Les Misérables
thus, greedy and avaricious. This man played the good priest when he
first came. Now he does like the rest; he must have a carriage and a
posting-chaise, he must have luxuries, like the bishops of the olden
days. Oh, all this priesthood! Things will not go well, M. le Comte,
until the Emperor has freed us from these black-capped rascals. Down
with the Pope! [Matters were getting embroiled with Rome.] For my part,
I am for Cæsar alone.” Etc., etc.
On the other hand, this affair afforded great delight to Madame
Magloire. “Good,” said she to Mademoiselle Baptistine; “Monseigneur
began with other people, but he has had to wind up with himself, after
all. He has regulated all his charities. Now here are three thousand
francs for us! At last!”
That same evening the Bishop wrote out and handed to his sister a
memorandum conceived in the following terms:—
EXPENSES OF CARRIAGE AND CIRCUIT.
For furnishing meat soup to the patients in the hospital. 1,500 livres
For the maternity charitable society of Aix . . . . . . . 250 ”
For the maternity charitable society of Draguignan . . . 250 ”
For foundlings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500 ”
For orphans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500 ”
——-
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000 ”
Such was M. Myriel’s budget.
As for the chance episcopal perquisites, the fees for marriage bans,
dispensations, private baptisms, sermons, benedictions, of churches or
chapels, marriages, etc., the Bishop levied them on the wealthy with
all the more asperity, since he bestowed them on the needy.
After a time, offerings of money flowed in. Those who had and those who
lacked knocked at M. Myriel’s door,—the latter in search of the alms
which the former came to deposit. In less than a year the Bishop had
become the treasurer of all benevolence and the cashier of all those in
distress. Considerable sums of money passed through his hands, but
nothing could induce him to make any change whatever in his mode of
life, or add anything superfluous to his bare necessities.
Far from it. As there is always more wretchedness below than there is
brotherhood above, all was given away, so to speak, before it was
received. It was like water on dry soil; no matter how much money he
received, he never had any. Then he stripped himself.
The usage being that bishops shall announce their baptismal names at
the head of their charges and their pastoral letters, the poor people
of the country-side had selected, with a sort of affectionate instinct,
among the names and prenomens of their bishop, that which had a meaning
for them; and they never called him anything except Monseigneur
Bienvenu [Welcome]. We will follow their example, and will also call
him thus when we have occasion to name him. Moreover, this appellation
pleased him.
“I like that name,” said he. “Bienvenu makes up for the Monseigneur.”
We do not claim that the portrait herewith presented is probable; we
confine ourselves to stating that it resembles the original.
CHAPTER III—A HARD BISHOPRIC FOR A GOOD BISHOP
The Bishop did not omit his pastoral visits because he had converted
his carriage into alms. The diocese of D—— is a fatiguing one. There
are very few plains and a great many mountains; hardly any roads, as we
have just seen; thirty-two curacies, forty-one vicarships, and two
hundred and eighty-five auxiliary chapels. To visit all these is quite
a task.
The Bishop managed to do it. He went on foot when it was in the
neighborhood, in a tilted spring-cart when it was on the plain, and on
a donkey in the mountains. The two old women accompanied him. When the
trip was too hard for them, he went alone.
One day he arrived at Senez, which is an ancient episcopal city. He was
mounted on an ass. His purse, which was very dry at that moment, did
not permit him any other equipage. The mayor of the town came to
receive him at the gate of the town, and watched him dismount from his
ass, with scandalized eyes. Some of the citizens were laughing around
him. “Monsieur the Mayor,” said the Bishop, “and Messieurs Citizens, I
perceive that I shock you. You think it very arrogant in a poor priest
to ride an animal which was used by Jesus Christ. I have done so from
necessity, I assure you, and not from vanity.”
In the course of these trips he was kind and indulgent, and talked
rather than preached. He never went far in search of his arguments and
his examples. He quoted to the inhabitants of one district the example
of a neighboring district. In the cantons where they were harsh to the
poor, he said: “Look at the people of Briançon! They have conferred on
the poor, on widows and orphans, the right to have their meadows mown
three days in advance of every one else. They rebuild their houses for
them gratuitously when they are ruined. Therefore it is a country which
is blessed by God. For a whole century, there has not been a single
murderer among them.”
