushed to the oratory, entered the
alcove, and returned to the Bishop. The Bishop had just bent
down, and was sighing as he examined a plant of cochlearia
des Guillons, which the basket had broken as it fell across the
bed. He rose up at Madame Magloire's cry.
"Monseigneur, the man is gone! The silver has been
stolen!"
As she uttered this exclamation, her eyes fell upon a corner
of the garden, where traces of the wall having been scaled
were visible. The coping of the wall had been torn away.
"Stay! yonder is the way he went. He jumped over into
Cochefilet Lane. Ah, the abomination! He has stolen our
silver!"
The Bishop remained silent for a moment; then he raised
his grave eyes, and said gently to Madame Magloire: —
"And, in the first place, was that silver ours?"
Madame Magloire was speechless. Another silence ensued;
then the Bishop went on: —
"Madame Magloire, I have for a long time detained that
silver wrongfully. It belonged to the poor. Who was that
man? A poor man, evidently."
"Alas! Jesus!" returned Madame Magloire. "It is not for
my sake, nor for Mademoiselle's. It makes no difference to
us. But it is for the sake of Monseigneur. What is Monseigneur
to eat with now?"
The Bishop gazed at her with an air of amazement.
"Ah,
come! Are there no such things as pewter forks and
spoons?"
Madame Magloire shrugged her shoulders.
"Pewter has an odor."
"Iron forks and spoons, then."
Madame Magloire made an expressive grimace.
"Iron has a taste."
"Very well," said the Bishop; "wooden ones then."
A few moments later he was breakfasting at the very table
at which Jean Valjean had sat on the previous evening. As
he ate his breakfast, Monseigneur Welcome remarked gayly to
his sister, who said nothing, and to Madame Magloire, who
was grumbling under her breath, that one really does not
need either fork or spoon, even of wood, in order to dip a bit
of bread in a cup of milk.
"A pretty idea, truly," said Madame Magloire to herself, as
she went and came, "to take in a man like that! and to lodge
him close to one's self! And how fortunate that he did nothing
but steal! Ah, mon Dieu! it makes one shudder to think
of it!"
As the brother and sister were about to rise from the table,
there came a knock at the door.
"Come in," said the Bishop.
The door opened. A singular and violent group made its
appearance on the threshold. Three men were holding a
fourth man by the collar. The three men were gendarmes;
the other was Jean Valjean.
A brigadier of gendarmes, who seemed to be in command of
the group, was standing near the door. He entered and
advanced to the Bishop, making a military salute.
"Monseigneur — " said he.
At this word, Jean Valjean, who was dejected and seemed
overwhelmed, raised his head with an air of stupefaction.
"Monseigneur!" he murmured. "So he is not the cure?"
"Silence!" said the gendarme. "He is Monseigneur the
Bishop."
In the meantime, Monseigneur Bienvenu had advanced as
quickly as his great age permitted.
"Ah! here you are!" he exclaimed, looking at Jean Valjean.
"I am glad to see you. Well, but how is this? I gave
you the candlesticks too, which are of silver like the rest, and
for which you can certainly get two hundred francs. Why did
you not carry them away with your forks and spoons?"
Jean Valjean opened his eyes wide, and stared at the venerable
Bishop with an expression which no human tongue can
render any account of.
"Monseigneur," said the brigadier of gendarmes, "so what
this man said is true, then? We came across him. He was
walking like a man who is running away. We stopped him
to look into the matter. He had this silver — "
"And he told you," interposed the Bishop with a smile,
"that it had been given to him by a kind old fellow of a priest
with whom he had passed the night? I see how the matter
stands. And you have brought him back here? It is a
mistake."
"In that case," replied the brigadier, "we can let him go?"
"Certainly," replied the Bishop.
The gendarmes released Jean Valjean, who recoiled.
"Is it true that I am to be released?" he said, in an almost
inarticulate voice, and as though he were talking in his sleep.
"Yes, thou art released; dost thou not understand?" said
one of the gendarmes.
"My friend," resumed the Bishop, "before you go, here are
your candlesticks. Take them."
He stepped to the chimney-piece, took the two silver candlesticks,
and brought them to Jean Valjean. The two women
looked on without uttering a word, without a gesture, without
a look which could disconcert the Bishop.
Jean Valjean was trembling in every limb. He took the
two candlesticks mechanically, and with a bewildered air.
"Now," said the Bishop, "go in peace. By the way, when
you return, my friend, it is not necessary to pass through the
garden. You can always enter and depart through the street
door. It is never fastened with anything but a latch, either
by day or by night."
Then, turning to the gendarmes: —
"You may retire, gentlemen."
The gendarmes retired.
Jean Valjean was like a man on the point of fainting.
The Bishop drew near to him, and said in a low voice: —
"Do not forget, never forget, that you have promised to use
this money in becoming an honest man."
Jean Valjean, who had no recollection of ever having
promised anything, remained speechless. The Bishop had
emphasized the words when he uttered them. He resumed
with solemnity: —
"Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil,
but to good. It is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw
it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give
it to God."