Les Misérables
Tourteau, vicar-general of Agde, abbé of Grand-Champ, order of Cîteaux,
diocese of Chartres. When the Bishop succeeded to this apartment, after
the hospital patients, he had found these portraits there, and had left
them. They were priests, and probably donors—two reasons for respecting
them. All that he knew about these two persons was, that they had been
appointed by the king, the one to his bishopric, the other to his
benefice, on the same day, the 27th of April, 1785. Madame Magloire
having taken the pictures down to dust, the Bishop had discovered these
particulars written in whitish ink on a little square of paper,
yellowed by time, and attached to the back of the portrait of the Abbé
of Grand-Champ with four wafers.
At his window he had an antique curtain of a coarse woollen stuff,
which finally became so old, that, in order to avoid the expense of a
new one, Madame Magloire was forced to take a large seam in the very
middle of it. This seam took the form of a cross. The Bishop often
called attention to it: “How delightful that is!” he said.
All the rooms in the house, without exception, those on the ground
floor as well as those on the first floor, were white-washed, which is
a fashion in barracks and hospitals.
However, in their latter years, Madame Magloire discovered beneath the
paper which had been washed over, paintings, ornamenting the apartment
of Mademoiselle Baptistine, as we shall see further on. Before becoming
a hospital, this house had been the ancient parliament house of the
Bourgeois. Hence this decoration. The chambers were paved in red
bricks, which were washed every week, with straw mats in front of all
the beds. Altogether, this dwelling, which was attended to by the two
women, was exquisitely clean from top to bottom. This was the sole
luxury which the Bishop permitted. He said, _“That takes nothing from
the poor.”_
It must be confessed, however, that he still retained from his former
possessions six silver knives and forks and a soup-ladle, which Madame
Magloire contemplated every day with delight, as they glistened
splendidly upon the coarse linen cloth. And since we are now painting
the Bishop of D—— as he was in reality, we must add that he had said
more than once, “I find it difficult to renounce eating from silver
dishes.”
To this silverware must be added two large candlesticks of massive
silver, which he had inherited from a great-aunt. These candlesticks
held two wax candles, and usually figured on the Bishop’s
chimney-piece. When he had any one to dinner, Madame Magloire lighted
the two candles and set the candlesticks on the table.
In the Bishop’s own chamber, at the head of his bed, there was a small
cupboard, in which Madame Magloire locked up the six silver knives and
forks and the big spoon every night. But it is necessary to add, that
the key was never removed.
The garden, which had been rather spoiled by the ugly buildings which
we have mentioned, was composed of four alleys in cross-form, radiating
from a tank. Another walk made the circuit of the garden, and skirted
the white wall which enclosed it. These alleys left behind them four
square plots rimmed with box. In three of these, Madame Magloire
cultivated vegetables; in the fourth, the Bishop had planted some
flowers; here and there stood a few fruit-trees. Madame Magloire had
once remarked, with a sort of gentle malice: “Monseigneur, you who turn
everything to account, have, nevertheless, one useless plot. It would
be better to grow salads there than bouquets.” “Madame Magloire,”
retorted the Bishop, “you are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as
the useful.” He added after a pause, “More so, perhaps.”
This plot, consisting of three or four beds, occupied the Bishop almost
as much as did his books. He liked to pass an hour or two there,
trimming, hoeing, and making holes here and there in the earth, into
which he dropped seeds. He was not as hostile to insects as a gardener
could have wished to see him. Moreover, he made no pretensions to
botany; he ignored groups and consistency; he made not the slightest
effort to decide between Tournefort and the natural method; he took
part neither with the buds against the cotyledons, nor with Jussieu
against Linnæus. He did not study plants; he loved flowers. He
respected learned men greatly; he respected the ignorant still more;
and, without ever failing in these two respects, he watered his
flower-beds every summer evening with a tin watering-pot painted green.
The house had not a single door which could be locked. The door of the
dining-room, which, as we have said, opened directly on the cathedral
square, had formerly been ornamented with locks and bolts like the door
of a prison. The Bishop had had all this ironwork removed, and this
door was never fastened, either by night or by day, with anything
except the latch. All that the first passer-by had to do at any hour,
was to give it a push. At first, the two women had been very much tried
by this door, which was never fastened, but Monsieur de D—— had said to
them, “Have bolts put on your rooms, if that will please you.” They had
ended by sharing his confidence, or by at least acting as though they
shared it. Madame Magloire alone had frights from time to time. As for
the Bishop, his thought can be found explained, or at least indicated,
in the three lines which he wrote on the margin of a Bible, “This is
the shade of difference: the door of the physician should never be
shut, the door of the priest should always be open.”
On another book, entitled _Philosophy of the Medical Science_, he had
written this other note: “Am not I a physician like them? I also have
my patients, and then, too, I have some whom I call my unfortunates.”
Again he wrote: “Do not inquire the name of him who asks a shelter of
you. The very man who is embarrassed by his name is the one who needs
shelter.”