In villages which were greedy for profit and harvest, he said: “Look at
the people of Embrun! If, at the harvest season, the father of a family
has his son away on service in the army, and his daughters at service
in the town, and if he is ill and incapacitated, the curé recommends
him to the prayers of the congregation; and on Sunday, after the mass,
all the inhabitants of the village—men, women, and children—go to the
poor man’s field and do his harvesting for him, and carry his straw and
his grain to his granary.” To families divided by questions of money
and inheritance he said: “Look at the mountaineers of Devolny, a
country so wild that the nightingale is not heard there once in fifty
years. Well, when the father of a family dies, the boys go off to seek
their fortunes, leaving the property to the girls, so that they may
find husbands.” To the cantons which had a taste for lawsuits, and
where the farmers ruined themselves in stamped paper, he said: “Look at
those good peasants in the valley of Queyras! There are three thousand
souls of them. Mon Dieu! it is like a little republic. Neither judge
nor bailiff is known there. The mayor does everything. He allots the
imposts, taxes each person conscientiously, judges quarrels for
nothing, divides inheritances without charge, pronounces sentences
gratuitously; and he is obeyed, because he is a just man among simple
men.” To villages where he found no schoolmaster, he quoted once more
the people of Queyras: “Do you know how they manage?” he said. “Since a
little country of a dozen or fifteen hearths cannot always support a
teacher, they have schoolmasters who are paid by the whole valley, who
make the round of the villages, spending a week in this one, ten days
in that, and instruct them. These teachers go to the fairs. I have seen
them there. They are to be recognized by the quill pens which they wear
in the cord of their hat. Those who teach reading only have one pen;
those who teach reading and reckoning have two pens; those who teach
reading, reckoning, and Latin have three pens. But what a disgrace to
be ignorant! Do like the people of Queyras!”
Thus he discoursed gravely and paternally; in default of examples, he
invented parables, going directly to the point, with few phrases and
many images, which characteristic formed the real eloquence of Jesus
Christ. And being convinced himself, he was persuasive.
CHAPTER IV—WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS
His conversation was gay and affable. He put himself on a level with
the two old women who had passed their lives beside him. When he
laughed, it was the laugh of a schoolboy. Madame Magloire liked to call
him Your Grace [_Votre Grandeur_]. One day he rose from his armchair,
and went to his library in search of a book. This book was on one of
the upper shelves. As the bishop was rather short of stature, he could
not reach it. “Madame Magloire,” said he, “fetch me a chair. My
greatness [_grandeur_] does not reach as far as that shelf.”
One of his distant relatives, Madame la Comtesse de Lô, rarely allowed
an opportunity to escape of enumerating, in his presence, what she
designated as “the expectations” of her three sons. She had numerous
relatives, who were very old and near to death, and of whom her sons
were the natural heirs. The youngest of the three was to receive from a
grandaunt a good hundred thousand livres of income; the second was the
heir by entail to the title of the Duke, his uncle; the eldest was to
succeed to the peerage of his grandfather. The Bishop was accustomed to
listen in silence to these innocent and pardonable maternal boasts. On
one occasion, however, he appeared to be more thoughtful than usual,
while Madame de Lô was relating once again the details of all these
inheritances and all these “expectations.” She interrupted herself
impatiently: “Mon Dieu, cousin! What are you thinking about?” “I am
thinking,” replied the Bishop, “of a singular remark, which is to be
found, I believe, in St. Augustine,—‘Place your hopes in the man from
whom you do not inherit.’”
At another time, on receiving a notification of the decease of a
gentleman of the country-side, wherein not only the dignities of the
dead man, but also the feudal and noble qualifications of all his
relatives, spread over an entire page: “What a stout back Death has!”
he exclaimed. “What a strange burden of titles is cheerfully imposed on
him, and how much wit must men have, in order thus to press the tomb
into the service of vanity!”
He was gifted, on occasion, with a gentle raillery, which almost always
concealed a serious meaning. In the course of one Lent, a youthful
vicar came to D——, and preached in the cathedral. He was tolerably
eloquent. The subject of his sermon was charity. He urged the rich to
give to the poor, in order to avoid hell, which he depicted in the most
frightful manner of which he was capable, and to win paradise, which he
represented as charming and desirable. Among the audience there was a
wealthy retired merchant, who was somewhat of a usurer, named M.
Géborand, who had amassed two millions in the manufacture of coarse
cloth, serges, and woollen galloons. Never in his whole life had M.
Géborand bestowed alms on any poor wretch. After the delivery of that
sermon, it was observed that he gave a sou every Sunday to the poor old
beggar-women at the door of the cathedral. There were six of them to
share it. One day the Bishop caught sight of him in the act of
bestowing this charity, and said to his sister, with a smile, “There is
M. Géborand purchasing paradise for a sou.”
When it was a question of charity, he was not to be rebuffed even by a
refusal, and on such occasions he gave utterance to remarks which
induced reflection. Once he was begging for the poor in a drawing-room
of the town; there was present the Marquis de Champtercier, a wealthy
and avaricious old man, who contrived to be, at one and the same time,
an ultra-royalist and an ultra-Voltairian. This variety of man has
actually existed. When the Bishop came to him, he touched his arm,
_“You must give me something, M. le Marquis.”_ The Marquis turned round
and answered dryly, _“I have poor people of my own, Monseigneur.” “Give
them to me,”_ replied the Bishop.
One day he preached the following sermon in the cathedral:—
“My very dear brethren, my good friends, there are thirteen hundred and
twenty thousand peasants’ dwellings in France which have but three
openings; eighteen hundred and seventeen thousand hovels which have but
two openings, the door and one window; and three hundred and forty-six
thousand cabins besides which have but one opening, the door. And this
arises from a thing which is called the tax on doors and windows. Just