Les Misérables
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.
CHAPTER XII—THE SOLITUDE OF MONSEIGNEUR WELCOME
A bishop is almost always surrounded by a full squadron of little
abbés, just as a general is by a covey of young officers. This is what
that charming Saint François de Sales calls somewhere “les prêtres
blancs-becs,” callow priests. Every career has its aspirants, who form
a train for those who have attained eminence in it. There is no power
which has not its dependents. There is no fortune which has not its
court. The seekers of the future eddy around the splendid present.
Every metropolis has its staff of officials. Every bishop who possesses
the least influence has about him his patrol of cherubim from the
seminary, which goes the round, and maintains good order in the
episcopal palace, and mounts guard over monseigneur’s smile. To please
a bishop is equivalent to getting one’s foot in the stirrup for a
sub-diaconate. It is necessary to walk one’s path discreetly; the
apostleship does not disdain the canonship.
Just as there are bigwigs elsewhere, there are big mitres in the
Church. These are the bishops who stand well at Court, who are rich,
well endowed, skilful, accepted by the world, who know how to pray, no
doubt, but who know also how to beg, who feel little scruple at making
a whole diocese dance attendance in their person, who are connecting
links between the sacristy and diplomacy, who are abbés rather than
priests, prelates rather than bishops. Happy those who approach them!
Being persons of influence, they create a shower about them, upon the
assiduous and the favored, and upon all the young men who understand
the art of pleasing, of large parishes, prebends, archidiaconates,
chaplaincies, and cathedral posts, while awaiting episcopal honors. As
they advance themselves, they cause their satellites to progress also;
it is a whole solar system on the march. Their radiance casts a gleam
of purple over their suite. Their prosperity is crumbled up behind the
scenes, into nice little promotions. The larger the diocese of the
patron, the fatter the curacy for the favorite. And then, there is
Rome. A bishop who understands how to become an archbishop, an
archbishop who knows how to become a cardinal, carries you with him as
conclavist; you enter a court of papal jurisdiction, you receive the
pallium, and behold! you are an auditor, then a papal chamberlain, then
monsignor, and from a Grace to an Eminence is only a step, and between
the Eminence and the Holiness there is but the smoke of a ballot. Every
skull-cap may dream of the tiara. The priest is nowadays the only man
who can become a king in a regular manner; and what a king! the supreme
king. Then what a nursery of aspirations is a seminary! How many
blushing choristers, how many youthful abbés bear on their heads
Perrette’s pot of milk! Who knows how easy it is for ambition to call
itself vocation? in good faith, perchance, and deceiving itself,
devotee that it is.
Monseigneur Bienvenu, poor, humble, retiring, was not accounted among
the big mitres. This was plain from the complete absence of young
priests about him. We have seen that he “did not take” in Paris. Not a
single future dreamed of engrafting itself on this solitary old man.
Not a single sprouting ambition committed the folly of putting forth
its foliage in his shadow. His canons and grand-vicars were good old
men, rather vulgar like himself, walled up like him in this diocese,
without exit to a cardinalship, and who resembled their bishop, with
this difference, that they were finished and he was completed. The
impossibility of growing great under Monseigneur Bienvenu was so well
understood, that no sooner had the young men whom he ordained left the
seminary than they got themselves recommended to the archbishops of Aix
or of Auch, and went off in a great hurry. For, in short, we repeat it,
men wish to be pushed. A saint who dwells in a paroxysm of abnegation
is a dangerous neighbor; he might communicate to you, by contagion, an
incurable poverty, an anchylosis of the joints, which are useful in
advancement, and in short, more renunciation than you desire; and this
infectious virtue is avoided. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur
Bienvenu. We live in the midst of a gloomy society. Success; that is
the lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption.
Be it said in passing, that success is a very hideous thing. Its false
resemblance to merit deceives men. For the masses, success has almost
the same profile as supremacy. Success, that Menæchmus of talent, has
one dupe,—history. Juvenal and Tacitus alone grumble at it. In our day,
a philosophy which is almost official has entered into its service,
wears the livery of success, and performs the service of its
antechamber. Succeed: theory. Prosperity argues capacity. Win in the
lottery, and behold! you are a clever man. He who triumphs is