It chanced that a worthy curé, I know not whether it was the curé of
Couloubroux or the curé of Pompierry, took it into his head to ask him
one day, probably at the instigation of Madame Magloire, whether
Monsieur was sure that he was not committing an indiscretion, to a
certain extent, in leaving his door unfastened day and night, at the
mercy of any one who should choose to enter, and whether, in short, he
did not fear lest some misfortune might occur in a house so little
guarded. The Bishop touched his shoulder, with gentle gravity, and said
to him, _“Nisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui
custodiunt eam,” Unless the Lord guard the house, in vain do they watch
who guard it._
Then he spoke of something else.
He was fond of saying, “There is a bravery of the priest as well as the
bravery of a colonel of dragoons,—only,” he added, “ours must be
tranquil.”
CHAPTER VII—CRAVATTE
It is here that a fact falls naturally into place, which we must not
omit, because it is one of the sort which show us best what sort of a
man the Bishop of D—— was.
After the destruction of the band of Gaspard Bès, who had infested the
gorges of Ollioules, one of his lieutenants, Cravatte, took refuge in
the mountains. He concealed himself for some time with his bandits, the
remnant of Gaspard Bès’s troop, in the county of Nice; then he made his
way to Piédmont, and suddenly reappeared in France, in the vicinity of
Barcelonette. He was first seen at Jauziers, then at Tuiles. He hid
himself in the caverns of the Joug-de-l’Aigle, and thence he descended
towards the hamlets and villages through the ravines of Ubaye and
Ubayette.
He even pushed as far as Embrun, entered the cathedral one night, and
despoiled the sacristy. His highway robberies laid waste the
country-side. The gendarmes were set on his track, but in vain. He
always escaped; sometimes he resisted by main force. He was a bold
wretch. In the midst of all this terror the Bishop arrived. He was
making his circuit to Chastelar. The mayor came to meet him, and urged
him to retrace his steps. Cravatte was in possession of the mountains
as far as Arche, and beyond; there was danger even with an escort; it
merely exposed three or four unfortunate gendarmes to no purpose.
“Therefore,” said the Bishop, “I intend to go without escort.”
“You do not really mean that, Monseigneur!” exclaimed the mayor.
“I do mean it so thoroughly that I absolutely refuse any gendarmes, and
shall set out in an hour.”
“Set out?”
“Set out.”
“Alone?”
“Alone.”
“Monseigneur, you will not do that!”
“There exists yonder in the mountains,” said the Bishop, “a tiny
community no bigger than that, which I have not seen for three years.
They are my good friends, those gentle and honest shepherds. They own
one goat out of every thirty that they tend. They make very pretty
woollen cords of various colors, and they play the mountain airs on
little flutes with six holes. They need to be told of the good God now
and then. What would they say to a bishop who was afraid? What would
they say if I did not go?”
“But the brigands, Monseigneur?”
“Hold,” said the Bishop, “I must think of that. You are right. I may
meet them. They, too, need to be told of the good God.”
“But, Monseigneur, there is a band of them! A flock of wolves!”
“Monsieur le maire, it may be that it is of this very flock of wolves
that Jesus has constituted me the shepherd. Who knows the ways of
Providence?”
“They will rob you, Monseigneur.”
“I have nothing.”
“They will kill you.”
“An old goodman of a priest, who passes along mumbling his prayers?
Bah! To what purpose?”
“Oh, mon Dieu! what if you should meet them!”
“I should beg alms of them for my poor.”
“Do not go, Monseigneur. In the name of Heaven! You are risking your
life!”
“Monsieur le maire,” said the Bishop, “is that really all? I am not in
the world to guard my own life, but to guard souls.”
They had to allow him to do as he pleased. He set out, accompanied only
by a child who offered to serve as a guide. His obstinacy was bruited
about the country-side, and caused great consternation.
He would take neither his sister nor Madame Magloire. He traversed the
mountain on mule-back, encountered no one, and arrived safe and sound
at the residence of his “good friends,” the shepherds. He remained
there for a fortnight, preaching, administering the sacrament,
teaching, exhorting. When the time of his departure approached, he
resolved to chant a _Te Deum_ pontifically. He mentioned it to the
curé. But what was to be done? There were no episcopal ornaments. They
could only place at his disposal a wretched village sacristy, with a
few ancient chasubles of threadbare damask adorned with imitation lace.
“Bah!” said the Bishop. “Let us announce our _Te Deum_ from the pulpit,
nevertheless, Monsieur le Curé. Things will arrange themselves.”
They instituted a search in the churches of the neighborhood. All the
magnificence of these humble parishes combined would not have sufficed
to clothe the chorister of a cathedral properly.
While they were thus embarrassed, a large chest was brought and
deposited in the presbytery for the Bishop, by two unknown horsemen,
who departed on the instant. The chest was opened; it contained a cope
of cloth of gold, a mitre ornamented with diamonds, an archbishop’s
cross, a magnificent crosier,—all the pontifical vestments which had
been stolen a month previously from the treasury of Notre Dame
d’Embrun. In the chest was a paper, on which these words were written,
_“From Cravatte to Monseigneur Bienvenu.”_
“Did not I say that things would come right of themselves?” said the
Bishop. Then he added, with a smile, “To him who contents himself with
the surplice of a curate, God sends the cope of an archbishop.”